Notes: The town is warded against entrance by the undead due to historical shenanigans. The village is safe behind their palisade, but the undead are content to wait and force the village to starve as they have secured the roads only ways out of the village are watched by the horde.
The town is roughly 1,000 people, mostly commoners and with a handful of guards, a company at most. The town is fortified with a ditch and palisade but not meant to repel a serious siege. The Lich's objective is to kill the town's population to add to his army and march on larger cities and towns, with the intent to secure an undead kingdom with him as ruler. Current party level and composition is 4 total, at level 2 each. I'm looking for ways an ingenious party might try to defeat this horde. Now, what I expect it the party to at least defeat a portion of the army to secure a route out of the town for the people to flee.
TLDR feel free to mock me for this scenario or ask questions, this is an intentionally difficult battle, borderline unwinnable for a party at level 2. The idea is to get the party out of the town to get stronger and return as conquering heroes to free the town.
Hey, I ran something like this for level 1-2 characters and it worked just fine.
Obviously the PCs cannot deal with the lich or the vampires head on - and to be honest, I think that you're probably going overboard with a CR21 monster. There's nothing that they can really do to stop the lich or even hurt it, and it can basically auto-win on its own. I put my PCs against a goblin army with a few trolls and a level 6 Orc necromancer, and he was scary enough to level 1 PCs. If you go for less of a big-bad (a lich's lieutenant), then the PCs can kill him somewhere around level 6 after they learned who his master is, giving them closure on the early adventure, while still having the plot work. (Note that any lich worth his salt knows most of the Wizard spells in the PHB, and definitely knows Teleport. If he's on a rampage and there's nobody to oppose him, he will Scry on the townsfolk when they leave, Teleport to them and cast Circle of Death and BAM, dead town). Liches are typically only interested in learning more terrible arcane secrets - a lich bent on destruction is going to make it happen.
How my level 1-2 PCs held a village against 200 goblins and the rest:
They arrived in the village to find some drunk goblin scouts looting ale. The villagers were all scared. They saw them off, simple level 1 combat encounter to teach the players combat.
There was a deep, fast flowing river with one bridge.
They fortified the bridge, and enlisted local dwarfs to build a wall across it.
They trained locals to shoot crossbows.
They foiled a plot by the necromancer to send brick-laden zombies through the river. Simple combat encounter for level 1s.
They discovered a Mage Cannon atop a tower. Nobody knew how to operate it.
They worked out how it worked. It needed bat guano and sulphur to load it, and they needed the command word.
They discovered the command word through a crystal orb.
They discovered that there was a spy in the town, putting yellow scarves around trees to guide the army to the village. They tracked him to the mayor's house where they took on the spy and then imprisoned the mayor.
There was an ettin eating sheep nearby, but he had an infected foot. PCs could have allied with him (by healing his foot) and had him attack advance parties, instead they fought him at level 2 and managed to luck out and kill him.
They went to a giant spider cave and found the bat guano covering the floor. Simple combat encounter that level 2s can handle. Found a cursed magic sword there.
They managed to get the sulphur by bartering somewhere.
When the goblins arrived, they were funneled into the bridge. The cannon fired level 8 Fireballs three times, obliterating most of the army and severely damaging the trolls. It cracked more each time they fired it, breaking after the 3rd shot.
The PCs finished off the last 2 trolls that attempted to climb over the wall on something like 16 hit points.
Now, since your town is warded, this isn't the right way for them to win - but what I hope you can take from it is that I designed a series of sub-missions that the PCs could do in typical adventuring style, each of which contributed to the overall battle after 3 days of game time. The important thing is to make the townspeople and their soldiers effectively meaningless - it should only be the PC's actions that affect the tide.
Some things you could have them do:
Open up the abandoned library to research town plans
Clear some Carrion Crawlers from the crypts, where the secret tunnel is
Have the defences begin to fail, make the PCs find the flowers needed to reinvigorate them
Create some kind of decoy for when the townsfolk escape
Notes: The town is warded against entrance by the undead due to historical shenanigans. The village is safe behind their palisade, but the undead are content to wait and force the village to starve as they have secured the roads only ways out of the village are watched by the horde.
