I'm planning an adventure as part of my running campaign that will most likely see the party defend a small keep against a siege.
The situation is mostly so that country the PCs have worked for so far and its neighbor are in war. The neighbor's army has taken an early win and taken some land but have not so far managed to take a small keep on a strategic supply line, and not controlling that supply line means they can't gain permanent progress further into the friendly territory. This has caused area of no-man's land to form between the better defensible area further into friendly territory and the camps of the hostile force closer to the pre-war border. The keep is very close (just over siege weapon range) to the main camp of the invasion force. The party is tasked to find certain VIPs that where lost in aftermath of the skirmishes on that no-man's land, some are under piles of bodies, few on the keep, some captured by the other side as well as providing the keep some relief so it doesn't fall before they are prepared for counter attack. The keep has not fallen yet because the other side has not yet gotten siege weapons and their main force has been occupied by the skirmishes.
So what do I need help with:
1) Anyone have good map for interesting siege battle to use as a base? Preferably wet erase battle map sized, so 32*54 squares if I remember correctly. Should have few different directions the enemies can attack from and objectives to defend. It could just be the VIPs, but maybe food or ammunition storage, water supply or weapon emplacements could be more interesting.
2) How to handle NPCs in such large scale battle without too much book keeping? I'm considering using either 4e minions (1HP, but no damage from saved AoEs) or swarms. Should allow for them to work more efficiently when being organized, such as keeping up shield wall in choke point.
3) The siege part will likely last for at least couple of days, what kind of events can happen outside of the main assault?
4) What can the PCs do between the fights, other than rest? Of course they will likely come up with their own options, but it would be helpful to have some prepared options, so I can compare DC and possible effects.
5) How to structure the "adventuring day"? I'm thinking I will throw few "testing defenses" parties against the keep each day, if I was feeling evil, I could even time them so they can't get long rest unless they clear the combat fast. I would like there to be increasing sense of urgency and threat once the attacks start, but would also likely be better if the party is fully rested for the final assault.
6) How to handle morale? NPCs on both sides are sensible humanoids, they will not throw their lives away for hopeless cause, but I also don't want the fights to be over before they get started.
1. There's a section in Pinterest of dnd battle maps, just search it up, if you want to make a custom map for the village itself there's a generator that can help you in watabou. Village Generator by watabou (itch.io) click this site for village or town map, battle maps in general are hard to find unless you go to patreon there's a lot more better battle maps there, but if you want free ones go to Pinterest.
2. For NPC's its either you turn them into a swarm or let their health be, group them up in one initiative eg. villager 1 - 5, villager 6 - 10, villager 11 - 15 are in Group one. (This can be same for the swarm) this is if you want to include all of them, if not all of them are there, what you can do is have them at the back lines running supply runs.
3. Enemy setting up the base, spies and assassins trying to infiltrate the place, or destruction of land life, news travelling around the different kingdoms off the siege, mainly word off mount from the traveling merchants and other travelers. A lot can happen based on where its set at. (This is viable for both sides)
4. If its the party and what they can do instead: the party can train militia, send a player to call for an alliance with neighboring places, bait the spies with espionage and false information etc, or do their thing. If they have carpentry proficiency they can build anti siege weapons or strengthen the defenses while the main force is skirmishing. Another note is they can act as double agents.
5. Structure it into a skill challenge, three for one day, one at the morning, one in the afternoon, and one at night or midnight. depending on their role they can potentially increase the delay or the resistance of their defenses. For eg. train militia, requires a successful skill challenge of charisma checks. Setting up traps around requires intelligence or dexterity checks of your choice.
6. Moral is a bar of 50 / 50 eg. enemy has gained the foot hold the bar would look like this allies at the right and enemies at the left 46 / 54. Moral. Or you can do the 50 Moral for both sides and use skill challenges to lower or increase moral.
If you need more help, search online for siege modules and read them eg. is Berdusk till Dawn.
