How Nasty are your Wyld Hunts?

[Volivat]

How nasty have your Wyld Hunts been?

I am creating a Wyld Hunt for the Prasad empire that should be not far from the toughest response the empire will have to a verified Anathema threat. In lieu of that I would love to hear what other people have created

Wyld Hunt...

A circle of Pure Way monks (immaculate monk templates) essence 3 for four of them with their leader at essence 4.

An essence 3 general leading 3K soldiers of elite quality. 2K close combat soldiers, 500 ranged and 500 mounted soldiers.
He has a circle of essence 2 support officers

The Wyld Hunt has an essence 3 sorcerer attached as well. (providing a size 2 battle group of demons/elementals)

[Crumplepunch]

I can tell you now that this hunt is going to be murder for a starting circle, and pretty dangerous for experienced ones. The Immaculate Shikari are no joke even before upgrades, and thats a lot of support you have given them, too.

As a practical matter, I think you will find this a difficult encounter to run. That's what, 10-11 Dragon-Bloods and 4 battle groups? Combat is going to take hours to for you to run through each turn.

[Volivat]

I can tell you now that this hunt is going to be murder for a starting circle, and pretty dangerous for experienced ones. The Immaculate Shikari are no joke even before upgrades, and thats a lot of support you have given them, too.

As a practical matter, I think you will find this a difficult encounter to run. That's what, 10-11 Dragon-Bloods and 4 battle groups? Combat is going to take hours to for you to run through each turn.

Disclaimer: (In our games we dont scale almost anything and we try to be logical from the setting point of view on how actors in the game respond to pcs actions or other npcs) So the game is quite lethal if you are doing stupid stuff.

This is what I think is a reasonable show of force by the Prasad empire if they have discovered an anathema that is starting to become a threat to their empire. It is unlikely that this amount of resources will be spent on anything not representing a proper threat that actually scares important power brokers in the empire. (essence 3 and 4 people, do have other stuff going on in their lives than spending weeks/months in hunting down random Anathema threats)

I agree on the practical matter (Ex3 dont scale well with many actors in a combat, not many rpgs does, but Ex3 is pretty bad). A way of lessening the burden is by having the officers be attached to their battle groups and just lend dice by doing command actions until their battle group is gone.

That would reduce the actors to 12 (7 DBs and 5 BGs) on the ST side and release a new actor each time a battle group falls or one of the shikari members falls.

And this would be the whole session most likely.

[Crumplepunch]

Disclaimer: (In our games we dont scale almost anything and we try to be logical from the setting point of view on how actors in the game respond to pcs actions or other npcs) So the game is quite lethal if you are doing stupid stuff.

That's a reasonable approach as long as your players have no illusions about how dangerous their opponents are. A circle of Solars could have walked through this force in 2e, 3e is a different story.

I agree that this should be a significant military investment by Prasad.

[Monkipi]

Yeah, I had just the base template Shikari almost roll my Essence 2 circle (a Zenith and 2 Twilights, all with 7 or so combat charms). Part of this was intensified by the fact that they were all set in one v one matchups as a hubristic show of force by the hunt (I actually thought this would benefit the players) but their inability to synergize and group up really put them in a bad spot without even involving the 3 dragons of troops they had brought.

From a Watsonian perspective I can see how this is a reasonable reaction from Prasad to an anathema threat of some size, but this is probably going to be a very big challenge. I would anticipate potential deaths looking at this. I don't know how combatty or what essence your party is at, but I can see this bringing people low on motes, then taking heavy damage pretty quick.

[dman1123]

In my games Wyld Hunts depend on how active the circle have been.

So my starting circle my attract a single battle group with a couple low essence supporting DBs. But after a few sessions, and some experience, the Wild Hunt gets more serious and it'll be a Sworn Brotherhood with immaculate support and battle groups. And so on and so on.

[Katana1515]

Unless your sessions are very very long I strongly suspect this will take more than just 1 session! Not that this is a bad thing, if your players are up for it.


The way I would model a Hunt is to write up a total list of resources (much like you have), and then sit back and think about how the Huntsmen are going to actually find the circle! Most likely they have a lot of ground to cover in which the circle could be hiding. Do they know what or how many Anathema they are looking for? What they look like? Are they aware of any loved ones or allies they can capture and threaten in order to flush them out? Most likely the Hunt is going to have to disperse in order to have a hope of finding them.

