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

Day 3 – Cragmaw Caves

"The bridge may be trapped - the arrows could be to bait us into charging... What say we go back, bypass under the bridge quickly, and head up the creek bed direction instead? Perhaps it’ll prove to be a less exposed route?”

“If they redeploy and man up the bridge to ambush, we'll know it is not trapped and can come back again this direction with more confidence" the charismatic priest adds.

The party shuffles back to the goblin den and re-organises. They take the now heavily wounded Barret out of the front rank and replace him with Stein.

They form back up, move down the connecting south eastern tunnel and back into the main north south tunnel and are confronted with three goblins standing on the bridge. Waiting (ie with a ready action) they immediately fire upon the party as the round the corner (the party isn’t considered to be surprised nor flat footed as they were at least somewhat expecting this outcome).

·        The shot at Talmark is wide and the warrior is missed.

·        The shot at Stein bounces off his shield.

·        The shot at Kord thuds into his scale mail armour but cannot penetrate.

Kord wonders to himself “why are there only three of them now?”

The party are faced with the unenviable choice of do they double back and try to assault over the bridge, which is only 5ft wide, or do they try to bypass the goblins by going under the bridge.

They could trade shots with the goblins but the party really doesn’t have that much missile firepower (Lucien has a crossbow and Talmark has a longbow and Kord has some limited ranged magic attack capabilities). They’d probably win the fight but they’d take a lot of damage in the process and for all the party knows the goblins might bring up reinforcements. Over time they would probably just whittle down the party.

They must close to hand to hand. They’ll take too much damage going under the bridge and only Asmodeus knows what’s on the other side. It could just be a dead end or worse, something even more sinister. Then they’d be trapped with the goblins just continuously pelting missile fire at them.  

They decide to double back again and to assault over the bridge.

It’s likely that the goblins will fall back and have a two to one advantage against the person leading the assault. Talmark will lead the assault and Kord will follow immediately behind. Kord will back Talmark with a healing scroll and he’ll also use Fire Bolt to try to weaken the goblins (if he’s further back in the ranks he’ll get more negatives to hit). Stein will follow so that as Talmark forces his way into the goblin ranks he can be supported by the only remaining unwounded man at arms.

The party advances back up to the point at which the goblins will be able to shoot at them again.

ROUND 1A

·        The party automatically get the initiative as the goblins are effectively just waiting for them and cannot do anything until the party acts.

·        Talmark is the first to act. Initially he cannot see the goblins as they’ve backed up again across the other side of the bridge into the dark. He double moves across the bridge but doesn’t quite have the movement rate to get into contact with the goblins. Four goblins have a hold action. They fire four shots at Talmark as soon as he rounds the corner. The first shot critically hits him in the right leg. A large artery is opened up and, blood spurting, Talmark takes 5pts of damage. The remaining shots fly wide and miss the warrior.

 

ROUND 1B

·        The four goblins cannot act as they’ve already used their actions.

·        Klarg, the bugbear starts yelling. Talmark understands goblinoid and yells back to the party that Klarg is calling up more reinforcements.

 

ROUND 2A

·        Kord casts cure light wounds upon Talmark using a scroll and heals back 8pts of damage bringing Talmark back up to full hit points (although he can only be healed 7 up to his max hit points).

·        Talmark drops the torch onto the bridge and gripping Felldrac in two hands he 5ft steps to the east and attacks the first goblin but he misses.

ROUND 2B

·        Two goblins emerge from the darkness of the dry river bed in the west. They fire two arrows at Kord but both miss.

·        The two goblins to the front of Talmark attack the Chelianian warrior but they cannot hit him. The two in the second rank try with their bows but they too both miss as they are impeded by trying to not hit their fellows in the front rank.

ROUND 3A

·        Talmark slashes at the goblin to his front but misses.

·        Kord 5ft steps forward and stretching out his hand casts Fire Bolt at one of the northern goblins firing arrows at him. It’s a ranged touch attack but he misses.

·        Stein 5ft steps onto the bridge.

 

ROUND 3B

·        One of the northern goblins fires an arrow at Kord and hits him in the left shoulder for 1pt of damage.

·        The second goblin fires at Stein and hits him in the stomach for 4pts of damage. As it’s his first time wounded in this combat Stein will need to take a morale check next round (I forgot to do this for Barret but we’ll let that go).

·        The two goblins in the front rank attack Talmark but they both miss. The two goblins in the second rank fire arrows at Talmark but they both miss too.

DEW