Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Taketheleap 04-05-08, 06:50 PM	Sorry In advance if this topic has already been hit, I did a quick scan and didn't see anything. Background info: My Pc's Are heading to a dark and scary castle in an open field. It's in a very remote area and It's Very old. They are going there because they've heard rumors that this castle is magical and has a library that documents every secret ever told anywhere. To make a long story short, I want this Castle to be haunted. There will be no fights up until the library, just traps. When they find out what they went to find out, the Big bad guy sends an entire army to the castle to destroy them. The army will be approaching from all sides, no escape type of situation. The Spirits of the Company that inhabited the castle will rise up and mistake the PC's for their old commanders. The PCs will have a few hours to prepare the castle to the oncoming army and hold out for a day or so, until the Big Bad Guy lays waste to the entire area in a big scary show of power. What I need is a way to lay this out rules-wise. So far I was thinking, I have multiple Battle mats so I was going to put the inside of hte castle on one, in case any enemies get to the castle. Then on the other mat I would Do a 1,000ft = 1 square scale and show the army approaching from afar, allowing the players to maneuver siege weapons (by commanding their ghostly soldiers) and try to keep as much of the army away from the Castle. Simply put, I'm having a hard time working out a system (if you will) to make this smooth. I need to figure out how I regulate the flow of Bad guys to the castle, what kind of areas the siege weapons target and so on. This session is in 3 days, so I'm sure I can pull it together by then, but any ideas will help greatly. Thanks - Leap
Slider33 04-05-08, 07:47 PM	I ran a siege battle one time, where the PC's had to defend. I essentially rolled randomly to see which one of the group got attacked each round. Also, I sort of treated the enemy that was besieging as a "swarm" monster. You might be able to throw together some rules for a type of swarm monster. It's pretty easy to hit a giant mob of creatures all crammed into spaces, so the mob swarm AC is relatively low, unless they are a special unit that's very heavily armored. So, maybe have multiple "blobs" of enemies, each swarm has certain stats and abilities. Some use ranged weapons, some do damage to the door, etc. etc. When one of the swarm blobs get reduced down to 0 HP, maybe single creatures rout or disperse, or all die essentially. These "swarms" would be weak against certain attacks, like boiling oil, or grenade/splash damage weapons. Also spells. Have "boss" creatures that are individual NPC's, especially enemy spellcasters if you choose to use them. So, instead of having each and every monster on the field, treat them as swarms, that approach worked for me, however it was a long time ago, and I don't recall the stats I used. You can get creative. It was one of the most successful sessions I've DM'd, I think my players loved it at the time.
Taketheleap 04-05-08, 07:53 PM	Awesome, Thanks. I was planning on making each Miniature I put on the 1000ft. = 1square Mat, and have each one basically be a unit of 100 enemies or so. Kinda like a zoomed out Play field. I've decided to use the hexagon for the one thats zoomed out. Anyone got any creative ideas for unique Siege weapons? And also, during the "war", anyone got ideas for how long it should take for communication to travel from the castle HQ to the outlying siege weapons?
StevenO 04-05-08, 10:53 PM	This sounds like the sort of situation you'd read about in the Heros of Battle supplement. From that book the general advice is to break you big battle into a few smaller engagements and use how the PCs do in those to judge the final outcome. I will not go into detail but everything gives the players so many points towards final victory. For this short engagement I see basically four stages of battle. 1. Initial assault. This is the players encounting the coming armies advanced party. You spirits can awaken at this time to back up the PC should they be losing. Possible outcomes here include: Total Victory: PCs destroy/capture advanced party. Victory: PC fight of advanced party with aid. Neutral: PCs survive battle. Enemy scouts report back. Loss: PCs lose allied spirits. 2. Prepare for the storm. In this you ask the players what they will do to prepare for the approaching army and factor that into the final outcome. 3. Main Assault. Players help direct battle against waves of enemies. 4. Sneak Attack. A strong group gets through and threatens to break the siege. The players must deal with this opposition.
Roelandt 04-05-08, 11:19 PM	Heroes of Battle are utterly useless for war scenarios. The writers, insistant that Troop Combat is not part of D&D or d20, chose not to create a system. Oh well. Consider using Warhammer (for deeply complex rules probably not attractive to you or your players as it has a pretty steep learning curve). Or get ahold of the old troop system "Chainmail" the game that D&D was derived from. I found my copy in an old box. You might find it online somewhere. Chainmail is very simple, easy to learn and easily run. Or you can do what Heroes of Battle suggest and just DECIDE how the battle goes while giving the players isolated dungeon-like encounteres where they gain experience and (get this) treasure. This approach is overtly silly...shame on WoTC for suggesting it. I myself created a troop combat system a few decades ago that I use in every game system. It is even more simple than Chainmail. It took me an afternoon to create, and have used it for 20 years to iron out the bugs, of which there were few because it was simple. Each unit has a defense, an attack and a life. Opposing forces roll and add their attack, in order to roll over the defense. The difference of the dice roll is the damage (the number of unit casualties) the target takes. Player characters have a percentage chance of taking damage each time the unit takes damage. Morale, special powers, heroes etc boost either/or attack and defense. Its very fast paced (as opposed to Warhammer which can take many hours to resolve even simple scenarios) and rule LIGHT so as not to hinder roleplaying. If Chainmail is unavailable to you, I suggest creating your own simple system. And only use Heroes of Battle for feats and classes. There Troop Combat system is non-existent, though the cover suggests otherwise. Storme
