Suggestions: Ambush attack from unwise extended rest

[OnlineDM]

If any of my players are reading this (unlikely, but you never know), please stop now! Also, there are some spoilers for the Keep on the Shadowfell ahead.

I'm a pretty new DM, and I'm running my party of three PCs through the Keep on the Shadowfell. More details are on my blog, if you need back story for this party. They're on the first level of the keep now, and they've been having a pretty easy time of things, frankly, which is great - but I know that both they and I are looking for SOME challenge.

The party has cleared out all of the goblins on the first floor of the keep, as well as handling the ochre jelly and giant rats in the maze of caves. After that last battle, they decided to take an extended rest. Instead of heading back to Winterhaven, though, they decided to nap in Balgron the Fat's chamber. They've left the doors open and their Eladrin trancing and keeping watch. That's where things stand right now.

Thinking in-world, if the party is not moving for six hours it seems possible (and even likely) that other denizens of the Keep might pass through the area on their way out to get supplies, empty the latrine, get some fresh air, etc. I'm thinking that one of the hobgoblins from a lower level strolls out at some point during their rest and sees the bodies of the dead goblins everywhere. A few different things could happen here:

• The hobgoblin immediately cries out and raises the alarm, waking the players before they've finished their rest but alerting them that bad guys are coming.
• The hobgoblin deduces that "someone's been sleeping in my bed, and THERE SHE IS!" He figures out that the PCs are still in the dungeon, and he quietly brings the other hobgoblins up to ambush the players as soon as they leave Balgron's chamber (letting them get the extended rest benefits).
• Splug (whom the players allowed to leave) turns out to be sneaking around, looking for loot from dead goblins or maybe from his secret hidey-hole. HE discovers the players while they're sleeping and decides to warn them out of gratitude that taking a nap surrounded by dead goblins while the Keep has other inhabitants could end badly for them.

I don't like the first approach, frankly. I want the players to get their extended rest, and a battle where they're awoken by a yell and then face uncertain silence as the hobgoblin goes to get help doesn't seem like much fun.

I'm planning on the second approach at the moment. I'll have the hobgoblins (but not the spider) from the second floor camped outside Balgron's room in ambush, half outside of the regular door and half outside of the secret door. When the players try to leave, the hobgoblins start with a surprise round. Vicious, but probably fair - and it may quite possibly send the players back to Winterhaven for another extended rest!

The appeal of the third approach to me is that it brings Splug back. He was a lot of fun, and I feel bad that I just had him run off when the battle with Balgron started. But it feels a little forced, frankly.

What do you think is the best approach? I'm open to creative suggestions that I haven't thought of, too!

 

[Smoke Jaguar]

I haven't done a Shadowfell campaign before but common sense to me would say that somebody would notice if the entire first floor of a keep had dead bodies and was completely empty. You would think that baddies would be coming and going.

I would leave it up to chance. Depending how strongly you feel about it, I would either do a even vs odds or 1-3 vs 4, to get caught.

Getting caught should help the pc's to think more critically about what they are doing. I would be careful in how you present it though. You don't want them wasting all sorts of time trying to hide bodies and meaningless tasks that are mudane.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If you do want the extended rest to happen, then yes, 1) isn't an option.

Personally, I don't really like your option 2) if for no other reason than the illogic of the hobgoblins. If they find the party, it seems kind of dumb on their part that rather than attacking them while they are sitting/lying down/weapons sheathed... they wait outside the room until the party gets fully back on their feet, reapplies and readjusts their armor, gets weapons back in hand, and then attacks when they come out through the door.

My own personal choice would be for a pair of hobgoblins at the 6-hour mark (upon which you can rule the party has gotten back their powers and healing surges, but before they are "up and on their feet") to come up through the zombie crypts into the main area, and upon finding the first few goblin corpses, quickly move back down and raise the alarms. If you're feeling nice (and if the party has left the doors open in order to hear people outside Balgron's wing of rooms)... perhaps you let the eladrin make a Perception check to hear that first pair (I'd make it a Hard check with probably an additional penalty dependent on distance from the eladrin to how far the hobgobs have to go to find the first corpses).

Once the hobgobs as a full patrol come back up the second time (and I'd have them double-running through the crypts starting from the staircase and chart exactly how far they get)... you can start having the eladrin make Perception checks again (difficulty class based upon distance between the two groups) to try and hear them. Once they do hear the hobgobs coming, allow them to roll initiative and begin the process of getting up on their feet and ready for battle (requiring them to take as many actions as necessary to get "battle ready" in order to help increase the tension.)

