My group is in the Battle of Brindol. Warblade, Crusader, Wizard at 9th, plus Druid, Bard at 8th.

I bumped Abithrax a size last session, and gave him max HP, no other changes.
It was going badly for the players. The Animal Companion was doing a LOT of damage, and they were on a rooftop, so he went for a Powerful Blow to knock it off the edge. Abithrax rolled a Nat1 (in front of the players) and failed.
Then he failed his save vs Glitterdust. He took another round of damage, used his Breath Weapon - which could have dropped the Warblade, Crusader and/or Tiger if they had failed their saves, and jumped into the air with about 40hp remaining. Warblade rolled a nat20 on the AoO with a dwarven war axe, confirmed, and dropped him.


Tonight. Streets of Blood - Wave One.
I setup the map, gave them a long 30' wide street with buildings on both sides. Lions of Brindol on the rooftops with their bows. Threw a ballista in the back manned by a couple guys. I didn't even look up the stats, just gave it +8 to hit and 4d6 damage. Barricades in the street manned by 24 commoners with spears, plus Captain Lars.
Told them a horde of hobgoblins (100) was coming around the corner 200' away. All the standard hobbs this whole campaign have had 14hp, so these did too.

Wizard put up a wall of Stone blocking most of the street - between the Hobgoblins and the barricade.
Captain Lars and the Warblade and Crusader moved up to just behind it. Druid told her Tiger to guard Lars.
Wizard used his next-to-last last fireball, taking out 30 hobbies. Ballista and the archers shot at the manticores, Druid used call lightning on them.
Stuck a Warblade Hobgoblin in with the hobbs, to Mountain Hammer the wall section while the regular hobbs poured through the gap and died in great droves to AoOs, Mithril Tornado from the party Warblade, Fiery Burst from the Wizard, etc.

Wizard stuck his nose in view of the Manticores, got spiked, and dropped to single digit hitpoints. Other than that, I don't think they took 20pts of damage between the whole party. A few peasants died to random arrows shot over the Wall of Stone from the back of the pack and the 2nd manticore dropping on them when it ran out of spikes, and some of the Lions had to drink their potions.


Running it. I have several hundred tiny (fit in a 1" square) poker chips in various colors - 50 to a color. White and Yellow were unwounded hobbs, with about 15 actual minis for the front rank to make it look good. If they got wounded, they got a pink chip stacked on top. Crusader, Warblade (with 1pt of PA), Tiger, and Captain Lars all can't fail to kill a hobb with the bard singing, so I only had to track ones hit by arrows or who survived a Fiery Burst. If it had a chip and it got hit again, it died.
None of them have Combat Reflexes, so I could just sacrifice hobbs to get more past them, but the bottleneck was still a problem.

Same with the Lions for tracking damage. They got a pink chip stacked by them for every 5hp of damage, rounded whichever way I felt like at the time. 7 chips=dead, which none of them got to.
Peasants are behind the wall out of view AND behind partial cover.
At the beginning, the hobbs rolled a couple attacks on everyone - volley fire over the wall. Pairs of d20s for the Lions (hobbs could see them on the rooftops) and visible players. Peasants were rolled en masse. Miss chance says one roll per peasant for 2 arrows, and they had partial cover as well, so I rolled a bag of 24d20, and killed a peasant for every 18+. I halved the rolls the 3rd round, and just shot at visible people on rounds 5+.

3.5 hours of playtime later 93 hobbs are dead, one manticore is dead, the other has single digit hp and is getting zerged down by peasants with spears. The Hobb warblade has knocked down 2 5' sections of the Wall of Stone with Mountain Hammer, and is untouched (he's been outside the wall the whole time).

We called the session for time, and I revealed 2 Stone Giants and 3 "big dogs with riders" in the distance for the next wave. I'll hit them in about 5 rounds, which should just give them enough time to clean up this wave and drink a potion or two.

The druid is actually OUT of spells. She has a wildshape left and was poking through the books looking for a good form - She's buffed to the nines, so melee time, plus a couple remaining shots on Call Lightning. NPC cleric is flying, running Sanctuary and playing healbot with her wand. PC Wizard has a Cloudkill, a Mirror Image, and a Fireball (reserved for making Fiery Burst work), plus Magic Missiles on a wand. Bard has a single 3rd level slot (knows Haste, so it'll be useful when he uses it), and his shortbow, and he can fly.

The melee types are loving it. Racking up big killcounts on their own merits, instead of just cleaning up after the BFC goes down.
Casters are a little frustrated by the lack of rest. Stone giants bombing the wall, then the dragon, and straight into the Streets waves, with no rest.
They asked (meta) how many waves. I gave them a bit and told them "several, but there would have been a razorspawn wave and a ghost lion wave if you hadn't stopped those". They cheered.

I'll drop some scrolls before Kharn.