Interesting Ambush Tactics, and other Plot-Manipulating Moves


Gamer Life General Discussion

Sczarni

Cartigan wrote:
Of course, it isn't simply homebrew campaigns I break by just deciding not to go along with the ridiculous working of other minds. Our DM for Rise of the Runelords kind of had to make up how an encounter would play out on the fly after we decided to set a crazy ass ambush instead of bursting in and fighting headlong.

In our Serpent's Skull campaign, our party of Level 2 PC's takes on the mid-boss encounter, pretty heavily outgunned. By a stroke of luck, we've all created Stealth capable characters with some very interesting Illusion tricks.(Ranger, Rogue, Wizard, Witch, and Bard)

Long story short, we were able to "pull" the guards, in small groups, onto the jungle path (which they normally control completely) and get the jump on them. This was thanks to some clever positioning and a Silent Image spell. Sleep, Color Spray, and a Lucerne Hammer did what they do best from there. We proceeded to take that camp apart, bit by bit, with successive "come & get me, hit & fade" type assaults, despite being pretty heavily out-gunned and out-numbered.

Another party had a Diviner wizard who completely played up the "Paranoid Mastermind" role. I was DM'ing this campaign, and it was all I could do to stay on top of his antics.

So, what are your nastiest, most successful ambush setups, spell combinations, and off-the-rails producing moments?


Our wizard scryed on a pretty high end bad guy while he was sleeping. He then teleported himself and the rogue into his bedroom and kidnapped him by tying him up and putting him into a portable hole, then teleporting back to our castle. This tactic infuriated the DM to no end since we had basically just circumvented twenty pages of the adventure.

We have been clearly told that this won't work from now on as he has house-ruled teleport to make a loud audible sound as well as a flash of bright light and dazing those traveling for a round after arriving.


I like on rule that my regular DM uses when the players decide to set up ambushes(one which I use) is to allow us to draw the encounter map. Of course if it already mapped out than we stuck with what is there...but that just makes sense.


Mortagon wrote:

Our wizard scryed on a pretty high end bad guy while he was sleeping. He then teleported himself and the rogue into his bedroom and kidnapped him by tying him up and putting him into a portable hole, then teleporting back to our castle. This tactic infuriated the DM to no end since we had basically just circumvented twenty pages of the adventure.

We have been clearly told that this won't work from now on as he has house-ruled teleport to make a loud audible sound as well as a flash of bright light and dazing those traveling for a round after arriving.

No private sanctum? Must be terrifying to be a PC who's pulled that stunt... waiting for the reprisal. I wouldn't sleep at night.


Evil Lincoln wrote:
Mortagon wrote:

Our wizard scryed on a pretty high end bad guy while he was sleeping. He then teleported himself and the rogue into his bedroom and kidnapped him by tying him up and putting him into a portable hole, then teleporting back to our castle. This tactic infuriated the DM to no end since we had basically just circumvented twenty pages of the adventure.

We have been clearly told that this won't work from now on as he has house-ruled teleport to make a loud audible sound as well as a flash of bright light and dazing those traveling for a round after arriving.

No private sanctum? Must be terrifying to be a PC who's pulled that stunt... waiting for the reprisal. I wouldn't sleep at night.

The guy was a fighter and didn't have access to high level magic. The DM did get his spiteful revenge though. In an unrelated encounter, he had faeries sneak into my home and exchange my kid with a shaved bear cub.


Mortagon wrote:
Evil Lincoln wrote:
Mortagon wrote:

Our wizard scryed on a pretty high end bad guy while he was sleeping. He then teleported himself and the rogue into his bedroom and kidnapped him by tying him up and putting him into a portable hole, then teleporting back to our castle. This tactic infuriated the DM to no end since we had basically just circumvented twenty pages of the adventure.

We have been clearly told that this won't work from now on as he has house-ruled teleport to make a loud audible sound as well as a flash of bright light and dazing those traveling for a round after arriving.

No private sanctum? Must be terrifying to be a PC who's pulled that stunt... waiting for the reprisal. I wouldn't sleep at night.
The guy was a fighter and didn't have access to high level magic. The DM did get his spiteful revenge though. In an unrelated encounter, he had faeries sneak into my home and exchange my kid with a shaved bear cub.

The house-rule was due to Andy raising a valid point: What stops me from have the enemies you now have apply similar tactics and just go "Whelp, TPK because bad-guys you can't hope to defeat nor defend yourself against currently just teleported in and steamrolled you. What do we do now guys?". And the kidnapping was not unrelated in the least. While it was not revenge for killing him, it was his psychotic wife's elaborate plot to get revenge for you killing her beloved dog "Jewel".

What DOES infuriate me is that for some reason, no-one seems to take things like lv4 spells into consideration. When living in a world where magic is common as dirt, why not make it mandatory to take countermeasures. Kinda like how we in the real world have insulation so the weather doesn't kill us as easy.

So from now on; everywhere important is built with a lead lining. Because somehow, non-caster spies exist, and there should be justification for that.

