So, here is the scenario: my lvl5 party is marching towards a city that is besieged by a horde of undead under the controll of several necromancers, which are using hill giant zombies as siege engines. If they were to attack head-on, it’s a guaranteed TPK. Lukily, they are part of a small force sent to lift the siege and I’d like them to have a couple of options/hooks to weaken the besieging force.
I want them to be able to influence the outcome of the battle, without singlehandedly lifting the entire siege - kind of like an elite special operations team.
Ideas so far:
harass the rearguard to strike at some of the hill giants
stealth mission to take out one of the necromancers
...
I’m still missing some ideas to mechanically convey the dread, panic, chaos and scale of the scenario, without turing it into a string of combat encounters.Any ideas or suggestions are much appreciated!
Some sort of anti-sapper mission where they sneak ahead of enemy lines and plant alchemical bombs that trigger in close proximity to undead?
EDIT:
Or some sort of anti-siege spell that needs to be ritually placed around the city from the outside to help ward large rocks flung by the giant zombies?
Typically the best use of small elite units (such as PCs) is destroying key targets while the rest of the army is elsewhere and/or distracted. I would do something like "One of the necromancers is off 'recruiting' new zombies in a local village, put a stop to that."
Siege warfare in real life is all about supply. The bad guy is using necromancy which tremendously reduces supply problems, but not entirely. Typically undead become uncontrolled without a lot of castings.
To explain the massive numbers needed to maintain a siege, I suggest you create a McGuffin and go with a series of missions:
Scout. Win = learn about necromancer recruiting
Prevent Necromancer recruiting more undead. Win = learn about McGuffin
Spy. Win = learn location and more info about McGuffin
Steal. Win = obtain McGuffin
It's a Trap! Win = Use McGuffin to lure "General" into vulnerable position and kill him
Maybe the besieged city is running out of food/water/arrows, and the characters need to establish a supply line? They know of a secret tunnel leading in and out of the town, but it's in the middle of an outlying necromancer camp and filled with dungeon monsters.
The partyd have a cleric, so that kind of limits their options. The city is built on the banks of a river, but it would interesting if it were being polluted upstream.
I'm also toying with the idea of having them sneak an artifact into the city to bolster the defences or clear barricades around the necromancer's encampment to make way for a cavalry charge ...
I don't want to railroad the whole thing, but give them the opportunity to come up with a range of ways to help break the siege. They'll be part of the warcouncil, so the more hooks, the merrier!
This seems like the type of session scenario in which you can just encourage them to do as much recon/Intel as possible, even some "higher priority" problems identified by this war council, provide them with the list of problems learned, and just sit back while they take their time to come up with plausible solutions and you can just nod along and adjudicate.
There isn't any railroading if you don't even have rails; this session likely works best if you have nothing predetermined but instead just provide a list of problems to be solved, be generous to creative solutions, and treat is as open a session as possible. The party doesn't need to solve ALL the problems, either; there can be a separate volunteer force of NPCs from the city and For added intrigue, maybe this other group takes care of the other problems (behind the scenes in narrative only) but have a separate political agenda that doesn't align with the city council's (or the Party's); and if they gain too much influence after the fact there's different challenges after the siege is broken.
I don't want to railroad the whole thing, but give them the opportunity to come up with a range of ways to help break the siege. They'll be part of the warcouncil, so the more hooks, the merrier!
On the contrary, having a cleric is fantastic against fighting the undead! Besides always having Channel Divinity: Turn Undead (which later buffs to destroy undead), they can also make holy water, either through regular crafting described in the item or by the Ceremony spell (both ways would require time and resources, but assuming you have both it's a viable strategy). They also have a number of spells that let them designate areas that either harm/hinder undead or outright stop them from entering completely; many of these are at higher levels, starting with the Hallow spell at 5th, and again, all of them require time and resources, but assuming you have both then they are fantastic for creating safe spaces to fight/hide from the undead. Lastly, clerics have access to Glyph of Warding, which can basically allow you to create landmines than you can key to activate only on undead; once again, this requires time and resources, but assuming you have both then this is excellent for creating a defensive area against an army of undead!
EDIT: Unless you meant to say they don't have a cleric? In which case yeah, forget most of what I said (though Glyph still applies if you have bards, wizards, or artificers).
