Much to my surprise, the party pressed on. They ascended the steps and utilizing his powers of stealth, Rudy peaked into the main worship chamber of Cathedral. A small group of monsters were pouring over documents using the altar as a makeshift meeting table. The 25 foot high ceiling sported 4 ten foot square openings, 2 on each side, with ropes hanging down from each one.
Not hearing from the guards outside, a hobgoblin soldier was dispatched from the table to check on them. As he approached the entryway, he detected the party. His life was quickly forfeited, but his warning allowed the rest of the monsters to respond to the threat.
As the encounter began, a goblin underboss, hobgoblin commander, hobgoblin warcaster, and hobgoblin soldier advanced on the party. Once they reached the party, things started going downhill quickly. While the party was able to quickly dispatch the warcaster and soldier, the damage inflicted by them, the underboss and commander quickly began to wear on the party. Add to that, 4 archers began to rain arrows on the party from the 4 openings in the ceiling.
As the party continued to get pounded from afar, Ekeraath called for a retreat. Rudy and Alexander, while not pleased began an orderly withdrawal. Unfortunately, things got complicated as Mara missed an opportunity to retreat, took a couple arrows, and ended up falling unconscious. At this point, the party was out of, or almost out of healing, so things were looking bleak.
With a lucky roll and the use of a potion of healing, Mara was able to retreat along with the party. The underboss and commander continued to press the party, but the archers did not follow. As the retreat continued, Rudy hid behind a statue to cover them and if necessary take on the archers himself.
Eventually, the party was able to overcome the underboss and commander, however, they would have to rest before finding out what happened to the archers.
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4 comments:
I've included Adam's excellent comments and the reponses for the sake of posterity.
Adam wrote:
Since we got hurt pretty bad this week, I've been trying to figure out
why that is. If you're not interested in a analysis of our combat,
feel free to ignore this or, if you like, tell me to STFU. There will
also be a summary at the bottom.
Part of the reason we got hurt so bad was that we were rolling bad
while Josh was rolling decent. We can't really control that. Josh
also played his monsters very effectively as a group. That's not
something we can really control either, nor would I want to. I like
the challenge of having to use counter-tactics.
What we can control what creature we choose to attack and how we
choose to attack them. On our first encounter, we had the 2 bugbears
on the steps, 2 archers and the hexer. We engaged the archers at
range to start while our melee attackers met with the bugbears in
midfield. So far so good. But, when the hexer came into play, he
hurt us quite a bit with his cloud of -2 to hit and adding status
effect to Ekerrath that make him unavailable for flanking. Once that
happened, Rudy lost his combat advantage and we kept on taking damage
round after round. Once we did finally target the hexxer, he went
down like a ton of bricks. Takeaways from this fight; get into melee
quickly, don't rely on the fighter for flanking and take out
controllers first.
The second fight we started out real well, but we didn't do such a
good job of keeping those good tactics until the end. Waiting on the
stairs for that one goblin to separate from the other 4 at the altar
was excellent. Then we took out 2 of the remaining 4 fairly well.
But when it came to number 3 and number 5 we split our attacks on them
and they took forever to go down. We knew that #5 was going to take a
lot of work to kill, so we should have left him until last. Remember,
dead creatures do no damage. In hindsight, we should have either
engaged the archers or retreated from them immediately. I know at the
time I was thinking that the melee creatures were about to go down, so
I wasn't concerned about it. 4 rounds and 16 arrows later...
Takeaways from this fight; focus fire brings creatures down faster,
reevaluate the current situation frequently.
The third battle I think we did fairly well on, the field didn't play
to our strengths very well, but I think we adapted our tactics
decently. We took out the shock troopers as quickly as possible, then
engaged the archers in melee combat so that they couldn't use their
best tactics against us. Takeaways from this fight; if you can't make
combat play to your strengths, make sure the enemy can't play to
theirs and it's OK not to take the most efficient course of action to
try to do something really cool. (Now if only we can get Josh to roll
a 9!)
