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Wolf_Shade
2009-01-24, 06:51 PM
I'm running a 4E campaign with six players.
They are going to come to a point where they are tasked with defending a city that is under siege by an army of orcs. By the time they are involved they will likely be level 5 or 6.

I don't know how to run an army. I don't have a set number of orcs that are involved. It's not going to be helm's deep size, but it is three different tribes.

I can't just throw the army at the players. One, the players would die horribly, and two, that's not good tactics on the part of the army.
I can't let the players just pick off the straglers from the edges of the army until they are all dead. It would take too long and wouldn't be believable.

The players don't have to wipe out the army. There is a crystal ball that is being used to communicate the orc's orders to the orcs. Right now I envision it sitting in the middle of their camp. The players need to take possession of or destroy the crystal ball. Of course, they won't know that to start with.

Greengiant
2009-01-24, 07:40 PM
For the size of a tribe, check out the orc organization for gang.

30-100 orcs plus 150% noncombatants plus
1 3rd-level sergeant per 10 adults, 5 5th-level lieutenants, and
3 7th-level captains

I'd guess that's a tribe. Depends, look at the size of tribes in north america before the arrival of the french/british/portuguese/spanish/etc, their tribes were HUGE.

As for defeating the army, objectives are the solution in my mind. Have them shore up defenses, get some last-minute recruits to help the town's melitia size. Have them re-enforce the walls or something. Send them on a mission to take down the leader of the orcs behind enemy lines. Get them to gather resources for the alchemists and healers behind their lines.

Endless opportunities, but make sure that they understand that they WILL die if they are in the din of battle.

Siosilvar
2009-01-24, 07:52 PM
As for defeating the army, objectives are the solution in my mind. Have them shore up defenses, get some last-minute recruits to help the town's militia size. Have them re-enforce the walls or something. Send them on a mission to take down the leader of the orcs behind enemy lines. Get them to gather resources for the alchemists and healers behind their lines.

+1

I don't know a whole lot about 4e, but generally small groups of 3-6 are massacred by armies of 500+. Giving them some smaller tasks to accomplish will, well... give them something to do. Make sure that they feel like they've accomplished something. It might not stop the army entirely, but at least whatever they're doing will slow them down a bit and either evacuate more people from the city or open up a chance to stop the orcs.

Studoku
2009-01-24, 07:53 PM
As one of the players, my first instinct would be to assassinate the orcs' leader. Doing so would, depending on the mentailty of orcs in the setting, either delay the army or cause other prospective leaders to begin fighting for control.

Dienekes
2009-01-24, 08:11 PM
I did something like this (except I had elves attacking) with my players. And what I did was essentially have a bunch of submissions. ex. Helm's Deep inspired defend this wall. Go guard the Duchess. Sneak into and assassinate the elven leader. Even more fun occurs if the attacking forces win. Then you have breaking into the slave/torture pits. Loot the Wizard Tower so the attacking forces can't get their hands on the magic item there. And such.

Basically avoid a head on head combat and make up spec ops missions.

CthulhuM
2009-01-24, 08:35 PM
You could go by the system in Heroes of Battle and decide the outcome of the battle based on victory points:

Basically, you set up a number of objectives for your party to accomplish (various good suggestions found above), and give each of them a point value. If the party completes the objective completely they receive those victory points; if they are partially successful, they gain partial credit. These missions could start as much as a week or two before the battle (scouting the enemy, raising defenses, destroying enemy supplies, etc.) and continue on up to tactical strikes made during the orcish attack (taking out leaders, sneaking up on fortified groups of archers, etc.).

In the end, you dictate the outcome of the battle based on how many points the players accumulated (relative to how many they could have accumulated), throwing in nods and references to the missions they did or didn't accomplish along the way. For example, if they managed to determine that the orcs were going to attempt a flanking attack at such and such a location, an ambush of local militia (or the party themselves) could be ready to intercept it. If not, it would result in the defending forces losing a good number of troops and being pushed back from one of their defensive positions.

skywalker
2009-01-24, 10:53 PM
For the size of a tribe, check out the orc organization for gang.

30-100 orcs plus 150% noncombatants plus
1 3rd-level sergeant per 10 adults, 5 5th-level lieutenants, and
3 7th-level captains

I'd guess that's a tribe. Depends, look at the size of tribes in north america before the arrival of the french/british/portuguese/spanish/etc, their tribes were HUGE.

We're talking about 4E. Which does not have those stats. How big is the city? Because the size of the city directly correlates to the number of orcs it would make a juicy target for.

Have you done the math? Because you can actually stack a fair number of orcs into a level 8-9 encounter...

Wolf_Shade
2009-02-07, 06:39 PM
I did something like this (except I had elves attacking) with my players. And what I did was essentially have a bunch of submissions. ex. Helm's Deep inspired defend this wall. Go guard the Duchess. Sneak into and assassinate the elven leader. Even more fun occurs if the attacking forces win. Then you have breaking into the slave/torture pits. Loot the Wizard Tower so the attacking forces can't get their hands on the magic item there. And such.

Basically avoid a head on head combat and make up spec ops missions.

This seems to be the best option. It also has the potential to be the most difficult. I'm not a great strategist so I don't know 1) what an army laying siege would do and 2) how a party of "superpowered" individuals would stop them. One of my players has studied Roman tactics so I need to keep it semi-believable at least.

