Eaglesford Campaign: "Strange Lights"

[Nail]

We gamed last night! Huzzah!

Our new player showed up, but was forced to play an NPC for the meeting. Despicable DM! Actually, the adventurers didn't get quite as far as I thought....which, in retrospect, shouldn't have been surprising.

You see, I had a big-ole "adventurer threshing machine (TM)" waiting for them, and they got....well, they got threshed. (Can you do that to adventurers? <shrug> Go ask the battlerager.)

We ended the session with some good, ole-fashioned information sharing. Gotta love it when the adventurers start "getting to th' bottom o' the problem".

 

[SpaceBaby Industries]

To: Rowan, Druid of Eaglesford
From: Rowan, CEI of SpaceBaby Industries
Re: Tactics

Earlier, you expressed some concern of not having made the most sound of tactical choices in the battles with the Goblins. I'd like to take a moment to reassure you.

First, those bats may have turned on you, but I doubt that was a worse result than what would have happened if they hadn't been summoned and managed to eliminate their original targets. Optimal strategy? Possibly not, but it beat doing nothing.

Second, with all kindness to Riva, your party does not exactly come across as a collection of exemplary tacticians. I recall a three way party split at a certain spider infested farm as one glaring example.

Thirdly, all of you survived, so your tactics couldn't have been that bad. You'll know better for the next time, and that's what counts.

Finally, those bats hopefully demonstrated the myriad benefits additional mobility provides, especially against dug in defenders. As you continue to grow in the path of the Druid, your ability to Wild Shape will allow you many options for circumventing what would be difficult terrain for the ground bound. I've attached a sample form that has worked well for me.

Take Care,
Rowan

PS: If Riva ever "writes" the Battlerager Picture Cookbook, I would be happy to "proofread". I hear our literacy skills are remarkably similar. Do you think you could have flaps? I love being able to open flaps and see a new picture.

 

[Nail]

ROTFL!!

 

[DrSpunj]

Second, with all kindness to Riva, your party does not exactly come across as a collection of exemplary tacticians. I recall a three way party split at a certain spider infested farm as one glaring example.

Thirdly, all of you survived, so your tactics couldn't have been that bad. You'll know better for the next time, and that's what counts.

I just have to jump in here and say that Riva's tactics (straightforward-charge-I-take-the-bait approach) were what started Nail's "adventurer threshing machine (tm)" (also known as ATM ) in motion. The rest of the evening was spent trying to recover from that move. While Riva took by far the most damage, he also received the most healing and actually slumped unconscious twice and was disabled an additional time IIRC, and most all of us were nearly equally "threshed" by the end of the grueling ~3 hour battle.

Garret was starting to think that Riva had learned some hard lessons about tactics, given his more cautious approach to things in the last few days. His fall in the tower pit and his headlong charge into this blasted ATM quickly dispelled any of those foolish notions.

For those of you looking for RBDM tactics, let me jump ahead of Nail's next posting (I know, I'll hurry ) to describe the scenario. Imagine entering a 5' wide straight corridor near one end by climbing down a shaft. About 15-20' in front of you stairs descend for ~10'. At the bottom of the stairs ~1 inch of liquid covers the floor and extends the entire 20' to the end of the passage, blocked decoratively enough by a flimsy, red curtain.

The corridor is completely without light, and while some in our party are carrying torches, Riva and Kytum-Up (our kobold ally second-in-line) don't really need them with their darkvision. Leading our party (most of which are still at the top of the shaft), Riva heads down to the base of the stairs. At that moment, a goblin standing just behind the curtain pulls it open revealing himself, another goblin standing next to him, and behind them a ballista (huge Xbow) aimed directly down the corridor at Riva. The first goblin fires his Xbow at Riva, then the goblin with the ballista fires and hits him as well (oh, and the ballista bolt/javelin is poisoned). Finally, the last goblin fires his Xbow and pulls the curtain shut.

Now, anyone want to guess Riva's response?

As he steps off the stairs into the puddle, starting his charge towards the curtain 20' away, he is surprised by a number of things. First, the liquid is not water, it is grease or something of the sort that reduces any movement by half and requires a balance check to remain standing. Second, its 1" depth effectively hides numerous caltrops, at least one of which pierces Riva's soles reducing his movement by another half. So each 5' square now requires effectively 20' of movement. For a raging dwarf, he wasn't going to get too far on a good day.

This wasn't a good day.

The biggest surprise he received was finding four goblins very effectively hidden/concealed to either side of his position. They are situated in 5' corridors at right angles to the main corridor, with cover being provided by low walls. Much to his dismay, Riva missed Spotting them as he tried to charge past. That leaves him with 1 goblin on either side using a morningstar in flanking positions. Having faced them before, we are all familiar with their Sneak Attack abilities and collectively groan (as Nail gleefully cackles). That was two attacks, both with Sneak Attack damage. To add insult to injury, behind each of those goblins is another goblin, wielding a longspear, which is an additional 2 Sneak Attacks. Realize these positions also gave these 4 goblins a killing zone with one AoO each for anyone trying to move through/past Riva to get to the curtain goblins and ballista crew.

I'll leave it to Nail and Gina to flesh out the remainder of the battle, but suffice it to say, I think our party did...well...how did you put it?

