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[tryrar]

...yeah, even if they somehow only had 50 people manning the castle, it'll still be a nightmare hunting them all down and making sure we don't take unacceptable losses trying the caravan route. We might have to do a long scouting run and see if our target ever leaves the castle for any reason, which would give us much better odds

Edit: Oh, here's a good question to ask. Was the castle abandoned in advance of the army, or has it been empty for a while? This might impact our chances of finding somebody who might have lived in the castle and might know where any secret passages are.

[Kassire]

I still advise to wear them out, hungry soldiers don't make very good soldiers.
I mean, rather than outright sieging them we would just attack the caravans, making it hard for them to get an organized force to hunt us down if we do say, a sort of Guerrilla Warfare, fast attacks with small amounts of soldiers (The PC's and maybe a few others)

Also Taw, what kind of system are we using for say a battle with two armies? I mean there's always this.

[Flying Dice]

I'll post over in IC in a mo, but...

Yeah, I'm in support of plan Caravan Raiding. Our party is built for blitzing people hard and fast, not sneaky infiltrations. We can hit their supplies, burn what we can't steal, and keep repeating it. Either we'll starve/disease them out, or they'll send raiding parties out of the castle after us, in which case we can hit those to whittle down their forces.

[tryrar]

I'll post over in IC in a mo, but...

Yeah, I'm in support of plan Caravan Raiding. Our party is built for blitzing people hard and fast, not sneaky infiltrations. We can hit their supplies, burn what we can't steal, and keep repeating it. Either we'll starve/disease them out, or they'll send raiding parties out of the castle after us, in which case we can hit those to whittle down their forces.

+1 to this

[Harbingerjm]

Oops, forgot that Nerjin asked a question. Getting that now.

Also

Edit: One question about gear, would it be possible to trade the point of AC from Gnome Twist Cloth for a 5% reduction of the Arcane Spell Failure? Call it Light Twist Cloth, an Exotic armour that applies any armour bonus it gives (say, through magical Enhancement) to Touch AC (if proficient). This would allow wearing it without having to make it Twilight to offset ASF, though once you started magically boosting the AC it'd cost basically the same (Twilight is a +1 bonus, so you can afford an extra +1 enhancement to offset the missing mundane AC). It's basically a fancy robe that needs Proficiency that way.

Also Taw, what kind of system are we using for say a battle with two armies? I mean there's always this.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, Heroes of Battle was made for this.

I'll post over in IC in a mo, but...

Yeah, I'm in support of plan Caravan Raiding. Our party is built for blitzing people hard and fast, not sneaky infiltrations. We can hit their supplies, burn what we can't steal, and keep repeating it. Either we'll starve/disease them out, or they'll send raiding parties out of the castle after us, in which case we can hit those to whittle down their forces.

Our listed goal in the OOC thread opener is to slow the enemy war effort while our allies look for reinforcements.
Our listed goal in the IC thread opener is to assassinate the commander in charge of the enemy frontlines.
The caravan raiding plan offers probably our best bet to take the castle, but it ignores the reason why we're trying to do so in the first place, because it leaves the enemy commander free to keep sending out orders to the rest of the front. Now, there are a few potential ways to stop them from doing this, starting with "kill any messengers heading out" and working up from there, but it runs into the problem that we don't know how the messages are being sent. Horsemen? Easy enough to hunt down and kill. Messenger birds? We don't have enough ranged attackers to surround the castle and stop any from getting out; depending on how fast the birds are, I may be able to fly after them and butcher them, but if more than one is sent out at a time... Magic message spells/telepathic links/scrying on map tables? Yeah, we're fucked.
This leads me to perhaps the 2 most important questions:
a) How important is it to keep the castle intact?
and
b) Do some PCs just want to watch the world burn?

