One-shot for 4 lvl 6 Fitghters, need advice

[Unoriginal]

Hi folks!

I'm preparing an one-shot for four lvl 6 Fighters (all different subclasses, pre-gen), and I must say I have some troubles coming up with keeping a scenario short enough, given we'll likely have only 4 hours to play at max and it has to have a conclusion (half of the players won't have the time for another session in the foreseeable future, but that one-shot is to celebrate their birthdays).

I was thinking about something like: the PCs are sent to safeguard an abandoned fort, before the army of their allies shows up and invest it in preparation for an attack. Problem is that the attacking army is much closer than anticipated, and the PCs only have a couple hours to prepare before it arrives at the fort and start trying to conquer it.

Idea is that they have to resist all night against a whole army until their reinforcement arrives.

Do you think it could be both fun and short enough?

If you have any other idea, I'm more than happy to read them.

[Dork_Forge]

I think this would be fun, particularly if you let them get their Home Alone on. I'd personally try and design it in 3 'waves' or encounters, that gives you roughly an hour to handle each with an hour for prep/set up etc.

[Waazraath]

Agreed, I used this setup several times - one of the bonus adventures in Princes of the Apocalypse works this way (the farmstead attacked by orcs). Give the party indeed some prep time, and then a number of waves. In the later waves, you can vary how smart the opponents play depending on how much resources were drained already, and how much time you have left. It's a pretty flexible setup where you as DM have a lot of freedom to determine the pace. Players always enjoyed this type of encounter very much.

In an ideal situation, you put some variaty and buildup in the waves. For instance: Wave 1: lots of grunts, maybe some archers; wave 2: elite melee, archers and a spellcaster; wave 3, the boss monster, lots of grunts and everything not killed in earlier waves. Maybe between wave 2 and 3 infiltrators (wave 2.5) disrupting some of the defenses.

[Catullus64]

It might be a problem to have the PCs be the only defenders of the fort. Either the enemies only ever attack one place on the fort at a time (which I don't think remotely intelligent enemies would do), or your PCs have to split up to deal with the multiple fronts. Even if this fortress is small enough to fit on one battle map, that means running all fronts on one initiative counter, and that's complicated enough for one assault to take up the whole four hours.

Instead, I would have there be a token force of friendly soldiers at the fort. Tell the players at the start that they can't be everywhere at once, and to decide which front of the fortress to shore up with their own presence. Then you can have one encounter at a time, before the PCs have to rush to put out another proverbial (or not) fire.

The NPCs are valuable in other ways too. They can provide natural-sounding exposition about the broader war and the timeline of the assault. They can include likable named characters, whose death or survival the PCs can get invested in. They can allow for social interaction in the gaps between encounters. They can include some spellcasters that bolster the weaknesses of your all-Fighter party.

The rough structure I would pursue would involve the following sequences:


The players arrive and are given command of the fortress, have any missing details filled in for them.
They have some time to direct the construction of new defenses. I would give them about 12 in-game hours. This should ideally be finished before the first hour of playtime is up.
The enemies launch their first assault. I would have this involve two encounters in quick succession, as the enemy breaks through in one of the spots where the PCs aren't, until the PCs arrive just after their first encounter to drive them out. Ideally these two encounters together take no more than an hour.
Night falls, and the noise of more elaborate siege works are heard outside. The PCs can choose whether to rest, or to spend the night active, perhaps disrupting the siege works or ferreting out infiltrators. Again, this stage should take about an hour, ideally less.
A final encounter as the enemies launch their prepared assault at dawn. Should be pretty desperate fighting, brutal encounter difficulty, (if at least one PC doesn't fall here, I don't think you're doing this right) but ends with the arrival of the relief army, signaling victory.


It'll take discipline and a fairly firm hand on the pacing to fit that into four hours, but it's more than possible. The lack of many spellcasters should do something to speed combat up, but siege encounters tend to be complex by nature. I would have at least one of these fights be just the PCs vs. a single big monster. Since Fighters are really good at shredding single targets, have it be pretty tough, like a CR 8-9, higher if you've been generous with the magic items. Frost Giant and Young Black Dragon are the former, Fire Giant and Young Blue Dragon are the latter, for classic examples.