I ran a series of siege situations with a group of players back in 3.5 and I learned a few things.
1. The Players should be the pivotal part of the battle. Their actions and sacrifices should directly lead to either victory or retreat.
2. I liked to set up these fights as losable. That is the players should believe they might lose. Have the scouting party that they send out get completely slaughtered, the well turns out to be poisoned, something that says “we are on a time table and we may have to rethink it”
3. Set up an escape route for them. This isn’t what you actually want them to do, but you’re using Chekhov’s Gun to influence the mood. They may still use the escape route, just to get out of the keep and go assassinate the enemy general, which is fine.
4. Have two battle plans for how it goes outside of where the players are, and a timeline for them. This way, if the players are winning in the area they’re at, you can have messengers come beg for help, “The north wall has been breached! They’re swarming through!” or if the players fail at an objective, here comes that annoying sergeant to the rescue with a band of veterans.
5. Don’t tell the players everything about how the battle is going. The biggest mistake I see DMs make is to share their omniscient viewpoint with the players, this is especially true in large scale battle scenes. It’s partially because they’re your buddies and friends but also you want an audience for all the work you’re putting in, and they are right there. Resist the urge to share information. It’ll crank up tension and add opportunities to role play.
Where did you get that all about village? Sure there will be some farms around the keep that used to provide it with supplies and the keep might have some support buildings but it is meant to be entirely within the defensible area.
Suggesting searching pinterest would be bit more useful if you linked to a section or even suggested keywords. It is not like I did not search for "keep battlemap" and few others before on other image search systems. I can't even search there without making account. And their presentation is so horrible I have actually added a script that removes pinterest results from my image searches, because following the links doesn't lead to actual image files. The images there also practically always are from elsewhere in internet without permission of the host or original uploader. I was also interested in personal experiences about using these maps, like is there enough room to navigate and speed to matter, are the defenses in sensible locations and is there objects that can create interesting dynamics. Is it easy to trace to battlemap and read the height differences.
With NPCs I meant more about the keeps defenders, about company of levies and the full army of hostiles during the combat phases. Villagers and other non-combat NPCs will likely get locked inside, though party could train them into some form of militia. The advantage of minion system is that I can represent them on the battle map with tokens and flip the token once they die, they require no other book keeping. Swarms would help with having less dice to roll for the attacks, but they take lot more book keeping and can lead to weird situations where you hitting one creature causes another few meters away to also die, though that is just level of abstraction vs. story telling problem. Narrating it as dude falling and taking his buddy with him, or some sort of cleave or multi attack is easy enough. Could also use some hybrid approach, like minions for taking damage, spontaneous swarms for attacking and actual health for calculating how many units are affected by spell like sleep.
I'm not assuming the siege to last long enough that news traveling anywhere is of consequence, both sides already know about it (though the major attack will take some time for the PC friendly side to get learn about trough their forward scouts) and it is in actual no-man's land at the moment, so at most there are scavengers looting after last skirmish, merchant or traveler would not really risk that route. Someone teleporting in to offer their wares, might be interesting, but doesn't really fit into style of narrative I'm going for. Spies and assassins would definitely fit and give opportunity for combat encounter that is not just who kills who and doesn't require the surrounding army to launch yet another minor attack. Destruction of land life has already mostly happened due to the earlier major battle and the skirmishes that have been going. This causes lots of the problems PCs face on the way to the keep, mostly scavenger beasts and monsters, undead and shadowfell creatures, and might be of interest to rangers and druids as well.
The party doesn't yet have proper teleportation, so they are not getting to anyone who could help in time, and they already should know at that point that there is help coming in form of levies from rest of the country reaching the war zone. I think I will time them so that if they keep the keep long enough, the final attack will be cut by the counter-attack. Getting more allies would likely be an option for next adventure, or something they could chose to do instead. Training the levies in the keep could be done to improve their stats by bit or they could train the remaining non-combat NPCs to have bit more forces. The espionage part is quite in line with the party, so yeah, I have to prepare for them to sneak into to the enemy camp, try to to pretend they are bringing new orders from that country's "bureau spear tip sharpness inspection" or something like that as well as also prepare some useful intel they can acquire or false information they can plant. And they could do some sabotage either on the field or in the enemy camp.