Someone asked how big the city was. It's not huge. Say a trade city with a full time population of maybe 1000 adults.
City defenses consist of a 40 foot wall (assuming that's high enough, if not I'll raise it) with enchantments on it that make the top 10 feet frictionless. There is a single gate of entry, 40 feet wide (for high traffic). The gate is reinforced by an iron portcullis. The gate is guarded by enchantments on the ground in front of it that create a rapid upward and outward force.
The population is primarily scholarly farmers. There's probably around 200 skilled archers and about 500 "book smart" mages. Heavy into study and magical research, not so hot at combat magic. (The enchantments are modified utility spells/rituals).
The city is backed up to a canyon drop off that provides a natural barrier in that direction. They also have long winters and short summers, so any siege that occurs near and into winter (which this one has) is going to have some hardships of its own.
The city leaders are overconfident in the cities defenses and hadn't been worried about the orcs until they stayed into the snow season.
The city also has a sewage system of sorts underneath it that the orcs are aware of.

The orcs are a collection of three different tribes that were previously at war. They were brought together by a promise of prominent positions in an upcoming "great war" by someone claiming to be a servant of Gruumsh if they could take this city. The three tribes have segregated camps, but are all camping in the same area. It's like a three sectioned amoeba, sort of. The center is where I see orders coming from and then being distributed to the armies of the separate tribes.
The orcs have numbers, alchemical explosives, and magic resistant lumber. So where as previously the "natural" defenses worked fine the orcs are better able to overcome some of them.


If anyone has suggestions for missions the players can run (escort isn't really an option given the climate, can't send for help as there's not really anyone close enough). Or if anyone has more questions just so I can flesh out the city a little better.

Thanks to those who've had input so far.

Wolf_Shade
2009-02-07, 06:40 PM
Have you done the math? Because you can actually stack a fair number of orcs into a level 8-9 encounter...
No, but I've got no qualms with using the level adjustment rules in the DMG to make them more challenging.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-02-07, 07:18 PM
I recommend using a lot of orc minions with some regular orcs (all of appropriate levels, so I guess 3 to 9, with minions probably closest to PC level, or a bit under). The PCs can't fight on their own - if they try, they're simply overwhelmed after slaughtering a heroic amount of enemies, no dice rolled. Instead, the PCs need to rally support to even out the odds, and you only play out key points of the battles as level-appropriate encounters (conveniently dramatically ignoring all the dozens of other combatants around them, who just negate each other). The PCs' success will have a great effect on the end results. However, their decisions out of combat should have an even bigger effect on the final result, assuming they have a say in strategy and tactics.

If the PCs are to operate on their own - you already seem inclined toward this? - they have to fight quickly and get away with speed and stealth. Set time limits for encounters, and don't demand that they defeat all enemies - set a specific XP value for the encounter, and grant all that XP if the PCs achieve their goal, whether it's destroying/stealing a crystal ball, defending a bridge for X rounds, or killing a commander. After a certain number of rounds, every round or two brings more enemies into the fight (minions, mostly; you could also make a table and roll on it, with small chances of non-minion orcs, or even small groups). You want your PCs to feel pressured to fight quickly and get away.

Using skill challenges as part of the encounters - similar to traps - may be a good idea, too. This could simulate archers who are outside the actual combat, enemies joining the combat, achieving the specific goal, and so on.

Of course, if the PCs make successful strikes, the orcs will start sending patrols or raiding parties agianst them - probably composed of pretty tough orcs.

Seonor
2009-02-07, 07:52 PM
I don't know if these ideas work in your setting, but here are some potential missions:

Scouting the sewage system: one day a someone hears noises comming out of his basement. The party needs to check if it was a group of orcs or just rodents of unusual size. Bonus points if they scout a save patrolroute for the cityguards.
Intercepting messages: The orcs set up some sort of communicationsystem (carrier pigeons, magic (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0512.html), messengers, ... ). The party needs to steal/copy a few messages without the orcs noticing. After they brake the code, let them send a few messenges themselves.
Assassinations: leaders, high-level mages and clerics... you get the idea.
Sabotage: siege engines, food+water supplies. If it is cold enough, just burning down their tents/barracks will severly hinder them. If the orcs bring in flyers, attack their camp.
Rescue missions: The orcs captured in some earlier conflict (with another city) a group of soldiers and are using them as slaves. Free them and bring them back into the town.
Search: you said their are many mages in the town? they need spell components, either generic ones just to keep the defense up, or some powerfull ones for a particular nasty spell.
Scouting: How are the orcs organised? Where are they storing weapons/food/tools? Where are their supply lines?


Just a few ideas and they need probably some adjustment before you can use them.

Random NPC
2009-02-07, 08:29 PM
I think you got it clear that the party might be better suited for special ops missions instead of full head on battle. Yes, they should fight but the battle should start before the army arrives the city.

My feeling is that you want the army to be able to win without the help of the adventurers, right? Then I'm going to give out some tips on how the army may win. Also they could serve as missions for the players to fulfill in order to repel the orc army.

1. Siege Weapons. Not many. Maybe four or five catapults. These are good to make a breach. This factor is quite huge for the Orc army and can greatly tilt the battle to their favor. The players should destroy one or two in the middle of the night two days before the battle or so. Or at least enough catapults so they won't be too much of a bother. I would recommend sending an NPC to help them in the whole destroying the catapults. Planting explosive runes or Gods know what.

