Thought exercise: attacking & defending a city


Advice


You're one of two groups. You're either attacking or defending a city.

Attacking: you're a small adventuring group. 4-6 powerful individuals. The details are at your discretion, but lean toward the "realistic." You're resources are vast as is fitting your group, but not endless. The end goal would be to get some specific treasure or conquer the city for yourself. Killing the ruling body (see "defending") would be required for that. You know as much about the city as the common people know and perhaps just a touch more as would come from a high gather info check + a few divinations.

Defending: you're a standard 4-6 adventuring group who years ago conquered and setted a now thriving city. You have a reasonable standing army and base of operations. Your resources are vast, but you still have a kingdom worth of upkeep. Be creative, but consider the cost/benefit ratios.

For both groups the details are up to you, but please consider what a "reasonable" dm would allow. Custom items, sure. Snow cone wish machines, probably not.

Feel free to reply to other posters with countermeasures. "Cities probably have lots of archers to counter flyers," for example.


What level are we looking at for the party?

How much collateral damage is acceptable? I.E., do I actually need the city, or is "raze it to the ground" close enough to "conquer"?

Getting a treasure and conquering a city are also two very different goals. One of them is best accomplished with a stealth attack; the other has a great many options but stealth is unlikely (it can work, see Troy, but it would take a rather specific set of circumstances).

Vast resources are nonspecific: do I have gold, support troops (necessary to actually hold a conquered city), inside men? A wheelbarrow?


Sun Tzu, book III:

Quote:

1. Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.

2. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

3. Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.

Espionage, infiltration, and sabotage-to-appropriate-purpose. More detailed analysis requires information this reader does not have.

Book XI wrote:
52. We cannot enter into alliance with neighboring princes until we are acquainted with their designs. We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar with the face of the country--its mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps. We shall be unable to turn natural advantages to account unless we make use of local guides.


Control Winds is my go to for mass destruction. Wildshape into a bird and fly above the enemy camp, then use it to destroy all attackers.


kestral287 wrote:

What level are we looking at for the party?

How much collateral damage is acceptable? I.E., do I actually need the city, or is "raze it to the ground" close enough to "conquer"?

Getting a treasure and conquering a city are also two very different goals. One of them is best accomplished with a stealth attack; the other has a great many options but stealth is unlikely (it can work, see Troy, but it would take a rather specific set of circumstances).

Vast resources are nonspecific: do I have gold, support troops (necessary to actually hold a conquered city), inside men? A wheelbarrow?

Part of the problem is that I don't have a specific scenario in mind. The idea is for you to formulate your own. If you wanted to conquer a city then you probably want to keep damage to a minimum and not murder ALL the cities residents. The idea there is you want them to like you afterwards. If you just want the treasure then you can just nuke the city from orbit and comb through the mess afterwards. Dealers choice.

But In you're case if you want specifics I'll give you your resources:

You have only a wheelbarrow and a holocaust cloak.


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Then my assets are plentiful!

Treasure Scenario:

First, we find a lot of boulders. During planning times, the Party Wizard will be using Shrink Object on these stones, and put them in the wheelbarrow. This constitutes Plan B.

With the rest of his spell slots, he's spamming the hell out of Divinations to locate the treasure and find as much as he can in the way of its defenses.

Quite obviously the details of that will determine how things go. Ideally, we roll in under Invisibility, exploit holes in their defenses, and get the hell out.

Should that fail to be an option-- due to the treasure being inaccessible or the scrying being detected so security is upgraded-- then the secondary plan is to deliver an ultimatum to hand over the treasure, and after a reasonable length of time fly up 1200' and begin dropping micro-boulders from our wheelbarrow until the treasure is turned over or the city has been destroyed by kinetic bombardment.

Plan C is to use the holocaust cloak to burn all of the thatch-roofed cottages.

Capture Scenario: The ideal plan is "Teleport in, Dominate Person on the ruler, sit back and enjoy". More realistically, we first Dominate the ruler's pet casters. Got to get them out of the way.

The alternative solution is to ingratiate ourselves with the leadership, in such a way that they love and respect us. From there, we have options.

We can marry the prince/princess and begin a slow and careful string of assassinations to assume control.

We can make them unpopular via various forms of sabotage (unless they already are unpopular!) then lead a revolution to seize control.

We can become high advisers and effectively rule through the king's ear.

... or we could aim the first falling rock from the wheelbarrow bomber at the castle and declare ourselves rulers by virtue of the Rite Of Falling Rocks.


Given the fact that the attacking side is starting off with just the party, then this seems like it will rely very heavily on espionage, assassination, and PR.

If they are not already branded as conspirators, then they should do their best to gain info, look for dirty secrets, and find weaknesses.

Making the ruling party look bad (preferably without them knowing that you did it, since that puts their own machinations into effect) will greatly help you win over the people, and it puts incentive for the ruling elite that you didn't incriminate to join you.

Once you turn public sentiment, you can begin to turn the current ruling elite (middling nobles, powerful merchants, generals, etc.) to join you. Distancing themselves from the 'horribly corrupt tyrants' helps to cement their position in the coming power struggle, and the fact that your side does not have power right now puts you in the perfect bargaining position...for them. Compared to the ones that are already in power, you are much easier to steal power from, either by buying it from you for support or disposing of you when the throne is up for grabs.

You thus need to make sure they can't get rid of you, and that you have too much sway to bully around. Being the 'valiant heroes that exposed the tyrants' crimes' may work...but you may want to hold off on that until you have the support to stop the other party from saying 'nu-uh, you guys did that; off with their heads'. So ingratiating yourself to the people through other deeds is important (dragons, bandits, invading barbarians; there are plenty of ways...some of which you can set up)

So general goals
1. Turn public sentiment away from them
2. Turn gain support from the upper class
3. Cement your own position before someone can get rid of you.

The Exchange

City defence: make sure that everyone knows how to use a bow.

Step 1: plant black berry bushes out of town
Step 2: make sure you have scouts(mebbe birdies), mebbe divinations
Step 3: cast plant growth a day before baddies arrive
Step 4: have a load of adepts fire entangle into plant growth to trap baddies
Step 5: wizard casts flame arrow on one of the archers bows, then follows up with pryotechnics (with lesser extend rod)
Step 6: shoot the crap out of the blinded, entangled in plant growth baddies.

Season by adding whatever more mass mayhem creating spells like summoning azlatas/ spirtual weapons/ hordes of lantern archons etc.

Note: best against foot troops with minimal magical support. Fly and teleport/windwall would negate.

City attack: Cast multiple cloudkill on city, send undead minions(burning skeletons) in to wipe the mess. What city?


If I am defending a city I am going to want to know about threats ahead of time. To this end I will want a spell like or item source for commune.

It should certainly be possible to use such magic to know about when and where the threat will arise.

Bound outsiders have access to greater teleport at will. They will make a great fast reaction force.

Bind a hound archon or 3 and give them the task of maintaining law and order in the your city. They can literally respond to every guard whistle or signal arrow with in seconds. Even just a few of them should be able to vastly improve law and order in the city. This will allow you to not have to deal with the small stuff.

An orb of storms will allow the climate to to be perfect all the time and keep away disasters. If one turns the wind off then it takes a CL of 18 to make control wind a threat.

Have telepathically bound sim of yourself be you for all practical purposes while you go out on further adventures. Just use alter self to cover your tracks.

Have stable of griffons and riders to engage air born threats. Make sure they have access to see invisible.

Father fall helps against bombardment.

Access to Quench will keep the city from burning.


Mindblank will be required to attack the city with out them knowing.

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