[Tawa]

Edit: One question about gear, would it be possible to trade the point of AC from Gnome Twist Cloth for a 5% reduction of the Arcane Spell Failure? Call it Light Twist Cloth, an Exotic armour that applies any armour bonus it gives (say, through magical Enhancement) to Touch AC (if proficient). This would allow wearing it without having to make it Twilight to offset ASF, though once you started magically boosting the AC it'd cost basically the same (Twilight is a +1 bonus, so you can afford an extra +1 enhancement to offset the missing mundane AC). It's basically a fancy robe that needs Proficiency that way.

a) How important is it to keep the castle intact?
b) Do some PCs just want to watch the world burn?

Gear thing: Eh, sure. Why not.

a: It would be nice, but not necessary.
b: I don't think any of the PCs are chaotic evil.

As for the battle system, I'm going to keep the exact mechanics a secret to avoid potential exploitations, but it involves the sizes, training, and equipment of both armies and the skill of their leaders.

[Flying Dice]

Our listed goal in the OOC thread opener is to slow the enemy war effort while our allies look for reinforcements.
Our listed goal in the IC thread opener is to assassinate the commander in charge of the enemy frontlines.
The caravan raiding plan offers probably our best bet to take the castle, but it ignores the reason why we're trying to do so in the first place, because it leaves the enemy commander free to keep sending out orders to the rest of the front. Now, there are a few potential ways to stop them from doing this, starting with "kill any messengers heading out" and working up from there, but it runs into the problem that we don't know how the messages are being sent. Horsemen? Easy enough to hunt down and kill. Messenger birds? We don't have enough ranged attackers to surround the castle and stop any from getting out; depending on how fast the birds are, I may be able to fly after them and butcher them, but if more than one is sent out at a time... Magic message spells/telepathic links/scrying on map tables? Yeah, we're fucked.
This leads me to perhaps the 2 most important questions:
a) How important is it to keep the castle intact?
and
b) Do some PCs just want to watch the world burn?

You're rather keen on ignoring something else that was in that post, namely that the castle is heavily guarded. To man fortifications across that much space in a way which could be described in such a manner, there are more men at arms in that castle than any 1st-level party backed by a couple NPC soldiers and a handful of peasant conscripts could hope to take. We also aren't set up for something like scaling the walls under cover of darkness, since it's still heavily guarded and none of us are particularly stealthy.

Which is why I went the way I did, supporting the best-of-poor-choices in the meantime to at least harm the enemy while trying to figure out a way to get us inside without fighting or failing at pretending to be rogues.

And would ya look at that, it worked. Out of curiosity, Tawa, would Norward be able to narrow down the location of that passage with another check? (Other than Spot or Search, I mean).

[Tawa]

1st-level party
And would ya look at that, it worked. Out of curiosity, Tawa, would Norward be able to narrow down the location of that passage with another check? (Other than Spot or Search, I mean).

You guys are level 5.

And no, you could not. With your current modifier, anyway.

[Flying Dice]

Herp, yeah. Point still stands, though. We could try to 5-man-army it with the NPCs backing us up and stopping flankers, but "heavy guard" for a castle that size says (at least to me) that we're talking about 100+ men at a minimum -- and that's already spread thin, ~2 men per tower with three shifts: one sleeping, one on guard, one doing various tasks. Not to mention that we don't have a way to deal with massed archers, which is pretty much a given unless this place has some heretofore unmentioned lack of knowledge of bows.

And that's assuming that the entirety of the enemy force is composed solely of trash-level martial NPCs.

[Harbingerjm]

a: It would be nice, but not necessary.

Oh good.

b: I don't think any of the PCs are chaotic evil.

It was a flippant way of making a suggestion for how to deal with the castle, not a moral question. Good people can like fire too!

You're rather keen on ignoring something else that was in that post, namely that the castle is heavily guarded.

...How are you getting that I'm ignoring that?

We also aren't set up for something like scaling the walls under cover of darkness, since it's still heavily guarded and none of us are particularly stealthy.

...Why would we need, want, or even be able to "scale the walls under cover of darkness" in that plan?

[Flying Dice]

You're rather keen on ignoring something else that was in that post, namely that the castle is heavily guarded.

