What's the best way to handle a short and aggressive assault in terms of mechanics?
Essentially I built a lot of the campaign in advance (skeleton framework for building as we go). I put in a small sidequest where players would deal with an orc settlement that keeps raiding everyone, but then one of the leading players made a half-orc whose main thing is that he wants to help orcs become free and independent, so now they're defending the orcs. It's good fun.
But now the humans are going to launch an attack on the orcs to wipe them out, and the party will be involved in preparations and then defending during the siege itself. There are only about 50 orcs and the humans will have to come up a narrow cliff pass a few at a time, so it's just about plausible that I could use normal combat rules, but it could take a while and get a bit slow.
Is the Mass Combat UA worth looking at or is there a better way to do this?
The UA Mass combat is more appropriate when both sides (humans and orcs in your case) are in large number. In the DMG (Master od Rules section, page 250), there are rules when one side (orcs in your case) are in large number and the other not.
Something my DM did for a situation like this was set several lines of different types to certain areas. I would say you have different classes of orcs. Archers, Pikemen, and brawlers And then a few other points of entry that get discovered before the battle. Then you assign to YOU what class would deal with what entry point the best. The players then help place each class at each entry point. So let's call the entry points the narrow pass you mentioned, a steep hill being climbed, and a long forgotten tunnel that leads to the center of town. The archers go best on the hill, the brawlers go best to the tunnel, and the pikemen go best to the narrow pass. If the players put a class in the wrong area (pikemen in the cave area) then that class begins to lose footing and troops. The heroes can come in and lend a hand. A small battle dealing with 3 or 4 enemies and 1 or 2 of the allied factions might be good. At the very least, maybe this gives you a jumping off point.
The end of the CORE adventure line CORE 1-3 (A Hole in the World) did a great job of framing the adventure during an imminent assault on a settlement. Basically it had the party try to accomplish various side-quests to help the city prep for both an orc and a modron invasion and depending on how much stuff they managed to get done informed how things played out when the respective armies showed up. If things went really bad, there was a scene where the party was fighting through the streets trying to help survivors get out of the city while the clashing armies fought in the background.
You should look up that adventure path if you get a chance. It is a great model for this sort of thing.
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What's the best way to handle a short and aggressive assault in terms of mechanics?
Essentially I built a lot of the campaign in advance (skeleton framework for building as we go). I put in a small sidequest where players would deal with an orc settlement that keeps raiding everyone, but then one of the leading players made a half-orc whose main thing is that he wants to help orcs become free and independent, so now they're defending the orcs. It's good fun.
But now the humans are going to launch an attack on the orcs to wipe them out, and the party will be involved in preparations and then defending during the siege itself. There are only about 50 orcs and the humans will have to come up a narrow cliff pass a few at a time, so it's just about plausible that I could use normal combat rules, but it could take a while and get a bit slow.
Is the Mass Combat UA worth looking at or is there a better way to do this?
The UA Mass combat is more appropriate when both sides (humans and orcs in your case) are in large number. In the DMG (Master od Rules section, page 250), there are rules when one side (orcs in your case) are in large number and the other not.
Something my DM did for a situation like this was set several lines of different types to certain areas. I would say you have different classes of orcs. Archers, Pikemen, and brawlers And then a few other points of entry that get discovered before the battle. Then you assign to YOU what class would deal with what entry point the best. The players then help place each class at each entry point. So let's call the entry points the narrow pass you mentioned, a steep hill being climbed, and a long forgotten tunnel that leads to the center of town. The archers go best on the hill, the brawlers go best to the tunnel, and the pikemen go best to the narrow pass. If the players put a class in the wrong area (pikemen in the cave area) then that class begins to lose footing and troops. The heroes can come in and lend a hand. A small battle dealing with 3 or 4 enemies and 1 or 2 of the allied factions might be good. At the very least, maybe this gives you a jumping off point.
The end of the CORE adventure line CORE 1-3 (A Hole in the World) did a great job of framing the adventure during an imminent assault on a settlement. Basically it had the party try to accomplish various side-quests to help the city prep for both an orc and a modron invasion and depending on how much stuff they managed to get done informed how things played out when the respective armies showed up. If things went really bad, there was a scene where the party was fighting through the streets trying to help survivors get out of the city while the clashing armies fought in the background.
You should look up that adventure path if you get a chance. It is a great model for this sort of thing.