Improving the defenses by building weapons or traps or improving the walls was one of my main ideas for what to do during the down time, and I would have liked for bit more concrete examples, but that might be too map dependent. What is good damage for ballista and should it do damage in line AoE, what is the attack stat or save? They should be meaningfully powerful, but not something that makes PCs feel weak. What does improving the walls mean? 3/4 cover instead of half cover?
While skill challenges are good way of abstracting the progress during the downtime, they don't really work as resource drain and if I only use them, then the short and long rest balance will be of quite a lot in long rests side. And I would like to have few more combats just so that the players have a change to learn about their enemies and how their defenses are working before the final assault.
Having the morale of each side as a single "bar" sounds like a good idea. This makes it so that both sides don't have morale failure at same point, but instead it happens as a result of other side having a significant upper hand. Starting values for each encounter could be determined based on the values from last encounter and the events and skill challenges between the encounters. But how much would different battle events change the value (assuming your 50+50 scale for example) and at what point would units start to abandon their positions, surrender or panic? When the the meter reaches one end all at once or maybe with roll of d20 scoring more than what morale that side has left, per group of units?
Berdusk till Dawn is a good note, though from quick read not quite what I was looking for, got any other modules, adventures or campaigns which feature fleshed out sieges? And even if I did turn out most of the advice, don't think I don't appreciate it.
Remember, D&D isn't truly a simulation. It's a stage play. It's an illusion. So it's not only like Dm_From_1975 said that the players are instrumental in the outcome of the siege, which is true, but there isn't really a rest of a siege. It just seems like it to the players. So, you don't need to worry about simulating a reasonable amount of soldiers who are a reasonable strength level in case the players decide to charge through the middle. You can balance the encounters to be interesting in localised skirmishes and not worry about the implication if the players decided to take on all the soldiers at once: because hopefully the players won't decide to do that. Because it's a siege, you probably aren't going to worry about the players fighting an army in an open field. And if there are NPCs fighting one another, just roll a single die for each engagement pair. If it's high, the friendly has the advantage. If it's low the enemy does. If it is extremely high or low, the character kills the other one. You can do this for larger narrative events in the background to tell how the battle is going in general. Combats the players are not directly involved in do not need to be resolved using the combat mechanics.
Remember, D&D isn't truly a simulation. It's a stage play. It's an illusion.
D&D is smoke and mirrors.
That’s a great way to put it. My experience of running seiges showed me that getting into granular details of the game meant I wasn’t focused on the players aspect of it, and those games came across as slow and uninspired. When I started just focusing on the players and what they saw and were doing, it got 10x better for everyone.
I ran a series of siege situations with a group of players back in 3.5 and I learned a few things.
1. The Players should be the pivotal part of the battle. Their actions and sacrifices should directly lead to either victory or retreat.
2. I liked to set up these fights as losable. That is the players should believe they might lose. Have the scouting party that they send out get completely slaughtered, the well turns out to be poisoned, something that says “we are on a time table and we may have to rethink it”
3. Set up an escape route for them. This isn’t what you actually want them to do, but you’re using Chekhov’s Gun to influence the mood. They may still use the escape route, just to get out of the keep and go assassinate the enemy general, which is fine.
4. Have two battle plans for how it goes outside of where the players are, and a timeline for them. This way, if the players are winning in the area they’re at, you can have messengers come beg for help, “The north wall has been breached! They’re swarming through!” or if the players fail at an objective, here comes that annoying sergeant to the rescue with a band of veterans.
