Post by Tesla Ranger on Jun 25, 2015 15:33:01 GMT
This happened during our session last night and was just too cool for school. Last week the party had taken out a bandit fort in the most metal way possible. Picking up where that left off, this week the bandit leader came after them. I've already written about the encounter in some detail so I'll just link to that below. The boss, Hawkeye Harrigan (Human Bandit Captain with 2 levels of Ranger), was a CR4 encounter against a level 3 party. The party hadn't been able to complete a long rest yet so they were still injured from taking out the fort. He was meant to be a tough fight but he wasn't strictly a necessary one. It might have been possible to avoid him entirely but the rolls didn't work out that way.
The Characters & Setting
The Session Write-up
The Blow-by-Blow Encounter from the Boss's perspective
Originally I'd figured that Harrigan would use his longbow and shoot at them from a distance. He'd have disadvantage given the night-time conditions but I was giving him some leeway on account of the nickname and background. On his second shot though, he rolled a 1 and his bowstring snapped. He closed into melee and eventually rolled a second fumble. For that his dagger got deeply lodged in the Paladin's wooden shield and torn from his grip. Shortly there afterward, he dropped the rogue to 0 hp. The paladin quickly drank what she thought was a Potion of Healing but what was actually a Potion of Poison. She only had 3 hp left and the poison's supposed to do 3d6 damage every round for 4 rounds. In this case, I figured going unconscious was probably bad enough. Right after that Harrigan got a critical on our Ranger and he went down. The only one left was the High Elf wizard who'd been hiding in illusions and attacking with his familiar the entire time. At that particular moment, he was hiding inside the illusion of a bush and had rolled an 8 for his Deception roll. I figured the bush was probably out of season and out of place but then Harrigan rolled another 1 for his WIS save. He never figured out there was a 4th adventurer there! He just took his dagger and went home!
The wizard was able to get the paladin back to 1 hp and between the both of them they got the other two back up. Harrigan was still at about 50% of his health but he thinks they're all dead. I'm going to have to find a way to work him in somewhere down the line though. This can't be the last we see of Hawkeye Harrigan and the Blacktail Bandits.
The Characters & Setting
The Session Write-up
The Blow-by-Blow Encounter from the Boss's perspective
Originally I'd figured that Harrigan would use his longbow and shoot at them from a distance. He'd have disadvantage given the night-time conditions but I was giving him some leeway on account of the nickname and background. On his second shot though, he rolled a 1 and his bowstring snapped. He closed into melee and eventually rolled a second fumble. For that his dagger got deeply lodged in the Paladin's wooden shield and torn from his grip. Shortly there afterward, he dropped the rogue to 0 hp. The paladin quickly drank what she thought was a Potion of Healing but what was actually a Potion of Poison. She only had 3 hp left and the poison's supposed to do 3d6 damage every round for 4 rounds. In this case, I figured going unconscious was probably bad enough. Right after that Harrigan got a critical on our Ranger and he went down. The only one left was the High Elf wizard who'd been hiding in illusions and attacking with his familiar the entire time. At that particular moment, he was hiding inside the illusion of a bush and had rolled an 8 for his Deception roll. I figured the bush was probably out of season and out of place but then Harrigan rolled another 1 for his WIS save. He never figured out there was a 4th adventurer there! He just took his dagger and went home!
The wizard was able to get the paladin back to 1 hp and between the both of them they got the other two back up. Harrigan was still at about 50% of his health but he thinks they're all dead. I'm going to have to find a way to work him in somewhere down the line though. This can't be the last we see of Hawkeye Harrigan and the Blacktail Bandits.