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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hypersmurf" data-source="post: 1595229" data-attributes="member: 1656">First level party, assaulting a keep full of hobgoblins, atop a plateau, with a watchtower overlooking the trail up the cliff.We decided to avoid the trail, sending our best climbers up the cliff on the opposite side of the watchtower, who lowered a rope for the others.DC 10, it was decided, to climb the rope... which meant everyone could Take 10 and climb safely, with the exception of the dwarf wizard - Str 8, no ranks in climb.  He elected to wait until we were near the top of the rope, then head up the trail (with the watchtower hopefully distracted).The ranger, rogue, and bowman reached the top first, and unfortunately were spotted from the watchtower (really unlucky Move Silently check).  Trading missile fire proved an unfortunate plan - some lucky rolls on the part of the hobgoblins did a lot of damage in the first couple of rounds, and the three PCs fled behind the keep, out of view of the tower guards.(The wizard walked around to the foot of the trail.)The tanks, therefore, reached the top of the rope to find, not a beachhead, but a bunch of hobbos with crossbows pointed at them...(The wizard started to climb the trail.)The bowman was providing some covering fire from behind the keep; the ranger and rogue went in the back door, and immediately got into trouble taking on a bunch of hobbos by themselves.  Once the tanks seemed to have their melee in hand, the bowman climbed through a window, intending to surprise the ranger and rogue's opponents from behind... but ran into another lot of guards by himself.(The wizard continued to climb the trail.)The tanks finished up the tower guards, and headed for the front door... running past half a dozen arrow slits in the process and getting pelted with crossbow bolts.  They decided the main door was probably barred... but the wall beside it looked to have crumbled at some point, and had been replaced with packed rubble.  So they elected to try and shoulder-charge their way through.(The wizard continued to climb the trail.)Of course, this took them more than a few rounds, and they were being shot at the whole time.The bowman got hit with an unlucky crit, and went down; the ranger went to his rescue, and ended up on 1 hit point, trying to hold a door closed against several hobgoblins while the bowman gradually bled deeper into the negatives.The wizard finally made it to the top of the trail... and stepped into the line of fire of all the arrowslits, got shot, and dropped unconscious.  (The player's relief at finally getting to do something... was short-lived <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )The rogue was running away from the ogre who'd come storming out... but eventually ran out of places to run, and actually managed to solo it.We all survived.  I'm pretty sure there was some fudging (okay, a lot of fudging!) on the DM's part going on.  As he commented to me later "I thought you'd pick one entrance.  I didn't think you'd pick all of them at once!  You pretty much activated every single encounter on the top level simultaneously..."Heh.  We're slightly more tactically savvy now.  But we thought we played 1st level PCs pretty close to character!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />-Hyp.</blockquote>

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