awkward situation

[pukunui]

Hi all,

I am currently running Scourge of the Sword Coast, and my players have put themselves in an awkward situation for the second time. In both cases, they have stumbled across an enemy group's leader and killed him, then retreated to a well-defended location for a long rest before emerging to deal with the remaining enemies.

In the first case, I decided to have the remaining enemies withdraw while the PCs were resting, but I'm not sure if I should do that in the second case as well.

The first time they were exploring a ruined castle inhabited by orcs. The orcs' back story involved three tribes being brought together after their leaders were killed by an orc wight. When the PCs found and killed the wight, they retreated to a secret chamber that the orcs didn't know about. That left the surviving orcs more or less leaderless, other than a shaman. I figured that since the wight was the only one holding the tribes together, they would fragment and fall to fighting amongst themselves until the shaman decided to take his group and retreat. So when the PCs emerged from their secret hideout, they discovered that the remaining orcs had abandoned ship, as it were.

This time, however, the PCs have assaulted a dwarven fortress that was taken over by duergar. They defeated all the duergar on the upper level, then ended up going straight to the duergar leader on the lower level. They killed the leader and his guards but it was a hard fight, so they decided to barricade themselves in his room (which only has one exit) to get a long rest.

The surviving duergar have no obvious leader among them, but neither are they fragmented by tribe or clan. So in this instance, I'm uncertain if I should have them stay or withdraw. If they stay, they might just wait the PCs out, since they know where they are. Otherwise, they might just decide to cut their losses and retreat back into the Underdark, perhaps taking their slaves with them.

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[StormbringerAUS]

Do you feel the party is taking liberties by taking the long rest there and then. Or if you think this is a tactic they will keep using do something to show it doesn't always work.

You can have the rest interrupted by a counter attack or just have their rest affected by the noise and threat from beyond the barricade.

If the Duergar stay and want revenge for their leader's death then they have plenty of time to set up an ambush and have a very difficult encounter for the party.

If they retreat have them leave some traps to make the party 'pay' for their crimes.

 

[pukunui]

I'm not too worried about it becoming a recurring tactic. They probably should have retreated all the way out of the stronghold in this case, but the room they're in now is pretty defensible. The duergar could definitely set up an ambush.

I suppose they might also use their slaves as a bargaining chip -- "Come out or we'll kill all the slaves. We can always get more ..."

The trouble is that I know that if the PCs don't get a long rest, they're looking at a TPK. Now, yes, I should be impartial and just let the chips fall where they may ... but, my wife and daughter are among the players, and I'd rather that they have a fun experience than a demoralizing one, so I tend to go a little easy on them, which is partly why I had the orcs just leave.

I also have the memory of running this same adventure for another group and having it end in a TPK in this exact same spot. (Now, granted, in that case the circumstances were a little different - those PCs were higher level and I'd overcompensated for that by beefing up the duergar more than I should have; and they had one PC turn traitor on them, which didn't help at all.)

I'd rather not repeat that experience. I'd like to be able to actually finish this adventure for once.

 

[stoneagewar3]

Well, the duergars will probably rally before they try to tear the barricade down, and if they fail, the party should be staring at just about every single duergar in the fortress when they do come out, if they do decide to leave, they will probably burn the place down, the party will get smoked out if nothing else

 

[StormbringerAUS]

I wouldn't want something like this to lead to a TPK no matter who was in the party, so maybe a Duergar grabs the opportunity to become the leader, and as part of this offers the party a chance to escape so his people don't suffer too many more deaths but he can hold onto the fortress. Find what you think fits the story and run with that.

 

[pukunui]

I'm not sure they *can* burn the place down. It's all stone chambers underground. The leaders' room is a dead end area off a common area (where the corpses of him and his guards still lie). I feel like the duergar, coming across their dead leader, wouldn't immediately know where the PCs have gone, but it wouldn't be hard from them to realize that they've barricaded themselves in the leader's room. From that point, I think they'd also be smart enough to know that trying to break into the room wouldn't be necessary. If anything, they could just build a counter-barricade and attempt to bury the PCs alive, as it were.

Otherwise, knowing that the PCs will eventually have to come out, they might just wait and set up an ambush.

Or they could just say, "Screw it, this isn't worth it, let's go home."


I guess maybe I'm having a little trouble getting my head around the duergar mindset. What would be a reasonable thing for them to do after discovering that someone has come in and murdered their leader and his guards and then barricaded themselves in his room?


EDIT: [MENTION=6936541]StormbringerAUS[/MENTION] That could work. They could always go back to Daggerford and tell the dwarven community there that they weren't able to completely drive the duergar out and leave it in their hands as to whether or not they want to mount a war party to do so themselves. The PCs' mission was just to find out what had happened to a dwarven acquaintance of theirs. No one had any idea the duergar were there.

 

[StormbringerAUS]

I think it would be fun having the party on the edge of a Duegar power struggle, and have a faction trying to use them to gain the upper hand, then the actions of the players can swing it one way or the other depending a bit on what they come up with.

Then go and tell the Dwarves what has happened.

 

[pukunui]

What makes this situation even more awkward, now that I think about it, is that no one in the party speaks Dwarvish, and none of the duergar speak Common.

 

[StormbringerAUS]

What makes this situation even more awkward, now that I think about it, is that no one in the party speaks Dwarvish, and none of the duergar speak Common.

Could lead to some entertaining hand signals and lots of mixed signals in the end.

 

[Oofta]

Let's see, you have a couple of logical options.

The duergar blockade the door and it can't be opened. Everyone is going to die until a secret door opens up and an old dwarf pokes his head out and says something along the lines of "Come with me if you want to live". He's an escapee who's been looking for a way of rescuing the rest of the hostages. He knows the secret passageways, but the secret exit is blocked and the normal entrance was always guarded.

The duergar knock politely, and bring a hostage as an interpreter. Through the interpreter they explain that by killing their leader they are now leaders of the clan. This isn't really a good thing which will be obvious fairly soon as the duergar expect things like human sacrifice as part of the coronation, etc. But it lets you set up another set of encounters.

The duergar pretend to leave but set up ambushes to harass the group as they leave.

They leave a note explaining that they have made a new, powerful enemy. While the duergar don't fight them now, assassins and surprise attacks continue to plague the group for a while.