Advice on handling a large, hostile army

[mseds99]

Howdy all,

I'm an experienced DM, but I'm going to be dealing with a situation that I'm never dealt with before and would love to get some advice from DM"s who have had to deal with similar situations. To summarize, I have a party of 13-16th level charcaters (VERY powerful 13th-16th level characters) who are high ranking officials in a new kingdom which they help establish. A vast horde of giants/ orcs/ogres, etc., etc., are being led by a few powerful creatures who would hand the party their collective behinds in a straight battle. The horde is on the move and is approaching the border of the newly formed kingdom. The "out" for the party is find a powerful artifact hidden elsewhere by another group of big baddies who are using the artifact for their own nefarious purposes. The owner of the artifact will gain the allegiance of the hordes approaching the kingdom. The original maker of the artifact ia a legend amongst the Horde, and the leaders of the army are pretending to be a reincarnation of the original creator of the artifact. If the party were to gain possession of the original artifact, they could reveal the counterfuge of the Hordes' current leaders, gain leadership of the Horde, and save the town. All would be right in the world, the party would save the kingdom again and acne would be forever be removed as a problem for all civilized lands. Yeah. Got all that so far...

My problem is that my party is doing the unexpected on me. I assumed they would attempt to sieze the artifact and take control of the hordes. Instead, they want to harrass the army throughout the land, kind of like guerilla style warfare. On a small scale, this is fine, and I can handle it. Small groups, even 20-30 ata time an be handled with the current rules and battlemats. The problem occurs when the amassed Horde approaches the first walled town in the kingdom. The surrounding land is open plain and there is nowhere for the party to "hit and run". The horde literally numbers around 12,000 strong. Their strategy is to literally overrun everything in teir path with brute force. I have no ideahow to handle this situation from a rules standpoint. how do you handle the mechanics for something like this? Do you do attack rolls 50 at a time? do you roll initiative for the different divisions? It all seems so clunky? Has anyone dealt with a similar circumstance? How did you handle it. There will be other defenders, so I guess I could do some Warhammer-style battle, but I'v never done anything close to that and that's not my cup of tea anyway.

Muchas gracias for any help provided.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

My first thought was that having the Horde overrun the town in question might well convince the party that trying to get the artifact would be a better idea...

You might want the Horde to stop and loot for a few days, in order to give the party time to do their stuff.

 

[Sakzilla]

Another way to get them "back on track" would be to find a squad of nasty baddies buried in the army to pin down the PCs until the town was good and overrun. Have fun with it - roll up a party of guys that are CR 18 or so, and try to thump the PCs - not expecting to kill any of them or win the fight, but render the party irrelevant under these circumstances.

One of two things will happen. Either they will get the point and go 'fact finding, or they won't get it. In which place would throw in a coup of some sorts, maybe includingf some old political adversaries of the party - hey, at 16th level, there has to be someone they have encountered and not killed.

As for the military part, the horde should be able to overrun the town as a foregone conclusion - make it obvious that the crew can't stop the baddies. I wouldn't try to game out a siege with RP characters and a WH-style combat system. WH is too mickey mouse for the complexities that a party like this bring.

Good luck!

 

[AuraSeer]

The best way to deal with a battle of that size is to have it happen offscreen. Decide how you want things to play out, and assume that's how it goes. (In your case, just figure out how long it'll take for the town to be overrun, and what the invaders will do afterward.) The only way for the PCs to change it would be to take out the invading general, or something else spectacular. They should know this before the army reaches the gates.

If the PCs insist on getting involved in the battle, run only the little piece that surrounds them. Put maybe a dozen enemies on the map to start with, and run that combat normally. Each round, bring in 2d10 enemies from the edges of the map. Make it explicitly clear that there is no end in sight; the PCs must eventually flee or die.

 

[Angcuru]

Pray that the party wizard doesn't get the bright idea to drop a few extended cloudkills and maximized fireballs into the army.

Besides that, it would be a good idea to have a bit of a distraction from the army so that they will have to split up, some going after the army, some doing something else, causing those focusing on the army to wisen up and realize that they have to go find that artifact. What would be a good distraction, do you ask? Pick a random party member and have a messenger arrive while they're in the field, telling this character that someone VERY close to his heart (i.e.wife/husband, child, parent perhaps) has disappeared from his/her home, and that there were signs of vampires at the scene. Said character gets all emotional and leaves the party to go find out what happened and to rescue his loved one, and perhaps his closest friend in the party goes along with him. Bada-bing, bada-boom. Problem sol-ved.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

First, congrats to your players - you built one solution into the situation, so they naturally try to find another...

For the military campaign, I'd suggest something along these lines (just my two cents'):

1. Determine exactly who the army leaders are (you've probably already done this).

2. Determine what resources they have to recruit high-level help. Don't limit yourself to npc's. Maybe one of them can use Planar Ally to bring in a demon or three. Maybe another can animate powerful undead. Regardless, these recruits are the counter to the party.

3. Assuming the bad guys are smart enough to know that any normal army can be trashed by high-level heroes, given enough time, they'll place their counterforce where it can attack the pc's, if they get involved. Then plan the rest of the assault on the town, using the main army and its generals.