1a. If you want to be really mean, use Siege Towers. They rock hard and if they are not taken down quickly (and it's NOT hard) they will overwhelm the city. It's hard to take them down if the party focuses on destroying the tower, but if they focus on hampering its movement then it's easy. Note that the orcs can improvise and make a "road" for the tower to move on.

2. Ladders. Use them well and often. This is what most of the time makes the invading army win a battle. There's no way for the party to tamper with the ladders before, so the whole point of them for your players is to at least stop the ladders from working properly during battle. Take them down, burn them, break them. Go nuts here. The orcs may also use their enchanted wood to make the ladders.

3. The sewage system will help the orcs. The party should not know of this unless they can take the information from the orcs. Here the party might do some infiltration without being noticed. If they fail or never gather those plans, the party will be needed inside. If they never happen to know about the orcs entering the sewage system, try to keep the party inside the city walls.

These are not much, but if you think about it, you can really tilt the battle with these tricks.

Knaight
2009-02-07, 08:56 PM
This seems to be the best option. It also has the potential to be the most difficult. I'm not a great strategist so I don't know 1) what an army laying siege would do and 2) how a party of "superpowered" individuals would stop them. One of my players has studied Roman tactics so I need to keep it semi-believable at least.

Someone asked how big the city was. It's not huge. Say a trade city with a full time population of maybe 1000 adults.
City defenses consist of a 40 foot wall (assuming that's high enough, if not I'll raise it) with enchantments on it that make the top 10 feet frictionless. There is a single gate of entry, 40 feet wide (for high traffic). The gate is reinforced by an iron portcullis. The gate is guarded by enchantments on the ground in front of it that create a rapid upward and outward force.
The population is primarily scholarly farmers. There's probably around 200 skilled archers and about 500 "book smart" mages. Heavy into study and magical research, not so hot at combat magic. (The enchantments are modified utility spells/rituals).

A city with a full time population of 1000 adults is not going to have a 40 foot high enchanted wall, with a 40 foot wide gate, 200 skilled archers, and 500 mages. Maybe a city of 50,000 but the amount of resources this city has is just unrealistically huge.

herrhauptmann
2009-02-07, 11:33 PM
3 Tribes of orcs.

How big are you thinking each tribe is? I generally think no more than 80-90 combatants/casters in a tribe. Will the citizens of the town be helping defend their homes, or will they be hiding under the bed screaming 'Save me, save me!'

Also, scholarly farmers and magic resistant wood? Personally I can't suspend disbelief enough for that. Have a hard time even with 3.5 Silverymoon and Halrua.

I support the Heroes of Battle idea of victory points. Even though it is a 3.5 book, the overall system of running a fight is a good idea. If the orcs are going to max out use of ladders, let the defenders use those hooked poles to push the ladders away. Strength check DC 10, right when the ladder appears, DC 15 the second round, DC 20 the third round, after that, a few orcs each round get onto the walls from that ladder, say 3d4 minions.

For Random NPC, I don't see why the PC's couldn't be aware of a possible attack from the sewers. It is one of the common methods used when PCs need to infiltrate a city or keep. In fact, make that a big source of victory points. If the pc's can successfully delay a sewer invasion before the big attack comes, they get mucho points. If they can't, they'll get a sudden surge of orcs out of the sewers.
The defenders then have a choice, rush into the city to kill the raiders and make it easier for the siegers to take the walls. Hold the walls and let their home get pillaged. Or split their forces. Regardless of what the PCs do, have a plan of fights ready. Whether they defend teh walls with everyone, fight in the streets with everyone, fight on the walls alone, or fight in the streets alone.
A few rounds after the infiltration, they start storming teh walls.

Allow the use of boiling oil from the defending towers. Massive firey damage to everyone under it, and on the ground within say 3 squares. After teh oil is spilled, that group of squares is safe from attack for a few rounds because anyone entering will get cooked.

AslanCross
2009-02-08, 12:13 AM
I agree with those who've said the city is far too well-defended for something that only has a thousand adults. That's the kind of defense you might see in a metropolis, likely the largest one in a kingdom.

I doubt the wall would be 40 feet high, let alone enchanted. In fact, it might not be more than a wooden palisade of 15-20 feet.

To give an idea of scale, here's an example. Although it's a 3.5 example, the city of Brindol in the Red Hand of Doom adventure has a population of 8,500. Its militia only numbers 800, and about half of them are simply farmers who can hold a spear or crossbow. The lord of the city has a personal army of about 200 professional soldiers. It has only one noteworthy Wizard, and a handful of clerics.

More likely than not, your city's "mages" are probably just going to be students of magic who have are trained in the Arcana skill and have Ritual Casting. They really wouldn't actually be Wizards, as you've already mentioned.

In any case, I also recommend the use of victory points from Heroes of Battle. That way the PCs can do small-scale missions that can greatly affect the course of the battle, instead of them devoting their power and expertise to wading into the horde and slaying orc minions to the last warrior.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-02-08, 05:11 AM
A city with a full time population of 1000 adults is not going to have a 40 foot high enchanted wall, with a 40 foot wide gate, 200 skilled archers, and 500 mages. Maybe a city of 50,000 but the amount of resources this city has is just unrealistically huge.

Also, 2.5 times as many mages as archers? What? How about 500 archers per 1 mage, instead?

