Looting Towns for Fun and Profit [3.5]

[root9125]

So, in an evil campaign, it seems reasonable that the PCs gain a lot of wealth at the expense of others. My PCs carried this to a logical conclusion by deciding to loot a town. Generating the items in the town is not an issue. Planning where they are located, also not an issue. Giving the PCs large wealth, also not an issue (they're at about 65% of expected WBL). But given that it is a reasonably sized town, what can I do to make it challenging, interesting, or exciting to loot? Furthermore, how can I stop them from doing it in every town they come across without DM fiat?

I have the game in 4 hours, so any help would be most appreciated.

[Zovc]

Have interesting guards?

Perhaps certain civilians have levels in Fighter/Warrior instead of just commoner?

Are there any wizards there to protect the town?

What level is your party?

[jiriku]

You game on a Thursday afternoon while I am working. I am jealous.

Challenging: guards and townspeople with class levels.
Interesting: the class levels are in caster classes, and they use a variety of interesting spells such as entangle, grease, web, soften earth and stone, and fog cloud. Also, they fight from the rooftops and construct makeshift barricades and traps, just like players do when they have to defend a town from bandits.
Exciting: Set things on fire. Oh no, the loot is burning!

Non-Repeatable: The ruler of the area hears that bandits plague the area and detaches a sizeable portion of his army to garrison local towns and patrol the roads. This includes a group of high-level good adventurers who will teleport to a town within minutes or hours of an attack. Now attacking a town requires facing a tough, well-prepared defense and then holding off rapidly-arriving reinforcements.

[jmbrown]

A town has hundreds of people living in it. Even if the PCs are in the upper teens, there's little 4-6 people can do against 1,000+ guys. I forget which book has rules for mobs but a mob of even the weakest commoners have a grapple so high that an elder wyrm that happens to start the round on the ground within reach is screwed.

If they were looting a podunk or even a hamlet they could probably get away with it at level 10+ but an actual town?

[Bagelz]

a large group of evil doers ransacking towns will undoubtedly gain the attention of higher level good heroes.
one town just the local guard/militia might go after them, two towns the neighboring towns militia help out against this nusance.

3 or more towns, theres definitely some proponents of LG that will hunt you down and stop you. (good adventuring party, an army of paladins, or a metallic dragon).

Or they could have stepped on the local theives guild toes (they lost too much money because they had to pay back protection, and they no longer have anything to steal themselves).
Any time a pest is a big enough problem, they get exterminated.

definitely handle this ingame, just don't surprise your players, give them hints that it will escalate.

[root9125]

Right, details. I always screw this part up. XD

Okay, party level 7, there are 4 of them. The town has a mage's guild, so wizards defending their stock are a given. Warrior's guilds, and so on, will have appropriate characters defending them. Reasonable. The DMG has a nice list of 5th level PCs of each of the base classes... okay.

[bosssmiley]

1. Set up a loud and public distraction.
2. Grab the low-volume, high-value stuff fast.
3. Get the hell out of Dodge!

Westerns, caper movies (Thomas Crown, Pink Panther, Ocean's N, Hudson Hawk, First Great Train Robbery, The Sting, The Italian Job, etc.), and this article about D&D as heist movie are good starting points.

[Telonius]

A Stone of Weight is only 1,000 gp. Hide a few of those in the treasury and watch hilarity ensue.

[Lysander]

Another way of making towns not particularly lootable targets: THE BARTER SYSTEM.

Evil PC: Give me all your treasure!
Farmer: Please take anything you want! The cow, the primitive bronze scythe, the sixteen tons of wheat, the burlap sack of potatoes! Anything!

Unless your characters want to load up a cart with produce they might find that a village has very little of interest.

[jmbrown]

Right, details. I always screw this part up. XD

Okay, party level 7, there are 4 of them. The town has a mage's guild, so wizards defending their stock are a given. Warrior's guilds, and so on, will have appropriate characters defending them. Reasonable. The DMG has a nice list of 5th level PCs of each of the base classes... okay.

Yeah, if you're going to be playing this by the book it'll be nearly impossible for them to grab anything reasonable without being captured. We are talking about a town here, right? 1,000+ people?

If the PCs are smart they'll set up a distraction somewhere then grab what they can. The stereotypical heist in a movie usually involves a distraction followed by a sneak attack. Surprise is the key element in a mundane setting but when you take into account that even a level 5 character can magically see any location within a small town and you've got an army with an unprecendented level of organization.

