Pathfinder Intellectual Exercise

[Arkwright]

Greetings. I pose to you an intellectual exercise that is confounding me.

As by the rules of Pathfinder, how would you and others, in a party of 6, massacre a village?

Requirements:
-NO villages must escape to tell of the massacre, or at least they must not be able to tell of your presence.
-Must be a group no greater than 6 people, and preferably not too high-level.

Potential Issues:
-Villages are often far-strung out, with many cottages and farmhouses. And you need to get ALL of them.
-Consequently, they can also very easily escape.

So, what classes/levels/feats/spells etc would you suggest to accomplish this task? How could this theoretically be done?

[NamelessNPC]

If they don't know you are killing them, they won't escape. If they don't see dead bodies, they won't know somebody is hunting them. Just cast silence inside every hut and kill them one (familiy) by one. It must be done in the night, so the entire family is in one place at the same time.

If those measures are taken, a low lvl party can do it. Or does it have to be all the killing at the same time?

[Arkwright]

Hmm stealth is a good option.... problem is that out of your average party of 6, probably 5/6 of them won't have any stealth skills.

But what if one is out for a call of nature and comes bakc and finds all killed? Still a bit too much luck.

[Honest Tiefling]

Alternatively, they could know that there is a murderer on the loose. They just don't know its YOU. Toss out some undead, and keep their numbers up. Stealthy McNinja pants sneaks about to make sure no one makes a break for it. If someone can control undead, get them to work something out with the sneak so that everyone who disobeys horror movie tropes dies and shambles back to the church as an undead to teach them a lesson. Get the party face to corral everyone into the temple, with some sort of fake priest set up. If you have a nature-y dude, find a way to sabotage ways in and out of the town if at all possible.

I...Guess you could just poison the well too.

[NamelessNPC]

You don't need every party member to do it. The rogue alone can surely dispatch 4-6 sleeping commoners.

Someone with darkvision stalking outside can see if anyone left the house.

[Pilo]

A party of Lvl7 Druids or Clerics with the earth domain.

Cast http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/spike-stones around the village then set the houses on fire to make the people run away.

[supermonkeyjoe]

!. Kill all the outlying villagers as quickly and stealthily as possible and as anonymously as you can, possibly with summons or monstrous minions

2. Call an emergency village meeting to help the villagers deal with this new threat.

3. Massacre the assembled villagers

4...?

5. Profit.

[Bhaakon]

One ranger with good handle animal and a herd of trained attack cats.

[Arkwright]

Hmm definitely some good ideas here :)

[Grail]

A single 3rd level halfling rogue should be able to achieve this without raising much of a sweat, especially given that you've indicated that they are spread fairly sparsely.

Why 3rd level? You could probably even manage it with a 1st level, but the 3rd level gives a little bit of leeway for some average dice rolls. With sneak attack at +2d6 damage, he should be able to kill them with a sharpened pencil.

Why a halfling? Because of the inherent bonuses that they get, especially to stealth and their skill/attribute bonuses.

One house at a time and nobody would even know it was happening.

[Psyren]

A level 1 Witch with Accursed Hex could go around putting the entire village to sleep easily. Then just CDG everyone.

[KillianHawkeye]

A level 1 Witch with Accursed Hex could go around putting the entire village to sleep easily. Then just CDG everyone.

Or a sorcerer with enough sleep spells?

[Psyren]

Or a sorcerer with enough sleep spells?

The Witch can do this regardless of the size of the village though. Whether it's 10 inhabitants or 1000, she can attempt to hex each one twice, even at first level.

Plus, she can cast Sleep spells too.

[Novawurmson]

Might find some good ideas here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=245120), though I was trying to balance the idea so it would be feasible both ways.

I think the general consensus on the thread is that it would be hard for the village to fight a party of level 5+ adventurers as long as they used decent tactics.

I think a party of 6 ranged characters with good stealth could kill a small village at level 3-5. If you want to make it more interesting for the players, mix up the classes; Any combination of:One archer fighter, one rogue, one zen archer, one ranger, one (anti)paladin (depending on whether the village is evil or not), one gunslinger, one inquisitor, one alchemist (with the Explosive Missile (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist/discoveries/paizo---alchemist-discoveries/explosive-missile) Discovery), a Myrmidarch (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/magus/archetypes/paizo---magus-archetypes/myrmidarch) Magus, and, if you're willing to get into 3rd Party material, an Archer Path Psychic Warrior, Marksman, Soulbolt Soulknife and a Cryptic.

[Psyren]

Another note on the Witch - Hexes are supernatural, so they have no components. As she goes around putting the village to sleep, she won't make a sound or gesture, so it'll be very hard for the village to know who is doing it.

At level 2 the sleep will last 2 rounds, and she can also pick up the nails hex to CDG with if she has no weapon.

[Novawurmson]

Somehow I missed the "intellectual exercise" part. So far, I like Psyren's idea best, but I think the biggest problem would be resource management if you're trying to do it at low levels. Most spells are much less useful out - they simply can't handle the quantity of civilians that need killin'.

