Ok. New DM here running a Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire peak campaign. Because my players had trouble with the quests (since there are only 3 of them and I didn't think of giving them a sidekick at the begining), I put the sidekicks from Dragon of Icespire Peak as NPC in Phandalin. Which means that when the PC went to convince people to join up to fight against the Redbrands, there were like other 7-8 people who were combat capable like them. They are on the night that they decided to take the town back and lured 4 Redbrand Ruffians and 4 Redbrand Recruits (I used the Bandit stat block, since the ruffians have no ranged attacks they would have been sitting ducks otherwise as they decided to shoot them from the rooftops) that were gunned down by the 3 PC and 7 sidekicks.
The redbrands know something is up now and there are 20 (random number I came up on the spot) gatheirng in the Sleeping Giant taphouse. Glasstaff is probably in their hideout. The Nothic is dead, killed by the PC when they escaped from the Redbrand's prison (since they were captured when they infiltrated it before).
So the questions are: 1- How to handdle the Sleeping Giant fight? 2- How to handle the hideout fight.
The sleeping giant has two issues. The first is how to calculate what type of monsters to use. If I take the sidekicks as equal level characters, a Hard encounter would be be worth 1500 xp, but the DMG says that if there are several monsters then you have to multiply their total xp. If you take the math as given, then 15 Bandits (CR 1/8) should be a hard encounter to 10 level 2 characters, which does not feel right. On the other hand, there would be a lot of combatants which means a lot of rolls. I would probably give them players control over the sidekicks just so that they don't get bored waiting for their turn. So I would have a lot of monsters and no clue how to calculate what would be apropriate.
On the other hand, there is also a chance that they take a 10 people strong party into the redbrand hideout, after most of the redbrands are said to be outside of it, which leads me to belive that Glasstaff might be f*cked. Specially since there is a bit of resentment against Glasstaf because when he tried to run when they first attacked the hideout, his secret passage lead to him accidentally flanking the party and take them out one by one with magic missiles when they were already in a losing fight against 2 ruffians and 3 bugbears. So he left an impression and they think him a tad stronger than his stat block suggests.
If they decide to attack the Sleeping giant first (they are 27 xp away from level 3 so they might want to level up before confronting Glasstaff) then he runs away and leaves a bobby trapped hideout (I was thinking that he might have raised a strong undead to replace the Nothic, either a Ghast or Wight with the body of Thel Dendral or a Ghost of the previous owner of the manor and then set the place to either burn down with them inside or fill with poison, having them make con saves that the undead wouldn't have to since it doesn't breathe) but I need some way for him to be a threat to that many people if they come first. Maybe he could make sure to funnel them to a small space and use the fireball scroll to hurt most of them? Maybe say that he altered the necrotic preservation spell from the crevice so that it does damage to act as a moat or something?
My point is, I would really apreciate ideas about how to handle this or make this threatening for the players (or at least some criteria to decide when the monsters chosen are too much or too little) and how to make Iarno Albreek reasonably deal with a numerical superior force (whether they reach the hideout before he escapes or he traps it as revenge)
Edit: Ok, so reading a bit better, if some of the monsters have too low CR compared to the others (read, the bandits AKA Redbrand recruits) then I don't add them to the calculation, so each recruit would still count as 25 xp instead of 100, as long as there are some monsters who are a lot stronger and those do count for the calculation? So if I had 4 CR 1 monsters and 8 CR 1/8 monsters, it would be 200(CR 1 xp)*4(number of them)*2(3-6 monsters multiplier)+8*25(CR 1/8 xp)=1800 xp
It feels like you have an arms race problem. Having 7 friendly npcs is a lot, and taking on 20 enemy in one location is a pain to play, especially if that results in a straight combat scene. Especially when we are talking about 2nd level characters, they no longer sound like the heroes the story is written about, but some supporting people who happened to be there while a town fought off bandits.
