Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Caliburn101" data-source="post: 6952482" data-attributes="member: 6802178">I recently re-ran a stress-test scenario I GM'd during the D&D Next playtest.The setup was like the siege in the 13th Warrior movie - around 50 peasants and the 11th level party against 300 Gnolls and their leader (originally a shadow demon possessed ogre magi), now a Flind and his Gnoll variant buddies, who carried an artefact with them that allowed the mass raising of up to 30 Witherlings 3/day.The group were optimised for the fight - knowing they had to save the palisaded settlement and being sent by the local ruler because of their skill-set. A Paladin, Evoker Wizard, Battle Cleric, Hunter Ranger and an Assassin Rogue.The moment that the players realise that an encounter won't be tidily managed by their PCs cool-stuff-resource pool they start thinking harder on how to maintain the scene to their advantage - using terrain, using mundane objects etc. In my battle, the Ranger dropped bags of flour onto Gnolls attacking through a gate giving them disadvantage to do anything and ensuring as they came out of the cloud they were easy meat for the Paladin and Assassin - allowing the peasants they were covering the time to retreat to a redoubt. The Assassin later rolled barrels of lamp oil (with the stops taken out) down an improvised ramp made of a horse trough and the Evoker lit them up with a wall of fire strategically placed for them to roll through. The Cleric and paladin lead and exhorted the peasants to run through chokepoints ahead of the Gnolls to draw them into deadfalls dug the day before, and past rooftops where fishing nets were dropped on groups of them. A Wand of Web was given to the leader of the settlement to defend the second gate with a few of the hunters of the settlement there with a barrel of pre-prepped fire arrows to light it up periodically.Not one character died thanks to intelligent use of stabilisation of downed PCs and ensuring the bodies were dragged back to fortified locations where they couldn't be eaten.As resources were expended and especially the Evoker ran out of BOOM, the tension and drama went up and up. The game was fantastic fun, and a little judicious application of brave peasant action ensured the party had holes in their defences filled at critical moments in a way which didn't detract from their accomplishments in maintaining and eventually winning the 'unwinnable' fight.4 hours and 26 minutes later, the three players who haven't fallen are back to back in the stockade dungeon protecting a single way in via a tunnel, and finally take the Flind down, breaking the scattered remnants of the Gnoll horde and seeing them flee for the hills.Final score - Gnoll Horde 42 (with two near PC kills): Party 254...There is no way that the CR rules would have allowed such a battle as written... but it worked very well.Trust your own judgement and go for it. All this agonising over this minutiae or that doesn't often lead to a better game, just more GM stress in my opinion.</blockquote>

Verification