@Evil Lincoln: Worst made part of the AP. Doesn't consider what the players can do in the slightest. One of those giant page-wasters where the players get to feel awesome against poorly made opposition and get disproportionate amounts of XP and loot. Best part: There IS a wizard powerful enough to do that. But... HE DOESN'T WANT TO HELP THE BARON, because he is a douche.


The guy was a fighter and didn't have access to high level magic. The DM did get his spiteful revenge though. In an unrelated encounter, he had faeries sneak into my home and exchange my kid with a shaved bear cub.

+1


There are mundane ways to get around high magic. Lead lined walls is a favorite of mine. I always assume that if someone is building a castle they have such countermeasures around.


Mortagon wrote:

Our wizard scryed on a pretty high end bad guy while he was sleeping. He then teleported himself and the rogue into his bedroom and kidnapped him by tying him up and putting him into a portable hole, then teleporting back to our castle. This tactic infuriated the DM to no end since we had basically just circumvented twenty pages of the adventure.

We have been clearly told that this won't work from now on as he has house-ruled teleport to make a loud audible sound as well as a flash of bright light and dazing those traveling for a round after arriving.

The book specifically says the PC's can catch him sleeping, which means the authors intended for it to be possible. I think the DM did not read the book in detail, or at the least overlooked it.

edit: added "in detail"


psionichamster wrote:
Cartigan wrote:
Of course, it isn't simply homebrew campaigns I break by just deciding not to go along with the ridiculous working of other minds. Our DM for Rise of the Runelords kind of had to make up how an encounter would play out on the fly after we decided to set a crazy ass ambush instead of bursting in and fighting headlong.

In our Serpent's Skull campaign, our party of Level 2 PC's takes on the mid-boss encounter, pretty heavily outgunned. By a stroke of luck, we've all created Stealth capable characters with some very interesting Illusion tricks.(Ranger, Rogue, Wizard, Witch, and Bard)

Long story short, we were able to "pull" the guards, in small groups, onto the jungle path (which they normally control completely) and get the jump on them. This was thanks to some clever positioning and a Silent Image spell. Sleep, Color Spray, and a Lucerne Hammer did what they do best from there. We proceeded to take that camp apart, bit by bit, with successive "come & get me, hit & fade" type assaults, despite being pretty heavily out-gunned and out-numbered.

Another party had a Diviner wizard who completely played up the "Paranoid Mastermind" role. I was DM'ing this campaign, and it was all I could do to stay on top of his antics.

So, what are your nastiest, most successful ambush setups, spell combinations, and off-the-rails producing moments?

To elaborate on what we did in RotR.

So we had a Barbarian, a Ranger, a Druid, a Sorcerer, and a Bard/Rogue and were going to the lumbermill to talk to the head guy - in I think the middle of the day. I forget what happened - either we made him confess or beat him up and found his day planner - either way, we found out that the secret meeting of all the evil people was going to be there that night. Instead of leaving and returning later, we kind of decided to hang out all day. The Barbarian and the Ranger waited on the roof to spot people coming in and the Bard/Rogue decided he would put on the evil guy costume and screw with everyone else when they got there while the Ranger and Barbarian jumped off the roof and went back up the normal way so as to box them in. Long story short, there wasn't much fighting to do after the DM went along with the Bard player's completely ridiculous method of disarming the enemy party (mostly convincing them to lay down their weapons and dance in a circle - I don't know either).


wraithstrike wrote:
The book specifically says the PC's can catch him sleeping, which means the authors intended for it to be possible. I think the DM did not read the book, or at the least overlooked it.

I saw, which is why I allowed it to happen at all. It is basic scry and fry, hardly inspired or original. I don't have to LIKE it though. Both for being lame, and for reasons described in my last post. If I allow it, then the players would get pissed, because they have no chance at ALL to protect themselves against all the crazy stuff the opposition can do. Even if I LET them live, because I could kill them easy as pie, their every move would be known, their every effort easily foiled, their every weakness exploited. It would not be fun.


As a player there's nothing I enjoy more than getting ahead of the NPCs and, conversely, nothing I disdain more than stumbling through a predictably linear series of traps, pitfalls and encounters with mooks choreographed by the BBEG who knows you're coming. When I play, my goal is always to figure out where the big bad is and find him before he/she is aware the PCs are even gunning for him. If at all possible our group will try to sneak past all the mooks and kick things off by attacking the BBEG first rather than last. We then backtrack and fight our way back out in reverse order.

To that end, in our current RotRL campaign, I've endeavoured to outmanoeuvre the various NPCs at every turn; with varying levels of success. It usually starts by carefully collecting intelligence information on the NPCs with magic and stealthily scouting out their headquarters beforehand; the latter often accomplished by my character's exceedingly stealthy tiny air elemental familiar.

