So, my party and I have to bring down a sneak through a siege camp to enter the town that's being attacked. To improve our standing with the leadership, were going to sabotage the camp. Throwing horse poop in the water supply, setting fire to the stores of arrows & bolt to hurt their hunting ability. Where I'm drawing a blank is how to ruin their food. The Siegers are a orcish horde akin to what is seen in lord of the rings. So I imagine a butcher's tents. Suggestions on what to do?
Can you summon a great number of rats? Or similar vermin that will eat and infect the food?
There is also rat poison, I guess.
What if you got a bunch of poisonous mushrooms and mixed them into the rest of the mushrooms? Would they know the difference? Of, take poisonous mushrooms and grind them into a powder. Next, mix it into the "meal" and "grains". There are any number of poisonous berries you could use as well. Grind up a paste and mix it with lard. Then leave the lard container in the supplies and they will use the lard to make food, and ...
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Fire is going to be your best bet for the food, as well as the other supplies. Recall, in most medieval sieges, it was actually the defenders who had the advantage in terms of food supplies, not the attackers. The defenders generally would be able to prepare by both storing their own food reserves within their fortification and destroying the crops behind them, forcing the attackers to feed their armies using what they could take with them and with long supply lines. Not exactly ideal.
Igniting their food storage is going to take out their food and has the propensity to spread to other areas of the camp, causing additional damage and forcing the defenders to be distracted trying to put out the blaze. With enough fires spread across the camp, you could even make them vulnerable to a counterattack that takes advantage of the confusion--though that probably would not be really necessary since the destroyed supplies could just as easily break the siege without risking the lives of soldiers.
Additionally, the flames will signal something is amiss in the enemy camp, giving some weight to your "we are here to help" story when you show up at the walls (you might want to approach carefully and with a white flag or something, so the defenders do not turn you into pincushions before you can tell your side of the story). However, this means you will also signal to the camp that there is sabotage, so they might start looking for you.
Personally, I would douse the food storage in oil, then set a candle upright in a bowl also filled with oil. Light the candle, place it somewhere so your contraption will eventually start a blaze. Do this a couple more times in different parts of the camp (you can change the length of candle to adjust the timer), then hightail it out of there before things start going up in flames. With luck, one or more of them will ignite the food and you will be on your way to the town before the sabotage is detected.
For food a siege army would most likely have raided the surrounding land for livestock and only slaughtered them when needed, so perhaps breaking free animal pens could be a thing too.
If you want to protect a village or camp against random raiders, the best way is hiring some Artificiers, Forgery Clerics, and some Wizzs who have the spells Mending... Mold Earth.... Shape water ( this one works well to extinguish some accidents provoked by Forgery fails )..... Catapult ( to place extra defensive turrets )........ and the Enlarge/Reduce.....
Those spells at least, grants a fair advantage against any undesired encounter or raid.
I don't imagine orcs being a particularly hygiene-conscious bunch that have to be choosy about what state their food's in, so merely dropping it on the floor, rolling it in mud, or leaving it lying around partially cooked is going to help. However, you could steal it and distribute it unevenly, causing brawls as some of the soldiers are getting more food than others. If they're keeping livestock, you could dump the food in their troughs. Wolves and other sort of hound-like creatures might raise an alarm if they're disturbed, but pigs, cows and horses - if hungry or dimwitted enough - will have no problem eating meat.
There's some other means you could cause trouble besides spoiling the food. You've got the right idea about not necessarily killing the besiegers, but disrupting them. Using Goodberry to create coffee beans or some other laxative to give the orcs diarrhoea or some other form of stomach upset is one way to keep them from attacking. Salt their drinking water. Put lice in their beds. Make them uncomfortable at the very least; an irritable fighter is a bad fighter. No doubt hunting traps will occassionally go wrong, being armed too close to the camp. Perhaps some caltrops have gone missing, only to be found in the worst way you can. Injuring the enemy means having one or two besiegers pulling said wounded enemy out of combat, and adding more stress to their healers (assuming they're passionate enough to bother healing.) As said above, if you can get them to kill each other (including within their idea of an infirmary), all the better.
Fire's an obvious one as it causes chaos, but there's only so many fires you can light before it's no longer a coincidence and is instead active sabotage, which puts the whole camp on alert. I'd perhaps save that one for last, or set a timer for the fires to go off. "Let us go and we'll tell you when and where to expect the kaboom, hog features!"