*wizard casts clairvoyance*

"They're in storehouse #5"

*Party gets surrounded in less than a minute*

"B-but we were supposed to ride into town crossbows blazing and take everything!"

[jiriku]

Oh, 5th level opens up slow, spike growth, and stinking cloud for the defenders as well. Remember, they don't need to be able to go toe-to-toe with the players, they just need to be able lock them down with control magic and let the action advantage of their overwhelming numbers do its thing.

[Zovc]

Unless your characters want to load up a cart with produce they might find that a village has very little of interest.

One can probably find one neat magic item per village... hopefully. XP

Well, if your characters are level 7, they're significantly more powerful than most commoners (if I remember correctly, most commoners don't get above level 4 in their lifetime).

Hopefully the 'warriors guild' has some sort of emergency plan for an occasion like this. I'd expect the Wizards to be prepared for an occasion like this, too, perhaps a seer foresaw danger on this day. Even the theive's guild probably has some sort of plan for an occasion like this, even if it's just "skedaddle."

It'd be interesting to have a few odd citizens taking advantage of the chaos, trying to steal things for themselves. I imagine a lot of people will just flee the city altogether.

If the PCs kill civilians, they will definitely invoke the wrath of LG, if they just steal, CG is likely to leave them alone, I'd expect LN and LG to be the only ones to come after them.

[Gerrtt]

Well, after they ransack a few towns a cry from the people for adventurers to protect them will likely occur.

Make a nice antithesis party for them.

[Tyndmyr]

Yeah, any town small enough to not have significant defenders isn't going to have significant portable wealth. What little there is will be relatively scattered.

Im pretty sure either the DMG or another book(perhaps the Stronghold Builders Guide) has a table for how many people of what level you can find in a town of what size. I know there's also one for most expensive available items...and most commoners have rather trivial sums of money, so you can expect the highest leveled NPCs to have the good stuff.

[jmbrown]

If the PCs kill civilians, they will definitely invoke the wrath of LG, if they just steal, CG is likely to leave them alone, I'd expect LN and LG to be the only ones to come after them.

Stealing from the innocent is definitely not a good thing so all good aligned characters with even a modicum of fighting ability will to try to hamper the party. Even lawful evil and neutral evils characters are likely to lend a hand based on the fact that theft will harm their own interest or well being.

[Lysander]

Here's the downside. The king investigates why all these villages are being looted, then sends a team of soldiers, wizards, and clerics of sufficient level to defeat the bandits. If the king doesn't have anyone powerful enough to stop them, then why are your PCs looting villages instead of seizing the throne and taxing people?

[Myrmex]

a large group of evil doers ransacking towns will undoubtedly gain the attention of higher level good heroes.
one town just the local guard/militia might go after them, two towns the neighboring towns militia help out against this nusance.

3 or more towns, theres definitely some proponents of LG that will hunt you down and stop you. (good adventuring party, an army of paladins, or a metallic dragon).

Or they could have stepped on the local theives guild toes (they lost too much money because they had to pay back protection, and they no longer have anything to steal themselves).
Any time a pest is a big enough problem, they get exterminated.

definitely handle this ingame, just don't surprise your players, give them hints that it will escalate.

Good advice. I'm not really a fan of giving every po-dunk hamlet uber-guards just so the PCs can't mess with it. It's really silly. A high level cleric that steps out of the church, though, would be fine. Just don't have a level 10 cleric at every town of 100 people or smaller.

At higher levels, I've been a fan of having the PCs' raids step on the toes of powerful villains who don't want their towns raided for their own reasons- Devil soul farms, Illithid breeding pens, that sort of thing.

A wizard could also take things into his own hands after he find that the PCs killed his favorite pie-maker, and begin launching attacks from his tower.

[arguskos]

A wizard could also take things into his own hands after he find that the PCs killed his favorite pie-maker, and begin launching attacks from his tower.

Emphasis added.

This amuses me. It does so greatly. There will be a pie-loving mage in the next large city my player's journey to, simply because I like the idea of a mage patronizing this one pie shop, and in return for all the pies he can eat, casts spells on their behalf once in awhile (like Guards and Wards every week or so, you know, defensive stuff).

[jiriku]

And of course, any king with a halfway decent minister of finance will realize that for serious countermeasures, it's expensive to mobilize the army indefinitely to every tiny little hamlet. Cheaper just to interview witnesses to get a good decription of the players, perhaps pick up a piece of gear they drop (like an arrow or throwing dagger), then pay some adventurers to hit them with a scry'n'die. And if the first group of adventurers dies in the attempt, well, that didn't cost anything. Get a higher-level group and try again. The players should quickly realize that the best way to avoid continual harrassment and hunting is to be subtle about their thefts.

