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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hastur_nz" data-source="post: 7157614" data-attributes="member: 40592">I ran a little battle recently for 3xPC's at 7th but no fireball etc, and one of my players had DM'd the same one earlier for his group which was probably much lower level.  Some of it's probably relevant for your situation...My players got a lot of time to organise the exact defenses - where all the NPC's were, what their assigned tasks were (including non-combatants who were assigned to fight fires etc), they also dug and covered pits with spikes to help defend the gates.  They kept the NPC's out of much direct fire, most of the time, and made sure they all had good cover themselves.  For invading forces were mainly Orcs, with Ogres that flung flaming stuff.  My players made sure they never left the inside of the compound, and with cover I hardly hit them, but these are much tougher than level 2 or 3 PCs.  A few common-folk were killed once some Orcs breached the main gates, until I had the rest run away and let the PC Fighter hold the Orcs back (I run morale for both sides).  I didn't plan on rolling too many dice, but because everyone was spread out all over the whole battlefield, I ended up having too, but it was only about 40 orcs etc so not that big really.  My players enjoyed the tactical aspects as a change of pace, and they all gave it much thought, so it ended up being an easy victory; next session the players actually took the fight to the survivors before the re-enforced, re-grouped and attacked again, which was also fun.My player who had DM'd the same scenario, said his players put all the towns-folk up on the walls, using ranged attacks etc, and most of them got killed off.  So there's lesson - same scenario, but different player tactics can lead to very different outcomes.For a group of low-level PCs, vs an army, personally I'd be very worried that the players will get in over their heads and die too easily.  Basically a PC only needs to get surrounded by enemies, and they are likely to go down and be un-saveable.  Attacking a siege engine sounds cool, but realistically how can low level PC's do that without it being a suicide mission?  If I was a player, I'd spend my whole time behind as much cover as possible, doing very little to draw attention to myself - maybe some stealth and/or intelligence mission, but I'd be very worried that my 20-30 hit points wasn't going to last if I got anywhere near a section of the army.  I'm not sure what heroic actions your players might expect, maybe they can be commanders of a sort but hopefully not front-line ones.  Remember - if this is Healm's Deep, your level 3 PC's are definitely NOT Legolas or Gimmli or whatever, at best they might be Merry or Pippin.Your "rescue mission" ending does indeed feel like Deus-ex-Machina, so personally if I was going to use that device I *would* let the players know that external help is possible, and that it's on a count-down, and if there's things they can do to speed it up, stop the enemies from thwarting it, etc.  That's actually a good chance to let them help influence the battle in meaningful ways.  In other words, let the players help drive the conclusion of "reinforcements save the day", if that's what makes sense.  I think with such low-level PC's, and I'm assuming also inexperienced players, you owe it to everyone to be clear that the army is large and a few heroes obviously can't defeat them by themselves, but there might be some smaller-scale things that the heroes can do that will help swing the tide of battle.  Don't make them guess what's going on, give them information and choices to make.  By all means let them be creative in what they could do, but if they are not sure give them some decent options and if their ideas are clearly poor let them know and allow them to reconsider, i.e. don't let them get themselves killed just because you made them guess and they guessed wrong.Last thing - pre-plan some basic stuff, in terms of numbers of attackers vs defenders, likely casualties at various times, etc, and where appropriate just narrate what the PC's can learn of what's going on around the place, e.g. 300 orcs armed with geataxes and battering rams storm the front gate, fire and arrows rain down and kill half of them before they crash though, then 100 defenders try to hold them back but each orc is worth two men, etc etc.  Obviously the players can help influence the defenders actions, plans etc.Good luck, it's a lot to chew off so early in your DM career.</blockquote>

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