Hoo boy.
Looks like Piratecat has already covered the basics. Here are some observations and additional detail regarding the main fight:
For this fight, we had four PC's: 2 Brawny Rogues (Logan and Cobalt), a Protecting Paladin (Toiva), and a Protector Shaman (Bramble). Of the four of us, only Bramble had any healing surges remaining. And while three of us were near full health going in, Logan started the fight with EIGHT hit points. All of us had used up our dailies in the previous two fights of the day.
As Piratecat has said, we were up against 3 6th-level skirmishers and a 7th-level controller. For a four-person party of 4th-level PC's, that's about a level+2.5 encounter, which falls into the “hard fight” range even before taking into account our heavily-depleted state. Did I mention that the defender and both strikers had NO healing surges left for this combat?
Piratecat has given me the stat-sheets for the baddies to help me write up this tactical report. I note that their defenses are slightly better than ours overall, and their to-hit bonuses are also comparable, again maybe a little better. Their hit point totals were about 50% higher, as expected.
Holy cow, was our rolling atrocious. Conversely, it seemed like Piratecat couldn't miss. I realize that human psychology made it seem worse than it actually was, but I don't think I'm off by much to say that we hit with about 40% of our rolls, and Piratecat hit with about 75% of his rolls.
And yet, for all that, we won the battle. It's hard to explain. At about the 2/3 point in the battle, I turned to Piratecat and said: “I don't understand why we didn't lose this fight about an hour ago.” But looking back, there were two main contributing factors:
1)Toiva pulled a great stunt early in the battle, bull-rushing the controller and bodily carrying him away from the fight. Although the foe weaseled out, it resulted in Toiva chasing him around the battlefield, effectively keeping him from influencing the remaining 3-on-3 fight the rest of us were having.
2)Bramble, the Shaman, was a huge, huge, huge difference-maker. Played beautifully by my beautiful wife (Kodiak on the boards here), Bramble managed to keep the surge-less rogues going for most of the battle through deft use of her powers and clever placement of her Spirit Companion. Some examples:
At one point, when BOTH of the rogues had been knocked unconscious, Bramble managed to get us both back on our feet in a single round. She used Thunderwave (from her Arcane Initiate feat) to knock one of the enemies past her Spirit Companion, triggering* its Spirit's Shield power, which gave Cobalt 4 hit points, restoring him to consciousness. Then she used Healing Spirit as a minor action, targeting herself for the surge (since only she had surges left), and giving Logan (who was next to the Spirit) the extra die of healing, also restoring him to consciousness.
Over and over again, she'd move her Spirit to a spot adjacent to one of the bodyguards. The nobleman, being hounded by Toiva, was yelling at him to assist. So the bodyguard would move, triggering Spirit's Shield. Up would pop one of the unconscious rogues, with 4 hit points. She did this several times in a row; each time the bodyguard would smack down one rogue back to unconsciousness, and then Bramble would restore one of us to single-digits again. It was like playing whack-a-rogue; the two just wouldn't stay down! And though we kept getting knocked out again, we were chipping away at the bodyguards' healths all the while.
A single use of the level-1 at will “Haunting Spirits” allowed Logan to do about 40 hit points of damage to the enemy, as it afforded him two sneak-attacks: one on an opportunity attack, and another on his actual turn.
* - yeah, against the rules, as I noted while writing this up. Ah well.
As for Toiva's amazing chase: there was a wrecked carriage near to where the fight was going on, with horses still attached. Toiva bull-rushed the noble controller (Nils Riverlimb) into the wreckage of the cart, simultaneously shape-shifting into a leopard to spook the horses into bolting. That's what caused the last bodyguard to give chase, thus giving the Shaman so many uses of Spirit's Shield. It was pretty frikkin' sweet.
The fight ended with Cobalt unconscious, Logan settled at his original 8 hit points, and Toiva and Bramble still unbloodied. (I think... Toiva may have been bloodied by the end.) We had knocked out the controller and two of his three bodyguards; the third surrendered when his boss was taken out.
Neither side was fighting to kill, though Toiva was this close to dealing a fatal blow when she finished off Nils Riverlimb. Boy, was she pissed – particularly because Nils had used a Domination power on her to make her kneel and surrender her main weapon right before Bramble pummeled him with a critical hit on her Spring Renewal Strike.
AND... while that was going in, Strontium was having her own fight against a swarm of body parts, from the dismembered and piecemeal-animated librarian she had gone to visit. Yuck! Her rolls were predictably terrible, and the swarm had her immobilized and down to six hit points while the ghost-librarian controlling them stood nearby, watching. She escaped through sheer guile, convincing the ghost to call off the swarm by threatening to burn his precious books, with an intimidate check aided by a Prestidigitation to produce a small flame. The ghost called off his swarm of parts, and Strontium turned and fled the library.
Whew.
Or was that one of the villains?
