D&D General PCs raiding a city

[Tonguez]

You’re raiding a city with a party of 5?

I’d have the PCs go and attempt to infiltrate the city and run the adventure accordingly - let the PCs choose if the sneak in as merchants, attempt to scale the walls, or sneak in through the old sewer tunnel.

I’d say that a elf city with competent guards, a bit of magic and frost giants on tap is challenge enough and the raid shouldnt be the goal - make the goal something like ‘open the gates to let your army in” or “assasinate the Jarl”

 

[FXR]

Here's more context.

The city is a rather big one for the setting, about as populous as medieval Paris. The elves themselves are about 200 hundred adults and form the aristocracy, but most of the citizenry (and military) are humans, gnomes and a few dwarves. It's a city normally open for commerce, located on a coastline, so it's not hidden by any mean. It is, however, well-fortified.

Both elves and vikings live in the same region, the northern Fjord.

The elves know the vikings, which technically are their tributaries, are coming. Normally, the elves would simply send their impressive fleet captained by elven storm sorcerers to meet the vikings' drakkars on the sea or burn the vikings' villages and be done with it. No way a single drakkar would have been able to reach the city.

However, things are a little more complicated. The elves recently found out that their souls don't reincarnate anymore when they die. So, many of them have recently developed a fear of death and aren't willing to put themselves in danger. However, they are terribly haughty and overconfident: they aren't willing to leave non-elves in command of the army, as they feel humans (and gnomes, and dwarves) are basically children and should be treated as such. Also, that would mean that a human is better fitted for the job than an elf, which sounds like an heresy.

The vikings have prepared this raid for years. Many of their newer boats are hidden in the woods and, thanks to some captives, have a fairly good ideas of most defenses of the elven cities. Also, for once, the different vikings clans are pretty much united behind this goal.

Normally, even if with all this, the elves would win. However, one jarl has decided that neither elves and humans are fitted to rule the northern fjords and has thrown its lot with the frost giants, which he has awaken from their enchanted sleep. The giants are numerous and the elves aren't familiar with them. The involvement the frost giants is the real game changer here.

 

[Redwizard007]

Here's more context.

The city is a rather big one for the setting, about as populous as medieval Paris. The elves themselves are about 200 hundred adults and form the aristocracy, but most of the citizenry (and military) are humans, gnomes and a few dwarves. It's a city normally open for commerce, located on a coastline, so it's not hidden by any mean. It is, however, well-fortified.

Both elves and vikings live in the same region, the northern Fjord.

The elves know the vikings, which technically are their tributaries, are coming. Normally, the elves would simply send their impressive fleet captained by elven storm sorcerers to meet the vikings' drakkars on the sea or burn the vikings' villages and be done with it. No way a single drakkar would have been able to reach the city.

However, things are a little more complicated. The elves recently found out that their souls don't reincarnate anymore when they die. So, many of them have recently developed a fear of death and aren't willing to put themselves in danger. However, they are terribly haughty and overconfident: they aren't willing to leave non-elves in command of the army, as they feel humans (and gnomes, and dwarves) are basically children and should be treated as such. Also, that would mean that a human is better fitted for the job than an elf, which sounds like an heresy.

The vikings have prepared this raid for years. Many of their newer boats are hidden in the woods and, thanks to some captives, have a fairly good ideas of most defenses of the elven cities. Also, for once, the different vikings clans are pretty much united behind this goal.

Normally, even if with all this, the elves would win. However, one jarl has decided that neither elves and humans are fitted to rule the northern fjords and has thrown its lot with the frost giants, which he has awaken from their enchanted sleep. The giants are numerous and the elves aren't familiar with them. The involvement the frost giants is the real game changer here.

Thats awesome. Whats your endgame? I'm assuming something like "vikings and elves band together to drive the giants back to (somewhere,) and PCs find a way to make that permanent.

 

[Eltab]

The PCs are sent to demolish a specific building in town, toppling it into a boulevard so it prevents large-unit reinforcements from arriving.

The Battle of Concord: the PCs find a local self-defense militia holding a bridge against raiders (read: the PCs). Can the PCs bust this concentrated point of resistance and threaten to raid across the countryside?

 

[Oofta]

The way I've always seen this handled is that the PCs are a special unit. As such, they will probably have an initial set of goal(s) but then will basically be given choices of what to do.

So the first goal is to sneak into the city while there's a feint at the north gate and open the south gate or cause another distraction so others can open the gates. There can be any number of ways for them to get into the city; for example coming in disguised as simple traders days before the fight starts.

After that they are tasked with stopping a particularly tactical unit/commander or any number of various goals that make sense. In addition other groups may ask for aid and if the situation they can call in reinforcements as needed. If they go the aid of some group, have a subset of attackers break off to counter the new threat, if they get reinforcements do the opposite.

You can set this up any number of ways, but the whole idea is that they can influence the battle but will sometimes have conflicting goals. Effectively they are scoring "points" by succeeding at goals but may also get points for helping others (typically fewer than they could have gotten on their own). If they need reinforcements, subtract points.

How much you want to track or how much detail you want to set it up is really up to you, we could write an entire game supplement on this. I would also probably throw in some RP opportunities to break up the fights so have things like innocent workers they can interact with and potentially help or interact with other non-combatants.

