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In The Battle of the Hilltop in Tales from Wilderland, the player-heroes are outnumbered 20 to 1. The number of adversaries they each face depends on their chosen stance. The book lists rearward stance as an option, but this is actually impossible if you're following the rules as written since the number of enemies is more than twice the number of the Company (and will be for the duration of the battle).

So, ignore that suggestion in the book OR the scenario needs to be tweaked to make it possible. If the heroes take a defensive position, perhaps the number of close combat enemies they face should be limited each round so that they do not equal more than twice the number of Companions. This would be a situational rule. For example, there are five in the Company. This means that no more than ten enemies can reach the companions at a time. Following the rule that there needs to be two heroes in close combat for every hero in rearward, four Companions must engage in close combat while one can be in rearward. Of course, any number of enemy archers can fire upon the Company even if they can't reach them, according to the judgment of the Loremaster.

We played this part in the adventure last night and it is a fairly brutal battle against Uruks, Orc Soldiers, and Goblin archers. We only completed two rounds so far and one player-hero has been poisoned by an Orc blade, and two of them are 1 point away from being Weary. I am expecting a climactic finish when we get together next. We just ran out of time.

Another thing my player-heroes did was successfully find boulders to set traps for the Orcs as they advanced up the hill. I ruled that anytime they rolled a Gandalf rune, boulders rolled down the hill and crushed some of them. I just rolled a Feat die and that's how many died. In just two rounds, it has happened twice for a total of 10 Orcs dead! I also ruled that 5 Goblin archers were firing at them per round, so the boulders killed a couple of them each time too and therefore only 3 archers were able to fire that round. The next round they are replaced back to 5 archers.

The stance rule and 2:1 ratio for rearward is true if you are fighting in the open. If you are fighting in a defensive location and, that is not necessarily the case. IIRC there are examples of such things in the rulebook, but I do notn have mine at the moment, so cannot check. So, if your players can set up defensive positions, they can slow down the rush of enemies.

Sounds like the PCs getting the benefit of holding the high ground.

Don't forget the Complications/situational modifiers LMB p48 (I almost always do) as they can greatly add to the enemy's difficulty in attacking a hero. They can add +4 to the TN quite easily and possibly even more if the LM want's to make the set-piece last stand even more heroic.

It sounds like everyone's having a great time in your game James.

The idea about the traps intrigues me, as I've been pondering ways to introduce such traps (or even tricks) with simplistic (read fast) rules. I may try your idea & see what happens.

I have just finished the ring-fort battle at the base of the Misty Mountains in Stewed Hobbits adventure.

What I did there I feel would carry over to some of the discussion in this thread (in regards to preparing defenses, etc).



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What I allowed - as the goblins were making their way down the mountainside, closing in on the heroes protecting Dindy, I allowed the heroes to "prepare the battlefield" - preparing defenses.

At this point, I allowed the players to think outside the box and describe some of the efforts they made in preparation of the oncoming assault.

As each player described his wishes, I assigned an appropriate skill test - usually CRAFT (which makes sense for traps).

Success bought them d6 bonus dice in the same vein as a Battle check is done. Traits and Distinctive Features were also invoked for a couple auto-success, and one was invoked post-success for an Advancement Point.

[The Woodman of the group has Woodworking as a Distinctive Feature, and described making "ground-spears to slow their assault" He described how woodworking would apply and I awarded him 1d6 to add to the pot]

All of these dice went into the pot like fellowship hope points, and the party used them, and I even allowed them to apply to damage.

All totaled, I think there were 9 bonus D6s in the pot. The battle was immense, lasted 3 hours of game time, they used all bonus dice, and it was a lot of fun. One of the dalesman died, and Dindy WAS captured by goblins. We've played one game since (last Friday) - the heroes entered the caves in pursuit of Dindy. I turned that into a much bigger tunnels section, and applied "Journey Rules" mentality to it. We're half way done with that and plan to finish it at our next scheduled game on 2/7. The party was nearly killed by an avoidable spiders encounter, but he heroes chose to go attack their "den" as opposed to backtracking the hour to find another way.

Robert