Adventures about Reinforcements

[Spibb]

Hey,

I'm working on a mid Paragon tier adventure. I'm presently working on a part wherein the players have to get reinforcements from a reluctant source for a military group in the Shadowfell. I'm having some trouble thinking of interesting ideas for this part though. I want it to be a 3 - 5 encounters worth of xp but not just a hack and slash dungeon to get to the boss.

Does anyone have any ideas? Or better yet know of pre-exiting modules that I can base it on or at least draw inspiration from?

 

[Saagael]

Maybe this reluctant military group has too many resources tied up in some conflict (that's why they're reluctant), and the PCs can help end whatever conflict is going on to get those resources for themselves. This can include diplomatic skill challenges, sneaking behind enemy lines, 1 or 2 combats when they get there, and then maybe the climactic encounter would be a mass combat with lots of swarms and minions as all hell breaks loose on the battlefield, and the PCs have to protect some target (location, NPC, item, whatever).

 

[LostSoul]

Any more information that could help? Why is the group reluctant to help? Why do the PCs need aid? What sort of play do your players like?

 

[Saagael]

Now that I think about it, a lot of the paragon tier adventures in the Scales of War adventure path deal with the players trying to get allies in a war. It's in the Dungeon magazines though, and uses pre-MM3 monster math, so it would require editing and changing, but it could be a good place for inspiration.

 

[thewok]

I'm sad because I thought you wanted to build an adventure around my Champions Online/DCUO character. In Champions, he's a Delta man, serving as military liaison with a supergroup. In DCUO, he's a mercenary working for Lex Luthor. In both worlds, people call his name, and he arrives, ready to mete out punishment on his enemies.

His name? Reinforcements.

(yes, I did get run with a Cheat Commando name.)

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Another idea would be to take a long look at the group that is reluctant -- if you look past seeing them as a single group, and more like a collection of individuals who have influence over each other, you might get some ideas for creating that adventure.

Think about it this way -- you have a small council that makes the decision about sending reinforcements -- each member of that council has his or her own feelings about helping the force in the shadowfell. The PCs need to find a way to convince a majority of those members of the council to vote to send help.

So, if the council is a sort of typical medievalish high council, perhaps there's a high priest, a military commander, the treasurer, a wizard, and an important noble. Write a quick description of each -- what does each want, why is he or she opposed to the deal, what are his or her feelings about the other members of the council, what is his or her secret, etc.

Once you've got that figure out, it's not too hard to look at each one and think about a skill challenge of sorts that the PCs would need to complete to secure that person's vote.

-rg

 

[Ryujin]

"Revenge of the Giants" has a section of skill challenges, about recruiting allies against the Giant army.