Interesting encounters in a City siege situation

[Spibb]

I DM for a 4 player 4e group (Defender, leader, 2 strikers). I'm working on a plot arc where they have to retake a city from undead hordes. I'm thinking of having like 20 minion soldiers (following the henchmen guidelines) under their control to make it seem like a proper war, not just just 4 guys running into a city and killing everything. The only real problem I'm facing here is spicing up the encounters.

I have interesting ideas for major encounters (like boss fights) within the city but not many ideas for the casual encounters. I don't want the fights within the city to be just brawls in one non-descript street after another. If anyone has any suggestions for engaging places in a city that the players could fight that would make for an interesting encounter, I'd be glad to hear 'em!

 

[Ferghis]

Oooh, sweet plot idea.

Off the top of my head:

- getting messages to potential insurgents within the city might be an adventure in itself.
- wandering ghouls being attracted by the city's necrotic energy and corpses.
- getting warmachines assembles might be an interesting skill challenge.
- have zombies tunnel out of the ground when the PCs are approaching. Have them describe a marching order, and then the zombies appear wherever you want among them. If they make a good enough history check, casually mention that they are travelling over an ancient battlefield or graveyard.
- the new powers that control the city might use some sort of messenger. A rat, a raven, an undead monkey. Have the PCs try to catch it.
- have some friendlies holed up in a house and threatened by many mindless undead, and a door into the house is broken just as the PCs are near.

 

[Riastlin]

I'm currently running my players through a similar scenario. They are helping the resistance forces take back the major city in the region. Some of the things I am doing (in no particular order) are:

a. Have the PCs slip into the city and get the city gates opened for the rest of the army. This encounter was designed to end once they got the gates opened as reinforcements flooded the street.

b. Place enemies on the rooftops in the relatively narrow streets and alleys. Makes the PCs look up and down at the same time, also makes it easier to flank them if things are going too easy.

c. Enemies start summoning some greater evil through a portal -- PCs have to race through the city to get there in time to stop the ritual to open said portal (Skill Challenge).

d. City being set aflame by the bad guys -- possible skill challenge to save innocents.

e. Enemies attempting to retreat via ships at the dock -- combination fight/skill challenge to cut off the retreat -- at the same time reports come in of enemy leaders at another location so PCs have to choose between cutting off the retreat or going after the bigwigs.

In between encounters, I narrated the party's advance through the city, describing minor pitched battles along the way, only interrupting the narrative for when they have to actually fight (i.e. the larger encounters). The idea is to give them the feeling that they are fighting their way through the streets without actually having to do so for the entirety of it.

 

[IanB]

If you can get your hands on a copy of Red Hand of Doom, it has a bunch of good stuff like this.

 

[knightofround]

Have you considered drawing upon videogames for inspiration? Whenever I'm designing large-scale combat encounters I end up drawing upon my raiding experiences in MMOs for inspiration. Unfortunately there's not much inspiring large scale D&D content out there.

Actually the best campaign arc I ever DMed was very similar to yours. The PCs were Roman soldiers tasked with recapturing a castle full of demons and undead. I gave each player a small contingent of henchmen that they could direct like a swam in 3E. (Although the henchmen mostly wet their pants and acted as Red Shirts) The PCs got very attached to the handful of henchmen who managed to survive. In fact after it was all over two players decided to retire their own characters in order to play their surviving henchmen. Years later we still tease the player who lost all his henchmen in the first engagement =)

I basically copied Karnor's Castle from EverQuest 1 and reskinned it to better fit my campaign. Obviously you need to make sure to pick a game that the rest of your group hasn't played, but it worked out very well for me.

 

[Neubert]

You can also put the creativity in the hands of the players. Ask them to put their positions and draw out the battlemap (in your case, a street or similar) with obstacles and other terrain. Then sprinkle with monsters (zombies crawling out from under boxes or bursting up from the ground). Done!

I've heard this works very well when monsters attack the PC's campsite.

 

[renau1g]

One thought would be to force the PC's to make a difficult choice. There's two groups of innocents being encroached by the enemies, the party knows that they only have the strength to take on the enemies as a group so they can't split up. They must make a split second decision about who to save...This depends on the group though, might not be appropriate for some.

A variant of that would be a group of guardsmen are pinned down without their armor/weapons/etc (replacing one of the groups of innocents above). If the party saves them, their future encounters may be easier as the guards can gear up and help out, but at the cost of the innocent civilians.

