How to stop runners?

[chriton227]

For whatever reason, it sounds like you've decided that the only course of action you had available was a full-on, frontal assault...and that's fine. It's going to be bloody, and you're going to be vastly outnumbered, but it can be done (we *did* storm the beaches of Normandy, after all). Stock up on healing potions, hire all the retainers you can afford, and cross your fingers. Find a choke point, put the fighter on the front line with the healer within reach, and keep your exit clear so you can retreat if need be.

The key is to be creative, and always be open to alternate courses of action. Because not every idea is a good one.

I wouldn't say we decided to storm the beaches of Normandy, the situation was much more akin to the DM saying "you are in an otherwise empty fluorescent orange rowboat 500 yards from the beaches of Normandy. There is only the 5 of you, you have no support, there are no other boats. Your boat has a searchlight you can't turn off, the Germans all have night vision cybereyes, so they have already seen you. You only speak English, no one on shore speaks anything but German. The current is carrying you to shore, if you are lucky you might be able to choose what stretch of beach you land on. Good luck." We were literally started 30 feet from the shrubs in the valley, with the kobolds having already seen us. We got to make perception checks to see if we were surprised. About the only choice we had was which kobold to attack first, and since we couldn't kill them all the only way to avoid the dogpile was to go home. Had we gone into any other cave, I have no doubt we would have then been fighting all the occupants of the other cave in addition to a horde of kobolds following in behind us. I think the DM assumed that the caves would be balanced against the strength of the party, and having never played DDN he couldn't judge how badly that setup was going to overwhelm the party.

 

[CleverNickName]

About the only choice we had was which kobold to attack first, and since we couldn't kill them all the only way to avoid the dogpile was to go home.

Retreat is always an option. In fact, sometimes it is the best option.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I have no doubt we would have then been fighting all the occupants of the other cave in addition to a horde of kobolds following in behind us. I think the DM assumed that the caves would be balanced against the strength of the party, and having never played DDN he couldn't judge how badly that setup was going to overwhelm the party.

Actually... the caves talk about how the occupants usually don't work together. So by assuming you couldn't go to a different cave, or that you couldn't do something other than chase the kobolds back into their home... you basically closed yourself off to the only option you took. Which happens, of course... especially as I said when we think (like it sounds as though your DM did) that D&DN plays like 4E does. You've now gotten first-hand experience to discover that it doesn't.

Now you and your group knows that a frontal assault like you might've been able to do in 4E is not as likely to succeed as before. And your DM now knows that he has to be more judicious in determining which monsters come storming after the group. It's a learning process. Best thing you could do is fill out the WotC survey with your experiences, so that the developers know what kind of thing can happen with the rules as such. Because if enough other players have matching experiences as you... that'll help them balance things later on so that your difficulties don't crop up as badly again.

 

[chriton227]

If it were me, I'd stake out the caves from a hidden location for a few days at least and pick off hunters for a while; loot and interrogate them. Once I know the political situation of the area and have some loot to offer, I'd try to stir the pot between rival factions. Maybe decapitate some orcs and stack their heads outside the hobgoblin cave. See what happens.

I know I've said it before, and I've see several other people mention it, but none of the pregen speaks any of the languages spoken by any of the monsters. Comprehend Languages might let you understand what they are saying, but the party has no way of actually asking any questions. That will make figuring out the political situation very difficult if not impossible. It would be a great idea if the playtest wasn't built in such a way to prohibit it.

And this brings back smiles of joy to me as players realize they are not a super hero.

I don't want level 1 characters to be superheroes. I do want them to be heroes with lots of room to grow, and maybe someday with a lot of work and luck they could become superheroes. If I wanted to Bob the Ratcatcher or Fred the Tailor, who has to run in terror from a handful of the weakest humanoids in existence, I'd go play an old edition of WFRP. A level 1 hero should be a cut above a common guard, otherwise there would be no need for the PCs, or the players should be playing the guards instead.

 

[Kichwas]

This is something that has bugged me about dungeon crawl adventures since I was 10 years old back in 1981...

The only realistic way to do one of these home invasion really, is 'Seal team vs. Osama' style - come in stealthed from above, storm the building, and use the layout against its occupants. Ie: running past them and forming a wall faster than they can flee...

Otherwise, any such invasion -SHOULD- be a suicide mission.

So since 1981, I've basically been playing 'kind' to players - not having NPCs run or yell for help...

Much like how in an MMO you can kill 5 elite guards around the king and nobody does jack because you are exactly 1-meter out of aggro range...

D&D, since 3e, has let us start playing it a little more real by having AOs to interrupt people who run for help - but that itself is a very unreal mechanic (go get yourself in a knife fight inside a building, and see how easily you can stop someone from fleeing using only AO style moves... it won't happen ... but if do end up in this situation and decide you would rather live than prove an intellectual point, you're likely to try and slam, trip, grapple, and so on... an opponent who is doing the same to you).

The problem is that the realistic ways of preventing the run / yell for help would take extremely complex bookeeping mechanics to manage...

Which is probably why AOs were put into 3E as the 'lesser of evils' solution.

