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EldritchWeaver
2019-07-13, 09:47 AM
I plan to give the current villains in my campaign a series of bases, which are connected with teleporters. But I'm not sure what the bases should be equipped with or what their specialty should be (like infantry vs airforce). The Tech level is for a sci-fi race to conquer a D&D-like setting.

So what would you suggest?

erikun
2019-07-13, 06:34 PM
Gear the encounters towards how you intend for the PCs to handle the enemy bases. Gear their wartime strategy towards what you want to exclude the PCs from doing. Generally, this should be something that the PCs weren't going to have general access to anyways - an invading navy when the PCs don't normally have access to ships and sailing - so that you can give a context of the invaders being dangerous without realistically restricting what the PCs can do. The rest of the campaign can still be them as the scrappy underdogs attacking enemy bases on foot (or whatever) and eliminating them in the local area. I would be careful about giving the enemy an air force, though, unless the setting has a bunch of forests/mountains where the PCs can travel between areas without easy detection.

A side note: You could have magic (vs. tech) in the form of detection, obfuscation, barriers, and so on.

As for setting up the bases, think first about an interesting set of encounters that the PCs would have in the base, and then fit in the enemy specialty within that. If the PCs are on foot and the aliens have an advanced navy, then set up the bases as forts or outposts with guards and a series of rooms, probably with a construction yard or maintenance areas for ships. If the PCs have ships and the aliens have a massive infantry army, then rather have a large town on a shoreline with a few water-bound defenses that the PCs can interact with before driving off or taking over the port. It may seem unrealistic, and you can introduce more of the enemy's specialities in later bases as the PCs push further into the enemy's "home" base, but it's generally going to be better to set up an encounter that the party can meaningfully interact with over "Well here's a flying saucer floating in the air, how is your 5th level party going to deal with that?"

KineticDiplomat
2019-07-14, 11:46 AM
Well, if the initial conquest is over and the invaders are occupying, they might have some outposts where small units patrol out of - man portable weapons, light vehicles, smaller drone swarms in support. Probably with some on call access to the bad boys in terms of firepower, or sine you have teleporters, a reaction force.

Or they might have administrative centers with only light guards. Or better yet, a handful of police and governance types are propping up some local collaborating lords.

All of those give you chances to hug their belt buckles, sonto speak, and keep the fights at a few on few level. Presumably taking on any real force results in the PCs being chopped to pieces by automatic weapons and autonomous units. Possible some manned/unmanned goodness.