[RPG] What would be the proper mechanics and stats for playing a siege

dnd-4e

This question is from @NewbieDM; asked today on Twitter:

Would it make sense, if creating a 4e
siege, to make a monster stat block
for the horde, with different attacks,
arrows, catapults, etc, and then a
companion char stat for defending
force, to fight alongside pc's
individual skirmishes? How does that
sound?

The question, I'd hazard a guess, refers to this article on his site.

This is due to Jeff's advice, and I have notified @NewbieDM of this posting. He was cool with it. I did this in part to attract more people to this site, and also because I found the question interesting.

Best Answer

I'd say the best ways to represent a siege (I guess you mean something like the Battle at Helm's Deep) are:

  • either one or more Skill Challenge(s)
  • or gathering of some sort of Victory Points

Skill Challenges

With "Skill Challenge" I don't mean "replace the whole battle with a few skill checks" but rather use a skill challenge as a framework to connect single encounters into a single, massive, confusing, awesome Siege of Doom(tm).

When and how soon did the city learn of the threat and what precautions could be taken before the siege arrived? Can the PCs convince the city's ruler/council to spare some troops (perhaps even clerics or wizards that would be required elsewhere) for a plan the PCs came up with? Do the PCs manage to notice a trap or distraction and find the real attack or attempt to finally break the city?

All these can be answered with appropriate skill challenges, where the outcome of each single challenge determines the next step (and possibly combat encounter) the siege puts in front of the players.

Victory Points

The basic idea is that the outcome of the siege depends on the PCs' actions. The more beneficial actions the players succeed at, the more victory points they gather. The higher their final score when the siege's climax comes around the better the overall outcome (and chances of survival) of the besieged city and its inhabitants.

The DM can award victory points not only based on the result of combat encounters (e.g., whether or not the PCs managed to destroy or sabotage the enemy's siege towers, etc) but also for roleplaying or strategic decisions (Where did the PCs put the city's troops? How did they distribute any magical healing? What are the members of the mage guild supposed to do during the siege? etc.).

Something like this has been used in the official Scales of War adventure path. The first instance such a mechanic is used is in Part 6, The Temple Between:

  • If the PCs gather 6 or less victory points, Overlook (a big dwarven city) is burnt to the ground and basically eradicated.
  • If the PCs gather more than 6 but less than 15 points, the city is heavily damaged but survives the onslaught.
  • If the PCs gather more than 15 points the city survives the siege largely unscathed and with most of its inhabitants and important NPCs alive.

If you want to go with the "stats block" idea, I would not put the whole horde into a single stat block but rather sort the different enemy units into blocks. So you don't have a single elite/solo "monster", but several minion/normal/elite units composed of dozens or hundreds of orcs/zombies/whatever.

This not only solves some of the weird interaction with conditions @AceCalhoon mentioned, but also gives the PCs more possible targets. Do they take out the siege towers to protect the walls? Or do they take out the minion archer squads shooting volley after volley at the defenders? Or do they try to attack the elite siege commander squad that controls the horde?

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