OnlineDM
Adventurer
I ran my party through the Battle of Otharil Vale in the Mad King's Banquet adventure during our last session. As written in the adventure, it's two waves of bad guys assaulting the PCs, and these waves are represented as skill challenges.
Skill challenges are fine and dandy, but this is a WAR! So, I decided to go with the option of a combat encounter. I used some of the suggestions in the published adventure, but I definitely went in my own direction here.
Download my version of the adventure here. My blog post with more discussion is here.
First, I created maps (see below - the bigger versions are on my blog). The first two waves happen with the PCs defending a small hill. The third wave involves the PCs trying to retake a tower that has fallen to Steppengard's forces.
Second, I added a third wave. This was partly because of the vagaries of my group (we had only a partial group when we ran the first wave, so there were some PCs coming into the second wave with a lot of resources) but partly because I wanted this battle to really stress the PCs to the limit. They had already fought through the mage assassination encounter the previous night and disabled the catapults and siege engines, and then went straight into battle without an extended rest. By the end of the last wave, they were dangerously low on surges... just the way I hoped they would be.
Third, I changed the monsters. In some cases, I used the monsters from the published adventure but updated their numbers to reflect current damage expressions (that is, they hit a lot harder now). In other cases, I used totally different monsters. I did a lot of re-fluffing, but I ultimately wanted to get away from the waves and waves of Steppengard military folks; the PCs have fought enough of them already.
I was very pleased with the results, and I think this made for a fun way to run the battle. Let me know what you think!
Skill challenges are fine and dandy, but this is a WAR! So, I decided to go with the option of a combat encounter. I used some of the suggestions in the published adventure, but I definitely went in my own direction here.
Download my version of the adventure here. My blog post with more discussion is here.
First, I created maps (see below - the bigger versions are on my blog). The first two waves happen with the PCs defending a small hill. The third wave involves the PCs trying to retake a tower that has fallen to Steppengard's forces.
Second, I added a third wave. This was partly because of the vagaries of my group (we had only a partial group when we ran the first wave, so there were some PCs coming into the second wave with a lot of resources) but partly because I wanted this battle to really stress the PCs to the limit. They had already fought through the mage assassination encounter the previous night and disabled the catapults and siege engines, and then went straight into battle without an extended rest. By the end of the last wave, they were dangerously low on surges... just the way I hoped they would be.
Third, I changed the monsters. In some cases, I used the monsters from the published adventure but updated their numbers to reflect current damage expressions (that is, they hit a lot harder now). In other cases, I used totally different monsters. I did a lot of re-fluffing, but I ultimately wanted to get away from the waves and waves of Steppengard military folks; the PCs have fought enough of them already.
I was very pleased with the results, and I think this made for a fun way to run the battle. Let me know what you think!
