DMing a multi-front defence

[NeverSleep]

I've got a group of 6 pc's. All tier 2-3, combat focused.

They need to defend their city which has three main gates from the attackers (Wilding Drakes- read: dragons with mind control) and their mind controlled minion humanoids.

How do I best set this up so all groups get attention, while still letting the players pick the strategies?

Currently they've parlayed with the elder drake, but it has broken down to violence. At the end of the last episode, there were 2 adult, 3 elder, and 1 adolescent(most dangerous) meeting with the pcs at the northern gate.

I plan on having most of the drakes teleport out right away and leading their own troops at the various gates. They are leading a mook army of about 200 per gate. The pcs are elite gaurds and have full military control.

Anybody have advice on this?

[The Glyphstone]

What do the PCs have besides themselves for defense?

Figure out a way to abstract the fights that don't involve PCs, rather than rolling for all of the mooks.

[Etrivar]

Well, the obvious response is to have the PC's split into three groups (as balanced as they can make them) then have each group lead a detachment of soldiers to each gate.

some more information would be helpful though, like; how many soldiers are at their disposal? What are the walls made of? How high are they? How wide are the gates? Do you want them to win? If not, then the strategies suggested will change significantly :smallconfused:

[NeverSleep]

Its a town of 30k, and I've established that there are archers on the walls (30' stone) where they need them. There is also a set of horsemen at the gate they are currently at. They will also have a mook army and about 30 or so lvl 3-5 resources. I generally dm a bit on the fly, so if they ask for a specialist rogue with umd I roll percentage to see if they have it.

I want it to seem grim, and possibly tpk or great loss of city with easy revival in the storyline.

They also could run off the enemy if they take out some key drakes or come up with an awesome strategy.

I want to reward them for good strategies and unique resource usage.

[BRC]

I've got a group of 6 pc's. All tier 2-3, combat focused.

They need to defend their city which has three main gates from the attackers (Wilding Drakes- read: dragons with mind control) and their mind controlled minion humanoids.

How do I best set this up so all groups get attention, while still letting the players pick the strategies?

Currently they've parlayed with the elder drake, but it has broken down to violence. At the end of the last episode, there were 2 adult, 3 elder, and 1 adolescent(most dangerous) meeting with the pcs at the northern gate.

I plan on having most of the drakes teleport out right away and leading their own troops at the various gates. They are leading a mook army of about 200 per gate. The pcs are elite gaurds and have full military control.

Anybody have advice on this?

The important thing will be to maintain the Flow of battle and make sure everybody has something to do. This can be tricky if the PC's split up to cover each gate.
one thing you could do is make up a couple character sheets, representing the lesser Champions of the city, have them one or two levels below the PC's, and have plenty of copies.

Don't go for complexity here, make these characters blank slates, and have them be simple enough that a player can easily figure out how to play them. I know it's counter-optimization, but go for easy-to-understand static bonuses rather than nifty tricks with feat and magic item selection. The point is that the Players can pick up one of these sheets and instantly know how to use the character.

Make a couple of these sheets, maybe a Fighter (Captain in the City Guard), a Wizard (Recruited from the local guild), and a Rogue (Mercenary Champion).

Now, if the PC's split up, lets say to have 2 PC's at each gate, then when you focus on one gate, everybody not at that gate gets to control one of these blank-slate characters. This way you can have the focus switch between the various gates, and still make sure everybody is having fun.

Now, if you're willing to mess around with half-statted Homebrew, you could figure out some way to have the other players control squads of troops. One player gets to use to control a team of Archers on the walls, each round either focusing fire or launching AoE Volleys.

[Etrivar]

Then therein lies your challenge: figure out how to get them to look beyond the obvious solution, get them to look beyond the simple 'hold the gates' battle. If you show them (not necessarily in a blatant fashion) that they can resolve this more easily, they should grab it and run. Don't just hand the solution to them, but hint at it. If they opt for the pure defense battle after that, they deserve a TPK :smallwink:

[BRC]

Oh, as for running the game. For really complex plans like this, I find it helps a good deal to not have them plan, and then fight in the same session.

Have one session end with you presenting the situation, and describing to them all the resources they have available. Then let them come up with their strategy, then you give yourself a few days to work out how to handle whatever strategy they are using.

The trick is to present the question as open-ended as possible. Just give them the map and a list of what they have to work with and what they know. Then sit back and watch, answer any questions they have. Interject to encourage plans you like by adding new information (If one of the players says something along the lines of "If only we had ten carts, a hundred crossbows, and lots of string" you can say "You have all of those things"), or to discourage impractical plans before the players spend too much time discussing them ("Even if you were able to train random members of the populace as wizards, you couldn't get your hands on a thousand scrolls of Fireball").