Thoughts on the OOTS goblin predicament

[Shadowknight12]

Using the rules for falling objects, the titanium elementals would've easily reached the damage cap (20d6) due to their weight alone. If we use the statblock of an Elder Earth Elemental and assume it gets 2 slams when it hits the wall, the wall is taking 20d6 (average 70) minus hardness is 62, plus 2d10+11 (average 22 per attack) minus hardness is 14, for a total of exactly 90 damage, instantly destroying a normal masonry wall half the time. Now if this is reinforced masonry, it only dealt nuked half of its HP, but I don't believe there's any indication the walls were especially reinforced.

[GeoffWatson]

Using the rules for falling objects, the titanium elementals would've easily reached the damage cap (20d6) due to their weight alone. If we use the statblock of an Elder Earth Elemental and assume it gets 2 slams when it hits the wall, the wall is taking 20d6 (average 70) minus hardness is 62, plus 2d10+11 (average 22 per attack) minus hardness is 14, for a total of exactly 90 damage, instantly destroying a normal masonry wall half the time. Now if this is reinforced masonry, it only dealt nuked half of its HP, but I don't believe there's any indication the walls were especially reinforced.

So the wall's only 1 foot thick?

[Shadowknight12]

So the wall's only 1 foot thick?

From my reading of the SRD, the hit points are for a 10 by 10 section "at least 1 foot thick" not per foot of thickness.

[Bacon Elemental]

I've got to say "The hobgoblins steamrolled Azure City and Redcloak/Xykon had little to do with their success" is a very bizarre opinion that I keep seeing cropping up that I just can't understand from any reading of the text. Like, just listing off the things they did that I can remember:

1. Mobilised far more conscripts than any general who cared about their civilisation would
2. Used powerful magic to sweep over the magical instant warning towers so Azure City had no clue they were coming. This made them unable to summon troops from beyond the capital city, effectively giving them a decapitation strike that prevented them from having to face say, the armies that're probbably still guarding the border with the Red Dragon Empire and the assorted other unfriendly neighbours like in GDGU (Where the whole plot happens because Azure City's army is already stretched thin and cant afford a new front against the mountain hobgoblin tribes
3. Created "several hundred" ghouls, which is a factor that Hinjo was worried about and based the deployment of the city's low-level clerics on to try and counter
4. Forced all the senior paladins to completely remove themself and their magical powers from the battle in order to protect the Throne Room just by targeting the Gate
5. Created high-power elementals to tear up the city walls without fear of being counter-batteried like regular artillery
6. Forced the high level characters on the walls to allocate themself to counter an attack on multiple seperate fronts by...
7. creating 3 high powered undead warriors to lead each prong of the attack in the shell play
8. Killed the High Priest of the 12 Gods, who was being held in reserve as a counter to them and was clearly pretty damn powerful given that he seemed evenly matched with Redcloak and could cast Resurrection (The whole reason Redcloak fought him was in case he slaughtered many goblins)
9. Killed many other high level clerics and arcane spellcasters with a Chlorine Elemental (so cheap)
10. Killed the powerful diviner Sangwoon with the invisible zombie dragon (I dont really know much about her, but she had (maybe only one) 6th level spell, so she was no slouch)
11. After having forced the paladins out of the battle, slaughtered them en masse

And thats just the things I can think of them doing intentionally, let alone the unforseeable knockon effects of them in general like the hobgoblin city only being so successful because the Supreme Leader used the results Sapphire Guard's brutal hunt for Redcloak to sieze and consolidate power, or Miko murdering Soon and throwing the city into chaos the evening before the battle, or Tsukiko betraying Azure City because she's an undead fangirl.

[Last_Riot]

I am not a vegan and my argument did not extend to animal forms. It was specifically about whether it's okay to treat fellow intelligent beings as less than human or not, and "they are evil and cause strife" is not adequate justification when such things are extremely subjective and furthermore, could be altered or accommodated so that they aren't harmful anymore.

Fire and electricity are both aspects of reality that are extremely harmful for humans (and most living things) to interact with, but we as humans took them into our lives and learned how to live with them and have been instrumental in our development as a species. A lot of foods we eat are poisonous, hurtful or evolved to be repulsive and bad tasting, both dogs and cats are domesticated descendants of dangerous predators, and in all these cases, we have welcomed them into our cultures.

Just because something is harmful and dangerous doesn't mean it should be killed, or that we can't coexist peacefully with it.

But the whole point is that they are non-human. Animals like us, but still not human, despite resembling us superficially. Somewhere, a line has to be drawn on when something is "close enough" to be human, and some people put that line pretty generously and would grant a whole lot of animals a whole lot of rights, and many others hold humanity (Homo sapiens) as distinct. There's no universal and unquestionable rule to separate what is human enough to count and what isn't.

Your comparisons are also pretty flawed. We don't go "just live with it" when a forest fire breaks out. We try to put it out. We put rules in place to try to avoid them. We build institutions around preventing, controlling, and extinguishing fires. Wolves were eradicated from many areas, and we only kept "the good ones", the subservient ones, the docile ones that obey our orders and don't have an agenda or agency of their own. And I'm not sure what applicability you see with the plant examples that wouldn't revolve around some form of utterly inhumane treatment. Reminds me of the human zoos and eugenics programs, really.

If we were to apply these examples to orcs of LotR, are you saying that humans should enslave the orcs they find, kill the more aggressive ones or otherwise chase them out, keep the more subservient ones as household slaves, and then selectively breed these orcs for better temperament, lower strength, perhaps lighter skin and duller teeth while we are at it? And that eventually, we might breed good pseudo-humans out of these orcs, over many millennia of enslavement and eugenics? Just do like we did with dogs? Is this your ethical solution?

