RHoD Problem: Koth got away

[Doctor DM]

Yep, he escaped with the maps.

The party had an incredibly easy time time with the manticore and scrubs, and the party samurai almost one-hit the minotaur, but Koth beat the living HELL out of them. 2 deaths, 1 pc in negatives, and the two survivors just hanging on. And that's with a lot of healing.

The only way they were able to run him off was a character using up his Necklace of Fireballs (which he spent literally ALL his money on). Although Koth was beating them down, I reasoned he would take off since he had used up most of his resources, everyone else in the keep was dead, and he was at 9 HP. And he had the maps.

Which is the problem: Without the maps, how do the characters know to go to Skull Gorge?

Anyone dealt with this before?

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

Any chance one of your players is a Ranger? If not, they could maybe get a hand from Jorr in tracking Koth. If you've got a cleric, Divination (the spell) should get them on the right track. Scrying shouldn't be out of reach for a Druid either, which should work given that they've met Koth. (Arcane casters will likely have a problem getting a hold of 1000 gp mirrors, but pools of water are pretty easy to come by). They even get bonus points for that one if they can grab any of his leftovers from their first battle.

Druids, Rangers, and Gnomes also have the ability to speak with animals, either via a 1st level spell or a racial SLA. That might could get them headed in the right direction. Druids also have Speak with Plants, which I guess could maybe be helpful?

Barring that, they should at least realize that something is seriously up at this point, shouldn't they? Hustling back towards Drellin's Ferry could give an opportunity to talk logistics with some of the important folks back there; if they know that something big is going down, what would be viable locations to hide forces and start from? What are tactically significant choke points? Clairvoyance could help speed this process up.

Along a similar line of thought, there's always the option of, y'know, looking. Dire Bats, if found and caught, could be fitted with saddles. They'd be untrained, so it'd be risky, but again, a Wild Empathy check here or there would go a long way towards making them viable mounts. Between a 40 ft fly speed and just being in the air, scouting should be considerably easier. Also, flying into battle on the back of a giant bat is pretty sweet.

Hopefully that will at least get some gears moving in your head. I imagine some of it isn't useful advice -- I've only experienced RHoD as a player, and I haven't played very far into it in any of my attempts. Good luck.

 

[Klaus]

Yep, he escaped with the maps.

The party had an incredibly easy time time with the manticore and scrubs, and the party samurai almost one-hit the minotaur, but Koth beat the living HELL out of them. 2 deaths, 1 pc in negatives, and the two survivors just hanging on. And that's with a lot of healing.

The only way they were able to run him off was a character using up his Necklace of Fireballs (which he spent literally ALL his money on). Although Koth was beating them down, I reasoned he would take off since he had used up most of his resources, everyone else in the keep was dead, and he was at 9 HP. And he had the maps.

Which is the problem: Without the maps, how do the characters know to go to Skull Gorge?

Anyone dealt with this before?

How did Koth become so tough? He's a bugbear sorcerer, after all...

Anyway, it's just a matter of saying "Which way he went?" "Looks like he headed for ol' Skull's Gorge Bridge... Maybe he's hiding in that ol' ruin" "Well, it's worth a look" (...) "WTF is that DRAGON doing there?"

 

[RangerWickett]

When we fought Koth, our GM -- who is a stickler for the rules to a ridiculous extent, though whenever there's a rules dispute he almost always rules in his favor -- read that the boulders on the map provide cover, so Koth stood in a square with a boulder in it, and claimed cover from all attacks.

Not partial cover, like from a small tree (y'know, you duck and weave behind the tree to get a +2 to AC?). No, normal cover, from all directions.

Cover, which gives a +4 to AC.

Cover, which prevents attacks of opportunity.

So there's this bugbear with probably mage armor and shield up, standing in a spot that gives him another +4 to AC and makes him immune to attacks of opportunity while he casts spells with impunity. We all surround him, try to grapple him and drag him out of the square, or bull rush him, or ready actions to attack him when he takes his action, but he's invincible.

Finally, through attrition, four PCs who have him surrounded finally manage to deal enough damage that he drinks his potion of fly. Then his next round, he goes on total defense and flies away. I only narrowly managed to pop the bastard out of the sky with a nat 20, but afterward we weren't cheery that we won.

We were busy trying to figure out how to bring the lucky boulder with us.

 

[Doctor DM]

How did Koth become so tough? He's a bugbear sorcerer, after all...

Yeah, I was pretty shocked as well. THe minotaur did a lot to one PC, and they were worn down a LITTLE, but still.

He just flew around where they couldn't hit him, firing away lightning bolts (that I rolled REALLY high damage for). Those CMW potions were put to good use. And our party is a little long range challenged. The party Sorceror was zapped early on, so he couldn't fire back for a while.

 

[Doctor DM]

And thanks Merlin, those are some good ideas.

Much obliged.