Even with a militia raised, probably 25% of the population would be fighting, at most. Depending on location and whether the place has soldiers garrisoned, professional soldiers might amount to 5 to 10% of the population (remember, they're drawn from the countryside too, and the countryside contains some 90% of the general population, so cities can have disproportionate amounts of troops if they have a garrison).

So if there's 1,000 people (that's more of a town, but pretty medieval anyway), there might be 50-100 soldiers (probably doubling as watchmen) and maybe 200-250 militiamen (admittedly, this assumes that every single man has some sort of militia duty, and trains together regularly; if they don't, they are worthless as a group, regardless of their personal combat ability). Of course, if your society has gender equality, you'd double that to 400-500, since the women would pick up weapons too. The rest are too young or too old to fight.

That's a very fantasy-game "everyone fights to defend their home" -style solution, though. If you wanted more realism (which I assume you don't), you'd probably go with 100 soldiers and 100 militia.

There might be a palisade, but probably no stone walls. There might be a keep inside the town designed to hold the people and take a siege - leaving the rest of the town to be plundered and burnt...

But really, the numbers are irrelevant. The PCs' actions should decide the outcome, and the NPCs just cancel each other out.

Dervag
2009-02-08, 06:05 AM
This seems to be the best option. It also has the potential to be the most difficult. I'm not a great strategist so I don't know 1) what an army laying siege would do and 2) how a party of "superpowered" individuals would stop them. One of my players has studied Roman tactics so I need to keep it semi-believable at least.Now this we can help you with. I'll write more below.


Someone asked how big the city was. It's not huge. Say a trade city with a full time population of maybe 1000 adults.1000 adults is a town, not a city. I assume the transient non-permanent population is larger. Do those transient people pack up and leave, or are they stuck inside the city? Will they contribute to the defense?

If there are only 1000 people in the city, the defenses are too impressive. Raising a 40 foot stone wall is a LOT of work, for example. Of course, if the walls were raised some time in the past, they'd still be there even if the population that lives there now could never have built them. In which case the current population will rattle around inside like a handful of peas in a large tin can. That could make defending the walls difficult- there simply wouldn't be enough warm bodies to hold every foot of wall.

Or maybe the "city" is more like a complex of large buildings with an outer curtain wall? That's not unprecedented, either. The complex of buildings would have a name like "the citadel." In that case, transients would pitch their tents outside the walls of the citadel.


City defenses consist of a 40 foot wall (assuming that's high enough, if not I'll raise it) with enchantments on it that make the top 10 feet frictionless. There is a single gate of entry, 40 feet wide (for high traffic). The gate is reinforced by an iron portcullis. The gate is guarded by enchantments on the ground in front of it that create a rapid upward and outward force.That sounds like an excellent defense, assuming the enemy does not have any artillery (including magic) that can easily knock down walls. Catapults don't qualify, because they can't easily knock down walls.


The population is primarily scholarly farmers. There's probably around 200 skilled archers and about 500 "book smart" mages. Heavy into study and magical research, not so hot at combat magic. (The enchantments are modified utility spells/rituals).About those mages: Is their combat magic roughly as deadly as, say, a random schlub with a crossbow? Are there some mages who are truly proficient with combat magic mixed in?
_______

Assuming your orcs are the typical usual, disorganized berserker-types, here's how I would have expected the siege to go.

As the orcish army gets within a few days' march of the city, word reaches the city and its surroundings. The peasants start freaking out. Farmers and the populations of outlying villages will run into the city. The city will take standard precautions- making sure food supplies are secure, getting ready to bar the gates, sending out messengers on horseback to nearby cities, and so on.

Then the orcs get close. Once they are within several miles of the city, their advance parties (scouts, random groups wandering ahead of the main horde, take your pick) will cut off travel into and out of the city. Any refugees who didn't make it into the walls or far away from the city will be dead or enslaved after this point.
______

Now it matters just how organized the orcs are. If they act like a normal, well-organized army, they will set up a defended camp with some light fortifications of its own (just in case anybody decides to break the siege by attacking them). They will keep a large fraction of their force on patrol around all parts of the town they can reach, to make it impossible for anyone to sneak in or out. Most of the rest of their forces will be out foraging for food. In this context, "foraging" means "looting, hunting, whatever."

If they are disorganized, things look a little different. The orc camp(s) will not be fortified. There may not be enough sentries to prevent people from sneaking out or in. It should be impossible to get pack trains of supplies in or out, but people might be able to get through.

In your case, because the orc leader has to worry about his troops fighting among themselves, he will probably have to go out of his way to keep them separate. That doesn't just mean separate camps. It means assigning them to forage separate areas. If two foraging parties come across the same food, and they're from different tribes, they might very well fight and start a tribal war that would gut his army.

Note that the orc leader probably doesn't need a crystal ball to tell his subordinates what to do. The area he needs to control only stretches over a few miles, tops. So even without a crystal ball, all he has to do is keep some runners around. When he needs to send a message to a subordinate, he just writes a message and hands it to a runner.

Having the crystal ball is a BIG help, of course, and without it the heroes will have an easier time sneaking past the army or doing something to one part of the army before reinforcements arrive. But losing it doesn't mean the orcs automatically lose the war.
______

Dervag's Guide to Siege Warfare:


The orcs have numbers, alchemical explosives, and magic resistant lumber. So where as previously the "natural" defenses worked fine the orcs are better able to overcome some of them.OK. Now, let's talk military strategy, starting with the basics. If anything doesn't make sense, please reply with a question:

This is a "siege," right? That means the orcs are going to be camped outside the walls for a long time before the battle gets decided one way or another. This could go on for weeks, months, or even years, in theory.

