Let's talk ambush.
At my table we tend to play out travelling, so encounters that happen during travel do come up quite frequently. I thought about putting my players into more ambush scenarios, so let's have a thread about them. Don't really wanna make it setting specific, I just want to spitball ideas here.
Some scenarios I have come up with:
>the road is blocked by a fallen tree, so any vehicle like a cart cannot pass. If the party tries to clear the road without checking the surrounding undergrowth, they will be ambushed with their guards down by hiding bandits
>the party comes by a merchant seemingly down on his luck. He appears to have been robbed blind, his horse is gone, his cart is broken down. In reality, in the cart his partners are hiding with crossbows beneath a piece of cloth, ready to strike when their partner has lured any helpful travellers into a false sense of security.
>the classic "road leads through a small ravine" scenario, ambushers sit on top and block the road with rubble to trap the party in a compromising situation
>on a road through a forest, ambushers have felled a tree and propped it up with some sticks and ropes. At any given moment they could drop it onto the road either to crush someone or split a travelling group in two, before attacking the weaker part of the group (either to kill them and have an easier fight against the other group, or to take some easy hostages and negotiate an exchange against all the group's riches)
>pic related, some of the ambushers pretend to be a bunch of corpses on the road to distract a travelling group, while others will attack from the flank once the corpses "wake up
>a tripping rope in an old archway that the road passes through will take out any unobservant rider's horse and leave him on the ground
>a wooden bridge over a small river has a bandit hiding underneath. One end of the bridge is covered in oil that will be set ablaze to trap a travelling group on the bridge from one end.
 |
 CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
|
Suppose the cutthroats are competent fighters and have taken down some officials or men-at-arms sent against them. They can then use whatever insignia or signet ring or flag they may have looted to pose as officials, extorting money for passage or leading them onto bad roads because the bridge ahead collapsed and they must move further upstream to find a suitable ford.
picrel seems kinda a terrrible idea to me, no?
>bodies put them on high alert
>half your gang are lying down, extremely vulnerable
>attention is on the super vulnerable people
maybe there's more of them hiding normally
>then why
i dunno
yeah im assuming the rest of the gang are off to the side. but like, still. i wouldnt want to be one of the people lying down when the inevitable fight happens.
The idea is that, assuming this type of ambush isn't common, arrows fly from the sides so the people being ambushed panic (and likely assume the ambushers pulled the same trick on the already dead corpses), so they're looking to all directions, only to find out the corpses are more of the ambushers instead of previous victims, but at that point they're too busy trying to defend the road from the outside to realize they've got baddies within.
Yeah, the panic makes sense.
Crowd ambush. The press of bodies, each of which may or may not be about to strike. Arrows raining down from above, the bodies too thick to escape from... If the civilians start dropping, anyone escaping trips over the bodies. Hands reach out from the piles, grabbing, trying to get help, trying to be saved....
I admit it's more for the spectacle of the scenario, but the plan behind that ambush plan rests on the idea that no one expects to be stabbed in the dick by a corpse.
Please take you squabble somewhere else, I just grabbed a random image off google.
The pic was probably done by AI.
moron.
You sure are kid
also slop lives rent free in your head, moron lol
Yes, moronic things like AI frick ups live in your head.
I accept your concession.
You accept things into your ass
weird thing to conclude
It's from Gwent moron
Yes, you are moronic
Black person
In your butt
Don't say: moron
Do say: Humanity is a virus. A plague.
Don't say: Shut the frick up, homosexual
Do say: Brenna today, Vizima tomorrow!
Elves die.
Extremely dumb post.
Yeah I can see your post
Your dumb face is in that book
It's from Conan 2d20 books, imbecile
No, there is way too much purpose in this image, like a cohesive story, LLM "AI" can't deal with that
Also it does not look like dogshit, so there is that too
I remember a story about a japanese samurai lord who saw a body on the road and he feared just this scenario, that the body was merely pretending to be dead and with assassination in mind.
Now how does tha tstory go? ge pokes the body with his bow I think... I forget the rest.
A corpse was on the road. A lot of people passed by it because touching corpses is under-caste work. An important, high ranking samurai saw the corpse and immediately tensed up. He drew his weapon and made a wide circle around the corpse, even walking away backwards so he could keep his eye on it.
A lower ranking samurai saw this and thought it was very funny. He walked up to the corpse, poked it with either his bow or his sword (I don't remember), and of course the guy who was only pretending to be dead sprang up, took the samurai's sword, stabbed him to death, and stripped the body.
Never let them b***hes catch you lackin', especially in medieval Japan.
>Never let them b***hes catch you lackin', especially in medieval Japan.
There's no reason to speak like an impressionable minority youth here, moron.
There's no reason to act like an impressionable minority youth is shoved up your ass, yet here we are.
>One person speaking like a minority youth because normalgays told them to and another with one shoved up their ass by normalgays.
Now kiss!
"Distressed party" is the more common bait, where someone pretends to be stranded or injured to draw another traveler close, while the rest of the highwaymen lay in wait nearby to spring the trap. This method of robbing and murdering travelers is still in used today, and has remained almost completely unchanged except "broken down car" is a prop now and the guns are better.
I agree with you that if I'm the caravan commander in this situation, I'm ordering the driver to just keep going and roll over them. No telling if whatever outlaws did this are still nearby. But perhaps there's some cultural context that accounts for them stopping and investigating.
