Attack the orphanage!

[Henry]

Don't forget the group is likely to just whack the children with the flats of their blades or love taps with blunt weapons (-4 to hit for nonlethal dmg) to subdue them. Any fighters with great cleave will clear out the mobbing children like a sheaf through wheat.

So naturally, the children are all hiding (remember, small creatures get a +4 to hide) and launch sneak attacks on the fighters a few at a time, with kitchen knives, heavy bookends, buckets over heads, etc. I'd even make the case that they get sneak attack damage by going for tendons, etc. Like the scene in Pet Semmatary. Of course, rules-sticklers aren't going to like level 1 rogue children...

 

[Bardsandsages]

nfortunately, psychotic 8-year olds aren't too scary on their own.

You obviously have never actually dealt with an 8 year old. Believe me, they are ALL psychotic and all very, very scary!

Required viewing for your game research:

Children of the Corn
Lord of the Flies
Village of the Damned
Home Alone (I'll only make you suffer through the original. Think of the traps these kids could come up with using their environment. They'd be like adorable human versions of kobold!)


The fact is, you really only need one or two "main" children mind controlled. Left to their own devises, the children could be easily manipulated to see the PCs as "evil" people come to hurt their headmistress. Inspired by their mind-controlled leader and in a mob, children can be very, very mean.

 

[Stormborn]

Of course, rules-sticklers aren't going to like level 1 rogue children...

Maybe not, but I think a case could be made for children who lived on the streets, maybe as part of an Artful Dodger like gang, picking up a level of Rogue before being "rescued" and put in the orphanage.

 

[Sejs]

Bear in mind a timely Magic Circle vs Evil will throw the dominated kiddie plan for something of a loop.


My contribution?

Explosive orphans. Alchemist's fire, lamp oil, whatever. Something horrible that Mr. Tso will make them get in close to the PCs and then set off. After all, what does he care if a few kids die?

 

[Arkham]

Children playing catch with those little golden balls from a Necklace of Fireballs....

 

[Corbert]

Explosive orphans. Alchemist's fire, lamp oil, whatever.

WOW, I have got to pull that on my players . My wife is playing a paladin, wait til she gets a load of this.

Heh heh, I'm just going to go get the couch ready to sleep on now.

 

[Driddle]

WOW, I have got to pull that on my players . My wife is playing a paladin, wait til she gets a load of this.

Heh heh, I'm just going to go get the couch ready to sleep on now.

Even better: While they amble toward the PCs, our bomb-laden little tykes keep mumbling, "Gawd told me I can be a paladin if I kill you..."

 

[Solarious]

I love you people. These are some great ideas. I think half-farspawn, molotov toting children swarming the PCs will certainly be memorable. This is going to be great!

Then tell us what happens after you run this, and which ideas you use. The people desire to know what happens to their free ideas!

 

[Thurbane]

Here's a couple of suggestions off the top of my head:

- Surrounding characters and using Aid Another rolls to give one kiddie a decent chance to hit

- Improvised grenades like oil lamps and, even worse, chamber pots

- Improvised traps, like a chamber pot full of lamp oil balanced above a door with a lit candle

- Swarming/mass grappling spellcasters

- Heavy things pushed down stairs or dropped off balconies (There was a real world case where I live of a man who was left a quadraplegic because some moronic brat decided to drop a potted plant on his head from a window in a block of flats)

- The ever popular skillet or caudron full of molten stew flung or tipped on players

- The kiddies pet pooches i.e. mangy, diseased street mutts (maybe Willard with his pet rats)

- Luring plyers into an improvised pit trap - a hole cut in the floor with a rug pulled over it. Maybe even nastier, things like upward pointing knives, pitchforks or broken glassware at the bottom of this trap

- Handfulls of hot pepper hurled in players faces



Another thought occurrs - look the the Home Alone movies for inspiration!

 

[Zimri]

The fact is, you really only need one or two "main" children mind controlled. Left to their own devises, the children could be easily manipulated to see the PCs as "evil" people come to hurt their headmistress. Inspired by their mind-controlled leader and in a mob, children can be very, very mean.

This would likely get around anything like "detect evil" or "protection from evil" The ones that are not mind controlled are just doing what they have been lead to believe (and in most cases would actually be) good. Protecting the (usually) good person that looks after them. Since they aren't mind controlled protection from evil can't automatically give them a save or supress the control. They may even wonder (should the control get removed from the one or two or however many were controlled) why their fellow orphans stopped helping and turn on the once controlled minions.

Of course you could also have a player that believes over-population is a pandemic that leads to disease being spread, higher tax rates, and other burdens on society. They may simply not need another reason to remove the blight 8)