First, let's talk grand strategy. What happens in the campaign after the battle? If the defenders win and the orcs lose, the orc army will probably fall apart. At the least, the orc leader will have to talk very fast to keep the tribes from killing him and/or going back to war with each other.

On the other hand, if the orcs win... well, you can probably imagine what happens next. There will be much looting and pillaging of the town. The orcs will steal everything that looks good and isn't nailed down, then pry up the nails and repeat the process. A lot of people will get killed for no good reason. The orcs might occupy the town, place an orc warlord in charge, and use his warriors to control things. In that case, the PCs will have to either leave town in a hurry or become resistance fighters in occupied territory.

Or the orcs might go away and go wreck someone else's city, after demanding a big pile of treasure from this city in exchange for not being stabbed in the face any more.

Either way, there are a bunch of adventure hooks. A lot of the details of what happens depend on stuff that I don't know, so I'm not going to say much more.

=========

Strategy:

That was easy. Now, we talk strategy:

Generally, there are three ways a siege like this can go. They can go in favor of the defender or the attacker. First, I'll talk about how the siege can go in the defender's favor, and how the PCs can work to make that happen:
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-(1) Siege lifted due to logistics:
This happens if the orcs get tired of camping out in the rain/drought/plague miasma/whatever. Or they run out of food and water. Or something. But for some reason, they can no longer live close enough to the city to besiege it. They leave, defenders win by default.

This one happened a LOT in real life. Ancient and medieval armies were not always good at logistics, so sometimes they just plain ran out of food and supplies. That would happen if they couldn't find any more lying around and couldn't organize a logistics train to ship them from somewhere else.

And they had lousy camp sanitation, so there was a lot of disease. You could lose a big chunk of your army in a few weeks to killers like typhoid fever (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid), cholera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera), or dysentery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid). Those were terrible ways to die.

Orcs are going to have both those problems.

How can the heroes make this happen?
To affect the orcs' logistics, they need to be able to get out of the city, or use some kind of powerful magic to do it from within the city. They (and troops under their command) can attack foraging parties, which reduces the amount of food the orcs can gather from the surrounding land. To defend themselves, the orcs have to use bigger foraging parties, which means fewer foraging parties. And they won't be able to forage as far from the support of the main army, either.

The orcs will have to camp near a large supply of drinkable water. Granted, they're orcs, so their standard of "drinkable" may be low, but there are limits. Cut that water supply, and the orcs have to go find another water supply or die of thirst. This only works in areas where natural rainfall is low or unreliable, of course.

The heroes can destroy supplies before (or after) the orcs get their hands on them. Burning grain, fouling supplies of clean water, and stealing livestock all work well to undermine the orcs' logistics.

If the orcs have a real supply chain (there are wagons or pack donkeys or guys with very large knapsacks carrying stuff to them from a home base) they have other options. They can raid the supply chain, forcing the orcs to peel off troops to protect the supplies. They might be able to attack the home base, in which case the orcs are totally screwed and will have to run back (getting hungrier all the way) to retake it from them. Or they can take troops and dig in at a position that lets them cut the supply train entirely, which has a similar effect.

Normally, only organized armies have a supply train, so the orcs might just rely on living off the land (foraging). That will make the orcs less vulnerable to raids aimed at their "rear" (the area they came through). But it also makes them more vulnerable to bad weather and other things that reduce their ability to gather food. And it means that the orcs' time in the field will be limited, because once they've eaten everything near the city they won't be able to get care packages from home.

If your Roman history buff friend is on the ball, he will know about all of this as a "Fabian" strategy. It's named after a Roman general who used these methods to badly mess up the plans of his enemy, the brilliant general Hannibal.
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-(2) Siege lifted due to politics:
The orcs could stay around a while longer if they wanted to, but they don't, so they leave. Defenders win by default.

If the orcs fight among themselves, their numbers will decline. Some orcs will be killed or injured and unable to help with the siege. Defeated clans or tribes will probably pull their forces out of the siege and return home to lick their wounds, and will also be out of the picture.

If something comes up back in Orcland, the orcs may have to go home to deal with it. Maybe a war broke out that threatens these three tribes' home turf. Maybe the elite shamans of Gruumsh have gotten into a schismatic fight over whether Gruumsh is "brutal but cunning" or "cunning but brutal." Who knows? In any event, they have to go home, which ends the siege.

For example, something like this happened to Europe as a whole when the Mongols showed up in the 1240s. At first, it looked like they were going to stomp all over everyone, and nobody could figure out how to beat their army. But then the Mongols had to go home because a succession crisis broke out back in Mongolia. By the time they got back to Mongolia, they'd pretty much lost interest in riding on horseback all the way across Asia to invade Europe again.

How can the heroes make this happen?
The heroes can work to create confusion and dissent in the orc camp. This should be pretty easy, since the orcs are an alliance of three Chaotic Evil tribes that were at war with each other recently. Convincing members of one tribe that sneaky bastards from the other tribe are trying to attack them works well. Undermining the credibility of their leader by doing things that make him look dumb works too. Killing the leader works very well, but since he's in the middle of the army that could be difficult.

