Hi folks,
i need some help to come up with a working plan to defend a small (600 citizens) town against a werewolve army at least 300 "man" strong.
The city has a castle, basalt city walls, and aprox 150 men at arms, able to defend it if neccessary.
As part of the ruling council, my character has already ordered the production of alchemical silver arrows, light, one-handed and 2-handed weapons.
I also considered the construction of catapults. They are reasonable cheap and my char is an experienced engineer and architect so bilding a few catapults should be possible.
My idea was to fill the catapult munition with something explosive in conjuction with silver shrapnel.
As it turns out, our recent actions have caused this army to call for reinforcement.
So now we are facing even more enemies.
My char has craft wonderous items, so maybe you have a few ideas how to improve our chances with magic, or other more mundane possibilities i haven't considered yet.
Thank you in advance for your ideas!
KR
Brakiri
When it comes to the brakedown of your army what classes and lv are they? I know most are lv 1 warriors, but what else do you have to help in the fight? How large is the militia and what class are they and lv? I know that most will be 1-2 lv commoners and experts but what else do you have?
You're not really planning on rolling 900 combat rolls per round are you? And by the way, you might want to think those numbers a bit. 300 is a LOT of werewolves. On numbers, their inherent abilities, and the fact that they have DR, it's not a contest but a slaughter.
Here's basically how you handle these things.... You telescope the action down to where it really matters.... what your PC's are going to face and how they do doing so. You throw some waves at them and after they take them down, you face the PC's against the boss, the pack leader and his cronies and the outcome of the battle will mirror the outcome of their fight.
In other words... unless you're a die-hard wargamer, in which case you'd have already answered this question, be cinematic!
I'd be more interested in knowing about werewolves in his world. Werewolves are usually mindless carnage machines. If you're expecting 'an army' of them, does this include siege engines, tactical groups, etc?
If the answer is yes, if one of your group is a stealthy fellow, make a concentrated dose of some kind of silver based poison/powder, sneak into the enemy camp and add it to thier food/water supply. That should slow them up atleast a bit.
How open is your DM to outside-the-box thinking?
For instance, there's nothing in the rules that I can find that indicate that a lycan ingesting silver has adverse affects, but it makes sense logically that it would weaken them. Could the PC's grind up a bunch of silver powder and "poison" all the local water sources with the silver, then try to destroy all of the lycan's current water supplies?
Not to mention that if you do this to all local water sources (at least all the major ones), a good percentage of the local wildlife will have silver in thier system.... and I"m assuming that lycan army will be using Survival to hunt for food locally (I hear it's hard to supply train food for large groups of warriors).
Not RAW, but if someone tried to do this in a game I were running, it would be rewarded.
Though, trying to come up with that amount of silver may be prohibitive on its own.
EDIT: NINJA'D BY BOOKSY *shakes fist*
Gather all the silver coins you can. Sharpen all the edges, load into catapults and fling at the werewolves.
If this is anything less than a disciplined attempt to seize a vital strongpoint (the town) as part of a more sweeping military endeavor, I'd be inclined to run a bluff. Lycanthropes aren't known for either patience or wisdom, so basic illusions could work them over quite nicely. Prestidigitation gives the razor wire on the walls the gleam of silver. Ghost Sound places dozens of reinforcements wherever they are most needed. Minor Image conceals silver-spiked trenchworks. Major Image lays a reeking miasma of wolfsbane on the flanks or portrays a city rapidly being engulfed by flame because someone's cow kicked over a lantern at just the wrong time. Again, without some compelling reason to linger when instinct is shouting that the town isn't worth it, I would expect the Lycanthropes to move on. If they have such a reason, you've still bought yourself time to make your limited manpower count.
Hi,
@Heaggles
We have a handful of human watchman. Mostly level 1 fighters and a few officers which might have a slightly higher level.
In addition we have 120 half-giants. Its a barbarian tribe, called the Beotuk. I think most of them will have 1 or 2 levels of barbarian.
@LazarX
As far as i know, there are mass combat rules within the kingmaker ruleset. I think we will use them when the time comes.
@Booksy
These werewolves are from a special mercenary order called the Lyconians. They attack defenseles beach towns and cities, kill most of the citizens and keep the children, to integrate them into their mercenary order (by turning them into werewolves as well).
@Eben theQuiet
Thats a very good idea. Will have to scout to determine where the camp is, what bodies of water they are using etc.
@Peasant
Not bad either, but i doubt that these spells can create such wide area illusions. As far as i know their area of effect is very limited.
But i will look into it, thanks for the tipp :)
Depending on the half giant stats being used and the werewolf stats being used, that barbarian tribe is gonna be worth quite alot, especially if armed with silver weapons to bypass the DR. And if it's the pathfinder lycan stat changes they will only be +2 wis al the time, and +2 str +2 con when wolfed out, other then that they will just be human or elf or whatever they started as.
If them getting reinforcements is that huge of an issue, maybe try finding some reinforcements of your own. Send riders out to other nearby settlements and cities. A nearby elf settlement could be worth a bunch of archers added to your walls which would change the odds quite a bit before they even get to you.
