What are ways to intrude a small late medieval fortress if you lack the military manpower necessary?
>go and get the manpower and besiege it
>sneak in with a small group of capable people with specific tasks like killing the fort's authority
>social intrusion, slowly gaining trust of the fortress's authorities until you are able to get close enough to try something
>bribing the guards or infiltrating through conspiracy
I'm currently planning out a scenario where PCs would need to get to someone hidden in a fortress, and I wanna make sure whatever method they choose to accomplish that goal would be somewhat within my prep. (Yes, I like to overprep, I think it is fun and my players love my games.)
Essentially, I wanna have my bases covered so whatever plan they come up with I have something appropriate ready that would make the session interesting.
The PCs are affiliated with an enemy of the fort, which the inhabitants are not aware of. It's a small military fort with some non-conbatants and a few prisoners/hostages. All in all I'd say about 50 men, two thirds of them capable of using a weapon.
So far I have mostly focused on working out the social structure in the fort, the defences and the surrounding environment (a forest) but maybe there is something in my blindspot that I may want to prepare for. The PCs have access to some magic, but it's basically just combat spells like throwing a fireball or buffs/debuffs. The fort doesn't have magic.
Depends on your group, mostly. They might try stuff like poisoning the well, smoke the target out by starting some fire. And about that, you might want to prepare something in case the players try to make the target come out of the fortress instead of them trying to get inside.
How do you smoke out a fort? The well is inside the walls.
But yeah, luring them out of the castle (for example, by preventing merchants from delivering goods to the fort) seems like a valid scenario?
the viability of this depends on the moisture and wind levels
>How do you smoke out a fort?
What game are you playing? Tech level, magic if present, classes and the like. Sneaking in to poison the well might be feasible even if getting to the big boss is not. The possibility to smoke out depends on what is available.
>But yeah, luring them out of the castle (for example, by preventing merchants from delivering goods to the fort) seems like a valid scenario?
I don't know your npc nor do I know the relationship he and your PCs have, it could be anything, including fake news about something the bad guy would want to come out and check personally. In the example you give, if you mean the merchants not delivering goods might be bad for the food supply, the fort has some stored so it can last a while. But the merchants refusing to deliver goods unless they negotiate some more favourable terms on neutral ground with the lort himself? Well if the doesn't come out quickly he could be losing a fair share of money and face.
if the fort isn't properly maintained in some way that also gives options, this doesn't mean only the structure either, for example if a tree was allowed to grow near a wall you can just climb the tree to get inside
I've thought about that. It is indeed a bit run down, since until recently it was mostly abandoned. So a tree having grown close to the wall makes sense. Maybe I'll put a timer on it though. Surely the inhabitants of the fort will notice such a liability and cut it down after a few days if they catch wind of the danger.
Hmm. That would probably have much more far reaching consequences than just concerns for this one fort. I'll look into what that would entail.
Sorry, that last questionmark in my previous post was a typo, I didn't mean to pose that as a question.
We're playing Dark Eye, tech level is late medieval/early renaissance, the party is mostly martials and one wizard who specifies in combat magic. I guess setting a forest ablaze is something they would be capable of.
So far there is no relation between the PCs and the NPCs, but he is the head of the criminal organisation that's using the fortress as their head quarter. The party would be tasked to deal with them, since the duke's army would be bound in a larger conflict. That's it so far. If the group waltzed in to kill their target, they would not get out alive due to the number of enemies.
The supply is definately a weak point. Some food in the fort is from the forest, some is stolen from nearby farms, some is from the few merchants. So that's something the party could leverage.
>the surrounding environment (a forest)
Burn. It. Down. Even if the flames won't spread inside the fortress setting woods around it ablaze should kill the people inside via heat and fumes.
Fly over the Walls, or Teleport to the Inside of the Keel.
This, why come up with plans when you can just magic the problem away?
Secret passages were common in castles to allow supplies to be brought in during siege. A lot of them weren't even that secret what's important was that they weren't associated with the main gatehouse (main place where the enemy would try to attack).
Tunnelling was also a common thing, though usually it was done to collapse a section of a castles wall.
And since it's fantasy, you could airdrop someone. Dragon, griffon, maybe they have a parachute and get catapulted in.
I haven't really planned the fort as a large castle with a dungeon complex and secret passages, but maybe I will add a minor back exit. It sounds fun. I think the difficulty here is to have this be reasonable for the players to find out, without putting a big arrow on it that makes it seem like "the intended solution".
