Need DM'ing help: 10th level party VS 1st level monsters - Encounters needed!

[PSusac]

OK, here’s the scenario.

My party of adventurers has defeated the command structure of a hoard of goblins, hobgoblins and orcs. In so doing they freed a bronze dragon who helped clear the area of goblinoids, but MANY got away.

They took over the army’s base of operations and about 3 months later a town started springing up around their location. Recently one of the townspeople was murdered.

The party tracked the murderer to an abandoned(?) Yuan-Ti temple, and they have managed to blow through the remaining elite (5-6th level) warriors of the surviving army. The party killed a about 30 elite fighters (in waves) in the actual shrine of the Yuan-ti god. All this bloodletting, was followed by the a party member’s decision to murder of a prisoner (an elite warrior). This caused the temple to summon forth the daemon-prince God of the Yuan-ti, who promptly geased the party into restoring the Yuan-Ti to the temple.

The temple itself is abandoned, but it will have a hole in the floor of one trap room that will dump the party into the underdark. There is a surviving tribe of Yuan-Ti, down there, perhaps in the thrall of a larger civilization of drow. So the party now has to fight its way through the orcs/goblins, go into the underdark and liberate the Yuan-ti from the Drow and somehow not kill the Yuan-ti while doing it.

What I need from you guys are some ideas for challenging encounters against 10th level characters that can realistically be initiated by 1st level mooks. So far I’ve dropped a landslide on the party, and I plan to have them grease up a ramp that leads to a hole in the floor, so that at least our tank is likely to fall down to the cave complex beneath the temple (this is where the Yuan-ti live).

At this point all that are left are:
1 x 12th level warlord
3 x 7th level lieutenants
6 x 4th-5th level adept/sorcerer/witch/cleric types.
20 2nd level Worg riders
About 100 1-2nd level warrior grunts (mixed hobgoblin and orc).

The bad guys have had time to find/repair any traps in the temple complex, and there may be oozes and slimes that they can use as well. Also, there may be other magical sections of the temple complex that have remaining spell effects and whatnot. So there are a lot of raw materials that the bad guys can put to use in defending their lair.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

[Claxon]

In all honesty, you would probably need to send all 100 1st/2nd level enemies, all 200 2nd level worg riders, and the 6 5th level characters to challenge your party. At the same time. Otherwise the party isn't going to take any significant damage or have any challenge. A 10th level character can probably kill 3 1st enemies a round. Each person in your party can do this. Gods help you if your wizard/sorcerer start using AoE.

It just very difficult to challenge a party with enemies so far below their level. The enemy needs natural 20 to hit and even when they do the damage is nearly irrelevant.

[David_Bross]

Well, 100 1st level witches with good int, accursed hex, and a decent strength score, and scythes could probably take out the party, but in terms of a reasonable encounter, I can't really come up with one that uses massive numbers of kooks.

[Adam W. Roy]

I think the idea of using cunning traps, especially ones involving deadly oozes and slimes, ones the party might have difficulty saving against, is a good idea. Have the mooks laugh and run away each time the party falls for another trap, leading them deeper and deeper into the Underdark, until the exhausted and spent PCs run full tilt into a CR12-14 Drow war party ambush...

[Rerednaw]

Assist. Each trooper only needs to hit AC 10, granting their ally a +2.
Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE is using all sorts of nasty poisons on their arrows/bolts/weapons, so when they DO hit, there's a secondary effect.

Attack alterate defenses. Use acid, alchemists' fire, liquid ice to attack touch AC. Use tanglefoot bags, even if the PC makes the save, they are still entangles which is a pretty hefty penalty.
Again using the assist action, some of the mobs then grapple some PCs.
If any PCs get grappled, send in the Word riders using Spirited Charge against the grappled target(assuming they have it).

Items/spells: Smokesticks, obscuring mist. Any ranged character (including spellcasters) cannot make a ranged attack if they cannot see the target. Freely use Silent Image to cover the spiked/poisoned pit traps on the floor.

Rig lots of deadfalls or collapsing ceilings tied to ropes or lines that any of the NPCs can trigger as a free action. You know because rocks fall and you die.

Or maybe some of the NPC casters converted the fallen into undead.
Say a couple dozen frost or flaming skeletons whose sole task is to run up and be adjacent to a PC. A surrounded PC then takes 9d6 fire or frost from the skeleton's fire/frost aura, more if he attacks with natural weapons and even more each time he kills one and they explode on death.

And still, it's your game, there's nothing that says the warlord having half a brain, hasn't hired some more defenders or say...made a *deal* with some unsavory elements (devils, aberrations, etc...) to help 'defend' his territory. Or perhaps the reason the Yuan-Ti abandoned the place was something more powerful came in and kicked them out...the only limits are your imagination.

[Kolokotroni]

What is the party composition? What are their usual tactics. Obviously a straight up brawl will not work. But ambushes/traps along with the suggestion of alchemical weapons (touch AC is always doable) could work very well. The other thing is to intersperse some of the more powerful enemies among the mooks.

2 4-6th level alchemists for instance, with a battalion of mooks with a bunch of alchemist fires and acid flasks can do some real damage regardless of party level.

It could be especially useful if they are doing this through murder holes in a cavern full of impeding traps.

