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What level are the players?
Is the city doomed, or is winning the siege an option?
What I'm getting at, is this a case of "infiltrate the city, do the thing, exfiltrate, because this conflict is too big for you", or would it be possible for the players to maybe rally the citizens, fend off a few specific attacks, do some commando missions and together with regular troops break the siege?
It's also important to make this clear to the PCs - if the players think they're going to fight their way through this and you've decided that's not possible, you'll get friction. But if it's obvious the scale of the enemy is way beyond them and it's a matter of maybe just escaping to try to deliver a message to get help, that's different.
I have recent experience in running a city under attack, because that was the main theme of the Paizo module Assault on Longshadow. However, the party spent 1/3 of that module improving the city of Longshadow's defenses and 1/3 of the module defending against the attacks. Since Vipersfang's players are not defending the city, the takeaway I get from that adventure is that the besieging forces will have thin spots where a skilled party could slip through. My party was experts in stealth and the enemy line was no barrier to them.
More relevant was my game in Palace of Fallen Stars in the technological Iron Gods adventure path. The city of Starfall was ruled by the stupified Black Monarch Kevoth-Kul but governed by the evil Technic League. The Technic League patrolled the walls with flying robots that could see invisiblity. When the Technic League figured out that the party was in town--they had walking in under non-adventurer identities--the party needed to sneak out. One party member had contacts with the criminals in the slums, and used those contacts to gain access to a smugglers' tunnel under the walls.
For a party to use a sewer escape, Vipersfang has to explain why the besieging enemy has not sent infiltrators into town via the sewers themselves. I presume the sewer has iron bars across it. Maybe the bars have a gate with a lock that a party member can pick. Maybe the sewer has a 30-foot drop in it that cannot be climbed. The party will need to figure out what obstacles are in the sewer, perhaps by talking to someone who maintains the sewer.
Another method of escape that would keep the champion happy would be to sneak over the city walls and pierce through a thin spot in the surrounding forces. They could take more people with them that way, since they don't need to keep secret through the entire escape. Does the enemy merely want to conquer the city or does the enemy want to eradicate its inhabitants? If all they want is the city, then they won't waste much effort chasing after escapees.
Other suggestions depend on the party level. The 6th module of Jade Regent required the party to sneak into the capital city despite the Typhoon guards who were oni in disguise. The party simply teleported in, because they were 16th level.
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A number of paizo adventure paths took the route of preparing a couple of skirmish encounters across various scenes throughout the battlefield / castle with some secondary objectives (destroy a siege engine within x rounds, prevent hostiles from attacking y creature, defeat all enemies within z rounds, etc). The result of the battle, or in your case, the number of remaining survivors, depended on how well the PCs succeeded in these secondary objectives.
Yeah I think this is the best way to go about it. You don't want to slog your way through street by street, you want a couple of cool standout scenes that sketch what the siege as a whole looks like.
I like the idea of rescuing survivors as a way of keeping score. For each encounter there's some way of determining how well the PCs did based on speed, being detected, catching all enemies, preventing enemies from inflicting damage etc., which you can conveniently just rate between 0 and 3. Where 0 is a failure that can send the whole thing tumbling down, and 3 is a perfect success. 1 is enough to keep the PCs moving closer to exiting the city. 2 and 3 mean they can rescue people, or acquire resources or take out choice enemies which may be useful later if there's an attempt to liberate the city. And then you calibrate it so that generally the PCs can score 1 point easily enough, but often 2 and if they're lucky or clever up to 3.
A number of paizo adventure paths took the route of preparing a couple of skirmish encounters across various scenes throughout the battlefield / castle with some secondary objectives (destroy a siege engine within x rounds, prevent hostiles from attacking y creature, defeat all enemies within z rounds, etc). The result of the battle, or in your case, the number of remaining survivors, depended on how well the PCs succeeded in these secondary objectives.Yeah I think this is the best way to go about it. You don't want to slog your way through street by street, you want a couple of cool standout scenes that sketch what the siege as a whole looks like.