One way to handle it would be to turn the attack into a story event rather than fully played out. Battle rages in a pitched melee, but the party are given the task of holding the backdoor to make sure no one escapes. Glasstaff and a few mates make a break for it in the confusion and the party have a 4 on 4 fight in the courtyard behind. If they win, the main battle has wrapped up, losses on both sides and the remaining bandits surrender when their leader fled. Then if they happen to go to the mansion first, you can just say its abandoned and have all of them together at the one climatic fight.
Alright then. I just ran the session last night and after a six hours ordeal consisting of three combat encounters, I thought that I would at least recount what happened so the future new DM don't make the same mistake. At least I have already told my players that this was a special ocassion because they were kicking a gang out of town and the NPC don't think it merits to gang together to that extend to handle normal situations. Also, the sessions would be too long otherwise.
So, context. LMOP/DOIP campaign in which the sidekicks were NPC around town instead of given at the begining. First tip: Don't do that. Second tip, if you do that, choose which ones you would give the party and use those instead of all of them. Like, choose an expert, a spellcaster and a warrior and only introduce the others after the one from the same class dies.
So, in the campaign, the party learns that the redbrand terrorize the town. It makes no sense to them (rightly so) that there are fight capable people that don't fight back, so they ask Daran Eldermath (retired adventurer who didn't fight the Redbrands because all his retirement money is invested in his orchard and they would burn it down in retaliation) to gather like minded individuals to kick out the redbrands in 3 days time. Enough time for them to do a sidequest, which turned out to be Gnomengarde, in which they bought an autoreloading crossbow platform to use against the redbrands.
The meeting day came and so the 3 player party and 9 NPC meet. On the way back from Gnomengarde, the party learnt that the Redbrands had set a meeting at an inn a day away from town to sell some townsfolk they had imprisonned. They waited until the meeting to tell the others so Daran Eldermath and Inverna Nightbreeze had to rush out on Daran's two horse to save them. IN HINDSIGHT I should have gathered like, 5 horses, to reduce the possible party members even further and because 2 NPC are unlikely to succeed in the rescue. Anyways, I will probably have them fail and be captured and one of them replaced with one of the 2 doppelganger of the campaign.
Then we come to last week session in which they lured a bunch of Redbrands to the plaza (4 ruffians [CR 1/2 but with no ranged attacks] and 4 bandits [CR 1/8]). The barbarian acted as bait to lure them from ransacking Eldermath's orchard (someone had told the redbrand's that the meeting was there to disguise the real location and to ensure there was a group they could attack near the plaza; without telling Daran of course) and then the rest mowed them down by shooting them from the rooftops with a 10 people party, including the repeating crossbow platform thy bought. Which is where last night's session began.
The first encounter of the night was 1 ruffian and 8 bandits taking some townsfolk out of their houses as hostages (which according to the DMG would make it equivalent to a 700 xp encounter). The party handled it by having their dragonborn barbarian distract the redbrands by playing the banjo with a nat 20 performance check while the others (a human wizard and a halfling rogue) snuck around behind them. The human wizard remembered to bring an expert sidekick and the rogue a warrior sidekick, so it was like a 5 person level 2 party. The encounter started well enough, but while the wizard attacked with spells and sidekick and then hid behind a house, the rogue, being new to the game, has the bad habit of leaving their character in the open. It was left as the only character easily accessible for most of the enemies which lead to concentrated fire taking her down. My players then commented how it was weird that the other sidekicks weren't part of combat, to which I said they were far away, to which they responded that they would use the dash action to bring them closer. Anyways, the combat ended without them getting involved and with the rogue down and the barbarian somewhat hurt since it carried damage from last session. They were reluctant to use a spell slot from their only healer (another sidekick) so they confiscated a healing potion from a NPC so that they could continue.
For the second encounter, they made a point of clarifying that they would attack using all their sidekicks. Which is how a ten person party ganged up on a thugh (CR 1/2) and two bandits (CR 1/8) while another bandit ran away to warn the other redbrands (I know it looks very low but they all had ranged attacks, cover, and it was balanced for a weaker party and to cover the retreat of another group to the gang's headquarters as a clue about where they were). The redbrands lasted longer that they had any right to do, but mostly because it took long to position the players.