I'll also point out that cats were not really domesticated in any considerable measure, and dogs are pretty much the exception to the rule. We don't really have predators as pets, and no truly other domesticated predator. Some people may have ferrets, lions, crocodiles, etc., but I wouldn't consider these to be domesticated whatsoever. Russians have shown us the potential of a breeding program with the domestication of fox, but I'd have a hard time not calling that utterly evil if you replaced the foxes with some sentient being, especially if the argument is that those beings are close enough to humans to be granted the same rights to life as we are.

It's also pretty naïve to think that someone who wrongs you is always just misunderstood and just needs accommodation. Appeasement does not always work. Most people would probably say it usually doesn't work. If there's an "other" group, human or otherwise, that sees you as a lesser entity, and feel no remorse in hurting you and taking your stuff, the list of solutions is pretty darn small. When cities faced Genghis Khan's horde, they had the choice to surrender their stuff or die. And entire cities were razed, the Khan did not mess around.

Sure, you *can* decide to not resist, give them their stuff, and avoid bloodshed. Though history is also filled with examples of surrendering forces being slaughtered wholesale anyways. And even if the invaders don't slaughter you, you are still enabling them, helping them then move on to further invade others. You have become a collaborator to evil. And I doubt many would consider "funding evil" to be a Good thing to do.

Now, if we go back to a scenario of a smaller aggressor, maybe then a diplomatic solution could possibly work out. This is basically the scenario we saw in Good Deeds. In that situation, they were lucky, negotiations worked. They do not always. One should not assume that everyone is rational and that it's just a matter of revealing to the other party how a peaceful solution is better. People are not rational. And people have different priorities. And leaders can have interests that conflict with their peoples', and usually do. War is often a handy tool to consolidate power. And sometimes, it can even be used to prevent a coup that would itself lead to war anyways. Maybe the orc chieftan wants to send his rival to lead a suicide force in order to consolidate his leadership. Maybe his culture demands military victories to prove his worth. Maybe his people are running out of resources, and cultural taboos prevent the more peaceful solutions. Maybe he was slighted in the past, and his culture demands he seek vengeance. Peace is not always feasible. There are situations where the opposing party is dead set on conflict.

You could argue that it should at least be tried. And I'll kind of agree with you there. But level 1 adventurers are not diplomats. If the nation is to send emissaries to the raiding orcs to ask them to stop, it probably won't be the PCs. And whether the nation has tried or not to actually seek out a peaceful solution, the PCs just aren't in any position to seek this out for themselves. They don't have the skills, and they don't have the authority. And that's assuming they can even manage to get an audience with the hostile leadership, which is far from guaranteed. Trying to negotiate can even be counter-productive, since if they manage anything, it could cause serious problems if then the official channels don't agree with what they've proposed, resulting in all parties feeling slighted.

Sure, movies that lean into "Just Like Us" will often have the protagonists surrender his weapons and go for a parley, and then for some reason the antagonists will always respect him or be honorable, or in the odd cases he's betrayed, he'll be miraculously spared by impossible planning or circumstances. Because that's the agenda the author wants to push forward, at the cost of realism. In reality, there would be a considerable chance that the situation goes as follows:

The party finally encounters a group of orc raiders they were seeking out, and as they prepare for battle, one of the heroes shouts out "Parley!" in orcish. Both parties freeze for a moment, then the orcs huddle up and whisper to each other for a moment. Finally, they turn to the adventurers and say: "very well! but if you wish to meet our leader, you must be disarmed and hooded!" Knowing this is their only chance to find a peaceful resolution to the raids, the party agrees. They are marched for half an hour, and then hear some orcs whispering to each other some more. Then, silence. Not a single word. Or sound, for that matter. As the heroes try to understand what's going on, one by one they are thrown off a cliff to their deaths, leaving the effects of the Silence spells only moments before splattering against the spiky stony ravine floor. The orcs laugh and rejoice at their easy loot and the splatter their victims have made.

Then the GM goes: Alright, roll up new characters!

Let's not forget that messengers were quite often punished for delivering bad news. Diplomats often faced gruesome fates. Trying is no guarantee of success. And this isn't even the worst case scenario, here the heroes got a quick death that overall had no negative side effects, other than giving the orcs a marginal quantity of loot. The orcs also could have enslaved the heroes, and tortured them for information, and then used that information to more effectively harm the ones the heroes would have otherwise been tasked to defend.

Don’t elementals that size have really good Str and attack bonuses? Especially since Titanium Elementals are probably closer to Earth Elementals than anything else(perhaps they have a higher Dexterity). Plus, they were launched through catapults, so that’s probably a good bonus to damage one way or another as well.

Let’s say that they had the offensive stats of a Huge Water Elemental, for conveniences’ sake. They have two slams with a +17 bonus that do 2d10+7 damage and Power Attack. With full Power Attack, they have a +5 bonus(irrelevant as empty spaces only have AC 5 anyways) and each slam does 2d10+19 points of damage. That’s 60 points of damage before hardness is applied, for EACH of them, and that’s not including the catapult bonus or if they had better physical stats(which they very well may have).

So yeah, it’s safe to say that most castles were not designed against tanking high-end summons.

That's not a lot of damage, and it's divided among many attacks. That said, the hardness is pretty low.

3.5D&D gives walls lots of hit points. The basic masonry wall has 90 hp per foot of thickness (and hardness 8), and other wall types have more hp, so it would take them a long time to bash down the walls if the rules were followed, not instant breaches.

With a mere 8 hardness, catapults can definitely, by RAW, break walls. Without any magic whatsoever. Give commoners pickaxes and enough turns, and they too can break a wall.

So yea, as another guy put it, D&D walls are pretty much made of papier mâché.