We also need to remember to use our entire turn, and our entier bag of
tricks. Mara was KO'd because she was so focused on covering our
retreat that she forgot to retreat herself. Ekeraath forgot to use
his dragonbreath as a minor action in 2 of 3 fights. He also never
used his power attack ability.
SUMMARY: This group is a melee oriented group with ranged support.
With Rudy being able to deal 15-20 points of damage fairly reliably,
we need to get him into a good position. Part of that means putting
him in flanking with someone other than a the fighter. Since the
fighter takes the most hits, he will get the most status effects, and
therefore not be available for flanking.
We also need to choose our targets more wisely. We need to take out
controllers and healers (even though we haven't come across any of
them yet) before we take out martial creatures. They are just too
disruptive to our tactics to let them run free. This should be the
job of our ranged group (Kuppies Dragonslayer, Mara and if range
permits, Leenia). Then we need to take out easier creatures to kill
over harder. We also need to have everyone attacking the same target.
Abilities that hit multiple targets are good, but we need to focus
damage on 1 target at a time (in most cases).
We also need to keep awareness of our surroundings and use them to our
advantage as much as possible. Mara had a good idea of trying to
topple the statue on the hexer during that first fight, but
unfortunately it moved before she could try it. Leenia was also
searching the battlefield for anything we could use to our advantage
using her advanced knowledge of nature. The battlefield was pretty
barren, but it is this kind of thinking that will save us from all
getting killed one day.
So as I see it, when we go into battle, we need to keep these
objectives in mind.
1) Get into melee as soon as reasonably possible.
2) Get Rudy and Alexander into flanking while Ekerrath marks the target.
3) If flank flunks, get combat advantage to Rudy by any means available.
4) Leenia stands a few squares behind the melee group so she is in
range for Lance of Faith, Cause Fear, Command and healing.
5) Kuppies and Mara snipe controllers and leaders, disrupt enemy
tactics, then focus on the same target as the melee group.
6) Focus your primary attacks on your groups target.
7) Use your whole turn when you need to and know all your abilities.
7) Keep battlefield awareness and be prepared to change tactics.
If anyone is still awake after reading this...any thoughts or comments?
Josh responded:
Wow, that was a long read. Something like this should go in a blog.....wait a minute! I have a crazy idea. Maybe, just maybe, I could create a blog to chronicle your adventures. That's just crazy enough to work. Anyway...back to researching monsters and making their tactics/abilities complementary.
Kudos to Mara and Leenia for thinking outside the box regarding using the environment. I wish I could have had more to say regarding Leenia looking to use the lay of the land. Hopefully going forward I will be able to reward that better. And because I'm a really cool DM, I would have let Mara shoot the statue on top of the hexer. Based on the old D&D cartoon, I have now likened Mara's bow to the one in the cartoon, so I can so see blasting the statue and having it potentially fall on the hexer.
Joel responded:
Speaking from strategic view (and not a lawful cleric)
I wonder if we need to fight all the fights we do - is every battle we had to eliminate the guards and therefore move forward? If so, then fate is fate and we need to push on. I kind of like the fact we intimidated some bugbears and sent them on their way - that just left us stronger for our next encounter. Under 1st edition rules, we should be awarded experience points for that - would that be the case in 4th E?
I wonder for the near disaster combat if we should have retreated sooner - or would it not have mattered since we had little cover outside the temple. Maybe we need to discuss escape routes before battles.
Joel had one more comment:
Another question I pondered several times on Wednesday - when do we want to go all out with our daily's? It is wise to coordinate those with each other?
Josh is doing what he can to speed up combat, and we will need to know each other's fighting abilities so we can make quick decisions without debating or discussing with each other (to any great extent). I would be interested in hearing other people's views - obviously combat is more challenging without having the dailys. Should we be educating each other on what our daily powers are?
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