Adventurer problem, Need Advice from the good people who frequent military threads

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

So, while I personally am filled with neat tactics to use against my PCs and destroy them, but I'm also filled with the need to not specifically target my pcs with nastiness and acurately role-play their adversaries.

That being said,

If you were an evil overlord, and you were going to send out a horde of little widget things to establish a forward base in preparation for an invasion,

How would you take precautions against interference from high level adventurers?

Most of the soldiers are, of course, fairly low level and your big shot adventurers have better things to do, but you otherwise have VAST resources to draw upon and are yourself obscenely high in level.

I was thinking that maybe you would hire some giants. If the party threat never materializes then you at least have some heavy lifters. Only problem is that the base in a forest. Having friendly adventurers regularly check on things would be an option but for the secrecy of the base...

That's the specific problem, but generally I want to know what different tactics an evil overlord should take to secure his operations against heroic interference.

Classically, I think I would train my minions to give heroes instructions to the entrance of my secret deat tra... I mean arsenal/vault.

 

[DDK]

Only way to get a job done right is to do it yourself. I say have him go in there and slay anyone that opposes him with a few Power Word: Kill spells and whatnot or if he's a fighter, just take 'em out with a Whirlwind Attack.

Damn PC's are always messing things up for the good guy... err... I mean villains. Anyway, serves 'em right if they think they're so powerful and you're always going to metagame to put them up against 'appropriate' challenges.

It's always good to show 'em they can get their butts kicked once in a while

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

That's a possibility in individual cases, but strikes me as a bad policy.

While I don't know how generally true this is. The world I'm working with is Oathbound. A realm where every ruler worth any salt has several high level adventuring teams. Going off and killing them all oneself strikes me as supremely ineffecient.

First off, you'd have to have some sort of beeper system and even then you'd be travelling or teleporting all the time. Gives your enemies loads of opportunities to ambush you.

We're not talking a world where the heroes are central. We're talking a world where the heroes are but one mighty cog in some fearsome engines.

Any evil overlord is going to see interference by adventuring parties all the time. Gonna need some security.

I'm thinking that deals with outsiders would work really well here. Mind you there would be some nasty problems given the particular nature of the setting, but the basic principle of equipping your minions to summon in super powerful allied beings ain't bad.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

Need more information on the background of your warlord. Sounds like your warlord probably just needs his own high level mercernary team for dealing with those who might interfere with his invasion.

Probably should infiltrate a few forward scouts and use some diversionary tactics to draw the adventurers away from his main invasion force.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Well, the warlord is Lord Pandarus from Oathbound or Plains of Pennance. The relevant details are primarily that he is aggressive, has diverse interests, many potential powerful enemies, large enemies, lots of magic and steam punk tech, and all the joyous powers of a level 20 monk and then some.

Basically the way the world works is that individuals of great personal power sometimes work their way up to becoming bloodlords. These guys, in turn, sponsor other adventurers as their agents, or vanguards, and there are a fair amount of pretty high level adventurers around. You generally can't start play cept as level 7, though there are a lot and a lot more lower level things as one would suspect.

Still I would guess that the common level of most bloodlords' regular forces is around 4th with officers being far higher and support staff, conscripts, and auxiliaries being lower.

Still the high level parties of vanguards and rashers are fairly strong willed and well known, particularly to other vanguards trying to discover their location.

The camp in question is made up of a fairly large group with support staff outnumbering regulars and specials to a high degree. The main purpose of the camp is to create a base in a protected area for an invasion force that will be along later. So there are a lot of siege engines and slow special units that need to be prepared in advance of the main force, bu they are relying primarily on stealth to defend themselves.

The PCs just happen to be around the place, and I want to give them a good fight that makes sense. I figure that the commander of the force is going to want to put together something that can neutralize the threat of such parties without wasting lots of his men who he needs to be building things.

I'm just looking for ideas about what that might be.

Ah, the other principle I'm working off of is that this lord doesn't really want to rely on adventuring parties for defense. For one thing there are probably way more targets than parties, and for another if he isn't keeping using his parties to put pressure on his opponents and protect super valuable stuff then he's probably in even thicker trouble.

Now some sort of adventurers unit that has fairly high level characters but lacks the unique chemistry and bonding of an adventuring party, and thus expense, and makes up for it with discipline and standardization might work.

But if that's true than what would be your ultimate party design to take down another party. Particularly if the other party could be of a variety of levels of competence. Probably between 7th at the lowest level a patrol couldn't take care of and 14 at the level where an appropriately high level threat would have to be called in from the outside to counter.

 

[DM with a vengence]

Hook up some sort of effecton teleports into your base that stun the teleporters for a few rounds (Unhallow w/ a varient of Dimensional Anchor) , then give all you mooks ranged weapons (javelins are good). As soon as unfriendly people teleport in, the become unfriendly pincushions.