Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Azrah 11-13-06, 03:40 PM	Hey All, My party is in a situation that I'm not real sure how to approach. Maybe one of you has a good suggestion or a clever idea on how to handle. We need to infiltrate a town where our presence would most likely be immediately noticed. There are regular townpeople, but there are not too many visitors and the visitors that do come are regulars, so they're known. We need to sabotage their mining operation (along with some other tasks) and still manage to come out alive. The suggestion was brought up to do our normal routine, which is to hide within a caravan of merchants while they enter town, but this seems way too risky for the amount of suspicion that we'll be faced with. There's also a witch whom I'm pretty sure is well aware of our general whereabouts, lessening our chances of our conventional "sneaking in under a tarp in a cart" routine. It's a pretty open town, with no gates or fences or the like, but it is rather busy. And from everything we have to do, we'll need to move around quite a bit. Aside from me (a rogue), I don't see a whole lot of options to enter aside from marching right up the road to town. Ugh, I'm at a loss... We've got 5 members in our party - a rogue/monk, a fighter, a barbarian, a ranger, and a wizard - all at the fourth level. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks :)
Romtos 11-13-06, 03:52 PM	Work in the mine for a while. And take your time to finish the 'tasks'. Let the wizard fix you an alibi by magic, so you're not suspected. Finish the job by blowing the mine up with a yadda-zillion explosives.:)
mudbunny 11-13-06, 03:52 PM	Possibilty for the Ranger: I am working for (Insert local authority) looking for rumors about (insert something here). Does anyone know anything?? Possibility for Monk/rogue: Strip down to monks habits and wander into town. "I am (insert name), wandering the countryside, looking for the killers of my master... Barbarian: Do you have somewhere I can get a drink? The (food animal) I was tracking has been moving pretty fast. Before I continue, I need a drink. Wizard: Excuse me kind sir, do you know where I would be able to find (insert spell component here, ideally one that is found commonly in herb gardens)? Fighter: Excuse me, I was wondering, do you have a blacksmith in town? My sword needs to have a nick taken out of it... Simply tailor the request so that it fits something near the mine...
CriminalTruth 11-13-06, 06:31 PM	alter self is an amazing spell..... disquise is an amazing skill... Find out who the regular visitors are and their mannerisim's when they will be outta town.. whoala...
DarkNick 11-13-06, 07:53 PM	Well, they don't know what you're there for do they? Do you care if they know who does it in the end? Just turn up in town and camp out at their inn, in the guise of adventurers taking a break. Sometimes the best way to go undercover is to not go undercover. You don't have to fake anything. Romtos has a good idea, see if you can get work in the mine (though 4th leel adventurers probably look too welthy to bother with simple mining). Mudbunny had some good ideas too.
Clockwork_Apparition 11-14-06, 02:24 AM	You could always find a group of local monsters to provoke into a fight with the town. Unless the town is fairly large, an incursion of goblins will likely avert attention and provide an alibi for your being there. This is kinda brutal and risky, but I'll take a step out on a limb and guess you're not a good or safe-playing party. You could, alternately, go on a psychotic rampage by attempting to kill as many people on the outskirts of the wall-less town as possible, poisoning their water supplies, or sabotaging their supplies or foodstuffs. Like I said, brutal, risky, but ultimately effective and disturbingly rewarding if pulled off. Pardon, I have to go wash the scum off of me.
Azrah 11-14-06, 08:26 AM	Haha, these are some great ideas - especially poisoning the water supply :) Apparently, this mining town has slaves brought in who are drugged. This drug makes them very docile. We caught a shipment coming up the river to the town. So the idea of tainting the guard's food/water supply came up... I don't think any of us would be able to wander in and make up a story - like I said, there's the witch and I don't know how much she knows or who she's told... the whole town may be on alert. I was thining about just performing guerilla-style night raids on the camp. This way, we'd never have to actually disguise ourselves and could inflict a large amount of damage without ever having to show ourselves. I had thought about working in the mine, disguising myself as a slave, but it occured to me that I wouldn't have any of my gear (and most likely they wouldn't buy the bit about a halfling slave, most of their slaves are orcs or half-orcs). I realized I was a little vague when I said "other tasks", so I'll kinda list the stuff we've got to do: Kill the witch! Destroy the mining operation Free the slaves Find booty! And, along with this stuff, we've got to get past a big guardtower/watchtower, find the contact inside who set one of the slaves free (a current NPC in our party), and find the cache of drugs and destroy it. Excellent feedback all! Keep it comin'! Thanks a lot everyone :)
PHGraves 11-14-06, 08:34 AM	Why go into town at all? You have a Ranger, live off the land. Go in under cover of darkness and kill the witch. If you have time that night, rig a distraction for the mine guards (killing is a distraction, btw), sneak in, and destroy the mine (this bit helps if you have someone with Knowledge(mining) or a Dwarf). If the town is flammable, this could be an easy distraction.
Azrah 11-14-06, 10:15 AM	Why go into town at all? You have a Ranger, live off the land. Go in under cover of darkness and kill the witch. If you have time that night, rig a distraction for the mine guards (killing is a distraction, btw), sneak in, and destroy the mine (this bit helps if you have someone with Knowledge(mining) or a Dwarf). If the town is flammable, this could be an easy distraction. Now that's along the lines of what I was thinking, but the only catch is that we're pretty interested in finding this "inside man" who released this ex-slave that's with us. Although not pertenant, it may prove useful. If there's nothing better, I may advocate this option. I have absolutely no problem sneaking in there and killing off guards one-by-one and getting to the drug cache while the others are blowing up the mining ops. Btw, it's not a mine in the traditional sense of the term, it's more strip-mining; blasting water at the side of a mountain and having the muddy debris wash into sluice (sp?) boxes. This means that there aren't any dungeon-like areas - it's all in the open, above ground. Also, all of the buildings are made of wood and are on stilts; apparently, this area used to be on a flood plain. Burn it down is what I say...
Thubby 11-15-06, 11:50 PM	get the (3?) stealth characters, go do what you need to do, using hide/ move silent, leave the others as backup, or a distraction, nothing draws attention like a raging barbarian bar fight.
Clockwork_Apparition 11-16-06, 12:11 AM	Here's another idea: Replace the "docile drug" with some substace that makes the slaves fly into a rampage (preferably on a incubation period type system). That would be both a distraction and a method of sabotaging the mines. Still think you oughta slit some slaver throats, though. :evillaugh
Kitaki 11-16-06, 12:57 PM	Fire spells/flaming arrows/rampaging barbarian = damn good distraction. All the while you (the rogue/monk) and the fighter slip in/kill remaining guards on the other side of town, kill the witch, get out, wait a few days, then proceed with whatever plan you can come up with at the time. No witch to tell the guards about you + less guards due to distraction/witch murder = alot less problem.
Genetic 11-16-06, 01:19 PM	On the subject of the guard tower, there are a few methods of getting past it. You could try color spray on the guards and run past, disguise self, or other similar things. There's also the lovely idea of poisoning a drink or food that's supposed to be eaten by the higher-ups of the mining operation with knockout poison (I think it's drow poison but I don't have the DMG on me at this moment...). Once they're unconcious you can walk in, take their stuff, and either coup de grace them or take them prisoner. Hope some of my rather... odd suggestions help!