I've got to say "The hobgoblins steamrolled Azure City and Redcloak/Xykon had little to do with their success" is a very bizarre opinion that I keep seeing cropping up that I just can't understand from any reading of the text. Like, just listing off the things they did that I can remember:

1. Mobilised far more conscripts than any general who cared about their civilisation would
2. Used powerful magic to sweep over the magical instant warning towers so Azure City had no clue they were coming. This made them unable to summon troops from beyond the capital city, effectively giving them a decapitation strike that prevented them from having to face say, the armies that're probbably still guarding the border with the Red Dragon Empire and the assorted other unfriendly neighbours like in GDGU (Where the whole plot happens because Azure City's army is already stretched thin and cant afford a new front against the mountain hobgoblin tribes
3. Created "several hundred" ghouls, which is a factor that Hinjo was worried about and based the deployment of the city's low-level clerics on to try and counter
4. Forced all the senior paladins to completely remove themself and their magical powers from the battle in order to protect the Throne Room just by targeting the Gate
5. Created high-power elementals to tear up the city walls without fear of being counter-batteried like regular artillery
6. Forced the high level characters on the walls to allocate themself to counter an attack on multiple seperate fronts by...
7. creating 3 high powered undead warriors to lead each prong of the attack in the shell play
8. Killed the High Priest of the 12 Gods, who was being held in reserve as a counter to them and was clearly pretty damn powerful given that he seemed evenly matched with Redcloak and could cast Resurrection (The whole reason Redcloak fought him was in case he slaughtered many goblins)
9. Killed many other high level clerics and arcane spellcasters with a Chlorine Elemental (so cheap)
10. Killed the powerful diviner Sangwoon with the invisible zombie dragon (I dont really know much about her, but she had (maybe only one) 6th level spell, so she was no slouch)
11. After having forced the paladins out of the battle, slaughtered them en masse

And thats just the things I can think of them doing intentionally, let alone the unforseeable knockon effects of them in general like the hobgoblin city only being so successful because the Supreme Leader used the results Sapphire Guard's brutal hunt for Redcloak to sieze and consolidate power, or Miko murdering Soon and throwing the city into chaos the evening before the battle, or Tsukiko betraying Azure City because she's an undead fangirl.

1: the troops were there to be mobilized whenever an eventual Supreme Leader would be ready for them.
2: it's far from clear that advanced warning would have changed the tide of the battle. Getting all the troops outside of the city to return would have taken some time, they'd have raced against the hobgoblins. And those troops served a purpose, their withdrawal could have been exploited, wether by the hobgoblins or other hostile neighbors.
3: "several hundred ghouls" is not considerably game-changing in an army of several tens of thousands of hobgoblins. Ghouls are also just a CR1, with two hit dice (and no con bonus), pretty mediocre AC, pretty bad attack values, one ability that incubates for days (irrelevant) and a second ability that has a very low DC. They are better than lvl 1 hobgoblin warriors (who would actually have more AC, more damage than ghouls), but also probably much weaker than a sizable force of the hobgoblin army. By the monster manual, every 10 000 hobgoblin lvl 1 warriors should be accompanied by 500 lvl 3 hobgoblin sergeants, 16-33 lieutenants of lvl 4 or 5, and 15 leaders of level 6 to 8. And that's based on a "tribe" that caps at 300 pop, while it shows that the greater the population of the group, the higher the levels we can expect to find in them (due to better organization and resources, presumably). Those ghouls are a drop in the bucket.
4, 8, 9, 10: combined, even if high level, these are still very few people. Casters in particular would quickly run out of spells in such a prolonged fight. Even if each high level caster kills 500 hobgoblins, there are still too few of them for it to change the tides of the battle, given that 1) the hobgoblins have unshakable morale and never retreat and 2) the defenders have poor morale and readily do retreat.
5: the walls by RAW are made of papier mâché and wouldn't have resisted anyways, the elementals brought nothing to the table the army couldn't have managed with mundane means.
6, 7: these undead champions were killed pretty easily, and were not required for a three-front assault. Take for example the one that broke through the breach: we were shown just before his attack how desperate and worn out the defenders had become. The breach was imminent anyways.

[pendell]

Points on the battle for Azure City:

-- It was a very close run thing. Just before Redcloak summoned the great elephant and launched the final assault, he was almost killed by a projectile from the walls. If the hobgoblin general didn't have the presence of mind to push Redcloak out of the way, he'd have been killed. There would have been no fiendish elephant. Xykon would have continued into the throne room of the Sapphire Guard and been destroyed by the ghost-martyrs there. The hobgoblins , without the leader who had brought them here in the first place , would probably have fallen back and withdrawn. Perhaps they would have had a leader who could salvage the situation and capture the city anyway, but they wouldn't have Redcloak's firepower and would have had a lot more trouble in the Ultimate Battle Between Clerics.

So even with their leader absent and their forces in confusion, Azure City still came very, very close to winning the battle.

-- This isn't the middle ages. Azure city has artificial lighting and restaurants and a sewer. it's a fantasy world that substitutes magic for modern technology. A medieval army would have had a lot of problems with a walled city, but casters supply the place which would otherwise be filled by gunpowder and siege weapons.

A hobgoblin army -- or any other army -- wouldn't assault a fortified city without having at least a high-level caster or two. Redcloak was decisive; Xykon was not. Redcloak marshalled the army, planned and coordinated the assault, and participated directly in the battle as a caster. Xykon flew over the top , heading directly for the Gate, and would have been destroyed if Redcloak and Miko hadn't rescued him.

While Redcloak was decisive here, it doesn't follow that only he could have made this happen. Much of his power comes from the Scarlet Mantle, and he is not the first bearer. Nor is there anything preventing the hobgoblins from recruiting a mercenary caster to support them even if they cannot raise their own. Which seems kinda speciesist, actually.

