If it takes 10 men to build a wall....

[Kennyboyraven1]

I'd like some advice please. I've got a party going back to place they have previously visited and left a group of particularly deadly Hobgoblins behind. I wanted to get some opinions on how much 500 Hobgoblins with about 100 Lizardman slaves could construct in 2 months?

Thanks! :smile:

[jjordan]

In two months a Roman Legion could put up a permanent fortress. You've got about 1/10th the workforce but your Hobgoblins could have made a serious start on a permanent fortress which is still, even unfinished, pretty formidable. So a palisade and ditch with some additional barriers outside (punji stakes, sharp brush, etc..), corner towers, fortified gates, communal sleeping sheds, kitchen area, livestock pens, slave pens/shelters, a small temple, and etc... They're probably still working on improving the walls and improving the commander's quarters. They might be expanding the fortress. They will certainly have patrols out and will have subjugated or destroyed organized groups within a day's march of the fortress. That might have added to their manpower and materials.

[Damon_Tor]

You could do a lot.

The fort at Jamestown was built by a little over 100 men in about a month:

https://storage.googleapis.com/hippostcard/p/8918cf38014c98d05ee63f71d9979e24-800.jpg

So you could do quite a bit better than that. Build four such forts meeting in a square in the middle and you've got a basic star fort, and something that could be built by 200 men in two months, that could easily garrison 600. With 200 men building the walls of the fort itself, you've got 400 left over to add defenses. Towers for archers, one at each of the four points of the star, are very doable. A more substantial gate with its own archer towers and murder holes.

The whole thing is wood though: in Dungeons and Dragons that's a serious liability when Fireball spells are a thing. Better assume that there are some hobgoblin wizards who can cast "Control Flames" and other fire-fighting cantrips or the whole thing will just burn.

[Damon_Tor]

If you're interested, the walls of the Jamestown fort were 14 feet high and between 100 and 120 feet long. So my proposed star fort would be about 200 feet on a side, and I'd probably go ahead and increase the height of the walls to twenty feet, just to a PC can't scale it with a single move action. With your extra manhours I'd dig a deeper trench around the fort, maybe 10 feet deep, that's a great task for the lizardfolk, just brutal backbreaking labor. So from the top of the palisades to the bottom of the trench it would be 40 feet.

The five archer towers (the four corners and the gatehouse) should be taller, at least 30 feet.

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If you like you can show signs of continuing improvement: maybe they've started mortaring stone around one side of the fort, so it's clear that construction is ongoing (and things will get worse if they're left alone)

[sandmote]

The whole thing is wood though: in Dungeons and Dragons that's a serious liability when Fireball spells are a thing. Better assume that there are some hobgoblin wizards who can cast "Control Flames" and other fire-fighting cantrips or the whole thing will just burn. I specifically put off responding to this because logistics and defense are going to come up. At which point whoever wrote the fluff for the Hobgoblin Devastator in Volo's makes me very angry. No competent army is going look at wizards and say, "no, learning how to keep the army alive isn't a worthwhile military endeavor."

The following assumes the hobgoblins stayed put.

The Romans put a small fort every night they made camp so a basic defense should be normal for hobgoblins, and they're going to have many members specialized in logistics, with a focus on keeping an army equipped and defenses put up fast and effectively. In two months, the hobgoblins got a defense together a while ago, and are replacing the wood with something more magic resistant (assuming they haven't taken over existing fortifications and plan on staying that long) as they layer defenses.

Traditional D&D is late medieval, but for hobgoblin organization you need either classical or early modern levels of bureaucracy. Roman and Macedonian defenses are likely instead of star forts, due to the race's focus on melee weapons. Although I suspect the entire force is also trained to fire at range during a siege; if every peasant in Grenada had a crossbow, hobsgobs can manage the same for their army.


What might such impromptu fortifications look like? Roman camps were surrounded by a wooden palisade of close-set stakes (Polybius notes that Roman palisades were unusually robust, compared to their Greek equivalents, Plb. 18.18.1-17), around which would be set a trench (the agger) – the trench was not to provide cover, but to foul approaching enemies. Material from the agger was used to build up the height of the wooden palisade, and the agger itself was often filled with obstructions and hazards like sharpened sticks.

Beside fortifications, they're going to want food and supplies. Unlike the romans (who put a market inside the fort) I suggest the legal street market outside the walls below the fort. So if the PCs want to scope out local conditions (assuming they aren't recognized on sight), they don't get to go inside. This would also help separate the hobgoblins from their conquered locals, in contrast to Roman assimilation techniques.

And that bring the hobgoblins to their likely weakness; no assimilation. Being a separate race and devoted to Maglubiyet, I think a slave state with all the additional labor that brings would make sense. if the party can't manage a straight fight or a siege, they might be able to drain the size of the force by taking out smaller units collecting tribute or expanding the defense. The hobgoblins response (taken from the roman fighting in Briton) would be to organize parties leaving the fort to be larger. At some point, the party would likely be organizing larger scale resistance among subjugated or displaced people.

[Kennyboyraven1]

Thanks everyone for your input. I love it all. Sorry for the delayed response.