The town is roughly 1,000 people, mostly commoners and with a handful of guards, a company at most. The town is fortified with a ditch and palisade but not meant to repel a serious siege. The Lich's objective is to kill the town's population to add to his army and march on larger cities and towns, with the intent to secure an undead kingdom with him as ruler. Current party level and composition is 4 total, at level 2 each. I'm looking for ways an ingenious party might try to defeat this horde. Now, what I expect it the party to at least defeat a portion of the army to secure a route out of the town for the people to flee.
TLDR feel free to mock me for this scenario or ask questions, this is an intentionally difficult battle, borderline unwinnable for a party at level 2. The idea is to get the party out of the town to get stronger and return as conquering heroes to free the town.
Without additional resources you didn't list, this sounds deeply unwinnable, and the lich is going to win quickly. It makes sense for undead to have infinite patience, but the town is in a country, so I doubt the undead will continue to wait for the town to starve when they can build trebuchets and destroy the town, since they have to worry about an army potentially showing up. It makes much more sense for the lich to spend its patience on building siege engines on-site than for it to literally wait for the town to starve, especially since the town might get word to the king somehow.
Speaking of which, that's priority one: making sure the local head of government knows their country has been invaded, if they don't already know, and the disposition of said invading army. What the town should do is make as much holy water as they can (is a cleric in the party? If so, then all they need is all the silver in town), then, depending on how much they have, pick a number of couriers (picking only one is truly desperate) to attempt to make it to the king (is there a wizard in the party? a familiar is an optimal member of the set of couriers, since most of the invading army can't fly and is unlikely to be able to see 1200 feet in darkness, giving an owl a credible chance at escape). Then the town spends the holy water trying (or appearing to try) to get a courier out to the king. They ideally don't need to succeed - if they're e.g. covering for an owl, what they need to do is provide a distraction that can't be ignored, like posing a credible threat to a significant number of zombies. If they do need to succeed, everything is radically worse, because they're going to lose a lot of people ensuring 1 living person escapes the town to deliver the plea for help, but the core plan is still the same.
There's no time to "get stronger". Assuming the PC party is chosen as a courier or a courier's bodyguard, they have to get to the king right now with the message if they get out. That town has maybe a month to live if I'm being overly generous. The king needs to mobilize and drive the undead back pronto.
I do like the idea of reducing the general CR of the "officers" of the horde, including the leader Lich to a more manageable necromancer. The idea of a mere Lich destroying a town directly rather than assigning a capable servant makes plenty of sense.
I do like the idea of sub objectives for the players to get accomplished inside the town. I did discuss this as a possible mini campaign with some players, and the general ideas i got back was organizing the townfolk into a series of fortified redoubts, intended to heavily bleed the horde over a series of encounters, while much of the town takes shelter inside church catacombs. There was an idea to bait parts of the horde to follow after illusionary refugees, and then fill part of the moat with pitch and oil to burn them. Additionally, two players had some suitable allies from their backstories they were eager to potentially use in a fight, including a brotherhood of Tyr paladins and a particularly wealthy artificer with an airship.
I do like the idea of reducing the general CR of the "officers" of the horde, including the leader Lich to a more manageable necromancer. The idea of a mere Lich destroying a town directly rather than assigning a capable servant makes plenty of sense.
I do like the idea of sub objectives for the players to get accomplished inside the town. I did discuss this as a possible mini campaign with some players, and the general ideas i got back was organizing the townfolk into a series of fortified redoubts, intended to heavily bleed the horde over a series of encounters, while much of the town takes shelter inside church catacombs. There was an idea to bait parts of the horde to follow after illusionary refugees, and then fill part of the moat with pitch and oil to burn them. Additionally, two players had some suitable allies from their backstories they were eager to potentially use in a fight, including a brotherhood of Tyr paladins and a particularly wealthy artificer with an airship.
The sub objectives can all lead into the greater objective - a goal achieved by completion of its parts, essentially.
I like the idea of luring the undead into the moat, but since they can't ever get into the town, that seems difficult (why approach into arrow range?). But it's a good way to deal with them if the PCs can pull it off.
