How to Preserve Monsters?

[Sammael]

Last session, my players made short work of my carefully planned EL12 kobold ambush encounter. I don't regret it, I just wonder what some of the different DMs would have done in my place.

The party consists of one human sword-and-board fighter, one human cleric/divine disciple (with access to travel domain), one sun elf wizard/harper mage (focused on evocations), one human enchanter (who also likes illusions), one strongheart halfling rogue/assassin, and one moon elf monk/sorcerer/argent disciple (my custom PrC, basically a shifter-type class that lets him turn into a silver dragon and focuses on dragon form abilities).

The kobold ambush consisted of a half-dragon (white) kobold barbarian 2/sorcerer 6/rage mage 2, eight arctic kobold warriors (level 5), and an arctic kobold cleric of Kurtulmak 5. The CR of the half-dragon alone is 12, but I felt that was exaggerated, and, going by the party size, I'd say this was an EL12 encounter.

The players started unaware of the ambush, having to scale a cliff to return to the road they left. Four kobold sentries were posted in the cliff, not too attentive, but definitely aware of the party which had cast light to see their way around (all was happening during the night). The sentries let their leader know about the party (using a magic item), and the kobolds proceeded to prepare for the ambush. Basically, the sentries were to wait until the party scaled the cliff and attack from behind (using potions of spider climb to reach the top of the cliff quickly), the half-dragon was to fly above the party and blast them with his breath weapon and spells, the four additional warriors were to snipe from snow bunkers, and the cleric was to remain invisible and cast boosting spells.

So, while the kobolds are busily buffing up for the encounter, the party's cleric casts fly on the fighter, while the monk/sorc casts spider climb on himself and starts scaling the cliff. Other party members stay behind. The fighter flies by the sentries, not noticing them. He flies over the cliff's edge, only to be blasted by a 10d6 lighting bolt cast by the spell enraged half-dragon (the fighter has 120+ hp, so he's perfectly fine). Invisible kobold cleric continues with his buffing, and four kobold warriors sling stones at the fighter, missing horribly (since he has a flat-footed AC of 28). Thus ends the surprise round.

The rest of the party notices the lighting, and the monk/sorc morphs into a dragon and flies over the cliff. The cleric then gathers up the others, and successfully teleports to the top of the cliff (he has studied the cliff extensively twenty days prior to this encounter). Since all the kobolds rolled crappy initiative scores, the party's fighter goes first, flying over to the half-dragon and inflicting around 20 points of damage. The party teleports in, and the sun elf wizard casts chains of vengeance on the half-dragon, who, of course, fails the DC 23 save. By the way, I have toned the spell down considerably from its original version in Book of Eldritch Might. Enchanter attacks the half-dragon with phantasmal killer, but fails to kill him. On his turn, kobold cleric attempts to dispel the chains and fails, and the half-dragon fails to escape from their grip (despite an 18 Strength).

Next round: party cleric demolishes the kobold warriors with holy smite. Fighter finishes the chained half-dragon off with a couple of blows. Kobold cleric successfully sneaks away past the party's rogue, and one kobold warrior manages to escape into the darkness. Kobold sentries reach the top of the cliff and promptly climb back down after seeing their fallen leader.

So, any ideas as to how I could have made this encounter more interesting?

 

[takyris]

Well, first off, let me say that it doesn't sound like you did anything WRONG per se. I don't think the encounter was designed to be that hard, by the sound of it.

The real problem here is that you only had one person who could actually hurt the PCs, from the sound of it -- your Rage Mage. Your 5th level warriors were flavor text more than anything else against a party like this, or at least they were in this situation. Your cleric buffed what turned out to be the losing side for all of, what, two rounds, and he was so far below the level of the PCs that, in this situation, he wouldn't have been a threat anyway. What level is your party? I'm guessing 10-12? This is actually about right for them -- they used some of their big spells, took a little damage, but were never really in trouble.

