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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grogg of the North" data-source="post: 6088342" data-attributes="member: 6682960">A couple of thoughts:Clear all the trees away from the wall.  Leave stumps behind if you want, but the first thing I'd do if I had to erect a defensible wall would be to get rid of everything that would allow my opponents to sneak up on me.  If a warmage is going to be shooting fireballs into my fort, I want him out in the open where my archers can make him pay for it.  At night my guards would be the ones with low-light vision or darkvision.  Assuming you clear back just enough trees for the darkvision to hit the forest (~60 ft) that's plenty for an elf with a torch to see the forest too.Traps.  If you clear the area outside the palisade, litter it with traps.  Some that just make noise, some that are just annoying and some that are deadly.  Have a safe route that the mercenaries take when they forage, go to town, whatever.  If the PCs are patient, maybe they can pick out the right route to take from watching the guards.  Otherwise, your ninja gets to show off his trap abilities.  Alarms.  Either the magical version scattered about the fort and cave entrance or things like bells, gongs, and horns.  Something loud that would reverberate down the cave and let the necromancers know something is going on and give them time to prepare.  Make sure that at least one mercenary in a group has a horn or something to sound the alarm with.  Heck, the necromancers could order their minions on guard to just sound the alarm instead of fight if someone approaches.  Have the mercenaries make friends.  Maybe they bribed/helped/rescued a local ranger/druid grove/barbarian tribe.  These friends provide them information about what's going on in the forest near the fort or may even come to their aid in battle.  And then your PCs get to quote LotR.  "They have a cave troll!" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Remember that if anyone attacks, Hide From Undead is ended for everyone.  So if they start fighting mercenaries, they may suddenly find themselves fighting undead reinforcements.  If all the necromancers have are skeletons, they don't get a save versus HFU.  Is it reasonable for these necromancers to have some ghouls or wights as well?  Have a backup plan / escape route.  If the battle is going poorly, I doubt the mercenaries are being paid well enough for them to throw away their lives.  They can, and probably would, flee or surrender.  Unless the PCs have a bad reputation or something like that.  Likewise, the necromancers probably have some sort of goal that they want to accomplish.  If the battle is going against them, safety is only a teleport away.  This could force the PCs to decide who to pursue: the mercenaries that may have fled to the woods or try to track down the casters themselves from whatever notes or doodads they left behind.  Finally, I'd HIGHLY recommend against giving the PCs some NPC helpers.  Either they are going to treat them like a bazooka, used to solve a problem in the most bloody and expedient manner possible and then discarded, or complain about how they are not powerful enough to really help them.  Also, the NPCs will steal the spot light a little.  The story should be about how the PCs bravely stormed the fort.  Not how they sent Bob the Fighter to knock out the guards and open the gate for them.</blockquote>

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