The only reason this happened now and not at some point either in the future or past is plot convenience. Rich wanted a big battle at Azure City, and so events happened in story time.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Last_Riot]

Points on the battle for Azure City:

-- It was a very close run thing. Just before Redcloak summoned the great elephant and launched the final assault, he was almost killed by a projectile from the walls. If the hobgoblin general didn't have the presence of mind to push Redcloak out of the way, he'd have been killed. There would have been no fiendish elephant. Xykon would have continued into the throne room of the Sapphire Guard and been destroyed by the ghost-martyrs there. The hobgoblins , without the leader who had brought them here in the first place , would probably have fallen back and withdrawn. Perhaps they would have had a leader who could salvage the situation and capture the city anyway, but they wouldn't have Redcloak's firepower and would have had a lot more trouble in the Ultimate Battle Between Clerics.

So even with their leader absent and their forces in confusion, Azure City still came very, very close to winning the battle.

-- This isn't the middle ages. Azure city has artificial lighting and restaurants and a sewer. it's a fantasy world that substitutes magic for modern technology. A medieval army would have had a lot of problems with a walled city, but casters supply the place which would otherwise be filled by gunpowder and siege weapons.

A hobgoblin army -- or any other army -- wouldn't assault a fortified city without having at least a high-level caster or two. Redcloak was decisive; Xykon was not. Redcloak marshalled the army, planned and coordinated the assault, and participated directly in the battle as a caster. Xykon flew over the top , heading directly for the Gate, and would have been destroyed if Redcloak and Miko hadn't rescued him.

While Redcloak was decisive here, it doesn't follow that only he could have made this happen. Much of his power comes from the Scarlet Mantle, and he is not the first bearer. Nor is there anything preventing the hobgoblins from recruiting a mercenary caster to support them even if they cannot raise their own. Which seems kinda speciesist, actually.

The only reason this happened now and not at some point either in the future or past is plot convenience. Rich wanted a big battle at Azure City, and so events happened in story time.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

The former Supreme Leader was a cleric. And given the size of their nation, presumably a fairly high level one. The military leader he assassinated was clearly a very able combatant. There's no reason to believe he was the nation's only one.

They might not have had casters with 8th level spell slots, but they didn't need them. They /did/ have a large number of lvl5+ casters to use Animate Dead. And presumably a decent number of combatants with around 10 levels of PC classes. We didn't really see them because that wasn't the narrative focus of the story, but there's no reason to believe only the defenders had competent combatants and spellcasters, even if they probably had more and better ones.

Also, catapults don't do that much damage. Just as Tarquin survived falling from very high, off the Mechane, Redcloak would have survived that projectile.

Also don't forget that the invasion was a means to an end, and their primary objective was the gate, and that Redcloak had spiteful suicidal tactics that a hobgoblin leader would not have had.

A hobgoblin general intent on conquest or destruction of the city could have spammed siege engines, and ravaged the city with a much lower cost of his own forces. It's much harder to say how a prolonged siege would have played out, as we don't know enough of the diplomacy between the various neighboring nations (they did recognize Gobbotopia after all), but having the army wait out for an initial solid bombardment would have made the initial assault way less costly. Such an overwhelming force could easily greatly outnumber the defenders in terms of catapults, many of which they could build on the spot to bolster their numbers or replace losses. Destroying the walls by bombardment not only creates entrances, it also kills defenders. Missed shots that go over the walls also kill defender. They can also poison the water supply, and use various forms of biological warfare. They did manage to infiltrate the city defenses, after all. Those goblin ninjas could have been used to more devastating effect, if the invading army was willing to spread the assault over a week instead of taking the city in less than a day.

[pendell]

We know that Azure City was in a state of something little short of war with the Empire of the Dragon on their border. I suspect the Empire's approach to the siege would be "It's a shame they can't both lose." Wait for the two sides to mutually annihilate each other, then sweep in to pick up the pieces. I'm a little bit surprised they didn't try it in-story; perhaps the presence of an epic sorcerer lich deterred them.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Peelee]

The Mod on the Silver Mountain: Let's spoiler paid-only content, please.

[danielxcutter]

Using the rules for falling objects, the titanium elementals would've easily reached the damage cap (20d6) due to their weight alone. If we use the statblock of an Elder Earth Elemental and assume it gets 2 slams when it hits the wall, the wall is taking 20d6 (average 70) minus hardness is 62, plus 2d10+11 (average 22 per attack) minus hardness is 14, for a total of exactly 90 damage, instantly destroying a normal masonry wall half the time. Now if this is reinforced masonry, it only dealt nuked half of its HP, but I don't believe there's any indication the walls were especially reinforced.

You sure 20d6 is the limit? I know that's terminal velocity, but I'd imagine something big and heavy as the Titanium Elementals would probably have a higher cap.(And titanium's only lighter than stone or iron; it's still metal.)

Also to be fair, an EEE is probably a bit high. Redcloak was level 16 at the most and he summoned five, plus I'd imagine Titanium Elementals probably have better stats than their earthen counterparts; being lighter and just as strong suggests similar or equivalent Str scores and probably a higher Dex which probably leads to a higher-level spell needed for summoning. That's why I went with a Huge Water Elemental in my post.

Then the GM goes: Alright, roll up new characters!

It's late over here and my eyes are glazing over for more reasons than your argument, but I'm lucid enough to state that any DM who pulled that stunt needs to be bitchslapped in the face with the PHB. Preferably a hardback copy.

Points on the battle for Azure City:

-- It was a very close run thing. Just before Redcloak summoned the great elephant and launched the final assault, he was almost killed by a projectile from the walls. If the hobgoblin general didn't have the presence of mind to push Redcloak out of the way, he'd have been killed. There would have been no fiendish elephant. Xykon would have continued into the throne room of the Sapphire Guard and been destroyed by the ghost-martyrs there. The hobgoblins , without the leader who had brought them here in the first place , would probably have fallen back and withdrawn. Perhaps they would have had a leader who could salvage the situation and capture the city anyway, but they wouldn't have Redcloak's firepower and would have had a lot more trouble in the Ultimate Battle Between Clerics.