4. Ask the players to give you - in advance - their general plan of defense. Determine ahead of time how long the pc's can remain hidden and unopposed, before the counterforce engages, based on the plan and contingencies the players have given you. Definitely ask for contingincies - this allows you to determine what happens before the game starts without being too arbitrary.

5. Begin the game with a short explanation of what actions the characters took, what effects they had, and how things appear at this point. Then start play with the counterforce appearing. If the party has split up, require that those not around the counterforce act as previously specified, unless the party is smart enough to have come up with a communications system. (If some players are going to be sitting for a long time, let them play some of the counterforce - my experience is most players will be even more ruthless than a DM in this situation).

6. If the counterforce fails to drive off the party, ask the players what actions they want to take to try and deflect the army (which has continued to mass against the town during the fight). If the party's resources have been seriously depeleted, it's possible they won't be able to seriously affect the army, and the town will be sacked. If the party retains the capability to seriously damage the army, consider having the army's generals pull back until they can recruit more forces to block the party. (Congratulations! The party wins, at least temporarily.)

7. If the counterforce succeeds in driving off the party, simply tell them how the town falls. I wouldn't even try to play this out, unless the town has sufficient regular forces to stop the army on its own (which, from your intro, it doesn't seem to).

Keep in mind that characters of the levels you're talking of *can* trash a normal army, if left unopposed. Improved invisibility, fireball, cloudkill, fog cloud, etc. can split up, kill, demoralize, and generally render hors d'combat any amount of normal troops. Presumably its generals know this and will take appropriate steps. If the party has been harassing the army before now, the generals should really understand what needs to be done.

Another consideration is time. Generally DnD combat is very quick and deadly. Though it may take hours of real time, the fight with the counterforce will likely be over quickly in game time. So the army should not be able to suddenly sack the town in the few minutes that the party is engaged by the counterforce. This is why I recommend that the army withdraw temporarily, if it fails to neutralize the party.

Hope this helps.

 

[DM with a vengence]

I second the 'bring in 2d10 new opponents every round' tactic, but if you're really insane, you can map out the entire town, place units, and give each unit a 'combat bonus'. When units collide, roll opposed combat checks. The winner loses one point of combat bonus, and the loser loses 1 point per every five that he lost by. When the PCs are on the scene, they can influence combat directly, but in other sectors the enemy is getting decimated. You may want to give control of the town's militia to the PCs

 

[s/LaSH]

There's always the out-of-game suggestion that maybe the PCs are barking up the wrong tree...

If the enemy has decent mobility, and can move some troops quickly without giving the PCs a chance to respond, you could consider sacking a city completely off the army's main path. In fact, you could send a group of assassins (demons or soemthing) straight into the PC's home (palace or whatever) - when they're not there. The PCs come home from a guerilla raid to discover their palace has been razed by frustrated assassins from Hell, and that Nobody Is Safe.

That could be too severe, of course. But DM strongarming sometimes has to be, well, strong.

In case you haven't made it clear, it's probably worthwhile making the whole 'ancient artifact' thing very clear to the players. Have the enemy armies yell "For XXX!" as they charge. You might even want to throw in an encounter with one of the leaders to prove they're not XXX. And continually mention the actual owners of the artifact.

I know how disruptive PCs can be to an army... it was only goblins, but when a PC rides up at the head of a cavalry unit and says, "You twenty go that way, I'll go this way alone, try not to get yourselves killed" and pulls out his sword, you know you're in for an epic battle. The carnage that day was incredible...

 

[Cedric]

That one is pretty tough. I think if it were me...I would just flat out say...if you take this army on, head on...you'll lose and the town will lose, and probably the towns after this one.

But...whatever you want to do is up to you...

If they still go for it...I'd use the 2d10 method for a bit, but expect the generals of that army to send some heavy duty reinforcements if they wade through enough ogres.

Cedric

 

[Angcuru]

I know how disruptive PCs can be to an army... it was only goblins, but when a PC rides up at the head of a cavalry unit and says, "You twenty go that way, I'll go this way alone, try not to get yourselves killed" and pulls out his sword, you know you're in for an epic battle.

This is where guys with big weighted nets come into play.

Geez, you think THAT'S bad? I'm currently writing up some detail and story for my upcoming campaign(a bit of which I shall eventually post in Story Hour), and let me tell you, big-ass armies don't have NOTHIN' on a pair of pissed off epic-level characters. We all know the general idea of the mage: starts off weak as a new-born squirrel, ends up stronger than hell(sometimes literally). Such was the case for an elven woman named Aerie, who was at first a timid, self-concious cantrip-flinger with low self-esteem, but now is quite possibly one of the most powerful spellcasters in all of Faerun, yet is still a bit timid. But she knows her stuff.

But, back to what I was saying. There's a big difference between an epic battle and an epic massacre. In an Epic battle, the characters are wading through the carnage basking in glory, and come out victorious or as a heap of dead flesh. In an Epic massacre, (an example from my campaign) Aerie went out ahead of her people's army and literally just casts a single spell, and the enemy army is enveloped in in a maelstrom of fire, lighting, ice, flying rocks, and poison gas. She then turns around to her own army "Ok, then. That was easy enough. Lets go home." and just proceeds to head home while the others just look at the enemy army in shock and awe. (the right combination of time stop, auto quicken spell and area-effect spells can be just DISGUSTING).