So for 5E, DMs will either have to learn to be forgiving again, or we'll need some AO mechanic, or players will start having to act like Navy Seals and planning assaults using all kinds of magical spying ahead of time and weeks of tracking to figure out timing, patrols, and so on...
(and I've played in a D&D game like that before... it was neat once, but it was also a game where we'd spend 2 of every 3 sessions just going over plans and maps and spreadsheets of expected NPC positions... not fun after the first few times...)

 

[jadrax]

I know I've said it before, and I've see several other people mention it, but none of the pregen speaks any of the languages spoken by any of the monsters.

Yeah, that is basically an error I feel. The Ogre cannot even speak the language of any of the groups he is supposed to work for.

I think another big break for people who are used to more modern modules is that this module is intended to force the GM to improvise, and he really needs to do so if it is to work.

 

[Hussar]

I'd point out the obvious here.

This is a playtest module. You've rightly identified an issue. And it is an issue. When it comes time to provide feedback, you can tell WOTC exactly what you've said here.

The module is not meant to be "finished" really. It's meant to test mechanics and not a whole lot more. "Too many monsters makes the game too slow" is a possible issue. "No 'sticky' characters makes encounter design tricky". That's exactly the kind of feedback I think WOTC is looking for.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

On the language issue...

Comprehend Languages might let you understand what they are saying, but the party has no way of actually asking any questions.

It's probably reasonable to allow a high INT character to choose a language or two before play. That's a pretty standard D&Dism.

If you don't want to break the playtest rules by doing that, there's the option of using CHA and INT checks to sway the attitude of, and rudimentarily communicate with, certain (non-hostile?) humanoids. It'd be like a minigame of Og Unearthed embedded in the adventure.

Lack of a common language could potentially be run as just another rp challenge mixed with a few checks.

(Caveat emptor! I haven't actually run this approach in the 5e playtest, nor have I run the 5e playtest at all. I may be talking out my wazoo.)

 

[KesselZero]

I think some of this has to do with your DM. Disclaimer: I definitely don't mean this to be any sort of insult or attack on your DM. I've struggled with similar questions as you bring up-- why wouldn't all the monsters just dogpile the PCs?

But there are a lot of other ways for a DM to run monsters than just having them totally dogpile at the first sign of alarm. I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but it sounded from your description that the rats were tactically aiding the kobolds by stopping your escape. Who's to say that the rats have the intelligence or the inclination to help the kobolds? Maybe they think kobold flesh is tasty and that's why they moved into Cave A, and are just as likely or more to attack weak, delicious kobolds rather than tough, stringy dwarves. In addition, one of those kobold rooms includes lots of children (or it did in the original module; I'm assuming the playtest is the same). Maybe the kobold fighters in that room are guards whose job is to stay there and make a defensive perimeter at any sign of trouble, not go rushing out to leave the children undefended. Maybe the chieftain is a coward who refuses to get involved in fights unless absolutely forced to, and prefers to hide in his room surrounded by guards if he hears the sound of battle. Maybe if you stayed outside the caves, you could fight off the ambushers in the daylight without any other kobolds daring to come attack you because of Mean Mister Sun. Maybe the kobolds send out foraging parties at night, and you could lie in wait to ambush one of those once it got out of earshot of the caves, slowly whittling down the tribe's numbers that way. Maybe if you ran into the goblin caves with kobolds chasing you, all the buggers would start fighting each other and you could slip away. And so on and so on. Again, I don't mean to say that your DM was wrong in the decisions he made, just that there are other ways of running the same setup that are maybe more nuanced, and definitely less lethal. You can make the argument that a DM who makes some of these calls is being unrealistic or soft-hearted, but you're absolutely right that playing a game where every monster group has no tactics except "throw everything at every enemy" is no fun. And speaking to realism (such as it is), kobolds are generally understood to be such weaklings that they've had to survive by cowardice, sneakiness, and trapmaking. Maybe not by a first-level party, but kobolds tend to get stomped in direct conflict. They may refuse to fight off their home turf (where they know where the tricks and traps are), allowing for an escape into the wilderness, or they may retreat into their warrens at the first sign of danger (for much the same reason).

I do agree that there are some mistakes in the playtest docs. Having no shared language with the denizens of the caves is probably one. Mike Mearls admitted that using Wisdom as the rogue's dump stat was a mistake. But there are ways around even the errors, such as nonverbal communication-- putting heads on spikes was one method to try to stir up inter-tribal warfare. The ogre works for money, so surely he understands a sack of coins, even if he doesn't understand common. When I playtested, my wizard was able to sneak up on a room of hobgoblins and blast them with Burning Hands before they knew what was what-- our party had torches at one end of the hallway, the hobgoblins at the other end, creating enough dim light for me to more or less be able to see thanks to my Low-Light Vision. It took some luck, but it worked. Hopefully the errors will be fixed for the next round of playtesting, but in the meantime there are workarounds.

Anyway, I hope I don't come off as all You're Doing It Wrong. That's not what I mean at all. I just mean to say that there are many ways of running the same module, some of which may address the concerns you raise. It's as much, or more, an issue of how the DM chooses to play it as how the players do.

 

[darjr]

wait, some of them speak common? right? I'll have to double check. some them share languages as well, like goblin.