The Tarak D&D Campaign - A Choice Is Made

Welcome to the next post in a series where I describe the adventures during a 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign I ran a little while ago.

In the last post, our heroes found themselves back at Tuadun again, and at a slightly loose end after dealing with the hags, the dragon, and the brigands in the woods. But never fear, I had a solution to hand ! On their way to the tavern, they found the captain of the local constabulary putting up a noticeboard, with a selection of posters offering adventuring a variety of opportunities.

Making A Choice

In the tavern, the party discussed the merits of the opportunities the posters held.

They immediately rejected the mission to follow the River Souconna to the sea and report back on what they found; although the reward was huge, it would be time-consuming and complex. I must admit I was a little disappointed because that was the idea which I felt had the most promise, buy hey, it was their decision to make !

Also rejected was taking the mage Mr Dabra to his retirement home. They felt that they'd done too many travel-type missions recently, which was fair enough.
That left the Menagerie of Carbadoc Magus, or the Hobgoblins, both of which were relatively quick missions with a decent reward. They bounced them around for a while, and then decided that tangling with a mage of unknown power sounded quite risky, so they'd start with the hobgoblins.

Hobgoblins !

The party headed off towards the woods again, although this time further south than their previous expeditions.

Finding the hobgoblins was relatively easy, and they worked out rapidly how to do it. It was a simple case of finding a burned out homestead that had recently been raided, and following the footprints.

When found, they appeared to be tunnelling into a mound hidden among the trees, with a clearing in front.

Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio

Now the thing with D&D hobgoblins that makes them so much fun for the DM is that they are organised. For low Challenge Rating creatures, they can be surprisingly effective. They're not just dumb monsters, their lore allows them to work like a military unit. Their abilities reflect this, particularly Martial Advantage. The actual rules is;

Martial Advantage. Once per turn, the hobgoblin can deal an extra 2d6 damage to a creature it hits with a weapon attack if that creature is within 5 feet of an ally of the hobgoblin that isn't incapacitated.

I used hobgoblin stats that were straight out of the Monster Manual, with one key exception. Some were armed with glaives, and I gave those ones the Polearm Mastery feat. This does a couple of things, but the relevant one for this encounter is that it gives them an attack of opportunity when someone moves to within their 10' reach.

The hobgoblins had a picket line of 6 goblin sentries out. Their job was to fight for a round or two while one of their number warned the hobgoblins of an incoming threats. This worked a treat, and when the surviving goblins disengaged after a couple of rounds, most of the hobgoblins had had time to form up.

The formation consisted of three ranks. The first rank was made up of hobgoblins alternating between glaives and swords, the second was alternating glaives and longbows with a captain at the centre, and the third (smaller) rank were all glaive armed.

This image should give you the idea: G=glaive-armed, S=sword and shield, L=Longbow, C=Captain.

This formation had the potential to be very effective with the combination of reach, opportunity attacks and mutual martial advantage.

Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio

A Bloody Battle

Having swatted the screening goblins aside, our party of heroes headed for the main hobgoblin formation. This was the point where Morson the Paladin decided it was time to be extra heroic.

He charged ahead on his warhorse, thinking he would burst through the hobgoblins and take the captain on in single combat, confident that his plate armour would protect him from the arrows as he stormed in.

The hobgoblins had other ideas. As Morson got to within 20 feet of the formation, one of the surviving goblins dived out of cover and moved adjacent to the charging knight. This gave martial advantage to the longbow-armed hobgoblins (because the rules say "weapon attack", not "melee weapon attack"). Then demonstrating the spirit of Crecy and Poitiers, they didn't bother shooting at the impervious tin can bearing down on them. Instead, they shot his less well armoured horse out from under him.

Morson tumbled to the ground in an undignified heap as the hobgoblin formation advanced on him with a disciplined march step. The following round, with the rest of the party still some way behind, he found himself in combat with four glaive-armed hobgoblins who were slashing at him from out of his reach. When he stepped forward to engage one, they all got an attack of opportunity. By the end of the round, he was looking very, very weak and bloody.

The rest of the party could see what was going on, but didn't have a lot in the way of area effect attacks. Nairo the Aasimar sniped with spells from cover at the far end of the battlefield while Barrow and Scarlet dashed forward to help Morson. Roland started working down the treeline on the right, stopping for a couple of rounds to deal with a pair of goblins he found hiding there.

The fight in the centre was incredibly difficult for the party. Scarlet and Barrow found it hard to make headway against the polearms, and within a couple of rounds Morson was down and having to make death saves. I was starting to wonder if I had inadvertently designed a TPK scenario !

That was when Roland saved the day. The rest of the players had been upset with him that he was mopping up goblins on the flank rather than helping in the big punch-up in the middle. But he'd actually been quietly getting into position. At that point, he pulled out a magic item he'd picked up a while previously, stuck in his backpack and waited for everyone to forget about. Yep, that included me as the DM !

The magic item in question was.... a Wand of Lightning Bolt. From a perfect enfilade position, Roland fired. With a single shot, he gutted the hobgoblin formation, destroying almost the whole of the second rank. Only the captain survived, and he was grievously wounded.

As the hobgoblins wavered, Roland's second lightning bolt blasted the third rank. The survivors broke and ran. The party did not pursue. They were low on resources and far too badly hurt themselves, being busy for a while dressing wounds and reviving the unconscious Morson.

With no further sign of the hobgoblins, the party found a small clearing in the woods that they could make relatively secure so they could take a badly needed long rest.

Next time... into the mound...