5. Don’t tell the players everything about how the battle is going. The biggest mistake I see DMs make is to share their omniscient viewpoint with the players, this is especially true in large scale battle scenes. It’s partially because they’re your buddies and friends but also you want an audience for all the work you’re putting in, and they are right there. Resist the urge to share information. It’ll crank up tension and add opportunities to role play.
I hope my experience helps you some!
These are some solid advice on managing the mood for the siege. I had already planned to add some way of escaping, both as a way of giving strategic choice and as a way of avoiding TPK, but using it to make the situation look worse than it might be is some clever narrative. I have previously used Schrödinger's trolls and puzzles (the solution is the second somewhat sensible thing they try) so having events based on how well players are doing should not be much of a problem, other than having to prepare bit more events than actually gets used.
Edit: this forum doesn't seem to handle replies well, everything goes to end, and doesn't even have a note to what was replied to.
@Verenti, yeah that works, though there are going to be quite a lot of NPCs of both sides in the walls and gates within range of the players attacks and spells, and I would like the players to feel these are handled fairly even if they are not going trough combat mechanics.
Divine contention has a really good example of a seige fight. You could do something similar.
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When you thought you knew about spellcasting - you played a warlock
Why are most bard colleges a pain to type? I mean bard college of valor, compare to champion or evoker. Same goes for sacred oaths: paladin oath of devotion. That's even worse.
I don't think WoCE were very creative with the rogue and ranger subclass titles. I mean ranger archeotype? Roguish archeotype? Bro! Fighters are better but still is somewhat unsatisfying compare to a monastatic tradition or sacred oath.
I recently ran a siege of a walled monastery. The key to this is to break down the siege into small, encounter sized fights that the PCs are part of, and can choose to engage in, and to have as few NPCs as possible on the map (one key NPC is fine, loads of guards is tiresome). Don't try to run the entire siege at once, and don't try to run the NPCs.
1) Anyone have good map for interesting siege battle to use as a base?
Go to Pinterest and just search for maps. There are loads. Print that map out if you're not running using shareable maps online (I play face to face but we play using Roll20 for maps) and hand it to the PCs, but don't try to make it a battlemap. Use individual maps for each key area.
2) How to handle NPCs in such large scale battle without too much book keeping? I'm considering using either 4e minions (1HP, but no damage from saved AoEs) or swarms. Should allow for them to work more efficiently when being organized, such as keeping up shield wall in choke point.
If your PCs are high enough level that CR1/4 monsters are no threat, use swarms to represent them. I would not waste time on minion creatures if the PCs are level 6 or higher - if not using swarms, just allow the characters to auto-kill near-useless creatures by declaring an attack. This will let them wade through ranks of enemies without bogging the game down with lots of rolling for things that don't matter, and players typically enjoy feeling like bosses. Save the dice rolling for the big bad creatures - e.g. don't roll dice for the 30 goblins, let the players get to the fight with four armoured trolls quicker.
3) The siege part will likely last for at least couple of days, what kind of events can happen outside of the main assault?
Mining beneath the walls (dig a counter tunnel and stop them), NPCs trying to betray them and open a side door, poisoned supplies, siege engines throwing living creatures which can survive the impact over the walls to attack them (oozes for instance), a necromancer raises the defenders' own dead, an offer to parley and eat dinner with the enemy commanders. Read Legend by David Gemmell for some ideas.
4) What can the PCs do between the fights, other than rest? Of course they will likely come up with their own options, but it would be helpful to have some prepared options, so I can compare DC and possible effects.
The leaders of the keep want to surrender, persuade them it's a bad idea in a council meeting
Keep morale up
Conduct funeral services for the dead
Try to work out how the secret magic mega defence system can be activated
5) How to structure the "adventuring day"? I'm thinking I will throw few "testing defenses" parties against the keep each day, if I was feeling evil, I could even time them so they can't get long rest unless they clear the combat fast. I would like there to be increasing sense of urgency and threat once the attacks start, but would also likely be better if the party is fully rested for the final assault.
