Goals of PC's caught in a siege?

[Jack99]

Thanks all for the feedback. Some great ideas. I think I will be making it a dynamic dungeon if I can. I think it sounds like a great approach.

How about using the siege as a backdrop for different story? Say the PCs have to find a lost artifact or rescue a princess in the middle of the siege. This works best if the castle under siege is falling and the PCs will have to deal with invading forces while trying to accomplish their goals. Even more dramatic if they have enemies on both sides of the battle, perhaps an evil prince is trying to get away with the princess or the corrupt high priest trying to steal the artifact that the PCs are looking for?

Havard

Already part of the plan. With the orc horde outside, the evil guys behind the scene will try to frame the Lord Warden by using shapeshifters to impersonate him and commit murders. Whether the PC's manage to solve this will make a huge impact on the siege.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Read David Gemmell's "Legend" for some great ideas and feel for heroic seiges!

 

[haakon1]

My game was back in 2E days, and I was trying out the 2E Battlesystem rules (a vast improvement over that godawful clunky 1E edition). From what I remember, it was a hell of an exciting time in the PCs' lives...

Sieges can be super fun. But I was talking about fighting out the entire battle under normal D&D rules. It actually works -- and is very fun -- to use real D&D rules and a lot of dice, up to about company size, instead of switching to abstract "battle rules".

 

[Phaezen]

I have been considering the idea of some kind of siege counter.

Take a scale from 0 to 100 with the counter starting at 50. Each quest success or failure moves the counter up or down the scale depending on the nature of the quest and degree of success or failure. Also add a timer, say for every hour of in game time the counter moves up 1.

Tie events to the scale, for example of the counter hits 60 a fire breaks out in an encounter area or the gates are assaulted.

If the counter hits 100 to town/city falls, if it hits 0 the siege is lifted.

Also add timeline events, so after 1 day the sieging army manages to get catapults into place.

 

[David Howery]

Sieges can be super fun. But I was talking about fighting out the entire battle under normal D&D rules. It actually works -- and is very fun -- to use real D&D rules and a lot of dice, up to about company size, instead of switching to abstract "battle rules".

well, the 'Rorke's Drift' scenario I ran wouldn't work for that, what with 200 defenders and 4000 goblins/worgs on the attack. I did run a city siege scenario once, although the PCs were just 2nd level nobodies and not in charge of the defense... I had the PCs doing a bunch of things like serving as a 'fire brigade', where they ran around to threatened parts of the outer walls and fighting off the besiegers who got a foothold there... and probably the most intense skirmish was underground, where the besiegers were digging tunnels, and the defenders dug counter-mines, and battles were fought in the tunnels... that was all standard D&D rules, no Battlesystem there...

 

[haakon1]

If the counter hits 100 to town/city falls, if it hits 0 the siege is lifted.

Interesting.

Random thought: a siege could make a pretty good Adventure Path, and this sort of mechanic might tie it together.

 

[darjr]

In one of Glen Cooks black company books a portion of the Black Company get stuck inside a walled city under siege. One they just won over through their own siege.

Anyway they think the Captain is dead so a struggle for control over the remnants of the company commences within the walls, a deadly struggle, with one side revealing that they are part of an ancient evil cult.

The 'heroes' take over a tall building and begin to build onto it like a boat.... because they know the city will be flooded, and it is, 6 foot depth, maybe?

Their building remains mostly dry, and then they find their way into the sub basement and the dungeons below the city.

After a short dungeon crawl they find that they lead to several parts of the city, including the palace that the other faction took over. They sneak in and try to take over the palace and eliminate the other faction.

I won't spoil it anymore, but I want to put players in that situation, I want to have a character in that situation.

 

[broghammerj]

I believe it was 2E box set dragon mountain....has multiple quests you have to overcome to make the mountain appear in order to get to the dragon. One of them involved defending a town against and invading kobold hoard. Something like 300-400 kobolds. Kobolds are nice because they can get mowed down easily due to low HP and are relatively simple to track deaths. The interesting thing is they were equipped with wizards who had wands of fireball, MM, etc.

The DM ran it using standard rules and kept rough estimates of casualties. There are a few townspeople who could help fight (maybe 20 or so). We had a blast.

I will tell you the most fun we had however, was with the time used to prepare for the battle. I believe it was close to a day so the wizard could re-memorize spells etc. We were casting wall of thorns, stone shape, building oil pits, etc. Planning was half the fun. There were good "defensible building", fall back points, rally points, and escape plans.

If you are playing 4E that may be harder to pull off as there aren't more permanent battlefield alterations you can make. My advice:

1, Lots of low level easily killable minions which are a challenge due to shear volume.
2. Some sort of strategic planning for defense.
3. Be free flowing in execution and not so encounter structured as some have recommended. If the orcs break down the draw bridge than so be it, but if the PCs find a way to keep it intact than roll with it.

 

[Shemeska]

I've only run a seige once in a campaign, and it wasn't exactly a typical scenario since it was a 4 way seige of Vecna's former divine domain of Cavitius in the middle of the Quasi-elemental Plane of Ash. On the inside were various undead servitors of Vecna left behind when he was pulled into Ravenloft years prior, and one of the splinter sects of the Doomguard (the one who believed the universe was falling into entropy too quickly). At the very center of the domain, in Citadel Cavitius itself were a cabal of liches and demiliches known as the Circle of the Bonetappers who were largely responsible (along with Vecna's slowly waning wards) for the fact that the walls were still standing.

On the outside were two of the other (tenuously allied) former Doomguard splinter sects (and one of the Ships of Chaos...), a massive yugoloth army being led by an avatar of the Oinoloth, and on the horizon quickly approaching was a massive army of wandering undead (normally hungry and aimless on the plane, but all of the sudden controlled by someone or something and moving with a purpose - in this case controlled by the baernaloth Sarkithel fek Parthis the Flesh Sculptor).

The PCs had to sneak inside and find a particular MacGuffin before the wards and walls were breached, and ended up having to avoid falling afoul of some of the less inclined to bargain undead, plus having to convince both a former Greater Doomlord of the Doomguard not to just throw them back over the walls, and then dealing with a trio of demiliches (one of whom was a chosen or former chosen of Vecna himself).

Was fun when they were inside Citadel Cavitius itself, bargaining with one of the liches and the main exterior door started to buckle as if someone was just physically trying to break it down (the Oinoloth versus Vecna's old wards).

Took about five sessions to finish that out, nearly a TPK at one point, but was a damn fun scenario to run with the ongoing seige and the forced time constraints on their goals inside.

 

[nedjer]

and probably the most intense skirmish was underground, where the besiegers were digging tunnels, and the defenders dug counter-mines, and battles were fought in the tunnels... that was all standard D&D rules, no Battlesystem there...

Tried something similar based on the Battle of Messines. It was a riot with PCs showing a pretty shocking willingness to try to make and use their own chemical weapons when the enemy started pouring 'sulphurous fumes' into the rat-runs. Tried a 'wooden horse' in the middle of it but they were having none of it.