Solo RPG Campaign - 5b. Thirty-four Bite-Size Halflings vs. Three Spidery Bois

This session was played in mid-March.

Prior to session 5, I had rolled a random encounter for the Monsterous Attercop Lair I had discovered in session 4, and discovered that it had "encountered" (been encountered by?) a group of a few Bandits. Actually I rolled "Brigands" but when I when went to play out a quick battle, I misremembered what I had rolled, and looked up the stats for Bandits. At any rate, I made a few quick rolls to determine that the Bandits were easily overwhelmed.

After session 5, I determined that the Halfling Meet encountered on the way home was going to confront the Attercops, so I decided to play out this battle in lieu of a party adventure. The first thing I did was to roll a recon roll for the halflings, to see what kind of intel they would gather on the Attercops. From the PC party, they would have only learned of the presence of webbing, and might have expected giant spiders. The ACKS intel roll wasn't really designed for forces this small (it's meant for armies), so I was kind of abusing it. But at any rate, the Halflings not only discovered the type of forces and (approximate) number, but also obtained a "prisoner." Rather than taking an Attercop prisoner, I think this means that the Halflings discovered (and bravely recovered) the body of one of the bandits that had been wrapped up in webbing to save for later.

Next I gave a 1-in-6 chance that each the 30 non-leader Halflings would get caught in webbing -- 8 of the 30 failed. In my mind, I imagined that their becoming entrapped would actually occur shortly after the combat began (and therefore would not impact the surprise check). I was simply rolling it in advance to reduce the number of surprise and initiative rolls I would have to make. However, in retrospect, I probably should've let this entrapment count as "having foreknowledge" for the Attercops' surprise roll.

Since there are only 3 Attercops, the next thing I did was to break out the Halflings into initiative groups of 3 or less (not counting the ones that got webbed):

• One Constable (HD 3-3, Sword +1)
• Three Reeves (HD 2-2)
• Band A = 14 halflings (HD 1-1) - 5 webbed = 3 + 3 + 3
• Band B = 10 halflings (HD 1-1) - 2 webbed = 3 + 3 + 2
• Band C = 6 halflings (HD 1-1) - 1 webbed = 3 + 2

For the surprise roll, I gave the halflings a +1 for having Foreknowledge (but not LOS, since attercops are ambush predators), +1 for Nervous Watchfulness, and -2 because the attercops are Naturally Stealthy. Two of the groups in band B, and one of the groups in band C were surprised, but none of the rest were. The attercops also got a -2 because halflings are also Naturally Stealthy. I gave them LoS on the halflings, but not foreknowledge, so there was no additional modifier here. Surprisingly, two of the three attercops were surprised (if I had given them foreknowledge from the halflings that got trapped in webs, they could not have been surprised).

The halflings got a +1 to their initiative due to Nervous Watchfulness, but in the first round, any halflings that were not surprised and that won initiative were unable to attack, since they lacked LoS, or any knowledge of where the attercops were. This triggered the same "bad feeling about this" rule as my party had triggered with the giant centipedes had in session 4, so they just readied slings to fire. The first attercop moves to contact the constable, and as he does so, the readied slingers loose their slings, but all miss. Rules Note: Throughout this combat, partly due to lack of familiarity with the rules, and partly due to the number of combatants being tracked via "theater of mind" I routinely forgot that readied actions take place between movement and combat. As a result, I often interrupted move actions with readied fire, instead of waiting for the end of the move action (when such shots would have been into melee, and would therefore either not have been possible, or would have had a -4 penalty). Ooops. This battle was a learning process, to be sure.

The three Reeves and three of the "standard" halflings move in to support their Constable with melee attacks on the attercop (the Reeves deal some damage), while the remaining halflings lack a target and ready their slings to attack if any others show up.  The constable takes a defensive stance, increasing his AC by +2.

In round two, the  six halflings that are attacking the first attercop have high initiatives and manage to finish it off. The Constable readies an action to attack anything that attacks him. The remaining two attercops are now able to act, and they go after two of the Reeves, each killing one with a single attack (one of whom fails a saving throw to the attercops poisonous bite). There are a total of 19 sling attacks against the second attercop in this round, but cold dice mean that only three connect, and those fail to kill the creature. At the end of round two, all eight webbed halflings receive a saving throw to unweb themselves. Hilariously, all eight fail, and end up hopelessly tangled for the remainder of the battle.

At the beginning of round three, there are 18 sling attacks against the two attercops, of which 10 finally hit, killing one of them, and seriously wounding the other. The constable attempts to finish off the remaining attercop, but they miss each other. Finally, the one remaining Reeve, along with three other halflings, make successful melee attacks that finish off the third attercop. No XP or treasure was awarded, since these were all NPCs. The halflings, having accomplished their mission, presumably returned to their shire (whose location has not been discovered yet).

This session really was a fumble through. Mistakes were made and rules were learned. I'm still struggling to understand how to properly set up an encounter, but once I started, the combat itself flowed pretty smoothly. Perhaps that was partly because so many combatants all had identical stats, so I didn't have to spend a lot of time tracking things like attribute and proficiency bonuses.