Anyways, third encounter and the one that took the longers. A group of Redbrands (a few thugs and bandits plus a spy as a captain and a CR 1/2 brawler special unit) holed up inside a bar and were supposed to use ranged attacks to ward off the party. The brawler would then propose a 1vs1 fight to settle things. Unfortunately, the barbarian was the more likely one to accept that but deemed it too risky since they were still hurt. In the end it turnerd into a shot out with them exchanging arrow fire (thugs shooting from windows and behind barricade to have cover, players shooting arrows and then hiding behind houses across the street) while the barbarian tried to sneak inside from behind the house. The first part of the fight would probably had turned to have no casualties among the players if not for two things. The first was that the rogue's bad habit of leaving their character in the open while everyone else hid behind houses and away from the enemy line of fire struck again. Which means that in the first turn the rogue and the sidekick she controled (the healer) were the only ones that could be shot by six enemies and were taken down. The second is that I had written that in case the players stuck with using a 10 people party then redbrand reinforcements would come from behind them with potions of invisibility that Glasstaff finally managed to make. So a Spy, 2 ruffians and 1 thug managed to attack from behind and take out some of the sidekicks.
Anyways, long story short: First few turns of the fight were a slog, then people died and became a lot more fast paced. I had to give them an extra sidekick I had planted among some hostages the redbrands had in order to avoid a wipeout. It ended with a badly injured barbarian, an unhurt warlock (the new sidekick who joined after most people died) and a somewhat injured expert sidekick being the only ones standing on the player side, and this relied mostly on the expert using their cunning action to either use dash and attack with a bow if their current opponent used melee atacks or, if they used ranged ones, stand next to them to give them disadvantage, then disengage to get away and attack with their bow on their turn before standing next to them again (come to think of it, can you make an opportunity attack with a bow? that doesn't sound right).
The dragonborn did set the bar on fire and tried to trap some redbrands inside, but the idea came to him when there were only two of them left and one remained outside to fight the expert so it was just a bit of gratuituous arson.
To cap the night with a last mistake, I didn't roll saving throws for unconscious players and sidekicks during the fight to avoid the fight dragging and let them use a first aid kit on them after it. A completely missed opportunity to kill off some sidekicks so that this doesn't have a chance of happening again and to add more tension to the encounter, but I felt it was already hard enough without them having to use actions trying to stabilize their teammates. At least the kit didn't have enough charges for all of them so one of the sidekicks ended up dying anyways.
So, as a summary:
1- Don't give them a chance to have a ton of sidekicks at the same time.
2- If you did give them the chance, give them a time sensitive task that happens at the same time a few days away and a way to get people there on time. Especifically, a way to get as many people as you need to remove to make the encounters balanced there. Ten people party? Then you need 5 people somewhare else at the same time. Also make it something that can't be avoided by making it personal to some of the sidekicks so that they have to leave no matter what.
3- If you didn't manage to get many away, find a way to split the party. Give two tasks that have to be stopped asap. Hostages are bad for this, since they mean that they want them alive. They should have started outright executing people as retaliation or kidnapped important character and tried to leave town. Hopefully this means they split the party.
4- If they insist on not splitting the party, rather than planning encounters balanced for that many people, have normal encounters but with a gimmick that give the enemies a surprise round that can wither down the sidekicks. Invisible opponents that gang up on one or two of them to kill them in the first round, one use spell scrolls that can take down some of them immediately, a sudden wall of fire or collapse that divides the group in two so that you only have to fight half of them and the others suffer loses due to narrative, etc.
5- Explain to the players the issue and have them meet you halfway (This should be further up in the list, actually)
6- If they insist, stand your ground. If you are a wet noddle like me, take any chance you can to kill sidekicks.
ANYWAYS, back to the campaign. I already told them they can get at most 2 sidekicks at the same time from now on to bring up the party up to 5 characters. Next session they will have to rest after that fight since they are in no condition to keep fighting. Since in the last 2 session they ended up killing like 35 redbrands, the gang is finished so Glasstaff will run away without fighting them. Since they have to rest, he actually has time to take his notes and leave no clues.
