My PCs have gotten themselves stuck behind enemy lines of an army besieging their city. They have an objective, forward of the enemy lines, to take out a "siege monster". In this case it's not literally a siege monster destroying the walls, but the strategic effect is the same. A lake blocks the enemy's path to the city, with high mountains on both sides (where the PCs are), and the monster is creating a way for the army to cross the lake. I'm trying to get the PCs to a climactic showdown with the monster.
I've given them an out, but they burned that (not literal) bridge. Now we'll see what they come up with, but it looks likely they'll have to go through the enemy lines. I'm not really trying to make this hard, but I do want consequences for them having squandered my freebie way out. It should be exciting, and potentially put a small drain on their resources before the final battle.
They have a ranger with Pass Without Trace, so it's theoretically possible they can just Stealth through the whole thing. But I want to make it interesting, so I don't think I'll go with a straightforward single Stealth roll to make it all the way through to their objective. Probably Stealth will give them an opportunity to sneak up on enemy parties, but they might have to make several of these checks to get through, or there might be some point at which there is no way past a group of enemies without stepping out into the open, and the only option is to take them out quickly and quietly.
I don't want to turn this into a whole mini-adventure, because I'm trying to wrap up the big boss siege monster in the next session or two, but what are some ideas for a simple encounter or two, possibly resulting in one short combat?
How organized is this enemy line? As in... does everyone have uniforms or other indications of who's an ally?
I'm thinking of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, which I'm DM'ing some friends through right now. One of the details of the game is that the cult uh.... isn't too well organized. They deliberately don't keep records of membership and avoid sharing too much information with everyone in the cult, so if the players take the time to get a few things like robes/masks and learn a few key phrases or hand gestures they can fairly easily pose as cult members.
Either way, there's probably something your players could do to pose as members of this opposing army, even if it's just enough to sneak through the lines without drawing too much attention.
What Transmorpher said. You could make a series of small challenges, where they need to sneak past a patrol, bluff their way through a check point (an army besieging a city would have more than just soldiers, they would have craftsmen, laborers, teamsters, camp followers, all of which could be civilian or military, but likely civilian with medieval/rennaissance style armies) that the party could disguise as. As long as someone has Disguise Self, they can make themselves appear to be members of the enemy army escorting a work party, prisoners, etc.
Both of these could take place at a thin part in the enemy line, where they least expect the good guys to come through, so that if things turn violent the party has a reasonable chance of escaping and evading any reinforcements. This gives you some skill challenges that could turn into combat but won't devastate the Party's resources before the big fight.
Of course, you can't know how they'll react to these scenarios, they may not try to sneak or disguise and may see a small patrol or a weak checkpoint as a juicy target to inflict some chaos on the enemy's line, and just attack outright. If they do that and succeed, I might even consider weakening the big fight by saying word gets around that the good guys are sneaking through their lines so they pull some soldiers away from defending the monster to hunt for the interlopers. That way if they fail their checks to bluff or sneak and kill the enemies they can still feel like they got a win out of it, you just need them to overhear someone giving the orders to search for intruders.
Hope these ideas help, I'm typing on my phone and I can get a little rambly when I do that.
I've given them an out, but they burned that (not literal) bridge. Now we'll see what they come up with, but it looks likely they'll have to go through the enemy lines. I'm not really trying to make this hard, but I do want consequences for them having squandered my freebie way out. It should be exciting, and potentially put a small drain on their resources before the final battle.
This may not be how you intended that statement or how you are at your table but this feels a bit like they didn't do what you expected, you tried to get them back onto your railroad with this "freebie" way out, they decided to do something that to them seemed logical, or the thing there characters would do and you now want to punish them for not doing the story as you wanted.
If the way they have chosen would logically take longer/be harder then I agree make it that way, but try and avoid artificially "punishing" players, even if it a subconcious thing, because they didn't take the fast route out of the situation they found themselves in.
But ideas for you, they get the opportunity to sabotage supplies or weapons etc at the rear of the army, if they succeed it draws forces away from the front to try and deal with this force attacking the rear.
In a similar vein they come across an infiltrating unit who ask them to create a diversion in some way (gives players full freedom to do what they want) they in turn will then create another diversion in a different part of the rear of this army allowing the party to slip back through to the front.
They see a small group of wizards/sorcerors or other magic users performing a mass teleportation ritual, if not interrupted additional forces will arrive/forces will be teleported into the city etc.