...How are you getting that I'm ignoring that?

We also aren't set up for something like scaling the walls under cover of darkness, since it's still heavily guarded and none of us are particularly stealthy.

...Why would we need, want, or even be able to "scale the walls under cover of darkness" in that plan?

1. I probably read implications into your post that weren't there. Sorry.

2. Seriously though, are you not paying attention? Or are you the only one who's allowed to mention issues with various ways of approaching this problem?

[Harbingerjm]

You're rather keen on ignoring something else that was in that post, namely that the castle is heavily guarded.

...How are you getting that I'm ignoring that?

We also aren't set up for something like scaling the walls under cover of darkness, since it's still heavily guarded and none of us are particularly stealthy.

...Why would we need, want, or even be able to "scale the walls under cover of darkness" in that plan?

1. I probably read implications into your post that weren't there. Sorry.

2. Seriously though, are you not paying attention? Or are you the only one who's allowed to mention issues with various ways of approaching this problem?

No, I'm just really not seeing a) why we'd want to move into the burning building and b) how it would be "under the cover of darkness" when, as mentioned, the building would be on fire.

[Flying Dice]

You're rather keen on ignoring something else that was in that post, namely that the castle is heavily guarded.

...How are you getting that I'm ignoring that?

We also aren't set up for something like scaling the walls under cover of darkness, since it's still heavily guarded and none of us are particularly stealthy.

...Why would we need, want, or even be able to "scale the walls under cover of darkness" in that plan?

1. I probably read implications into your post that weren't there. Sorry.

2. Seriously though, are you not paying attention? Or are you the only one who's allowed to mention issues with various ways of approaching this problem?

No, I'm just really not seeing a) why we'd want to move into the burning building and b) how it would be "under the cover of darkness" when, as mentioned, the building would be on fire.

I'm honestly not sure if you're being intentionally dense here. We were discussing various ways to tackle the problem at hand. One potential way was a prolonged siege. We agreed that that was not in line with our stated objectives. Another would be a direct assault, which is obviously doomed to failure. A third would be attempting to scale the walls at night with ropes and grappling hooks. If you don't understand that I was mentioning and crossing out several different by now, I'm not sure what I can do for you.

...Especially because I never mentioned burning anything. Incidentally, you're probably severely overestimating your own plan for using fire arrows -- we've got maybe 15 NPC soldiers, at least 10 of whom don't have bows. Even if all of the non-conscript ones are archers, that's still going to take a damned long time for little effect while also reducing the force we have on hand.

[Harbingerjm]

I'm honestly not sure if you're being intentionally dense here. We were discussing various ways to tackle the problem at hand. One potential way was a prolonged siege. We agreed that that was not in line with our stated objectives. Another would be a direct assault, which is obviously doomed to failure. A third would be attempting to scale the walls at night with ropes and grappling hooks. If you don't understand that I was mentioning and crossing out several different by now, I'm not sure what I can do for you.

Except that's not where you placed the bit about us being able to climb the walls that I was responding to. You placed it in the middle of a paragraph adressing how I was ignoring the number of enemies inside the castle in a plan to set the castle on fire. How did you intend that to be interpreted?

...Especially because I never mentioned burning anything.

...

Incidentally, you're probably severely overestimating your own plan for using fire arrows -- we've got maybe 15 NPC soldiers, at least 10 of whom don't have bows. Even if all of the non-conscript ones are archers, that's still going to take a damned long time for little effect while also reducing the force we have on hand.

The suggestion was to set the place on fire. Fire arrows are an optional part of that, certainly; as would be dropping oil on the place from (well) above, use of infiltration through the tunnel, or even (depending on the layout of the castle and town) just having Voreldarsjach pop out from behind a house in town and breath a blast of clinging fire onto the gate. There are plenty more options beside, too, especially if we can get our hands on some useful wands.

[Nerjin]

I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't have placed a Halberd with Nymandus as opposed to a Longsword and Shield... Halberd's seem pretty nifty.