Played last night Same bizarre party. They are 3rd level. The monk is an astral self one, the Bard is one from exploring eberron a commander sort of bard, warlock is fathomless and pact the tome.
They decided to take a new job to get some travel in. Below the Hill dwarven city is a long valley of rolling hills (Think mid west) Populated by Halflings, Gnomes and Hill dwarves mixed together who provide food, wood and other supplies to the city. They have a main road that travels the length about 40-50 miles. Unfortunately the lands around the valley are populated by friendly and unfriendly creatures, humanoids, and other potentially dangerous things. Some of it is unexplored for the most part.
So when they get to Crossroads the first town down the mountain from the city they hear about Notch Brow the Goblin who has been giving the local farms trouble. This is the Goblin from their first two fights who escaped. The town ask for their help recognizing them as the ones who defeated him before. With a local guide showing them the suspected lair the ambush the goblins killing two standing watch but one still sounds the alarm further down the cave.
A long difficult fight occurs and the players see how painful area spells hurt after I hit them with two erupting earth's from the shaman. And the Leader Notch Eye (Has a scar over one eye, notching his eyebrow) Has made a pact to an Old one so uses his magic to blast PC's. The magic took the players by surprise a little. It was a tough fight. After leader is hurt he pulls a lever opening an escape route and flees.
Party finishes up killing every one and then searching before taking a long rest to regain some health. Leader does the same.
The then search the opening they saw him flee in and notice it is only half finished so they pry it open (It is counter waited so closes unless someone holds it open) to find the Goblin leader in his incomplete escape tunnel. so they go after him (only about 10 feet deep). Rough fight (Mirror image worked well for the goblin) but he eventually is killed though he did hex the character holding the door open and watched him fail strength roll after strength roll not able to keep the door open. finally two characters had to do it because even after a short rest they were hurt and the goblin was still dangerous enough to not want to leave two trapped pc's with him if the door closed.
But they won got their first magical treasure.
They return to accolades and a small reward including an old family treasure map one farmer gave them.
They travel down the road 4 days without issue and reach the end. Then follow directions to find the "Archeologist" group that have lost contact with the city. Their first job, second one is south of this one.
No one has survival so they actually get lost the first day and manage to waste two days going in circles to arrive back at the road and recognized land marks to start again. During that they suffered an ankheg attack that didn't do much. Couldn't hit the grappled character
so off deeper into wild country. Two days ends with a night time assault by a bunch of Gnolls. 3 Flesh renders, 5 hyenas, 6 gnolls, and one pack lord. neither is surprised.
It is a long protracted fight with me rolling really well with several crits then my luck fades and the PC's then get lucky but ended with two pcs having gone down and barely back up and other two PC's about to go down.
One PC who is ranged (The warlock) Ran away not realizing the hyena's were trained to run down escapees so they surrounded her running past other party members and saw how nasty pack tactics is.
So that was the night mostly