So my group of players who are working their way through Rappan Athuk are about 2-3 sessions from a mass combat battle at their precious castle they've been working on throughout the campaign. Did I mention how much of this campaign has turned into a homebrew hodge-podge? Anyways, I need to work up a system for the likely castle siege that is coming. I do have access to the Strongholds & Followers book released by the Matt Coleville group, so I will be borrowing a lot from that as well as we dive in.
So the first order of business is to give my players, who are all 9th level at this point, some followers and troops that have come in support of their cause and claim to the area here west of the Forest of Hope. The Strongholds & Followers book provides a handy table specific to each class. I may skim or filter this a bit to allow for each of my players to get actual troops where some of the results are merchant and adviser type persons. Based on the amount of money and they have spent upgrading this castle through the campaign I've been tracking the progress, so I'm going to allow each of them 3 rolls on the table. That should give them a fairly healthy roster on top of the 10 guards and captain from Zelkor's Ferry, plus any of the town's citizens get pressed into service of defense of the castle as well.
Now how should we run the lead up to the actual battle itself? I'm thinking it will take the elvish warships roughly a week to sail down the river channel towards the area surrounding the keep. Once the players resolve some in town encounters and roleplay recruiting local allies to their cause, they should have some time to prep the castle and / or harass those who seek to unseat their rule. To that end, I am going to setup a victory point tally based on the actions, wins and losses incurred during the entirety of the conflict here.
This is a rough draft, but let us see what that looks like:
- Base Castle >> 5 points
- Castle upgrade 1 >> 5 points
- Castle upgrade 2 >> 5 points
- Castle upgrade 3 >> 10 points
- Scouting the enemy forces >> 5 points
- Disrupt the enemy supplies and camps >> 5 points for each successful attempt
- Additional defenses and planning added to the castle >> 3 points
- Player forces winning a stage of the battle >> 10 points each (planning 3 of these in total)
- Player characters winning a set piece encounter >> 15 points each (planning 3 of these in total)
The player forces are mostly covered in the Stronghold and Followers book, providing base line stats which I will have to draw for the group and the enemy forces. I'm thinking this will be an encounter running parallel to the characters encounters.
So what gives the characters victory? I'm going to say they need to get to 100 points during the week leading up to and battle itself. They will start with 25 points based on what they spent and upgraded to the castle so far. Not getting to 100 points will not spell defeat, but that would mean a margin of success with conditions. That could include damage to the castle, loss of life to the soldiers, followers and citizens being harbored within the castle. I expect my players to win out, but I want it to feel close, bloody and dangerous. That being said I need to work on what I plan for the set piece encounters for the group....with back to back encounters this could be dicey for them, but that is the fun of it. I'll make another post once we've cleared this part of the campaign and report back on what worked and didn't. For now the players seem excited and I've let them start to meta plan what they hope to do leading up to it.
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