On the other hand, they can also leave the city entirely and go over to Orcland in hopes of stirring up enough trouble to force the orcs to come home and deal with it. That only works well if the siege is going to last for months or years, though, because it will take them a while to make the trouble. And a while longer for the orcs to figure out what's happening.
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-(3) The siege gets "broken" by force:
An armed force from the city defeats the orcs in battle, or an armed force marches from somewhere else and defeats them in battle. The result is a big pile of dead orcs, and the remaining orcs leave because they don't want to die. Defenders win.

This might happen if the orcs attack the city directly and take heavy casualties. The result will demoralize the orcs and strain the authority of their leader. Which might lead to "siege lifted due to politics" if some angry orc decides to overthrow him because his brother got killed on the walls.

Or the orcs might be defeated when an army marches out of the walls and attacks them in the open (called a "sally" by the defenders), or when an army marches in from far away and does the same thing.

How can the heroes make this happen?
Fairly obvious. By defending the city and killing any orcs who get close, they make it more likely that the orcs will have to retreat due to heavy casualties.

If they can organize an army inside the city, they might be able to just march out and stab orcs in the face until all the surviving orcs run away. That's the simplest way to break any siege, but if there were enough troops in the city to do that the orcs probably couldn't besiege the place to begin with.

If they can get out of the city, they may be able to find help from somewhere else. But you said there weren't any other powers close enough to help, so that option is probably out.

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Then there are the ways for the attackers to win. I will talk about how the PCs can stop these things from happening.

(1) Defenders lose because of logistics:

Just like the orcs, the humans in the town have to eat and drink. If they plan to hold out for a long time, they'd better have big piles of food sitting around in a warehouse. Imagine a hill of beans or corn big enough to feed you for a year, then multiply by a few thousand. Yeah, that big. It had better be long-lasting food, too. Stuff like beans and wheat, not like fruit. A big granary is no use if all the food goes rotten.

If the town has been besieged before, the leaders of the town probably have a plan for this. In which case the food and water supplies should be there, and in places that are hard for the orcs to harm. They will also have done everything in their power to move food from outside the walls to the inside. Cattle will have been herded in, big piles of corn will have been carted to warehouses within the city, and so on.

Likewise, the town needs a reliable water supply. It's almost impossible to transport and store enough water to keep a town going for months or years using premodern technology.

If the area is rainy this is not a problem. Likewise if there are springs or wells inside the walls- but in that case, what happens if contamination gets from the sewers into the underground water supply? If the town gets its water from a river or stream, then the orcs may be able to defeat the town easily by blocking the stream, or by fouling it so that it becomes undrinkable.

Once again, if this has happened before, the town leaders will have a plan to deal with it.

Of course, with so much magic inside the town, it's possible that the defenders can magic up as much food and drink as they need. I don't know. In that case, things get a lot simpler for them.

There are other things the defenders might need, like arrows for their bows and material components for spellcasters. Or medicine, or wood to shore up the defenses. The possibilities are endless. The longer the siege goes on, the greater the risk that important supplies run out, which weakens the defense. In the case of food or water, the weakening becomes fatal very quickly and the town will have to surrender to the tender mercies of the orcs. For other stuff, it's not quite so big a problem, but still a serious threat.

Or disease can break out inside the town, just as it can break out in the orc camp. If the town has good sanitary practices (as the existence of a sewer system indicates), that's less of a threat. But it's still relevant. A plague will weaken or kill some of the town's defenders.

The orcs can even try to make this happen. Classically, this is done by throwing dead, diseased bodies of men or cattle into the city with catapults. Magic might work too.

How can the heroes stop this from happening?
The first line of defense is organization. Make sure that the granaries are guarded (so that people don't try to steal food and hoard it for themselves). Keep everyone following the sanitation rules to make sure you don't have half the population crippled by a bad case of Montezuma's Revenge.

One important note for the organizers: kill and eat livestock first. The first week of the siege should be a massive barbecue. Only livestock that are vitally needed for the defense should survive. And some breeding stock, of course.

This is because livestock will eat food that humans need for themselves, and because the livestock cause sanitation problems. Nobody wants to have to waste time mucking out the stables when the orcs are busy battering down the walls. Also, a big barbecue will raise morale.

The second step is to defend against deliberate sabotage. Orcs may try to sneak into the city (by magic, or over the walls, or through the sewers). Once inside, they could destroy or contaminate stockpiles of supplies- burning granaries or poisoning wells, for instance. Put grates in the sewers and post guards if possible (this may become a punishment detail). Once again, make sure that important supply stockpiles are guarded and that people are ready to take steps to put out fires and so forth.

The third step is to try to find sources to replenish supplies. This may not be possible; it depends on details. Perhaps some food can be grown within the city walls, at least on a small scale. Maybe there are ways to smuggle timber and weapons into the city from outside. I can't guess.
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(2) Defenders lose because of politics:
The defenders are less likely to lose this way than the orcs, because they have nowhere to go. Also, they (seem to) have a unified political leadership that won't have as much trouble keeping control as the orcs' leader does. But it might still possible for the orcs to bribe agents, or for a faction within the town to make a deal with the orcs.

The traitor group might take steps to help an orc army get in through the sewer, through the gates, or by taking and holding a section of the wall long enough for orcs to assault it. That last one isn't very likely.

Moreover, if the siege gets ugly enough, and if the orcs offer favorable surrender terms that the populace believes, the leaders might be pressured to surrender.

