SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

Monday’s post about my preparing for the next D&D session, I spoke about having to adjust the Lich stats so it could be used as the boss in the Jim Murphy Undead Lair.

It is by chance also the boss he uses within the video as well. So in this post I’ll be making use of his advice, along with the advice of you guessed it Matt Colville.

Before I start these are the Lich stats:

I’ll cover the other bits like actions, spells, etc as and when needed.

Let’s look firstly at Jim Murphy’s advice. After all it’s his idea. Jim talks about taking the Lich down from an 18th level magic user to a 5th level one. So to do this he suggest scaling down everything to the appropriate level, including saving throws against any spells he throws, any special abilities are either not available or greatly diminished in power.

This advice from Jim leads nicely in to the adjusting monsters advice from Matt Colville. However Jim does let his Lich keep counter spell. He says that the Lich with it’s spells and what ever abilities it has cause a minor inconvenience.

With the basic stats above I’m leaning towards lowering the AC. At the moment by a single point. But that might get lowered on the day to 15.

The HP need reducing drastically. Saving throws have been halved and reduced by 1 or 2 points.

Skills I’m leaving, and will adjust on the fly if I need them.

AC: 16

HP: 54

saving throws: Con: +4, Int: +5, Wis: +4

So let’s look at these other things the Lich can do.

I don’t need to worry about the rejuvenation. But I want to keep the legendary resistance. However I’m going to dial it back and make it a once a day thing. Which in reality is for the one encounter I plan to use the Lich in.

So what spells will I give my Lich?

Firstly the spell save DC is too high. That needs to drop to something the group has a chance of meeting. And the to hit bonus is way way to powerful. For one or two of my group it’s an instant hit without rolling!

Spell save DC: 15

Spell attack bonus: +4

I’m only picking about two or three spells. This is mainly because I’m going to be making this an action oriented monster. Actions plus lots of spells would I feel make this too over powered for a low level “baby” Lich. Also because this is a boss monster, and you know from the undead liar video, lots of undead are being thrown at the party. I’m going with defensive spells for “baby” Lich.

I’m also going to give the “baby” Lich only 4 spell slots.

Spells: shield, counter spell, dispel magic and ray of frost

The Lich has the following legendary actions:

As has been pointed out previously this is a “baby” Lich. So I’m just going to drop these legendary actions.

Although technically my Lich could be argued as being in it’s liar and have access to the following lair actions:

The only one I will make available to this “baby” Lich is the regaining spell slots action. The others just seem too over powering at this lower level. And because there are only have 4 slots I’ll use 1d4.

So now onto the Matt Colville advice from his recent (at the time of writing) Running the Game video Action Oriented Monsters. Naturally I’m using “baby” Lich as a boss.

Actions: Cast a spell

Bonus Actions: raise the fallen dead – each round a fallen undead comes back.

Reactions: Cast counter spell

Villain Actions:

Round 1: “stay awhile, stay forever” – entrances and exits shut and become locked.

Round 2: “kill him!” – focuses the undead on a member of the party that has used magic.

Round 3: “I have you now” – a minotaur skeleton appears and attacks the party.

So that’s my modified “baby” Lich I plan to use. What do you think? What would you do differently?

Yesterday was such a shite day for me. I had a sick bug or something and was sick two or three times. Spent the day slipping in and out of the depths of sleep. Between the sleep and vomiting there was that constant feeling I could be making a fast move for the bathroom.

The attack chihuahuas were even kind to me and never left a “surprise” for me to discover in the morning. They are quite the little practical jokers some nights.

But today I’m feeling much better.

So much so I even felt up to putting six more skeletons together, and apply the white primer to them.

Once these are fully painted that will take me to thirteen in this part of the undead horde that are dungeon ready.

I’m not sure what the skeletal creature is. But I’m calling it as a skeleton dog. There is also a pile of bones I can use as scatter terrain. Which is useful. Mainly because I can place a couple (which is all I got on the sprues) in the dungeon as a “warning” of what’s to come.

Looking forward to throwing the Jim Murphy Undead monster mambo at some players.

With the finishing touches to the zombie horde still to be done. I deviated from the plan and built five of the skelton miniatures that arrived.

Once again I had to cut and glue things together before being able to start painting.

I used a white primer with these. Once dry did base coats, that I have to admit weren’t doing much for me. They looked so flat and lifeless. It was only once I applied a wash that the miniatures started to come alive.

The final touch was some highlighting, and flock on the bases.

Not an amazing paint job but table ready (just) or as I like calling it dungeon ready.

