DDEX3-10 Quelling the Horde *Spoilers*

[Kroad]

Played this twice this weekend (at Winterfest).

My first AL Convention, so not got that much to compare it against....BUT.....

Game 1. Fairly tough party, six players average level 3.

We stomped the scarecrows and dogs without much problem. Took a short rest after the latter IIRC.

With my Deep Gnome wizard using his Advantage DEX (Stealth) in the rocky caverns, I was able to "kite" our drow rogue, and the two of us snuck well ahead of the party without alerting anything. We kidnapped a goblin and interrogated it. We figured out to release the giant boars as a distraction.

We still had a hard fight against the succubus, Agarak, and his centipede. Part of the problem is that everything is so close together.


Game Two, I had a virgin human fighter, polearm master. The group was weaker, five people, average L2 ish.

I obviously didn't reveal any of my prior knowledge.

We didn't have much problem against the scarecrows or the dogs. But things went disastrously wrong in the cave. Unlike the first group, we used lots of light and took Route 1.

Our scout tried to climb the wall and triggered Agarak. The fight against him and the carrion crawler would have been tough enough, but his knights joined in.

It should have been a TPK. But astonishingly, the fighting retreat by the two "survivors" kited the baddies far enough away that the three of us that had been dropped were able to get back up. (Paralysis finally wore off, then used potions on the other two who had self-stabilized).

We caught up with the fight and tipped the balance back in our favour.


I chatted to the DM after the event, he revealed that he had had a TPK against the scarecrows earlier that day. It sounds like they got unlucky (lots of frightened PCs), but I wonder if there was also a CR problem, per the above posts.

I think there's an interesting adventure there, but I'm not sold on the map, and the monsters seem...volatile.

I also found the whole witchcraft thing a bit of a non-sequitur. Nice idea, but maybe placed in the wrong adventure.

Motor - I was your meat shield paladin in that 2nd adventure. You did a great job not revealing anything which was cool. Having played a lot of AL scenarios that was by far the hardest scenario I've ever played. Between the frightening of the scarecrows, the paralyzing of the crawler and Agraks spells there were just way too many saving throws for a low level party. We certainly inflicted some of the pain on ourselves with poor rolling but we would have been challenged regardless.

Overall it was a very stressful adventure from a self preservation perspective and I give the GM credit for playing the monsters pretty intelligently. I think he gave us some pity at the end when it seemed like we had a slim chance to pull it out. Was ready for a stiff drink over lunch when we finished up.

 

[Eltab]

I got to play this at Winter Fantasy, but not with anybody up-thread.

The scarecrows came at us in waves, so we could deal with (read: gang up on) a few at a time. Had they all come at once we would have been in trouble. My Monk2/Rogue1 with a +1 longbow began his "playing Ranger" day when somebody else with a non-magical weapon did about zilch to one scarecrow; no point in trying to punch it in the mouth, I thought. Lucky me, with 45 speed I can Disengage and just run around the fields while taunting the Dashing scarecrow that decided to follow me around. I was trying to think of ways to do Fire damage to it (thinking Wizard of Oz scarecrows) but didn't in time. You cease to be Frightened if you cannot see the source of your fright - so I ran around the Little Shed of Horrors and took a shot at the scarecrow bothering our Striker. That freed him to come to the aid of the others while I sniped from a distance.

One PC was dragged into the LSoH but the scarecrow never managed to put the manacles on him; he counter-grappled and pushed himself back out the door !

We adopted a strategy: always shoot the Mount first. We snuck up to the guard post, I scouted a bit, and we artillery'ed the mount with surprise; it went down in one round; then we mopped up the goblin guards.

I was looking over a piece of goblin armor and seeking inspiration but failing. One member of the party is a Zhent but lies poorly about being in the Emerald Enclave. He had a fascination with Rust Monsters, which being un-natural beasts he could not explain (convincingly). I took along the chestpiece even though everybody knew I was a Monk and cannot wear ANY armor.

We came into the training cavern next to the Rust Monster pen. I successfully scouted it out (looking for hostages, actually) and we decided to open the door and lay a trail of metal for the RMs to follow over to the Goblin trainers / fighters. It might have worked had our two Tanks backed away around a corner so the RMs would not sense THEM. We actually ended up leaving a trail back into the cage and locked 2/3 inside. We also alerted the goblins to our presence.
On the plus side, "Shoot the mounts first" worked out well. We had two goblins who fell at the feet of our Paladin when their mount collapsed out from beneath them. The others we clobbered from short range. The Paladin Persuaded the last goblin to join him as a loyal follower !

