Assault on Old Fort

[lair-master]

I'm preparing an encounter where the heroes are besieged by seemingly endless waves of goons as they sit trapped in an old abandoned fort. Think John Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13" (1976). The party is comprised of a battle cleric, an urban ranger, an alchemist and a sorcerer. They're all level 3.

I could use some pointers for designing such an encounter. I want to attack them in droves, but I don't want the goons to be too weak to pose a threat or too strong. Monster recommendations would be great. I was thinking good old-fashioned goblins, but I'm open to other ideas.

I was also thinking the first wave would be all ranged attacks. The party would receive partial cover in front of windows and full cover behind walls and tables and such. This wave is mainly supposed to spook them, but it will probably result in the deaths of some NPCs too.

The second wave is when things get hairy. The goons advance on the fort using wagons for cover, and once they're close enough will attempt to enter through every opening available. The party will need to defend the doors and windows from scores of goons.

The waves keep coming and from there it's up to the party to either find a means of escape or lure the goons into a concentrated area and wipe them all out with an explosion or something. If you've seen the film you know what I'm talking about.

So, yeah, the idea sounds fun in theory but I don't know how to properly execute it. Any advice would be great!

[Smallfoot]

I'll toss some stuff behind a spoiler for the Quest for Perfection part III. One warning, I've played it but haven't GM'd it.

QfP3:

This one involves waves of goons hitting a village, and there might be some helpful information. The problem is that part of the mechanics involved is how to *avoid* making the GM (and the party) deal directly with dozens of low-level NPCs. The focus is getting to the specials - casters, a monster, some stronger goons, and the BBEG. Still, some of the strategy information may help you out.

One tricky part for you is making the fort apparently defensible (so they'll stay at first), but revealing slowly that it's not. Then you need the goons to have an obvious reason to attack directly rather than, say, setting the place on fire and sitting back to wait.

As far as the attackers are concerned, they've got to be pretty weak individually if the party is going to have a real chance. That limits you to humanoids pretty much. You could do undead under the control of a BBEG who stays hidden if you wanted to go for a Living Dead vibe. You could also make the goons really weak but have them pull out their pet ogre (or whatever fits the CR and flavor you're after), especially if the pet serves partially as a distraction.

Setting up the potential Big Boom isn't that hard. Discovering a barrel of black powder would set it up nicely. (You could also do a bit of false hope with a broken siege weapon or some broken firearms. Or don't make it false. Shooting firearms at -4 might be a viable strategy for shoring up their ranged capability.) But you need to make the setup for getting the goons all together, whatever that is, pretty darn obvious, I think.

The escape route is also tricky. You don't want it to be obvious from the start unless there's an overpowering reason they don't want to use it. But if it's hidden and not found early on, the players are liable to get so tied up in defending from the siege that they don't do any more searching for exits.

The setup you're planning sounds pretty sweet, but be prepared for the players to not exactly cooperate in the scenario. It's not generally a good idea to railroad the players into a particular situation although it's sometimes necessary. And when they get there, be prepared for them to do something unexpected. I know some folks who broke a PFS AP module by making friends with someone they shouldn't have been able to, who then roflstomped the subsequent encounters for them.

[lair-master]

Thanks, Smallfoot! I definitely don't intend to railroad the players, simply put them in this situation and see how they react.

One thing I'd love some advice on is how to handle so many enemies at once. I anticipate there being at least a dozen goblins per wave, but keeping track of them all and rolling individually for each attack sounds like a headache. I want this to be a fast-paced, exciting seige, but it has the potential to be monotonous.

[Ishpumalibu]

The goons using combat maneuvers may help too. Not lethal, and use blunt arrows for range? Or bolas? Tower shields could be helpful for arrow volleys as well.

[lucky7]

One possible idea is to give the monsters (whatever they are) hit points equal to their CON score, so they go down quicker.

[Gnomezrule]

You could use siege weapons. For the first few waves. Just allow them to hit multiple targets.

Alternatively you can create something like Chase Cards but in this case it would be siege cards. Just rather than chase events it would be fort defense rather than movement. For example:

1- Goblins on a ladder you can: Push back the ladder STR check -or- Unbalance the ladder Disable Device Check.

2- Rolling siege tower you can: fire balista with chains attached and pull it down attack and STR check -or- fire catapult with oil.

Come up with a bunch of siege situations. Offensive and defensive. Durring any sortie of goblins have a round of them approaching let the defenders attack at ranged or pull a card from the deck. For each sortie of goblins roll 4d4+4 goblins make it over the wall or into melee range. Subtract any they kill and for every card event they defeat knock out one of the d4 rolls.

So Goblin sortie: 4d4 + 4 ⇒ (2, 3, 1, 4) + 4 = 14

Round 1- Goblins are rushing. NPC defenders are shooting the party can cast spells man siege weapons or use ranged weapons. Or draw a card.

The fighter elects to draw a card he gets the ladder card from above. He rolls the STR check. Success! The sorc casts sleep on a few 4 go down. A couple more ranged attacks hit and kill the gobs.

So 4 gobs fell when the fighter knocked over the ladder. 4 fell asleep, 2 got killed. So 4 gobs make it over the wall and need to be dealt with.

[Smallfoot]

Zenith Games just posted a method for simultaneously working opponents in groups of 4 ("squads") or 20 ("scores"). It may be of some help.

http://zenithgames.blogspot.com/2014/08/squads-and-scores.html