So I am running a 3 person gestalt rise of the runelords campaign. Long story short the PC's hsve decided to spend the night in the second level of thistletop.
Here is what is ppresent:
1. Ripnugget escaped the throne battle after seeing the sheer strength of the Pc's. So he rran to the bottom level to alert nualia.
2. The players climbed with pistons and rope through the side of the fortress and also blew up the bridge.
3. They have captured orik and sweeped the second level in a clockwise motion not going into the chapel.
4. After capturing orik they decided to hole up in the room right above the tentamort lair. As a choke point for the fighter sorcerer to burst them down with fire and the other two players to pepper them with bolts.
5. I heavily forshadowed with orik while he was being interrogated that there are spooky fiendish dogs and more goblins.
6. About an hour and a half into their respite i send some goblins a yeth hound to attack. Which they defend pretty well. Then i send a couple more goblins and a commando and the commabdo seeing his friends get oblierated runs away. The party of course has a wand of cure light wounds to heal all the way back up.
So obviously these minor pokes of encounters was enough to give them proper warning to leave. However the fighter/sorceror is still brimming with spells and is pretty determined he can blow anything up. Then we have a paladin/gunslinger whose two bombs blew up. And we have an aracanist/alchemist almost all up of spells.
So is it rude to kill the party? I really dont want to. But liberally the whole fortress knows of their presence. So i was thinking nulia and ripnugget to gather all the wood and oil they can find and strew the small hallway leading to their hiding place and smoke them out or something. And have thw goblins at arms ready to pepper them with arrows with whoever comes out.
Idk. I am just at a lost here and any advice would be appreciated.
Bump
not all that familiar with the story, but...
Gotta play your villains smart or you lose all credibility. If they can't come in and get the heroes because they are too well fortified then they would smoke them out.
This doesn't mean the villains are going to win. Maybe the heroes will discover a back door, maybe they fight their way through the mobs (partial concealment from the smoke helps against the arrow volley) and escape?
not all that familiar with the story, but...
Gotta play your villains smart or you lose all credibility. If they can't come in and get the heroes because they are too well fortified then they would smoke them out.
This doesn't mean the villains are going to win. Maybe the heroes will discover a back door, maybe they fight their way through the mobs (partial concealment from the smoke helps against the arrow volley) and escape?
Thats true. Just trying to balance smart villians with activelytt trying to punish players. After all barracading them might takr a while. So hopefully they do somethinf at some point :/
You would probably get more advice in the Rise of the Runelords section.
However I would let the NPC's launch a full scale attack on them. The players are camping in hostile territory. Wait until 2 are asleep and have removed armour then launch a full attack with all remaing goblins, and Nualia's henchmen. Nualia should have all her buff spells up when she attacks pick the tactics based on what they know of the players abilities.
You are not punishing them, sleeping in enemy territory obviously invites attack you are merely demonstrating natural consequences. My players would not rest up in such a location as it invites attack and loses the strategic initiative, wither withdraw to a safe place or press the blitzkreig assault
Honestly I see your issue you don't want to ruin the game but at the same time they need to learn the lesson. I run into this issue in a couple games with tpks (total party kills) here is my suggestion follow the other comments and launch your attack whether they you wipe them or not depends on how things progress for example if 2 of them die well that sucks but they suceeded! But if you wipe them out, you apologize for the way things turned out, you then ask them if they want to retcon it to before the set camp to sleep and you give them the chance to leave and rest somewhere safer.
You've got two choices: the hard way or the easy way
Hard: most "realistic" is a full on assault. Nualia gathers all of the surviving creatures from the entire complex and sends them at the pc's in waves, one right on top of the other. Goblins and Ripnugget first, any of her surviving henchmen next and finally her and all three of her Yeth Hounds. Congratulations PC's! You get to fight everyone at once!
Easy: As suggested above, Nualia uses her forces to harass the group, to draw them out or force them to withdraw. At random intervals, never less than 20 minutes or more than an hour, she sends her forces to engage and withdraw, just enough for the pc's to engage in combat and then run away. Particularly effective here - the yeth hounds (remember just because a pc saves against one hound's howl, doesn't mean he doesn't have to save against the others.) Everytime they have to roll initiative the start timer for rest resets to zero. If they don't get 8 hours, they don't recover spells, they don't heal any hp, and if it gets to 10am the next morning and they haven't had sufficient rest, tell them you'll give them all the fatigued condition.
If they persist, the consequences are theirs to own. Make sure the area around them has been set with traps and difficult terrain to make sneaking about more difficult.
I´m going for the Hard lesson, if they want to rest in a place where all the bad guys still are very much alive, they diserve whatever happens to them...
I almost did a TPK (one member of a party of 5 managed to runaway with the body of two other party members) on the Return To The TOEE (3rd or 3.5)due to the party camping inside the temple, after a fight, without almost any spells and hurting....
My players have not yet reached Thistletop, but in a past AP, I had players get banged up while assaulting a thieves guild located underground. They also decided to hole up in a room, feeling safe in the notion of one door, jammed shut, and stone/rock/dirt surrounding them otherwise. What they didn't know is that this room was across from the guild leader's personal rooms, so they also were known to be in there by the top person.
In my scenario, the guild leader spoke with them through the door, which was a fun encounter where she offered to let them join the guild. When they didn't believe the offer, the leader said that then they had a choice of staying in the room and being killed in there via magic (the plan was to not allow them to sleep while buying a wand of fireball or a necklace of fireballs, or they could come out and fight now.
I got no complaints from my players. They liked having three choices, and feeling like they had a hand in how the standoff progressed- meaning that there was some DM transparency about the strength remaining to the guild, what plans were being laid by their enemies, etc. I think players dislike it when it feels like the DM is inventing things to throw at them because they don't know just how bad they've stepped in it.
So the short version of my advice is to have the very smart Nualia talk to your PCs, and let tell them in no uncertain terms just how much danger they're in. Maybe Nualia also attempts to recruit them- what could it hurt? Or maybe recruiting them is a ploy to get them to come out. No matter what, let them know what's coming. They might already be wondering why an all-out assault hasn't happened, with two exploratory attacks having taken place.