The barbarian already asked me for more chances to roleplay so next session should probably focus on that, so I would appreciate ideas for that. I was thinking a conversation with the warlock that helped them (especifically, about why it waited so long), the people of phandalin burying the redbrand corpses, Halia thornton speaking to them about them deciding not to keep their deal (assassinating Glasstaff so that someone loyal to her could take over the redbrands, instead they went for total anhilination), some comments about how they had some many wounded that they are short on healing potions (to go into the umbrage hill quest later), the doppelganger pretending to be Daran coming back to town and claiming that they failed the mission and Inverna died... I probably need more stuff, since I am actually bad at roleplay.
The other thing I would like would be for Glasstaff to leave a surprise in the hideout for them. Go full bond villain and filling it with poison with maybe undead guards or making it collapse. Any ideas regarding that? The closest they have come to fighting Glasstaff was when they tried to invade their hideout for the first time and his escape tunnel accidentally caused him to flank them and ensuring the fight they were having with his minions ended in a lose since he finished them off with magic missiles. They also never reched his laboratory so they don't know of his invisibility potion research and thus think it was due to a spell. So they might think he is stronger than he actually is, which means I have a chance to make him a bigger villain than he was by making him that annoying guy who always shows up when the party is in dire straits and I am warming up to the idea.
"It makes no sense to them (rightly so) that there are fight capable people that don't fight back" Why are there fight capable people at all? Phandalen was described as a small mining village, not really the place to find warriors and wizards hanging out. In our campaign it was simply said the population was made up of miners and their families, so no one wanted to fight for fear of retaliation.
It was a series of mistakes on my part. U had not given sidekicks at the begining and they were having trouble with the fights, so I thought it would be a good idea to, instead if letting them decide ooc which sidekick to use or selecting two or three myself, to have all of them appear at one point or another in phandalin kind of like interviews. So when they asked if there was anyone in town that could fight (since Sildar reccomended they get someone else to round up their group) and they were pointed to several people...
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Ok. New DM here running a Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire peak campaign. Because my players had trouble with the quests (since there are only 3 of them and I didn't think of giving them a sidekick at the begining), I put the sidekicks from Dragon of Icespire Peak as NPC in Phandalin. Which means that when the PC went to convince people to join up to fight against the Redbrands, there were like other 7-8 people who were combat capable like them. They are on the night that they decided to take the town back and lured 4 Redbrand Ruffians and 4 Redbrand Recruits (I used the Bandit stat block, since the ruffians have no ranged attacks they would have been sitting ducks otherwise as they decided to shoot them from the rooftops) that were gunned down by the 3 PC and 7 sidekicks.
The redbrands know something is up now and there are 20 (random number I came up on the spot) gatheirng in the Sleeping Giant taphouse. Glasstaff is probably in their hideout. The Nothic is dead, killed by the PC when they escaped from the Redbrand's prison (since they were captured when they infiltrated it before).
So the questions are: 1- How to handdle the Sleeping Giant fight? 2- How to handle the hideout fight.
The sleeping giant has two issues. The first is how to calculate what type of monsters to use. If I take the sidekicks as equal level characters, a Hard encounter would be be worth 1500 xp, but the DMG says that if there are several monsters then you have to multiply their total xp. If you take the math as given, then 15 Bandits (CR 1/8) should be a hard encounter to 10 level 2 characters, which does not feel right. On the other hand, there would be a lot of combatants which means a lot of rolls. I would probably give them players control over the sidekicks just so that they don't get bored waiting for their turn. So I would have a lot of monsters and no clue how to calculate what would be apropriate.
On the other hand, there is also a chance that they take a 10 people strong party into the redbrand hideout, after most of the redbrands are said to be outside of it, which leads me to belive that Glasstaff might be f*cked. Specially since there is a bit of resentment against Glasstaf because when he tried to run when they first attacked the hideout, his secret passage lead to him accidentally flanking the party and take them out one by one with magic missiles when they were already in a losing fight against 2 ruffians and 3 bugbears. So he left an impression and they think him a tad stronger than his stat block suggests.