[JeenLeen]

A town has hundreds of people living in it. Even if the PCs are in the upper teens, there's little 4-6 people can do against 1,000+ guys. I forget which book has rules for mobs but a mob of even the weakest commoners have a grapple so high that an elder wyrm that happens to start the round on the ground within reach is screwed.

If they were looting a podunk or even a hamlet they could probably get away with it at level 10+ but an actual town?

Such is in Cityscape.
If the party does this consistently, you should put them against... I forget what the class is called, but it's in Races of Destiny and it's a type of PrC that gets bound to a city (or cities in general) and draws power from them.



If there is a magic shop in town--and not just a place in the Mage's Guild (for the Mages could just defend their location and leave the rest of the city to the looting if they are Neutral or Evil)--the provider of those items should be a good challenge for the PCs. Every game I've played has shopkeeps being retired adventurers, or at the least backed by retired adventurers who would probably teleport in in an emergency.

But that setup makes a successful raid almost impossible, which is not what you want. I imagine, as people have said before, the town should have decent defenses. The Warrior's Guild, Mage's Guild, and perhaps some viligantes or higher-level commoners put up a decent defense. I would recommend that at least one guild, preferably one known to have good loot, focuses on defending itself and not the village. Such could make for interesting intra-city politics afterward when the villagers get mad at the guild, but it makes that target almost impossible. Do you PCs want to risk getting that loot?
Perhaps the looting is on a time limit, since you can assume the ruler of the city has alerted his king (or whoever), so reinforcements could be arriving sometime soon.

If your PCs make a habit of it, it does make sense that the towns would get a defensive plan set-up so that they can no longer effectively raid towns or cities. Unless the country they are in does not have a teleport-able army or high-level casters. Of course, your party could move to another country if the current one becomes too secure.

[MickJay]

I agree with Lysander, remember that the towns operate on a completely different economical basis than the adventurers. Copper coins are going to be plentiful, silver common and gold relatively scarce. If the town is large enough and has wealthy merchants or specialized craftsmen, there might be more gold and some valuable items to be stolen, but such towns will have at least semi-decent guard or militia, perhaps a wizard or other magic user, and the attack will provoke a reaction of the ruler in any case. Try to balance the risk vs. reward, perhaps treat the settlement as an encounter with triple or quadruple wealth to be had (mostly in the form of different items) and then make sure the party will have to bear at least some consequences of their attack (people in the area will know them from description and call for help when they'll see them or something like that).

Still, if the PCs are tough enough, they shouldn't encounter resistance immediately - common people might simply flee, fearing for their lives, and will need some time to rally (if they'll decide to fight in the first place).

[Ravens_cry]

Go Viking. Don't sack the town, sack the temples and monasteries. Of course, this does mean you're more likely to face people with caster levels, paladins and clerics, oh my, but it also means there will be more concentrated wealth. If you do sack the town, don't just cart up on goods, , take wealthy and prestigious hostages. You can sell them as slaves, or they can buy their own freedom. Or their families can.

[Temet Nosce]

So, in an evil campaign, it seems reasonable that the PCs gain a lot of wealth at the expense of others. My PCs carried this to a logical conclusion by deciding to loot a town. Generating the items in the town is not an issue. Planning where they are located, also not an issue. Giving the PCs large wealth, also not an issue (they're at about 65% of expected WBL). But given that it is a reasonably sized town, what can I do to make it challenging, interesting, or exciting to loot? Furthermore, how can I stop them from doing it in every town they come across without DM fiat?

I have the game in 4 hours, so any help would be most appreciated.

Most loot there isn't going to be easily portable. A town might have an awe inspiring quantity of material in it, but a lot of it would be stuff that required bulk transport, including even the monetary units. That's before considering selling the citizens as slaves and such or that said citizens may loot their own town before the adventurers get around to it. Looting a town really isn't a party operation, it's more of an army one. Could your party do it? Sure, but they're gonna end up either tied down there for a long while or leaving behind the vast majority of the wealth.

As far as challenging, interesting, and exciting... Arranging transport and valuing goods could be involving, encountering various odd things where other loot should be (possibly they were stocking weapons or something and labeling it otherwise), and various traps/wards/etc on valuable loot (possible curses on magic items).

