Death to the slavers!
Dec. 8th, 2008 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothWell, some of the slavers. We played D+D on Sunday, and it ended up taking the whole session to do one long battle. Maybe it was two long battles? Stupid enemies communicating with each other and combining encounters to assault our defensive position... at least it was a really good defensive position.
The party was able to take a short rest after the small fight they'd had just after entering, camped out on a balcony with only one entrance (but they could jump down easily to exit). They decided that since the enemies would definately be waiting for them, they'd avoid the main hall they'd seen the fleeing goblins run down, and take the side passages instead.
This led them to a small chamber with a couple of duergar in it -- customers of the slavers. Evil, though, and therefore they had to die! They got the jump on them, and charged into the room to engage them.
Unfortunately, the actual slavers were waiting for them to attack and heard the commotion, and before too long a warcaster joined the fight, flinging Morgan across the room and knocking him down. Bore activated a defensive item and charged between the deurgar through the gap where they'd been flanking Morgan to engage the warcaster, protected by a temporary shield. Samuel and Shanarea tried to follow suit, without the 'protective shield' part, and got pounded.
And then more slavers showed up -- goblins with axes, backed up by hobgoblin archers, from two directions. One set was more or less in position to engage Bore and no one else (once the warcaster finally went down, which took a while), the other was blocked in the other doorway by Morgan, and the three non-front-line folks finished off the Duergar (and the warcaster, since Bore was having serious problems hitting anything) then continued to offer fire support in both directions as needed. Eventually, the raging goblins were down, and the archers tried to run. One of them had been cursed with a power that did extra damage for trying to run away, which finished him off, the other drew a last attack from Bore's combat challenge, but he missed and the archer got away.
Vexx scouted the room the archer had fled to, but it had more enemies lying in wait, including a huge-ass wolf. So the party closed the doors, set a trap to make lots of noise if the enemies tried to open it, and retreated to the room they'd fought the duergar in it, since it had two convenient directions for the enemy to attack them from and enough room for the ranged folks to wait safely behind the front lines.
The good news was that the enemies waited long enough for the party to catch their breath (and recharge encounter powers). The bad news was that this was becuase they were getting all their friends together (altough not the giant wolf, which couldn't fit in the tiny passageways) and charging from all *three* directions, including the hallway the party had assumed they'd be able to retreat through if things went bad.
With *three* lines of attack, you might have though Vexx would plug one of the holes, since he was a melee fighter, if not as tough as Bore or Morgan. You'd be wrong. Morgan blocked the hallway with a hobgoblin soldier/crossbow pair, and Vexx helped Bore block the hallway with *two* hobgoblin soldiers (one of them had charged into the room to get at the wizard, but Bore shield-bashed him into an alcove next to the fireplace, letting him trap him and still block the hallway) and a crossbowman.
The third avenue of attack, which had the hobgoblin chieftain and two archers (who'd bypassed their alarm-trap by using a secret door -- foo!) was blocked by Shanarea. The chieftain probably thought that charging the archer in melee and mauling her for more than half her hit points was a good start to the fight... one round later, he was dead, as this made her *angry* and she did something like 70 hp of damage to him with a twin strike and an action-point fueled two-fanged strike (and a lot of good rolls).
That turned the tide of battle. The other assaults stalled against the party's defenders, and the archers without a melee meatshield couldn't really press the attack. They still pushed for a few more rounds, until all the soldiers and half the archers were dead, then the last two fled for their lives, riding off on the giant wolf.
The party looted vast amounts of wealth from the slavers' outpost, and the chieftain that Shanarea had killed was the chieftain that they'd been hired to find. But they didn't find the slaves! Instead, they found records indicating that they'd been sold to a mysterious person that they'd have to ask about back in the hall of seven pillars.
last session | next session
The party was able to take a short rest after the small fight they'd had just after entering, camped out on a balcony with only one entrance (but they could jump down easily to exit). They decided that since the enemies would definately be waiting for them, they'd avoid the main hall they'd seen the fleeing goblins run down, and take the side passages instead.
This led them to a small chamber with a couple of duergar in it -- customers of the slavers. Evil, though, and therefore they had to die! They got the jump on them, and charged into the room to engage them.
Unfortunately, the actual slavers were waiting for them to attack and heard the commotion, and before too long a warcaster joined the fight, flinging Morgan across the room and knocking him down. Bore activated a defensive item and charged between the deurgar through the gap where they'd been flanking Morgan to engage the warcaster, protected by a temporary shield. Samuel and Shanarea tried to follow suit, without the 'protective shield' part, and got pounded.
And then more slavers showed up -- goblins with axes, backed up by hobgoblin archers, from two directions. One set was more or less in position to engage Bore and no one else (once the warcaster finally went down, which took a while), the other was blocked in the other doorway by Morgan, and the three non-front-line folks finished off the Duergar (and the warcaster, since Bore was having serious problems hitting anything) then continued to offer fire support in both directions as needed. Eventually, the raging goblins were down, and the archers tried to run. One of them had been cursed with a power that did extra damage for trying to run away, which finished him off, the other drew a last attack from Bore's combat challenge, but he missed and the archer got away.
Vexx scouted the room the archer had fled to, but it had more enemies lying in wait, including a huge-ass wolf. So the party closed the doors, set a trap to make lots of noise if the enemies tried to open it, and retreated to the room they'd fought the duergar in it, since it had two convenient directions for the enemy to attack them from and enough room for the ranged folks to wait safely behind the front lines.
The good news was that the enemies waited long enough for the party to catch their breath (and recharge encounter powers). The bad news was that this was becuase they were getting all their friends together (altough not the giant wolf, which couldn't fit in the tiny passageways) and charging from all *three* directions, including the hallway the party had assumed they'd be able to retreat through if things went bad.
With *three* lines of attack, you might have though Vexx would plug one of the holes, since he was a melee fighter, if not as tough as Bore or Morgan. You'd be wrong. Morgan blocked the hallway with a hobgoblin soldier/crossbow pair, and Vexx helped Bore block the hallway with *two* hobgoblin soldiers (one of them had charged into the room to get at the wizard, but Bore shield-bashed him into an alcove next to the fireplace, letting him trap him and still block the hallway) and a crossbowman.
The third avenue of attack, which had the hobgoblin chieftain and two archers (who'd bypassed their alarm-trap by using a secret door -- foo!) was blocked by Shanarea. The chieftain probably thought that charging the archer in melee and mauling her for more than half her hit points was a good start to the fight... one round later, he was dead, as this made her *angry* and she did something like 70 hp of damage to him with a twin strike and an action-point fueled two-fanged strike (and a lot of good rolls).
That turned the tide of battle. The other assaults stalled against the party's defenders, and the archers without a melee meatshield couldn't really press the attack. They still pushed for a few more rounds, until all the soldiers and half the archers were dead, then the last two fled for their lives, riding off on the giant wolf.
The party looted vast amounts of wealth from the slavers' outpost, and the chieftain that Shanarea had killed was the chieftain that they'd been hired to find. But they didn't find the slaves! Instead, they found records indicating that they'd been sold to a mysterious person that they'd have to ask about back in the hall of seven pillars.
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