# Goals of PC's caught in a siege?



## Jack99 (May 2, 2010)

In my campaign, the hometown/base of operations of my players is about to be attacked by a small horde of orcs. One of the main BBEG's, a disciple of Asmodeus has duped the orcs clans into allying with the purpose of sacking Fallcrest. The disciple needs unrestricted access to the town and castle in order to gain possession of an artifact.

Now, the question is, how to run this siege/war.

So far, in past campaigns, I have tried a couple of different approaches:

1) Using One Bad Egg's Hardboiled Armies, I created army units and the players ran a war on a big scale, controlling units of several thousand soldiers, maneuvering on the battlefield.

2) During the siege of a fey town attacked by trolls, goblins and other fey menaces, the PC's got key targets (opposing army's leaders) which they took out one by one, while sneaking around behind enemy lines.

3) During yet another siege, the PC's were just there - meaning that they participated in a lot of different skirmishes, but without any specific goal other than whichever the PC's came up with themselves.

So, I was wondering what other cool ways there are to run the siege of a town/castle?

I play 4e, but a skill challenge is not an option for this one.

Thanks in advance.


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## Mouseferatu (May 2, 2010)

A combination of 2 and 3 works best. Give the PCs some specific offensive objectives (take out certain enemy leaders/weapons), some specific defensive objectives (deal with the sappers the defenders have detected coming under the east wall, guard the general from assassination), and some "right place, right time" events (rescue the injured from a burning church/hospital, fill in the gap where the orcs just broke through the postern and slaughtered the guard).

Honestly, while I tried to capture some of this myself in "The Temple Between" (Scales of War adventure), the single most perfect example of this sort of thing is the one that I got my own inspiration from: the 3E adventure _The Red Hand of Doom_. The siege section of that adventure is the best I've ever seen for any modern incarnation of D&D, and should, IMO, serve as the model for all to come.


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## Jack99 (May 2, 2010)

Mouseferatu said:


> A combination of 2 and 3 works best. Give the PCs some specific offensive objectives (take out certain enemy leaders/weapons), some specific defensive objectives (deal with the sappers the defenders have detected coming under the east wall, guard the general from assassination), and some "right place, right time" events (rescue the injured from a burning church/hospital, fill in the gap where the orcs just broke through the postern and slaughtered the guard).
> 
> Honestly, while I tried to capture some of this myself in "The Temple Between" (Scales of War adventure), the single most perfect example of this sort of thing is the one that I got my own inspiration from: the 3E adventure _The Red Hand of Doom_. The siege section of that adventure is the best I've ever seen for any modern incarnation of D&D, and should, IMO, serve as the model for all to come.




I agree with you, on all counts and would have tossed you some xp if I could. 

I like both The Temple Between and Red Hand of Doom. In fact, one of the sieges I made in my last campaign was structured much like the one in Red Hand of Doom (I assume you mean the siege of Brindol), which is probably why I am seeking advice here on ENworld - I would like (if possible) for this siege to play differently than the previous sieges my players have experienced.


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## Phaezen (May 2, 2010)

It might help to think of the siege as a dynamic dungeon.  Each encounter within the siege environment can equate to a room or a grouping of rooms within the dungeon.

Take a map of the town and identify encounter areas within and outside the walls of the besieged town, as well as routes between the areas, with travel times.

Stealing a bit from Ari, the party can be given objectives, both defensive and offensive, set up as minor and major quests within the siege.  Each area should have at least one minor quest.  Major quests can be split between the encounters, to add a sense of urgency as the party will have to move between encounter areas to complete vital missions.  Also build in time constraints to some of the quests or the give the party choices of 2 or more quests with the rider they only have time to successfully complete a small number.  Allow for degrees of success and failure in the quests

Make the character make decisions at key points in completing each quest, if they have made a minor success in one area, have a message come through about a new danger in another.  Consider letting players know about overall progress in the defence of the town, or give the the option to return to a command centre to find out.

Each successful or failed quest should change adjacent areas within the town, opening up travel routes if an assault is successfully repelled, or closing them if not, reinforcing defenders in key areas, or depleting resources.

More to follow...


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## the Jester (May 2, 2010)

Well, I ran a siege a while back that worked really well- I set up two sections on the battlemat: one had a rough map of the town at a "unit" scale, where  1 mini was a unit of soldiers, and one had the wall at miniature scale. The pcs had to divide themselves- some worked artillery and catapults on the city-scale map, while the others (with a bunch of minion npcs) had to fight off minions scaling the walls. 

The unit scale guys had to fend off siege towers and enemy ballistae, then an attack on the gates by ram-wielding ogres. If a tower reaches the walls, things get far worse for the wall team, who are repelling minion after minion, and then eventually a crack team of non-minion bad guys.

