Short Adventure with Big Battle as Background

Yenrak · May 26, 2019

[FONT=&quot]I'm looking for recommendations for published adventures that would be appropriate to set against a large battle.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]In my campaign, a dwarven city is about to be attacked by hundreds of goblins, scores of bugbears, and a bunch of hill giants. The dwarves have 550 soldiers and are pretty evenly matched against the humanoids.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]I'm not particularly interested in running the actual battle. I've found mass combat to be tedious. Instead, I'd like to send my players on a mission that could be crucial to turn the tide of the battle. I guess I could make it a simple as "take that hill" and have the party battle a subset of the army. But maybe there should be a ruined tower on the hill with a spooky inhabitant.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Anyway, if there are published adventures that might fit in, I'd love to hear about them. Maybe a really good one-shot. Or if you have cool ideas you'd like to share, please do. The party consists of five or players with level 5 characters.[/FONT]

Morrus · May 26, 2019

War of the Burning Sky #1: The Scouring of Gate Pass

City under siege, PCs must get some important info then escape the city with it.

Yenrak · May 26, 2019

Thanks Morrus! I'll check it out!

A bit more info: This is actually a very transformed version of the Goldenfields section of Storm King's Thunder. In my campaign, the players are guarding a caravan traveling from Luskan to Bryn Shander. (I'm using the Accursed Tower by Salvatore for this part of the adventure.)

Anyway, Nightstone was moved to a riverfort on the Iceflow. And Hundlestone is Goldenfields. The giants are after the large stock of food that the dwarves collect from traders coming north. I decided to up the size of the attacking force just to make it a bit more epic.

77IM · May 27, 2019

The Tactical Maps Adventure Atlas, an excellent product which I love, has several scenarios that would be good for this. The first one I'd look at is "Fort First Watch," which has four scenarios, defending against gnolls, hobgoblins, orcs, and giants. I think it would be easy to adapt these scenarios to goblins and bugbears, and you could run them back-to-back with short rests between for extra deadliness. "Snow Wall" has fights against kobolds, hill giants, and humans (plus a duel between dragons), if you want higher-level challenges. Some of the other maps also have scenarios that you might be able to mine for ideas, such as "Stonehaven" and "Grassel's Farm."

Luz · May 27, 2019

Dungeon Magazine #221 has "The Battle of Emridy Meadows" by Chris Perkins and Jon Leitheusser. I believe it was published for 5e during the playtest. It involves the final battle between the forces of the Temple of Elemental Evil and the forces of good, where IIRC the PCs are given missions to weaken the enemy ("take that hill" sort of thing.)

Yenrak · May 27, 2019

I had now idea they had done Battle of Emridy Meadows. I'll have to look for that.

Riley37 · May 28, 2019

Getting an observer onto a hilltop is a tactical goal, to gain line-of-sight to an area - or to a specific target. Even without artillery, getting line-of-sight could be significant, if it lets the commander learn the location (and size and composition) of enemy forces. A small team of experts - that is, a party of PCs - might be well suited to the task of "get to the top of that hill, and use this Scroll of Sending to tell us what you see from there." Or alternatively, communicate by heliograph (flashes of light, eg sunlight reflections on a mirror).

If the PCs have their own artillery - such as Call Lightning - so much the better. (It's not a common spell for short-range squad-scale fights, but it could break armies.)