Regarding allies or using the garrison - and quindraco's reply focuses around a similar idea in summoning the king - the difficulty there for me is that this makes the PC's role effectively to pass the buck to someone more suitable to deal with it. I'm not sure why that would be the focus of an adventure where the PCs are in a town. Sure, you can call for the king, or the paladins of Tyr, or an artificer in an airship - but this all has the same result: someone else turns up and sorts it all out for them.
D&D is a game that lets you be the hero in the story. It would be fine for a town to call on the aid of a group of level 10 characters to come and break the siege, but essentially, if the goal is "summon help" then you're turning the PCs into NPC quest givers. They should have yellow exclamation marks over their heads, as someone else is going to come do the actual quest.
If you want to go with "fetch aid" then have the PCs leave the town and fight through enemy lines, stealthing through undead patrolled swamps, sneaking through secret passages in the mountains - but the story you're playing through should be their story - not the story of the king, or their backstory allies. The PCs should always be the most important players in the tale.
we had a similar high level encounter run on FG... the DM actually spiked the game by using the maximum number of tokens...
From what I saw for the win at a slightly higher level... enlarge potion on a Pal / Soc with spirit guardians... plant them in the entrance gate and keep them alive... it's like a massive AOE moving lawn mower of everything 15 feet from your PC which when enlarged is a HUGE AOE... have somebody hit him with protection from evil to support his combat durability vs undead... and walk around like a lawn mower protecting his flanks... mowing undead down...
I agree with most of the sentiment above, most specifically:
This should be about the characters - they are they heroes of this particular story.
The Litch shouldn't be directly involved - they have more important things to deal with than a po-dunk little town protected by second level characters.
I would do something along these lines:
Undead Army Breakdown
196 skeletons (armed with spears, swords, bows) 28 Animated Armors 56 Zombies 28 Ghouls 1 Vampire Spellcaster - the 'General' of this particular little army.
Now, even scaled back a bit, this is a total party wipe, and more than enough to take out the town... except you've got this ward in place. To my mind, that's where things get interesting... the story is what it's all about. Only, in this case, the party gets to take part in a story bigger then them...
Perhaps the party spots the undead army travelling cross country, and races to the town to warn them. They will be here in a few hours! What do do?
Have the town cleric (he's a bit of a historian, and thinks there's something to this town's history) task the party with going into the underground crypt to get the macguffin that will supercharge the ward and destroy the undead, while he maintains the ward keeping them out... only, there's a ticking clock - he can't keep it going all night. Will it work? Who knows, but it's our only hope!
Now the party has an achievable mission with real stakes - they are taking part in world building and engaging in story, and when they bring the macguffin back and put it in the carved stone in the middle of town (after battling through the (small and appropriately sized) handful of undead that have broken through the failing wards), it shines with actual sunlight, obliterating the vampire and all of the rest of the undead army. Maybe they even find a handy level appropriate magic item or two along the way.
They get to be the ones that destroy an undead army and a freaking vampire necro-wizard.
They are capital H Heroes of the Day!
And if everyone is having fun and you want to keep it going...
The clock is still ticking, because the vampire wizard, as villains do, needs to engage in a bit of monologuing before they destroy him, revealing the Litch King's plan to pour across the land, heading to the capital to destroy the rightful king and despoil the kingdom, like Litches do. The town cleric, now dying in the character's arms from his undead inflicted wounds, presses the macguffin into the party's hands - you must take it to the king! it's the only way to save the kingdom! the fate of the land is in YOUR HANDS!
Now they
travel across the kingdom on horseback - it's an endurance race against an undead army that doesn't need to rest, or stop to eat, or go around rivers, or... (play up the unstoppable horde angle)
battle the occasional undead scouting party
thwart the plans of another Litch Lackey en route, perhaps saving another small town with a strategic location with the news...
Convince the well meaning but obdurate political leader to grant them access to the king - does the local church leader the cleric sent them to help? Is he a secret servant of the Litch King(there has to be one feeding mis-information to the king)? Political shenanigans!
Get an actual audience with the king to unveil the Litch King's master plan, expose the hidden spy, and give the kingdom the secret weapon to destroy the Litch King once and for all! Historical Shenanigans! Story shenanigans. Giant Battle Shenanigans, and they witness the destruction of the undead army. The King has a team of a Trusted Few he can send on important secret missions now...