On a setting note, its worth remembering that the return of the Solars is still a poorly understood thing in the stock setting, even experienced Wyld Hunstmen are going to be expecting to face lone, inexperienced Solars and be wildly confident in their abilities to take them on.

This leads to what I find is a more manageable and hopefully fun scenario. The Circle has multiple small knots of dragonbloods combing the city/island/region for them, using hundreds of mortal troops the same way regular hunters use dogs. This leaves them with a number of interesting choices, do they stay and fight? Do they try and break out the hunters net? Do they go into hiding and hope to ride out the storm? When it comes to violence its most likely between the circle and one of these groups (a potentially scary but more manageable encounter) then as an ST I have the option to make the fight more challenging if needed as more and more of the Huntsmen arrive on the scene. After the fights over, the mote depleted circle then has to either fight or flee as the hunters net draws tighter!

[TK421]

Strangely, I'm preparing for almost the exact same thing: a full Wyld Hunt from the Prasad empire sent to deal with a verified Anathema threat!

Earlier in the game, I had a Realm-aligned Wyld Hunt track down and ambush the party. The PCs weren't totally unprepared to fight, but they were outnumbered 5 to 3, and it was almost a total party wipe. The saving grace was a tactical error by the Wyld Hunt's sorcerer coupled with a misreading of how Mists of Eventide works (I had it dealing levels of initiative damage instead of dice of damage).

My point is that it matters a lot which side is prepared for the fight. A circle of monks that the PCs can divide and conquer will be doable, but if the Hunt arrives as a well-oiled machine backed up by powerful battle groups...the PCs are going to have a really challenging time of it.

Often times I find myself struggling to balance what makes sense in world and what my players can have a fun time with. Yes, it makes sense that the Prasadi would send some major firepower after the PCs if they've kicked up enough dust, but does that make for a fun encounter? My method for striking a balance is to tune the circumstances of the conflict: the PCs learn about this force before they arrive, allowing them time to intercept on their own terms, or prepare an ambush, or call in allies, or the Wyld Hunt is overconfident and send in their JV squad first.

If your just not sure how challenging a force like this might be, you could try throwing a smaller "scout" force at the party before the main force gets there. How well (or poorly) they deal with this mini-force can tell you how ready (or not ready) they are, and how you need to fine tune the conflict.

[danelsan]

If they actually have to face that entire force at once, unless they are pretty damn good at combat, they are probably better off escaping and starting to think about raising an army of their own...

[DrLoveMonkey]

from an in universe perspective that's, I think, a nearly unheard of amount of force brought to a Wyld Hunt, even by Realm standards. I'm fairly certain most hunts have 3-5 DBs and if they're lucky a couple hundred men.

From a gameplay perspective, if you've got a full circle they can certainly win, but a head on confrontation will be fairly difficult. If you've got a dawn with TAP and a multi attack decisive charm it would help a lot with routing those battlegroups.

[Aranfan]

What is TAP? I don't recognize the acronym.

[DrLoveMonkey]

What is TAP? I don't recognize the acronym.

Sorry I role my own rule of never using an acronym in a thread before writing it out at least once, TAP is Thunderbolt Attack Prana and it doubles all rolled damage against a target, so if you have like 9 damage dice and roll 4 damage you'll actually deal 14.

[Aranfan]

Sorry I role my own rule of never using an acronym in a thread before writing it out at least once, TAP is Thunderbolt Attack Prana and it doubles all rolled damage against a target, so if you have like 9 damage dice and roll 4 damage you'll actually deal 14.

Shouldn't you only deal 8?

[DrLoveMonkey]

Shouldn't you only deal 8?

You deal one automatic level of damage for every four dice of decisive damage, rounded up. Which is doubled by TAP, it's pretty good.

[Volivat]

from an in universe perspective that's, I think, a nearly unheard of amount of force brought to a Wyld Hunt, even by Realm standards. I'm fairly certain most hunts have 3-5 DBs and if they're lucky a couple hundred men.

This is not meant as your typical wyld hunt that goes after rumors or sightings of anathema. But a military strike team by the prasad empire against a threat to their empire.


Could you give a page number for that: every four dice of decisive does 1 level of damage? Must have missed it