Sun Tzu on The Art of War is vastly overrated for modern warfare, but for a Medieval-stasis fantasy setting, it's not all bad. I strongly recommend getting some inspiration from there. When you're looking for the oldest trick in the book, that's the book people are referring to.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
If it’s a horde then target their leaders (stab them, poison, cause internal problems) however it’s very hard to kill then outright without alerting the entire camp and you don’t become the leader of a horde by being weak. Disruption 5 Risk 5
Targeting the normal troops is much easier but it’s much harder to have a large effect if you are lucky you can exploit division among the ranks. Disruption 1 risk 1
Attacking their water supplies may be a good idea but your going to need a lot of material to ruin the water for an army. Disruption 2 risk 2
Food stores will likely be guarded but it’s long been an a weakness of armies, you probably won’t have enough poisons to deal with it all but fire is a very good tool here. Disruption 3 risk 3
Starting fires is a very good way to cause confusion and damage however you’ll need a extremely large blaze or many smaller blazes to cause significant damage. Disruption 3 risk 2
Attacking their weapons/more general supplies. Wagons, horses, swords, spears, and especially arrows. It can be as mundane as tents to magic space rocks but attacking this stuff can greatly weaken the enemy. For hordes they are unlikely to store all their weapons in a single place but if you can destroy their supplies of arrows then the fight is going to get a lot easier. Disruption 3 Risk 2-4
Attacking special units. Stuff like mages, scouts, engineers or even elite troops. Mages are an especially good target for this because they tend to die easier and can cause massive effects if not countered. Disruption 3-5 Risk 3-5
Disruption scale
1, they might not even notice it
2, hampers their ability to fight but probably won’t change the battle
3, significant decrease in their ability to fight
4, extreme chaos, can be paired with a counter attack to drive them out
5, crippling loss, horde will lose cohesion after this
Risk sale
1, no more dangerous then being in the camp in the first place
2, forces you to hit multiple unguarded areas
3, the area is guarded
4, the enemy in very interesting in keeping that thing safe
5, You are either extremely lucky or your going to be fighting your way out
Overall there is no one size fits all Strategy and which every you use is more dependent on what you can do and if you feel you can get away with it. For hordes attacking food and leader ship is one of the best options but neither are very hidden. If they have magic users try and get rid of them before the DM can have them cast a ritual. Stealing their plans or general information like the size of the army and how much moral they have can be incredibly valuable to a defender.
So, my party and I have to bring down a sneak through a siege camp to enter the town that's being attacked. To improve our standing with the leadership, were going to sabotage the camp.
Throwing horse poop in the water supply, setting fire to the stores of arrows & bolt to hurt their hunting ability. Where I'm drawing a blank is how to ruin their food.
The Siegers are a orcish horde akin to what is seen in lord of the rings. So I imagine a butcher's tents. Suggestions on what to do?
Can you summon a great number of rats? Or similar vermin that will eat and infect the food?
There is also rat poison, I guess.
What if you got a bunch of poisonous mushrooms and mixed them into the rest of the mushrooms? Would they know the difference? Of, take poisonous mushrooms and grind them into a powder. Next, mix it into the "meal" and "grains". There are any number of poisonous berries you could use as well. Grind up a paste and mix it with lard. Then leave the lard container in the supplies and they will use the lard to make food, and ...
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Everything catches fire if you try hard enough. Keep it simple and just carry extra oil flasks.
Fire is going to be your best bet for the food, as well as the other supplies. Recall, in most medieval sieges, it was actually the defenders who had the advantage in terms of food supplies, not the attackers. The defenders generally would be able to prepare by both storing their own food reserves within their fortification and destroying the crops behind them, forcing the attackers to feed their armies using what they could take with them and with long supply lines. Not exactly ideal.
Igniting their food storage is going to take out their food and has the propensity to spread to other areas of the camp, causing additional damage and forcing the defenders to be distracted trying to put out the blaze. With enough fires spread across the camp, you could even make them vulnerable to a counterattack that takes advantage of the confusion--though that probably would not be really necessary since the destroyed supplies could just as easily break the siege without risking the lives of soldiers.
Additionally, the flames will signal something is amiss in the enemy camp, giving some weight to your "we are here to help" story when you show up at the walls (you might want to approach carefully and with a white flag or something, so the defenders do not turn you into pincushions before you can tell your side of the story). However, this means you will also signal to the camp that there is sabotage, so they might start looking for you.
Personally, I would douse the food storage in oil, then set a candle upright in a bowl also filled with oil. Light the candle, place it somewhere so your contraption will eventually start a blaze. Do this a couple more times in different parts of the camp (you can change the length of candle to adjust the timer), then hightail it out of there before things start going up in flames. With luck, one or more of them will ignite the food and you will be on your way to the town before the sabotage is detected.
For food a siege army would most likely have raided the surrounding land for livestock and only slaughtered them when needed, so perhaps breaking free animal pens could be a thing too.
