I’m going to do some experimenting here and see how it goes!
Alza, Red Patty, and Phaedra are a group of adventurers. Along with Benny the hound and Aur-Ree the hawk, the party makes its way through the forest guided by Alza at the front.
Alza rolls a challenge to navigate the forest.
Advantages:
Ranger
Perceptive
Adventurer
Aur-Ree is helping to scout
Disadvantages:
Eyesight
Enemies do be hiding though
For real, they’ve been hunting the party for weeks and set up an ambush
This is a professional group of bandits hired by a noble that the party pissed off, so let’s say this is something the average person could have difficulty with, DC 16.
@kobold asked for a die roll:
I just realized that I did this wrong - Alza is also on the Martial path, which gives him +1 extra advantage, so let’s roll an extra die and see what it gives us:
OK, so 5 + 5 = 10, +4 = 14, and two matches means an extra +2, which means Alza rolled a 16!
Alza hears a tree groan in a way that wind alone could not muster, and immediately draws his hand-and-a-half sword, motioning to the party to stop.
Suddenly, a bolt shoots from the brush nearby, and Alza narrowly deflects it with his sword. “We’re under attack!” he yells angrily, warning the other two.
Two kobolds violently emerge: one from above in a tree with an axe, and another wielding a spear rushes out of the brush where the bolt came from. The party knows there must be a third wielding a crossbow.
Red Patty already has her sword out, and she’s PISSED. Even if the group was taken unawares, she knows they never could have snuck one past Alza, and rushes forward to meet the enemies.
Red Patty is going to invoke her Divine Rage, and Divine Smite the closest enemy she can.
The interpreted result in the last roll is correct. We rolled high on 6’s, got 3 6’s and 2 4’s, which is 3 matches, so the base roll was 15, and Red Patty has a +8 bonus, which grants her a total of 23.
So anyway, Red Patty deals 23-14 = 9 points of damage, inflicting the trauma “decapitated” on the kobold that attacked her out of the tree. That’s one hell of a trauma.
But, in doing so, she put herself in a position of danger to take damage instead of Alza, and given she just divine raged, she’s going to have to hope she’s tough enough to brush off an attack with Fortitude. Fortunately, her defense is Fortitude, so she at least doesn’t gain a disadvantage for this, and because she’s using Platemail, that also grants her double advantage on defensive rolls to shrug off an attack.
Oof! Red Patty takes a spear to the side, but fortunately it doesn’t pierce her armor. Still, that kobold knew what they were doing - she takes 3 points of damage from the strike, reducing her HP to 5.
Meanwhile, nobody knows where Phaedra is… she took a moment from the initial skirmish to sneak around and try to find the archer, and rely on her agility to sneak up behind them.
The kobold in the brushes shrieks in pain and staggers away from the deadly elf’s attack, deciding that the battle was lost and decides to try to book it.
Rather than help Red Patty, whom everyone knows can take several axes to the face and still be fine, Alza quickly drops his sword and pulls out his bow, trying to strike the kobold with the crossbow fleeing.
Between Phaedra’s blades and Alza’s bow, the crossbow kobold has suffered exactly enough damage to take on a trauma, and gains the trauma “Bleeding Out” on the ground.
The last kobold, seeing the writing on the walls, considers fleeing as Red Patty hovers over him, staring him down and trying to break his will to either fight or run.
The last kobold soils itself and throws its spear to the ground. Before it can even think to escape, Alza’s hound, Benny, cuts off the only path left it could have fled towards.
Because he’s virtuous, Alza decides to try his best to staunch the bleeding out kobold’s wounds.
Phaedra makes no movement to pull out her Elfstones. While they could heal the kobold, the price she pays for using it on an enemy would be too high for her.
The kobold coughs and chokes, and begs for something to drink. Alza obliges, giving the kobold a drink of water to take with him. The kobold struggles to swallow for a little, manages to get it down, and looks up at the ranger with eyes no longer full of fear, but one of painful acceptance. Within moments, he is gone.
Red Patty holds the other kobold up by both their arms and stalks through the bushes to join the others. “That was all of them? These cowards were easy.”
“At least we didn’t kill all of them,” Phaedra says, refusing to acknowledge Red Patty’s mild barbarism. She’s already done cleaning and sheathing her blades. “Now, at least, we can learn why we were attacked.”