Key Our Cars

Had another playtest in our ongoing series of events. Temple crafted a human cleric and a half elf rogue, next time we’ll do a ranger and a wizard. And then we’ll have covered the basic classes. Anyway we start off with our crew, such that it is, in their new (to them) tower home. The, warlord, paladin, warlock and fighter have gone off to town to arrange for a construction crew to come out and get the serious repairs started. The six of them have though started the rebuilding and have had some supplies delivered out. To protect their supplies they’ve constructed a rough outbuilding, really not much from than several posts sunk into the ground and crude planks nailed to the sides and top to keep the worst of the weather off their materials. Inside they have better crafted wood, spikes, rope, tools and the like that will go into the rebuilding process. Around that they’ve thrown up a palisade of cut down saplings and trees to form a wall.

Where do they get the money for this you ask? *DM hand wave* Even as a keying your car on the way out kinda DM I’ll hand wave some things just because I can use them.

Right now as it stands the party is seriously pissing off a local goblin tribe and that my friends is what you call plot thread material. And plot thread material is worth a few hundred gold in materials and labor to spruce up an old watchtower to give the players a base of operations. Plus it gives them some place to store their stuff while they’re out adventuring and then I can take that stuff through burglary or theft.

Okay anyway, the rogue and the cleric are inside the tower and they *sniff sniff* smell smoke. Well that’s unusual. The rogue swiftly climbs up to the top of the tower, still no upper floor and the balcony is fairly dangerous. but he makes it to the top without a problem. From up there he shouts down to the cleric that the wall around the storage shed is on fire in a couple of places and as he watches a torch comes flying over it to land on top to spit and smolder. Luckily because they’re using green wood for the most part for the shed it’s very difficult to set alight.

The rogue spots a goblin in the underbrush gathering more wood for the fire and lets fire with a bolt from his hand crossbow and drops the goblin gurgling to the ground, blood pulsing from a punctured artery. He ducks involuntarily as with a *whiiif crack* a projectile cuts through the air next to his head. Peeking over the top of the low battlement he scans the woods but sees nothing.

Our goblins consist of 2 Minions, 2 Mooks and one Goblin Sharpshooter. The Mooks are simply Minions but with a damage threshold. If you don’t do at least 5 points of damage to them they’re still up and running. Next time I’ll ease that up to 7 or even 8 points I think as with the basic +’s that even 1st level characters get thats close to their minimums. The rogue hits for a minimum of 5 points at range and cleric’s with their Lance of Flame and assuming a 18 in a stat also do a minimum of 5 points. So I think we’ll assume a base of 4 plus half the average die, in this case a d7 or 4 points of damage so a threshold of 8 points for Mook should work out a little better. As it was at 5 points they might as well have been Minions, one point kills.

The cleric heads outside and then climbs down the side of the upper steps to drop off on the side of the

shed. With shrill cries of war, two of the lesser goblins charged the cleric and she drops one with a Lance of Flame. Then another one goes down on the next round when it’s her turn without her taking any damage.

Not so much with our intrepid rogue up above. Our Sharpshooter nails him with a max damage bolt after another miss. The goblin’s stealth and the environment it was in, (medium woods and underbrush) made it very hard to spot but the rogue does see him though eventually and fires. Rolled a 1. D’oh. The goblin doesn’t even notice the shot. He shoots back and *Thwack!* another max damage hit. The rogue has already used his first Second Wind to recover some damage after the first hit. So now he’s down 14 points out of 24. He fires back and creases the goblin but the goblin’s vengeance is swift and it lands a bolt deep in the heroic rogue’s chest and the rogue falls backwards at 0 hit points.

Meanwhile our cleric is advancing to the shed and gets inside the walls when she hears running footsteps and turns to use a readied action to Flame the last Mook.

She goes into the shed and grabs a ladder and uses that to climb up and her quarterstaff to knock the burning torch off the shed. She drops down and realizes that she hasn’t heard anything from the rogue above. She moves back to the edge of the tower as she senses something is wrong after calling up and hearing nothing she uses Healing Word to generate an aura of healing around herself which catches the rogue in its effect and he’s able to recover from his death rolls and use a Healing Surge.

The rogue, shaken, climbs down or tries to, slips and falls and takes 2d10 damage knocking himself to negative 10. The cleric hearing the thud runs back inside and uses her second Healing Word to let him recover, again.

They wait in silence a bit, the battered and blood(ied) rogue and the pristine cleric but the sounds of the woods around them slowly recover as the animals and bugs began going about their business.

I’d decided the Sharpshooter at this point would simply Stealth away to render the latest bad news to the goblin chieften and thus ended the encounter. Next time we’ll playtest with two of the current 6 characters and bring in some travlers, a ranger and a wizard who’ve stopped by the tower out of curiosity as the goblins retaliate at this affront to their territorial rights, at least as they see their territorial rights.

The Sharpshooter with it’s high stealth and not coming unstealthed after a miss is a pretty tough little beast in the right setting and this was certainly a setting it was able to shine in. This also indicated the necessary increase in hitpoints for the mooks to help distinguish them from Minions.

Image Credits – Cleric
Image Credits – Goblin
Image Credits – Rogue