So even with their leader absent and their forces in confusion, Azure City still came very, very close to winning the battle.

-- This isn't the middle ages. Azure city has artificial lighting and restaurants and a sewer. it's a fantasy world that substitutes magic for modern technology. A medieval army would have had a lot of problems with a walled city, but casters supply the place which would otherwise be filled by gunpowder and siege weapons.

A hobgoblin army -- or any other army -- wouldn't assault a fortified city without having at least a high-level caster or two. Redcloak was decisive; Xykon was not. Redcloak marshalled the army, planned and coordinated the assault, and participated directly in the battle as a caster. Xykon flew over the top , heading directly for the Gate, and would have been destroyed if Redcloak and Miko hadn't rescued him.

While Redcloak was decisive here, it doesn't follow that only he could have made this happen. Much of his power comes from the Scarlet Mantle, and he is not the first bearer. Nor is there anything preventing the hobgoblins from recruiting a mercenary caster to support them even if they cannot raise their own. Which seems kinda speciesist, actually.

The only reason this happened now and not at some point either in the future or past is plot convenience. Rich wanted a big battle at Azure City, and so events happened in story time.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Nitpicks: the hobgoblin who pushed Redcloak away was a foot soldier, not the general, and I don't think the fiendish mammoth actually did much besides serving as a fancy mount.

Spoiler: SOD

Show

Also I'm not 100% sure the limits of what the Mantle can do. I know it grants knowledge of the Ritual, eternal youth and immunity to disease, plus something that lets a newly anointed cleric to one-shot a probably higher-leveled paladin, but not much else is clear. And bluntly speaking, most artifacts are piss compared to high-end magic items, even before epic levels.

[Bacon Elemental]

1: the troops were there to be mobilized whenever an eventual Supreme Leader would be ready for them.
2: it's far from clear that advanced warning would have changed the tide of the battle. Getting all the troops outside of the city to return would have taken some time, they'd have raced against the hobgoblins. And those troops served a purpose, their withdrawal could have been exploited, wether by the hobgoblins or other hostile neighbors.
3: "several hundred ghouls" is not considerably game-changing in an army of several tens of thousands of hobgoblins. Ghouls are also just a CR1, with two hit dice (and no con bonus), pretty mediocre AC, pretty bad attack values, one ability that incubates for days (irrelevant) and a second ability that has a very low DC. They are better than lvl 1 hobgoblin warriors (who would actually have more AC, more damage than ghouls), but also probably much weaker than a sizable force of the hobgoblin army. By the monster manual, every 10 000 hobgoblin lvl 1 warriors should be accompanied by 500 lvl 3 hobgoblin sergeants, 16-33 lieutenants of lvl 4 or 5, and 15 leaders of level 6 to 8. And that's based on a "tribe" that caps at 300 pop, while it shows that the greater the population of the group, the higher the levels we can expect to find in them (due to better organization and resources, presumably). Those ghouls are a drop in the bucket.
4, 8, 9, 10: combined, even if high level, these are still very few people. Casters in particular would quickly run out of spells in such a prolonged fight. Even if each high level caster kills 500 hobgoblins, there are still too few of them for it to change the tides of the battle, given that 1) the hobgoblins have unshakable morale and never retreat and 2) the defenders have poor morale and readily do retreat.
5: the walls by RAW are made of papier mâché and wouldn't have resisted anyways, the elementals brought nothing to the table the army couldn't have managed with mundane means.
6, 7: these undead champions were killed pretty easily, and were not required for a three-front assault. Take for example the one that broke through the breach: we were shown just before his attack how desperate and worn out the defenders had become. The breach was imminent anyways.

1: And if the suicidal assault had failed (As it nearly did) that entire goblin nation would have been obliterated by the loss and subsequent retalitory strike by the azurites, hence why I said only a leader who didnt give even the faintest of damns about the lives of his people could have ordered it
2: I really don't know how you can't say there's a difference in army mobilisation between finding out a huge mob army is coming for you a week or more in advance (Army base at Blueriver Fort would have also had warning etc) and finding out the night before the assault.
3:I admit I'm not closely familiar with dnd 3.5 but in exchange for 1 worse AC ghouls get more than twice the HP and paralysis *in addition* to the regular damage of their attacks, and in comic Hinjo is explicitly worried about the threat posed by ghouls paralysing the defenders. A few hundred special undead as a bonus also doesnt stop being an advantage just because the goblins have some senior warriors (Assuming the distribution of higher level characters is correct to rules anyway. There seems to be a large authorial weight pressing down on the level curve in OOTS in general. Azure City sure seems low on high level characters in general for a city that's TWENTY times the size requirement for Metropolis and 4 times as large as say, Baldur's Gate at its peak)
4/8/9/10: I mean it's adding nearly 100 spell-casters or part-spellcasters into the battle, which, as was pointed out, hinged around critical moments inflicted by SINGLE spellcasters at several moments.
5: Except for the fact that yknow, the azurites get to shoot at their siege engines first because they'd have to get within range to fire equivalently large boulders, which wouldn't also then get up and start tearing huge chunks out of the wall. What counter-fire the azurites did manage was demonstrably effective given that it killed the general of the army and nearly its overlord

6/7: Like the death knight that killed all the buffed, enlarged fifth-level elite soldiers that were being relied on to hold the breach and who had killed scores of goblins to the extent that it made a ramp up to their necks? And then blew up the rest of the platoon holding the breach, slew the city's general with a single stroke, and nearly finished off V before being killed by comedic effect?

Like it just seems that you have to contort everything into pretzels to make the claim that the hobgoblins defeated azure city on their own merit and it was something they could totally have always done at any moment and therefore they were the real power.

[danielxcutter]

No offense, people, I subscribe to "no the hobgoblins really did need Team Evil" line of thought as well, but the general isn't the one who shoved away Redcloak. He wasn't hit, went along with Redcloak on the fiendish mammoth, and was killed when the Gate blew up.