As was previously mentioned about supplies lines in sieges, you could have the PCs evacuate all near by towns in order to cut the "supply" of "fresh recruits" that the necromancers have; then have them take out key necromancers; thus reducing the numbers of the siege. You could make each encounter slightly harder, so there is a risk reward to how many of them the party wants to try and take out.
Another option is for them to perform rescue missions to find people who hid and got trapped as the undead hordes approached and now are in grave (pun intended) danger. You could even have some of the rescued people be ones who could be really valuable in protecting the down, like an alchemist or an abjurer.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Perhaps they have a ready supply of recently or soon-to-be dead that they are using for undead resupply. It’s limited by how many they can turn per day. perhaps they keep the “conscripts” alive to make mobility easier. The party’s mission is to disrupt this supply.
Thanks all! Really loving all of this and definitly will keep this in mind when running this session!
Would anyone have experience with running interesing skill checks/montages in a combat-ish session? How can I run an interesting bit (as part of a montage, or otherwise) where the traverse the battlefield. I've done travel montages, but I want to have some fast-paced bits available when they are navigating the battlefield/camp.
E.g. A chase scene where they're fleeing a hore of undead
E.g. A scene in which they're being bombarded by giants from afar while trying to cross a field of trenches
E.g. A wall climbing scene while dodging boulders and arrows being hurled/flung at them
Any ideas on how to keep this fast-paced and interesting?
I haven't quite done this myself but I've seen other's do it:
For running a combat with a horde, you could reduce lower-threat monsters like zombies/skeleton to 1 HP and keep throwing them at your PCs as they traverse the battlefield (this may work better with theater of the mind than a grid layout); another thing you could to is create a "swarm" stat block for the horde and describe each loss of HP as an undead being killed.
For the boulders/arrows, you could have them make saving throws to avoid getting hit and skill checks to see if they can get to cover in time or not. I might also use this to give the characters different choices such as, "do you want to run across the open battlefield which is empty but leaves you open to arrows and boulders, or do you go through the trenches which offer cover but are filled with undead?"
The last thing I can think of is to have a good idea of your battlefield's layout and to give quick, succinct descriptions of everything without lingering on anything other than the players' primary objective for too long; again, theater of the mind would work better for this, but it may also help to have a rudimentary map for quick reference on hand to help visualize the layout.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
So, here is the scenario: my lvl5 party is marching towards a city that is besieged by a horde of undead under the controll of several necromancers, which are using hill giant zombies as siege engines. If they were to attack head-on, it’s a guaranteed TPK. Lukily, they are part of a small force sent to lift the siege and I’d like them to have a couple of options/hooks to weaken the besieging force.
I want them to be able to influence the outcome of the battle, without singlehandedly lifting the entire siege - kind of like an elite special operations team.
Ideas so far:
I’m still missing some ideas to mechanically convey the dread, panic, chaos and scale of the scenario, without turing it into a string of combat encounters.Any ideas or suggestions are much appreciated!
Some sort of anti-sapper mission where they sneak ahead of enemy lines and plant alchemical bombs that trigger in close proximity to undead?
EDIT:
Or some sort of anti-siege spell that needs to be ritually placed around the city from the outside to help ward large rocks flung by the giant zombies?
Typically the best use of small elite units (such as PCs) is destroying key targets while the rest of the army is elsewhere and/or distracted. I would do something like "One of the necromancers is off 'recruiting' new zombies in a local village, put a stop to that."
Pantagruel is correct.
Siege warfare in real life is all about supply. The bad guy is using necromancy which tremendously reduces supply problems, but not entirely. Typically undead become uncontrolled without a lot of castings.
To explain the massive numbers needed to maintain a siege, I suggest you create a McGuffin and go with a series of missions:
Maybe the besieged city is running out of food/water/arrows, and the characters need to establish a supply line? They know of a secret tunnel leading in and out of the town, but it's in the middle of an outlying necromancer camp and filled with dungeon monsters.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Also, does your party have clerics or anything similar? That could add to their options too.
Thanks for all the ideas so far!
The partyd have a cleric, so that kind of limits their options. The city is built on the banks of a river, but it would interesting if it were being polluted upstream.
I'm also toying with the idea of having them sneak an artifact into the city to bolster the defences or clear barricades around the necromancer's encampment to make way for a cavalry charge ...