It was, quite frankly, really awesome.


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## NewJeffCT (May 2, 2010)

Phaezen said:


> It might help to think of the siege as a dynamic dungeon.  Each encounter within the siege environment can equate to a room or a grouping of rooms within the dungeon.
> 
> Take a map of the town and identify encounter areas within and outside the walls of the besieged town, as well as routes between the areas, with travel times.
> 
> ...




I would agree with these ideas - a lot of good stuff here.  I would make sure that the goals are clearly defined for each success & failure, though.  Maybe not always for the players, but for you the DM.


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## David Howery (May 2, 2010)

I ran a couple of siege scenarios back in the day, and what the PCs can do kinda depends on what levels they are.  I ran a full bore city siege scenario when they were only 2nd level, and they were hiding from the giant flaming balls of pitch the enemy catapults tossed over just as much as the 0-level nobodies.  When they were higher up (6th level or so), I ran a smaller siege scenario based on Rorke's Drift (I even copied the historical map almost exactly), with the PCs and a handful of elite infantry stuck in a crumbling fort surrounded by several thousand goblins...


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## haakon1 (May 3, 2010)

*Scale?*



David Howery said:


> I ran a smaller siege scenario based on Rorke's Drift (I even copied the historical map almost exactly), with the PCs and a handful of elite infantry stuck in a crumbling fort surrounded by several thousand goblins...





Yeah, the smaller scale siege, where you can play out all the NPC's on both sides is what I've done.

But it won't work well much beyond a company-sized (100-150 per side) engagement, I'd think.

The Rourke's Drift scenario, where a company is defending and thousands are attacking, would be interesting to try though . . . 

You could do something like this with a larger settlement if you assume most of the civilians are cowering in the central fortress, so they don't contribute to the fight and aren't threatened unless the PC's and friends lose.


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## David Howery (May 3, 2010)

haakon1 said:


> Yeah, the smaller scale siege, where you can play out all the NPC's on both sides is what I've done.
> 
> But it won't work well much beyond a company-sized (100-150 per side) engagement, I'd think.
> 
> ...




My game was back in 2E days, and I was trying out the 2E Battlesystem rules (a vast improvement over that godawful clunky 1E edition).  From what I remember, it was a hell of an exciting time in the PCs' lives... except for the thief, who didn't have much to do.  So after a hole appeared in the enemy lines, they sent him out to get help from the nearest friendly garrison.  He had a rough time of it, dodging wolfriders and the like... and then he picked the wrong way to run and almost ran smack into another force of goblins coming to help out the first bunch back at the fort.  So, he was pretty much forced to run all the way back to the fort and sit in there as the reinforced goblin army besieged them for days.  IIRC, the game ended with the players just barely squeaking out a win, down to their last unit (and hp), forted up in the last redoubt, and broke the morale of the last few goblin units trying to break in...


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## havard (May 3, 2010)

How about using the siege as a backdrop for different story? Say the PCs have to find a lost artifact or rescue a princess in the middle of the siege. This works best if the castle under siege is falling and the PCs will have to deal with invading forces while trying to accomplish their goals. Even more dramatic if they have enemies on both sides of the battle, perhaps an evil prince is trying to get away with the princess or the corrupt high priest trying to steal the artifact that the PCs are looking for? 

Havard


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## Jack99 (May 4, 2010)

Thanks all for the feedback. Some great ideas. I think I will be making it a dynamic dungeon if I can. I think it sounds like a great approach.



havard said:


> How about using the siege as a backdrop for different story? Say the PCs have to find a lost artifact or rescue a princess in the middle of the siege. This works best if the castle under siege is falling and the PCs will have to deal with invading forces while trying to accomplish their goals. Even more dramatic if they have enemies on both sides of the battle, perhaps an evil prince is trying to get away with the princess or the corrupt high priest trying to steal the artifact that the PCs are looking for?
> 
> Havard




Already part of the plan. With the orc horde outside, the evil guys behind the scene will try to frame the Lord Warden by using shapeshifters to impersonate him and commit murders. Whether the PC's manage to solve this will make a huge impact on the siege.


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## Silverblade The Ench (May 4, 2010)

Read David Gemmell's "Legend" for some great ideas and feel for heroic seiges!


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## haakon1 (May 7, 2010)

David Howery said:


> My game was back in 2E days, and I was trying out the 2E Battlesystem rules (a vast improvement over that godawful clunky 1E edition).  From what I remember, it was a hell of an exciting time in the PCs' lives...




Sieges can be super fun.  But I was talking about fighting out the entire battle under normal D&D rules.  It actually works -- and is very fun -- to use real D&D rules and a lot of dice, up to about company size, instead of switching to abstract "battle rules".


