Help me with my warzone (My Players OUT!)

[Ovinomancer]

Shallown, Rayne----GO AWAY!

Ok, my players pulled a fast one on me an went somewhere I do not have fully fleshed out. Namely into a warzone. Let me give a little backstory (I'll keep it brief):

The Kingdom the player are in is in the beginning stages of being invaded by the neighboring Empire (cue ominous music here ). Due in large part to the players, this was not the surprise that the Empire wanted it to be. Currently, the Empire forces are laying siege to the Kingdom fortifications securing the only viable pass between the mountian range seperating the two countries. Since the Empire did not expect active resistance at this stage, they did not have heavy siege equipment in thier first wave. They have since recitified this and, as the players arrive on scene, have brought up the muscle, so to speak. The Empire has considerable resources, and, being the evil Empire they are, willingly use non-human creatures in many capacities. I would expect some giants and living siege stuff in thier arsenal, as well as some powerful casters (15-16). The Empire will throw some serious effort into ending this seige as quickly as possible as they do not want to be stuck in this mountain pass where they cannot bring thier full army to bear. (The Kingdom recieved warning, but not enough to recall/muster a full standing army, and are currently relying on those forces kept under arms and mercenary companies for the defense.)

Enter the players. They are working as 'troubleshooters' for the Duke in charge of this province of the Kingdom. On a recent mission to discover why reiforcements are not arriving as anticipated, they encountered a group of knight in the retainer of another powerful lord of the Kingdom. These knights attacked the party after an earlier, peaceful encounter. The party easily dispatched the majority of the knights (they weren'e meant as much of a threat). Upojn questioning them, they found out that the knights believed (on the word of thier Lord) that the Duke was a traitor and that he had allied himself with the Empire. This recall of troops was just an attempt to lull the other Lords into a trap, and the Duke himself was responsible for the slaughter of the reinforcements. The players did not question the knights any further, instead deciding to verify this account by teleporting to the pass to see if the forces were actually fighting each other. Instead of teleporting to the Kingdom fortifications, were thier status as 'troubleshooters' would probably provide them with plenty of access to information (hey, what commander turns down a 10th level party of 'suicidal' adventures?), they instead choose to tele to a location previously identified by them as a stategic vantage in the pass. Which is, of course, now controlled by the Empire.

They successfully tele'd in and had a brief encounter with the forces arrayed at thier destination (a mountainside entrance to a tunnel leading to an oversight position of the pass), and are now flying around the mountain in order to look upon the valley (the entrance does not front the pass). I have previously told them (and one of the characters has witnessed) that the Empire fields nasty flying troops.


Help me with ideas for cool mounted flying troops and other nasties that would be involved in this siege. Enemy tatics for dealing with unexpected flying interlopes would be welcome also.

Thanks!

 

[Hand of Evil]

I have always pictured a fantasy warzone along the lines of no-man's land of WW1, you have a barren waste, pocked marked, blasted, of fog and smoke, criss-crossed with trenches and forts. Spells being shot along side of normal seige weapons, undead roaming the battle attacking whoever they come across, monsters like ghouls would come out in the darkness to feast on the dead.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yep, me too. If fact, this is very close to some of the scenes I have planned for later n the war. For right now, it's a two week old siege in a mountain pass. With very agressive attackers. Kinda Urak-hai.

 

[philreed]

I would treat the warzone like the restricted areas in the Mercenaris Xbox game -- enter the area and die quickly. Just unleash hell on the characters by raining powerful magic, boulders, arrows, and other instruments of destruction down on their heads.

In short, anyone within a warzone must make a successful DC 15 Reflex save each round or suffer 6d6 points of damage. To be especially mean have a successful save result in half-damage. That should get them to clear the area quickly.

Taking it even further give fighters and experienced soldiers a competence bonus on the Reflex save equal to +1 per 2 class levels.

The Reflex DC could be based on the size of the battle, such as DC 15 for a small skirmish with dozens of troops up to DC 40 or so for a battle involving thousands of troops.

 

[radferth]

1) For battlefield mass missle fire, I decide how many/how often arrows hit someone (maybe once per character every five rounds or so for random, sporatic missle fire; 2 or more times during a volley of arrows. Each of these arrows rolls to hit the character's flat-footed AC at an attack bonus of +10 (the chance that an arrow striking them will penetrate their armor, no dex or reflex save because the arrows are arriving in mass and aren't particularly aimed at any one person).

2) I liked to use dragonels for flying mounts for evil armies (blatant Tolkien rip-off, but less so since the mounts in RotK were so huge and deadly). I think Tome of Horrors has a version (as does some 1st and 2nd edition monster book). If you don't have a write up anywhere, treat them as stingless wyverns, perhaps with scaled-down claw attacks. Perhaps the empire also has some gargoyles, minor fiends, or spellcasters as flyers as well.

3) Wizards on the ground with the extend spell feat can pose quite a threat to flyers with long-range spells like fireball. And don't forget that summoned weather can do bad, bad things to flyers.

 

[palleomortis]

I have alway seen rocs as the perfect battle flyer. They are an int. of 2, and HUGE as hell. So they can carry stuff you would never imagine. I would suggest taking the idea for archers on elephants in Lord o the Rings, and put them on some rocs. See what they do with that. And then, even if they kill the roc, the archers have feather fall, and then they have to deal with the troops as well.

 

[JimAde]

You didn't mention what level your party is, but one nasty thing to do to flying characters is the every-handy Dispel Magic. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if a force like that has a specialist dispel/counterspell guy. I forget the feat names but there are ways to dispel as if you were a higher caster level than you are, and the range is decent (200 ft. for a 10th-level caster, even without metamagic). In fact, isn't there a dispel invocation for Warlocks?

Didn't work? Try again. Still didn't work? Try again!

 

[palleomortis]

Or, have an army of multi classed wizards and fighters hide behind a bunker. When the party draws near, they all cast fly, fly up, and rain arrows down on them like the rain from the sky. (Or just kill them.)

 

[Ovinomancer]

Party is 10th level, with a straight wizard, straight cleric, wizard/fighter/spellblade, bard/rogue/mindbender, a fighter/swashbuckler/scout/ranger/dervish (yeah, I know, but he's really only got one shtick AC and dance), and a straight barbarian.
They work very well together as long as each of them understand and agree with the job.

I am not looking for balanced encounters for the party. They chose to come to this place without proper preparations, and it should be very nasty for them. They did choose to pop in right at the place the Empire is pushing the hardest.

 

[palleomortis]

Rocs And Sourcorers, Rocs And Sourcorers!! Choose Me Choose Me Choose Me!!!