[Bacon Elemental]

No offense, people, I subscribe to "no the hobgoblins really did need Team Evil" line of thought as well, but the general isn't the one who shoved away Redcloak. He wasn't hit, went along with Redcloak on the fiendish mammoth, and was killed when the Gate blew up.

Whoops, my bad. He got pushed out of the way by that regular soldier too.

[pendell]

Nitpicks: the hobgoblin who pushed Redcloak away was a foot soldier, not the general, and I don't think the fiendish mammoth actually did much besides serving as a fancy mount.

I dunno if 3.5 has this rule, but it should be a morale check or a penalty to the defenders. My understanding is that the primary impact of elephants in the real world was psychological also; untrained troops would panic when facing them, but veterans learned to get out of the way and let the elephants go right through and off the battlefield. Which is one of the reasons they disappear from near eastern battlefields after a very short time.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Dion]

Ha ha ha! I love the efforts we go to in order to justify the claim the current goblin situation is just fine for the goblins.

Here’s my thought:

The number of hitpoints of a masonry wall compared to the damage of a titanium elemental is unlikely to be a subtle clue placed by The Giant to show us that the goblin situation is not as it seems.

The end of the book is unlikely to involve Roy realizing “hey, wait a minute. I’ve done all the calculations, and it turns out the hobgoblins could have knocked down the walls without the titanium elementals. The goblins are not the victims of repression after all! The Dark One lies!”

Edit: but who knows! The Giant might say, “How could I have made it any more obvious that TDO was a liar? Roy even has an architecture minor from fighter college! What else did you need to figure it out?”

[Last_Riot]

I dunno if 3.5 has this rule, but it should be a morale check or a penalty to the defenders. My understanding is that the primary impact of elephants in the real world was psychological also; untrained troops would panic when facing them, but veterans learned to get out of the way and let the elephants go right through and off the battlefield. Which is one of the reasons they disappear from near eastern battlefields after a very short time.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

This story is based on 3.5 D&D rules, and for anything, until shown otherwise, we should assume those rules apply.

And they don't grant elephants an Aura of Fear. Not even fiendish giant mammoths. And as stated by another, all the mammoth did was serve as a fancy mount.

Ha ha ha! I love the efforts we go to in order to justify the claim the current goblin situation is just fine for the goblins.

Here’s my thought:

The number of hitpoints a masonry wall compared to the damage of a titanium elemental is unlikely to be a subtle clue placed by The Giant to show us that the goblin situation is not as it seems.

The end of the book is unlikely to involve Roy realizing “hey, wait a minute. I’ve done all the calculations, and it turns out the hobgoblins could have knocked down the walls without the titanium elementals. The goblins are not the victims of repression after all! The Dark One lies!”

Of course they are generally repressed. As far as we are told, most goblinoid settlements never come to grow, being sacked before it grows too big. The hobgoblins that took Azure City show us what happens when they aren't repressed, though.

Let us not forget that the goblinoids were made by an evil god, made by design to breed fast and spread destruction, and have since adopted the worship of a different evil god, and routinely do evil in the name of Evil itself. They aren't "just like us". No human society has ever embraced "evil" as some kind of virtue, and committed it for its own sake. Even those practising otherwise reprehensible acts such as human sacrifice. Human society just can't work like that, it needs to consider itself good to function properly, even if that requires a lot of mental gymnastics.

[danielxcutter]

This story is based on 3.5 D&D rules, and for anything, until shown otherwise, we should assume those rules apply.

And they don't grant elephants an Aura of Fear. Not even fiendish giant mammoths. And as stated by another, all the mammoth did was serve as a fancy mount.

Well, by that logic there shouldn't have been any deserters when the army charged the breach because of no morale penalties.

Also I'm pretty sure that there are rules for mass combat in Heroes of Battle.

Of course they are generally repressed. As far as we are told, most goblinoid settlements never come to grow, being sacked before it grows too big. The hobgoblins that took Azure City show us what happens when they aren't repressed, though.

Let us not forget that the goblinoids were made by an evil god, made by design to breed fast and spread destruction, and have since adopted the worship of a different evil god, and routinely do evil in the name of Evil itself. They aren't "just like us". No human society has ever embraced "evil" as some kind of virtue, and committed it for its own sake. Even those practising otherwise reprehensible acts such as human sacrifice. Human society just can't work like that, it needs to consider itself good to function properly, even if that requires a lot of mental gymnastics.

{scrubbed} Goblins are not any more Evil than humans put in the exact same situation.

[hroþila]

Plenty of "Evil for Evil's sake" stuff going on in the largely human Empire of Blood. No it's not just the authorities.

[Last_Riot]

1: And if the suicidal assault had failed (As it nearly did) that entire goblin nation would have been obliterated by the loss and subsequent retalitory strike by the azurites, hence why I said only a leader who didnt give even the faintest of damns about the lives of his people could have ordered it
2: I really don't know how you can't say there's a difference in army mobilisation between finding out a huge mob army is coming for you a week or more in advance (Army base at Blueriver Fort would have also had warning etc) and finding out the night before the assault.
3:I admit I'm not closely familiar with dnd 3.5 but in exchange for 1 worse AC ghouls get more than twice the HP and paralysis *in addition* to the regular damage of their attacks, and in comic Hinjo is explicitly worried about the threat posed by ghouls paralysing the defenders. A few hundred special undead as a bonus also doesnt stop being an advantage just because the goblins have some senior warriors (Assuming the distribution of higher level characters is correct to rules anyway. There seems to be a large authorial weight pressing down on the level curve in OOTS in general. Azure City sure seems low on high level characters in general for a city that's TWENTY times the size requirement for Metropolis and 4 times as large as say, Baldur's Gate at its peak)
4/8/9/10: I mean it's adding nearly 100 spell-casters or part-spellcasters into the battle, which, as was pointed out, hinged around critical moments inflicted by SINGLE spellcasters at several moments.
5: Except for the fact that yknow, the azurites get to shoot at their siege engines first because they'd have to get within range to fire equivalently large boulders, which wouldn't also then get up and start tearing huge chunks out of the wall. What counter-fire the azurites did manage was demonstrably effective given that it killed the general of the army and nearly its overlord

6/7: Like the death knight that killed all the buffed, enlarged fifth-level elite soldiers that were being relied on to hold the breach and who had killed scores of goblins to the extent that it made a ramp up to their necks? And then blew up the rest of the platoon holding the breach, slew the city's general with a single stroke, and nearly finished off V before being killed by comedic effect?

