Spoilers for the adventure follow…
The gleam of the Ironclad Regiment’s weapons shining in the afternoon sun testified of their betrayal. The festival of the Kingfisher and the commemoration of the Battle of High Hill became a day of blood again.
As the ill trained militia locked in combat with the veteran sell-swords, the heroes found themselves in the midst of the combat. After rallying the militia and setting them in some semblance of order to oppose the traitorous attack, they found themselves fighting in the very center of the battle. Two cavalry troopers on massive warhorses thundered towards them. Asterius and Fallon marveled at the size and majesty of the beasts, even as their churning hooves leapt forward. Both troopers charged Asterius with their lances leveled. Asterius weathered their charge, and in turn rammed each of them off their mount with his massive horned skull.
Davgin unleashed a cone of flame upon one of the warhorses and its rider, while Fallon laughed and chanted a taunting limerick at the riders as they each hit the ground. Grunge and Asterius took advantage of the opening to catch each horse’s bridle and mounted up.
It was at this moment that the leader of the traitorous band, Gragonis the half-ogre, strode out of the fray to confront the heroes, flanked by two of his soldiers. Asterius took several savage blows and, nursing his wounds, began to weave to and fro on his horse, attempting to draw the half-ogre away from his friends on the hill. Davgin and Fallon for their part continued slinging spells at the brute, and Gringle wheeled his horse back and forth, staying out of reach of the enemy as he peppered them with arrows.
The half-ogre in his rage charged the spellcasters, dealing ferocious blows to their Dagonesti companion, Thalis. But Thalis stood true, bolstered by Fallon’s healing magic. Fallon continued to put on a face of bravado, mocking the half-ogre’s mother with false glee as she dodged terrible blows from the monster’s battle axe, each of which could have parted her head from her shoulders.
In these desperate moments, each of the heroes dug deep, drawing upon the momentum of the rallying militia and striking with renewed strength. Finally, as Gragonis stood, bloodied and battered, Gringle nocked a final arrow to his shortbow, took careful aim, and sent it flying like the blow of an angel of death into the traitor’s eye. Gragonis fell with a thud like a felled tree. His remaining companions fled as the remaining mercenaries were driven away. High Hill, once the happy place of reenacted battles was once again painted in blood and horror as it as when the Solamnic knights had turned back the Istarian invaders so many hundreds of years before…
After the mass combat last session we played out the characters’ part in the Battle of High Hill as written. It basically took almost the entire session, but it was a cool fight. I made some modifications to up the difficulty…although as I go back and read through the scenario I realize it was optimized for 2nd to 3rd level characters, so they weren’t over leveled. So I guess I just made it extra hard. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So I used the light cavalry trooper stat block from Ultimate NPCS: Warfare instead of the regular guard stats from the SRD. They were a pretty formidable challenge when mounted on their warhorses. Asterius, the Paladin, was simply astounded that the soldiers could attack twice. But he knocked them both off their mounts relatively quickly.
I built a more powerful stat block for Gragonis using the Lazy DM’s Forge of Foes. I think that was okay, but it made the fight pretty hard. There were actually more waves of soldiers planned to reinforce Gragonis, but I realized that would make a long fight more sloggy.
Happily though, the party gained enough XP to level up after the fight to level four. I didn’t realize that in Dragonlance the characters get an additional bonus feat at fourth level. So these guys are all walking around with three feats now. Super powerful, so I’ll keep the difficulty high until I really can gauge their abilities.
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