Fortification Subsystem?

[markrivett]

I'm a bit stumped here, and may ultimately completely revise this encounter if it doesn't seem interesting.

Context: The (4 5th level) PCs have been asked to function as the rear guard of a retreating army which is being pursued by an overwhelming legion of undead. There is a tower that overlooks a road which they are to defend as long as possible before lighting a signal flame to indicate to any straggling soldiers trapped on the wrong side of the road that the way is lost.

They have a couple days to prepare, and soldier NPCs can be with them to help hold the tower/road.

Is there a good subsystem that might be adapted to work here?

I DO have a chase encounter later in adventure so I'd like to avoid using that if possible.

I'm looking for something simple so I don't have to go into a lot of explanation regarding how the PCs will succeed (fail). Decreasing victory points was my first thought, where the surrounding area is slowly consumed by howling undead, but I'm not sure of what kind of skill checks to use outside combat, survival, nature, and maybe thievery.

I also don't want this to be a series of combat encounters (they will have just had a combat encounter before this one).

Thoughts would be most welcome.

[Ellias Aubec]

Maybe use the VP system initially to allow them to build up the defences using whatever rolls you feel are appropriate. Then have a decreasing VP using that initial value as you mention to show the undead beating them down. Allow the PCs to earn more VPs by shoring up defences etc or making combat rolls to indicate them fending off the enemy. Those that use spells in interesting ways could add more points to the total as well.

Maybe have 1 combat encounter for a boss that could modify the VP total depending on how quick they deal with it.

As for skills they could use pretty much anything that makes sense. For example religion could be used to set up anti-undead wards, society for placement of barricades etc, arcana for setting up magical strengthening of walls/doors, athletics for moving barricades etc around, bluff could be used to set up distractions like fake soldier dummies and so on.

[Leitner]

This is for pathfinder 1. But I have used it before, and found it pretty effective for this sort of story telling.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/warfare-for-beginners-a-battle-system-for-t he-pathfinder-rpg.314572/

Like you said, decreasing victory points per whatever unit of time you like. An hour perhaps? Each hour they can stop the track reaching 0 would be another 10% or so of the army that escapes unscathed.

And then yeah, missions to take out some of the more powerful undead, establish choke points/traps, etc are how you delay the inevitable.

[Ascalaphus]

I think that when designing these minigames it's important to think about what choices the players get to make. A good abstract model to work with is what in board games is called "worker placement" - there are a lot of different tasks that you could send people/PCs to do, but you only have so many of them. So you have to weigh which things you think are easy and hard, and which things are the most rewarding.

So the party might have a choice between digging a moat, or deploying sharpened stakes, securing the windows, building a good sniper's nest, preparing really large amount of fire arrows, carving wards, blessing supplies of temporary holy water and other things. They have several days (minigame rounds) to send PCs to work on different things, and then the undead come. And then the PCs can use any of the things that they managed to finish. Maybe it's just the first wave, and then the players can repair/restock or build new things, based on what they liked in the combat and what didn't go well enough.

You don't even have to have a complete exhaustive list of posssible things they could be doing. If you have half a dozen example tasks with skills/DCs/benefits, you have a basis for comparison if the players come up with an original idea.

[markrivett]

Thank you all for your advice. I've designed an encounter that I think will work, but I'd like some additional thoughts.

1. Does this encounter seem fun enough for an entire game session?
2. Does this seem more like a series of rolls rather than a tense encounter?
3. Does this "minigame" seem balanced?

Here is some context for the encounter in the image link below (which will be hosted on roll20, and some of the information will be hidden via dynamic lighting).

The players had a previous encounter with two generals. One general (general 1) is ready to pick up and withdraw his forces immediately, but that will leave another general's forces (general 2) completely exposed. General 2 refuses to withdraw her forces at all. The players need to convince general 1 to keep his forces in place for a little longer (the best case scenario is for the general 1 to stay in place for 7 days) and convince general 2 to withdraw her forces sooner (the bast case would be for her to begin withdraw immediately since it will take her forces 7 days to retreat).

It will be extremely hard to achieve the best case scenario with both generals (the players haven't had the influence encounter yet, so I don't know what the results will be yet.)

https://markrivett.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Scarlet-Rise-Encounter.jp g

(note the Paizo forums added a space after the p and before the g in .jpg)

[Castilliano]

If you have a proto-system in place, it's okay to wing the finer details since you don't want to put all the weight on predictions.

PFS had some scenarios like this, and I wish I could remember them for you. The one that marks the end of the Lantern Lodge would work. There were plenty of resources and multiple places one could hole up, yet time was limited as to what the party could aspire to create.
There were small breaks between waves too.