D&D 5E You encounter 20 orcs ...

[TaranTheWanderer]

Attacking at night is a good tactic no matter what.

Lack of Darkvision shouldn't be an issue. Orcs will still have fires and torches. Darkvision sucks and, I feel, most DMs don't adjudicate it properly. You can only see 60 feet and all perception checks within that 60 feet is at disadvantage. Most orcs, in a camp, are going to spend their waking time at night near a torch or campfire where they can see properly. It's hard to play cards, or dice or do anything like cook without light or fire, even with darkvision.

A party can navigate in the dark without darkvision, given enough moonlight, if they are careful enough not to trip over rocks and bump into trees. Not as well as an Orc, who will have no such issues, but enough to get into an advantageous position.

The Orcs will, likely, be well lit, near torches or campfires, making it easy for people to shoot into the lit areas with no penalty, from a distance (assuming a long bow or long-ranged spells), while the orcs, because their lowlight is only 60 feet, have no clue where the shots are coming from and are at disadvantage on all perception checks to locate the direction of the shots.

Also, are orcs nocturnal? I'm not sure but, if not, a good portion of those orcs will be sleeping. If they are nocturnal, attacking during the day will give PCs advantage since most of the orcs will be sleeping.

 

[Tobold]

Level 5 PCs are well over twice as powerful as level 4 and have access to a bunch of AoE that can slaughter droves of orcs. Level 4 PCs are likely to get slaughtered.

Yeah, that is my most likely problem in my specific adventure. If the players go to the Shrine of Savras directly after Mountain Toe’s Mine, they will be level 4, not 5.

 

[Weiley31]

At that moment, the Stone Cold Reavers mercenary company came charging from off the side, launching ahead of the PCs. The orcs, caught off guard, focused surely on the faction charging at them. Sensing this as an opportunity, the PCs made their way past the carnage.

Then again, that is if you change the Stone Cold Reavers from a four/five party band into a small mercenary company. I feel that would work better in making them more of an antagonistic force.

 

[Prakriti]

At that moment, the Stone Cold Reavers mercenary company came charging from off the side, launching ahead of the PCs. The orcs, caught off guard, focused surely on the faction charging at them. Sensing this as an opportunity, the PCs made their way past the carnage.

Then again, that is if you change the Stone Cold Reavers from a four/five party band into a small mercenary company. I feel that would work better in making them more of an antagonistic force.

I like this idea. Or have the party encounter the Stone Cold Reavers before they reach the Shrine. The Reavers are scoping it out from afar, trying to come up with a plan of attack, when the PCs arrive. The PCs can choose whether or not to cooperate with them.

 

[Weiley31]

I like this idea. Or have the party encounter the Stone Cold Reavers before they reach the Shrine. The Reavers are scoping it out from afar, trying to come up with a plan of attack, when the PCs arrive. The PCs can choose whether or not to cooperate with them.

The way I roleplay Slyvania Moonlight(I think that's the name of the one named member of the Stone Cold Reavers) is that she's not only the leader of the mercenary company, but also a complete sociopath. So if an option was to strike a deal with the PC for help, it would totally be in her favor, on her terms, and will be EXPECTED for the PCs to uphold the other end of the bargain. So making a dealing like that would be deadly. But drama and suspense!!!


Course no matter what, she'll backstab the party as soon as the moment presents itself.

 

[pogre]

I ran this recently and it looked awesome on the table! (We play via Zoom).

I had the orcs in two separate groups in the courtyard. PCs hit group one, group two showed up the next round, and finally the ogres showed up in the third round - emerging from behind the shrine.

I thought my PCs would flee when the ogres hit the table, because I was using a bunch of the Reaper Hookhill ogres - those things are the size of buses!

They did not flee.

Two front-line warriors went down and it was touch and go, but the party pulled it off.

Great combat!

I think allowing the PCs to make a dent in the orcs in separate waves was probably the difference.

 

[Reynard]

Orcs hit hard but go down easy. Let the PCs know what's up and let them figure out what to do. As others have mentioned, they might try a distraction or other means to whittle the orc force down. Maybe they will come up with a clever ploy or way to parley. Maybe they will rush in and all die.

Those kids of decisions, free of a heavy hand from the DM, are what make playing D&D fun IMO.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Adventurous PCs can always just walk up and knock on the door.

 

[Umbran]

Hi there! I am currently DMing the 5E Essentials Kit adventure Dragon of Icespire Peak for a group of 5 players. In that adventure there is one encounter [SPOILER WARNING] called Shrine of Savras in which the group encounters "4 orcs per characters plus 3 ogres", if they are level 4 or level 5. So for my 5-player group, that would be 20 orcs. Furthermore, unless the players attack at night (which isn't an obvious strategy, because several of them don't have darkvision), the encounter says that there is no way for the group to approach without raising an alarm from the guard orc on the tower and encountering all those orcs and ogres at once. Even if the characters sneak in unseen, all the orcs and ogres except for one guard are in the same location, so there is no easy way to fight them separately.

So, I just played through that scene a little while ago. I think we were level three or four, and there were only three PCs.

So, yes, if the PCs just walk in in broad daylight, they are in trouble. They have to be smart. Luckily, we were smart...

Note that orc darkvision is only 60 feet. The orc in the tower can't see very far at night - certainly not to the far corner of the building! If we designate the watchtower as the SW corner, we came in, under cover of darkness, to the NE tower. There was some risk to this, as one of us didn't have darkvision, but they managed to make a stealth check to be quiet while led by another character who could see.

We then quietly sat at that corner several hours, until dawn, when our non-darkvision character could see, and attacked the unspuspecting orcs while most of them were asleep. I guess our GM thought the idea that all the orcs would be inside the building all the time was silly (because, really, it is - orcs in a camp move around) or too deadly (which it might have been, I dunno). So, some were sleeping around little fires outside scattered around the compound. This allowed us to take the first gorup by surprise, and quickly dispatch them before any others could come along.

We then created a distraction using a wand of pyrotechnics from a previous encounter, directing most of the orcs to the southeast corner, as we moved to the northwest, now with the building blocking the watchtower orc's view of us. We met one ogre in that corner, beat him down, and moved inside the building, and so on.

So, misdirection and constant motion. so we were never dealing with them all at once, were key. Walking up in their faces would not have been a good idea.

 

[Eltab]

Haven't played this either, but my group is slowly learning tactics.

Find a way to create a choke point. Sure there's 20 of them, but if that big Ogre gets there first, you only have to fight ONE (at a time). Until some Orc in the back remembers their bow and arrows...