So.... goblins. 200 vs. a 4th level party. Who are the standouts?

[Empirate]

Nice low-level aggravation also includes the following:


(Ceramic) Pots of Green Slime. Can be thrown as a grenade-like weapon, or can be used as part of simple traps that tip the pot on top of intruders.

Smearing all weapons with dung. Save vs. Filth Fever all day, all the way.

Sacks of flour dropped from on high. Blinding, choking, oulining invisible creatures, and highly combustible.

Tanglefoot Bags with Silence cast on them by the tribe's Shaman. No, you won't be casting any spells with verbal components anytime soon.

Low, narrow passages which small creatures can run through at their leisure. Bigger creatures need to go on all fours.

Similarly, creaky wooden walkways over deep pits. Those boards can easily support a Goblin's weight. A Human in platemail? Unh-unh...

All slopes oughtta be greased, of course. Just enough that heavy creatures have lots more slippage than small, sure-footed Goblins.

Caltrops. Lots of caltrops. Rusty caltrops. Smeared with dung.

That underground river the Goblins get their water from? Bottled up into a little subterranean lake by a dam. A flimsy dam. With certain weak spots that can be collapsed by skilled Goblin engineers in a matter of seconds. Oh, and the almost-dry riverbed? Is the main tunnel leading into the Goblins' dwelling.

Some important passages might have crenels or slits in the walls, with walkways hidden in behind. From out of these, goblin warriors with longspears go to work on intruders.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Thanks marcielle. Actually, I am thinking about the worgs and the pacifist because 7 hours of fighting goblins could indeed suck. What I was thinking of was having Foureyes -- who fears Goren -- maybe see the adventurers as a way to be rid of Goren. After the adventurers cleave through dozens of goblins, they'll arrive in the final large cavern, filled with women, children, Foureyes, Goren, and the worg riders. Goren will shout for the worg riders to attack, and Foureyes will see the last survivors of his small tribe about to be wiped out and shout "NO!" Then he will give up Goren, if the PCs will vow to utterly destroy Goren so that revenge cannot be made.

If they agree, the players are in a dilemma -- they are not powerful enough to planar banish Goren, so their only real guarantee of keeping Goren forever away from Foureyes is to kill Goren. But the party has a paladin who merely wants Goren stopped or in jail.

But in any case, that really isn't the dilemma I was concerned about. The dilemma stems from a paladin's sense of right & wrong -- and at least in my game, killing a sentient creature is only OK in self-defense or an actual combat encounter. If the creature has surrendered or is held captive somehow, killing that creature is murder. So the jail issue is less of note than the murder issue. We could come up with a hundred alternatives to jail -- banishment, serving time as a slave on a ship, binding him and turning him over to Foureyes in a helpless state, etc. But if Foureyes offers a deal which is none of those things and is only "kill him as he stands here helplessly" then that seems more interesting to me. How can a paladin cut him down when he's defenseless? Can a paladin even turn away and allow his allies to do it?

I don't know if Foureyes would have the INT and CHA to roleplay such an arguement, but if he could pursuade the Paladin to look at the women and children huddled within the cave and make the connection between Goren's willingness to see them in danger under his leadership, vs. killing Goren as the only way to keep the women and children safe, that might appeal to Paladin sensabilities.

 

[marcielle]

Sorry for the hijack, as a medieval historian I sometimes have to get this kind of stuff out of my system...

My books have lied to me
Lol thanks for that. This is what I get for reading too much fictions.

Could the local jails even handle someone with enough levels for a Prc? It would be hilarious for the Paladin to jail( or any let live option) Goren only to have him escape and drop a note at their inn telling the Pally he would murder a child each day in his name.
The most dramatic thing that could happen, the rest of then party could kill Goren, ignoring the Paladin. Might not be the Goodest thing to do but I doubt even he couldn't muster too much of an argument against killing an always evil Assassin from an always neutral evil race and it would probably be 3v1 if he tried to stop them.
After the odds balanced, he might either try to leg it or fight, allowing the Pally to kill him. But the damage has been done. He knows the rest of the party don't agree with him and don't share his ideal. What then? Pally's who actally roleplay can ALWAYS spin out of control and it's almost always fun to watch.

Im really wishin I could be a part of this scenario.

To mix it up more, you could have a human kid who has painted himself green and insists he's a goblin. Rawr. Bonus points if the real goblins believe him even though he can't actually speak goblin and is just spouting gibberish when he tries.

And a ghost goblin who decides to tail the Pally going on about he plight of goblins, how 'good' adventurers go on mad killing sprees butchering goblins who were mothers and fathers for money. This might help put him on edge for the Goren thing later