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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 5226351" data-attributes="member: 7006">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.</blockquote>

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