I dont want to offend someone with my question but reality is cruel and the game is cruel too.
We play a modified RotRL AP and the BBEG wants to kill as many as possible commoners to feed the runewell.
Scenario: The mayor of a town is speaking to the townsmen on the market square. The BBEG arrives, interrupts the mayor and speaks to the townsmen. Then without warning as many as possible townsmen (>300) die in a maximum of three combat rounds.
The BBEG is a 9th Sorc with minions (some dominated or charmed people, some mad supporter .. commoner or rogues) one week to prepare this attack and a budget of 100.000 gold.
For this scenario i need some ideas. The attack should be a very dramatic scene including spells and mundane terror like bombs. It will be the introduction to a "mythic variant" of RotRL (see Mythic Playtest for mythic informations). What spells, abilities etc. can or should i use by RAW? I dont want to use "GM power" .. the PCs should have the possibility to save some townsmen by countering parts of the attack.
At the end we will have a happy ending with a divine intervention.
Uh, Cloudkill. Fin.
Edit: Crap, one level short. Scroll of Cloudkill, then.
Gonna be honest the deus ex machina you imply at the end would annoy the crap out of me. You want to play gritty then play gritty, but regardless of style having something swoop in to save the day for the PCs would feel like a slap in the face.
No no .. the PC will save the day.
or walls of stone raise up first round to block exits, fence them all in while some aoe kills them. make the top of the walls have sharp spikes pointed inwards to stop people from climbing over.
A Regular Rod of Widen is 54,000 and with one casting of Dragon's Breath, you can do a 60' cone of fire, cold or acid. If you are using a Draconic Sorcerer, the damage would be 9d6+9, which should kill most commoners in one hit. The Stone Call is a better idea, because it creates difficult terrain, so it would make it harder for the villagers to escape.
And the only person you have to answer to is your players, don't be concerned about the opinions of people on this board. Do whatever your group likes, because it is them you spend time with, not us.
Deus ex machina can get pretty old very soon.
It sounds like the sorcerer is being cruel as a means of provoking the PCs?
With 100,000gp, just have him hire a local orc/hobgoblin/bugbear etc. tribe to swoop in and slaughter villagers en masse, torching huts and buildings, churning up fields with the stomping feet of horses, dire wolves, or other mounts - this is far, far deadlier and harder to recover from than any spell available to a 9th level caster.
Plus, the marauders will still be around for "round 2", rather than simply dissipating like a cloud of some kind.
Or - maybe better, since he seems like the enchanter-type - let him cast a few widened confusion spells, so that the commoners are killing each other. See how the PCs handle that! This will keep them busy, while the sorcerer flies overhead laughing at and taunting them, casting still more spells to burn buildings and so on.
Killing commoners is pretty easy. You don't need 100,000 gp to even come close to killing only 300. You can take out multiple cities for less than that (scrolls of Earthquake, Tsunami, Gate, etc.).
But if you want it to be something the party can do something about, give the BBEG a Necklace of Fireballs and have her give a bead off it to each of her minions, some of whom throw on the first round and some who hold back looking for pockets of survivors. Then the party members have multiple legitimate targets in addition to the sorceress, who will be casting spells throughout.
well is this the opening scene? I mean are we talking 1st level characters vs, a 9th level sorcerer and minions? or 9th level party vs. sorcerer and minions?
If it's first level characters they are almost as likely to die in a mass killing as the commoners.
Anything that is likely to kill 300 people is going to lay low your PCs.
If it's a fair fight with commoners in the balance, then dispel magic/counterspelling could easily save the day, and a party of 9th level characters vs. a band of bugbears should be pretty easily handled too (web them and kill them later when the civvies clear the line of fire for example)
Silly answer: Have a 7+ Druid buddy cast Spike Stones repeatedly while the BBEG is talking, then cause a panic that causes people to run through them. Alternatively, the sorceror can just use a few scrolls before interrupting. Cast them in alleys, etc, and intersperse a few in the crowd itself. One casting can easily cover 7 streets (you get 7 20' squares per scroll). Each scroll is 700gp.