kelvinaw273 04-06-08, 07:04 AM	This is not so much a siege as an assault; sieges are long, drawn out affairs that can last weeks, months and even years. So things to be examined are: Defensive systems, offensive systems, then the tactics either side will employ. Defensive systems Castles are sophisticated defensive architecture, designed to accommodate a large number of defenders, but able to be defended with just a few. This is in several parts: Walls, Towers, Gates and layered defenses. Towers are the hard points of the defense: they provide a vantage point and heavy cover to fire down on the attackers, while being extremely difficult to damage. Apart from their battlements, towers have numerous loopholes facing in all directions. Towers also contain the majority of the living space, and usually have only one or two means of access. Many of the archers shooting from the loopholes in the towers were actually the women of the castle (they hunted with bows, and so were often very accurate shots) fighting from their rooms. Curtain walls are the largest section of the defense. Walls are thick, but often hollow with narrow passages linking loopholes to shoot through. They were thicker at the base, often with a swelling to the outside - this had a dual purpose: it not only strengthened the wall where it was likely to be attacked, it also allowed rocks dropped from the walls to shatter and spray attackers with sharp fragments. Walls were topped with hourding, a wooden superstructure that began as a simple roof to protect the defenders from plunging fire, but became an enclosed superstructure that overhung the outside of the walls, allowing defenders to shoot at the attackers, drop rocks and boiling oil on them from total cover from all angles. Gates are vital for the castle to function, but are weak points in the defense. Gates are guarded by towers which provide covering fire, and if a gate is breached it becomes a trap: a portcullis could be dropped behind the attackers, they are subject to attack from murder holes in the roof of the entrance tunnel, and once in the courtyard they have in effect entered a killing zone as walls and towers have loopholes both on the outside and the inside. Layered defenses are frequently employed: Outside castle walls vegetation was cut back for at least a bow-shot to deny cover, the walls were surrounded by sharpened stakes, a ditch or a moat to slow down attackers. The original purpose of the moat was to flood tunnels when attempts to undermine the walls were made. The Castle itself had layered defenses in the form of wards and also multiple walls - storming the outer wall merely exposed the attacker to fire from the inner wall. Breaching the courtyard only gave entry to a killing zone, and so on. Castles were sometimes broken into wards, each ward being almost a separate castle. Each section joined to the others via choke-points that restricted access; passages could be held by a single man-at-arms. Offensive Systems Equipment for the attacker would be limited to what he could build on site or bring with him. Large engines like trebuchet and mangonels (catapults to throw rocks) could take days to construct, and were heavy and hard to move. Battering rams were easier to make (just chop a tree down and add ropes), and ladders and ropes could be transported. When confronted with castle walls you have three options: Go under, over or through them. Through Walls: Walls were thick and hard to breach, often the only options were to use battering rams on the sally ports and gates. The former were often rigged to be collapsed in emergencies, and the latter, as we have seen, led to a highly hazardous approach to the heart of the fortification. The best way of getting through a wall was to mine it: soldiers with shields would strive to protect specialist miners who would tunnel into the wall. Once they had made a cavity they would fill it with firewood and pigs' carcases', set it alight and withdraw. In the confined space the carcases would explode, creating a breach (hopefully). Under Walls: Mining was horribly time consuming, but with burrowing monsters may be more amenable to a fantasy campaign. Mining would be used in two ways: either to tunnel directly into the castle or to undermine the foundations of the defenses (tunnel under the foundations, withdraw after setting fire to the pit-props). Two methods defeated a mine: a counter-mine could be dug by the defenders, locating their target by sound, or a moat could raise the water-table ... Over Walls: Siege towers are often portrayed as the best way of getting over the walls, and they were. Problem is they were hard to build, hard to propel (setting up areas of soft ground could delay them as well), were large targets for catapults fired by the defenders and were no guarantee of success. For an army moving fast, ropes and ladders are the tools of choice. Combined assault: The best way, of course, is a combined assault, which is the most likely to be used by an army not expecting stiff resistance as well: an assault on the wall and towers surrounding the gate, while a ram crew tries to breach the gate itself. This will divert the defenders around the gate between two forces - the ones coming over the wall and the ones trying to smash their way through the gate. Weapons - Defender: The defender will have a large number of conscript soldiers - normally commoners, experts and the like as well as a few low-level warriors and aristocrats. These will supplement the men-at-arms (warriors and fighters) who make the core of the defense. Loopholes will be manned by aristocrats and warriors using bows; commoners and experts will be armed largely with crossbows and spears - it doesn't take much skill to shoot a heavy crossbow into a mass of infantry, or drop a rock on a squad of men. The best melee warriors will be concentrated where they are likely to be needed, or even deployed as a mobile reserve to stop breaches in the defenses. At least a few will be on each wall, as it only takes one man to block a parapet while reinforcements are rushed in. Defenders will likely have weapons such as ballistae and mangonels as well to use against large groups of men and enemy siege engines. Weapons - Attacker: The attacker will have a conventionally armed army. They may deploy large numbers of archers and crossbowmen to rake the walls, but their effectiveness is likely to be very limited; the attacker's best tactic is to get in close to melee as fast as they can. Hope this helps! Edit: the best role for the PCs is to act as commanders and mobile reserve, deploying themselves where they are needed most. Decide how the fight is likely to go in each section both with and without PC involvement. They can neutralize enemy mages, break up formations, destroy siege engines and such to turn the tide.
Taketheleap 04-06-08, 01:31 PM	Thanks a lot Guys, All of this has helped a TON. Yesterday I was workin on it and I decided to do a system much like the one presented above. I gave each figure a basic HP, AC, Attack and Speed, and Gave the Few Platoons of Ghosts and Catapults and Ballistas The same kinds of Figures. I love the advancing group approach, and Will be taking that :D . I have Creatures from Half fiend Warriors (the bulk of the army) To a stone Colossus to a Flight of gargoyles. You guys have helped a bunch, Thanks!