We dealt with the Incubus in a Persuasion and Charm duel: our not-Zhent Bard and the silver-tongued Paladin bumped into him, and the Bard successfully Commanded him to "go back from whence you came". The Incubus tried but failed to Charm the Bard first, so there was something humiliating / embarrassing / un-natural about what the Incubus should do when he arrives, but I won't go into details - besides, the charm would wear off in 8 hours anyway, so at least the Incubus is out of OUR way.

I was on a mission to locate the hostages; we talked to our new goblin cohort and found out all we needed to know. I'm no lockpicker - the Bard was - but I got the job done while the previous paragraph was going on. "Master -insert name here-, the Lord's Alliance has heard of your distress and has sent me to return you to your home. We will aid you with rebuilding. Will you come with me?" = +1 Renown on the spot. (Special note: I'm CHR 8, and have a character flaw about being direct, blunt, and no diplomat.)

The two silver-tongued Persuaders talked the Knights into going neutral over the question of who should lead the goblin tribe: Agrak or ex-Gold Dragon Paladin. We threw two dead goblin bodies in front of the carrion crawler and somebody cast Tasha's Hideous Laughter on the boss. (How do you go prone while tied into a saddle?) The Paladin then Alpha Strike'd him and we all ganged up on him until he was defeated.

Two goblin knights plus the original goblin joined the Paladin as retainers ! He's going to have to retcon the Noble background into his character now.

 

[Motorskills]

Motor - I was your meat shield paladin in that 2nd adventure. You did a great job not revealing anything which was cool. Having played a lot of AL scenarios that was by far the hardest scenario I've ever played. Between the frightening of the scarecrows, the paralyzing of the crawler and Agraks spells there were just way too many saving throws for a low level party. We certainly inflicted some of the pain on ourselves with poor rolling but we would have been challenged regardless.

Overall it was a very stressful adventure from a self preservation perspective and I give the GM credit for playing the monsters pretty intelligently. I think he gave us some pity at the end when it seemed like we had a slim chance to pull it out. Was ready for a stiff drink over lunch when we finished up.

You did an amazing job. I wish I had known, I would have bought you that stiff drink myself.

 

[Motorskills]

Motor - I was your meat shield paladin in that 2nd adventure. You did a great job not revealing anything which was cool. Having played a lot of AL scenarios that was by far the hardest scenario I've ever played. Between the frightening of the scarecrows, the paralyzing of the crawler and Agraks spells there were just way too many saving throws for a low level party. We certainly inflicted some of the pain on ourselves with poor rolling but we would have been challenged regardless.

Overall it was a very stressful adventure from a self preservation perspective and I give the GM credit for playing the monsters pretty intelligently. I think he gave us some pity at the end when it seemed like we had a slim chance to pull it out. Was ready for a stiff drink over lunch when we finished up.

Yeah, I think the DM played it very hard.

But I think that's probably appropriate for the situation(s).

 

[Fu-Man Chu]

I played this last night at a local con - it was my first time playing D&D AL (though I previously played a lot of Living Greyhawk and Pathfinder Society). It was also my first game of D&D 5e other than a quick introductory game at GenCon 2014.

I had thought I was joining in a 2-hour Wednesday D&D Encounters game, so now it makes sense why it ran about 4 hours 15 min. We had a party of 5 first-level PCs: Paladin, Warlock (me), Sorcerer, Ranger, and Cleric (being played by a person new to D&D), and a 2nd level fighter.

Yeah, it was rough. I'm not sure they DM knew it was supposed to be for APL 3 when he ran the mod, and so he ran it with kid gloves on. We fared fairly well until the battle with the goblin king and centipede. My PC, who was hiding in the back casting Eldritch Blast decided to open the boar pen and get out of the way as that seemed the only way to prevent a TPK. At that point, we were all out of spells, the Fighter was charmed, the Paladin at 2 failed death saves, and the Cleric was in melee with him. Fortunately, the goblin and centipede were standing just in front of the cage and so the angry boar just ran straight out and gored him. We managed to then rally with some good rolls and healing with potions to bring them down.

We never ran into an succubus though, so I'm not sure if he was taking pity on us, or if it was because we were over time, or both...