They get the chance to interrupt the sending or receiving of messages or orders, if they change the message and deliver it themselves they could seriously impact the next attack by having it happen piecemeal or not all at once.
How organized is this enemy line? As in... does everyone have uniforms or other indications of who's an ally?
I'm thinking of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, which I'm DM'ing some friends through right now. One of the details of the game is that the cult uh.... isn't too well organized. They deliberately don't keep records of membership and avoid sharing too much information with everyone in the cult, so if the players take the time to get a few things like robes/masks and learn a few key phrases or hand gestures they can fairly easily pose as cult members.
Either way, there's probably something your players could do to pose as members of this opposing army, even if it's just enough to sneak through the lines without drawing too much attention.
Unfortunately, these are highly organized and intelligent drow. However, if they come up with a reasonable disguise plan, I'll give them a chance with some rolls.
I've given them an out, but they burned that (not literal) bridge. Now we'll see what they come up with, but it looks likely they'll have to go through the enemy lines. I'm not really trying to make this hard, but I do want consequences for them having squandered my freebie way out. It should be exciting, and potentially put a small drain on their resources before the final battle.
This may not be how you intended that statement or how you are at your table but this feels a bit like they didn't do what you expected, you tried to get them back onto your railroad with this "freebie" way out, they decided to do something that to them seemed logical, or the thing there characters would do and you now want to punish them for not doing the story as you wanted.
No, it's a consequence, not a punishment. They got themselves into this situation by falling for a trick. (To be fair, I created the trick, but they fell for it.) That got them behind enemy lines. Then I gave them a gift of a free way out. They took it. I'm not mad because they didn't do what I wanted them to. They could have ignored it and had to go through enemy lines last session. They took it, but then instead of using it as a way out, they chose to use it to steal some spellbooks from a library. Fine. That was pretty cool. But since they used their out for that, now they don't have it available to use to get out from behind enemy lines. It's not punishment for there to be consequences when they exhaust their resources. That would be like calling it punishment if they used all their spell slots on the first encounter and I didn't nerf the boss for them.
Maybe the enemy army is organized into camps that are, say, 500 feet apart. So if they cut through path between two of them, they'll have 250 feet on either side, and if they don't do anything stupid, they won't get noticed. Then they can happen upon a patrol and have to fight them quickly and quietly, or make stealth checks. If it comes to a fight, no thunderwave, etc. And without much lights, since a fireball or lightning bolt or flame strike would cause enemies to come running, for example. (and if they did start casting something like that, I'd give them a wis or int save to re-think their actions.)
And you can give one of the drow a horn that they'd sound if there was an emergency. Let the players notice it, and maybe give them a round or two to take out the hornblower. It would add to the tension. And when they do take down hornblower, another nearby drow would make a grab at that horn himself. So the encounter is about stopping the horn from being blown more than just killing the bad guys.
Maybe the enemy army is organized into camps that are, say, 500 feet apart. So if they cut through path between two of them, they'll have 250 feet on either side, and if they don't do anything stupid, they won't get noticed. Then they can happen upon a patrol and have to fight them quickly and quietly, or make stealth checks. If it comes to a fight, no thunderwave, etc. And without much lights, since a fireball or lightning bolt or flame strike would cause enemies to come running, for example. (and if they did start casting something like that, I'd give them a wis or int save to re-think their actions.)
And you can give one of the drow a horn that they'd sound if there was an emergency. Let the players notice it, and maybe give them a round or two to take out the hornblower. It would add to the tension. And when they do take down hornblower, another nearby drow would make a grab at that horn himself. So the encounter is about stopping the horn from being blown more than just killing the bad guys.
The enemy are "camped" in an urban environment (think town outside the castle), but this actually works even better. The party will have to do some scouting to know which buildings they are occupying and which can perhaps be passed through to sneak by.
I've given them an out, but they burned that (not literal) bridge. Now we'll see what they come up with, but it looks likely they'll have to go through the enemy lines. I'm not really trying to make this hard, but I do want consequences for them having squandered my freebie way out. It should be exciting, and potentially put a small drain on their resources before the final battle.
This may not be how you intended that statement or how you are at your table but this feels a bit like they didn't do what you expected, you tried to get them back onto your railroad with this "freebie" way out, they decided to do something that to them seemed logical, or the thing there characters would do and you now want to punish them for not doing the story as you wanted.
