I'm so proud of my group! We just ran the Irontooth fight, with level one characters, the Warlord, the Wizard, the Rogue, the Cleric, and the Fighter. All of the characters were pretty much unmodified, except for the fighter, who had throwing hammers rather than daggers.
I did lower the difficulty of the "outside the kobold lair" fight, because the group did have many difficulties with the previous encounter, but on the outside the kobold lair fight, one, they focused fire, maintained a good amount of party and movement cohesion, and I decided that perhaps I *didn't* have to lower the difficulty of the Irontooth fight like I thought I might have to.
So, once they had done the outside fight (no one got in to warn anyone), I opened up the entire part of that map, and told them that this appeared to be the main kobold lair, and warned the players that it was supposed to be a tough fight. So being smart players (and presumably smart characters), they sent the rogue in to scout first, staying near the entrance to support him if need be... he spotted three near the south entrance, and, unfortunately, he didn't understand draconic, so he could only understand a little bit of what they were saying, and he got 'Something something Irontooth something cloaca-sucking." I told this that he got that because Irontooth was in Common, and even if he doesn't speak draconic, that he will know the curse words.
So, having found the three, they went to scout out the northern entrance, again, but unfortunately he was spotted, and a minion started screaming in draconic, "Enemies, enemies! Go tell Irontooth!", which started the encounter. I was, however, nice enough to give the rogue a move action to move his move *out* of the cave entrance and six squares toward the direction where the party was waiting. Then, the fight was on! The party rolled good initiatives, and I started rolling initiatives for all of the first wave. I was using the printouts, and I lettered the minions a through j on the white circle of the printouts, which worked really well. The party, for the most part, stayed out at the entrance of the cave, and most of the kobolds started rushing toward them. One thing that the players had complained about was that in the ambush attack, all of the enemies were making perfect tactical decisions, and were all in perfect telepathic contact with each other, so I decided that the enemies -- especially the minions -- wouldn't always use perfect tactics. So I had some of them be very aggressive, some of them panicked, some of them used overly cautious tactics, and some of them worked really well together. I had a great time describing the emotional state of how all the minions acted, making them more unique this way... there was a point where the fighter was right on the outer side of the southern wall immediately next to the entrance, and the rogue was acting as 'bait', a few squares directly out in line of sight from inside the cave... and it took three minions getting utterly splattered by the fighter for them to finally realize and wizen up that maybe that charging tactic wasn't the smartest thing in the world, so they became more cautious. I had one of the skirmishers hide in the rough terrain of the waterfall to look out and try to scope out the party for a turn before acting, which made him seem more unique... by the end of time turn three came around, they had pretty much mopped up all of the minions except for two, and a bloodied skirmisher...
I was reading the Irontooth introduction when I realized that wait a minute, there weren't many kobolds *left* to be afraid of him, so I had to take that sentence out of the introduction. Regardless, they got REALLY lucky in the fight against irontooth. The warlord was able to support everyone's daily powers quite well, he gave them a +5 to hit against Irontooth, the fighter marked him and got her 6d6 daily to hit against him with the use of an action point (to which the Warlord's damage bonus helped...), the rogue got a sneak attack in on him... the acid damage ended up staying with him for about three rounds (I forgot to add his +2 saving throw, eh...).. but the wyrmpriest ended up using all of his limited abilities VERY well, getting his bless to hit both dragonshields, and using his breath weapon against four PC's at once. The Wizard also did great, managing to use his acid attack very well (like I said earlier), and getting his encounter power to hit a large number of creatures. He even intentionally provoked an attack of opportunity while moving to both get to a better position and let the fighter have an attack of opportunity against irontooth.