Wait, so are the guys in front of the picture just pretending to be shot and actually part of the ambush? That would explain why they still have their weapons.
Yes.
Yeah look at the arrow. From the approachers angle it looks like it is in the girl's beck but it's actually just next to her neck. It's like the same trick you'd do as a kid to pretend to eat something.
>Why is the ambush happening?
Since extortion and intimidation would be safer than immediately attacking, as it may be resolved without any harm to the highwaymen, they clearly do not want cash. So, they probably want the party dead, either because they have been hired to kill them, or because they wish to terrorize people in the area.
>What if they are assassins?
Have the ambush occur at their camp while they rest or eat. If they stay at an inn, have it set alight while they are asleep. Poison the well, or attack them while foraging or looking for a spring.
>What if they are terrorists?
Have the fight start with some large spells. Attack the party at the front and back to prevent them from coordinating during combat, shoot their pack animals and retreat once they have some kills.
In my post-apoc campaign, I had a group of bandits get an EMP generator working again for ambushes.
Blowing vehicles/power-armors/etc to frick, even if only temporarily, is a good way to stop people in their tracks, and then come at them with solid projectile weapons and plasma cutters.
In a WFRP game I ran, a group of highway robbers were posing as Roadwardens, which are a police/military force charged with keeping the roads safe. They used their ostensible identity to get easy access to the travelers' camp the PCs were in, examine the defenses, ask some obvious questions, and then attack at night.
A more comical one I did was a greenskin ambush. Some orcs were trying - badly - to play themselves off as being wildlife or greenery. As in 'six-foot-tall green muscle slab with feathers glued to tree branches flapping its wings and yelling 'tweet, tweet!' One of the orcs, unsure what sound a tree is supposed to make, decided to just yell 'tree!'
While the PCs were distracted trying to process this absolute buffoonery, the *actual* ambush - consisting of goblins - snuck up on them and might've gotten away with it if one hadn't catastrophically failed its sneaking.
One of my favourite ambush scenarios I came up with.
>PCs are travelling through some rough terrain/bad weather
>They see a fire coming from a small camp near the main road.
>Weather too bad to see any details thtough the mist/snow/moving trees/whatever
>Hopefully they think it is some friendly NPCs, then ambush proceeds when they reach the camp.
>If they don't fall for it give them a small advantage, like not being surrounded from the beggining.
You can also put some traps in the "camp" to spice things up and make the cutthroats use some dirty tricks and tactics if the system allows it.
Upon better inspection the "camp" was either
A) randoms junk and rags put together to resemble a camp.
B) an actual small camp, but bandits clearly have nothing valuable, which explains the desperate attempt.
That's a pretty simple but cool set up. I feel like fog and natural weather as an obstacle is way underused in RPGs, so I'm for sure gonna use this one.
A cool ambush from history:
During Caesar's campaign against the Pompeians in North Africa, an ally of the Pompeians were the Numidians who were famed for their horsemen. One night in camp, while Caesar's men were sitting by a fire at the edge of camp, a native North African came up to them playing a tune on his flue. The tune was so good that the soldiers started dancing around and many others joined in. The revelry got to a point where half the camp was dancing around to the music and singing.
All this served an important purpose, for the native was a man of the Numidians and his job was to create a distraction while the Numidian cavalry galloped in from the dark, the noise of their horses' hooves masked by the revelry.
Caesar's men were caught completely by surprise as the Numidians rode through their camp, slaying many.
You may repurpose as you see fit to make it work in your setting.
That is probably the stupidest story I ever read. It's bullshit but I believe it.
You'll find that reality is always dumber than you'd expect.
The Mimic Caravan
Scenario: The party comes across a seemingly abandoned caravan. Upon inspection, they find valuable goods. However, the goods and even the caravan itself are mimics lying in wait.
Twist: The real caravan owners are tied up inside the largest mimic, a disguised wagon.
Illusory Bridge
Scenario: While crossing a bridge over a deep chasm, the bridge suddenly "collapses" under them. In reality, it's an illusion, but they fall into a pit trap lined with spikes concealed by the illusion.
Twist: A group of goblins uses this trick to loot the bodies of their victims.
The Forest's Whisper
Scenario: In a dense forest, the party hears their names whispered from the trees, luring them deeper in. The whispers are caused by a group of dryads working with bandits, using their magic to disorient and separate the party for an ambush.
Twist: The dryads are compelled against their will, enchanted by a dark druid who's the real mastermind.
Feast of the Undead
Scenario: The party stumbles upon a seemingly friendly village that invites them for a large feast. At midnight, the villagers reveal themselves as vampires, with the feast as a trap to gather fresh prey.
Twist: A few villagers are actually humans trying to find a way to end their cursed existence.
Mirage Oasis
Scenario: Traveling through a desert, the party finds an oasis. However, the oasis is a mirage created by a lamia, using the illusion to draw in exhausted travelers.
Twist: The lamia is being controlled by a magical collar, and if freed, she provides valuable information or assistance to the party.
Mountain Pass Avalanche
Scenario: As the party navigates a narrow mountain pass, a loud roar triggers an avalanche. However, the avalanche is actually an orchestrated attack by stone giants, using their ability to blend into the rocky terrain.
Twist: The giants are defending a sacred site from what they believe to be desecration by the party.