How about this party setup, at level 3+

An Alchemist starts things off by poisoning the town's water supply/food supply, preferably with Con and Str reducing poisons.

A Rogue and a Ranger scout the edges of the town, murdering those to stray too far; if the Ranger is level 4, he picks up an animal companion with scent to aid in this. A Summoner uses his Summon Monster ability to spam as many creatures into the town as possible, aiming to get people to hide in the their homes and figure out the strongest villagers to be focused down. When out of Summon Monster SLA's, he switches to his Eidolon to tear some people apart, then retreats.

When the town is weakened enough, the Alchemist accompanies the Summoner into the town, providing AoE damage and crowd control with his bombs; at level 3+, he should be doing at least 2d6+4 [INT] damage per bomb, or a minimum of 6, which should kill most level 1 Commoners, and Tanglefoot Bomb/Frost Bomb should help disable any unpleasantly powerful villagers.

The last 2 in the party can be focused on any stage of the plan. Another Rogue/Ranger type can increase the reliability of securing the perimeter, another minion-mancer (i.e. Druid, Conjuration Wizard, etc.) can help the Summoner, another melee brute can help the Eidolon in the final push, a Witch could help soften up the town with poisons and sleep hexes, etc., but the core idea of "Secure the perimeter, weaken the villagers, do a final push to slaughter them with some AoEs" is kept intact.

[Psyren]

Expanding on the Witch idea, here's a build:

Slumberella
Human Witch 2
15 Point Buy - STR: 8 DEX: 12 CON: 10 INT: 20 WIS: 8 CHA
Familiar: Raven
Feats: Accursed Hex, Ability Focus (Slumber)
Hexes: Slumber, Nails

Slumberella's sleep hex is a DC 18 Will save (10 + 1/2 level + INT + 2 for ability focus) = (10 + 1 + 5 + 2 = 18.) Accursed Hex lets her use it a second time on any target that makes the first save; this gives her a 99% chance of success vs. an equal-level commoner. (.10*.10 =.01 failure = .99 success rate.)

Again, these are both supernatural, so she can stand across the street or read the newspaper while using them on her target, who will not know she is doing anything special by RAW.

If Slumberella's target is isolated, she can attempt to take him out then and there. If not, she can use her familiar to attempt to lure him into an alley or abandoned building by mimicking a damsel in distress, and knock him out there.

As for finishing them, in the absence of a weapon/cohort, her nails can do the job. If a party member is allowed though, a rogue, ninja or vivisectionist can all work wonders. The alchemist has the added benefit of being able to make poisons that Slumberella can hand out via Beguiling Gift for the townsfolk to drink.

[Novawurmson]

One thing that's so strange to me about the Witch is that it seems like it was built as an RP-focused class; so many of the Witch's abilities would be incredibly fun and interesting in a campaign where you just sat around in a town and messed with people, but are nigh-useless in combat.

[Psyren]

One thing that's so strange to me about the Witch is that it seems like it was built as an RP-focused class; so many of the Witch's abilities would be incredibly fun and interesting in a campaign where you just sat around in a town and messed with people, but are nigh-useless in combat.

It's an absolute terror in the DM's hands. Lots of its stuff is geared around it being the BBEG, wreaking havoc in the campaign and generally making the PCs' lives miserable (e.g. Scarring one of the party.) Beast-bonded in particular can be a massive headache for the party to put down for good.

As far as being useless in combat, she's still a T1 caster when you get right down to it. In addition to being a phenomenal debuffer/controller, she's also a passable summoner - Fortune and Ward on summons toughens them up quite a bit, and Dimensional Occultist gets Planar Binding. Unlike party members, you don't have to worry about Cackling all day to keep those buffs up on your minions.

[Khosan]

About how big is the village in question? How many commoners, experts and warriors make up the population? How is the village laid out?

I could make some guesses, but specifics would help a lot.

I think the only thing I can say for certain is that getting rid of the villagers on the outskirts wouldn't be too tough. Anyone with a weapon and a decent Stealth check should be able to manage that in the middle of the night.

[roguemetal]

Depending on the difficulty of actually killing the people in town, this may be easy or unrealistically complicated. I personally always go for complicated even if its higher chance of failure, if only because the effect is always thorough.

Honestly, my best thought is to lead the entire village to another location, such as a cave nearby. Warn of some dangerous army that's coming from another direction and that you can hide them. Collapse the cave, and voila, no more town. Comes with added benefit of not having to hear them die, or make little gasps for air and such.

My more complicated thoughts involve suberfuge, and convincing the town to basically massacre itself. Lead a witch hunt, they're lots of fun. Or how about a revolution? If the town is too big to take down in one night, start gathering weapons from peoples homes, and giving it to some other faction. Then go 'missing' for a while, and watch as mayhem ensues.

Poisons and diseases are your friend. If you can spread it yourself, e.g. put a contact or airborne on your party to be cured later, that's even better. Nobody even knows its you.

Last but not least, undead minions take care of everything. It requires a higher level than you may desire, but usually works without fail.

Oh, and always start any of these by killing the horses or otherwise ceasing their means of transport.