 

[Lejaun]

It's definitely a difficult adventure. Even at level 4 it was quite a challenge for 4 characters (2 barbarians, a fighter and a sorcerer (plus a paladin for the first half)

The scarecrows were no problem, courtesy of the sorcerer and fire spells. The initial goblins weren't too bad for us either, though we did get hurt by the rust monsters more than we would have liked. I ended up just leaving my rusted out weapon in the cave.

The first trouble we had was when we encountered the carrion crawler, goblin knights and Agarak. Our party was incapable of making saving throws. Our Wolf totem barbarian was charmed, giving advantage to our enemies. Our fighter got paralyzed, our sorcerer dished out some nice damage but was paralyzed as well towards the end. We had a paladin for that part of the adventure, and he got beat up to the point where he was one turn from dying. We barely escaped with our lives and took a short rest.

We explored further and encountered the incubus while we were in battle with the goblin blacksmiths and armor. The incubus nearly killed our fighter, reducing him to 7 hp max and out of the fight. The two barbarians took a ton of damage, even while raging, and the wolf totem barbarian got knocked unconscious. The sorcerer had only cantrips and me (battlerager) had very low HP. The unconscious barbarian failed two life saving throws and we barely won the encounter.

Just curious if there is any more treasure there? All told, we ended up with some trinkets to sell, a wand +1 and a couple alchemist fire vials. Did we miss anything?

 

[Motorskills]

Presumably the adventure includes DM guidance for modifying the difficulty?

How is a 4 x 1st level party expected to complete this, I just can't see it?

 

[Tyranthraxus]

Motorskills: A 4 player Level 1 only table should be able to get it done.. just. They would be playing on V Weak.

THe first encounter : 2 Scarecrows

Depending on positioning this could be tough. I find my groups generally split up to search which could mean 1 or 2 characters are a little cut off at the start. Much better idea just to have the scarecrows attack when they are all back together.

As it is the scarecrow are dishing out 2d4+ damage on their turn with an attack (and with 2 attacks) its not too hard to take out the brick first turn. Id be having one laying out the glare and the other taking advantage of the frightened/paralysed targets. You could also play it dumber by having them not using their glare at all. Its still 4 combat attack rolls a turn though on 4 possible targets. Thats not taking into account that Scarecrows take half damage from non magical weapons. So 36 hp essentially becomes 72. Thats 144 damage the party need to deal to finish them off.


Now if they dont have a way to do damage that isnt Crushing, Piercing or Slashing this fight could be over pretty quickly.

 

[MtlGuy514]

The Scarecrow encounter isn't so bad because so long as everyone survives you are given the opportunity to rest for the night thereby recovering your HP and spell slots. It's the rest of the adventure that's grueling since the volume of encounters can wear your party down by attrition. The DM's reasoning for denying us the opportunity to rest was sound. We violated the Goblins' lair they knew at that point they weren't safe anymore. If we left and retreated a safe distance to take a long rest they would logically pack up and leave rather than stand around and wait to get picked off. So it was either forfeit the remaining portion of the adventure or finish the job. We finished the job, barely.

 

[pukunui]

I finally got around to running this myself. As I'm running it for my home group, I beefed it up a bit to make it more suitable for 5th level PCs. At the last minute, I ended up only having 3 PCs, so I tossed in a regular NPC ally and dropped a few things back (only two rust monsters in the stables, only one giant toad in the training yard, etc).

They did pretty well (and the players all told me they really enjoyed the variety of monsters). They went through the training yard and then scaled the cliff and fought Agrak straight away. They killed his carrion crawler but he got away, so they looted his blockhouse and then retreated back to the surface and went and hid in a copse of trees so they could get a short rest.

So now I'm left wondering what Agrak and his horde will do. The adventure makes it seem like they'd all just sit there waiting for the PCs to come back. The thing is, I don't think the PCs are going to take a long rest. Even though the spellcasters are low on spells, they're all healed up now, and they've got their short rest abilities back. We had to stop for the night before we could finish up, though, so Agrak really only has an hour to recover himself and shore up his defenses.

Perhaps I could have him move some (or all) of the animated armors from the armory up to the guard cavern. Or just post some sentries who will run away and warn the rest of the horde at the first sign of the PCs' return.

What do you guys think? What would Agrak's response be? He hasn't got time to pack up the horde and move them somewhere else, and I'm not sure a megalomaniac like him would do that anyway.