Spoilers! How our party dealt with the end of Book 1


Ironfang Invasion


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Alright, so my party just dealt with the Hobgoblin camp at the end of Book 1. I'm a player, so my viewpoint might have some gaps, but I couldn't resist sharing our battle after the GM and I calculated the CR afterwards. I also don't know precisely what our GM changed with the rest of the AP, though I know that this fight was unchanged from the book, with the exception of the enemies having maximum HP. Spoilers abound.

For reference, our party:
Ifrit Wizard 4 - Me
Half-Elf Scaled Fist Unchained Monk 4 - R
Human Druid 4 - G
Human Cavalier 4 - T

Our Prep:
So, once we'd cleared out the Trog caves, our GM alerted us to the presence of a Hobgoblin camp somewhere in the forest.
Our party spent several days and many spell slots surveying the camp,
trying to come up with a good plan of action to take them down. We figured out the relative number of enemies and the layout of the camp,
and somewhere in here I got it into my head that we couldn't kill the camp piecemeal because they would just get reinforcements from the main army and we'd lose our opportunity. To that end, G and I made preparations to control as much of the battlefield as we could while R and T held off the horde. We made scrolls of Stonecall, Invisibility, Blur, Glitterdust, and Summon Monster II and cobbled together some bizarre strategy involving the back steps.

We'd essentially blitz the back steps and back watchtower, with R climbing the ladder and killing the two at the top. All of us minus T would have Invisibility and all of us would have Blur on. G and I cast Jump and Longstrider on R, who also possessed our Boots of Striding and Springing. The plan was for R to leap from the watchtower down to the plateau once he had killed the two at the top while T did his best impression of a meat grinder at the chokepoint made by the stairs.

The Battle Itself:

Remarkably, our plan went off almost without a hitch. We really didn't make any special plans to deal with the horde within the camp,
we figured we'd make it up as we went along, as we normally did.
We'd cast some AoE, we'd summon some dudes, it would be fine,
right? Well, sorta.

R went up the ladder the first round, invisible, as G and I started summoning Small Earth Elementals (Me) and Eagles (G). T moved swiftly up the stairs, looking for all the world like he was assaulting the camp alone. T ended up taking a lot of damage due to being surrounded, despite R making the leap from the tower and taking some of the hits. Both of them eventually went down to hits from Scar, whom we incorrectly assumed would not be a problem. Scar got in a lot of lucky hits, and R and T went up and down, kept alive by G spamming his Cure Light Wounds Wand. I summoned earth elemental after earth elemental while G's cat companion solo'd the warg and the goblin hunter guy. We took approximately 1 alchemist bomb before we sent up an emergency Obscuring Mist, figuring that would stop some of their backline from trying to range us as well.

The quartet of summoned Earth Elementals overwhelmed their backline over 6-7 rounds as we frantically tried to stay up vs Scar and his bugbear flanking pals. I had to keep summoning to keep up our damage momentum while G, T and R blew out all the stops trying to survive. Scar went down to a lucky flurry by R, who had also been rolling low all fight. The alchemist went down last, she got grappled and coup de grace'd by the elementals whilst trying to flee the heavily Stonecall'd camp.

Once the smoke cleared (literally, I had summoned a Fire elemental as well and it lit the sleeping tent on fire), we viewed a desolate and destroyed camp. We also saw just how many enemies we had slain and rejoiced; then rejoiced while looting.


Very good. The group I gm just found the camp by the end of last session. They are all mounted and martial so should be very different approach to your groups splendid efforts


A different approach:
Our GM described the bizarre way the Hobgoblins were going in the front gate and we all as a group looked at each other and said "Minefield? Minefield." I look forward to hearing if your party doesn't realize and tries the front gate. :P


Cheers. I expect a full on charge to occur!!!!


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Very interesting! I have been wondering how PCs were going to handle this encounter. The camps seem to have very little weak spots and the guard tower could alert the entire camp if something went wrong.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path Subscriber

The group I'm running had an interesting solution. They have a druid, monk, ranger, and sorceror.

The druid used wildshape (bird) to recon the camp and get a decent layout. Based on that, they used decent stealth to approach the camp from the west, with the intent of taking out the guard tower first.

The monk and ranger used invisibility (some potions/scrolls found earlier) and took at the two hobgoblins in the tower. They managed to do it without alerting the camp.

The next step was to creep up to the edge of the ravine/canyon and then lob their dozens (of confiscated) alchemist fire on to the barracks tents. With the hobgoblin base on fire, the soldiers had no real option but to storm up the narrow stairs to fight back (while the heroes launched more ranged attacks.

The dwarven ranger was able to tank very well - using the Ironfang Survivor trait (+2 dodge to AC vs. Goblinoids) combined with Dwarven hatred and a ranger favored enemy bonus made him excel in this fight. Scarvinious was a decent threat, but he was never able to bring the weight of numbers down on the PCs.

The sorceroes main spell was hideous laughter (fey blood made the DC for this spell higher) - so she was able to take major combatants out of the fight for rounds at at time.

In the end, the fight turned rather one-sided, but the amount of prep the heroes put into it made it that way, so they earned it. It was nice seeing the hobgoblins brought down by their own alchemy...


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Awesome! Thanks for sharing.


Cavalier 4, Barbarian 4, Ranger 4, Cleric 4, Magus 4
All Human.
Mostly mounted, with 3 ranged specialists

Some scouting under invisibility

Party attacked from the North and West
Skindar and Ysitti escaped.
Barbarian and cavalier very brave and nearly died
8 rounds of combat with lots missiles fired from everywhere

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