Help us PCs assault a fortress!

[Pielorinho]

Here's the deal: our group of planes-hopping, fourth-level PCs have found ourselves on a backwater ice-world. The locals have been subjugated by the Dominion (think Star Wars' Empire), but not heavily: just enough to promote fighting amongst the different tribes and to get them to issue a twice-yearly tribute of children and tasty algae to the Dominion. (The algae is a fantastically concentrated foodstuff with obvious military uses). The Dominion accesses the world through a stone circular gate, located in the middle of their fortress; we've got our own means of reaching the world, but the trip takes several hours.

The tribute day is coming up tomorrow, and we want to shut the Dominion down for good on this back world.

Here's what they've got:
* Their leader seems to be an old hero of the local folks, who many decades ago (just before the Dominion showed up) turned evil. We think the Dominion may have parasitized him somehow. He's our biggest worry, and probably has mind-control powers.
* They've also got twenty or so guards; we don't know how many.
* They've also got the fortress.
* Most importantly, they have the gate. If they can get a messenger through the gate before we get a chance to destroy it (and we think it'd take at least ten minutes concentrated effort with several sledgehammers to destroy it), they can call on the virtually infinite resources of the Dominion to pour through the gate and crush us.

Here's what we've got:
* Fairly good information about their fort, including a back-entrance through their sewer tunnels that'll get us inside, though not near the gate.
* Semireliable information that extradimensional spells such as Rope trick will, if cast within the gate, disrupt its operation for a matter of minutes.
* Allies amongst the locals, including some two-dozen low-level rangers and barbarians, and a handful of first-level clerics. Our allies can breathe water.
* A Centaur PC whose main power resides in his lance and Ride By Attack feat (due to rules fudging, he can use it by himself, and gains double damage on a lance charge).
* A shapeshifty Akashic (from AU) with the group's only magic weapon, a +1 greatsword that grants the IMproved Sunder feat.
* A verrik Greenbond (from AU) with lots of healing specialization.
* My character, a halfling wizard3/rog1 necromancer specialist. In addition to having Rope Trick, she's got glitterdust, scorching ray, blindness, grease, cause fear, chill touch, and a handful of other spells, NOT including protection from evil (remember the scary mind control powers? oops)

Our current plan:
Disguise the halfling PC and the shapeshifty PC as children. Load up a sledge with the algae, covered in burlap, only hide the Centaur and the Greenbond underneath the burlap. Have one of the locals bring our party up to the fortress. Meanwhile, one group of our allies swims up the sewer pipes (ewww) and hides out just inside the fortress, while another group hangs out just outside the fortress, awaiting our signal. Everyone is coordinated with whisper.

Once we're as close as we think we can get to the Gate, cast Rope Trick inside it, call to our allies, and try to kill off the Dominion's local leader ASAP. Once he's down, work on the remaining guards; once they're down, work on the gate itself.

Does anyone have some other ideas on this? I'm debating whether to prepare two rope tricks on the off-chance that the first one gets dispelled by someone (I have no idea if anyone has that capability); I only have three second-level slots, though, and it'd hurt to give another one up. I have a scroll of pyrotechnics and a bunch of alchemist fire, and that seems like it oughtta be useful, but I'm not sure how to put that to best effect.

Ideas are welcome--we're playing through this tonight!
Daniel

 

[Henry]

Yeesh! I'm afraid all I can say is "good luck!" My only suggestion is to get the barbarians in as fast as possible to destroy the gate; a dozen battleragers with heavy weapons should be able to tear up that gate in 1 minute tops.

 

[Old One]

Segment the Battlefield...

IMO, you need to cordon off the gate area and have 1 team bashing the gate while the other team holds off the bad guys. Destroying the bad guys should not be your primary objective until AFTER the gate is destroyed. Cut of the reinforcements first, then destroy in detail.

So, rush the gate, attack the gate and defend the gate attackers.

Ideas:

1) Have a dedicated "Gate Destruction Team" (GDT). As Henry suggested, use raging barbarians bearing sledges (does that rhyme?). Have the low-level clerics load them up with Protection from Elements. Cast the Grease spell between the GDT and and the enemy. Pour some oil (and/or Alchemist's Fire) onto the some general area as the Grease spell. Have someone with a readied action torch the oil should the enemy break through the cordon and try to assault the GDT. A flaming area of grease should slow any attackers down.

2) Reserve the Pyrotechnics scroll for a concerted enemy effort to get to the GDT. Use the scroll's "smoke cloud" effect to obscure vision and incapacitate attackers that are trying to get through the area.