The big part of the battle was that Irontooth only got to do his "big combat move" once, the damage was going so quickly on him. But, boy, was it a big one! He was marked, and adjacent to a lot of PC's, and had just gotten bloodied, so I said. "Alright, he spends an action point. Then, he attacks the fighter with his double-axe attack, and then attacks the rogue. Then he does it again." He missed the fighter the first time, but since the attack included the fighter, he didn't get any penalties to attack the rogue... and managed to drop him into negative hitpoints. Of course, this wasn't too big of a problem with two Leaders in the party.
The player playing the rogue halfheartedly bitched, but I spent some time saying, "you have a high risk high reward fighting style. It isn't uncommon for a rogue to drop in a fight... the trick is to make sure he gets back up, which there were plenty of ways to make sure he did!", which calmed him down. Once Irontooth dropped, the group cheered in relief, and then focused on the wyrmpriest, which they were surprised at how many hit points he had, but ultimately dropped him.
When the final two kobolds -- the two dragonshields -- were left, down to one hit point and seventeen hit points, and almost completely surrounded by the entire party, with most of them having initiative left, one of the players said, "do we really need to fight this out? They are pretty much guaranteed to die." So I thought a bit and said, "yea, you end up fighting them. They don't surrender, even when pressed -- apparently there was something more than just Irontooth that they were afraid of."
All in all, the group liked it. They said it was a lot more fun and a lot more interesting than some of the other fights in the module I had ran, especially since I was letting them use more tactics, and letting their abilities shine a bit more -- which worked out really well. You just have to make sure that the enemies they fight don't fight, well, perfectly. At least not against a level one party....
Regardless, I can't wait to see how they go up against the Hobgoblin grunts and soldiers, who I am going to run at least somewhat like Roman Legionnaires -- very disciplined... hmmm. I should give them a bit more Roman flavor...
Hmmm... have the "Grunts" be Tirones, and carry Gladii, and have the soldiers be "Legionarii" and carry Spatha (and have one of them in each small group, with slightly different stats, be an Optio and lead them), have the archers be "Sagitarrii", have the Warcaster be a "Pontiff", have the Torturer be a "Cruciatus", and have the warchief be a "Centurion".
Hmmm... Make the "Scale Armor" instead be "Banded Armor" with the same stats... oooh, I like this...
I did lower the difficulty of the "outside the kobold lair" fight, because the group did have many difficulties with the previous encounter, but on the outside the kobold lair fight, one, they focused fire, maintained a good amount of party and movement cohesion, and I decided that perhaps I *didn't* have to lower the difficulty of the Irontooth fight like I thought I might have to.
So, once they had done the outside fight (no one got in to warn anyone), I opened up the entire part of that map, and told them that this appeared to be the main kobold lair, and warned the players that it was supposed to be a tough fight. So being smart players (and presumably smart characters), they sent the rogue in to scout first, staying near the entrance to support him if need be... he spotted three near the south entrance, and, unfortunately, he didn't understand draconic, so he could only understand a little bit of what they were saying, and he got 'Something something Irontooth something cloaca-sucking." I told this that he got that because Irontooth was in Common, and even if he doesn't speak draconic, that he will know the curse words.
So, having found the three, they went to scout out the northern entrance, again, but unfortunately he was spotted, and a minion started screaming in draconic, "Enemies, enemies! Go tell Irontooth!", which started the encounter. I was, however, nice enough to give the rogue a move action to move his move *out* of the cave entrance and six squares toward the direction where the party was waiting. Then, the fight was on! The party rolled good initiatives, and I started rolling initiatives for all of the first wave. I was using the printouts, and I lettered the minions a through j on the white circle of the printouts, which worked really well. The party, for the most part, stayed out at the entrance of the cave, and most of the kobolds started rushing toward them. One thing that the players had complained about was that in the ambush attack, all of the enemies were making perfect tactical decisions, and were all in perfect telepathic contact with each other, so I decided that the enemies -- especially the minions -- wouldn't always use perfect tactics. So I had some of them be very aggressive, some of them panicked, some of them used overly cautious tactics, and some of them worked really well together. I had a great time describing the emotional state of how all the minions acted, making them more unique this way... there was a point where the fighter was right on the outer side of the southern wall immediately next to the entrance, and the rogue was acting as 'bait', a few squares directly out in line of sight from inside the cave... and it took three minions getting utterly splattered by the fighter for them to finally realize and wizen up that maybe that charging tactic wasn't the smartest thing in the world, so they became more cautious. I had one of the skirmishers hide in the rough terrain of the waterfall to look out and try to scope out the party for a turn before acting, which made him seem more unique... by the end of time turn three came around, they had pretty much mopped up all of the minions except for two, and a bloodied skirmisher...
