D&D 5E Enemies in waves

[Mouseferatu]

I'm wondering if any of you have experience running "waves" of combat in 5E. I can wing it/learn as I go, of course. Obviously it's easier than if the PCs were fighting all of them at once, but harder than if they were truly separate encounters. But if any of you have actually done so, discovered any tricks or hidden pitfalls to watch out for, I'd love to hear about them.

(For those who care why: I'll be starting a future campaign with a modified version of Keep on the Borderlands, but the PCs' first task is retaking the keep itself. It lay abandoned for a while; the inner bailey is now home to the kobolds who were driven out of the caves, who are defending against a small horde of zombies sent by the hidden temple. I want to be able to make the players feel overwhelmed by the zombies, but not so much so that they can't win--or at least survive long enough to get to a more defensible position.)

 

[Paraxis]

I have ran only a couple encounters with waves and they went well, what I did was give clues that more waves were coming so while yes there was not a long break to use out of combat heals and regroup they were able to change up tactics and conserve resources. A spell with a minute long buff period like bless will have more effect than a small AoE, stuff like that.

Also you control the exact rate of the waves so if you need more pressure on the players the wave shows up a round earlier, they need a round to regroup and rebuff you push the next wave back a round, in the end you can can balance the encounter on the fly like that.

 

[SirAntoine]

I'd like to play those kinds of adventures.

 

[PnPgamer]

First i thought this was a topic about enemies entering to battle by surfing.

 

[Mouseferatu]

First i thought this was a topic about enemies entering to battle by surfing.

That's the second adventure.

 

[GlobeOfDankness]

i actually ran a three-stage encounter tonight that started with a few swarms of bugs, progressed to an incubus and a pair of hell hounds before ending with a stone beholder that the wild sorcerer accidentally summoned in. it took a lot longer as one fight than i think would have as three. the characters used a lot more resources than i've seen before on account of the 13 round encounter. one person was disintegrated.

it was a cool and memorable session, but i did sort of feel bad for keeping them in the same ruined tavern for the whole game. i tried giving them a two-round window to run away from the beholder while it was temporarily disabled, but they decided to stay and fight (this is where the disintegration came in.)

 

[Uller]

I've run multiple staged encounters. The DMG gives guidance to just treat each wave as a separate encounter for gauging difficulty. This seems accurate. Our last game had two staged encounters:

First one:
Stage 1: 2 giant spiders
Stage 2: 4 twig blights
Stage 3: 4 zombies
Stage 4: Young Green Dragon

There was only a round or two between each stage. My expectation was the dragon would just hit the party with a breath attack and fly back to its lair but the locked it up with three castings of Tasha's Hideous Laughter and managed to kill it.

Second encounter:
20 zombies starting with just 4 and adding 4 or 8 per round.

Poth these were with a 4th level party.

I also ran several staged encounters with a 10th level party against a pack of bugbears, ogres, a bear and hill giants. Again it worked well. Unlike 4e, 5e does not have am expectation of rest and recovery between most encounters. It seems to expect 2-4 encounters then a shrt rest so it doesn't make much difference ifnew monsters show up 5 minutes after the first fight ended or just as the last few monsters are being mopped up.

 

[TerraDave]

I do this all the time. Going back many years.

There are a few cases. One is "zombies keep rising". This is where reinforcements are essentially built into a single encounter, like zombies that keep coming from the earth or slowly shambling into the fight zone. The other is "ogre hear, ogre join fun!". A dungeon classic, as nearby monsters decide to join the encounter in a some what realistic fashion. An interesting variation is "come and get it". This is where the PCs actually provoke a stream of monsters to attack, usually from a defensive position, and with access to area attack spells.

Three reasons to do this: 1, that I touched on, is "gygaxian realism": there are cases where it seems like it should happen, so it does. 2, traditional dungeon set ups can have a lot of encounters, this can help consolidate them. 3, it can be a good way to keep players on their toes and disrupt some otherwise tired tactics on their part but actually be a less dangerous way for them to face a lot of opponents.

 

[iserith]

I'm wondering if any of you have experience running "waves" of combat in 5E. I can wing it/learn as I go, of course. Obviously it's easier than if the PCs were fighting all of them at once, but harder than if they were truly separate encounters. But if any of you have actually done so, discovered any tricks or hidden pitfalls to watch out for, I'd love to hear about them.

(For those who care why: I'll be starting a future campaign with a modified version of Keep on the Borderlands, but the PCs' first task is retaking the keep itself. It lay abandoned for a while; the inner bailey is now home to the kobolds who were driven out of the caves, who are defending against a small horde of zombies sent by the hidden temple. I want to be able to make the players feel overwhelmed by the zombies, but not so much so that they can't win--or at least survive long enough to get to a more defensible position.)

If you're using a grid, consider this approach to the zombie attack: Living Dead Girl. I wrote that for D&D 4e, but the basic setup and overrun mechanic is portable to D&D 5e. This presents the zombie wave as basically a force of nature - unstoppable and looming while the PCs deal with a particular objective. Wiping out zombies just draws more zombies, so while sometimes you have to take out a deader, other times you might benefit from pushing them around or leading them away from your goal.

Achieving objectives is a good way to account for player skill in a wave situation. Let's say you start with a Medium difficulty wave. The next one is Medium if they achieve a stated objective, Hard if they do not. It steps up from there with new objectives each time. If they're able to manage both fighting off zombies and dealing with objectives, they can keep the waves at Medium. If they are unable to do so, it gets harder and harder until a set number of waves have been dealt with.

Another good scenario is to try and stop the zombies from occupying an area or getting past the PCs. So let's say the characters are defending a large gap in the wall (or whatever). Send increasing waves of zombies at them. If they get through the gap or off the map (if you're using a grid), it accrues toward failure. After X zombies get through, they lose the objective and must deal with the aftermath.

If you think that the PCs will have a rough time of it (to the point of being unfair), consider placing objectives out there that grant the benefit of a short rest without having to sit around for an hour. For example, they save the NPC in distress from the shambling horde - this gives them a morale boost that allows them to regain abilities and spend hit dice as per a short rest.

All in all, my overall point is that waves can be a lot of fun, but having multiple objectives were slaying the opposing forces is just a potential solution among many makes for a more dynamic, exciting, and memorable scene.

 

[neobolts]

First i thought this was a topic about enemies entering to battle by surfing.

That is awesome! I am stealing this for my next campaign!