[marcryser]

terrain...
Access from one level to another is up/down a ladder through a small hole in the floor/ceiling. First melee guy through takes 4 prepared actions from orcs with longspears against flat-footed AC. Surviving Orc(s) run down a hall where someone else drops a portcullis behind him and crossbowmen engage from murder holes cut into the wall and an alchemist drops a slime/mold/fungus through a spot in the ceiling.

Repeat as needed until the party eventually wipes them out. They shouldn't ever have a stand-up fight with a party that has them out-classed in every way. Hit and Run, sniper, traps, and attacking at night is the thing to do. Use a small group of enemy to lure them into a trap/kill zone or think like a pack of hyena going after a lion. Whichever way the lion turns, a hyena nips at his testicles.

[Rory]

I once ran a very similar type of fray when a group of high level PCs challenged a huge cavern of kobolds. It was on the order of 500 kobolds. I used rolls of pennies to represent all those "extra evil kobolds" on a HUGE map.

The kobolds were one hit kills, so keeping track of hitpoints wasn't an issue.

For a smidge of guaranteed damage, I had a few kobold "sorcerer" types that plinked with magic missile type spells. When you spread them out and put them behind walls of other kobolds, they could be tricky to get to and stop the damage.

I also put a few leader types that could actually take a hit, but not very much. They weren't threatening to the fighter types at all. If they could get close to low AC PCs, they added some threat.

Grapple was kind of sort of fun. Although, it can get old after a while.

Use squadron-lite rules and have a group of 20 all toss sling stones. Auto rule that they each rolled a different number to hit (1 thru 20) and figure out the damage based on the PCs AC.

And in the end, after the massacre, I had a kobold lesser deity appear to give a tougher challenge to the PCs.

The kobold defeat signaled the end of a menance on the land and ushered in a new era of the PCs acting as lords and leaders for the land instead.

The adventure turned out pretty fun as it turned light-hearted (they raced to collect the most pennies) and let the PCs shine really bright. I hand waived many PC tactics employed to do area effect damage by various means, wiping out clusters via good description rather than rolls.

Of course, this adventure was ran in the days when fighters/rangers got 1 attack per level against less than 1 HD foes too. Making only 2 to 3 attacks per round by that mega damage great sword fighter would drag things out a lot more.

[Lincoln Hills]

One way the 1st-level monsters can get their revenge is to sell everything they know about the PCs to neighboring, more powerful enemies. "Plus they took all our old boss's treasure, so, you know... they're rich."

[Hawktitan]

100 sorcerers with magic missle or 100 idiots with alchemist fire could probably kill a couple people by themselves if not the whole party.

If you are going for something more realistic - nets, caltrops.

Having a couple of sorcerers (no more than 3) readying magic missiles to force concentration checks.

Sprinkle alchemist fire and a few tanglefoot bags amongst your troops. Prehaps remove a some warriors for a couple level 1 Clerics for Bless and level 1 Bards for Inspire Courage.

[Farrindor]

Www.tuckerskobolds.com

That is all.

:-)

[Spastic Puma]

When I ran my 17th level hero campaign I had them fight low level goblins en masse. The goblins always went down with one hit (except on made saves) and they had no attack. Instead, whenever they flanked one of the heroes they automatically did 5 damage with their attack. This was great because it cut down on the amount of rolling and made for a memorable encounter with over a hundred foes!

[Lincoln Hills]

Farrindor wrote:

Www.tuckerskobolds.com

I've actually had a whole 4th-level party agree, "I'm not going back in that kobold lair again! Let's go fight the bugbears instead."

I was so proud...

[PSusac]

Very nice! Thanks, keep them comming!

[Mudfoot]

1) The PCs have to sleep. Attack them then. And don't let them retreat to a safe bed (block teleport in certain areas if necessary).

2) The goblins found something uncontrollably dangerous in the temple. Being goblins, they'd release it for fun in the middle of a fight. It might kill 2 dozen mooks, but give the PCs a major problem, which lets the other goblins cause minor problems.

3) Barghests

4) As part of the 'abandonment' of the temple, an ancient (Azlanti?) artifact was placed there to prevent its being restored. It reacts unfavorably to the PCs intervention. Naturally, this affects goblins, YTs and PCs equally, but nobody cares if a mook goblin is hit by 6d6 of lightning.

And they're goblins, so they're supposed to die in stupidly humorous ways.

[strayshift]

Trap to separate party members - say a large fire/wall/pit, then multiple attacks from ALL directions (including above/below), throw in some touch ac attacks and non-lethal that wear down a.c. (ala faerie fire type effects) and ranged weapons too. Have some combat manoeuvres thrown in and also some tougher 'pet' type baddies too. Put the pcs under some time pressure before something really bad happens (e.g. caves flood) and limit their senses/intelligence (e.g. constant drumming echoing through caves).

This could look something like the pcs enter a large circular cave that has a 1 person wide path that goes upwards, many drums echo loudly above (perception to make out communication). The way forward is a circular (trapped) path upwards with cave offshoots. Going up the path (for those who can't fly) means having rocks dropped on you constantly as well as attacks from caves and from front/behind. Flying characters must manoeuvre through smoke and also are subject to large weighted nets being dropped on them as well as missile fire and some flying 'pets' to deal with. Poison is optional but if the pcs don't succeed within a set time period then flooded section of the caves will be opened and the pcs will risk drowning.

That could be accomplished with mainly low level opposition.