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## Phaezen (May 7, 2010)

I have been considering the idea of some kind of siege counter.

Take a scale from 0 to 100 with the counter starting at 50.  Each quest success or failure moves the counter up or down the scale depending on the nature of the quest and degree of success or failure.  Also add a timer, say for every hour of in game time the counter moves up 1.

Tie events to the scale, for example of the counter hits 60 a fire breaks out in an encounter area or the gates are assaulted.

If the counter hits 100 to town/city falls, if it hits 0 the siege is lifted.

Also add timeline events, so after 1 day the sieging army manages to get catapults into place.


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## David Howery (May 7, 2010)

haakon1 said:


> Sieges can be super fun.  But I was talking about fighting out the entire battle under normal D&D rules.  It actually works -- and is very fun -- to use real D&D rules and a lot of dice, up to about company size, instead of switching to abstract "battle rules".




well, the 'Rorke's Drift' scenario I ran wouldn't work for that, what with 200 defenders and 4000 goblins/worgs on the attack.  I did run a city siege scenario once, although the PCs were just 2nd level nobodies and not in charge of the defense... I had the PCs doing a bunch of things like serving as a 'fire brigade', where they ran around to threatened parts of the outer walls and fighting off the besiegers who got a foothold there... and probably the most intense skirmish was underground, where the besiegers were digging tunnels, and the defenders dug counter-mines, and battles were fought in the tunnels... that was all standard D&D rules, no Battlesystem there...


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## haakon1 (May 8, 2010)

Phaezen said:


> If the counter hits 100 to town/city falls, if it hits 0 the siege is lifted.




Interesting.

Random thought: a siege could make a pretty good Adventure Path, and this sort of mechanic might tie it together.


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## darjr (May 8, 2010)

In one of Glen Cooks black company books a portion of the Black Company get stuck inside a walled city under siege. One they just won over through their own siege.

Anyway they think the Captain is dead so a struggle for control over the remnants of the company commences within the walls, a deadly struggle, with one side revealing that they are part of an ancient evil cult.

The 'heroes' take over a tall building and begin to build onto it like a boat.... because they know the city will be flooded, and it is, 6 foot depth, maybe?

Their building remains mostly dry, and then they find their way into the sub basement and the dungeons below the city.

After a short dungeon crawl they find that they lead to several parts of the city, including the palace that the other faction took over. They sneak in and try to take over the palace and eliminate the other faction.

I won't spoil it anymore, but I want to put players in that situation, I want to have a character in that situation.


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## broghammerj (May 8, 2010)

I believe it was 2E box set dragon mountain....has multiple quests you have to overcome to make the mountain appear in order to get to the dragon.  One of them involved defending a town against and invading kobold hoard.  Something like 300-400 kobolds.  Kobolds are nice because they can get mowed down easily due to low HP and are relatively simple to track deaths.  The interesting thing is they were equipped with wizards who had wands of fireball, MM, etc.

The DM ran it using standard rules and kept rough estimates of casualties.  There are a few townspeople who could help fight (maybe 20 or so).  We had a blast.

I will tell you the most fun we had however, was with the time used to prepare for the battle.  I believe it was close to a day so the wizard could re-memorize spells etc.  We were casting wall of thorns, stone shape, building oil pits, etc.  Planning was half the fun.  There were good "defensible building", fall back points, rally points, and escape plans.

If you are playing 4E that may be harder to pull off as there aren't more permanent battlefield alterations you can make.  My advice:

1, Lots of low level easily killable minions which are a challenge due to shear volume.
2. Some sort of strategic planning for defense.
3. Be free flowing in execution and not so encounter structured as some have recommended.  If the orcs break down the draw bridge than so be it, but if the PCs find a way to keep it intact than roll with it.


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## Shemeska (May 8, 2010)

I've only run a seige once in a campaign, and it wasn't exactly a typical scenario since it was a 4 way seige of Vecna's former divine domain of Cavitius in the middle of the Quasi-elemental Plane of Ash. On the inside were various undead servitors of Vecna left behind when he was pulled into Ravenloft years prior, and one of the splinter sects of the Doomguard (the one who believed the universe was falling into entropy too quickly). At the very center of the domain, in Citadel Cavitius itself were a cabal of liches and demiliches known as the Circle of the Bonetappers who were largely responsible (along with Vecna's slowly waning wards) for the fact that the walls were still standing.

On the outside were two of the other (tenuously allied) former Doomguard splinter sects (and one of the Ships of Chaos...), a massive yugoloth army being led by an avatar of the Oinoloth, and on the horizon quickly approaching was a massive army of wandering undead (normally hungry and aimless on the plane, but all of the sudden controlled by someone or something and moving with a purpose - in this case controlled by the baernaloth Sarkithel fek Parthis the Flesh Sculptor).

