The party has 60 frost giants in tow - ideas please? (kinda long)

[Maerdwyn]

My Players - GO AWAY!


I am looking for ideas on how to challenge the party during the next adventure

The party consists of:
Cleric 9/WarPriest 2
Barbarian 8/ Bear Warrior 3
Druid 9/Shifter 1
Wizard 8/Rogue 3
Sorceress 9/ Eldritch Master 1 (Pseudo Dragon Familiar)
Fighter 5/ Wizard 3/ Arcane Archer 3
Sorcerer 4/Rogue3 (Cohort)

Setup: The party is trying to get home from the Faerielands, and is trying to bring a community of Frost Giants (We don't use alignment in the campaign. The giants are mercenary, but not inherently malicious) with them, hoping to gain alliance from the giants in a war the PCs' nation is fighting.

The plane: IMC, the Faerielands are superficially like the Prime but differ because of a much greater prevalence of magic, and the impact that the Fey rulers have on the lands themselves. (The plane is divvied up between various Fey rulers, who are closer to deities than fey in terms of their power concerning their own realm. Each can change the weather, geography, the flow of time, etc within his/her realm.) Gates between the Faerielands and the real world are the only truly fixed points in the Faerielands, and new gates can only be opened from the real world. No fey (including the rulers) may directly harm another fey, and any bargain a fey agrees to must fulfilled to the letter, though not necessarliy the spirit.

The present situation:
The PCs are in a kingdom ruled by Mabron, who is neutral to them, and is neither hindering nor helping their progress. A group of giants have been guests in his land for several hundred years, after fleeing from the illithid and drow who were invading their ancestral home in the real world. Queen Melia had attempted to trick the PCs into killing the chief of the giants in order to get out of an obligation to marry him (thus gaining a fey heir, and a measure of official staus for his people within the Faerielands). The PCs instead offered the giants some land in their country if the giants would aid them in an ongoing war.

With their expected route home cut off from them, the PC's need to take another portal. There are two back to the PC's home plane from Mabron's realm. One leads to the Illithid, Drow and Orcs that the Giants had fled years before, and the other leads to the Northern part of the PC's home island (Scotland to the PCs' Wales, if you will), but is located in a sort of No-Man's-Land that Mabron has been unable to fully assimilate into his realm.

This is the gate the PCs have decided to go for, and they intend to take 60 or so giants along with them when they go.

My task is to create and adventure around this that is both fun and challenging, and I'm looking for ideas. I'd like to reward the excellent role-playing they did last night by giving them a chance at getting the giants home to help the war effort, but I don't want the giants to make the trip back a walk in the park either.

Dangers that pose a challenge to the party and that the giants can't deal (or that they deal with off camera) with are what I'm going for. I've got some passable ideas, but I'd like to see what this community can come up with.

The gate and and the area around it are as-yet undefined beyond being known to be "very dangerous" - so I can do pretty much anything with them. Bonus points for creepy, though

Any and all help would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Ian

 

[Utrecht]

Obviously the biggest issue that you are facing is that anything that can realistically challenge 60 Frost Giants is going to wipe out the party.

However, given this, you may wish to have a necromancer engage in some sort of hit and run type of raids at night casting debilitating spells on the Giants (for example Pestilence from the BoVD)

Next, you mentioned that the Giants are mercenary - is thier only payment the land - or are they accepting coin from the PC's (if so, steal the money!!!!!)

Finally, flying foes are likely to be your best combat threat - especially if you rule that there are no rocks for the Giants to through....

HTH

 

[Larry Fitz]

Food, where are they going to find enough foood to feed 60 Frost Giants while still making appreciable progress? Also, the lands could have variants of Gnomes and Dwarves who will want to attack and kill the Frost Giants because of racial enmity, both of these races have all sorts of well-developed schemes for killing giants, and making themselves tougher for giants to kill, the PC's would be the difference, either through diplomacy or actual combat. And then of course there's the ever popular dragon, who also wants the giants dead over racial tensions....

 

[Henry]

Will saves, Will saves, WILL SAVES.