If they decide to attack the Sleeping giant first (they are 27 xp away from level 3 so they might want to level up before confronting Glasstaff) then he runs away and leaves a bobby trapped hideout (I was thinking that he might have raised a strong undead to replace the Nothic, either a Ghast or Wight with the body of Thel Dendral or a Ghost of the previous owner of the manor and then set the place to either burn down with them inside or fill with poison, having them make con saves that the undead wouldn't have to since it doesn't breathe) but I need some way for him to be a threat to that many people if they come first. Maybe he could make sure to funnel them to a small space and use the fireball scroll to hurt most of them? Maybe say that he altered the necrotic preservation spell from the crevice so that it does damage to act as a moat or something?
My point is, I would really apreciate ideas about how to handle this or make this threatening for the players (or at least some criteria to decide when the monsters chosen are too much or too little) and how to make Iarno Albreek reasonably deal with a numerical superior force (whether they reach the hideout before he escapes or he traps it as revenge)
Edit: Ok, so reading a bit better, if some of the monsters have too low CR compared to the others (read, the bandits AKA Redbrand recruits) then I don't add them to the calculation, so each recruit would still count as 25 xp instead of 100, as long as there are some monsters who are a lot stronger and those do count for the calculation? So if I had 4 CR 1 monsters and 8 CR 1/8 monsters, it would be 200(CR 1 xp)*4(number of them)*2(3-6 monsters multiplier)+8*25(CR 1/8 xp)=1800 xp
It feels like you have an arms race problem. Having 7 friendly npcs is a lot, and taking on 20 enemy in one location is a pain to play, especially if that results in a straight combat scene. Especially when we are talking about 2nd level characters, they no longer sound like the heroes the story is written about, but some supporting people who happened to be there while a town fought off bandits.
One way to handle it would be to turn the attack into a story event rather than fully played out. Battle rages in a pitched melee, but the party are given the task of holding the backdoor to make sure no one escapes. Glasstaff and a few mates make a break for it in the confusion and the party have a 4 on 4 fight in the courtyard behind. If they win, the main battle has wrapped up, losses on both sides and the remaining bandits surrender when their leader fled. Then if they happen to go to the mansion first, you can just say its abandoned and have all of them together at the one climatic fight.
Honestly, I'd just tell them they can't have 7 sidekicks. They get one - to round out the party to 4, as the game is balanced for.
This is d&d, not a war game, and if they want army vs army fights, you should probably be playing a different game.
Alright then. I just ran the session last night and after a six hours ordeal consisting of three combat encounters, I thought that I would at least recount what happened so the future new DM don't make the same mistake. At least I have already told my players that this was a special ocassion because they were kicking a gang out of town and the NPC don't think it merits to gang together to that extend to handle normal situations. Also, the sessions would be too long otherwise.
So, context. LMOP/DOIP campaign in which the sidekicks were NPC around town instead of given at the begining. First tip: Don't do that. Second tip, if you do that, choose which ones you would give the party and use those instead of all of them. Like, choose an expert, a spellcaster and a warrior and only introduce the others after the one from the same class dies.
So, in the campaign, the party learns that the redbrand terrorize the town. It makes no sense to them (rightly so) that there are fight capable people that don't fight back, so they ask Daran Eldermath (retired adventurer who didn't fight the Redbrands because all his retirement money is invested in his orchard and they would burn it down in retaliation) to gather like minded individuals to kick out the redbrands in 3 days time. Enough time for them to do a sidequest, which turned out to be Gnomengarde, in which they bought an autoreloading crossbow platform to use against the redbrands.
The meeting day came and so the 3 player party and 9 NPC meet. On the way back from Gnomengarde, the party learnt that the Redbrands had set a meeting at an inn a day away from town to sell some townsfolk they had imprisonned. They waited until the meeting to tell the others so Daran Eldermath and Inverna Nightbreeze had to rush out on Daran's two horse to save them. IN HINDSIGHT I should have gathered like, 5 horses, to reduce the possible party members even further and because 2 NPC are unlikely to succeed in the rescue. Anyways, I will probably have them fail and be captured and one of them replaced with one of the 2 doppelganger of the campaign.
