Near the end of a story arc in a campaign I will be giving the party the option to assault a heavily defended Kingdom with by riding atop an enormous Construct. It will be a clockwork-style machine that the party will be given the option to customize a little.
The Customization options will most likely be things like Ballista, Catapults, Cannons, or even a defensive cabin. Mechanically, I'm thinking of assigning zones for them to customize. If you think of the machine as a quadruped, there will be four large zones, one above each leg, as well as one huge zone in the middle. Each Zone can hold one piece of equipment, the Huge one would obviously give the highest damage, but would be the only place for the cabin.
During the assault, the party will be targeted by long range spells (Lightning Bolt, Fireball, etc), potential lucky shots from archers, as well as some defensive fire from wall mounted Ballista. When they reach a certain distance from the main Keep/Necropolis, most likely after breaching the main walls, the most dangerous problem for them will appear in the form of a Dragon. It will most likely be Skeletal or a Ravager since the Kingdom is run by a Lich and his cult of followers.
My questions are such:
While this is designed to be a bit of a power fantasy style way of getting the party into the Lich's lair, how should I balance it so it's not super easy on the player's part?
Are there any other kinds of options I should give the party to Equip it?
Do you guys have any advice or ideas to improve upon this idea?
And lastly, would you as a player enjoy this sort of thing?
Bottom Line Up Front: Sounds cool. Add high level encounters to counterbalance the power fantasy. You can have siege weapons, magical barriers, and interesting power sources as modules. I would love it as a player. MORE BELOW
So, I'm going to say that it sounds awesome. It'll take some doing, but it could be a great time. Only you know your players and if they would enjoy this.
I'm curious how this will fit into the overall story arc because it seems to me that recovering a gigantic clockpunk colossus and its customization options could be an adventure or even a few adventures unto themselves.
If your world is the sort of place where you can find clockwork relics to enhance and rebuild the colossus they need to steamroll through enemy territory, you can send them to all kinds of crazy places to recover pieces.
As for the actual assault, if I was building it, the colossus is a tool to create an adventure full of set piece battles. I'd let the party know what kind of defenses they're dealing with so that they can adventure to find appropriate pieces.
So if I assume the undefeatable Lich Kingdom has the Army of Doom, having a giant walker answers the dramatic question of "How do we defeat the Army of Doom?" Answer: We go through it. As the walker steps forward and plows through formations and shrugs off arrows and stuff, the kind of things that a lich can mobilize to defeat adventurers takes shape. Apprentice wizards teleport into the area and start bombarding it, forcing an encounter in the skies as the walker stomps forward (some PCs lob their own spells or take shots with mounted siege weapons at enemy targets). Flying enemies land and start attacking crew members, trying to disable systems, forcing the PCs to run about their walker aiding the loyal crew that's keeping things moving (if you've played Halo 2, I'm thinking about how you end up jumping on a Scarab, the large walker, and taking out the crew, but in reverse playing defense). The walker needs to keep some of its siege emplacements so that it can weaken the wall that the walker will shatter. After a few encounters of fending off increasing anti-adventurer tactical squads, the Ravager is released as a last ditch effort to stop the heroes from busting down the walls.
This got more and more over the top and I guess "anime" or "video gamey" in my head as I thought of it, but hopefully it's good ideas. I think the power fantasy comes from having a really cool way of shutting down large obstructions (armies, walls, conventional siege weapons all pale in the face of a clockpunk Colossus walker). The challenge comes from stopping the high-level/high-CR assets a lich can field.
Let me know if you want more advice, but you may want to point out what the party is like, what level you would expect them to be, and what class they're dealing with. Also, while it sounds like a really cool set piece battle, one thing to keep in mind isn't to railroad your players into it. If the PCs are told "You can't get past the Army of Doom, the Wall of Eternal Pawnage, and the Lich Kings high level stuff all on your own.", that's fine. That's what PCs do. They find a way. But now you can offer "There is one good way however! You can rebuild the clockwork colossus and stomp your way in!" and that will get you buy in." It just shouldn't be the ONLY way to fight the Lich King's forces.
Is your group the type that find the giant construct, decide the kingdom's screwed and simply ride off into the sunset on their new toy?
I know I'd have to prepare for that outcome if this was my own group.
I'd recommend for the actual assault to prepare three to four encounters worth of material for the battle. I'd suggest one straight up fight of CR appropriate level to take out the primary defences, a skill challenge or puzzle based encounter next that doesn't expend character resources, a third challenge that's a bit higher CR and involves traps, trick encounters or something unexpected, and then a more difficult straight up battle as the final note.
Here's a few suggestions:
Rank and file undead army as a colossal swarm vs. construct, each PC in charge of one attack type or defence system.
PCs in tactical combat vs. mounted flying elites atop the construct.
Saboteurs aboard the construct attacking its power source.
Magical defences require special skill minigame to overcome.
Thanks for the ideas, they are definitely welcome. I would always love to hear more.
The party is just starting this story arc, so I have lots of time to prepare. I'm not really too worried about the party running off, and I have a contingency plan for if they decide repairing the construct is a bit too much work.
Love the ideas of Apprentices/Acolytes popping in or flying by and blasting from the skies. Especially if they act as a distraction for a team of saboteurs to climb on board and start messing with systems. Then the guys will need to climb into the bowels of their beast to deal with them quickly. Moving Gears in a mobile area makes for all kinds of fun skill checks. I could even illustrate the dangers by having one of the Saboteurs fail a reflex or acrobatics check and go tumbling into the parts.
The undead swarm is pretty damn cool, the kind of thing that a Necromancer's army would throw at such a threat.
The party will be around 11-13 by this point, which is probably too low to take on a Ravager (unless the party has access to powerful siege weapons), but I'll try to stat something up that's CR appropriate.
I'm also thinking that, to prevent the party from simply using their new toy to overcome any new challenge later on, I should have the construct take so much damage that it barely makes it to the tower. With the amount of firepower being directed at it, it would make sense.
There was a Dungeon adventure called Beast of Burden that was about an entire adventure based on the back of a colossal creature. It's in Dungeon #100. It's well worth checking out for ideas or potential rewriting.
Mechanically, this is the same as ship combat in Skulls & Shackles.
ng
Construct on land vs. ship on water.
Both have siege weapons, and can do body to body combat.
What S&S found out is that ramming and boarding worked far better than long range ship battles. Also, spells cleared the decks easier than siege weapons. Lastly, ships (and constructs and forts) have a lot of hit points, so won't go down fast.
Siege weapons are for when you have time for a siege. With daily refresh of spells, you don't have that time.
That said, having the construct transport the party to the sight and rolling over intervening obstacles works great.
Just plan on the less than effective melee combat for the construct, and all will be well.
/cevah
