Help - Arriving in a town as its under attack. Looking for ideas

[hanez]

Hi, for my next adventure my PCs are travelling to a town to sell and trade their treasure.

I am planning for that town to be under attack by sea and have the pc's intervene. Some encounters i am thinking about include:


-attacking soldiers attacking the town
-the pc's attacking a navy ship with ballista
-possibly boarding a warship and defeating it
-being thanked as heroes by the town
-and most importantly finding a hook to lead them to the invaders base


I am looking for some neat ideas to flesh this out a bit... does anyone have any ideas or know of an adventure along the same line I could use for ideas? Trying to think if there was any type of dungeon adventure where the players arrived in a town as it was being attacked but it's not ringing any bells.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

More info would help us help you.

How powerful are the PCs? How many in the party?

High magic or low magic campaign world?

What specific system are you using?

 

[Bagpuss]

Trying to think if there was any type of dungeon adventure where the players arrived in a town as it was being attacked but it's not ringing any bells.

The Savage Tide campaign in Dungeon has the party arriving in time to save the village of Farshore from a pirate raid.

I think it is issue #143 is memory serves me right.

I think the adventure starts with the PCs coming to the rescue from a small pirate recon raid, and then has all sorts of improvements they can make to the village defences before the main pirate attack a month or two later.

 

[Bagpuss]

- Heroes too late to stop some people being cut down, but in time to witness it. Helps set the scene and shows the stakes.
- Villagers locked in a burning building that need rescuing. Perhaps having to fight their way to the building first or hold off attackers while other members off the party break down the doors.
- Woman being/about to be assaulted/raped needs saving. (Depending on how adult you want to be)
- Child crying in the middle of the street, as a stampede of loose cattle or alternately charging raiders on horseback head towards him
- A chance to help organise defenders giving them weapons perhaps a chance to barricade a street with a cart or something.
- A battle with whoever is leading the assault on the village, and his bodyguard.
- Witness the overall commander who it out of reach perhaps on a ship or outside the village wall.
- An opportunity to treat the injured for the party cleric, will they use their healing on NPCs they have only just met or save it just for the party? If they choose the latter lay the guilt on heavy when the NPC dies because they didn't help.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

If the city is being attacked by sea, what sort of an attack is it? Traditionally (well, depending upon historical era) it's hard for ships to attack citys head-to-head, because a city's fortifications can be a lot stronger -- if the city HAS fortifications. But usually an attack like this would probably start out as a blockade (capture or sink any ships trying to get in or out of the city) until enough force can be landed on shore near the city to take it by land.

If the PCs arrive by land, but the city is being blockaded, they might get involved with some sort of smuggling operation to try to run the blockade and bring back help. And food. And other supplies.
-In that scenario, the enemy would have small scouting parties on shore, trying to observe the city and figure out how defensible it is, how well prepared they are for an attack, etc. They might even try to send spies into the city.

Identifying some key goals that a small party of heroes could take on that might make a difference in the attack might look like
- finding a way to send for help
- create delays while the city waits to be relieved. This might mean sabotage, diversions, and other sorts of trickery.
- find and eliminate spies and observers so the enemy doesn't know where to land/attack/etc
- send false reports from interdicted spies to lure elements of the enemy's forces into a trap
and so on.

-rg

 

[hanez]

More info would help us help you.How powerful are the PCs? How many in the party?High magic or low magic campaign world?What specific system are you using?

Getting lots of answers! Thanks They are level 6, its a homebrew world, but it was based on Pathfinders Skull and shackles Adventure path. I am using a light version of 3.5 (basically its 3.5 but I worry a lot less about the rules then I used to.)The players are pirates, and the land is oppressed by an evil empire (this like star wars rebels vs the empire). The town is a hidden pirates place where people can trade, the empire has found it and is trying to destroy it.

 

[Bagpuss]

Well in that case it could be a case of stopping the enemy from escaping not just driving them off and alerting the empire to the location, because if they find out they will come back with a much larger unstoppable fleet to destroy the town.

