So we had session 2 last night and it wasn't, for my character at least, as bad as the first session. So we're using the 'milestone' system of leveling up and I took a level of fighter, since we had done so at the end of the session, I decided to go ahead and take the Defensive fighting style aver the great-weapon style. We had plenty of money, so I sold my armor to upgrade to +1 half-plate, uping my AC to 19 even though in this campaign it isn't worth much. Meaning that enemies are rolling fairly high.

In this session we were tackling a case involving elf children being kidnapped. We eventually set up a decoy room in an elven hospital to catch some red caps in the act of stealing kids. There were only three, but they each must have had well over 70 hp, could attack 3 times per turn, got disengage as a free action and managed to knock out the cleric/rogue before combat even began using a cloud of sleeping potion fog. With the sorcerer player missing due to his work schedule interfering, it left only me, the artificer, his bison mount (he's a gunsmith and chose a bison instead of a sabre-tooth tiger for his construct), and the fighter to face off against 3 red caps.

These things were said to be CR4, but were WAY overpowered and we only technically took 1 out. They each had disengage as a free action, 3 attacks per turn that did 2d6 + atk stat dmg. per attack and must have each had over 70hp.

The fighter ended up getting hit way more often than not even with 19ac and was taking tons of damage and finally went down. I had to revive him with a healing potion. Then the unconscious cleric rogue went down and I had to revive him the same way in the same battle.

In the next and only other battle of the night, we found the people who had kidnapped the kids and got into a nother battle with a few weaker foes, 3 more redcaps and what might have been some kind of sorceress or such (she was basically the queen of the elven winter court). The artificer's construct went down, then HE went down after it, we nearly lost the rouge/cleric and the fighter. then our npc boss and his assistant came in and saved us before anyone really died, but with those nightmarish red caps, I didn't dare use reckless attack because 3 attacks per red cap per turn is bad enough, but no way would I have survived if they'd had advantage to attack me.

We ended the case and the night without reaching another milestone, but I'll have to go fighter 2 for Action Surge next level just to help us all survive this campaign!