Any creature that can charm the giants, and cause them to turn on the party (they ARE mercenaries, after all) will be quite challenging to this group - especially if they charm the Giant Leader.

Also, go for natural hazards as opposed to straight combat hazards. The players are probably expecting combat hazards, and are expecting to clean up. Use their expecations and their strengths against them.

After all, perhaps the reason Mabron hasn't assimilated the realm is that it contains several gates to the plane of Limbo, and chaos energy makes it too unstable to dominate. Or perhaps another Fey has set up a hidden realms within the chaos. Either way, "Fey" screams "charm the giants," and the chaos bespeaks hazardous conditions. They might never have to lift a sword against another combatant, and STILL have a tough time getting those giants home.

 

[Celebrim]

I very much agree with the problem of Food being critical. Where are you going to find food and water for the equivalent of 1500+ men?

As an 'Exodus', play up the mythical themes and hardships of a 'journey'. Play also on the relative strengths of the two groups, and play up the need for teamwork to succeed. They should be challenged by climate (heat is especially tough on Frost giants, cold especially tough on the PC's), by weather (rain and storms, alternatively blizzards that don't bother the Frost Giants, but the PC's must depend on there allies to survive), by natural obstacles (A ravine with only a shoddy rope bridge across it. The PC's can cross, but getting the Giants over in a timely fashion might be tough, alternately a river in flood stage that the Giants can ford but the PC's can cross only if carried.), by politics (perhaps a Fey Lord decides to use his powers to impeed the progress of the party until such time as they do him some favor or pay some tribute to him, figuring out that they are being thwarted, and by who, and where he is found, and what he wants could consume several sessions. Alternatively a powerful Elder Wyrm demands that the party recover some treasure that his size or other attribute prohibits him retrieving.), by war (a racial enemy of the giants decides not to let them cross there land and the PC/giants are attacked by a large army of individually relatively weak foes (hundreds of low level gnomes), or alternatively, two deadlocked factions see the giants as the means of gaining the upper hand and bid for thier assistance. Each faction has something critical to the parties success - food, water, a bridge or ferry or air service (Rocs!) across some obstacle such as an ocean, a sea of clouds, a grand canyon, a desert, etc.).

UPDATE: I very much like Henry comment regarding Will saves. There are a large number of relatively weak Fey with charm capabilities who might want to get the Giants to do something out of mischieviousness (what is more tempting than a charmed giant?) or need that could make for interesting RP. This also reminds me, as an 'Exodus' one of the most powerful mythological themes is that of 'temptation to abandon the quest'. You see this in the Exodus, the Odessey, and The Lord of the Rings that the primary trial is often keeping up the will to continue when things are at there darkest. So you could play this up with division in the camp of the giants, and 'evil' or at least self-interested forces tempting the giants to stay in less than ideal but at least known condiations. A community of dark hearted Cloud Giants might offer to pay the Frost Giants to serve as thier thugs to oppress the inhabitants of a region. Or the giants might find a mountain valley halfway along the journey to be if not an ideal home (prey animals are scarce, or some enemy is near - say the aforementioned gnomes or a community of Fire Giant bandits), at least one that seems at the moment better than continuing toward thier goal. This could give the diplomatic members of the party a chance to shine.

 

[Maerdwyn]

Great ideas so far!

Food is definately of primary concern, and I've already decided to attack it. In Mabron's realm, time moves such that the giants need comparatively little food. When they pass out of it into the no-man's-land, it's a different story. They have livestock (aurochs), which I will certainly target somehow. If they successfully keep the herds alive, the giants will have enough food to get to the other side of the gate and eat sparingly for a couple months. How they react after the food runs out should be interesting.

Henry, I really like the idea of a nearby gate to a highly unstale plane (I don't use the standard cosmology, but I've got something that would work). I also like the idea of will saves, perhaps not only against mental attack spells, but also against a steadily depleting will to continue

Celebrim - There will certainly be some among the giants who are not happy about their leader's choice in this, and the winterwolves the giants have with them are going to be a destructive/divisive influence. Cool!