How can the heroes stop this from happening?
Set up a police force and/or some spies within the walls. Keep an eye on any suspicious elements that might make a deal with the orcs in exchange for money, power, or not being stabbed in the face by an orc. Use enough guards at critical locations that no small group of traitors can overwhelm them. Rotate the guards frequently- this will keep them alert and make it hard for traitors to figure out who is going to be guarding what on any one night.

Also, try not to lose any big fights or let the siege go on long enough that the population of the town starts wanting to surrender. But that's kind of obvious.
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(3) Defenders lose because of violence:
This one is really simple. If the orcs break the defenses down, they can charge inside and kill everyone. Game over. The PCs either die fighting, run for their lives, or get conquered by orcs. This might not be the end of the campaign, but it certainly counts as a defeat.

How can the heroes stop this from happening?
See "Tactics," below. Generally, the object of the game is to prevent hordes of orcs from pouring into the town and killing everyone. :smallwink:

=========

Tactics
This section is about the tactics the attacker might use to break into the city, and that the defender might use to stop this from happening.

Broadly speaking, the orcs sound like they have a lot of basic grunts, but not a lot of expertise at combat engineering or siege warfare. That defines what they're likely to try and to not try. Note that a lot of these strategies depend on a supply of wood- which, as I recall, they have.

(1) The orcs can charge to the wall and climb over it with ladders.
This is the stereotypical way to assault a castle, fort, or walled city. It is also really freaking dangerous. And it doesn't work very well. The orcs will get bunched up at the base of the walls, where defenders can drop things like rocks and red-hot sand and buckets of boiling water on their heads.

The orcs can try to keep the defenders from doing that by pinning them down with a barrage of arrows, rocks, and suchlike, but without guns it isn't going to be easy. The guys on top of the wall have a height advantage- you do not want to get into a rock throwing contest with someone who is standing thirty feet above your head. And they can always use shields, or the cover provided by any battlements on top of the wall, to defend themselves.

To make matters worse, climbing a ladder in an assault on a walled fortress is the last place you want to be. Typically, the ladders are leaned against the wall with the top of the ladder below the top of the wall, so that you can hoist yourself up onto the wall without having the ladder pushed down by the defenders. But in your case, the top ten feet of the outer wall surface are frictionless, so that won't work. The ladder has to be leaned against the lip of the wall itself, which means the defenders have easy access to the ladder, and to the vulnerable arms of any climbers.

If the defenders can push down ladders, or break them, or drop heavy stones from the top of the ladder down to the bottom, they can kill a lot of orcs very fast. Knock one orc off the top of the ladder, and he will fall thirty or forty feet. Any orcs below him may be knocked off, and the orcs on the ground risk getting hit by a two hundred pound orc that just fell out of a third or fourth story window. Push down the ladder, and all the orcs on it fall... onto all the orcs who were waiting to get up onto the ladder.

Falling off the wall is almost certain death; falling from midway up the ladder will cause bonebreaking injuries.

To make this work, the orcs have to have a huge numerical advantage. Like ten to one or twenty to one. It helps if there aren't very many defenders standing on each linear yard/meter/whatever of wall. In that case, orcs can throw attacks at several places at once. The defenders have to concentrate on the places under attack, and they may run out of warm bodies to drop rocks and tip ladders.

If the orcs can get a really tough, badass warrior to the top of the wall without him getting his hands stomped on or getting pushed off a ladder, then he just might hold off the defenders long enough for a few more of his buddies to make it up. At which point things look ugly for the defenders, because orcs are tough in close combat. Even then, the defenders might be able to push the orcs back over the walls.

It helps, in that case, if the walls are well designed. If there are towers covering any staircases leading off the walls, then the orcs will have to take a little guardhouse before they can get down. The towers act as a final line of defense, where guards can fire on attacking orcs and wait for reinforcements to come from another sector. Moreover, while this is happening the orcs who took a section of wall are vulnerable to being fired on from inside the city.
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(2) The orcs might try to attack the gate.

From the orcs' point of view this has the advantage that they don't have to climb up a forty foot wall while rocks and boiling oil are being dropped on them. Which is always a plus. To attack the gate, they have two options.

One is to use a battering ram to knock the gate down. This is very hard, because the gate will be secured by heavy bars. Even with the strength of orcs, the gate of a walled city will be tough to destroy.

The other is to use their "alchemical explosives" to blast the gate down. This is much easier. But even then, they'll need a heavy demolition charge to pull it off. Some orc is going to have to carry the bomb and put it in position (like in Helm's Deep).

The disadvantage is that the heaviest defenses of all are around the gate. For starters, we have the enchantment you talk about. Any poor sapper who tries to plant a demo charge on the gate is liable to get thrown and land on his head.

To make matters worse, a classic gate will be set into a tunnel through the wall. A long tunnel- the wall is extra thick here. Above the roof and behind the walls of the tunnel are rooms with what are called "murder holes." So named because guards in those rooms can pour burning liquids, shoot arrows, or drop rocks through the holes, and murder anyone too close to the gate.

The orcs can counter this (sort of) by forming a "tortoise"- a block of troops that hold heavy shields up to cover each other from the arrows and rocks. But the enchantment makes it hard to stay in formation near the gate. They can also build a mobile shelter with a heavy wooden roof (covered with wet hides or metal to fireproof it). Under cover of the shelter, which they wheel or carry up to the gate, they can attack it in more safety. If the shelter is made of magic-resistant wood, it may also neutralize the enchantment.