Now, if you had wanted to give them some trouble, here are a few sample things you could have done differently. These are all just random thoughts:

- More environmental problems. The half-dragon's cold immunity never came into play, and you gave the PCs an enemy stronghold that they could fly into and teleport into without any trouble. If the PCs had been slogging through waist-high snow that the much lighter kobolds could just run across instead, that would have slowed things down (and given the kobold archers time to do something). How about light? The kobolds don't need it. Not everyone in the party has darkvision, so some good quality natural darkness would have given PCs a penalty on spot checks, granted the kobolds concealment, and forced the PCs to spend time getting light sources up.
- More anti-spellcaster tactics. The kobolds seemed optimized to deliver damage, which is nice, but they got creamed by spellcasters. Spells that either granted immunity, massive save bonuses, or negation of incoming spells would really have helped. Also, your kobold ranged guys were never going to be putting a real hurt on people, and they only got one attack per round -- why not have them all ready actions to fire at the first person they see casting a spell? Sure, they probably won't hit, but hey, even if just one of them does, there's a good chance that it'll disrupt the spell. My favorite anti-spellcaster tactic is Silence. Almost no spellcaster is prepared for it the first few times -- either cast Silence on a slingstone and toss it near them (while the other kobolds sling stuff in, making it impossible to know which slingstone is silenced), or cast it on one of the kobold warriors and have him do a suicide run, lasting a few silent but very interesting rounds. Even if he doesn't hurt the spellcasters much, that's a round or two that they're worried about themselves, not helping the fighter deal with the sorcerer.
- Take the fight to the PCs. In D&D, at least, the advantage is almost always with the attacker -- with the exception of traps, which you didn't have here. The kobolds could either have attacked first, catching the PCs unbuffed, or had a lair lined with enough traps to cause a world of hurt for the PCs. Given the powerful spellcasters in the kobold camp, you could even do magical traps. A magical Dispel Magic trap can be handy, for instance.
- Your Rage Mage got involved early, which is good, but it also made him a target -- and once he died, you had the fight basically end. You really didn't use all your resources, and I'm not even sure you lost -- the cleric and warriors are free. Sure, they've lost their big guns, but if they're feeling vengeful, they can harry the PCs with attacks for the next little while. Next time, you might consider having your Big Gun fight from a more defensive position -- either invisible or behind cover, so that he's impossible to get to for the first few rounds.

Anyway, hope this helps. Really, it sounds like a good fun fight -- they shouldn't all be killers. If you need more help, you could try the Rat Bastard DM's board -- they almost always have good advice for DMs in need.

 

[takyris]

Additional stuff that just hit me:

- With the magical trap possibilities, you'd be great to hit things like Enervation, Silence, and Entangle as magical traps that people could run into. Enervation is great for people like fighters, who roll a lot of dice and have lousy TOUCH ACs.
- The kobolds are in a mountain lair, and I'm guessing there's snow, since you've got a half-white dragon kobold? If I were a cleric, I'd have prepared "Sound Burst", and I'd have had all those trap-making kobolds set up enough loose rocks that a single Sound Burst would cause an avalanche.

Alrighty, two more random thoughts, no charge.

 

[Psion]

formaldehyde

 

[Abisashi]

- More environmental problems.

I second this. You were using arctic kobolds, so this would have made lots of sense. And people would have been using balance on the ice. Yay!


6 characters are more than 50% better than 4 characters - which you have probably noticed. Weak enemies are generally nothing more than cannon fodder; your lvl5 warriors were little more than window dressing. NPC classes are significantly weaker than PC classes, and even had the kobolds been fighter 5, they still would have been pretty bad. If they had been 6th, they would have had a 2nd attack, which while probably only hitting on a 20, still could have done more damage - if combat had lasted longer.


Also, I suggest important baddies have extra hp, especially vs big parties; even had it not gone so well for the PCs, 1 CR12 guy can't stand up to 6 10th level PCs, even with cannon fodder.


But I think the main problem with this ambush is that it wasn't one - the fighter got hit by the lightning bolt, but otherwise the PCs went before their ambushers.

Hope my rambling helps

 

[el-remmen]

Folks have already mentioned environment, but it can't be stressed enough. In my mind, the environment of an encounter makes the difference between a good encounter and a great (i.e. memorable) encounter.

If the cliff the PCs had been climbing had been icy it might have been more difficult. . . Esp. if the cleric dispelled the spider climbing climbers while they were still on the wall.

