So, our party just started Book 5 of Jade Regent last night. After stumbling a bit over the riddle, we were tasked to take out the bandits at Seinaru Heikiko. When we arrived, we did very little investigating. Using Air Walk and some Potions of Vanish, we made it inside the courtyard, where the wooden constructs came to life and attacked us. At this point we began what would become a three hour encounter.
The party at this point is a Paladin, a Ranger, a Bard (Me), a Winter Witch and a Druid, all level 11. Other than using Vanish to get over the walls unseen, we didn't try stealth at all. So once the construct fight ends, everyone in the base starts running into the courtyard to try and kill us.
The Paladin and Ranger, along with the Druids Dire Tiger companion, can take down almost anything that tries to fight them one on one. The Druid and Witch are laying down area spell damage so potent that the average bandits barely get a turn to move into bow range. Meanwhile, I'm staying back providing healing, Haste, +3 song bonus and an extra 1d6 from the Discordant Voice feat. Given the amount of rounds we went, this massacre was over about 3 minutes, if that.
The best part, for us, was that our GM had made maps for every part of the fortress except the courtyard, which he used a generic grid map for instead. Naturally, the generic flip map is the only place that saw combat that night.
Still, it was super fun to play though. Especially since we interrupted the Druid and Were-Tiger mid activity and they had to run out in various states of undress.
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This was a memorable fight for us because we had disguised the necromancer's undead dragon as a cow for the cross-country trip, and we'd forgotten it was still a cow when we hit the courtyard. The GM had *not* forgotten and the archers totally freaked out when attacked by a flying killer cow.
Disguising our Large buddies as other things has been a recurrent theme, actually: the ranger's beloved giant wolf gets to play kami, dragons, horses, etc. quite often. Currently she's passing as the daughter of the great white dragon, with the rest of us pretending to be her sycophants--got us well into an enemy fortress before we ran into someone with Truesight.
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We had a similar situation in our party where we waltzed into the courtyard and took on the entire fort at once. It looked a lot like this.
It was awesome. Greater trip + combat reflexes on monk ^^
I remember my players steamrolling those bandits and having a great time doing so. Once in a while, it's good for high-level PCs to kick some butt, so I did not beef up the encounter.
Sounds like fun!
... Although I did a double take when - shortly after mentioning that there was a Druid with a Dire Tiger in the party - you recounted how a Druid and a Were-Tiger were interrupted "mid-activity". A more careful reading then revealed the truth. :)