Once you have all of the exits covered in 1d8 damage per square x 4 squares deep spikes, cast Confusion, Fireball, or, really, ANYTHING AREA and watch as the commoners kill themselves in a stampede.
The party can counter this strategy by use of Wall of Ice or Wall of Stone, Stone Shape, Dispel Magic, Beads of Force, a Bard's Fascinate, Intimidate checks, etc.
The Stonecall thing is probably the most efficient and brutal if you're not just going to buy Cloudkill in scroll form.
However, I think the Confusion sounds the most fun.
I think for the most theatric mass murder, if you position braziers among the area properly, you can use Firefall as a sort of terror bomb. It also blinds the whole crowd, so they couldn't effectively run away. If you Widen that, yeah, that's getting a massive number of people and it's far more terrifying than just getting pelted with stones.
If he can Quicken or get a surprise round, using a Wall of Fire to block the exit(s) or the ring form to trap people (maybe in preparation for another Firefall) would be brutal.
If you want less obvious spells, Obsidian Flow is nasty especially when a good portion of the living crowd will be blind from the Firefall. They'll try to run and just end up slipping on the Obsidian shards.
Yeah, that's probably how I'd do it...
Firefall, 4th level APG. 60' radius emanating from an existing fire source, 5d6 damage (and people catch on fire). That's what ~11,000 commoners, if they are sufficiently packed. If they see the firebearer, identify the threat and eliminate the flame, they save the townsfolk.
Nasty spell. Army killer, that one.
Silly answer: Have a 7+ Druid buddy cast Spike Stones repeatedly while the BBEG is talking, then cause a panic that causes people to run through them.
If you've got a Druid buddy, why not sculpt a Wall of Thorns around the area? That'll kill anyone that ran through and leave them nice and clumped for AoE.
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Deux Ex ? GM fiat ?
Go for it completely and unashamedly.
One of the best tool to rack up an obscene amount of dead commoners is to unleash a mid-to-high level PC party at them.
Have the BBEG's minions/allies be the PCs themselves, but older (and higher level) evil versions.
The evil PCs will use all their abilities to kill commoners but will refrain from killing the PCs, dropping some hints such as "I need you to keep on living" or "we must not alter the timeline".
This should enable the true PCs to stall them somewhat and save a few bystanders while getting a free preview of their future high-level abilities (though on the receiving end).
In the end, your aforementioned divine intervention causes the evil PCs to disappear, leaving the true PCs to ponder the meaning and reality of all this (illusion, time-travel, alternate reality, lucid dream or some other devious idea you cook up) and dealing with a crowd of survivors who are beginning to realize that the PCs look VERY similar to the monsters who just slaughtered their friends and loved ones.
Alchemist fire is pretty deadly to 1st level NPCs. Necklace of Fireball can kill off a number of people and is usable by anyone with one arm.
at about some well placed and camouflaged siege weapons?
depending on your power levels, PC's at low level would stand a better chance stopping some 'cannons' than they would against a sorcerer well above their CR capability.
Some well places web spells, (that will catch up commoners by the half dozen) perhaps a preprepared meeting place that has been soaked with oil, and then boom, incomming slamming balls of cow pukey fired by well place camouflaged seige engines?
This would allow for the POSSIBILITY of a 300 commoner massacre, BUT give PCs a chance to thwart it:
perception checks to notice wet, funny smell ground.
Perception checks to have noticed the camo'd seige weapons
possibly catching a saboteur in the act the night prior to wetting the ground.
The bad guy that tried to pull this off could escape in the chaos and thus be a recurring meany without being so incredibly powerful that he could literally kill the whole town.
This also leaves room for the meany to grow as the PCs grow, rather than being someone the PCs catch up to.
Also I really like the idea of siege engines used for the attack, because there are endless RP interactions.
