Q?: Irontooth encounter, how long did it take your group?

[Rowe]

Our DM used the irontooth encounter out of the H1 Book. I could not believe how difficult this encounter was. Below are spoilers



***Spoilers***



We approach the encampment, there are roughly 10 Kobolds outside of the water fall.

The idea behind this encounter was that we were suppose to lure the kobolds away from the group 1 by 1, and pick them off. giving us access to the waterfall cave with out alerting the Kobolds inside.

We did not do that!

Our warrior charges up to the scout Kobold, and misses his initial attack which sets off the alarm for the other kobolds to take battle formation. ( basically they clump up near the caster Kobold that is standing on the circle of power ( 3x3 square gives +1 to atk rolls).

I being the wizard make a run for the tree line to get with in range, and dispatch 4 of the minions with a Scorched blast, and damage the others within range.

Our DM takes 2 of the kobolds from the pack, and runs them to the inside of the cave.

We dispatch the 10 kobolds outside of the waterfal in about 5 rounds. Then other kobolds start to join the from from inside the cave. we get another 8 minions 2 skirmishers, 2 dragon scale kobolds, 2 other ranged kobolds, and Irontooth, and a Priest Kobold.

Our group makeup is Wizard, Warrior ( tank spec), Cleric, ranger.

If you are familiar with this campaign, and this specific encounter. The encounter rating with from a lvl 1 to a lvl 6 because the Kobolds were alerted from inside.

Now it was my idea after 1 round of eating damage from each of these kobolds that we should just run and come back another day. Our group rarely goes for that idea. generaly its all or nothing with the guys i play with. So we decide to stick it out.

We get the group of kobolds down to 2 skirmisher and 2 ranged and irontooth. Once we got irontooth the bloodied, the DM decided to cut us a break by making the other 4 kobolds run because they saw their leader take a beating.

We would have not survived this encounter other wise.

Combat was about 2.5 hours long, and it ate up most of the nights play.

How long did it take you all?

 

[el-remmen]

I'm going to move this to general discussion, as it is not a 'story hour' and you are more likely to get responses in the appropriate forum.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

That fight's definately tough if you don't stop them from alerting the caves -- you're basically doing 2 1/2 encounters all together in that situation. I think your call to run and come back later was sound.

For comparison, in the thread about the guy who DMed KotS for his 7 year old, said kid did a pretty good job of cutting off the kobolds' retreat, and took them out in manageable bunches. That seemed to make the fight loads easier.

 

[ozziewolf]

It took us about an hour for each encounter.

The group outside we killed with no one escaping to warn Irontooth. (The Ranger and I (the Rogue) took out the ranged guy first just because they always use nasty pots on us. After that we took the rest of the group apart.

We went in through the waterfall and where immediatly surrounded on all sides by Kobolds. I killed a kobold next to me shifted into his square and then the ranger shifted into my square and killed the two that had been next to her. (This provoked only one OA instead of 2 if she'd stayed in place.) We quickly took the rest of the group apart and had them all down by round 3.

Part of round 4 and all of 5 and 6 We fought Irontooth with the Wyrmpriest and his buddies. The fighter positioned himself and readied an action which nailed Irontooth as he charged in. Our Warlord took a serious beating but he held up ok and we killed Irontooth before he could make any bloodied attacks. (I understand that it would have been very brutal if he'd gotten attacks off.)

When it was all done the Warlord was pretty low on health and every one had used their dailies except for me. (Irontooth died to fast I suppose.) With all the hype we went in thinking it was going to be a lot harder for us than it was. We've been running pregen dungeons for a few months now and I think tactics played a major role in this fight. If we'd been brand new and this had been our first dungeon it probably would have been a lot harder.

 

[OchreJelly]

2.5 hours sounds about right. I re-tuned that encounter since I only had 3 players that night. I actually had the outside part mostly as is - two kobolds managed to flee and alert the ones inside. So I had part of a second wave come out since the PCs were fighting in the open outside. Irontooth and a warpriest, skirmisher and 5 minions remained inside. They got to deal with them after a short rest. It was still a tough fight with the fighter getting dropped.

 

[evilbob]

We killed all the kobold minions outside quickly and the other two non-minions ran into the cave. The DM didn't realize there were any entrances other than the waterfall so we went in that way (also we weren't allowed to stop to rest between battles, but that didn't really make any difference). When we ran in we were surrounded by a wall of kobolds. We didn't even manage to kill all the minions before the TPK. It took about 4 rounds, total, once we went into the cave. (Also about 2 hours.)