Like it just seems that you have to contort everything into pretzels to make the claim that the hobgoblins defeated azure city on their own merit and it was something they could totally have always done at any moment and therefore they were the real power.

1: that's not certain at all. The hobgoblins also had fortifications they could withdraw to. Plus the various forts they siezed along the way. Plus, Azure City had rival nations to worry about, which could have very well exploited the failed invasion to march in themselves to "liberate" them. Additional counter-point, hobgoblins were shown to be just fine with marching to their deaths and risking their nations in the pursuit of conquest, on multiple occasions.

2: there is certainly potential for a difference. I'm just saying I don't think it'd be enough, and that we lack enough info to really measure what the difference could have been. The best case scenario some elaborated seems implausible to me. All nations (who in the comics recognized Gobbotopia) could have marched in for help, including the rival ones Azure City was so worried about it had to post parts of their army to deter, all paladins would have been out at the walls and not in the throne room (despite that they knew full well of the threat of the goblinoids to their gate and they were being invaded by... goblinoids, precisely), the clans would all have stood together to defend the city (when they constantly were shown as always acting out of self interest and not wanting to weaken themselves for the king). The "perfect defense" that Azure City could have theoretically pulled off just doesn't seem plausible given all the other info we've had about the situation, even if Team Evil is removed from the equation.

3: they do get more HP, which is good. The paralysis is a pretty strong effect, though how useful it is when the typical defender will 1) save about half the time and 2) have the potential to die one shot to normal attacks anyways, 2 at most? It's basically super unreliable overkill. If an enemy would die in one or 2 hits anyways, then it's not really changing much, and if the enemy is strong enough to take many hits, it's probably going to make the save pretty reliably, or otherwise just dodge the crappy attack.

4/8/9/10: As above, I'm far from convinced that the paladins would have left the throne room empty, even without Team Evil. They know about the prophecy about goblinoids coming for their gate. They tried to wipe out this very nation earlier before precisely because of this. Paladins also don't have any spells worth calling them even part spellcasters. As for the catapults, they are only shown having one per tower. That's only a handful of catapults. An army of 30 000 could easily field hundreds of catapults, heck, probably at least a thousand, if the attack was properly planned.

6/7: They had already lost 3 of the 13 pikemen. That line of low level clerics was bound to run out of spell slots pretty quickly. Also, without team evil there wouldn't be this admittedly pretty strong undead champion. But there also wouldn't be the Order of the Stick around to buff these soldiers and help defend the city. They were only there in passing, they had no intent to stick around forever. A hypothetical invasion by the hobgoblins without Team Evil would probably have happened a decade later or so.

I'm not refuting the fact that Team Evil had some positive contributions. The Death Knight was a pretty good example, as was the bypassing of the early warning. But I also say that Team Evil had several negative contributions, such as per their sloppy strategy which sacrificed a ton of troops in vain, and their reckless haste, which prevented the hobgoblins from taking the time needed to build the vast quantities of siege engines they otherwise could have used to both bombard the enemy and attack the walls more safely. Yes, that death knight made a lot of important kills. But it also required building a bridge with the corpses of their own troops before he could come into play. His contributions came at a pretty hefty price.

[Last_Riot]

Have you ACTUALLY READ any of this thread, any of the many comments Rich has explicitly mentioned about this topic? Goblins are not any more Evil than humans put in the exact same situation.

I don't recall him saying this exactly. I do recall him making statements along the lines that it's wrong to just kill them wholesale (all while also not clearly establishing that all the paladins who did so were in-world punished for these actions)

And regardless of what he said in his own name, his own depictions (somewhat to my surprise) don't actually support that. The goblinoids are, bar a few exceptions, shown as evil, living in evil societies. You do not see the same nuance in them as we see in evil human nations, such as the Empire of Blood, which does do evil actions and has evil leaders, but is very clearly shown as not being run by 100% comedically evil citizen.

Maybe he'll soon go on record stating he regrets his depictions of the goblinoids, I don't know, I wouldn't be so surprised. But he's actually made a pretty good display of them as actually inherently evil people, and not just people ushered into evil by circumstances.

Besides, if we talk about fantasy as a whole (and it can get a little confusing, I admit, because we constantly switch talking about the genre as a whole, and specific and quite distinct cases such as this comic, LotR, and more typical (Greyhawk/Faerun) D&D settings.

Plenty of "Evil for Evil's sake" stuff going on in the largely human Empire of Blood. No it's not just the authorities.

Source? I don't remember them building a society around an evil god (quite a leap from an evil queen), or justifying their acts by saying "hey, we are the Evil ones". They certainly do wanton evil, but aside from Malak's secret agenda, the nation as a whole doesn't put evil on a pedestal as some kind of thing to strive for.

[hungrycrow]

It's late over here and my eyes are glazing over for more reasons than your argument, but I'm lucid enough to state that any DM who pulled that stunt needs to be bitchslapped in the face with the PHB. Preferably a hardback copy.