I need *some* direct combat. The last couple sessions have been very heavy on diplomacy and role playing (which I enjoy a lot), but the barbarian is getting a little itchy, especially around all these giants. Flying foes look like a good start here - maybe it's time to introduce the party to their first red dragon - they've been pretty dependant on fire spells lately .

Thanks everyone - keep em coming!

 

[der_kluge]

How about, the giants eat up all the cattle in a field, only to find out that they belong to the king.

 

[Dr. NRG]

There was a decent article in Dragon sometime in the last couple of years about tactics to use against giants, as well as tactics giants use against others. This isn't directly pertinent to your question, but it would likely be beneficial to give it a look.

I can't recall the issue number off the top of my head...

 

[Alcamtar]

Some ideas:

- Caves or narrow box canyons. The giants cannot really fight if they have to crawl on hands and knees, or if they're squeezing down the giant-equivalent of a 3-foot-wide passage. The party will have to protect them from dangers during this time.

- A region of stifling heat which must be crossed, maybe a desert or volcano. The giants must be persuaded to make the crossing, and then they will be sickened and weak for a few days, even after reaching more comfortable temperatures. The party must protect and guide the giants through the area, while keeping them from turning back.

- A small enclave of fire giants. The frost giants refuse to pass without wiping them out, but the enclave is well-fortified. The party goes in as advance scouts to reconnoiter and to provide a flanking diversion, so the main body of frost giants can attack successfully. The giant vs giant battle occurs offstage, leaving the party to their own devices.

- An old ally/friend of the frost giants who wants to call in a favor, and is willing to out-bid the party for their services. Here the party risks losing the frost giants altogether to a long-term contract. The ally is not unfriendly toward the PCs, but has a condescending "all's fair" attitude. The PCs meet this old ally alone while scouting ahead, maybe with one sympathetic frost giant along with them, and must find a way to get the group past the ally without losing them. They ally will be persuasive but will see this as great sport and may be willing to certain "game rules" to make it more interesting...

- Hostile halflings, in a valley of 7-foot tall brush (waist deep to a giant). Only the party is short enough to fight them effectively.

- A talus slope or snow cliff. The giants must tread softly to avoid causing an avalanche, so the party must handle any threats until they are back on firm footing.

- A city of bandits with narrow winding streets and human-sized dwellings. The lords of the city demand that the giants stay outside (they wouldn't fit in the buildings anyway) while the party goes in for supplies or other business.

- Soft mud covered with thin grassy turf. Heavy giants sink thigh-deep into the mud, but humans are able to move over it carefully without sinking. Good place for a mud monster.

- Adult Red dragon (CR 12). The frost giants can do little to hurt it, but its breath weapon does double damage against them. They are understandably reluctant to engage it. The dragon is demanding a hefty toll for passage through its land, and maybe even a human or horse to snack on. (Make it big enough to make a fight seem worthwhile.) The giants feel their employers should pay any tolls and refuse to pay or fight. The dragon is brash but will back off if contronted with sufficient force.

- For an interesting session, invent a reason for a small group of 7 giants to undertake some mission. Give each PC a frost giant and let them play...

- Frost giant bandits... cousins of the mercenaries. The giants refuse to fight kin, but will allow the PCs to do so.

- Throw at least one encounter in which the frost giants can save the day. It's not everyday that a party can get itself into trouble and then pull 60 frost giants out of their pocket and sic them on their foes! You don't need to play out the epic battle on-stage, but the players will enjoy getting some "use" out of this resource. Maybe let them discover an orc city and go walking in and make demands with the frost giants to back them up. Another example might be a river that the giants can wade through, carrying characters and horses alike.

Mike

 

[Stone Angel]

Perhaps since they have spent so long in the realm of the Fey they are weakened. The PC's must go ahead to tell the king that they are coming and of the soon to be alliance. The war gets tough and the PC's are sent on a mission. The odds are hopeless just when they think that the end is near a horn in the distance, the frost giants have come to their aid.

I like what I have heard of the campaign so far.