Weaker creatures like kobolds should use hit and run tactics, forcing the PCs to come after them after a big initial attack, perhaps with some areas they have prepared for these kinds of occasions, with some pitfalls, lots of cover for small sized creatures and the like.

Spread the enemy out so they can't be easily all targeted by one boom spell. . .

 

[diaglo]

one other suggestion:

you should've increased the mishap chance of the teleport.

20 days is a long time. plus when the cleric studied the area...he didn't have kobolds nor others up there to account for...so he could've ported into an occupied space and thus caused himself or his party harm.

 

[Sammael]

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback. One thing I definitely downplayed was the darkness - it was night, after all, but I had declared that it was cloudless and the stars were shining bright... thus the two elf PCs would have been able to see nearly as far as by daylight. On the other hand, fighter's weapon sheds light and the half-dragon let out a lightning bolt which pretty much marked his spot.

I planned to have the environment have more impact, but the fly/teleport ability thwarted that (as the non-flying PCs never even moved from their location after teleporting).

The ambush was supposed to be more deadly if the PCs spent less time in the cave they went to explore. However, I declared that the kobolds simply got bored and inattentive after a few days of waiting for the PCs to emerge, and thus weren't as prepared for the ambush as usual. That, and the half-dragon kobold wasn't much of a strategist, always relying on brute force rather than trapmaking (that kobolds are so good at). Oh well - that was obviously his downfall...

The encounter took place in the High Country in Rashemen (FR), and was merely a way for me to introduce the kobolds, who were sent by their draconic master to kill the party and take their treasure. Obviously, the kobolds should have been a bit tougher (I agree that war 5 is too weak), but I was going for realism (i.e. there aren't very many high-level kobolds around there).

 

[takyris]

If they were waiting for the PCs to come out of a cave, the easiest thing for them to do would be to trap the living heck out of the cave entrance... An Alarm spell, a trap that conjures an Illusion and gets the PCs to waste a few of their short-duration buff spells before they attack and realize that they're dealing with figments, that sort of thing... Kobolds are all about the traps.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

All good ideas, especially the environmental stuff.

I like to use cannon fodder, myself -- especially against PCs that are high enough level that they will get no experience for killing the fodder. It's a nice, mean way to get the PCs to spend their spells. So, you might think about turning each of those 5th level kobolds into something like 20 regular kobolds. Then arm them with crossbows, put them under cover, and don't bother buffing them with the cleric. They may not get a lot of shots off, but even that first surprise volley should score some hits. If you have about 120 kobolds hiding all over the face of the cliff, and they all shoot at the fighter, they'll need 20s to hit, but with 120 shots you should get about 6 hits, which WOULD make an impression on the fighter.

One thing to remember is that, at ANY level, numbers will tend to overwhelm high level PCs. The nearly impossible to hit fighter may be able to kill hundres of kobolds, but eventually they'll wear him down. And the kobolds aren't dumb enough to line up and make it easy for him. They run, take pot shots, run some more, and count on time and numbers to wear the PCs out.

As for the Half-dragon, as others have noted he's the only foe the PCs have that is of any real consequence. He's outnumbered 6 to 1. He can only get off one spell per round, while the party will be getting off about 3, while the others try to beat on him. He'll be on the defenisve almost instantly, and have no chance of lasting more than a round or two, unless he can find ways to separate the PCs. That should be his focus. Traps and tactics that will allow him to face one or maybe two PCs at a time, while the others are not able to help.

Other ideas: the high AC of the fighter is a problem, but he must have a lot touch AC -- or lower, at any rate. That lends itself well to grapple attacks, and being in heavy armor means he's going to have trouble getting out of thigns like nets, webs, etc. Toss some nets over him and let him struggle to get out. With the dex penalty for armor and shield he should really struggle -- I imagine he has few ranks of Escape Artist, if any. He might have, or have access to Freedom of momvement, but otherwise it should be easy to slow him down.

One good tactic for getting the party to divide itself is movement. Don't fight in one place -- keep the battle on the move. Slower PCs, like the fighter, will need help keeping up with the flow of battle -- should they decide to hold off and not pursue, set up another ambush.

-rg