There's another catch for the orcs, too. If the siege goes on long enough, the defenders can build a brick or stone wall on their side of the gate, with just a narrow opening for one or a few men to march through. If the orcs somehow break down the gate or get through it by treachery, this narrow opening will be way easier to defend than a 40-foot wide opening.
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(3) The orcs can attack the wall directly.

If they knock down the wall, they can charge through the breach and win. They have several options. One is to build a ram or plant explosives at the base of the wall. This works a lot like attacking the gate.

Another is to build long-range siege engines and attack the wall from a distance. This isn't really a good plan. For starters, catapults take a LONG time to batter down a heavy stone wall. To make matters worse, the defenders can build siege engines too, and the orcs' siege engines are easy, obvious targets for any magic or heavy weapons the defenders have. On top of that, orcs aren't exactly famous for being great carpenters or engineers. So their siege engines may not be very powerful and may break easily, which makes them dangerous to their operators.

Yet a third option is to undermine the wall. The orcs can dig a tunnel up to the wall, prop it up with wood, then set fire to the wood and run for their lives. When the props collapse, the tunnel caves in, and the wall is likely to fall in after it. If they're really nasty they can fill the tunnel with explosives, light the fuse, and run even harder. The drawback here is that digging such a long tunnel is a lot of work, and if you don't get the angles right it's a complete waste of time. Also, well-organized defenders might dig tunnels of their own and undermine your tunnel (not likely in this case).
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(4) The orcs can build siege towers.

This is a lot of work. Siege towers are BIG, they move very slowly because they're so heavy and hard to push, and they're easy targets for catapults or magic. But if the orcs can put together a good siege tower and get it up to the wall, they can climb to the top of the wall under cover of the tower. Which makes it a lot harder for the defenders to stop them.

The defenders can make this harder by the simple expedient of piling junk out in front of the walls. A large, sloping pile of rubble several feet high and ten feet wide in front of the wall (or a moat) makes it impossible for siege towers to get close enough to the wall for the orcs to come across to the wall itself. The tower still acts as a mobile fortress that orc ranged weapons can use to harass the defenders, but that's not a game-ending threat.

Anyway, hope that helps.

hamishspence
2009-02-08, 07:17 AM
open grave has "hordes" small squads of creatures played as a single monster. Those rules could be applied to orcs.

Eldariel
2009-02-08, 07:36 AM
open grave has "hordes" small squads of creatures played as a single monster. Those rules could be applied to orcs.

The "Mob"-rules from Cityscape/DMGII also work. After all, it's only a Swarm of Medium Creature.

hamishspence
2009-02-08, 07:55 AM
true, but cityscape mobs are rather larger.

also, the Saga Edition Clone Wars rules for groups are closer to 4th ed in style.

Saph
2009-02-08, 08:15 AM
Now this we can help you with. I'll write more below.

...

Anyway, hope that helps.

Dervag, that's not 'help', that's a treatise on fantasy siege warfare. Where do you find time to write this stuff? :P

Really interesting read, in any case.

- Saph

Knaight
2009-02-08, 11:51 AM
In the event of a siege one thing the party could do is just rush through the army, killing when they have to, but mostly just trying to break through. Once through they will probably be followed by a couple of orcs, which they can pick off at their leisure. Then they get reinforcements, surrounds the orcs, and hit from all sides. At this, the orcs are pushed back to the city, and if they stand their ground, well then its their problem when the city sends out a militia to hit them from the inside of the ring. Once totally surrounded, open a passage, leaving the orcs a route of escape so they don't have to fight to the death, and line it with troops cutting the orcs up as they flee.

Dervag
2009-02-08, 05:08 PM
EDIT: Uh-oh, did I kill the thread?


Dervag, that's not 'help', that's a treatise on fantasy siege warfare. Where do you find time to write this stuff? :POnce I got started, it just came to me... It didn't actually take me that long. A long time, yes, but not hours and hours.

Mostly, I found the time to write it because my sleep cycle is so shot to hell right now that I went to bed at 8 p.m. local time and woke up at 2 a.m. with very little else to do.

Nitpick: most of that really isn't about fantasy siege warfare so much as it is about medieval siege warfare, with the names changed and the serial numbers filed off. Aside from noting a few places where magic might change the rules of the game, I pulled everything more or less verbatim from real life.

Learned about a few things, too, like the trick of piling up junk at the foot of the walls to deter siege towers. The crusaders used that one in a lot of their castles in the Middle East, and I always wondered exactly why those castles had a slope at the foot of the wall. And now I know.


Really interesting read, in any case.Thank you.

Wolf_Shade
2009-02-15, 02:26 PM
Thanks all.

I'll have to adjust the population. I don't expect it to come up in the actual gaming but I'd prefer to keep it reasonable. A lower population of able fighters (even after increasing the population of the city) means the PCs have that much more impact, which is good. It also means I don't need as many orcs as I first thought.

I'm also going to need to sketch out a rough outline of the orc encampments setup. And using the players as scouts provides a good initial starting point for the players to work from.

Dervag, that was very helpful. There was a lot I had not considered, and it'll help me better flesh out the city and surrounding area. I had not intended to use political turmoil with the defenders, but it will make a good non-combat consideration for the players to either ignore or get involved in as they choose.

Thanks again all. This gives me a lot more material to work with, and I'll look up the Victory Points system, or modify the Skill Challenge system like Tsoth-lanti suggested.