Keep on the Borderlands - The Path of Evil - Session 5c

Day 3 – Cragmaw Caves

Lucien offers his choice, "I say leave them be. They are chained and no longer a threat.”

“We can toss them a bit of food, keep them occupied and perhaps make these horrid creatures even more friendly later, but any other option that does not kill them outright will set the offensive beasts to barking again, whether a spell, channel, peppering them with bolts and arrows or going in to kill them up close and personal.”

Talmark says, "Ambush! Oh yes, a well-set ambush is generally the best tactic, especially against a numerically superior force. However, I do not think we have the best spot here. There are 2 entrances to this chamber, and though we are basically at the entrance we could still be cut-off. There may be other exits as well, allowing the little blighters to get behind us. Perhaps we could take the dogs outside and chain them there? We would have them for later as well as keeping them out of our hair. As we press on, light and battle will alert the goblins anyways, and we are not currently stealthy..."

Lucien mulls it over more, "Alternatively, we could set up an ambush and bait some of the goblins here by provoking the dogs into barking more and take out more goblins on our own terms instead of reacting to their lair as we encounter them..."

“Let’s do that” agrees Kord. “Let’s get the dogs barking and draw out the goblins.”

“How should we do that?” asks Talmark.

Kord looks at him, “Leave that to me my friend. The power of Asmodeus will give me the power.”

The party backs up and forms an ambush around the cave entrance. Per, Fremont, Clovis stack on one side and Lucien, Talmark, Stein and Barret stack on the other.

Kord waves his hand and tells them to get back further. The power of Asmodeus can reach out quite a ways. They back up respectively, not really knowing what the evil cleric is going to do.

Kord enters the cave by himself. As he approaches the dogs one of them looks up for a moment and then bored puts its head back down.

Kord draws upon Asmodeus and Channels Negative Energy. He rolls 6pts of damage to each dog. They all will get a DC15 Will save for half and they have a Will save modifier of +1 and so need to roll a 14 or better. They roll 14, 13 and 13 and take 3pts, 6pts and 6pts respectively.

The dogs go wild and start baying for blood. They start jumping at Kord, straining their chains, which appear to be getting looser.

Kord runs from the cave and calls up the others into the ambush position.

Then the dogs break free. Howling they charge out of the cave….only to be ambushed by the party.

SURPRISE ROUND

·        Talmark swings at the second dog, hoping that if he kills it he’ll cleave at the first. He raises Felldrac and brings it down but misses the smelly mut.

·        Fremont also decides to stab at the second dog figuring that the rest of the party can handle the one to the front but he similarly misses.

·        Barret lunges with his spear at the first dog and also misses.

·        Clovis steps to the north east 5ft and stabs at the first hound and hits it square in the chest for 8pts of damage. The spear enters the chest cavity of the dog and mortally wounds it.

·        With bravado, Stein steps up and over the dead dog and attacks the beast in the second rank but he too misses.

·        Kord, Per and Lucien wait as they don’t have a good opportunity to attack.

ROUND 1A

Party Initiative: Roll 3 + 0 = 0

Monsters Initiative: Roll 17 + 2 = 19.

·        The Goblin dogs have taken their first casualty and must take a morale check.

·        They have a morale of 7 and roll 10 and fail. As they turn to run the party members in contact get an attack of opportunity.  

·        Talmark swings first and this time he hits the monster. The big blade bites deep slashing into the flank of the dog causing a catastrophic wound and dealing 18pts of damage.

·        With no one within striking range the dog to the rear runs off, howling for its masters……….

[I’m thinking in the next session of trying a bit of an experiment. Assuming that the party goes into the caves I’m going to try to simulate a light source effect. Now traditionally I haven’t worried about light sources because they can be very difficult to simulate from a graphics pov.

So what I’m thinking of doing is assuming that the two clerics cast Light upon either themselves or another party member and then instead of providing a 20ft radius normal light and another 20ft of dim light just use a 20ft radius normal light. This will be much easier to simulate using photoshop and powerpoint which are the two major graphics programs that I use. Anyway we’ll see how that works. If it doesn’t then we’ll drop that idea in the future.

If the characters don’t go into the caves that’s cool too but you can see where this is potentially going in the future.]  

 

DEW