Since they won't know where the hobgobs are coming from (or indeed that their enemies *are* hobgoblins), and the hobgobs won't know where the party is, you can have several rounds of both sides rushing through the corridors searching for each other (and/or trying to escape if that's what the party chooses to do). So long as you don't place the hobgob miniatures on the table, the party will have to make fast decisions entirely based upon sounds, and which way they think they're coming from. And the hobgobs will have to try and find the party also based upon how quiet the party is trying to be. Then once members from both groups see each other in the halls, they can then choose to rush each other and get into battle. Additionally, if you really wanted Splug to appear (plus help dictate which section of the dungeon you wanted the hobgoblin fight to occur), you could have the party see Splug out in the darkness first... not knowing that it was Splug... and then hope the party chases him to a section of the dungeon away from where the hobgoblins are (like perhaps to the rat caves or the excavation room). Thus there also might be a chance that the hobgobs don't find the party if the hobgobs go in a different direction after them (I'd have the hobgobs roll Perception checks to hear where they party might be, and if they fail, then roll randomly to determine which corridors/wings of the dungeon they go searching through first), and it allows the party to then possibly escape to the outside or move down into zombie crypts while the hobgobs are in a different part of the dungeon.

And finally, personally... as this would be the first fight following an extended rest, and the party has the option of retreating to Winterhaven following it if they so choose... I'd actually leave open the option of bringing in a second encounters-worth of hobgoblins from below (perhaps like at the Round 5 mark), to make the fight even more massive and difficult. After all, it makes sense that once the first pair of hobgobs return to announce that the denizens upstairs have all been slaughtered, that several rooms worth of hobgobs would come up to check, not just the first.

This is how I myself would run these encounters. Hope this helps in some way.

 

[OnlineDM]

Smoke Jaguar: I definitely want there to be consequences rather than perhaps randomly letting the players off the hook here. There WILL be some type of battle for sure.

DEFCON 1: Thanks for the well thought out reply! I agree that my option 2 of having the hobgoblins waiting in ambush might be a little unrealistic; you bring up a good point. I was thinking that I'd hand-wave that as coincidental timing - the hobgoblins had just gotten their attack prepared when the PCs woke up - but that might be TOO much of a coincidence!

Now that you've helped describe how things could play out with hobgoblins raising the alarm and getting reinforcements, the tension of perhaps knowing that something is coming but not knowing what... I like it! I'm not sure if I'll bring Splug back or not (I did play him as being a chicken before, so he probably isn't going to be looking to stick by the PCs as big, bad hobbos attack), but your suggestion about a possible way to use him is a good one.

Actually, my party never did any battling in the excavation room - they alerted the excavators to their presence without going over there, so that battle actually took place in the hallway. It seems like a nifty place to fight, so I might have Splug lead them there so that they can prepare for battle.

Thanks!

 

[Smoke Jaguar]

I agree that there should be consequences. Just make sure that they are good and valid consequences. You don't want the party getting caught up in the wrong stuff.

I agree with DEFCON. If you want to be nice, have them intrude just late enough that the party gets the full rest. That will teach them a lesson. If they are careless in this manner again, go ahead and interupt them sooner. Depending on the party number, have the hobgoblins come in and as the party wipes the floor with them have one of the hobgoblins narrowly escape to raise the alarm. I also like punishing (not sure if that is the right word) for natural 1's on attacks. If one of the PC's does that, have the attack make a booming noise, something break/explode, where other baddies can hear it.

 

[VannATLC]

Consequences are consequences, and should be reasonably logical consequences.

Your PC's have done something inexplicably dumb.

My PC's did something similiar, but chocked the doors closed and slept in shifts, then charged through having heard muttered goblin speak on the other side, in the morning (But having slept through the hobgoblins attempting the door.
I rolled a bunch of d20s to determine how long it took the downstairs group to find the PCs, and then run back and bring re-inforcements.
As hobgoblins are fairly intelligent and tactically sound, they set up ranged attacks at the door, and 2 on each side of the door, waiting for the PC's to charge out. My defender almost dropped on the Mob's first turn, but they won out, having expended some dailies and reduced themselves to about 1/2 their surges.

That left them with limited resources for the rest of the dungeon, and acknowledgement of the tight time factor. (I'd had Splug tell them they had 24 hours, tops, before the bad guy finished his Ritual.)