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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Patryn of Elvenshae" data-source="post: 5475764" data-attributes="member: 23094">This is tagged a Mutants and Masterminds thread, but I'm going to answer with what happened recently in a D&D 3.5 (with Saga + 4E houserules) game I was running.The players had been on the trail of a multiple murderer, and had reason to believe that the suspect was actually a Red Wizard of Thay, who had been in cahoots with a town councilman to smuggle in low-end magical goods (and some additional, less-savory stuff, besides) against the local Duke's express wish to keep any and all Red Wizards out of his territory.Long story made short, the Red Wizard(ess) and her underlings assembled the results of their blood-magic-enfused-undead magical research, a score of armsmen, and a swathe of more normal undead, and marched on the town, and the party rallied the town's militia to fight them off.I planned the battle for ... well, for weeks, because we didn't get together that often.  I got miniatures for each unit of militia and enemies.  I made up some mass combat rules using the Saga Edition fighter squadron rules plus some additional morale rules.  I made tokens for each side, and little stat cards for each unit, so that whomever was playing it at the moment would know what to roll and when.In short, it was going to be an epic final battle, with more than ... 400? ... total combatants (separated into 10-20 units on each side to keep things doable).The party formed up their battle lines, and then left town, bringing a single unit of half-orc irregulars and a single unit of cavalry with them, to scout out the enemy forces.  In the middle of the night, they came across the Red Wizard's encampment in a copse of trees some short miles from town, which was ringed with undead (many of whom were glowing softly) and archers (some human, some skeletal).  It was, in short, an absolutely overwhelming force - and they arrived just in time to stop a large, heavily-laden wagon enter the encampment (which carried the enemies' additional magical weapons and toys).They elected to just watch the wagon travel the last couple miles and enter the encampment.Then they attacked the encampment.  Six heroes, a dozen NPC troops in support, against about 200 mixed undead (some of them particularly nasty) and human soldiers.After the battle was joined, I looked at them and said, "I gave you guys an army; you really decided to solo this?"They actually won, though it was a very close-run thing, because:1) The Elven Wizard casted Enlarge Person and Bull's Strength on the Half-Orc Druid and then Enlarged himself, giving them *just* enough Strength to knock over the small hut in which the main Red Wizard, her best apprentices, and a good number of strong undead bodyguards were spending the night the round before they burst out and laid waste to a sizeable portion of the PCs.  I'd determined, at the start of the battle, that the Wizard and her apprentices would spend a certain number of rounds casting her best short-term buff spells before entering the fight, and then halved that number when the PCs started in on the hutt.  Missed it by one!  And ...2) One of the PCs, in an act of desperation, leapt into the campfire, got horribly burned, and threw an armfull of burning wood into the back of the wagon.  Which set it on fire.  Which caused the specially-prepared siege ammunition (which would have absolutely devastated large portions of the militia, necessitating *someone* to go break through the enemy lines to disrupt the siege engines in the main battle) to cook off.  When the fire started on the wagon, the human soldiers that had engaged and surrounded several of the PCs threw down their swords and *booked it.*  The PCs took the hint, but were still thrown bodily to the ground when, a few rounds later, the whole thing detonated.The PCs were recognized for their assistance to the Duke, who chartered them as a recognized Adventuring Company (he's a Cormyrian ex-pat), and named the Company as Baron of the northern reaches of his demesne.  The PCs chose to call themselves the "Company of the Crater," for obvious reasons.And I, on the other hand, got to look at the list of NPC names I'd drawn up.  Every militiaman was named, many after old characters of my own or of people I've played with over the years, so that in the aftermath I could actually construct a listing of the dead and let people know how they'd fared.I figured the PCs would have to deal with a fairly-well decimated settlement, and rebuild it from the smoking ashes.  Instead, well, basically everyone lived, and the PCs are now the Barons of a vibrant, celebratory village!Color me surprised! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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