I'll add a little more detail, the Hobgoblins are on a small Island, far away from the PC's lands. About a months journey by sea. The Island is say 20 miles long by 10 miles wide with widely varying terrain. Only chaotic mutations of natural creatures live there, apart from the Lizardman tribe they have already subjugated. There are ancient mines already in place where the Hobgoblins are based, as is an old fort carved into the rocky outcrop where their home is. The centre of the Island is dense jungle.

Look forward to your brilliant replies.

Thanks

[sandmote]

Thanks everyone for your input. I love it all. Sorry for the delayed response.

I'll add a little more detail, the Hobgoblins are on a small Island, far away from the PC's lands. About a months journey by sea. The Island is say 20 miles long by 10 miles wide with widely varying terrain. Only chaotic mutations of natural creatures live there, apart from the Lizardman tribe they have already subjugated. There are ancient mines already in place where the Hobgoblins are based, as is an old fort carved into the rocky outcrop where their home is. The centre of the Island is dense jungle.

Look forward to your brilliant replies.

ThanksI think you're going to have to apply the traditional "its a dungeon; don't think about it," argument to explain the details of how the hobgoblins are managing to survive, actually.

That is a population density of 3 per square mile, which is extremely low, particularly for any place with a large area to fish from. Usually, if this happens on a island it's from being in the rain shadow of a much taller landmass, and the inhabitants regularly sail back to shore when water supplies run low.

The natural creatures being large and dangerous could also explain this, but ironically the hobgoblins are likely to leave the area with more fields constructed and fewer such creatures, assuming they're preparing to stay the year. So simply ousting the hobgoblin will leave the lizardfolk better off in the long run than before the invasion (assuming it takes at least a generation for the farms to decay completely).

In this case, I suspect contact (magic or otherwise)with any local Koalinths was a top priority (the 5e version of those is in Ghosts of Saltmarsh), basically to fill in emergency food stores. Access to the Create Food and Water and Purify Food and Water spells are going to be the primary regulator of the hobgoblin's strength, as starved men can't fight. Who wrote the devastator's fluff? The start of this (https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/) applies rather well here; they're effectively in hostile terrain without outside supply and have similar limitations to how long they can last.

Without introducing better farming, hunting, or fishing practices the carrying capacity of the island is likely 100+the number of lizardfolk killed during the hobgoblin invasion. Again, see Roman legions for this; the hobgoblins should be doubling their military duties with civilian ones supporting their martial training. If piracy and hunting are options, these do both at once and are something the hobgoblins have been constructing equipment for.

[Kennyboyraven1]

The Island is in fact much bigger ( I should check my maps!), its about 40 by 50 miles. I'm thinking the Hob's will be mining, taking wood of fires/furnaces and also to refit doors etc in the exisiting fort. Start farming, both crops and probably whatever chaotic version of wild boar and chickens there are (or similar).

Fishing to supplement food stocks as well. I think a fair few will need to be out Fishing/Hunting to get enough food?

[sandmote]

The Island is in fact much bigger ( I should check my maps!), its about 40 by 50 miles. I'm thinking the Hob's will be mining, taking wood of fires/furnaces and also to refit doors etc in the exisiting fort. Start farming, both crops and probably whatever chaotic version of wild boar and chickens there are (or similar).

Fishing to supplement food stocks as well. I think a fair few will need to be out Fishing/Hunting to get enough food?If whoever built the fort and mines was wiped out and the lizardfolk moved there relatively recently, this few inhabitants could be plausible.

But I think that is the most likely plan the hobs would have after two months. My question is what the hobs plan to do once they have their living arrangements set up. My guess would be piracy, if they don't have the numbers to invade another island outright. I somehow doubt they'd be willing to spend the rest of their lives just feeding themselves peacefully.

[Yakk]

500 Hobgoblins aren't alone. Hobgoblins are always part of a larger plan.

The Hobgoblins enslaved the locals, built a fort and set off for new supplies. Boatloads of new slaves arrived, and they build a plantation (harvesting some of the mutated plant materials).

They have fortified the port with cannon and earthworks. All approaches to 1000' (the range of the cannon) are cleared. There is at least one large ship in the harbor. The harbor slaves are silkies (with their skin stored in a vault), the harvesting slaves are halflings (mostly neutered), and the lizard folk slaves are the heavy labor.

Sentry towers have been built in a ring around the island. They are manned by a handful of hobgoblins and they use signals to indicate any intrusion, including "deadman switches".

The approaches to the fort have a mixture of seemingly cleared areas and punji sticks, in rings. The cleared areas have explosives stored under them, and the cannons have the range and angle to hit them.

[Kennyboyraven1]

If whoever built the fort and mines was wiped out and the lizardfolk moved there relatively recently, this few inhabitants could be plausible.

But I think that is the most likely plan the hobs would have after two months. My question is what the hobs plan to do once they have their living arrangements set up. My guess would be piracy, if they don't have the numbers to invade another island outright. I somehow doubt they'd be willing to spend the rest of their lives just feeding themselves peacefully.

Yup, expansion will be there goal. They are a particularly 'advanced' version of the standard Hobgoblin, actually being decended from a species bred aeons ago. They have lived on the Island as savages for many hundreds of years until the party recently cleared the chaos effect. Now they are remembering their skills. The fort is in fact theirs from before the chaos effect began and they are now reclaiming it.

Once again thanks for all the replies.