Then we come to last week session in which they lured a bunch of Redbrands to the plaza (4 ruffians [CR 1/2 but with no ranged attacks] and 4 bandits [CR 1/8]). The barbarian acted as bait to lure them from ransacking Eldermath's orchard (someone had told the redbrand's that the meeting was there to disguise the real location and to ensure there was a group they could attack near the plaza; without telling Daran of course) and then the rest mowed them down by shooting them from the rooftops with a 10 people party, including the repeating crossbow platform thy bought. Which is where last night's session began.
The first encounter of the night was 1 ruffian and 8 bandits taking some townsfolk out of their houses as hostages (which according to the DMG would make it equivalent to a 700 xp encounter). The party handled it by having their dragonborn barbarian distract the redbrands by playing the banjo with a nat 20 performance check while the others (a human wizard and a halfling rogue) snuck around behind them. The human wizard remembered to bring an expert sidekick and the rogue a warrior sidekick, so it was like a 5 person level 2 party. The encounter started well enough, but while the wizard attacked with spells and sidekick and then hid behind a house, the rogue, being new to the game, has the bad habit of leaving their character in the open. It was left as the only character easily accessible for most of the enemies which lead to concentrated fire taking her down. My players then commented how it was weird that the other sidekicks weren't part of combat, to which I said they were far away, to which they responded that they would use the dash action to bring them closer. Anyways, the combat ended without them getting involved and with the rogue down and the barbarian somewhat hurt since it carried damage from last session. They were reluctant to use a spell slot from their only healer (another sidekick) so they confiscated a healing potion from a NPC so that they could continue.
For the second encounter, they made a point of clarifying that they would attack using all their sidekicks. Which is how a ten person party ganged up on a thugh (CR 1/2) and two bandits (CR 1/8) while another bandit ran away to warn the other redbrands (I know it looks very low but they all had ranged attacks, cover, and it was balanced for a weaker party and to cover the retreat of another group to the gang's headquarters as a clue about where they were). The redbrands lasted longer that they had any right to do, but mostly because it took long to position the players.
Anyways, third encounter and the one that took the longers. A group of Redbrands (a few thugs and bandits plus a spy as a captain and a CR 1/2 brawler special unit) holed up inside a bar and were supposed to use ranged attacks to ward off the party. The brawler would then propose a 1vs1 fight to settle things. Unfortunately, the barbarian was the more likely one to accept that but deemed it too risky since they were still hurt. In the end it turnerd into a shot out with them exchanging arrow fire (thugs shooting from windows and behind barricade to have cover, players shooting arrows and then hiding behind houses across the street) while the barbarian tried to sneak inside from behind the house. The first part of the fight would probably had turned to have no casualties among the players if not for two things. The first was that the rogue's bad habit of leaving their character in the open while everyone else hid behind houses and away from the enemy line of fire struck again. Which means that in the first turn the rogue and the sidekick she controled (the healer) were the only ones that could be shot by six enemies and were taken down. The second is that I had written that in case the players stuck with using a 10 people party then redbrand reinforcements would come from behind them with potions of invisibility that Glasstaff finally managed to make. So a Spy, 2 ruffians and 1 thug managed to attack from behind and take out some of the sidekicks.
Anyways, long story short: First few turns of the fight were a slog, then people died and became a lot more fast paced. I had to give them an extra sidekick I had planted among some hostages the redbrands had in order to avoid a wipeout. It ended with a badly injured barbarian, an unhurt warlock (the new sidekick who joined after most people died) and a somewhat injured expert sidekick being the only ones standing on the player side, and this relied mostly on the expert using their cunning action to either use dash and attack with a bow if their current opponent used melee atacks or, if they used ranged ones, stand next to them to give them disadvantage, then disengage to get away and attack with their bow on their turn before standing next to them again (come to think of it, can you make an opportunity attack with a bow? that doesn't sound right).
The dragonborn did set the bar on fire and tried to trap some redbrands inside, but the idea came to him when there were only two of them left and one remained outside to fight the expert so it was just a bit of gratuituous arson.
