Stuck in the middle with... you?

ACKs session 5, and a big fight. Judges perspective:

At the end of last session the party were caught, potentially, between a rock and a hard place. They’d realised they were potentially overstretched and backed up to a ‘safer spot’, but it put them right next to the door from which they were pursued by bandits in Session 3.

If the bandits had come out, the party could have found themselves caught between two groups of foes and in deep trouble. As it was, the bandits did not appear, and the reasons why became obvious later.

However that still left a lot of very angry kobolds to deal with. Having seen their fallen kin I made a few rolls. A max-morale roll for the Chief, and a very low smarts roll led to a screaming horde of angry little beasts charging at the party down the corridor (who by this time had retreated further, to the entrance room).

It could all have gone so horribly wrong. The party were outnumbered (by at least 2 to 1 as far as they could see) but the kobolds were unfortunately more stupid than they really ought to have been and they paid a heavy price. I shan’t go into the details, but by the end of 8 rounds of combat the chief lay dead surrounded by his kin and the survivors had wised up and slunk back into the shadows – sending sling stones at the party which succeeded in doing much more (both physically and psychologically) than the melee managed to do.

The end of the session saw the party retreat from the dungeon and slingstones and trek back to the nearby village, with everyone bloodied bar the sole torchbearer (a 10yr old alcoholic called Landersluth) and one of their 3 convict soldiers. 3 of the party had rolled on the mortal wounds table to boot (and gotten very good rolls...).

As they crested the hill to the village they saw smoke rising, and at least one of them realised where the bandits had gone.

It was a pleasing session in many respects. The party got to have a good old throw down and proved themselves a bit tasty in a fight. They were definitely lucky, and I didn’t play the kobolds too smart to begin with. Cleave is devastating but HP are low. Still, there are a few areas for improvement. I need to read and learn the combat rules for one thing – though Yanniks player had obviously done so and was a marvelous Beta ref for me during the fight. Onwards and upwards!