If they fail to stop them escaping then there is the problem of evacuating the town and finding a new place to hide before the main fleet arrives.

 

[Razjah]

You could always try to force the PCs to make difficult decisions. I think combining some of Bagpuss and Radiating Gnome's ideas would work. You can have the soldiers moving though the town, forcing people into the church before they burn it while the pirate ships and fighting forces are trapped outside the blockade (the empire lured them out with a false carrack or treasure ship). Now the PCs need to decide to help the trapped people or take a ship to the attack the blockade from the rear.

When the empire's fleet cannot hold the blockade and begin to withdraw- the party can pursue them to protect the town's secrecy or help save people trapped by damaged buildings, injured from fighting, or the citizens trying to repel the empire's ground forces.

If the party does well here it could be a great way to get them a ship, perhaps a small captured frigate or corvette. Then they can being to unite the pirates under one banner to better stand against the empire. Once they have proven themselves they may be given larger ships and begin building their own fleet. The climactic battle could involve the party on the flagship of the pirate fleet or on multiple vessels each controlling different aspects of the engagement.

A hook to find the empire's base? Capture some off the blockade ships and decipher their maps, letters, orders, and a pilot's rutter.

"A rutter was a small book containing the detailed observation of a pilot who had been there before. It recorded the magnetic compass courses between ports and capes, headlands, and channels, It noted the sounding and depths and color of the water and the nature of the seabed. It set down the how we got there and how we got back: how many days on a special tack, the pattern of the wind, when it blew and from where, what currents to expect and from where, the time of storms, and the time of fair winds; where to careen the ship and where to water; where the were friends and where foes; shoals, reefs, tides, havens; at best, everything necessary for a safe voyage." -Shogun by James Clavell

Give the party charts for the pirate seas, a rutter to get to the empire's port, and orders from the enemy to burn everything the party loves to the ground and they'll go at the empire. The last part alone could work, look at Star Wars- it worked for Luke.

 

[Derren]

Getting lots of answers! Thanks They are level 6, its a homebrew world, but it was based on Pathfinders Skull and shackles Adventure path. I am using a light version of 3.5 (basically its 3.5 but I worry a lot less about the rules then I used to.)The players are pirates, and the land is oppressed by an evil empire (this like star wars rebels vs the empire). The town is a hidden pirates place where people can trade, the empire has found it and is trying to destroy it.

In that case there is hardly anything you can do to save the town as empires normally can field much larger and stronger navies and armies than pirates. So the best bet would be to rally the defenders, cut through the enemy beachhead, get as many people onto ships (don't forget those VIPs), breach the enemy blockade and escape to another refuge.

Btw. about what tech level are we talking about? Viking Longships? Galleys with marines and archers? One mast ships with archers, marines and maybe a ballista or even with a primitive cannon on the deck? Age of sail ships with multiple decks and cannon broadsides?
That heavily affects how such an attack would look like.

 

[Razjah]

In that case there is hardly anything you can do to save the town as empires normally can field much larger and stronger navies and armies than pirates. So the best bet would be to rally the defenders, cut through the enemy beachhead, get as many people onto ships (don't forget those VIPs), breach the enemy blockade and escape to another refuge.

This is true, but a work around is to take the E6 approach. Your PCs are already 6th level, but you could cap the world at E8 or E10 to allow the PCs to really matter here. A world that caps at 8th level characters (or 8th level and feats) wouldn't have too many characters above 5th-6th level.

Btw. about what tech level are we talking about? Viking Longships? Galleys with marines and archers? One mast ships with archers, marines and maybe a ballista even with a primitive cannon on the deck? Age of sail ships with multiple decks and cannon broadsides?
That heavily affects how such an attack would look like.

The tech level will determine what kinds of ship based adventures you can run. Stereotypical Viking raids are more ground battles that allow defenders to engage some ships before the attacks reach land. If you have 16th century tech, you can have something closer to Pirates of the Caribbean and classic swashbuckling adventures. If your game is closer to Lord of the Rings in feel, the ship combat could be a bit boring, unless you make ship binding and boarding a common tactic.