I don't want to railroad the whole thing, but give them the opportunity to come up with a range of ways to help break the siege. They'll be part of the warcouncil, so the more hooks, the merrier!
This seems like the type of session scenario in which you can just encourage them to do as much recon/Intel as possible, even some "higher priority" problems identified by this war council, provide them with the list of problems learned, and just sit back while they take their time to come up with plausible solutions and you can just nod along and adjudicate.
There isn't any railroading if you don't even have rails; this session likely works best if you have nothing predetermined but instead just provide a list of problems to be solved, be generous to creative solutions, and treat is as open a session as possible. The party doesn't need to solve ALL the problems, either; there can be a separate volunteer force of NPCs from the city and For added intrigue, maybe this other group takes care of the other problems (behind the scenes in narrative only) but have a separate political agenda that doesn't align with the city council's (or the Party's); and if they gain too much influence after the fact there's different challenges after the siege is broken.
Boldly go
On the contrary, having a cleric is fantastic against fighting the undead! Besides always having Channel Divinity: Turn Undead (which later buffs to destroy undead), they can also make holy water, either through regular crafting described in the item or by the Ceremony spell (both ways would require time and resources, but assuming you have both it's a viable strategy). They also have a number of spells that let them designate areas that either harm/hinder undead or outright stop them from entering completely; many of these are at higher levels, starting with the Hallow spell at 5th, and again, all of them require time and resources, but assuming you have both then they are fantastic for creating safe spaces to fight/hide from the undead. Lastly, clerics have access to Glyph of Warding, which can basically allow you to create landmines than you can key to activate only on undead; once again, this requires time and resources, but assuming you have both then this is excellent for creating a defensive area against an army of undead!
EDIT: Unless you meant to say they don't have a cleric? In which case yeah, forget most of what I said (though Glyph still applies if you have bards, wizards, or artificers).
As was previously mentioned about supplies lines in sieges, you could have the PCs evacuate all near by towns in order to cut the "supply" of "fresh recruits" that the necromancers have; then have them take out key necromancers; thus reducing the numbers of the siege. You could make each encounter slightly harder, so there is a risk reward to how many of them the party wants to try and take out.
Yeah, not sure what happened there - mobile keyboard acted up - but they don't have a cleric in the party... Sorry about that!
Thanks for the input though, really helpful for a second party I am DM'ing!
Another option is for them to perform rescue missions to find people who hid and got trapped as the undead hordes approached and now are in grave (pun intended) danger. You could even have some of the rescued people be ones who could be really valuable in protecting the down, like an alchemist or an abjurer.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Perhaps they have a ready supply of recently or soon-to-be dead that they are using for undead resupply. It’s limited by how many they can turn per day. perhaps they keep the “conscripts” alive to make mobility easier. The party’s mission is to disrupt this supply.
Thanks all! Really loving all of this and definitly will keep this in mind when running this session!
Would anyone have experience with running interesing skill checks/montages in a combat-ish session? How can I run an interesting bit (as part of a montage, or otherwise) where the traverse the battlefield. I've done travel montages, but I want to have some fast-paced bits available when they are navigating the battlefield/camp.
E.g. A chase scene where they're fleeing a hore of undead
E.g. A scene in which they're being bombarded by giants from afar while trying to cross a field of trenches
E.g. A wall climbing scene while dodging boulders and arrows being hurled/flung at them
Any ideas on how to keep this fast-paced and interesting?
I haven't quite done this myself but I've seen other's do it:
For running a combat with a horde, you could reduce lower-threat monsters like zombies/skeleton to 1 HP and keep throwing them at your PCs as they traverse the battlefield (this may work better with theater of the mind than a grid layout); another thing you could to is create a "swarm" stat block for the horde and describe each loss of HP as an undead being killed.
For the boulders/arrows, you could have them make saving throws to avoid getting hit and skill checks to see if they can get to cover in time or not. I might also use this to give the characters different choices such as, "do you want to run across the open battlefield which is empty but leaves you open to arrows and boulders, or do you go through the trenches which offer cover but are filled with undead?"
The last thing I can think of is to have a good idea of your battlefield's layout and to give quick, succinct descriptions of everything without lingering on anything other than the players' primary objective for too long; again, theater of the mind would work better for this, but it may also help to have a rudimentary map for quick reference on hand to help visualize the layout.