how I killed my party: KotS spoilers

[brehobit]

Briefly, I killed them with the hobgoblins. They blew their dailies in the first hobgoblin fight, and then the two other rooms became one large encounter. The fighter was down to 3 healing surges and had the only daily left (because it was reliable and he kept missing). The leaders ability to shift everyone stopped the retreat.

The baddies AC was almost impossible to hit (the warlord needed like a 16 to hit the leader, the fighter needed a 15 I think). They did real well until the wizard got hit with a crit and a 19 that did 12 points of damage. That was a total of 28 points of damage in two attacks.

I thought they'd pull it off until the wizard dropped. We called it a TPK once only the warlock was left.

Mistakes I made:
* Didn't drop the baddies enough for a party of 4 (only dropped about 200 EXP in a total of something like 1000 EXP fight
* Combining the two rooms might have been a mistake. But I think that is what the module calls for. And I can't imagine the fight didn't make enough noise. But still...

Things that surprised me:
*That shift all allies 3 spaces if they are in range 5 as a minor action power is crazy powerful. Without that, I think they'd have been okay.
*The hobgoblin soldiers are hugely powerful for a level 3. (2d6+4 damage, 22 AC).

Mark

 

[ac_noj]

What level were your players? 4 level 1's should be able to beat an 800XP encounter but only if they're got Daily powers and Action Points to spend and use good tactics. More than 800XP and they're toast.

 

[Azurecrusader]

I managed the same with my party.

My own observations:
1. This is the first encounter of the adventure that really requires the PCs to think and be smart about their tactics. Some might say Irontooth...I disagree.
2. Hobgoblins have some typos in KotS. Check out the monster manual. They should only be doing a d10 damage (standard flail, not heavy), not that it's a huge difference, but it's enough.
3. Combining the two rooms as you say is devastating for the party, but without some good stealth action it's almost inevitable with all the lookouts and traps waiting to alert the two groups of Hobgoblins.

My group ended up calling it a do-over since we were really just using KotS to get the hang of the rules and it was late and people were making bad decisions. I admit, I had a bit of fun with the encounter, it's the first time in years that I've killed my party.

 

[Elsbon]

Hi Brehobit,

Having thought about various tactics we could've tried the last day or two, I decided today to check out how the encounter system works in the DMG. It seems like according to the DMG, the encounter was over 1000 XP, which would make it a level 6 encounter for a party of 4 level 2 characters. Without our dailies, and with our bad rolling and your good rolling, the outcome was pretty well set (as you said, the melee types needed 15 to hit the soldiers, and 16 to hit the leader).

Looking at the XP values listed for the hobgoblins, minions seem rather overrated. According to the table, 4 minions = any one of the actual hobgoblins, which seems in no way equal to one of the hobgoblins that we fought. The minions were almost completely inconsequential.

I was also rather annoyed at myself for forgetting my new multi-class power of Scorching Burst. It would've given us a teeny-tiny potential to win at the end (if the Warlock could have somehow dealt with the leader on his own - unlikely but possible), but it might have helped more if I'd remembered it earlier. If/when we start back up with D&D, I think power cards will be in order. (I was busy trying to think of "out of the box" ideas for saving our asses, and forgetting the conventional ones).

It seemed like one of the ideas of 4E was to encourage the party to keep going, so I thought that we could push for at least another encounter. It hadn't really occurred to me that after really hard fight #1 we'd go straight to ridiculously hard fight #2. So, meta-gaming on the theory that this was a huge string of battle after battle, it seemed reasonable to keep going (and not wanting to drag out the module into "and we go back and sleep...again...and again"). In retrospect, I think the real sign of when to call it a day in this edition is when you've used (many/most) of your daily powers. The whole "milestone" carrot was totally sending the wrong message.

I'm finding that in actual play, having the bad guys run on a completely different system is kind of annoying. Since you like to run them "as written", any mistakes in how their abilities work (or like how much damage they deal) are going to go unnoticed. Also, not having *any* idea about the HP total or abilities of each monster makes it hard to devise effective tactics. Maybe this is just inexperience with the system.

I probably should have been asking for better descriptions of the bad guys, and what they were doing/saying. Also, we were dumb in that we should have captured and interrogated one of the hobgoblins from the first fight. Unfortunately, while a good tactic, I find it annoying and boring (lots of wasted time threatening and intimidating an enemy, some times it doesn't work, and I've had plenty of bad roleplaying experiences with the "now what do we do with him" question).

Looking on the bright side of death, I'm looking into new character ideas, and I'm also considering ideas for running a game (although "we'll see" on that). I could probably come up with something for a limited duration (a few sessions).

 

[LostSoul]

Also, not having *any* idea about the HP total or abilities of each monster makes it hard to devise effective tactics. Maybe this is just inexperience with the system.

Check out the "Monster Knowledge" table on page 180 of the PHB. You can get their powers with a DC 20 check.

 

[NilesB]

*The hobgoblin soldiers are hugely powerful for a level 3. (2d6+4 damage, 22 AC).

They do d10+4 in the monster manual.

 

[Entropi]

Check out the "Monster Knowledge" table on page 180 of the PHB. You can get their powers with a DC 20 check.

Yep and Resistances/Vulns with a DC 25.

 

[ac_noj]

I've just had a look at the encounter in the module and I think I see the problem...and it's the "there's a monster lets charge forward" stratergy adopted by your players. If you block the entrance of the corridor that leads to 13 and 14 all the grunting goblinoid in the world isn't going to break through.

 

[Plane Sailing]

We called it a TPK once only the warlock was left.

Why didn't you call it a capture?

Hobgoblins bandage the dying, put them in the cells, plan to either (a) get them sacrificed to Orcus or (b) sell them into slavery.

Party then get to plan and execute an escape attempt from the jail cells (which are next to the torture chamber) and proceed from there.

This fits with the hobgoblins desires and storytelling imperatives

(This is exactly what happened when I last ran the game)

Cheers

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Agreed -- there are times when "You're captured instead of killed" isn't plausible, but they're slavers, so if they keep the PCs alive for a bit, they get paid and know that they're "sentencing them to certain doom" (at least until they escape).