The party rushed into area A, discovered the pit trap and retreated.
It certainly helps me keep everything straight.
Our heroes are completely under siege. The combined orc tribes have been hitting them non-stop since they took the B caves from them.
Let's look at it from the orcish side. They have 27 male orcish warriors plus the two leaders. Some of the women have taken up arms to defend their home. I figured about half of them are available, which gives the orcs a total of 40 warriors and two leaders.
Unfortunately, weight of numbers is not helping them "win", it's helping them not lose.
Initially, they caught the party in a pincer move by attacking both entrances. The secret door is no longer a secret. The two times this was attempted, the party was caught in room 16 and were able to foil attack with tricks and traps near the secret door.
From that point forward, the party left a deadfall trap in room 13, which made the orcs abandon it. The party used this area to launch a surprise attack on room 12. The orcs managed to dislodge them by attacking the mouth of the C cave. As a result, room 13 is now a no man's land, heavily trapped with oil, pits and spikes.
The orcs have also tried to lure the dogs out to kill them but failed.
There have been a total of 10 attacks on the cave's mouth all of which have failed. The orcs have lost 12 warriors in all of the combined attacks. They keep losing with bad morale rolls more than actual deaths. The party is shooting them in the back, from hidden positions. They are saving those +1 arrows for the orcish leaders. Thankfully they are out of magic arrows.
The goblins and kobolds are proven themselves to be useless to either side. The goblins utterly fail to be be helpful to the party, only attacking when the orcs rout. The kobolds are equally opportunistic, attacking the goblins once they walk by.
The party owns the battlefield and can escape almost at anytime. They did make one miscalculation. The cleric whipped out a sling and now the orcs are busying themselves copying it. Missile fire has been the deciding factor in combat. The orc leaders have been bearing the brunt of the these attacks.
As expected, the party has leveled up to third level, with the exception of Aleric who is stuck at first level due to his 3 classes. They have also discovered the importance of healing characters.
This is an unusually campaign as the heroes are bent on using tactics over killing. This one session covered about 13 days. They are frustrating their opponents. However, they are slowly becoming aware of the fact that they may end up fighting 3 successive battles with the orcs, the goblins and maybe even the kobolds, all in one day. They know they can't win that war, so they are thinking of fleeing the Caves of Chaos entirely.
We will see next week.
A most interesting campaign, and group tactics...
ReplyDeleteThe session write-up I've read. Typically these things are bores but this one sounds amazing.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that helps is very little math and the fact that the players are my children. They're here all week long and I hear little tidbits of their expectations. Either I adapt to what they expect, or I "maladapt" their ideas and put a die roll on it. It's not like the orcs and goblins know what they are thinking.
DeleteOne of the first attacks involved "recon". The orcs opened the secret door and made a racket. Then a second party ran through the hallway from the mouth of the cave and exited the secret door. They wanted intelligence, but had the bad luck of not encountering a soul.
To help keep the dicing down to a minimum, I don't do combat between the different tribes and clans unless the players are right in the thick of it.
I like the way the orcs work as a team instead of going down room by room in isolation. It's far more believable and creates more interesting challenges than simply worrying about HP levels and resting.
DeleteIn this particular module, I don't like the scales they used. Each square is 10 feet on the dungeon and keep maps while the wilderness is 100 yards.
DeleteNeither is optimal. The 100 yards is too small for travel while the 10 foot squares are too big for proper lighting.
How do you light up a 90 square foot room, let alone several of them? The players used this to their advantage by lighting candles in small rooms and hiding in darkened areas.
Vis and Ostro hate each other, but slightly less than they hate humans so they are a team.
I love the common-sense-gaming approach to presenting this particular ecology to your children. I'm 48 and B2 (along with L1 and D1/2) was absolutely battered by use when I was about ten. Our DM was an older brother and he harassed us mercilessly with the Hermit. Who goes around biting a sleeping mule, anyway?
ReplyDeleteI bet every gaming table has an account of the Chaos Campaign(s).