Asta
PSY
Ya know much as werewolves are lauded for their defensive skills they still burn quite easily.
Your city has walls made of Basalt, a rather good insulation material.
And a wild fire in PFSRD has a CR of 9 for a reason.
make a kill zone outside the city gates and to a distance of 100 meters.
fill this area with various bracken and leave the main gate of the city open, white flag of surrender and all. When the wolves go in for the kill slam the gates shut on the vanguard and light the kill zone on fire.
Werewolves being as they are it means the leaders and best warriors are in the city with you while the trash outside burns and or chokes to death.
Send a group of ten rangers/ scouty types to serve the purpose of guaranteed ignition of the fire trap.
Use half the barbarian tribe to fight with you against the leaders of the tribe and use the other half with the commoners armed with polearms, axes and ranged weapons (bombs and alchemist fire as well) to keep the burning army outside the city gates.
ensure every person is outfitted with scarves to help with smoke inhalation and use your magic item crafting to enchant the walls of the city to add a +10 to any climb check for the sake of scaling them.
Enchant the city gates to have a 1 time use time delayed Make Whole spell on it for if the army enters the city.
In addition outfit the city with the same tactic, ensuring that the city gates are mighty and retreat to the castle when the werewolf army rallies. Once in the castle light the city on fire and repeat the same process.
If this hasn't broken the spirits of the wolves and absolutely founded a legendary tale for bards to sing of in your game I will gladly eat my hat.
Alchemical Silver caltrops distributed by catapults ought to slow them down.
Also if you have cleric even if they are lv 1 have them split up with the other units and have them cast blessing of the Town watch and make scrolls of that spell it only cost 12.5 gp per 1st lv spell at caster lv 1, this will give all defenders +1 to attack and saves vs fear for 1 hr per casting.
Brakiri wrote: @Peasant
Not bad either, but i doubt that these spells can create such wide area illusions. As far as i know their area of effect is very limited.
But i will look into it, thanks for the tipp :)
Just how much acreage are you hoping to defend? For a population of only a few hundred I had envisioned outer walls encompassing a space not much larger than say a football stadium. Such an environment would be very favorable to something like Major Image, which could cover 9 10' cubes (a quarter of the perimeter), has a range of at least 600' and can be maintained indefinitely by an invalid sitting by the window of the castle tower. The cantrips are of course much shorter range, but being cantrips, may plausibly appear among any of the town's more colorful npcs without particular explanation, can be replenished effortlessly and in the case of Prestidigitation, persist even when the target moves out of range.
Ultimately I feel some kind of a bluff makes even more sense for these Lyconians since they prey on the defenseless and are out for personal gain. But perhaps there's something more going on here. I'm having a hard time grasping why any group with that description would attack a town with 120 Half-giant Barbarians.
Hi,
i'm really sorry for not answering sooner, but i was drowned at work and at home.
But now i would like to give you an update.
I ordered the silver weapons, and started to build light ballistas and standard trebuchets. I'm in the process of talking with our chief alchemist, if he could melt some silver and coat the rubble, the trebuchets are firing, with it. It won't last, but i think for one shot it's good enough. The ammo for the ballistas has to be ordered in silver as well.
I have no idea how long the city wall is, but lets say at least 450ft (the town is 3 districts wide).
We have 125 half giants in weapons, 20 watchmen and 10 hunters who can use a bow. I ordered long spears with alchemical silver tips, 2500 silver arrows for their large bows, a few silver short and long swords for the watchmen.
In addition i had a few ideas about guerilla tactics with my mage.
We have no idea where the enemy camp is, but our spymaster has send out scouts to locate the camp.
We are playing with spell points, and my wizard has level 8 now. I have 65 spellpoints.
My plan was as follows:
Find the camp.
Cast Phantom Steed (5 SP) to get to the camp within 3km.
Cast Fly and Invisibility (8 SP)
Fly to the camp and locate a few good targets, maybe supplies or large numbers of enemies on one spot.
Activate my Protection from Arrows item. (3 minutes duration)
Cast Improved Invisibility (7 SP)
Repeat the folowing 4 times:
Cast a 8d fireball (8 SP) and move 60 feet sideways
After 4 rounds, i cast Invisibility (3 SP), Fly again (5 SP), and then, after 2km, i land, cast phantom steed and run like hell.
I had another idea though. We are in posession of a large amount of wolfsbane. Maybe we can distill it into a weaker version of the poison and smuggle it into their water supply. I have no idea if this will do anything, but wolfsbane is used to cure lycantrophy.
@Peasant
I can't answer that question. The risk far outweighs the possible gain from attacking Safe Haven. Their motivations are not totally clear to us.
Well, I can't say I'm familiar with the spellpoints system, but what are your scroll options? A well-placed Cloudkill could easily wipe out much of the enemy army, especially given the minutes/level duration and the fact that armies tend to be made of many lower-level creatures.
Scrolls are problematic...we are on a mostly uninhabited island, while the next big city is 2500 miles over 30 away.
But the idea is good..maybe i can think of something.
Thanks.
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