Depends on what your party enjoys. Wave after wave of similar attacks will get boring fast. I'd try to make each assault different. In my siege I had the following (in my siege these happened simultaneously, so the PCs had to choose 3 of the 4 to do, and the order they did them changed what was happening in each of the other locations)
Three stone giants assaulted the main gates, trying to destroy anti-aircraft cannons. If they failed to stop them, the airships won't turn away. (protect the cannons)
An airship rains fire on the civilian quarter. The PCs need to fly up or assault it at range to drive it back while it also deploys assault teams. (destroy an airship)
The Big Bad personally leads a crack assault squad to capture a prophet in his temple (protect the NPC).
Waves of bad guys assault a set of steps leading to a vital gate (outlast)
Think of a theme or gimmick that will make every fight memorable and different.
6) How to handle morale? NPCs on both sides are sensible humanoids, they will not throw their lives away for hopeless cause, but I also don't want the fights to be over before they get started.
This is just up to you. There's no need for rules for this. You just need to decide how committed the humanoids are to what they're doing.
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I'm planning an adventure as part of my running campaign that will most likely see the party defend a small keep against a siege.
The situation is mostly so that country the PCs have worked for so far and its neighbor are in war. The neighbor's army has taken an early win and taken some land but have not so far managed to take a small keep on a strategic supply line, and not controlling that supply line means they can't gain permanent progress further into the friendly territory. This has caused area of no-man's land to form between the better defensible area further into friendly territory and the camps of the hostile force closer to the pre-war border. The keep is very close (just over siege weapon range) to the main camp of the invasion force. The party is tasked to find certain VIPs that where lost in aftermath of the skirmishes on that no-man's land, some are under piles of bodies, few on the keep, some captured by the other side as well as providing the keep some relief so it doesn't fall before they are prepared for counter attack. The keep has not fallen yet because the other side has not yet gotten siege weapons and their main force has been occupied by the skirmishes.
So what do I need help with:
1) Anyone have good map for interesting siege battle to use as a base? Preferably wet erase battle map sized, so 32*54 squares if I remember correctly. Should have few different directions the enemies can attack from and objectives to defend. It could just be the VIPs, but maybe food or ammunition storage, water supply or weapon emplacements could be more interesting.
2) How to handle NPCs in such large scale battle without too much book keeping? I'm considering using either 4e minions (1HP, but no damage from saved AoEs) or swarms. Should allow for them to work more efficiently when being organized, such as keeping up shield wall in choke point.
3) The siege part will likely last for at least couple of days, what kind of events can happen outside of the main assault?
4) What can the PCs do between the fights, other than rest? Of course they will likely come up with their own options, but it would be helpful to have some prepared options, so I can compare DC and possible effects.
5) How to structure the "adventuring day"? I'm thinking I will throw few "testing defenses" parties against the keep each day, if I was feeling evil, I could even time them so they can't get long rest unless they clear the combat fast. I would like there to be increasing sense of urgency and threat once the attacks start, but would also likely be better if the party is fully rested for the final assault.
6) How to handle morale? NPCs on both sides are sensible humanoids, they will not throw their lives away for hopeless cause, but I also don't want the fights to be over before they get started.
1. There's a section in Pinterest of dnd battle maps, just search it up, if you want to make a custom map for the village itself there's a generator that can help you in watabou. Village Generator by watabou (itch.io) click this site for village or town map, battle maps in general are hard to find unless you go to patreon there's a lot more better battle maps there, but if you want free ones go to Pinterest.
2. For NPC's its either you turn them into a swarm or let their health be, group them up in one initiative eg. villager 1 - 5, villager 6 - 10, villager 11 - 15 are in Group one. (This can be same for the swarm) this is if you want to include all of them, if not all of them are there, what you can do is have them at the back lines running supply runs.