PC's notice something odd about a new building going up near by, perhaps a few weeks prior to the attack they know nothing about, asking why the building has mechanical workings inside it could lead to an answer like "ummmm it's a mill", allowing a player with knowledge skills to counter that.... "guys that dosne't look like any mill ive ever seen"
Perhaps rogue/ninja with sabotage abilities could disable and disguise the fact he has done so
More intrigue, more foreshadowing and... if the PCs are uber combat optimized builds, they may miss all the opportunities to notice and thwart the plans, but STILL are well equipped to react to it once it does happen and assault the seige engines, cut commoners free from webs etc etc..
Silly answer: Have a 7+ Druid buddy cast Spike Stones repeatedly while the BBEG is talking, then cause a panic that causes people to run through them.If you've got a Druid buddy, why not sculpt a Wall of Thorns around the area? That'll kill anyone that ran through and leave them nice and clumped for AoE.
Because you can see the Wall of Thorns. Imagine the terror you can sow by having invisible kill fields in every street.
Maximize the carnage.
Well, my inner evil mastermind has been brought out by all this. Part of me wanted to suggest using black powder, since a couple of those would be the same as a fireball, but that does not seem very 'mythic,' and many view gun related items negatively.
How easily can this BBEG act within this town? While simply hiring an army or dropping some AoE spells would be easy, they lack flair. If this person can act without arousing much suspicion, then you can get very creative when you are a sorcerer.
Here is the scenario: Have your Sorcerer enter the gathering, and have his henchmen distribute seal envelopes. Have him instruct the audience not to open them until the right moment. Queue long, dramatic speech dripping with dramatic irony and foreshadowing. Have the audience open the envelopes. Explosive Runes.
Is this in any way practical? No. Is it likely to get very many victims before people realize "don't read it!" or at least get too distracted to bother with the letter? No. Is it an over complicated and excessively dramatic plan that will awe your players with the audacity? Very much so. Even if it does not create much of a body count, you can use it as a nice opening act for more efficient methods. Even if you forgo the suggested scenario, you could always find some way to make use of sight based explosions. You could get similar result just having a flying creature dump runed flyers over the crowd. A part of me just wants to go for large booms and the abject horror of dangers triggered by unconscious actions. Could you stop yourself from reading?
Thanks for your input. There are nice ideas .. i like the widden confusion idea combined with minions with alchemist fire or necklace of fireballs.
The "hire a tribe or other hirelings" thing is not possible but that was not obvious with the given informations.
Here are some more informations:
The BBEG is a known enemy of the PCs. The attack is a revenge for earlier actions of the PCs like killing minions, disturbing plans etc. It is some kind of final attack .. sneaky conspiracy is over, eat this. The PCs are bound to the city. They grew up there, friends and family live there etc. The BBEG wants to kill as many as possible people but in a very cruel way and the PCs should see it with there own eyes. The BBEG has only a few minions left, all powerfull are killed by the PCs. In the given 3 combat rounds a lot of things should happen so that the PCs have to decide what to do. Attack/counterspell the BBEG, kill a minion, protect some women or childen, dispel spells, heal the crowd...
We are playing in a city with fortifications etc. so an attack orc tribe cant take the city in 3 rounds. The PCs are lvl7, the BBEG lvl9/mythic tier1. Additionally there are some 3 - 4th level NPCs (chief of the guards, the mayor, etc.) and some will assist the PCs.
At the end the PCs will face the BBEG so some protective gear should be part of the 100.000 gp. Lets say the BBEG has 66.666 gp spend for personal equipment and 33.334 gp left. No scrolls of spell level 6 or higher please. Thats to easy :)
Thanks for your input :)
I'm going to stand by my Spike Stone suggestion. Visceral, cruel, easy to set up, and difficult to detect. It's also very affordable and can be cast on worked stone. This also has the side effect of making it so the PCs can save townspeople with Channel or similar as the damage stops once the NPCs stop moving.