They haven't made a plan yet because the game isn't happening yet. Also, I'm not trying to cover specific pathes, I'm trying to have the situation complex enough so that all approaches would lead somewhere interesting.
>You mix in with the people who haul up regular supplies.
That sounds like a fun idea. I've made the plan that the PCs are allowed to enter the fort if and only if they do so completely unarmed. Pretending to be a merchant with a cart would be a chance to smuggle in weapons.
>They haven't made a plan
Doesn't fricking matter, go with the motion, you dumb frick.
>I'm trying to have the situation complex enough
Yeah, rookie mistake. Don't do that shit.
This doesn't mean "don't plan" or "just do a 100% improv". It means you should be capable of moving with the path the players will pick, and not preparing some head-canon scenarios they might or might not use. Waste of time and resources and there is zero guarantee they are going to do any of the things you've anticipated.
In other words: your approach is the sort of shit someone who just started this hobby would do. Don't.
And God help you if you are in this business for longer than half a year
I don't think you quite understand what I am doing here, Anon. I'm not "preparing a head-canon scenario", nor even a number of options that I expect my players to choose from. I'm voluntarily creating a bunch of shit that my players may or may not come across. Yes, it is overpreparing. I do it because it is fun, to me personally. It's how I GM. I'm in this hobby for a decade. My players like my games, I like my games. You may disagree, that is okay. But I won't change my style because of that. My prep and what happens at the table is not the same. I just happen to focus on prep.
Nta, but you are twice as moronic as it appeared originally
yeah, how dare he do things the way he enjoys
Yeah, I guess tweakers should do more crack, after all they enjoy it
>I want my players to achieve a goal
Then fricking go along with their plan, you dumb c**t, instead of trying to cover "all" paths. You are running a game of pretend, not writing a CYOA
>late medieval
You bribe the bandits who have long-standing business deals with the garrison and who regularily use it as a refuge whenever they're on the run between territories.
You have real good sex with a maid and get her to unlock the side door to the kitchen.
You mix in with the people who haul up regular supplies.
fun fact, the term dungeon crawl got its name from early games of proto-d&d ran by Arneson and friends, where the group would take an enemy castle by sneaking in through the dungeon and fighting their way through. This style of play proved so popular it spawned the entire dungeon crawl genre. So that's one approach for you.
Is there anything as ironic as invading a castle through what was likely meant as an escape passage.
crawl up the shit chute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Ch%C3%A2teau_Gaillard
this lead directly to the signing of the magna Carta btw
GIANT
KITES
Do what the Black Douglas did on retaking his ancestral home from the English.
>morons just leave the battlements to go to church in the middle of conflict.
Deserved what they got.
During the English Civil War, it's said our local (and since slighted) castle was taken by a mere troop of dragoons one night; the story goes that they stole up to the gate, knocked and then shoved a pistol in the porter's face through the 'window', asking if he wanted to live.
Takes balls, and of course your party may need a magic wand (or a crossbow at a pinch) but fortune could favour the brave...
Well anon, the actual historical thing for this kind of shit is sneaking on a moonless or shaded night and climbing the walls. Like actually climbing isn't so hard, its the whole climbing while being shot at that is, hiding from a few sentries is far easier with 5 dudes than 5000
There are none, historically the only way any of this happened was if the people who are in charge of it had a disagreement so one group of them fricked up the other group. Unless your party is actually somehow connected to the fortress and has access to it, you can't do shit.
if the hidden someone is a prisoner or a lord, you may request to talk to him
regarding the poisoning of the well idea, if it's ground water, you can only poison it from the inside. if the fort has no ground water and instead gets its clean water from a nearby river, stream or aqueduct, then you can poison that from the outside
what I'd do is:
Split the party into two task forces
Group 1 harasses the surrounding villages, just one or two, no major operations.
Let messengers bring news of it to the castle regarding how many "bandits" there are
If the fort has a garrison of 50, they might send out a force of about 20 men to deal with the bandits and restore order
When they do, that's when Group 2 sneaks in
Sneaking is easier if you have less people, plus you just basically halved the garrison so less patrols, less chance of getting caught
Group 1 slips away into the surrounding forest
Group 2 has a few hours of reduced security to complete the operation
Group 2 may additionally distract the guards by setting the stable on fire with a spell or through other means. This would result in even more of the guards being preoccupied, making sneaking around that much easier
probably get people within it to defect is the most effiecent and common one.