Fun with Allies!

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

We had a game like that years ago- yours sounds amazing, thank you for posting!

 

[Hussar]

Very cool Wik. It's so nice to see a DM actually reward players for deciding to go and get some backup, rather than forcing them to do everything on their own.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, in my campaign, the drow and eladrin are the same race, just with different physical manifestations due to which political party they support. And the Eladrin in question are actually lead by a former PC who has since started working with the drow queen (neither the drow or eladrin are fundamentally good or evil). The druids are another offshoot of the same race, with more of a "wild elf" feel to them, and are fighting to secure drow support in the new emerging government.

So yeah, all sides were more or less agreeable to one another, except for maybe the mob of half-breeds (half drow, half-eladrin, or basically "those on the fence") who have cause to hate the eladrin particularly.

That was my first thought also: with paladins and drow in the same army, will this alliance even last long enough to get to the BBEG?

That said, even if they all do get along now, all the BBEG needs is a few "charms" or "dominates" or "suggestions" in the right place and the whole row of dominoes comes tumbling down...

Still, good work on your players' part.

Lan-"any idea how you're going to run a combat with 350 participants"-efan

 

[blargney the second]

It was a really cool session - I enjoyed playing in it immensely! (Sorry for reading this thread, Wednesday Boy, but I can't unread it now.)

When our halfling rogue scouted out the estate and noticed 70+ guards on active patrol, we started taking things more seriously. The wizard wondered (gleefully) if they might be mostly minions, but I just wasn't willing to bet our characters' lives on that. So we went to Luskar, an old enemy who owed us a favor, and asked him to provide us with a distraction. He said he'd help if we got other people on board, and that got the whole ball rolling.

The big detail that really brought the plan together was when Wik's brother thought of using the baby treant I'm growing to control the monstrous hedge and let us through. Somebody realized we had druid allies who could actually do it, and then it all coalesced very quickly after that.

There was also a moment when I noticed that my character's alignment had changed somewhere along the way. Our old enemy Luskar made it pretty clear that he didn't care if the rabble he roused were harmed. My minotaur wasn't particularly comfortable with that, so he gathered fifty of the two hundred goodberries his pocket dimension hedge maze will ever grow to keep the people helping us alive. I decided it was time to scratch out Unaligned and replace it with Good.

It was a killer session all around. Hats off to Wik!
-blarg

 

[DumbPaladin]

Very similar situation to the one my group's in! Although, I think the BBEG will take a bit longer to fall. The PCs are fighting their way to her rooms, and the longer they take (read as: the more short rests they take), the more allies SHE'LL have in the final fight.

Ooh, we had the same similar crucial discussion about 50% of the way through the undead and outsider-filled (and trap-filled) city, heading for the city center where BBEG had opened his Portal of Evil.

I'm glad we made the right decision ... as leader, I was concerned about how much of a beating some of our army had taken, and I considered setting up a barrier outside of town and resting up to return the next day, but our fighter urged us to continue forward and finish this. And I listened.