We survived!

Though I'm still not sure we're learning much!

Have a nice day.

PS. Thanks for the pic, SBI! Cute!

 

[Videssian]

Heh, actually, the way Riva was thinking at the time is that he really *couldn't* go backwards because there were all those people in the way behind him in that narrow corridor. (and he didn't have enough movement).. And he didn't really want to get hit by that ballista a 2nd time. And if anyone was going to get hit by it, it'd best be him. If he *had* squeezed past, kytumup would have died. So he thought, well, there's a few of them in that room up ahead with that ballista there, and it'll be a lot less dangerous if I'm in melee.. So if I'm going to get there nice and quick, best to charge!

Unfortunately, those goblins were a lot sneakier than he expected, and those 4 hidden *rogue* goblins just past the stairs, and the grease and caltrops covered by water from the stairs and for another 30 feet.. well, lets' just say Riva had a very bad day... Rowan learnt some new dwarven swearwords, let me tell you!

It also turns out that if Riva hadn't raged after getting hit by that ballista, he would have died. As it was, it was closer than he liked. Riva has a lot more respect for goblins now!

Even if they still smell as bad as before...

 

[DrSpunj]

Riva, if you had enough movement to charge the length of that hallway, you certainly had enough movement to bullrush Kytum-Up 10' back up the stairs (there was no one behind him when the goblins first fired upon you, everyone came running just after that). That maneuver would have brought you into the upper part of the corridor, and since we couldn't shoot or cast spells at the ballista from up there, I'm sure the ballista and the goblins near it wouldn't have been able to fire upon you either. Even without knowing about the hidden/flanking goblins that would have been a better plan than you singly throwing yourself at them with the majority of us left behind at the top of the shaft! Who knows how many were down there waiting to pepper you with poisoned bolts! You only saw three, but another appeared to help load the ballista, and you don't know the layout of the place like Kytum-Up does. Those passages weren't new: I'm curious if Kytum-Up remembered their presence and/or whether his tribe used them as well for similar defensive purposes.

And apparently we all need to sit and have another pow-wow: these goblins LOVE ambushes! They LOVE being sneaky! If you didn't "expect" it before, hopefully nearly dying TWICE in a matter of as many minutes will help provide the evidence you need to be convinced! Every time we've encountered them they have (usually successfully) baited us into all sorts of bad positions: spreading ourselves too thin, leaving our more fragile party members out in the open where they become target practice dummies, circling around moving even faster than Bavic & I on those blasted wolves or with magic to flank us from an unexpected direction...I can go on if you need further reminders. Exactly which part of all of our encounters so far led you to believe they were going to stand out in the open in a long line and await our charge?

Realizing just now that he's been getting louder and louder, Garret takes a deep breath, turns around, and heads off muttering a prayer* that he seems to be using an awful lot lately:

Holy Mother, heed my prayer,
Lend me your wisdom,
So that I might see clearly;
Give me your PATIENCE (this with a bit of extra fervor),
That I might bear what I see.​

* Common prayer of Morwyn, Book of the Righteous

 

[Nail]

The more astute readers may notice that Garret and Riva occasionally disagree on tactics.

Speaking of learning, I'm learning some good "DM stuff" here too. For one, how much game time a combat can take up. As a group we're all learning little tricks to get combat moving more quickly (rolling attack and damage dice all at once, for instance), but I can't help but feel I need to work on some additional DM tricks. That and this "appropriate treasure/EL" problem. Hmmmm.

Still, this session (#18) was alot of fun (for me, at least ), including the "interrogate the goblins" at the end.

 

[Gina]

First: Thanks SBI for the words of encouragement!
Oh, and LOVE the butterfly look!

Second, tactics. Goblins and us.

The goblins all seem to think with one mind (wonder why????) while we work as a collection of individuals rather than a well-oiled war machine!

As I recall, Riva's plan was to move forward and "scout" the situation out. Unfortunately, he was caught in a cleverly laid trap. Given the way the corridor was set up, I don't think it would have made a lot of difference if we were all above still or if we had been directly behind him lined up in the corridor. I do know that had anyone other than Riva stepped into that square, they would have been dead since he took quite a bit of punishment AND some poison that he was able to shrug off with his dwarven constitution! (Which obviously comes from eating his old pappy's cooking.)

In the end, we were going to get caught in this one. Pushing Kytum-up back would have helped him, but the fact remains that in the heat of battle some of us make decisions that are, in retrospect, perhaps not the wisest ones we might have made.

Overall, it was a well-laid ambush and I would hope that in the future we will take more care to investigate things more fully, but I also doubt that we will be able to complely avoid such situations.

Rowan (who has earned the Wildshape ability and is itchin' to use it now!)

 

[Nail]

Overall, it was a well-laid ambush....

Which, incidentally, take time to set up.

 

[DrSpunj]

The goblins all seem to think with one mind (wonder why????) ...

Yeah, they do have extremely Lawful tendencies for a bunch of Goblins, don't they? Hmmm....

Which, incidentally, take time to set up.

You mean like several hours of nocturnal work while some unsuspecting so-called heroes are left alone all night in a well-defended but broken tower?

Yeah, I figured as much.

Unfortunately we let Mr. Powder Keg lead again.