SPOILERS:

When we hit Thistletop, for instance, we approached the island in a rowboat from the north in the early morning, landed and then snuck into the goblin compound past the guards thanks to a limited-use circle of invisibility object we'd found earlier. Thanks to silent image and ghost sound spells, I had Tsuto appear to enter the goblin king's throne room and demand to have every NPC we were aware of come up for a briefing. Our group waited hunkered invisibly in a hallway until a bunch of NPCs crowded in around the illusion of Tsuto to hear what he had to say. When ready, my character signalled his air elemental familiar, who'd been waiting outside atop the thatch roof, to unveil our surprise. She rose up and positioned herself above the throne room and, reaching into a handy haversack she was carrying, pulled out a sack full of enchanted skulls we'd pilfered from the Runewell chamber under Sandpoint (which we'd discovered would each explode for 1d6 damage if shattered) and let it go. The sack crashed through the soft thatch roof onto the heads of those assembled below and blew the lot of them to smithereens; we remained safely outside of the blast radius. Our group then waited, still invisible, for reinforcements to charge into the throne room to see what had happened. When the ruined room was once again filled with confused and horrified goblins and goblin dogs, I signalled my familiar to pull out the second sack that contained the remaining skulls. Another explosion, more dead defenders. Unfortunately, Nualia had failed to respond to the summons so we had to go down and search for her. Ah well.

When we went up to Foxglove manor we ignored the house in favour of exploring the well shaft outside. We fought and bunch of ghouls along with the BBEG dread ghoul at the bottom. Only then did we tackle the house.

In Magnimar, my familiar reported seeing a familiar face in the Seven Brothers sawmill while scouting it out; that of Justice in the upper levels. I magically transported all of the PCs up to an empty rookery up on the roof. Descending down into a trap room we discovered the rogue justice and jumped him. He managed to get a few spells but spent the entire fight prone without his weapon getting pummelled by our monk and paladin.

Sczarni

Some nice little tricks in here...keep em coming!

More trickery from my Illusionist & our Witch in Serpent's Skull, at least plans of such.

She has Unseen Servant, and is planning on creating some small sized "Black Mage" style robes for it to carry around, along with her notebook/journal. I have Effortless Trickery, so can concentrate on my (currently Silent) Image spell pretty much all day long.

Our Rogue & Ranger are super stealthy, so most people will immediately see:


    Glowing, plate-armored, super-badass Big Dumb Paladin guy in the lead.
    Scrawny, twitchy, possibly with glowing eyes (dancing lights) Obvious Mage
    poorly dressed, non-threatening, unarmed Gnome carrying baggage (my Illusionist)
    Longspear wielding skirmisher type (actually the Witch - our primary healer)
    Lightly armored archer guy (our Bard)

Lots of dumb baddies will target the squishies or tank first (both are essentially illusions), at which point we "flee" and allow them to pursue us into a pre-set kill zone.

We haven't had opportunity to set up actual traps, but I suspect Animate Rope & Create Pit to end up as scrolls or wands as soon as possible.


A variant of the, pulling guards to you that a higher level party I was in used was as follows. One room is sealed up but for one way in and out, the next room is the ambush room. In that room is an illusory wall on one side some of the party hides behind. The bad guys chase the "bait" character, monks work well for this because of their speed, once in the room they see a fellow in robes waiting for them. This was my lich character with a boosted CHA to help the Fear Aura. When he gave the command, that is once the enemy were being affected by the aura or not, The other PCs would come through the illusionto cut off escape through the door. Enemy trying to flee will then head through the other door into the sealed room where my lich's undead were waiting to keep them busy while the PCs focussed on anyone who didn't run away. Note: the PCs protected from fear and the lich had a permanent spell on his that increased the fear effect.

Also, this tactic can be turned against you. If the DM gets sick of it, they have one of the bad guys run through the rest of "their" part of the site alerting everyone. Pretty soon you get mobbed. I had a DM do that in that last Dungeon adventure where you went after Bargle. Those kobolbs or goblins almost wiped us out when all of them but the king and his personal guard came running.

I used teleport object once to trigger an ambush. The enemy was inside a keep our forces couldn't easily take. My wizard scried around and found a storage area in a sort of attic area that didn't look well used. So, we took a big barrel, nailed a tall, narrow block of wood across one side of the bottom like a leg making it one piece. This was then balanced upright on another, stouter block of wood. The barrel was then filled with lamp oil. Wrap an oil soaked bit of cloth around near the top and light it. Quickly teleport the barrel, less the loose support block into the disused attic. The barrel arrives, tips over and instant major fire. By the time the enemy detected the fire, the building was a lost cause. They came piling out where the PCs and their allies were waiting.


Don't know if your out there, but don't read my players!

My BBEG's Place:

It's a castle which I am in the processing of building using Kingmakers rules (I plan on the players taking over the kingdom so I need it to be a working kingdom).

Since the BBEG is a Caster he has Anti-Teleport on his main chamber, pointing to a room which he has Bound a Demon to guard, along with a Anti-Paladin.

I have thought about throwing a Jailers Ring + Prisoners Ring, or using a spell of Telepathic Bond so the Sorcerer will "prep" if the AntiPaladin goes down.

The rest of the castle had Guards+Wards, and I have a Twin Fighters w/CMB (Sunder+Trip) to entertain the team in the final room as well as the BBEG Sorcerer.

I don't see how any BBEG wouldn't have some Anti-teleport, Wards, protections, etc...

You think your the first Adventuring crew to wanna take his stuff? Ha!

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