Red hand of Doom, act 4

Lord Zardoz · Mar 31, 2008

So my players just concluded act 3 of Red Hand of Doom. Things are going well for them, and we are about to run into the 4th act.

However, there is a complication. The adventure timeline has had Act 3 conclude on Day 40. Day 40 is the day that the timeline calls for the Red hand to reach Brindol. Day 42 is the day that calls for the Red hand to attack. And the Ghost lords lair is more than 2 days away, even if the players fly non stop and skip sleeping. On top of that, there are some other tasks (campaign specific, not related to the adventure) that the PC's may need to pursue instead.

Now, the adventure has some suggestions for this situation. They range from 'fudge it' and just have the players show up in time, using teleport scrolls, or delay the timeline, to just letting the players fail. My own contingency is to just have the events in Brindol take place in the next city, and then kick up the victory point requirement to defeat the Red hand hordes. I may also just adjust the timeline between arriving at Brindol and the attack.

What I am wondering though, is what should I do if the players try to sneak into Brindol once it is surrounded? It will take a bit more than a successful Move Silently and Hide check, but I do not want to force them to fight their way in either.

Suggestions?

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Squire James · Mar 31, 2008

If they haven't left yet, maybe someone can show them a secret tunnel between Brindol and a convenient spot 2 miles away from the city.

Another option is to allow the PC's to confront the Ghostlord in the city, but otherwise play it out as if they met him in his lair. If they have the goods, most things will play out pretty much the same. You might want to separate him from the other Big Wigs a little to allow the meeting to take place. Of course, if they're REALLY feeling their oats, the PC's are free to make plans to use "the goods" to lure him into some trap in order to destroy him.

Lord Zardoz · Mar 31, 2008

As i said, Act 3 has already been concluded. The Ghost lord has his phylactery back, and the only fatalities were Hobgoblins. The Ghost lord will not fight the PC's at this point unless the players provoke him. Essentially, the Ghost Lord is a completely solved issue.

I am not interested in having the players get into Brindol without difficulty. Basically, they knew for some time that the Red Hand was heading that way. They opted to take the safe approach and avoid Red hand encounters where reasonable rather than the time saving approach that would have entailed more reach. They also opted to undertake a few tasks that, while important to them, they could have chosen to postpone. So no Teleport, no Tunnel.

On top of that, because of the geography of my campaign world, the Red hand would have shown up at "Brindol" about 20 days ago if they went directly there. I cannot plausibly delay the attack without making the Red Hand leadership inept. At the very least, the city is going to be essentially fully encircled, beseiged, and cut off by the time the players can get there. This is not going to be a literal wall of flesh, but every road and river access is blockaded, and the are going to be frequent patrols looking to intercept anyone trying to get in from a less obvious approach.

So my question is this: Short of having to run the 'Into the Horde' encounter, what kind of opposition might the players need to overcome or sneak past to get inside the city?

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Gilladian · Mar 31, 2008

Since they seem doomed to be trying to get into the besieged city, and you don't want a massive battle, try making it a roleplay scenario.

1) they find the smugglers who were once bad guys, but are now smuggling in food/medicine/weapons to the besieged and have to convince them to smuggle THEM in.

2) they remember rumors that there was once a secret escape tunnel from the royal palace/mayor's hall/wherever to an old ruin outside the city, and they must sneak past a minor guard post to get there. Possibly it could have its own guard/traps.

3) they have to go find some powerful but dangerous or reclusive and possibly untrustworthy NPC in the area who can give them magic to get into the city.

Lord Zardoz · Mar 31, 2008

The kind of solution I am looking for would be a combination of a decently challenging fight and / or a number of skill challenges.

The purpose of the road blocks and patrols is to make sure a large armed force does not attack the Red Hand army, and to prevent supplies from getting into or out of the city. But I do not think it would be plausible for the Red Hand to commit a significant portion of their army to chasing down a small group of people trying to get into or out of the city. While I do not want to run the 'Into the Horde' encounter which describes what happens if the players try to take on the entire army, I am open to running a reasonably hard fight.

Essentially, getting into the city should be dangerous and pose some real amount of risk. But how much, and how hard should it be to avoid it (number and type of skill checks).

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Pbartender · Mar 31, 2008

Some options...

1. Allies. If they've managed to recruit the mercenary dwarves, the owl-riding elves, or the forest giants, for example, they could call in the favor to help them mount a lightning-strike surprise attack from behind enemy lines that would allow them to break through into the city.

2. The River. Go up stream, and quietly float downriver onto the unwalled side of the city.

3. The Opposite Shore. For that matter, the Red Hand Horde, if I remember correctly, only really besieges one side of the city, due to the natural barrier the river presents. The PCs could take a round about trip, skirting a handful of outlying Red Hand patrols and fliers ("Don't let them get away! They'll report our position to the main army!"), cross the river far up or down stream, and come into the city from the other side, over the bridges.

4. Help From the City. If they can communicate long-range with someone in the city, I'm fairly certain there's one NPC wizard that could come fetch them with a Teleport... Of course, they'd have to evade capture, until he can locate and extract them.

5. "Help" From the Red Hand. The besieging army captures them, and brings into the siege camps as prisoners. An opportunity to escape presents itself (perhaps not until the real battle begins, which also means they lose out on all the bonus Victory Points that could be gained from the planning sessions with the leaders of Brindol) by which they can make it the rest of the way into the city.