No, it's a consequence, not a punishment. They got themselves into this situation by falling for a trick. (To be fair, I created the trick, but they fell for it.) That got them behind enemy lines. Then I gave them a gift of a free way out. They took it. I'm not mad because they didn't do what I wanted them to. They could have ignored it and had to go through enemy lines last session. They took it, but then instead of using it as a way out, they chose to use it to steal some spellbooks from a library. Fine. That was pretty cool. But since they used their out for that, now they don't have it available to use to get out from behind enemy lines. It's not punishment for there to be consequences when they exhaust their resources. That would be like calling it punishment if they used all their spell slots on the first encounter and I didn't nerf the boss for them.
Was just clarifying, end of the day if players do a thing and make there own lives harder that is on them :).
Hope my suggestions where useful, a few more.
Seige Engines need to be destroyed, or even better maybe infiltrated, imagine the party sneaking onto a seige tower, waiting for the right moment then fighting there way through the seige tower meeting up with the city defences again on the ramp. Convincing them they are friends.
They find evidence of a team undermining the walls, a chance for a underground fight to go and stop them (although may risk taking your players on too far of a diversion)
They find evidence of a spy in the city providing information, this would be a great plot hook for after the seige as they try and find the person that was betraying the city.
I've been interested in the siege monster. How did they neutralize the siege monster? I was thinking they should poison it.
It's difficult for me to imagine an average party sneaking through a drow army during a siege. Is it essential for them to enter the city? Can they instead help from outside the city? Do they simply need to communicate with someone in the city instead? Well, that's the party's problem.
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My PCs have gotten themselves stuck behind enemy lines of an army besieging their city. They have an objective, forward of the enemy lines, to take out a "siege monster". In this case it's not literally a siege monster destroying the walls, but the strategic effect is the same. A lake blocks the enemy's path to the city, with high mountains on both sides (where the PCs are), and the monster is creating a way for the army to cross the lake. I'm trying to get the PCs to a climactic showdown with the monster.
I've given them an out, but they burned that (not literal) bridge. Now we'll see what they come up with, but it looks likely they'll have to go through the enemy lines. I'm not really trying to make this hard, but I do want consequences for them having squandered my freebie way out. It should be exciting, and potentially put a small drain on their resources before the final battle.
They have a ranger with Pass Without Trace, so it's theoretically possible they can just Stealth through the whole thing. But I want to make it interesting, so I don't think I'll go with a straightforward single Stealth roll to make it all the way through to their objective. Probably Stealth will give them an opportunity to sneak up on enemy parties, but they might have to make several of these checks to get through, or there might be some point at which there is no way past a group of enemies without stepping out into the open, and the only option is to take them out quickly and quietly.
I don't want to turn this into a whole mini-adventure, because I'm trying to wrap up the big boss siege monster in the next session or two, but what are some ideas for a simple encounter or two, possibly resulting in one short combat?
How organized is this enemy line? As in... does everyone have uniforms or other indications of who's an ally?
I'm thinking of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, which I'm DM'ing some friends through right now. One of the details of the game is that the cult uh.... isn't too well organized. They deliberately don't keep records of membership and avoid sharing too much information with everyone in the cult, so if the players take the time to get a few things like robes/masks and learn a few key phrases or hand gestures they can fairly easily pose as cult members.
Either way, there's probably something your players could do to pose as members of this opposing army, even if it's just enough to sneak through the lines without drawing too much attention.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
What Transmorpher said. You could make a series of small challenges, where they need to sneak past a patrol, bluff their way through a check point (an army besieging a city would have more than just soldiers, they would have craftsmen, laborers, teamsters, camp followers, all of which could be civilian or military, but likely civilian with medieval/rennaissance style armies) that the party could disguise as. As long as someone has Disguise Self, they can make themselves appear to be members of the enemy army escorting a work party, prisoners, etc.
Both of these could take place at a thin part in the enemy line, where they least expect the good guys to come through, so that if things turn violent the party has a reasonable chance of escaping and evading any reinforcements. This gives you some skill challenges that could turn into combat but won't devastate the Party's resources before the big fight.