 

[FXR]

How much you want to track or how much detail you want to set it up is really up to you, we could write an entire game supplement on this. I would also probably throw in some RP opportunities to break up the fights so have things like innocent workers they can interact with and potentially help or interact with other non-combatants.

Indeed, I want something more than a string of combats and the battle isn't between Good and Evil. Just like in history, both factions sincerely believe they are the good guys. I was thinking about a few totally not-vikings putting a house on fire, while some people are inside. It might be the house of a family which, several years ago, rented a room to the rogue when the PCs were in the city.

Thats awesome. Whats your endgame? I'm assuming something like "vikings and elves band together to drive the giants back to (somewhere,) and PCs find a way to make that permanent.

I haven't put much thought about this yet. The PCs can surely attempt to have both factions (or, at least, significant elements of both factions) to band together, but it won't be easy. The jarl who thrower its lot with the frost giants is well respected and many elves of this city are kind of jackasses and will believe until the end that they can defeat both giants and totally-not vikings. It could work, however, as the PCs are well-respected by a few elves (who even tried earlier to enlist them to defend the city, but the PCs refuse for several reasons). It could work however, and, as the DM, I'm not going to decide otherwise, if the PCs play their cards carefully.

Another option would be that the PCs confront the jarl after the raid, either during the raid, or after, when the totally-not viking survivors are back home. The PCs could back a rival to the jarl, which is one NPC they like, and plead that the vikings spent so much of their blood to free themselves of the elves' shackles that it makes no sense for them to be vassals to giants.

So far, from the advice I got from previous posters, I got that it's better to focus on small, covert-up or commando stuff, than on the big battle. So I got these:
i) Objective 1 - burst open the Northern door to create a diversion and force elves to split their forces ;
ii) Objective 2 - destroy the massive chain that blocks the access to the city port ;
iii) Objective 3 - find a way to get a certain map from the elven archives (this has nothing to do with the battle itself, but the PCs need that map. They might bargain with some of the saner elves to get it, however.

To make it more difficult, I'm probably going to force the PCs to split themselves between these objectives. The northern door is far from the port and they will have to fight their way up or down to regroup. It will also add tension, if they are still split when the giants arrive.

 

[Shiroiken]

To do a raid correctly for the PCs, it's best if they have a specific objective; otherwise it's just a bunch of random combats that serve no real purpose. In a campaign where we led a barbarian horde against a city, we set up multiple fronts for the NPC units, while we took a small unit through a magically created hole in the wall to attack a specific noble house we had a grudge against (the barbarians just wanted a good raid). From our standpoint, nothing mattered except our single mission, with us finding out everything else afterwards.

Are the PC's obviously part of the non-Vikings? If not, they could be sent in as spies and saboteurs. Since the city is at the coastline, the docks are by far the weakest part of the defense. They could do one of a couple of things (or multiple of the players are creative) the night of the attack to weaken this even further. They could set fire to a warehouse area nearby, causing many on the docks to go help put out the fire (fire is devastating in a city, destroying entire neighborhoods/districts very quickly). They could assassinate the various lookouts that would be watching for danger from the sea, reducing the time the city has to prepare defenses. They could poison wells used by the barracks to cause them to become sick before the attack. The goals could be endless.

If the PCs cannot infiltrate the city, they're still a few ways to use the PCs in a way to impact the raid, but these are likely to require higher level characters to pull off. A short and simple mission would be to light a bunch of fires outside the city away from the docks, in order to look like either campfires or torches for an army. The standard response would be to send out mounted scouts to verify the level of threat, and the PCs will need to stop them from returning. Start with a fairly small scout group at first, then repeat a few times with more and more scouts. Eventually this will force the city to mobilize troops to meet the apparent threat, from which the PCs will withdraw from.

If you want the PCs to be part of the raid itself, I'd keep them all on one ship under an NPC commander. The first encounter would be with another ship before the docks, with the party simply part of the greater melee (keep your map limited, but remember that AoE will go beyond to help/hurt allies). The second encounter would be to take the docks, which is again should be kept to a smaller section, where the PC have to take out soldiers and civilian resistance (mostly sailors). The next should depend on the ultimate goal of the non-Vikings, because in a typical raid you want loot, so I'd have them first take a warehouse, then hold it against soldiers while NPC non-Vikings transfer the loot back to the ships.

 

[Redwizard007]

So far, from the advice I got from previous posters, I got that it's better to focus on small, covert-up or commando stuff, than on the big battle. So I got these:

Oh, man. If you don't do at least one big battle scene you are cheating yourself. I pulled off a githyanki incursion once apon a time and the battles are still talked about. You just need to wrap your head around it.

 

[Ancalagon]

You could have a battle where you take control of a tower on the wall, and use the position to attack (archery etc) defenders on the wall - you have to "hold on" to the tower for a set number of time until reinforcements have arrived.

You could have an infiltration mission where you are going to open a postern (a small side door vs a big gate).

You could have the job to rescue (or capture?) a specific person. Maybe an inside agent, someone your captain owes a favor.

 

[Ancalagon]

Also, I really recommend reading this post: 5E - Tools for Running Larger Battles Efficiently