Spoiler: 3.5 Adventure Path spoilers

Show

Something like this happens in RHoD. If the PCs try to talk to the giant invading hobgoblin army, the general just says screw negotiation and takes them prisoner. Of course instead of killing the PCs and mocking the players, the gm is supposed to set up an escape scene with all their equipment conveniently nearby.

[danielxcutter]

Spoiler: 3.5 Adventure Path spoilers

Show

Something like this happens in RHoD. If the PCs try to talk to the giant invading hobgoblin army, the general just says screw negotiation and takes them prisoner. Of course instead of killing the PCs and mocking the players, the gm is supposed to set up an escape scene with all their equipment conveniently nearby.

I read it a while back(don't tell my group :p), but while I get your point actually causing a TPK like that is total {scrubbed}.

[Fyraltari]

Source? I don't remember them building a society around an evil god (quite a leap from an evil queen), or justifying their acts by saying "hey, we are the Evil ones". They certainly do wanton evil, but aside from Malak's secret agenda, the nation as a whole doesn't put evil on a pedestal as some kind of thing to strive for.

I think they do.

[arimareiji]

Spoiler: 3.5 Adventure Path spoilers

Show

Something like this happens in RHoD. If the PCs try to talk to the giant invading hobgoblin army, the general just says screw negotiation and takes them prisoner. Of course instead of killing the PCs and mocking the players, the gm is supposed to set up an escape scene with all their equipment conveniently nearby.

I'm a weirdo -- I would actually feel insulted by this, unless something even remotely justifies it (like "they mistake one of the players for the defending ruler's offspring").

[pendell]

Spoiler: 3.5 Adventure Path spoilers

Show

Something like this happens in RHoD. If the PCs try to talk to the giant invading hobgoblin army, the general just says screw negotiation and takes them prisoner. Of course instead of killing the PCs and mocking the players, the gm is supposed to set up an escape scene with all their equipment conveniently nearby.

In fairness, the elves in the Resistance did something very similar to the hobgoblin they encountered in the prison raid in Azure City. Killing enemies out-of-hand is something that isn't restricted to goblinoids. I can easily imagine Tarquin's army arresting and torturing messengers no less than an orcish army might.

It's very plausible.

It happens in real-world armies too. In his book , CPT Macdonald (USA, Ret.) had incidents where he would send a surrendered prisoner back, only to have the escorts return in less than a quarter of the time required for a trip to the rear and back. The troops explained the prisoner had made a run for it. But he knew what had really happened. They knew he knew. And there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

You're not supposed to kill prisoners. But the enemy first needs to survive long enough to be taken prisoner, and that is not always an easy feat. Machine gunners and flamethrower operators, for example, have a tendency to die heroically, even with their hands up. The more the other army has reason to hate you, the less likely you'll survive to be captured. Heaven help you if they just found some of their mates with their throats cut nearby; no one's going to be a prisoner today or in the next few weeks, or maybe ever.


There's a big, big difference between people living in a peaceful society and people at war. People in war hate. It's a foundational mental state of war, and a survival characteristic. Soldiers who don't hate their enemies may hesitate and get themselves killed. So a big part of training is instilling in them a hatred of the enemy, to have both the willingness and ability to kill other creatures very like themselves. This book discusses in detail.

Some here say they would be insulted if a DM simply killed negotiators out of hand, but to me that is actually the most plausible outcome in a war between human enemies who have fought for centuries, whose hatred is bone-deep. That's part of why peace-making is so hard. Because it is very easy to make people hate, and very hard to make them let go of it once they have. In point of fact, I think it unlikely a generation that has been so instilled will ever un-learn it once it's set. It will be for their children's children , who did not grow up in the horror of a war, to learn to care for their former enemy as fellow humans again.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[danielxcutter]

I'm a weirdo -- I would actually feel insulted by this, unless something even remotely justifies it (like "they mistake one of the players for the defending ruler's offspring").

Well yeah, there are a few points in that adventure path that can feel like punishing the players for their choices like that. I can see "the only real progress that negotiation brings is that the army has no interest in negotiation", more or less, but that's a bit harsh.

And really, that has nothing to do with them being goblins.

[hungrycrow]

I'm a weirdo -- I would actually feel insulted by this, unless something even remotely justifies it (like "they mistake one of the players for the defending ruler's offspring").

Insulted by the idea of diplomacy leading the players into a trap? Or of the BBEG taking them prisoner when he should just kill them?

[Rrmcklin]

Source? I don't remember them building a society around an evil god (quite a leap from an evil queen), or justifying their acts by saying "hey, we are the Evil ones". They certainly do wanton evil, but aside from Malak's secret agenda, the nation as a whole doesn't put evil on a pedestal as some kind of thing to strive for.

Do you have a source for your claim? Because we certainly haven't seen goblinoids at large do what you describe either. And worshiping an evil god is not that either, because going by the rules non-evil people can still worship evil gods

[dancrilis]

I'm a weirdo -- I would actually feel insulted by this, unless something even remotely justifies it (like "they mistake one of the players for the defending ruler's offspring").

Without knowing the adventure path I don't think it is unreasonable.

DM (Narrating): The nation has been invaded by a monsterous horde of hobgoblins (or anyone else) who are pillaging all they find and are making their way to the capital.
DM (King): You must help us adventurers - go and assassinate their leaders, or secure our allies to our defence, or kill all of them with a pointy stick, or something ...
Bard Player: I have maxxed charisma and diplomacy - I am going to talk to them, I will have my own hobgoblin army (or any other army) in an hour or two tops.
DM: ...
DM (Narrating): Three hours later you wake in a cell in the hobgoblin camp ( (or other camp), the smell of urine ripe in your nose and your clothes stained in the filth of the cells former occupier.
Bard Player: But ... I didn't ... this is railroading!
DM: One good diplomacy roll is not going to convince the hobgoblin general (or any general) to abandon the plans he has spent decades developing, just no.

[Fyraltari]

It probably should convince him to let the negotiators go free, though.