3) Does anyone have Obscuring Mist or other vision obscuring magics? If so, array a defense in depth: (a) Seize the gate are and kill/drive off any guards in the immediate area. Low-level clerics with access to Command - "flee" would work well against normal guards. (b) Use Obscuring Mist to block visuals from outside your immediate area. (c) Use Grease, caltrops and oil to form a defensive barrier. (d) Make the enemy come to you...time is on your side, not theirs. (e) Leave a gap or two in the defensive barrier to allow your centaur to counter-charge or lead a sortie. (f) Have a special missile squad whose sole job is to keep up a constant fusilade of missiles at the leader to disrupt in psionic manifestation (readied actions to pepper him if he looks to be concentrating ).

Have fun stormin' the castle !

~ Old One

 

[BlackMoria]

I would favor a covert penetration of the fortress instead of an outright assault.

Have teams assigned primary missions and backup missions. Try to hit all objectives at once - so have one team go after the leader, one team go for the gate, one team to conduct a hit and run raid on the barracks, a team to act as a diversion......that sort of thing. Ensure that all teams have a secondary objective so if the main objective is realized, they can assist another team having problems with their main objective.

Also, I would make the destruction of the gate the first objective and the main effort. Reasoning....if it all goes wrong somewhere else, you don't have to worry about the bad guys escaping via the gate or bringing reinforcements through the gate. Getting the leader would be a bonus, but frankly, he is a secondary mission objective to taking the gate out of comission.

Hitting all objectives at the same time spreads out the defenders, makes them waste time trying to get a clear picture of what is going on and make them make hard decisions - like do they save glorious leader or the gate, cause they can't do both....that sort of thing.

Get into postion covertly, hit hard and fast and keep the enemy off balance with hit and run teams while mission teams go after their objectives. Don't forget a reserve force to send in, in the event a mission team gets in over its head.

Have fun....

 

[Pielorinho]

Wow--great ideas!

So here are some thoughts, based on this:

1) The team outside the fortress might be relatively weak, but needs to be able to put on a show of force. We should get as many folks as possible into the fortress through the sewers, since we know we can get in that way.
2) When the inside team (all the PCs, plus one semipowerful NPC ally) gives the whispered order, the team outside the fortress should move first. Their goal should be to draw as many guards as possible toward the fortress's outer defenses.
3) Simultaneously, rope trick the gateway.
4) The GDT should be inside the walls already, via the sewer; they should rush toward our location, whispered to them. Another team inside the gate should set some fires (assuming there are burnable parts of the fortress) to cause confusion, or should attack the fort's defenders from the outside, or should try to find a way to open the fort's main entry. The last team will be archers who accompany the GDT toward us.
5) I'm thinking that the low-level clerics may want to cast a Protection from Evil on the biggest baddest-looking barbarian, and have him be the one to lead the charge to our position, in hopes that he'll be the one first targeted by the Bad Guy Leader. Does that make sense? Or do we want to send a cannon-foddery weakling through first?

Once we do that, setting up the perimeter sounds good; I'll encourage the clerics to learn Obscuring mist, and see if the Greenbond wants to take Muddy Ground. Dunno if the oil thing will work, but it's worth a try.

Thanks!
Daniel

 

[sdt]

Two questions: Is this local leader being controlled by the Dominion? Who can operate the gate? I would want some Protection from Evil spells around; these can stop the mind-control powers of the leader and release someone from mind control. Also, I would recon the gate and the leader before I made final plans

 

[Pielorinho]

We're doing a bit of recon, but our time is very limited: if we don't do the assault in the morning, then either we have to sacrifice two kids to the dominion, or else they will get suspicious and call a force through the gate to go punish the locals.

We don't know how the leader is controlled by the Dominion. We fought some vampire spawn before, so there's a good reason to believe he's a vampire (er, I guess i should've mentioned that earlier). We're not going in with the assumption taht we can break the control. But definitely the clerics should have a Protection from Evil or three prepped.

Daniel

 

[Rel]

As per usual, I think that Old One's tactical assessment is spot on. Any sort of "Area Denial" is your friend when you need to keep the enemy from closing in on your GDT.

Consider having the Greenbond prep some Veils of Darkness. That would let you effectively block off some corridors with a relatively small number of defenders. Make sure to place the defenders in two ranks such that anybody emerging from the Darkness or Obscuring Mist is attacked immediately, preferably by those facing them directly and others with reach weapons behind them*. As soon as there is a break in the stream of bad guys coming through the obscurement, have the front liners shove the bodies back to the rear rank. The rear rank will be in charge of hacking the limbs from the corpses and throwing them back up the corridor in the direction of approach by the bad guys. That might make them pause and "consider their options" before rushing into the darkness ahead to attack you.

Yeah, it's nasty, but it might just buy you the extra time you need to close that gate.

*Also make sure that the front and rear ranks are both proficient with the same weapons so that they can switch off the reach weapons if the front rank gets low on hit points.

 

[sdt]

Of course, if he's a Vampire and it's daytime, then he's going to have problems outside.