Granted, many of us weren't rolling above 9's that night (the warlord never got above 5 on his four turns). We managed to take out two of the brutes and all but one minion, but we were pretty much losing anyway and then Irontooth showed up. By then no one had any powers or action points left. It was bad.

It is a little strange that there is a level 6 encounter that you can (and we did) hit when we were level 1. The DM didn't realize that he needed to adjust it down (I mean, we just blew through the guys outside in a couple rounds!) until it was past too late.

 

[Ander00]

We handled the outside easily enough, without the kobolds in the cave being alerted.

The fight inside took ages though, what with the DM not rolling very well and us failing for the longest time to even kill the last skirmisher from the first part of the encounter (it was at something like 3 hit points throughout most of the fight, but the fighter's cleave failed to connect a bunch of times). It might have been a bit easier had this been after the release of the books, and/or if we had concentrated on the kobolds first.
While all the PCs lived, it would've taken very little to tip the balance in Irontooth's favor (like the warlord missing with his Bastion of Defense, for example).


cheers

 

[Phoenix8008]

For us this encounter was split over our 2nd and 3rd sessions of play. Probably about 4 hours total, but that's with goofing off and 'warm-up'/'cool down' time included. Our 2nd session involved the fight after leaving Winterhaven and then the fight outside the waterfall. They had a rougher time with the few kobolds on the road than they did outside the waterfall. Even with the party splitting up taking on different knots of enemies away from each other, things went fairly well. The ranger (archer) and the wizard hung back behind the treeline and sniped all over. The paladin charged over to the waterfall and fought the slinger, a couple minions from the creek, and the wounded skirmisher that had been shot by either the ranger or the wizard. The dragonborn pally managed to bring down his knot of foes which prevented anyone from running in to warn the inner kobolds. The tiefling warlord and the dragonborn fighter waded into the magic circle and took down the dragonshield kobold and the minions who stepped up to fight them.

At the begining of our next session after looting the bodies, they decided that they would enter the lair through the central waterfall entrance. I rolled passive checks and determined that none of the enemies in that room had noticed them coming through, so the party got a surprise round before the alarm went up and the 3 round countdown started till the reinforcements arrived. The party pretty much stayed in the central room and let all the enemies come to them until there were very few left. The Eladrin wizard snuck around the corner during the last part of the 3rd round before Irontooth came out from the treasure chamber and smacked her hard. Then she got into a ranged battle with the Wyrmpriest while the dragonshields went around the other way to fight the paladin and the ranger. The Warlord and the fighter meanwhile were taking on Irontooth alone and holding their own. They were getting very worried seeing how much damage he soaked up before even becoming bloodied. The wizard went down from a critical energy orb from the priest and the pally risked 2 OA's to move away from the dragonshields to go heal her with his Lay on Hands (and earned 50 bonus XP from me for displaying such self sacrificing heroic deeds). In the end, the fighter finished off Irontooth with the Warlord barely standing still, and the party worked together to finish off the Dragonshields. The Wyrmpriest was last and tried to flee out a corner exit to get away, but the paladin chased it down and smacked it unto death for it's efforts.

Funny part (for me) is that they are stripping all the gear and weapons off these kobolds and carrying it all back to Winterhaven. I had let them sell the gear from the very first kobold roadside attack to the shop in town (for 1/5 value of course), but he's not gonna want to pay for anymore of that small stinky gear which he's already bought some of without much hope of ever selling. Maybe they'll be able to sell some of the weapons to the dwarf smith in town for stock or something, but they're gonna learn quick that it's not worth trying to lug around EVERY little bit of equipment they loot.

Overall, it's gone well and I think they were just lucky to not alert the kobolds inside and therefore got to do the fight in 3 waves instead of one big fight. THAT would have led to a TPK probably like the others I've heard about from this encounter. I really think it's alot about luck whether this fight is just challenging or a potential TPK.

 

[webrunner]

We dispatch the 10 kobolds outside of the waterfal in about 5 rounds. Then other kobolds start to join the from from inside the cave. we get another 8 minions 2 skirmishers, 2 dragon scale kobolds, 2 other ranged kobolds, and Irontooth, and a Priest Kobold.

Your DM went against the module, whether accidentally or by design. All the fleeing kobolds are supposed to do is a) prevent a surprise round and b) make the second wave (incl Irontooth) earlier.

This is a hard two encounters as it is, the DM shouldn't have made it harder by making it one big one.

 

[SteveC]

Yep, the GM in this case went against the module's suggestions, but everyone lived and you had a great battle, so no harm was really done? I am really surprised that you weren't TPKed, mind you, but that says a lot about your tactics and die rolls, so BRAVO!

--Steve