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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 9403411" data-attributes="member: 20323">I'm going to focus on what I consider your most pressing issue: The players want to solve this remotely: "We send in the redshirts and let them sort it out."If this were B/X there'd be a % roll for conducting a siege with a bunch of modifier tables (Rules Cyclopedia). If this were Chainmail/OD&D the GM might play it out with wargaming rules.So you need to articulate what YOU want: Do you want the players to solve this via their NPCs? This might make sense if the players had to do a lot of footwork to secure these NPCs as allies, and this just the natural evolution/payoff of that past adventure.Or do you want them to have to get their own hands dirty solving this? I am assuming this is what you want - something more adventuresome.What you're looking for is (a) clarity of your intent/vision, and (b) a narrative & mechanical approach that supports that.I'll give an example approach that plays along with what I think your players are intending: While the rebels engage the Queen's forces, the PCs use that as a distraction to infiltrate the palace without drawing attention to themselves, get to the sword statue, retrieve the sword, and then get out undetected. So what you might actually have is a HEIST with a mass combat backdrop. Thus things like Alertness Levels of the guards, having to create decoys or extinguish lights to sneak by, devising strategies to survive hail of arrow fire when crossing courtyard, decisions of how/whether to redeploy rebels to help the PCs but at high losses to the rebels, etc. Depending on how zoomed in you wish to get, you can design each Palace Area just with a mass combat event overlay and let the PCs loose, or you can abstract the infiltration with a skill challenge approach. You can spice it up with (a) unexpected defenses, (b) dramatic shifts in strategy, (c) walls coming down as hazards & opening up new connections between rooms/baileys, and in true HEIST fashion (d) the planned escape route getting compromised and the party having to improvise a new extraction.Edit: Last observation - there are two goals: get sword & kill queen. This can lead to tension if the PCs end up having to make choices in their HEIST for the sword that reduce chances of rebels killing the queen, or vice versa.</blockquote>

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