Totally doable for a scrappy team of underdogs... Heroes of the day, once again!
They can level up a few levels while this is going on, getting from 2nd level to 5th or 6th, depending on how long this goes on... and the cool thing (I think) is that Litches are notoriously difficult to destroy... if you keep the campaign going on long enough, you'll be able to throw the actual Litch against them directly - you can have a campaign ending confrontation from levels 17-20 that has some real emotional investment. A seriously pissed Litch wanting vengeance, and a bad guy the party is actually invested in defeating.
It all comes back to the story... and a throw away comment about 'historical shenanigans.'
In my previous replies I had managed to miss that you want them to actually destroy the horde. I think Bishop69's idea about empowering the macguffin is probably the right approach. Maybe once empowered it channels divinity a la Destroy Undead.
Knowing that the macguffin that can end the whole army is there is actually a good motivation for the undead army to be there. These high level undead are centuries or more old, presumably, so they're pretty darn smart. Is it worth them sticking around just to add more bodies to the army? Maybe discovering the reason for the undead being there at all ("Why do they care about this meaningless village?") could be part of the adventure.
and you know.. the scenario I listed out works even if they don't come back with the macguffin in time. In fact, it ups the stakes if they don't. Imagine the look on the party's face when they make their triumphant way out of the crypt with the macguffin in hand, only to find the village in ruins, not a corpse in sight, and their trusty cleric nailed to a big rock, barely hanging on after what was obviously hours of torment...
and then they watch in horror as he fades off after giving them only partial instructions on where to find the ceremony to activate the macguffin, or starts turning into an undead something or other and they have to put him out of his misery, and now they are on their own as they race to accomplish phase 2 as above, but instead of starting on a high, they start at rock bottom... build them up, tear them down, and then build them up even higher. Again, it's about giving them investment in their part of the greater story.
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Undead Army Breakdown: 196 skeletons (armed with spears, swords, bows)
28 Animated Armors
56 Zombies
28 Ghouls
2 Vampire Spellcasters
2 Vampire Warriors
4 Deathlock Masterminds
1 Lich
Notes: The town is warded against entrance by the undead due to historical shenanigans. The village is safe behind their palisade, but the undead are content to wait and force the village to starve as they have secured the roads only ways out of the village are watched by the horde.
The town is roughly 1,000 people, mostly commoners and with a handful of guards, a company at most. The town is fortified with a ditch and palisade but not meant to repel a serious siege. The Lich's objective is to kill the town's population to add to his army and march on larger cities and towns, with the intent to secure an undead kingdom with him as ruler. Current party level and composition is 4 total, at level 2 each. I'm looking for ways an ingenious party might try to defeat this horde. Now, what I expect it the party to at least defeat a portion of the army to secure a route out of the town for the people to flee.
TLDR feel free to mock me for this scenario or ask questions, this is an intentionally difficult battle, borderline unwinnable for a party at level 2. The idea is to get the party out of the town to get stronger and return as conquering heroes to free the town.
Hey, I ran something like this for level 1-2 characters and it worked just fine.
Obviously the PCs cannot deal with the lich or the vampires head on - and to be honest, I think that you're probably going overboard with a CR21 monster. There's nothing that they can really do to stop the lich or even hurt it, and it can basically auto-win on its own. I put my PCs against a goblin army with a few trolls and a level 6 Orc necromancer, and he was scary enough to level 1 PCs. If you go for less of a big-bad (a lich's lieutenant), then the PCs can kill him somewhere around level 6 after they learned who his master is, giving them closure on the early adventure, while still having the plot work. (Note that any lich worth his salt knows most of the Wizard spells in the PHB, and definitely knows Teleport. If he's on a rampage and there's nobody to oppose him, he will Scry on the townsfolk when they leave, Teleport to them and cast Circle of Death and BAM, dead town). Liches are typically only interested in learning more terrible arcane secrets - a lich bent on destruction is going to make it happen.
How my level 1-2 PCs held a village against 200 goblins and the rest:
Now, since your town is warded, this isn't the right way for them to win - but what I hope you can take from it is that I designed a series of sub-missions that the PCs could do in typical adventuring style, each of which contributed to the overall battle after 3 days of game time. The important thing is to make the townspeople and their soldiers effectively meaningless - it should only be the PC's actions that affect the tide.