3. Enemy setting up the base, spies and assassins trying to infiltrate the place, or destruction of land life, news travelling around the different kingdoms off the siege, mainly word off mount from the traveling merchants and other travelers. A lot can happen based on where its set at. (This is viable for both sides)
4. If its the party and what they can do instead: the party can train militia, send a player to call for an alliance with neighboring places, bait the spies with espionage and false information etc, or do their thing. If they have carpentry proficiency they can build anti siege weapons or strengthen the defenses while the main force is skirmishing. Another note is they can act as double agents.
5. Structure it into a skill challenge, three for one day, one at the morning, one in the afternoon, and one at night or midnight. depending on their role they can potentially increase the delay or the resistance of their defenses. For eg. train militia, requires a successful skill challenge of charisma checks. Setting up traps around requires intelligence or dexterity checks of your choice.
6. Moral is a bar of 50 / 50 eg. enemy has gained the foot hold the bar would look like this allies at the right and enemies at the left 46 / 54. Moral. Or you can do the 50 Moral for both sides and use skill challenges to lower or increase moral.
If you need more help, search online for siege modules and read them eg. is Berdusk till Dawn.
Those are some great suggestions above.
I ran a series of siege situations with a group of players back in 3.5 and I learned a few things.
1. The Players should be the pivotal part of the battle. Their actions and sacrifices should directly lead to either victory or retreat.
2. I liked to set up these fights as losable. That is the players should believe they might lose. Have the scouting party that they send out get completely slaughtered, the well turns out to be poisoned, something that says “we are on a time table and we may have to rethink it”
3. Set up an escape route for them. This isn’t what you actually want them to do, but you’re using Chekhov’s Gun to influence the mood. They may still use the escape route, just to get out of the keep and go assassinate the enemy general, which is fine.
4. Have two battle plans for how it goes outside of where the players are, and a timeline for them. This way, if the players are winning in the area they’re at, you can have messengers come beg for help, “The north wall has been breached! They’re swarming through!” or if the players fail at an objective, here comes that annoying sergeant to the rescue with a band of veterans.
5. Don’t tell the players everything about how the battle is going. The biggest mistake I see DMs make is to share their omniscient viewpoint with the players, this is especially true in large scale battle scenes. It’s partially because they’re your buddies and friends but also you want an audience for all the work you’re putting in, and they are right there. Resist the urge to share information. It’ll crank up tension and add opportunities to role play.
I hope my experience helps you some!
Where did you get that all about village? Sure there will be some farms around the keep that used to provide it with supplies and the keep might have some support buildings but it is meant to be entirely within the defensible area.
Suggesting searching pinterest would be bit more useful if you linked to a section or even suggested keywords. It is not like I did not search for "keep battlemap" and few others before on other image search systems. I can't even search there without making account. And their presentation is so horrible I have actually added a script that removes pinterest results from my image searches, because following the links doesn't lead to actual image files. The images there also practically always are from elsewhere in internet without permission of the host or original uploader. I was also interested in personal experiences about using these maps, like is there enough room to navigate and speed to matter, are the defenses in sensible locations and is there objects that can create interesting dynamics. Is it easy to trace to battlemap and read the height differences.
With NPCs I meant more about the keeps defenders, about company of levies and the full army of hostiles during the combat phases. Villagers and other non-combat NPCs will likely get locked inside, though party could train them into some form of militia. The advantage of minion system is that I can represent them on the battle map with tokens and flip the token once they die, they require no other book keeping. Swarms would help with having less dice to roll for the attacks, but they take lot more book keeping and can lead to weird situations where you hitting one creature causes another few meters away to also die, though that is just level of abstraction vs. story telling problem. Narrating it as dude falling and taking his buddy with him, or some sort of cleave or multi attack is easy enough. Could also use some hybrid approach, like minions for taking damage, spontaneous swarms for attacking and actual health for calculating how many units are affected by spell like sleep.