To cap the night with a last mistake, I didn't roll saving throws for unconscious players and sidekicks during the fight to avoid the fight dragging and let them use a first aid kit on them after it. A completely missed opportunity to kill off some sidekicks so that this doesn't have a chance of happening again and to add more tension to the encounter, but I felt it was already hard enough without them having to use actions trying to stabilize their teammates. At least the kit didn't have enough charges for all of them so one of the sidekicks ended up dying anyways.
So, as a summary:
1- Don't give them a chance to have a ton of sidekicks at the same time.
2- If you did give them the chance, give them a time sensitive task that happens at the same time a few days away and a way to get people there on time. Especifically, a way to get as many people as you need to remove to make the encounters balanced there. Ten people party? Then you need 5 people somewhare else at the same time. Also make it something that can't be avoided by making it personal to some of the sidekicks so that they have to leave no matter what.
3- If you didn't manage to get many away, find a way to split the party. Give two tasks that have to be stopped asap. Hostages are bad for this, since they mean that they want them alive. They should have started outright executing people as retaliation or kidnapped important character and tried to leave town. Hopefully this means they split the party.
4- If they insist on not splitting the party, rather than planning encounters balanced for that many people, have normal encounters but with a gimmick that give the enemies a surprise round that can wither down the sidekicks. Invisible opponents that gang up on one or two of them to kill them in the first round, one use spell scrolls that can take down some of them immediately, a sudden wall of fire or collapse that divides the group in two so that you only have to fight half of them and the others suffer loses due to narrative, etc.
5- Explain to the players the issue and have them meet you halfway (This should be further up in the list, actually)
6- If they insist, stand your ground. If you are a wet noddle like me, take any chance you can to kill sidekicks.
ANYWAYS, back to the campaign. I already told them they can get at most 2 sidekicks at the same time from now on to bring up the party up to 5 characters. Next session they will have to rest after that fight since they are in no condition to keep fighting. Since in the last 2 session they ended up killing like 35 redbrands, the gang is finished so Glasstaff will run away without fighting them. Since they have to rest, he actually has time to take his notes and leave no clues.
The barbarian already asked me for more chances to roleplay so next session should probably focus on that, so I would appreciate ideas for that. I was thinking a conversation with the warlock that helped them (especifically, about why it waited so long), the people of phandalin burying the redbrand corpses, Halia thornton speaking to them about them deciding not to keep their deal (assassinating Glasstaff so that someone loyal to her could take over the redbrands, instead they went for total anhilination), some comments about how they had some many wounded that they are short on healing potions (to go into the umbrage hill quest later), the doppelganger pretending to be Daran coming back to town and claiming that they failed the mission and Inverna died... I probably need more stuff, since I am actually bad at roleplay.
The other thing I would like would be for Glasstaff to leave a surprise in the hideout for them. Go full bond villain and filling it with poison with maybe undead guards or making it collapse. Any ideas regarding that? The closest they have come to fighting Glasstaff was when they tried to invade their hideout for the first time and his escape tunnel accidentally caused him to flank them and ensuring the fight they were having with his minions ended in a lose since he finished them off with magic missiles. They also never reched his laboratory so they don't know of his invisibility potion research and thus think it was due to a spell. So they might think he is stronger than he actually is, which means I have a chance to make him a bigger villain than he was by making him that annoying guy who always shows up when the party is in dire straits and I am warming up to the idea.
"It makes no sense to them (rightly so) that there are fight capable people that don't fight back" Why are there fight capable people at all? Phandalen was described as a small mining village, not really the place to find warriors and wizards hanging out. In our campaign it was simply said the population was made up of miners and their families, so no one wanted to fight for fear of retaliation.
It was a series of mistakes on my part. U had not given sidekicks at the begining and they were having trouble with the fights, so I thought it would be a good idea to, instead if letting them decide ooc which sidekick to use or selecting two or three myself, to have all of them appear at one point or another in phandalin kind of like interviews. So when they asked if there was anyone in town that could fight (since Sildar reccomended they get someone else to round up their group) and they were pointed to several people...