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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MaxKaladin" data-source="post: 2884176" data-attributes="member: 1196">Artillery can be used for defense by being used to bombard anyone who tries to attack the defenders.  This is essentially what you see in the old WWI films of people trying to cross no-mans-land with artillery shells bursting everywhere.  Artillery can also be used for area denial.  In other words, you zero your batteries on whatever spot you want to keep people out of and wait for them to try to penetrate it.  Then you give the order to fire and keep shooting until they leave the area or are all dead. For your "commandos", I'd see if I couldn't get the SAS (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Air_Service)" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Air_Service)</a>.  They're among the best in the world, their role includes "Counter Revolutionary Warfare (CRW), Counter Terrorism (CT) and acting as a Quick Reaction Force (QRF)" and they're based less than 100 miles from the hill.  These are extremely dangerous people who ought to be able to take your PCs and reduce them to carrion fairly easily.  If I were your defenders, I'd set up a three layered approach.  First will be outposts on any roads or trails that serve to turn away the general public and warn of anyone who looks "suspicious".  These should be checked up on fairly often so that taking one out will be discovered fairly quickly.  The second layer is a defensive perimiter that features fixed positions in a ring around the hill and the well with a view of the approaches to the perimiter AND which can see up the hill and fire upon anyone who has gotten past it.  These positions should also have a clear view of the positions on either side of them so they can see and respond to an attack on their neighbors.  There should also be patrols making the rounds of these positions to check up on them, to make crossing the spaces between the positions harder and to act as reinforcements in the event of attack.  This should ensure your PCs can't get past the defensive perimiter without raising the alarm unless they can use magic to conceal themselves.  The final layer will be two groups of commandos.  The first will have have set up an ambush that can target anyone who reaches the well.  They should be concealed against normal vision using their conventional means but the illusion mage should create subtle illusions intended to shield the PCs from detection by nightvision and any magical sight they suspect the PCs should have.  The attack magic specialist should also be here dressed as a commando so he won't stand out of the PCs can somehow detect them.  Ideally, when the PCs get there they shouldn't spot the ambush because they're concealed both normally and magically.  When they get into position to cast the spell, they should be cut down by a hail of bullets, grenades, attack spells and so forth.  The second group will be concealed near the tower at the summit (which is where I think the PCs need to go with the water) concealed in the same way.  The weapon mage should be with this group.  They should not be in the building itself (anticipating the old "fireball in the door to take out the defenders" trick).  Rather, they should be watching the entrances.  If there are a lot of potential entrances, pick the most likely one and the most unlikely one and boobytrap the rest with claymores.  I think they're pretty quick to set up and few should be required so they should be possible on short notice.  Note that this should not be the actual entrances (doors, windows) but the approaches so PCs carefully approaching an entrance to check for traps or defenders within will get hammered by a claymore.  If the PCs approach either of the untrapped entrances, they should get ambushed from behind.  If the PCs get in somehow, the two untrapped entrances can be used for the commandos to enter safely to take them from behind.  The reason the building itself is not trapped is so the commandos can safely enter behind the PCs and attack them from behind if they manage to get in.  The reason two entrances are not trapped is so that if the PCs get in one entrance and try to hold the door against the commandos there is a second entrance that can be used to enter and attack them.  In addition to this, I'd post a sniper team in the top of that tower on the hill and, if you have them, in various places outside the perimiter as someone suggested.  The team in the tower should have assault weapons and plenty of grenades so that if the PCs try to barricade themselves in and hold off the rest of the commandos they can just start throwing grenades down to the ground floor and blow up any PCs holding the door.  Another approach is to keep ropes for commandos to climb up if the PCs are holding the door (or the movement mage can carry them up, if possible).  Troops from the tower can then take any PCs holding the doors from behind.  Remember radios can coordinate all this. I'd take the rest of my commandos and create one or more rapid reaction teams.  If the movement mage can move several commandos around, he'll be with a team of commandos he can speed to wherever they're needed and any remaining commandos will be in a second group that will move normally.  Otherwise they're all in one group that can be sent to the site of any attack as reinforcements.  If the movement mage can't take anyone with him, he can be used to move around to scout and carry orders.  In the event of disaster, he can escape to alert his superiors elsewhere so further measures can be taken.If you have access to helicopters, have them patrolling.  Good ones to have would have infrared and spotlights so they can spot anyone moving in the darkness and put a spotlight on them.  The best would be attack helicopters with infrared and chain guns to turn the PCs into hamburger.  While the perimiter is being set up, the illusion guy should set up illusions to cover the snipers in addition to the ambushers.  If he has illusions left, set up phantom patrols for the PCs to worry about.  If he's feeling devious, he should cast some illusions designed to conceal people in random spots on likely approaches.  The idea here is to simply slow down and confuse PCs who can sense his illusions by making them waste time worring about an illusion protecting a random spot.  Knowing PCs, they'll invent all sorts of nightmares about these random illusions.  Finally, the spot where the water is to be used should be rigged with explosive charges.  If all else is lost, someone can set off the charges and blast any PCs who make it that far.  Alternately, they could have a plan to take the SAS into Avalon with them to pursue and kill the PCs.  That ought to challenge your PCs. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Edit to fix typos.</blockquote>

Verification