I'm barreling straight toward the final battle/climax of my Red Hand of Doom revamp for my Norse Gestalt game. A poster over on GitP had an awesome idea to make the PC's accomplishments mean something more than mere Victory Points, and so their tactical decisions in the field would produce slight alterations to the Streets of Blood encounter. His "Crisis Points" idea can be read about
here.
Narrative break this time, to explain the next section. As written in the module, the party is expected to run a gauntlet of multiple encounters - venturing out to kill giants besieging the wall with rocks, then stopping Abiothrax's rampage over the town's flammable buildings, then the Streets of Blood gauntlet. But that's boring, so I modified it heavily to make this part pass a bit more quickly and also give the party a sense of accomplishment for their work over the game so far that was more tangible than Victory points.
There would be four 'crisis points', as designated in my notes, during the narration of the Horde's initial attack - key attempts to breach the city or cause havoc amongst the defenders. At each point, the party could assign one of the four groups of allies they'd collected to deal with the problem, if they didn't want to go by themselves. Every ally was effective against two of the problems, and ineffective against two - if they picked the wrong matchup, Streets of Blood would be a little bit harder.
The Hellknights would be effective against ground-based targets, and useless against airborne enemies.
The Giants would be best-used against big targets, since they had a limited supply of tree-trunk javelins.
The Elves would be most useful against large numbers of smaller enemies, coordination and formation making up for the smaller damage of their projectiles.
The Silver Dragon would be best-used where his airborne mobility would have the most effect.
Summarized:
| | Hellknights | | Twisttusk Giants | | Tiri Kitor Elves | | Silver Dragon | | Loss Results | |
| Skeletons | | Win | | Loss | | Win | | Loss | | Pre-Wave Cannon Fodder | |
| Hill Giants | | Win | | Win | | Loss | | Loss | | Random boulders falling on defenders | |
| Vultures | | Lose | | Lose | | Win | | Win | | Fewer friendly mooks | |
| Abithriax | | Lose | | Win | | Lose | | Win | | No barricade | |
Obviously, he altered it in other ways, adding in a Silver Dragon ally. In his game the wave of "Vultures" are the Deadborn (?) vultures from MM4 (5?) that attack the men on the walls after the wall has been breached, to make it easier for the invading army to get through the breach.
My problem is that I don't really have any aerial units in my game. The four units my PC's have at their disposal are Rashemi Runescarred Berserkers (roughly 9th level or so; the PC's are 11th, so I don't want to overshadow them), a mercenary company composed of Barbarian//Druids (4th-8th level), "packs" of Berserks (Deities and Demigods; fast shapechangers that can "wildshape" into a totem animal or animal/human hybrid), and a
Wild Hunter.
My chart was going to look like this:
(Note, my "Streets of Blood" will be actually holding the breach in the wall)
| | Barb//Druids | | Runescarred Berserks | | Totem Berserks | | Wild Hunter | | Loss Results | |
| Initial Wall Assault | | Loss | | Win | | Win | | Loss | | Pre-Wave Cannon Fodder | |
| Hill Giant Battery | | Win | | Loss | | Win | | Loss | | Random boulders falling on defenders | |
| Half-Fiend Trolls | | Win | | Loss | | Loss | | Win | | Fewer friendly mooks | |
| Nycaloth | | Loss | | Win | | Loss | | Win | | No dense rubble in the breach (Cometfall spell from a Hathran) | |
The Wild Hunter will have a decent shot against flying things, as he has some pretty decent bow abilities (free +2d6 damage), and he will have a Talisman (same as a potion) of See Invisibility.
My initial thought for who to take the second successful slot against the Half-Fiend trolls was the Barb//Druid mercenaries (ten of each level 4th - 7th; two 8th level commanders), as their ability to wildshape and strike from afar with things like Call Lightning and Summon Swarm would allow them to deal effectively with fliers. But as I was writing all this down into a more usable format for use running the actual game, I started thinking of how the Druids would actually be able to effectively harm the Half-Fiend Trolls... and, they can't. I searched far and wide for spells that would be useful against them, and there's not really much of anything.
The trolls have Regeneration 5 (Fire and Acid), but have Resistance 10 to Fire, Acid, Cold, and Electricity, and SR 16. They're also immune to Poison, and have DR 5/magic, so bleeding to death via Bat swarms won't likely happen either (especially since you can't ever bleed more than 1 point per round, and it doesn't overcome regeneration).
So, long story short, I don't think the Druids of this level will actually be able to hinder these fliers in any real way. Is there some wonderful spell I'm not thinking of that might help?
The other option, that I just realized as I was typing this post, is that Runescarred Berserkers gain Air Walk as one of their runescars, but it would be character level 12th. As I stated before, my PC, the heroes, are only 11th level, so I don't want them "overshadowed." Though in truth, they don't need to know what level the Runescarred Berserkers are; the party's actions allowed many of the best warriors of Rashemen to muster and arrive in time.
I had listed the RSB's as winning against the nycaloth (who is using his Liftoff ability to snatch Hathran away from a ritual they are conducting), because their See Invisibility runescar would allow them to guard the Hathran and ready attacks against the Nycaloth. If I switch the Barbarian//Druid mercenaries to succeeding against the Nycaloth, I run into the same types of problems they would have had against the Half-Fiend Trolls; it has similar immunities and resistances, as well as DR 10/Good and SR 24.
Dilemas...
I suppose I could also give the Druid//Barb's talismans of see invisibility...
Anyone have any ideas on how to make this work?