Other ways of spoiling food could perhaps be adding rather than damaging - e.g. adding sulphur or ash to food supplies - I picked that one up in an interesting and short article here: https://www.medievalists.net/2018/02/ways-defeat-medieval-army/
Breaking or destroying the wheels of any siege equipment will at least delay its use as it can't be moved for positioning.
If you want to protect a village or camp against random raiders, the best way is hiring some Artificiers, Forgery Clerics, and some Wizzs who have the spells Mending... Mold Earth.... Shape water ( this one works well to extinguish some accidents provoked by Forgery fails )..... Catapult ( to place extra defensive turrets )........ and the Enlarge/Reduce.....
Those spells at least, grants a fair advantage against any undesired encounter or raid.
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
I don't imagine orcs being a particularly hygiene-conscious bunch that have to be choosy about what state their food's in, so merely dropping it on the floor, rolling it in mud, or leaving it lying around partially cooked is going to help. However, you could steal it and distribute it unevenly, causing brawls as some of the soldiers are getting more food than others. If they're keeping livestock, you could dump the food in their troughs. Wolves and other sort of hound-like creatures might raise an alarm if they're disturbed, but pigs, cows and horses - if hungry or dimwitted enough - will have no problem eating meat.
There's some other means you could cause trouble besides spoiling the food. You've got the right idea about not necessarily killing the besiegers, but disrupting them. Using Goodberry to create coffee beans or some other laxative to give the orcs diarrhoea or some other form of stomach upset is one way to keep them from attacking. Salt their drinking water. Put lice in their beds. Make them uncomfortable at the very least; an irritable fighter is a bad fighter. No doubt hunting traps will occassionally go wrong, being armed too close to the camp. Perhaps some caltrops have gone missing, only to be found in the worst way you can. Injuring the enemy means having one or two besiegers pulling said wounded enemy out of combat, and adding more stress to their healers (assuming they're passionate enough to bother healing.) As said above, if you can get them to kill each other (including within their idea of an infirmary), all the better.
Fire's an obvious one as it causes chaos, but there's only so many fires you can light before it's no longer a coincidence and is instead active sabotage, which puts the whole camp on alert. I'd perhaps save that one for last, or set a timer for the fires to go off. "Let us go and we'll tell you when and where to expect the kaboom, hog features!"
Sun Tzu on The Art of War is vastly overrated for modern warfare, but for a Medieval-stasis fantasy setting, it's not all bad. I strongly recommend getting some inspiration from there. When you're looking for the oldest trick in the book, that's the book people are referring to.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
If it’s a horde then target their leaders (stab them, poison, cause internal problems) however it’s very hard to kill then outright without alerting the entire camp and you don’t become the leader of a horde by being weak.
Disruption 5 Risk 5
Targeting the normal troops is much easier but it’s much harder to have a large effect if you are lucky you can exploit division among the ranks.
Disruption 1 risk 1
Attacking their water supplies may be a good idea but your going to need a lot of material to ruin the water for an army.
Disruption 2 risk 2
Food stores will likely be guarded but it’s long been an a weakness of armies, you probably won’t have enough poisons to deal with it all but fire is a very good tool here.
Disruption 3 risk 3
Starting fires is a very good way to cause confusion and damage however you’ll need a extremely large blaze or many smaller blazes to cause significant damage.
Disruption 3 risk 2
Attacking their weapons/more general supplies. Wagons, horses, swords, spears, and especially arrows. It can be as mundane as tents to magic space rocks but attacking this stuff can greatly weaken the enemy. For hordes they are unlikely to store all their weapons in a single place but if you can destroy their supplies of arrows then the fight is going to get a lot easier.
Disruption 3 Risk 2-4
Attacking special units. Stuff like mages, scouts, engineers or even elite troops. Mages are an especially good target for this because they tend to die easier and can cause massive effects if not countered.
Disruption 3-5 Risk 3-5
Disruption scale
1, they might not even notice it
2, hampers their ability to fight but probably won’t change the battle
3, significant decrease in their ability to fight
4, extreme chaos, can be paired with a counter attack to drive them out
5, crippling loss, horde will lose cohesion after this
Risk sale
1, no more dangerous then being in the camp in the first place
2, forces you to hit multiple unguarded areas
3, the area is guarded
4, the enemy in very interesting in keeping that thing safe
5, You are either extremely lucky or your going to be fighting your way out
Overall there is no one size fits all Strategy and which every you use is more dependent on what you can do and if you feel you can get away with it. For hordes attacking food and leader ship is one of the best options but neither are very hidden. If they have magic users try and get rid of them before the DM can have them cast a ritual. Stealing their plans or general information like the size of the army and how much moral they have can be incredibly valuable to a defender.
Mostly nocturnal
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