Lord Zardoz · Mar 31, 2008

Thanks for the suggestions PBartender. But they do not quite fit the question. I know about the wizard. And I already have an idea how I want to work in the allies the players have managed to rally to the cause.

Here is a more complete rundown of the present situation.

- The players have taken too long to reach this point in the adventure, and there is a price to pay for taking too long. On top of that, the players have a task that would take them to my games equivalent of the city of Dennovar that they may opt to pursue first. Both tasks will have penalties if they fail to complete them in a timely manner.

Scenario A: Brindol falls. In that case, I just run Act 4's events in the next city, and impose a Victory Point Penalty on the players for being unable to prevent the fall of that city.

Scenario B: The players put off their other task and bust ass to get to Brindol. This means they arrive a bit late, but not quite too late. Act 4 happens as normal. However, actually getting into Brindol will be Dangerous. The risks of trying to get past a besieging army is the price they must pay for taking too long. I need to determine what form those risks take, and how severe those risks will be. If I just wanted them to get to Brindol with no hassles, I would use the teleport suggestion. I do not want to do this, because doing so just makes the Red Hand come off as rather incompetent, and essentially invalidates the urgency of the timeline.

It will take the players about 2 days of travel to get there normally, but the Red Hand now has a very solid hold on all the territory between them and Brindol. On top of that, Wyrmlord Koth has been given a task force dedicated to hunting down the players and killing them, and is not too far from them. He will probably be able to cost the players another day or so (pc's never like to travel when depleted of hp / spells. And there are other factors in play unique to my game.

I can elaborate further if you wish. I just need to know how difficult it ought to be for the players to sneak past the Red Hand forces that have encamped at Brindol.

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Pbartender · Mar 31, 2008

Lord Zardoz said:
Thanks for the suggestions PBartender. But they do not quite fit the question. I know about the wizard. And I already have an idea how I want to work in the allies the players have managed to rally to the cause.

...

I can elaborate further if you wish. I just need to know how difficult it ought to be for the players to sneak past the Red Hand forces that have encamped at Brindol.

The trick is that it all depends on what the players come with for a plan... There's several different feasible ways for them to get into the city, and each plan has different challenges and varying degrees of difficulty. You as DM shouldn't really be feeding them suggestions, but you should be preparing for all the most obvious solutions to the problem. The ideas I suggested above, for instance, are all things my group would have brainstormed in the same situation.

My suggestion is that when the PCs approach Brindol, simply make the situation clear to them... They are too late. The city is besieged by the full force of the Red Hand. The city is surrounded by an immense army, the countryside is patrolled by goblinoids and their allies, and the air is swarming with draconic fliers.

Then let them figure out a plan on their own. If they come up with one of the less direct plans, give it a fair chance to succeed. If they try to sneak straight through the enemy lines, they're inevitably discovered, surrounded, beaten into submission (non-lethally -- the Wyrmlords have heard about the PCs by now and want them alive for torture and questioning), and taken prisoner. A later opportunity at escape can allow them to make it the rest of the way to the city.

In other words, let them figure it out for themselves and be prepared to wing it a little. Give them a fair chance to make it, but beat them hard, if they try to go straight through the enemy camp on their own.

Really, the module should have made it obvious that the characters are on a tight schedule... In this module, speed is of the essence, and the penalty for failure is the fall of Brindol. If they don't make it, they return to find Brindol conquered, and refugee partisans hiding out in the nearby hills.

Incidentally, what level are they and what resources do they have available? By the time my group had reached Act 4, we had Giant Owls from the Kiri Tor elves to take us any place we hadn't yet been, and enough teleportation magic to take us and the owls back to any place we already had been. I think we were a week ahead of schedule by the time we made it back to Brindol.

Squire James · Mar 31, 2008

Well, I didn't have the module in front of me, so I was not exactly sure where you were. Your description seemed to indicate they still had more stuff to do before the Brindol battle, when actually that "stuff" consisted entirely of "travel for 2 days".

Basically, I suggest that you decide how many waves of the Brindol battle they should "auto-lose" by their lack of speed. If they manage to get there faster than you had expected (through a forced march or such), they lose one encounter. If they get there more or less as expected, they lose two encounters. If they miss another day, make it three and consider your "Brindol has fallen" scenario.

However, they encounter equivalent forces to the missed waves on the way in (the army itself is busy, oh, attacking Brindol). They get XP for them, but no Victory Points. Losing that first encounter is very nasty, because those hill giants will be aiming at the PC's rather than the walls...

When they get to the city, they encounter the remaining encounters as normal.

Peni Griffin · Mar 31, 2008

You really are making this too hard. That's easy to do with this module. Take a week off, don't think about it, play board games. Then look at in the "into the Horde" data and ask yourself: WWGeneral Kharn D? How is he protecting his rear? What forces are committed to attacking the city and who's watching the flanks? Know what units you want and arrange your notes in such a way as to make it simple to track any given unit your PCs may encounter. If you're in the general's head and thinking in terms of what he knows and what he wants, it won't be difficult to figure out how he's deploying his troops outside of the town despite the lack of detail.

Then lay out the situation for the PCS and respond to what they do.

Life circumstances have lost us a month of game time, and I need to bone up on the Battle myself. A month ago the army appeared on the horizon, driving slaves before it to trigger the traps they expect to find along the Dawn Way. (My players are big on leaving engineering challenges for approaching armies.) Come Sunday, they attack and if I haven't figured out how the fortifications my players suggested adding change the dynamic of the battle, oh well.