Some things you could have them do:
Without additional resources you didn't list, this sounds deeply unwinnable, and the lich is going to win quickly. It makes sense for undead to have infinite patience, but the town is in a country, so I doubt the undead will continue to wait for the town to starve when they can build trebuchets and destroy the town, since they have to worry about an army potentially showing up. It makes much more sense for the lich to spend its patience on building siege engines on-site than for it to literally wait for the town to starve, especially since the town might get word to the king somehow.
Speaking of which, that's priority one: making sure the local head of government knows their country has been invaded, if they don't already know, and the disposition of said invading army. What the town should do is make as much holy water as they can (is a cleric in the party? If so, then all they need is all the silver in town), then, depending on how much they have, pick a number of couriers (picking only one is truly desperate) to attempt to make it to the king (is there a wizard in the party? a familiar is an optimal member of the set of couriers, since most of the invading army can't fly and is unlikely to be able to see 1200 feet in darkness, giving an owl a credible chance at escape). Then the town spends the holy water trying (or appearing to try) to get a courier out to the king. They ideally don't need to succeed - if they're e.g. covering for an owl, what they need to do is provide a distraction that can't be ignored, like posing a credible threat to a significant number of zombies. If they do need to succeed, everything is radically worse, because they're going to lose a lot of people ensuring 1 living person escapes the town to deliver the plea for help, but the core plan is still the same.
There's no time to "get stronger". Assuming the PC party is chosen as a courier or a courier's bodyguard, they have to get to the king right now with the message if they get out. That town has maybe a month to live if I'm being overly generous. The king needs to mobilize and drive the undead back pronto.
I do like the idea of reducing the general CR of the "officers" of the horde, including the leader Lich to a more manageable necromancer. The idea of a mere Lich destroying a town directly rather than assigning a capable servant makes plenty of sense.
I do like the idea of sub objectives for the players to get accomplished inside the town. I did discuss this as a possible mini campaign with some players, and the general ideas i got back was organizing the townfolk into a series of fortified redoubts, intended to heavily bleed the horde over a series of encounters, while much of the town takes shelter inside church catacombs. There was an idea to bait parts of the horde to follow after illusionary refugees, and then fill part of the moat with pitch and oil to burn them. Additionally, two players had some suitable allies from their backstories they were eager to potentially use in a fight, including a brotherhood of Tyr paladins and a particularly wealthy artificer with an airship.
Was this inspired by an AoS/WF army perchance? Don’t forget your Terrorgheist.
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The sub objectives can all lead into the greater objective - a goal achieved by completion of its parts, essentially.
I like the idea of luring the undead into the moat, but since they can't ever get into the town, that seems difficult (why approach into arrow range?). But it's a good way to deal with them if the PCs can pull it off.
Regarding allies or using the garrison - and quindraco's reply focuses around a similar idea in summoning the king - the difficulty there for me is that this makes the PC's role effectively to pass the buck to someone more suitable to deal with it. I'm not sure why that would be the focus of an adventure where the PCs are in a town. Sure, you can call for the king, or the paladins of Tyr, or an artificer in an airship - but this all has the same result: someone else turns up and sorts it all out for them.
D&D is a game that lets you be the hero in the story. It would be fine for a town to call on the aid of a group of level 10 characters to come and break the siege, but essentially, if the goal is "summon help" then you're turning the PCs into NPC quest givers. They should have yellow exclamation marks over their heads, as someone else is going to come do the actual quest.
If you want to go with "fetch aid" then have the PCs leave the town and fight through enemy lines, stealthing through undead patrolled swamps, sneaking through secret passages in the mountains - but the story you're playing through should be their story - not the story of the king, or their backstory allies. The PCs should always be the most important players in the tale.
Just because the undead can't get in, doesn't mean they can't use siege engines to demolish the walls and buildings.
The undead could also conjure or recruit non-undead creatures to invade the town.
What type of ward keeps the undead out? Is it a thing like an artifact? or is it special runes carved into the walls? or is it the blessed ground?
Are there people in the town that want to escape? Are there people in the town that want to ally with the undead?