The PCs had to sneak inside and find a particular MacGuffin before the wards and walls were breached, and ended up having to avoid falling afoul of some of the less inclined to bargain undead, plus having to convince both a former Greater Doomlord of the Doomguard not to just throw them back over the walls, and then dealing with a trio of demiliches (one of whom was a chosen or former chosen of Vecna himself).

Was fun when they were inside Citadel Cavitius itself, bargaining with one of the liches and the main exterior door started to buckle as if someone was just physically trying to break it down (the Oinoloth versus Vecna's old wards).

Took about five sessions to finish that out, nearly a TPK at one point, but was a damn fun scenario to run with the ongoing seige and the forced time constraints on their goals inside.


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## nedjer (May 8, 2010)

David Howery said:


> and probably the most intense skirmish was underground, where the besiegers were digging tunnels, and the defenders dug counter-mines, and battles were fought in the tunnels... that was all standard D&D rules, no Battlesystem there...




Tried something similar based on the Battle of Messines. It was a riot with PCs showing a pretty shocking willingness to try to make and use their own chemical weapons when the enemy started pouring 'sulphurous fumes' into the rat-runs. Tried a 'wooden horse' in the middle of it but they were having none of it.


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## ruemere (May 9, 2010)

It is hard to propose ideal solution not knowing party level (after all depending on character abilities, they may singlepartedly wipe out crucial opponents or... get wiped out in a random skirmish).

However, if possible try to underline personal aspect of the event - if they have any friends, relatives or business associates, they may get treated to goodbyes, farewell suppers, rousing oratories.

Also, field hospitals make for a great way to setting mood - scores of wounded, buzzing flies, overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. If you use it, PCs should be strongly motivated to bring the siege to an end.

Regards,
Ruemere


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## Allegro (May 10, 2010)

One aspect about a siege is there is always too much to do.  Consider Gandalf at Pelennor Fields, he turned the Witch King back from the gates but then had to choose between letting the Witch King continue his mischief or saving Faramir.  An example of this could be:


Resupply archers who have run short of arrows
If not undertaken a couple archer battalions will be destroyed
 
A traitor and his personal guards are on the loose somewhere within the keep
If not undertaken, a side gate will be opened to the enemy
 
Siege ladders are approaching the North wall
If not undertaken the companies of soldiers on the north wall will be destroyed
 
The head cleric cannot be woken from his slumber; a mysterious yellow shroud has been placed over him.  After investigating, she is trapped in some kind of dream word and any PC putting on the shroud might be able to save her
If undertaken and successful, 25% of destroyed battalions are healed and reconstituted into a new battalion to continue the fight.
 
The soldiers at the dyke have failed to release the waters.
If the waters were released a significant number of enemy might drown
 
      Soldiers are throwing down their weapons and fleeing the eastern wall; if the PCs investigate they will notice the attackers are lighting fires under strange green idols
The PCs could bolster the moral of the soldiers or try to destroy the idols
 
    Some soldiers on the walls are drunk; a merchant is selling liquor to bolster nerves to make a quick profit.
    If the PCs don’t investigate the effectiveness of the soldiers will decrease

        Now if the PCs undertake the dyke quest, this has a significant potential payoff but it also precludes the PCs from undertaking some of the relatively easier quests like resupplying the archers. If the party splits up, let the PCs not playing in a particular region take over a NPC soldier for the area.


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## Raven Crowking (May 10, 2010)

The primary goals of a besieged force are (1) ensuring a clean supply of food and water, (2) keeping the enemy outside, (3) dealing with disease vectors, (4) morale, (5) sorties against the besieging troops, and (6) ensuring enough food and water for the upcoming winter.

In general, sieges are a seasonal activity.  Neither side can actually afford to avoid planting or harvesting, so they occur in the summer months.  Because the enemy troops can despoil fields, the beseiged have a strong reason to sue for terms (if they believe such to be possible).  Even in a D&D world, it is unlikely that magic can supply all the food and water needed to sustain a population through the winter months.

I would break the seige down into several interesting events, and then run those events.  The degree of success (or failure) the PCs have in dealing with those events influences the overall outcome of the seige.  Events could include (for example):

1.  Beseiging force tries to poison water supply.

2.  Sappers dig under town wall, creating a gap.

3.  Outbreak of disease.

4.  Sortie to destroy seige towers, catapults, etc., being built, before they can be brought to bear on the walls.

5.  Attempt to sow disease/magical contagion among besiegers.

etc.

The PCs could also (depending upon their fame/reputation) be asked to help parlay terms to end the seige.  Even orcs want something, and sitting outside the walls day after day, week after week, is boring.


RC


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