CHAPTER 2
BUILDING ADVENTURES
Monsters on the Battlefield: A steady diet of humanoid spear-carriers doesn’t make for an exciting battlefield adventure—even if it’s “realistic” that such rank-and-file encounters comprise most of the PCs’ fighting. Some monsters make terrific (not to mention terrifying) opponents on the battlefield. Unlike their real-world counterparts, fantasy armies must face such varied threats as boulderthrowing giants (artillery), doppelganger infiltration teams, and dragons flying close air support. It’s particularly striking to take monsters out of their usual environment and “repurpose” them for the battlefield. Maybe an army puts barding on trained carrion crawlers and sends them toward enemy lines prior to a major assault. Perhaps another army loads its catapults with magic urns that each contain a gray ooze that eats away at the stockade walls when the urn breaks. Magic Elements: Most armies use magic to give them an advantage on the battlefield, and the PCs will have to contend with enemy magic as they employ spells of their own. A battle against a squad of undead troopers becomes more difficult when they’re within a desecrate effect; do the PCs attack the undead directly or try to remove the desecration first? Or perhaps the PCs must ambush an enemy convoy—a task made much easier if they’re attacking from within hallucinatory terrain. Not every encounter needs a magic element, because the PCs bring a lot of magic to the table themselves. If you include one or two encounters where a pervasive magic element has an important influence on the outcome, you’ll stretch the players’ strategic thinking and emphasize that they’re playing a high fantasy game, not a medieval warfare simulation. Environmental Effects: Even a routine battle becomes more tactically challenging when it takes place in the dark, in driving rain, or during a catapult bombardment. If the PCs adapt to the environmental effects you describe, they can get an edge on the battlefield. They can hide in the morning fog, for example, advance between volleys of arrows from a nearby unit, or sneak behind enemy lines during the dark. Environmental effects can add dramatic tension, too, as high winds stymie the PC ranger’s sniping efforts or rain turns the battlefield so muddy that the PCs can’t retreat fast enough to avoid a trebuchet barrage. Complex and Multiple Objectives: When the PCs have more complex goals than “overcome the enemies,” they have a greater tactical challenge. It’s harder for highlevel PCs to seize a tower if they aren’t supposed to destroy
it in the process, for example. Perhaps the PCs are ordered to seize prisoners for interrogation, forcing them to win a fight but pull their punches to leave as many enemies alive as possible. And what if the PCs are chasing retreating enemies northward when they see a single enemy flee westward on horseback? Whom do they chase? Timed Elements: Many military plans rely on a specific sequence of events: Unit A has to seize the hill before Unit B moves through the valley to distract the enemy cavalry so Unit C can charge the enemy’s lines. More complicated plans require simultaneous movement among different units, so the PCs must not only overcome the challenge but must do it at a specific time. For example, say the characters are defending a castle’s main gate from the battlements overhead. When a platoon of gnolls charges with a battering ram, the PCs can’t afford to take their time picking off the gnolls. They’ve got only a few rounds to kill enough gnolls to render the battering ram ineffective. The PCs know that the clock is ticking, so they’ll choose tactics that maximize their effectiveness for a few rounds (such as jumping off the battlements and engaging the gnolls in melee), even if those tactics wouldn’t be the best in the long term (because now the PCs are outside the walls and more vulnerable to attack themselves). You can also put the PCs “on the clock” for multiple encounters in a row. If they have to clear out a mountain watchtower by sunset, for example, they might have to rush past hobgoblin sentries on the trail, an ogre trying to start avalanches from the base of the watchtower, and then the bugbears in the watchtower. The time pressure isn’t as intense—it’s not an “every round counts” situation—but the players will feel a sense of urgency as their characters rush up the mountain.
ENCOUNTER PACING
As you build encounters for your flowchart, consider adding some boxes that let you slow down the pace of encounters in game-world terms. If you have a typical group of PCs, the spellcasters will be out of spells after a half-dozen encounters. Depending on their access to healing magic, the PCs might be badly wounded or in perfect health. If you don’t take an active hand in controlling the pacing of your battlefield adventure, PCs left to their own inclinations can wind up in trouble because there are always more enemies to fight. If the fighters are healthy
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Chapter 3 details a number of encounters that are ready-made for a box on your flowchart. • • • •
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Cut supply line Reinforcements Destroy artillery Prisoner exchange
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Left behind Take out the trebuchet Get ’em out alive King of the hill
If you use these encounters in a battlefield adventure that’s part of your ongoing campaign, you might want to replace the enemy forces described on pages 46 through 53 with ones of similar Encounter Levels that are more appropriate for the fantasy army the PCs are fighting. To design your own fantasy army, see the relevant section on page 24.
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