And if one of those zombies were to accidental fall there would be…

I some how managed to make it to twenty one zombie figures yesterday and today before my will to live finally started to drain away.

Luckily my order of Army Painter Necrotic Flesh Primer arrived today so that I could prime them and start painting.

I was being sneaky using the necrotic flesh as the primer colour because that was also going to be the base coat for the flesh areas.

So once dry I could paint the clothing matt black, and apply the zombie shader that Army Painter do for the Zombicide games.

Once that’s dry I can apply highlights to the clothing to give the hint of colour, along with strategic splashes of blood. Once happy (am I ever?) I’ll do the bases with the Ash Grey flock that I have.

But all that will have to wait until after our fourth D&D session tomorrow.

On that front I was at the library printing stuff off ready for the session. Plus two or three of the mini dungeons that are in The Lazy DM’s Workbook. They were to add to my DM folder as a resource to call upon if needed.

Right I need a good nights sleep so I’m ready for tomorrow.

The Mantic Kings of War Zombie Horde arrived.

So far I’ve only managed to muster up enough inner strength to put thirteen of them together.

I so hate this part of the hobby.

I think there is enough to make about forty zombies. Seriously I’m going to struggle to keep it together making that many.

I’ll stop at twenty. That should be enough for the Jim Murphy Undead mambo. Besides I’ve got those skeletons to assemble as well.

And then I suppose I’m going to have to paint them. It gets worse.

One of the things you need for skirmish miniature games like Last Days or D&D is a collection of scatter terrain. Stuff like treasure chests, barrels, bushes, trees, weapon racks, etc.

For Last Days I’ve been slowly collecting stuff for a wilderness type setting, where there is an old wreck of a farm house surrounded by trees and fences, the odd abandoned car. The trees were an issue.

I’m not up to building my own. Commercial ones were way too expensive. You could be paying over twenty quid, nearly thirty for three trees!

So I’ve been putting getting trees off. I’d need a few and at those war gamer prices way out of my league.

Since then I’ve started DMing. It meant I needed to come up with a solution.

On thingyverse I found a great looking stl file. But I never got round to getting any printed off. My more urgent needs were tiles for caves and boats.

What I liked about the 3d printed option was they would be cheaper to get done. They make great table theatre. I’m a big fan of table theatre. It gives a wow factor. You have to admit when you see the photos of tables full of dwarven forge (or other 3D printed tiles) they look damn impressive. Although some may argue a tad over kill.

Finances force me to take the approach of just enough to get the idea over. So I use a mix of 3d tiles, cardboard tiles, battle maps, with scatter terrain strategically placed on them.

But I found an affordable solution, that didn’t require me to have access to a 3d printer. I found some tree stumps!

One of the things the 3d trees and the expensive war gaming solutions had was canopy. Although very visually impressive. They have the same problem that the dwarven forge dungeons have in the majority of photos out there. In those photos the dungeon walls block the visibility for the players of what’s going on. And that is also an issue with the trees that have a canopy.

The nice thing about the tree stumps is that they show where the tree is without getting in the way. On some of the stumps the players miniature can be placed on top of the stump to indicate that the player has climbed up the tree.

Don’t get me wrong I’d be all over using the 3d printed trees. They look awesome.

But as an affordable compromise that will still give that table theatre, and not obstruct visibility these are a fantastic option.

Next a collection of columns to use.

Here are a couple of useful links for those interested:

Urban Construct Tree Stumps, YouTube videos with links on trees

So this morning I got my hands on the Wisbech Castle vaults map, and a map showing what is known about the tunnels under the town centre.

I decided to use the later first to create a dungeon based on it.

I’ve split the tunnels over two levels. They are too long to fit on a single page.

In the source material I’ve turned the area shown into an undead lair. The inspiration for this is from the Jim Murphy video Undead! Monster Mambo 4. I’ll probably run it the way Jim suggests. Which means getting a lot of zombie and skeleton miniatures. Sadly the zombies I have are modern zombies from Zombicide. I need zombies that are suitable for a fantasy setting. I also have just two skeletons. So it’s down to that nigh impossible task of tracking down miniatures at an affordable price. Which I think I’ve managed to do. If my calculations are correct I’ll have about twenty of each. The draw back is they are on sprues. Yep I have to resort to that bit I dislike, cutting and gluing once they arrive.

You will notice on my version of the map I’m producing I have two open pits. Which are connected. The adventurers will be able to descend down them, and at the bottom discover the connecting tunnel.

The reason I’m adding stuff like this is to make it interesting and dangerous for the adventurers “curious” enough to venture down. Otherwise I’m left with long straight corridors. So I think a little artistic license is justified.