My player's previous PCs awakened the Death Knight Algarond from his slumber and ran away from Weatherstone, but mostly died trying. Now we have a death knight raiding homesteads and rising undead in the area...which happens to be the area where I situated The Hollows. Their new PCs started around the Hollows, and having encountered refugees on their way there (random encounter) and fighting some undead, they managed to convince Mrs. Pollor to hire them as special consultants to defend the town from the imminent attack of de Death Knight and its horde; which means I get to use the siege rules before they get a proper stronghold.
Now, the Hollows doesn't have rampant or proper towers, but it does allow for 10 defenders to fight off 20 attackers (basic wall feature, I guess). They also started constructing traps and pits around the wall, which will work as a temporary one-off moat, and training the inhabitants to fight like a militia. They don't know this, but they have 3 days before Algarond arrives to attack (random roll), and I was thinking of having them roll for EMP + MELEE or RANGED to train the people once per quarter day and get them from Nill effect to 1/3 effect and 1/2 effect (so 20 militia would be treated as 10 proper guards in the best case scenario), so they need two good rolls to get them from 0 --> 1/3 --> 1/2 effectiveness. They could also construct a basic wooden rampant pulling houses down, but they haven't though of that yet, so I guess I'll have an NPC asking hard questions about "how exactly are we going to kill them from behind our walls?" kind of thing.
From the adventures of Wetherstone and The Hollows I counted the following:
- Weatherstone has about 40 undead soldiers, 3 death knight bodyguards and Algarond. I'm going to count the three bodyguards (I call them thanes) as monsters, since I think they can easily kill a guard per turn if unchecked and that follows the spirit of the definition of "monster". Additionally, Algarond raised another 20 - 40 fresh undead soldiers in the time left unchecked, although that would be pushing its limit control them, I reckon. I'm adding the particularity that if they kill Algarond, all the other fall dead; and if they kill a thane, the 20 soldiers under their command fall dead as well (the foul sorcery flows from Algarond to its thanes and from then to the soldiers). That makes a total attack rating of 7 or 8 (4 for Algarond and its thanes, plus 3 or 4 for 60 - 80 undead soldiers).
- The Hollows has around 100 inhabitants, which means around 40 or 50 able people to command around constructing traps, fixing the walls and training to defend themselves, plus the already existing 10 guards. That means that if they train them all to a proper militia status, they can get the equivalent of 30 guards (40/2 + 10). Maybe another 10 if we count refugees and what not, they can argue their case. This means that the total defence rating of the Hollows is 5 or 6 (1 for the PCs, 1 for the "moat", 3 or 4 for the "guards"). I'm not counting the "towers" because it's only a few and they don't really offer any protection being "cairns" that raise over the wall, they seem just for scouting