I'm not assuming the siege to last long enough that news traveling anywhere is of consequence, both sides already know about it (though the major attack will take some time for the PC friendly side to get learn about trough their forward scouts) and it is in actual no-man's land at the moment, so at most there are scavengers looting after last skirmish, merchant or traveler would not really risk that route. Someone teleporting in to offer their wares, might be interesting, but doesn't really fit into style of narrative I'm going for. Spies and assassins would definitely fit and give opportunity for combat encounter that is not just who kills who and doesn't require the surrounding army to launch yet another minor attack. Destruction of land life has already mostly happened due to the earlier major battle and the skirmishes that have been going. This causes lots of the problems PCs face on the way to the keep, mostly scavenger beasts and monsters, undead and shadowfell creatures, and might be of interest to rangers and druids as well.
The party doesn't yet have proper teleportation, so they are not getting to anyone who could help in time, and they already should know at that point that there is help coming in form of levies from rest of the country reaching the war zone. I think I will time them so that if they keep the keep long enough, the final attack will be cut by the counter-attack. Getting more allies would likely be an option for next adventure, or something they could chose to do instead. Training the levies in the keep could be done to improve their stats by bit or they could train the remaining non-combat NPCs to have bit more forces. The espionage part is quite in line with the party, so yeah, I have to prepare for them to sneak into to the enemy camp, try to to pretend they are bringing new orders from that country's "bureau spear tip sharpness inspection" or something like that as well as also prepare some useful intel they can acquire or false information they can plant. And they could do some sabotage either on the field or in the enemy camp.
Improving the defenses by building weapons or traps or improving the walls was one of my main ideas for what to do during the down time, and I would have liked for bit more concrete examples, but that might be too map dependent. What is good damage for ballista and should it do damage in line AoE, what is the attack stat or save? They should be meaningfully powerful, but not something that makes PCs feel weak. What does improving the walls mean? 3/4 cover instead of half cover?
While skill challenges are good way of abstracting the progress during the downtime, they don't really work as resource drain and if I only use them, then the short and long rest balance will be of quite a lot in long rests side. And I would like to have few more combats just so that the players have a change to learn about their enemies and how their defenses are working before the final assault.
Having the morale of each side as a single "bar" sounds like a good idea. This makes it so that both sides don't have morale failure at same point, but instead it happens as a result of other side having a significant upper hand. Starting values for each encounter could be determined based on the values from last encounter and the events and skill challenges between the encounters. But how much would different battle events change the value (assuming your 50+50 scale for example) and at what point would units start to abandon their positions, surrender or panic? When the the meter reaches one end all at once or maybe with roll of d20 scoring more than what morale that side has left, per group of units?
Berdusk till Dawn is a good note, though from quick read not quite what I was looking for, got any other modules, adventures or campaigns which feature fleshed out sieges? And even if I did turn out most of the advice, don't think I don't appreciate it.
Remember, D&D isn't truly a simulation. It's a stage play. It's an illusion. So it's not only like Dm_From_1975 said that the players are instrumental in the outcome of the siege, which is true, but there isn't really a rest of a siege. It just seems like it to the players. So, you don't need to worry about simulating a reasonable amount of soldiers who are a reasonable strength level in case the players decide to charge through the middle. You can balance the encounters to be interesting in localised skirmishes and not worry about the implication if the players decided to take on all the soldiers at once: because hopefully the players won't decide to do that. Because it's a siege, you probably aren't going to worry about the players fighting an army in an open field. And if there are NPCs fighting one another, just roll a single die for each engagement pair. If it's high, the friendly has the advantage. If it's low the enemy does. If it is extremely high or low, the character kills the other one. You can do this for larger narrative events in the background to tell how the battle is going in general. Combats the players are not directly involved in do not need to be resolved using the combat mechanics.
D&D is smoke and mirrors.
That’s a great way to put it. My experience of running seiges showed me that getting into granular details of the game meant I wasn’t focused on the players aspect of it, and those games came across as slow and uninspired. When I started just focusing on the players and what they saw and were doing, it got 10x better for everyone.
