How to get a small army into a town?


Advice


I need some idea on how to get a small army of duergars and trolls could surprise attack a nearby town.
The town is about 60 miles away from the duergar keep. The town also has scouts who keep an eye on this keep and the town of course has walls. On the attacker side there are duergar spellcasters up to character level 9 (druid, cleric, wizard). They have a lot of time to prepare their attack - I just doubt a tunnel over 80 miles would be all that plausible. Maybe you can come up with some suggestions, how around 30–40 duergars and trolls could get their buns inside that town – the more surprising the better!


Is their any closer mountains or caves?


For the duergars it's relatively easy: They can turn invisible as SLA, disguise themselves as dwarves, hide in chests, build a tunnel etc. etc.. It's the trolls which make it way more troublesome.

I'd send a single duergar, disguised or invisible, to spy on the town. Then I'd wait for the night, spy on the active scouts and kill (or capture) them in quick succession. Finally I'd use spider climb, communal to bypass the walls, collect forces and then engage the defenders.


Cut pieces off the trolls until they're tiny. Shove them all into a box. A Duergar disguises himself as a dwarf merchant and enters the town with the box of troll guts, among other goods. The other Duergars sneak in invisibly while the trolls regenerate.


Disguise the trolls as ogres, and send them in mixed groups of 4 claiming to be adventurers


Matthew Downie wrote:
Cut pieces off the trolls until they're tiny. Shove them all into a box. A Duergar disguises himself as a dwarf merchant and enters the town with the box of troll guts, among other goods. The other Duergars sneak in invisibly while the trolls regenerate.

but you have to burn everything else of the trolls except the part that you sneak in.

I like the duergar disguising himself as a dwarf bit!


Vidmaster7 wrote:
Is their any closer mountains or caves?

Nope.

I donˋt know how its plausible for a troop of 30+ units, including large ones, to travel 80 miles open field unnoticed...


It might be possible to transport trolls as meat. Without advertising what type of meat of course. Note that the trolls may not be on board with this plan.

Probably the surest way to get cooperative gate guards is to replace them with your own people. Bribery and corruption may be useful to get the original gate guards to where you can ambush and replace them, not so much for getting the originals to overlook a small army - they might panic or have an attack of morals. Don't try impersonating them for long, ideally just for an hour or less.


Vidmaster7 wrote:
but you have to burn everything else of the trolls except the part that you sneak in.

The standard Golarion regeneration mechanic is: when you cut off a chunk of troll, the soul of the troll stays in the biggest bit, and the other bit dies and does not regenerate.


Right so you take the toe and burn the rest. otherwise the toe just grows back and you have a useless hunk of flesh.


Also the other thing I would wonder is would it grow back before you could sneak it in?

Also could we disguise the trolls as some sort of herd animal instead like dress them up as yaks.


An army of Duergar and Trolls doesn't sound very subtle, why not just walk them into town.


Point^ operation trolly shield should be good for that one.


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Or have the trolls toss the Duergar, who ready their action to enlarge themselves after being tossed. :-)


Tie the Trolls to enlarged dire bats. Airdrop them in.

Unless they fall onto a bonfire or into a chimney, they'll be alright.


Vidmaster7 wrote:
Right so you take the toe and burn the rest. otherwise the toe just grows back and you have a useless hunk of flesh.

If you cut off the toe, the soul stays with the main part and the toe dies unless quickly reattached.

Burning the main part of the troll kills it.

If you want a living, regenerating troll toe, you'd have to start at the top and cut off one bit at a time until the soul retreats into one of the feet.


Combat Monster wrote:

Tie the Trolls to enlarged dire bats. Airdrop them in.

Unless they fall onto a bonfire or into a chimney, they'll be alright.

Nonmagic equivalent: launch the trolls into town from some kind of trebuchet.


Ummm....why not have one of the duergars sneak into town and find a relatively quite spot, something like a building with a basement or a warehouse or something.

Relay that information to whomever the spellcasters are, and use scrying to observe the location by following the individual. Use teleport to travel to the location with your trolls. This make take a few days to get all the trolls in depending on the number of spell casters who have access to teleport.


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Vidmaster7 wrote:
Right so you take the toe and burn the rest. otherwise the toe just grows back and you have a useless hunk of flesh.

And then when your army is victorious, you quip: "I toed you I was gonna invade."

No, wait, can I change my quip? "Everyone's going to TOE the line."

Never mind, the first one was better.

HOLD ON!

"Let's wage TOEtal war on this village."

This is going to keep me busy and amused all morning.


Claxon wrote:

Ummm....why not have one of the duergars sneak into town and find a relatively quite spot, something like a building with a basement or a warehouse or something.

Relay that information to whomever the spellcasters are, and use scrying to observe the location by following the individual. Use teleport to travel to the location with your trolls. This make take a few days to get all the trolls in depending on the number of spell casters who have access to teleport.

This plus one scroll of teleportation circle.


Matthew Downie wrote:
Combat Monster wrote:

Tie the Trolls to enlarged dire bats. Airdrop them in.

Unless they fall onto a bonfire or into a chimney, they'll be alright.

Nonmagic equivalent: launch the trolls into town from some kind of trebuchet.

"Oh my, they are firing Trolls at us!"


War in a world with magic is such a chancy thing.
To carry off a suprise attack the attack needs to be a...surprise.
From your description, it sounds like there's a cold war ongoing. Because of this, I would expect at least some divination spells being used to avoid these "surprise" attacks.

This leads to misdirection and attacking other potential targets. Otherwise known as plans within plans. So these divination well give you the idea of something happening, just not what.


quibblemuch wrote:
Vidmaster7 wrote:
Right so you take the toe and burn the rest. otherwise the toe just grows back and you have a useless hunk of flesh.

And then when your army is victorious, you quip: "I toed you I was gonna invade."

No, wait, can I change my quip? "Everyone's going to TOE the line."

Never mind, the first one was better.

HOLD ON!

"Let's wage TOEtal war on this village."

This is going to keep me busy and amused all morning.

The battle is aFoot! well not quite actually just the very end of the foot.

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