I like the idea of rescuing survivors as a way of keeping score. For each encounter there's some way of determining how well the PCs did based on speed, being detected, catching all enemies, preventing enemies from inflicting damage etc., which you can conveniently just rate between 0 and 3. Where 0 is a failure that can send the whole thing tumbling down, and 3 is a perfect success. 1 is enough to keep the PCs moving closer to exiting the city. 2 and 3 mean they can rescue people, or acquire resources or take out choice enemies which may be useful later if there's an attempt to liberate the city. And then you calibrate it so that generally the PCs can score 1 point easily enough, but often 2 and if they're lucky or clever up to 3.
The defense of Longshadow had a system like that, using defense points to track the success of individual skirmishes.
Final Defense Points 150 or more: Great Victory Longshadow suffers few casualties and relatively little damage beyond its gates and defensive walls. The people cheer the PCs as saviors of the town. ... PF2 Story Award 1000 xp.
110–149: Victory The defense was successful, but the town suffered from the attack. The survivors struggle to tend to the wounded and clear the dead from the streets. ... PF2 Story Award 750 xp.
70 to 109: Costly Victory The defense was successful, but at great cost to the town. Dead and wounded fill the streets. Most don’t blame the PCs for the damage the town suffers, ... PF2 Story Award 500 xp.
1 to 69: Pyrrhic Victory Regardless of the PCs’ victory over Kosseruk, many survivors slowly abandon the now-ruined settlement, and many more are killed. Most of the remaining citizenry turns against
the PCs, ... PF2 Story Award 375 xp.
0: Loss Most of Longshadow’s population is captured and killed by Ironfang forces. The town’s industry falls under the control of the Ironfang Legion, ... PF2 Story Award 0 xp.
For an inspirational fantasy fiction book:
16 Ways to Defend a Walled City, by K.J. Parker
For an inspirational movie:
The Seven Samurai
For an inspirational anime series:
Attack on Titan
I've been drafting up a squad fighting sub system based on pf2 where each PC takes the lead of a small squad of 5 to 25 NPCs and engage in skirmishes with likely composed hostile troops.
It's smaller scale than the army system I'm designing and is meant to work in guerilla style situations.
Don't know if youd want me to link it ?
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My advice would be to keep the focus on the party - the larger battle is background stuff, a hazardous environment for them to navigate while they do specific TTRPG scale things to help.
Note that they can still achieve victory without "winning" the entire siege, some examples of "victory" include;
- Evacuating a small group of citizens likely to be killed by the opposing army when they take the city.
- Evacuating some important NPC.
- Delaying the fall of the city by a day, giving more people time to sneak away.
- This one is from the movie Kingdom of Heaven - they fight a pretty violent battle against their besiegers, not to win the siege, but to force the besiegers to negotiate a peaceful surrender of the city.
Some ideas of TTRPG scale missions the party can do to try and help with the larger battles going on around them;
- Sneaking out of the city to destroy enemy siege equipment.
- Sneaking out of the city to assassinate an enemy leader who wants to use particularly violent tactics/who opposes a peaceful resolution to the siege.
- Scouting out potential ways to evacuate the city (sewers, hidden passages, gaps in the enemy lines, etc).
- Attacking an enemy camp and setting fires to pull enemy troops out of position to distract from evacuation efforts.
- Escorting the important NPC out of the city.
- Eliminating an enemy scouting party that has found an entrance to the sewers.
- Breaking into enemy tunnels to sabotage their sapping efforts.
- Defending a breach in the walls for long enough for engineers to seal the breach.
- Killing an enemy wizard or monster that the normal troops defending the city can't handle.
- Finding and eliminating a party of infiltrators who are attempting to poison the water supply.
- Finding the artifact in the cities catacombs that the enemy are besieging the city to recover.
- Helping an npc who got separated from family to find their family.
- Fighting a fire in the city caused by enemy artillery, and trying to rescue NPCs caught in the fire.
- Disrupting the ritual being performed by the enemy who are trying to summon a demon to let loose in the city.
- Defeating the Warsworn or other undead created as a side-effect of the conflict.
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- Negotiating with the thieves' guild to get them to tell you about their secret smuggling tunnels.
- Convincing the sister of the thieves' guildmaster to flee the city with you (because that was his price for giving you the information)
- Fending off the young hothead noble who's making a fuss about you "deserting" the city