These are some solid advice on managing the mood for the siege. I had already planned to add some way of escaping, both as a way of giving strategic choice and as a way of avoiding TPK, but using it to make the situation look worse than it might be is some clever narrative. I have previously used Schrödinger's trolls and puzzles (the solution is the second somewhat sensible thing they try) so having events based on how well players are doing should not be much of a problem, other than having to prepare bit more events than actually gets used.
Edit: this forum doesn't seem to handle replies well, everything goes to end, and doesn't even have a note to what was replied to.
@Verenti, yeah that works, though there are going to be quite a lot of NPCs of both sides in the walls and gates within range of the players attacks and spells, and I would like the players to feel these are handled fairly even if they are not going trough combat mechanics.
Divine contention has a really good example of a seige fight. You could do something similar.
When you thought you knew about spellcasting - you played a warlock
Why are most bard colleges a pain to type? I mean bard college of valor, compare to champion or evoker. Same goes for sacred oaths: paladin oath of devotion. That's even worse.
I don't think WoCE were very creative with the rogue and ranger subclass titles. I mean ranger archeotype? Roguish archeotype? Bro! Fighters are better but still is somewhat unsatisfying compare to a monastatic tradition or sacred oath.
I recently ran a siege of a walled monastery. The key to this is to break down the siege into small, encounter sized fights that the PCs are part of, and can choose to engage in, and to have as few NPCs as possible on the map (one key NPC is fine, loads of guards is tiresome). Don't try to run the entire siege at once, and don't try to run the NPCs.
1) Anyone have good map for interesting siege battle to use as a base?
Go to Pinterest and just search for maps. There are loads. Print that map out if you're not running using shareable maps online (I play face to face but we play using Roll20 for maps) and hand it to the PCs, but don't try to make it a battlemap. Use individual maps for each key area.
2) How to handle NPCs in such large scale battle without too much book keeping? I'm considering using either 4e minions (1HP, but no damage from saved AoEs) or swarms. Should allow for them to work more efficiently when being organized, such as keeping up shield wall in choke point.
If your PCs are high enough level that CR1/4 monsters are no threat, use swarms to represent them. I would not waste time on minion creatures if the PCs are level 6 or higher - if not using swarms, just allow the characters to auto-kill near-useless creatures by declaring an attack. This will let them wade through ranks of enemies without bogging the game down with lots of rolling for things that don't matter, and players typically enjoy feeling like bosses. Save the dice rolling for the big bad creatures - e.g. don't roll dice for the 30 goblins, let the players get to the fight with four armoured trolls quicker.
3) The siege part will likely last for at least couple of days, what kind of events can happen outside of the main assault?
Mining beneath the walls (dig a counter tunnel and stop them), NPCs trying to betray them and open a side door, poisoned supplies, siege engines throwing living creatures which can survive the impact over the walls to attack them (oozes for instance), a necromancer raises the defenders' own dead, an offer to parley and eat dinner with the enemy commanders. Read Legend by David Gemmell for some ideas.
4) What can the PCs do between the fights, other than rest? Of course they will likely come up with their own options, but it would be helpful to have some prepared options, so I can compare DC and possible effects.
5) How to structure the "adventuring day"? I'm thinking I will throw few "testing defenses" parties against the keep each day, if I was feeling evil, I could even time them so they can't get long rest unless they clear the combat fast. I would like there to be increasing sense of urgency and threat once the attacks start, but would also likely be better if the party is fully rested for the final assault.
Depends on what your party enjoys. Wave after wave of similar attacks will get boring fast. I'd try to make each assault different. In my siege I had the following (in my siege these happened simultaneously, so the PCs had to choose 3 of the 4 to do, and the order they did them changed what was happening in each of the other locations)
Think of a theme or gimmick that will make every fight memorable and different.
6) How to handle morale? NPCs on both sides are sensible humanoids, they will not throw their lives away for hopeless cause, but I also don't want the fights to be over before they get started.
This is just up to you. There's no need for rules for this. You just need to decide how committed the humanoids are to what they're doing.