 

[Kinneus]

Have a necromancer approach the party, and make a big show about casting some sort of horrible ultimate spell of evil. Describe in detail how the sheer evil of it almost knocks the party cleric/paladin/avenger out with its sheer malevolence. Reality itself seems to warp as shadows flit at the edges of the party's vision, and a sense of overwhelming dread overcomes them. And then... nothing. Nothing at all happens. The necromancer just sits there looking smug.

So the combat continues... but as soon as the first of the party's 20 minion soldiers dies and hits the ground, black tendrils of shadow reach from the earth and caress the corpse, causing it to rise as a zombie.

The look on the players' faces should be pretty hilarious when they realize they need to play 'protect the Redshirts' or else face 20 minions in addition to whatever else the encounter contains.

The necromancer should definitely have an area burst spell, but it should be an encounter power. An at-will or even a rechargeable is just a little too evil.

 

[Unwise]

I like the way you guys think. What level are the characters? I am thinking heroic tier.

Here are a few suggestions of my own.

Combats:
- Remember to use swarms to reflect a great deal of zombies, rather than relying on minions every fight. Swarms are far scarier with pull-down and tear-apart style attacks. I like having swarms that spawn minions (or even other monsters) regularly.
- I made an elite zombie swarm once that had the ability to spawn a minion every turn, or take X hitpoints and spawn a standard monster. This reflects a badass guy pushing his way out of the horde.

- If your characters are paragon or higher, consider having a fight against level appropriate undead that takes place inside a zombie horde. Use the zombie horde as an environmental effect.
- Eg. All players take X damage if they move more than Y squares per turn. Constant Aura damage that you can forgo by using a standard action to clear zombies away from you and your adjacent allies or by using an AE attack. If ever you are knocked prone, the environment attacks you, harshly. Remember, to keep describing it as them hacking through a zombie every step they take. The tiny nicks and scratches eventually adding up.

- Look up Dead by Dawn, a Chaos Scar adventure. I would pretty much use that as the basis for a section of the adventure. Particularly as it relates to the church skill challenge I will mention below.

- At paragon or higher, the PCs see a dragon take this opportunity to raid the mages tower for goodies. It gets blasted (by a lich, but they don't know that) and lands on the ground and is killed apart by zombies. The lich then decides to start animating it. The PCs don't have to get involved if they don't want to. If they don't however, when they face the lich, he will have one heck of an ally.
- As an alternative, the dragon is almost killed, but is being sacrificed alive to become a zombie dragon. The PCs can save it and with a social skill challenge, enlist its help. It might know something, why was it trying to get into the tower?

- I really like the protect the redshirts idea above.

- What if you have a bunch of soldier/blocking undead, lots of minions, but the best hte PCs can do is knock them over. They always hop up hte next round. They have to look to find the hidden necromancer and take him out before a single undead will stay dead. Finding him could be a perception/religion/arcane/insight skill challenge during the heat of battle. He looking over the balcony of a nearby building, raising everything they kill.

Skill challenges:
- Barricades as per Dead by Dawn.
- I like the idea above about getting war machines working.
- Consecrate the church, physical repairs and zombie proofing, religion, arcana etc. See Dead by Dawn for a cool adventure to run while doing this.
- Social skill challeng to give hope to the survivers and rally them. This then gives them a bunch of minions (soldiers) and a couple of swarms (armed non-combatants) to aid them.
- By the sound of it, the city is pretty far gone, what if they decide there is no saving it? They then go into the mages tower and set up a magical nukes to blow the whole place sky high. This leads to cool encounters trying to gather the survivers and get the heck away before the count down goes off.
- The local paladins/knights have come back as really tough undead. They maintain their honour, but are largely unaware of what is going on other than that everything in this city must be cleansed. Skill challenge to persuade them to protect the civilians, join you, or put them to rest.

Have you read Mistwatch from Dungeon (or is it dragon?) magazine? I would if I were you, it gives some pretty cool ideas for a smaller scale zombie outbreak.

 

[Ryujin]

The things that come to mind, in a siege situation, are:

- gathering and defending innocents, who have been trapped in the city.

- stopping looters, who always come out of the woodwork during this sort of thing

- having to deal with some pocket warlord, who sees it as an opportunity to grab power