[JonestheSpy]

Also, remember that dungeons are all about narrow corridors and chambers of various sizes, easy to sneak through and seperating all the various challenges - and if they are alerted, there are usually plenty of easily-defensible choke points.

A town will not be like that - once words gets out of an attack, it will be easy for the defenders to surround the players, or trap them in a dead end. Smart players will take advantage of narrow alleys, rooftops, etc, but on the other hand the locals swill know their way around those places far better.

Also, even in a walled city (which would probably be too big to attack anyway), there will be plenty of ways for people to flee if it seems like the adventurers are winning. People will steeam out in all directions, carrying whatever valuables tey can, so the loot factor will be severely reduced.

[Foryn Gilnith]

Stealing from the innocent is definitely not a good thing so all good aligned characters with even a modicum of fighting ability will to try to hamper the party. Even lawful evil and neutral evils characters are likely to lend a hand based on the fact that theft will harm their own interest or well being.

NE would skedaddle, because anybody with the personality to loot a town certainly won't hesitate to kill. While goodies would definitely oppose the party, I'd expect most of them to run off and call the local lord rather than try to throw random stones through the Wind Wall.

[Myrmex]

Local nobility will also really hate to see their stuff getting stolen, which means they'll be on the look out for people who are attacking their towns.

If you're doing the pseudo-medieval thing, then your local lords are going to be warlords trained from childhood to be the best fighters in the land. Their entire existence will revolve around serving the king and killing stuff, while maintaining their land to support their killing stuff.

They don't even have to be that high level. A handful of 4th level human fighters on warhorses can come close to wiping out a 7th party with a single spirited charge.

Not that I'm advocating a TPK; just that with clever tactics and the right feats, you can wreak murder on the PCs.

[Emperor Tippy]

Well if they are smart then the party should know enough to not take on the entire town at once.

Steps to taking out and/or robbing an entire town:
1. Sneak into the town.
2. Perform recon to find out such things as guard numbers, number of retired adventurers present, if anyone has any adventurer relatives, guard patrol schedules, etc.
3. Put on disguises, ideally as another species that is known to be enemies with the town.
4. Sneak into the guard barracks and kill or incapacitate all of the guards present after casting the silence spell (can't have anyone raising the alarm).
5. Sneak around and take out all of the other guards, retired adventurers, and other government officials.
6. Go house to house, killing or incapacitating all of the individuals present.

Once you have dealt with all of the people, start looting. Once you have the entire town looted, you set up a teleportation circle to a city where slavery is legal and sell the whole lot of the people into slavery. Or just kill them all. Then you burn the bodies and the town until it is just so much ash.

Now you leave.
--
This works better once you are higher level and can make use of self replicating undead for the depopulation part of the plan. You can reach the point where you can consistently take out the entire population of a metropolis in one night and without any real problem.

[Another_Poet]

Based on your party's level, generate level-appropriate encounters guards (not just town guards, but merchant guards, wizard guilds, thief gangs, wealthy monster trainers, etc - that's how you make it interesting) who will oppose the looting.

If the guards are beaten, use the standard treasure for encounters of that level to determine the total value of the looting in that part of town. To deter repeat looting, give most of the loot in the form of copper, silver, household wares and foodstuffs.

Simple, I know. But effective.


edit: for added fun have another evil group show up to loot the same town on the same day.

[Dr Bwaa]

edit: for added fun have another evil group show up to loot the same town on the same day.

I like this Good to see you again, AP. Ever think about another run of that cool freeform problem-solving sort of game you ran a while back (where everyone played separately and you awarded roaches for greatest successes)? I still think a lot about that game

I agree (despite this possibly being too late to help the OP) with the idea of another adventuring party. It makes sense; that's what parties do: get hired by the local power to deal with a band of thieves/whatever. Whatever you do, you should make sure to reward creativity from your PCs. A PC in a game I was DMing set up an elaborate bank heist, all by himself over the course of two weeks in-game. Among other things, he bought essentially a firecracker and then spread a "new game" amongst the children of the city: when they heard <the sound the firecracker would make>, they were to look for him and tell him that "The Hextorites are coming!" If they couldn't find him, they were to make sure to tell whatever grown-ups they could find on their way to look for him. Oh, did I mention this was in the capital city of a theocratic nation under Heironeous? That was just to cover his escape, though. His actual strategies for getting into and out of the vaults were even more elaborate. I'm just saying, reward ingenuity