I was reading the Irontooth introduction when I realized that wait a minute, there weren't many kobolds *left* to be afraid of him, so I had to take that sentence out of the introduction. Regardless, they got REALLY lucky in the fight against irontooth. The warlord was able to support everyone's daily powers quite well, he gave them a +5 to hit against Irontooth, the fighter marked him and got her 6d6 daily to hit against him with the use of an action point (to which the Warlord's damage bonus helped...), the rogue got a sneak attack in on him... the acid damage ended up staying with him for about three rounds (I forgot to add his +2 saving throw, eh...).. but the wyrmpriest ended up using all of his limited abilities VERY well, getting his bless to hit both dragonshields, and using his breath weapon against four PC's at once. The Wizard also did great, managing to use his acid attack very well (like I said earlier), and getting his encounter power to hit a large number of creatures. He even intentionally provoked an attack of opportunity while moving to both get to a better position and let the fighter have an attack of opportunity against irontooth.
The big part of the battle was that Irontooth only got to do his "big combat move" once, the damage was going so quickly on him. But, boy, was it a big one! He was marked, and adjacent to a lot of PC's, and had just gotten bloodied, so I said. "Alright, he spends an action point. Then, he attacks the fighter with his double-axe attack, and then attacks the rogue. Then he does it again." He missed the fighter the first time, but since the attack included the fighter, he didn't get any penalties to attack the rogue... and managed to drop him into negative hitpoints. Of course, this wasn't too big of a problem with two Leaders in the party.
The player playing the rogue halfheartedly bitched, but I spent some time saying, "you have a high risk high reward fighting style. It isn't uncommon for a rogue to drop in a fight... the trick is to make sure he gets back up, which there were plenty of ways to make sure he did!", which calmed him down. Once Irontooth dropped, the group cheered in relief, and then focused on the wyrmpriest, which they were surprised at how many hit points he had, but ultimately dropped him.
When the final two kobolds -- the two dragonshields -- were left, down to one hit point and seventeen hit points, and almost completely surrounded by the entire party, with most of them having initiative left, one of the players said, "do we really need to fight this out? They are pretty much guaranteed to die." So I thought a bit and said, "yea, you end up fighting them. They don't surrender, even when pressed -- apparently there was something more than just Irontooth that they were afraid of."
All in all, the group liked it. They said it was a lot more fun and a lot more interesting than some of the other fights in the module I had ran, especially since I was letting them use more tactics, and letting their abilities shine a bit more -- which worked out really well. You just have to make sure that the enemies they fight don't fight, well, perfectly. At least not against a level one party....
Regardless, I can't wait to see how they go up against the Hobgoblin grunts and soldiers, who I am going to run at least somewhat like Roman Legionnaires -- very disciplined... hmmm. I should give them a bit more Roman flavor...
Hmmm... have the "Grunts" be Tirones, and carry Gladii, and have the soldiers be "Legionarii" and carry Spatha (and have one of them in each small group, with slightly different stats, be an Optio and lead them), have the archers be "Sagitarrii", have the Warcaster be a "Pontiff", have the Torturer be a "Cruciatus", and have the warchief be a "Centurion".
Hmmm... Make the "Scale Armor" instead be "Banded Armor" with the same stats... oooh, I like this...