Things like the above could help generate goals for both the PCs and the bad guys.
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-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
we had a similar high level encounter run on FG... the DM actually spiked the game by using the maximum number of tokens...
From what I saw for the win at a slightly higher level... enlarge potion on a Pal / Soc with spirit guardians... plant them in the entrance gate and keep them alive... it's like a massive AOE moving lawn mower of everything 15 feet from your PC which when enlarged is a HUGE AOE... have somebody hit him with protection from evil to support his combat durability vs undead... and walk around like a lawn mower protecting his flanks... mowing undead down...
I agree with most of the sentiment above, most specifically:
I would do something along these lines:
Undead Army Breakdown
196 skeletons (armed with spears, swords, bows)
28 Animated Armors
56 Zombies
28 Ghouls
1 Vampire Spellcaster - the 'General' of this particular little army.
Now, even scaled back a bit, this is a total party wipe, and more than enough to take out the town... except you've got this ward in place. To my mind, that's where things get interesting... the story is what it's all about. Only, in this case, the party gets to take part in a story bigger then them...
Perhaps the party spots the undead army travelling cross country, and races to the town to warn them. They will be here in a few hours! What do do?
Have the town cleric (he's a bit of a historian, and thinks there's something to this town's history) task the party with going into the underground crypt to get the macguffin that will supercharge the ward and destroy the undead, while he maintains the ward keeping them out... only, there's a ticking clock - he can't keep it going all night. Will it work? Who knows, but it's our only hope!
Now the party has an achievable mission with real stakes - they are taking part in world building and engaging in story, and when they bring the macguffin back and put it in the carved stone in the middle of town (after battling through the (small and appropriately sized) handful of undead that have broken through the failing wards), it shines with actual sunlight, obliterating the vampire and all of the rest of the undead army. Maybe they even find a handy level appropriate magic item or two along the way.
And if everyone is having fun and you want to keep it going...
The clock is still ticking, because the vampire wizard, as villains do, needs to engage in a bit of monologuing before they destroy him, revealing the Litch King's plan to pour across the land, heading to the capital to destroy the rightful king and despoil the kingdom, like Litches do. The town cleric, now dying in the character's arms from his undead inflicted wounds, presses the macguffin into the party's hands - you must take it to the king! it's the only way to save the kingdom! the fate of the land is in YOUR HANDS!
Now they
Totally doable for a scrappy team of underdogs... Heroes of the day, once again!
They can level up a few levels while this is going on, getting from 2nd level to 5th or 6th, depending on how long this goes on... and the cool thing (I think) is that Litches are notoriously difficult to destroy... if you keep the campaign going on long enough, you'll be able to throw the actual Litch against them directly - you can have a campaign ending confrontation from levels 17-20 that has some real emotional investment. A seriously pissed Litch wanting vengeance, and a bad guy the party is actually invested in defeating.
It all comes back to the story... and a throw away comment about 'historical shenanigans.'
In my previous replies I had managed to miss that you want them to actually destroy the horde. I think Bishop69's idea about empowering the macguffin is probably the right approach. Maybe once empowered it channels divinity a la Destroy Undead.
Knowing that the macguffin that can end the whole army is there is actually a good motivation for the undead army to be there. These high level undead are centuries or more old, presumably, so they're pretty darn smart. Is it worth them sticking around just to add more bodies to the army? Maybe discovering the reason for the undead being there at all ("Why do they care about this meaningless village?") could be part of the adventure.
Thanks, Sanvael...
and you know.. the scenario I listed out works even if they don't come back with the macguffin in time. In fact, it ups the stakes if they don't. Imagine the look on the party's face when they make their triumphant way out of the crypt with the macguffin in hand, only to find the village in ruins, not a corpse in sight, and their trusty cleric nailed to a big rock, barely hanging on after what was obviously hours of torment...
and then they watch in horror as he fades off after giving them only partial instructions on where to find the ceremony to activate the macguffin, or starts turning into an undead something or other and they have to put him out of his misery, and now they are on their own as they race to accomplish phase 2 as above, but instead of starting on a high, they start at rock bottom... build them up, tear them down, and then build them up even higher. Again, it's about giving them investment in their part of the greater story.