I need help reasoning out what the enemy would do in this situation. Basically, there is a "gate" which acts as a portal between two places on the material plane. There was a group of enemy NPCs and bound slaves waiting at this inactivated portal (we'll say Side A) and my PCs killed all of them. As the gate was activated from the other side (Side B), my PCs hid and ambushed the yuan-ti that came into the room and have nearly defeated them. With the gate still open, would the yuan-ti on the other side be more likely to send a reinforcements when their colleagues don't return, or cut their losses and just close the gate? Or maybe something else? The yuan-ti forces on Side B are more than enough to overrun and capture the PCs, but that seems a bit too railroad-y to me, but I'm not too convinced the yuan-ti would give up so easily, either.
As a side note: The gate can only be "turned off" on the same side it was activated, meaning PCs would have to teleport to Side B, stop the mechanism, then quickly hop back to Side A before the portal closes.
The yuan-ti took advantage of their great intelligence during battle, planning traps and making excellent use of their surroundings. They favored ambushes over direct attacks. If in groups, they sent their least valuable members forward first, meaning that purebloods advanced before halfbloods who advanced before abominations.
Yuan-ti favored bladed weapons. They used slow-acting poisons in their elaborate traps but not typically on their blades.
This passage is the biggest help to your query. The idea that they would stand and fight, to the death, is relatively improbable. I would say that at least one of their rank would fall back to let the group on the B side know of the situation. From there, depending on the time frame they have to work with, set up something to trap the interlopers or shut down the portal.
All very good points. I guess I should elaborate a little more. I was planning on having one try to escape if my players engaged, but I can't. One of my players used their dragonborn racial feat to inflict fear on all the enemies (even though yuan-ti don't have emotions, they're not "immune" in their stat blocks so I felt the need to honor that) so the yuan-ti cannot retreat as they can't approach the source of fear. This was all done on the surprise round.
So, we know what's going on with the side A group and side B needs to respond to this situation in a fairly "realistic" manner.
This is something they've done more than once, the transition should take X amount of time with a grace due to unruly prisoners. The low ranking Yuan-Ti are the ones tasked to travel through the portal. If the low ranking team doesn't return in the designated time frame and/or the slaves/slavers don't start through the portal in that time, how would the higher ranking Yuan-Ti handle the situation.
I'd say if there's no traffic through the portal in 10 rounds, a full minute, then a new Yuan-ti would show up, see the debacle, and quickly retreat. The fear effect could drop any time during that minute, where one of the yuan-ti could run through the portal. The slavers, knowing who they're dealing with, could choose to run through the portal or run away. The slaves...run away or hide. Have fun, make this as crazy as possible with people running about scared, confused and disorderly.
I need help reasoning out what the enemy would do in this situation. Basically, there is a "gate" which acts as a portal between two places on the material plane. There was a group of enemy NPCs and bound slaves waiting at this inactivated portal (we'll say Side A) and my PCs killed all of them. As the gate was activated from the other side (Side B), my PCs hid and ambushed the yuan-ti that came into the room and have nearly defeated them. With the gate still open, would the yuan-ti on the other side be more likely to send a reinforcements when their colleagues don't return, or cut their losses and just close the gate? Or maybe something else? The yuan-ti forces on Side B are more than enough to overrun and capture the PCs, but that seems a bit too railroad-y to me, but I'm not too convinced the yuan-ti would give up so easily, either.
As a side note: The gate can only be "turned off" on the same side it was activated, meaning PCs would have to teleport to Side B, stop the mechanism, then quickly hop back to Side A before the portal closes.
This passage is the biggest help to your query. The idea that they would stand and fight, to the death, is relatively improbable. I would say that at least one of their rank would fall back to let the group on the B side know of the situation. From there, depending on the time frame they have to work with, set up something to trap the interlopers or shut down the portal.
All very good points. I guess I should elaborate a little more. I was planning on having one try to escape if my players engaged, but I can't. One of my players used their dragonborn racial feat to inflict fear on all the enemies (even though yuan-ti don't have emotions, they're not "immune" in their stat blocks so I felt the need to honor that) so the yuan-ti cannot retreat as they can't approach the source of fear. This was all done on the surprise round.
So, we know what's going on with the side A group and side B needs to respond to this situation in a fairly "realistic" manner.
This is something they've done more than once, the transition should take X amount of time with a grace due to unruly prisoners. The low ranking Yuan-Ti are the ones tasked to travel through the portal. If the low ranking team doesn't return in the designated time frame and/or the slaves/slavers don't start through the portal in that time, how would the higher ranking Yuan-Ti handle the situation.
I'd say if there's no traffic through the portal in 10 rounds, a full minute, then a new Yuan-ti would show up, see the debacle, and quickly retreat. The fear effect could drop any time during that minute, where one of the yuan-ti could run through the portal. The slavers, knowing who they're dealing with, could choose to run through the portal or run away. The slaves...run away or hide. Have fun, make this as crazy as possible with people running about scared, confused and disorderly.