I am planning on putting my party on a train in my upcoming campaign and was planning on having an old west style train robbery and I was wondering how I can accomplish this. A horse in pathfinder (using double movement) can only travel at about 18 mph and that isn't fast enough to catch up to a train.
What other mounts or methods of travel would allow for them to catch up to a moving train?
Are there items that would allow them to easily jump on to the train or fight on the roof of it?
Any other cool ideas for how to have this fight?
This is the first campaign I'm running and I want this first encounter to go well. Thanks in advance for any advice
Block the tracks (fallen trees are always good, bonus style points for tying a maiden to the tracks).
Jump off an overhanging tree onto the train. Don't fall between cars.
Find a place where the train has to slow due to travelling uphill, snow on the tracks, or something like that.
Attack the train as it's just pulling out of (or slowing down to pull into) a station.
Bribe the engineer to slow the train down at your pre-arranged ambush point.
Post a "Bridge Out Ahead" sign to get the train to slow down.
I think I might have them do a daring zip-line on to the train from a high location. I just really like the idea of riding to a speeding train and jumping on
Make sure they have a way to get off the train afterwards.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just make sure nobody can suplex the train
The PCs will be riding the train and bandits will be the ones getting on. I'm thinking I might give the spellcaster a couple scrolls of dimension door to get them off the train
They could, perhaps, have someone cast haste on their mounts to get enough speed.to catch the train.
Note that d-door has very strict limits on how many people can travel per casting. Perhaps they could be picked up by flying allies, or plan to take the engine and just chug ahead to a spot where more horses are waiting, leaving the cars behind? Though certainly having one scroll of d-door would be an appropriate emergency button....
I'm thinking of having one of them be a 12th level bard with 3 lower level minions with him. He could bring those 3 with him through a cast dimension door. I might have an illusion set up on the train to make it look like super fast horses are attacking while the true bandits get on board magically on a different part of the train
I was a player in an Eberron game that included a battle on a train. This particular train battle happened as the train flew through the sky, as it's "rails" were magically elevated. At one point the train slipped from its right-side-up position and the cars flipped around to the underside of the track. It would have been like the movie Inception if we were inside, but we happened to be on the outside of the train at the time. Some of us had magnetic boots, some were secured with ropes (battles swinging on ropes are also fun). At the conclusion of the battle we had to get up to the engine and regain control of the train before it crashed at the station.