G3 Results So Far - The 4 Backstabbers

We're still running through G3, me and the kid. Mostly going by the 1e write up and number of monsters, but using stats mostly from 5e. Been interesting, but yeah, 5e parties are so powerful... it's getting tricky. I mean, the boring old HP bags that are giants tend to get the job done and make it a tough fight. Interesting things often are lackluster, which as a DM is killing me. Let's take for example last night. Mostly my fault, but then again... tricky. 

So the lead up to last night was, 

• the kid has a figurine of wondrous power... think Guenhwyvar, but it's of the "foo lion w/ statblock" variety. 
• he'd been fighting plenty of things and getting lowish on resources. The lower (southern?) half of level 1 mostly complete, working his way up the left side of the map. 
• the kid found the secretly evil dwarf Obmi, I think is his name. In 5e he has assassin stats. OK, sounds interesting, I think to myself. Didn't really read over that statblock b/c thought we wouldn't play for another week. Then kid wanted to rush through it late last night, whoops. Anyway, so by the seat of my pants DMing...
• also found 3 rakshasas that were able to trick him into thinking it was 3 old acquaintances that were trapped. 
• So, the kid is like "one more medium/small battle, then the party has to go longrest outside the level 1 area". He's like "we can squeeze this in tonight right?". I can't say no without giving too much away so... here we go. 

Last night - what occurred:

• Room 18 is next. Module says 6 firegiants in there. I half serious half jokingly ask the kid "how many giants do you think you can handle in one fight" as we're deciding for sure to press on. He's like, oh maybe 7... maybe less... or something like that. I raise my DM eyebrows and give the look. But in my brain I'm calculating... these Rakshasas are going to backstab him. Oh and that dwarf too, whatever, just a dwarf. How are they going to do it? Definitely at most opportune time... so as he opens the door to the big giant room. Let's bring down the 1e firegiant count in there from 6 to 5. That'll be fine, with 3 rakshasas (CR13) and a Dwarf whatever assassin ( I mean an assassin, can't be that bad, right? just a rogue) right? 
• The party walks up to the door... I'm getting nervous. I'm like... so what else you got to help again? Oh yeah we said the Horn of Valhalla to call a small army. And your new Foo Lion / Komainu, right? Yeah you might want to get all that ready, we are both thinking. He does. And then I am rereading that statblock, homebrew for 5e, for the Foo Lion. He has Detect evil!!! OK, if we time this right, all will be well. I figure as soon as he summons the lion, standing at the door, the foo lion is going to use his detect evil to get his bearings. He does hate devils and demons especially, doesn't he? But then, we still need to give the baddies a chance... so here's how I do it:
• The Rakshasa posing as Kasamir runs around the side and says "gotta open the door asap b/c  b/c b/c..." the kid is like what? As he does that, as the foo lion casts detect evil, he turns around at the other 3 standing behind the party and starts to growl ferociously! The kid is like "oh no, he's going to attack our innocent ppl b/c they are strangers"... I'm trying to drop a few hints but not be totally obvious. 
• The left door flings open, 5 giants are revealed, we roll init. Who is looking at what? 
• Two rakshasas get highest on init. OK, the true Reveal now. I say "And Kasamir steps behind the fighter and pulls out a knife... and tries to stick it in his back!" 
• The kid is like, no no, what happened to Kasamir?! Is that really him?? 
• Me: No, not him... he morphs into a tiger like humanoid! 
• Kid: are his hands backwards?
• Me: Yes they are. (I had two old rakshasa minis from like 2002ish, so I pull them out). 
• Now we know what we are up against. Mostly. 
• The Rakshasa misses. The 2nd rak ... I think hits the Warlock... pretty sure it was him because...  wait for it (the other backstabbers to have a turn). 
• Two of the party get to go, then backstabbers, then party, then the 5 giants go last. 
• I think the fighter is the one to do big dmg on one rakshasa. He's got a +2 weapon, so I was going to allow that to do full dmg. 
• Druid uses a cone of cold to hit 2 raks and the evil dwarf.
• The raks laugh and grin. The dwarf takes a huge amount of dmg, like 45ish. 
• Kid: Oh no, the dwarf got hurt, he must be innocent. 
• Me: well not necessarily.. and get ready b/c he's like next.
• 3rd Rak' decides to fly, not wanting in on this melee stuff. 
• The backstabbing Ombi Obmi dwarf assassin attacks the nearest foe, the Warlock. 5e says he gets 3 attacks instead of the usual 2 for the assassin (I hope I read/remembered right). So he misses... then he hits... and rolls VERY high on the poison which the kid fails his save on. And then he hits again, same thing for the poison. The Warlock is now down from like 90ish to 16 HP or so. OUCH. And the Warlock is needed for this big fight.
• I remind the kid... OK, you can call the magical valhalla army. You also have limited wish now (kinda, he's been level 14 for a bit but never officially did the upgrades) and a wish on a ring and a sword. And you've got the Montebank cape, so you can get everybody out of here if you need to. 
• He summons the army with the Barbarian. 
• I start hinting hard that you gotta do more than level 6 spells to hurt Rakshasas... and you better have a very + magic weapon to be safe. 
• The Valhalla army (he had rolled two ones for the size of the army, so I had to DM call a reroll on one die for sanity sake) block the firegiants, and tank some hits, thank God. Tried to put pressure on the Raks (well no magic dmg so Raks shrugged off the hit).
• The rakshasas all decide to fly up to get out of harms way. 
• The Dwarf is taken down.. I think Crown of Stars or some other spell that did 50+ dmg (did the kid use LimitedWish vs. the Dwarf after all? I forget). 
• Before the Raks can do any dmg, they get brought down out of the air by some combo of...
• Druid (once a day, custom thing for dragonborns at my table) bonus action breath weapon. I say it does dmg b/c not a spell. 
• Crown of Stars from the warlock
• Limited Wish - > level 7 spell of Chain Lightning for the warlock, something he normally couldn't do
• Druid had his level 7 slot saved up... casts lightning bolt to hit two in the air (kinda bent the rules, used 1e idea of lightning bounce... we had been talking about it forever so yeah why not)
• Raks fall out of the sky. Don't take fall dmg apparently, nonmagical. But... 
• TWO Raks die!
• The last Rak', cussing the party and vowing revenge, snaps his fingers (backwards) and shifts to another plane. 
• OK! The party is going to win this, we're pretty confident now. 
• We pause around this point, but 4/5 the giants were hit by Sickening Radiance, etc. and the Valhalla army has 3 guys left absorbing hits or getting some dmg in. 

Conclusions for the moment:

Was exciting and memorable. But dang, I wish the Rakshasas had done so much more... I'm quite disappointed they didn't get to do much at all. I guess really they aren't much for fights. And if I had charmed or Dominate Personned the party, it would have been a TPK (update: although rereading that spell for 5e, maybe it's not totally insane in 5e). So I guess it went about as well as it could have.

The last Rak will have his revenge in the future. A new tricky enemy to deal with long term maybe. 

If I could do it all over again, last night's session, I would have toned down the assassin a hair and turned up the notch on at least one Rak. But then again... how could they do anything more than charm? Maybe a wand of XYZ. Was going to at least do MM wands from flying, but that never happened.