Of course, you can't know how they'll react to these scenarios, they may not try to sneak or disguise and may see a small patrol or a weak checkpoint as a juicy target to inflict some chaos on the enemy's line, and just attack outright. If they do that and succeed, I might even consider weakening the big fight by saying word gets around that the good guys are sneaking through their lines so they pull some soldiers away from defending the monster to hunt for the interlopers. That way if they fail their checks to bluff or sneak and kill the enemies they can still feel like they got a win out of it, you just need them to overhear someone giving the orders to search for intruders.
Hope these ideas help, I'm typing on my phone and I can get a little rambly when I do that.
This may not be how you intended that statement or how you are at your table but this feels a bit like they didn't do what you expected, you tried to get them back onto your railroad with this "freebie" way out, they decided to do something that to them seemed logical, or the thing there characters would do and you now want to punish them for not doing the story as you wanted.
If the way they have chosen would logically take longer/be harder then I agree make it that way, but try and avoid artificially "punishing" players, even if it a subconcious thing, because they didn't take the fast route out of the situation they found themselves in.
But ideas for you, they get the opportunity to sabotage supplies or weapons etc at the rear of the army, if they succeed it draws forces away from the front to try and deal with this force attacking the rear.
In a similar vein they come across an infiltrating unit who ask them to create a diversion in some way (gives players full freedom to do what they want) they in turn will then create another diversion in a different part of the rear of this army allowing the party to slip back through to the front.
They see a small group of wizards/sorcerors or other magic users performing a mass teleportation ritual, if not interrupted additional forces will arrive/forces will be teleported into the city etc.
They get the chance to interrupt the sending or receiving of messages or orders, if they change the message and deliver it themselves they could seriously impact the next attack by having it happen piecemeal or not all at once.
Unfortunately, these are highly organized and intelligent drow. However, if they come up with a reasonable disguise plan, I'll give them a chance with some rolls.
Oof, yeah... when the enemy army is made up of a singular, very visually distinct race it will definitely be a lot harder to pose as soldiers.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
No, it's a consequence, not a punishment. They got themselves into this situation by falling for a trick. (To be fair, I created the trick, but they fell for it.) That got them behind enemy lines. Then I gave them a gift of a free way out. They took it. I'm not mad because they didn't do what I wanted them to. They could have ignored it and had to go through enemy lines last session. They took it, but then instead of using it as a way out, they chose to use it to steal some spellbooks from a library. Fine. That was pretty cool. But since they used their out for that, now they don't have it available to use to get out from behind enemy lines. It's not punishment for there to be consequences when they exhaust their resources. That would be like calling it punishment if they used all their spell slots on the first encounter and I didn't nerf the boss for them.
Maybe the enemy army is organized into camps that are, say, 500 feet apart. So if they cut through path between two of them, they'll have 250 feet on either side, and if they don't do anything stupid, they won't get noticed. Then they can happen upon a patrol and have to fight them quickly and quietly, or make stealth checks. If it comes to a fight, no thunderwave, etc. And without much lights, since a fireball or lightning bolt or flame strike would cause enemies to come running, for example. (and if they did start casting something like that, I'd give them a wis or int save to re-think their actions.)
And you can give one of the drow a horn that they'd sound if there was an emergency. Let the players notice it, and maybe give them a round or two to take out the hornblower. It would add to the tension. And when they do take down hornblower, another nearby drow would make a grab at that horn himself. So the encounter is about stopping the horn from being blown more than just killing the bad guys.
The enemy are "camped" in an urban environment (think town outside the castle), but this actually works even better. The party will have to do some scouting to know which buildings they are occupying and which can perhaps be passed through to sneak by.
Was just clarifying, end of the day if players do a thing and make there own lives harder that is on them :).
Hope my suggestions where useful, a few more.
Seige Engines need to be destroyed, or even better maybe infiltrated, imagine the party sneaking onto a seige tower, waiting for the right moment then fighting there way through the seige tower meeting up with the city defences again on the ramp. Convincing them they are friends.
They find evidence of a team undermining the walls, a chance for a underground fight to go and stop them (although may risk taking your players on too far of a diversion)
They find evidence of a spy in the city providing information, this would be a great plot hook for after the seige as they try and find the person that was betraying the city.
I've been interested in the siege monster. How did they neutralize the siege monster? I was thinking they should poison it.
It's difficult for me to imagine an average party sneaking through a drow army during a siege. Is it essential for them to enter the city? Can they instead help from outside the city? Do they simply need to communicate with someone in the city instead? Well, that's the party's problem.