Earth Dies

Once the trio had settled back down and eaten lunch, Bridgette shifted back into her commander mode. "Okay, so - one of the few things my dad told me about his time in the Army was that after missions, they'd do an 'after action report' where everyone talked about the things they did right and the things they did wrong. It was important that everyone put down not only their own information, but everything they observed about other people, so that as a group they would learn how to do better. Also, it's important to note we're doing this, so we can get better, not to blame each other for mistakes."

Bridgette handed out sheets of paper and pencils to the other two, then took her own paper. "The way we're going to do this is as follows. You can put down an observation in a bulleted list. That observation could be something like 'We were standing too close together' or something more complex. You then talk about what was supposed to happen as well as what did happen. Discuss the impact and then finally make recommendations for the future based on the lessons learned. I'll give us ten minutes to write these down, then I'll ask Alice to start, then Colin, then I'll go last."

The trio sat in silence for the next ten minutes, broken only by the scratching of pencils on paper, and occasional shifting in chairs as they tried to recall specifics of what happened during their traumatic first battle. Finally, Bridgette called out, "Time! Okay, it doesn't have to be perfect, but let's go ahead. Alice, you first."

Alice cleared her throat and stood up. "Okay, I have a few thoughts. Here goes..."

"For my first observation, I ran out of healing spells, which placed us in critical danger of dying. Or rather, I thought I ran out of spells. I had completely forgotten about my Lusty Spell Preparation that doubled my number of spell slots, so when I had used three I forgot I still had three more. Also, I had gotten tired of lugging my healer's staff around, so I had it in my storage ring and didn't get the benefit of two more spell slots. In total, that's five healing spells that we had access to that I forgot existed, and could have easily topped us all off and ensured we didn't have our panicked run back home."

Colin jumped in, "Actually, you only had three more. I'm sorry to interrupt, but one of my observations was that I totally forgot to teach the two of you how to attune to your magic items, so while you may have been wearing the outfits and carrying the weapons, you haven't been getting any of the bonuses. I've made a note, and we'll remedy that this afternoon." Alice nodded her thanks towards Colin and continued.

"My second observation was that I forgot I had distance healing spells. It's not as effective, heals maybe two thirds of the amount that the contact heal does, but I missed at least one clear opportunity to heal Bridgette because she moved away from me towards danger, and I wasn't able to cast the healing spell in time. With now remembering I have extra spell slots, I can be a little more wasteful in heals - it would be better to cast the less effective heal immediately to keep her out of danger, as opposed to having to run into danger myself for the more powerful one."

Alice glanced around, "Anyway, those were the two big ones I had."

Bridgette clapped approvingly, "Those were great, thank you, Alice." Alice blushed and smiled warmly at Bridgette. "Both of those are excellent observations and things we can definitely improve on going forward. About your second point, I had forgotten about healing entirely, so when I charged into battle, it never occurred to me that you might end up trying to chase me into the melee just to cast a spell. Lesson learned for me as well."

Alice nodded and sat down, while Colin stood up. "Right, here are my thoughts."

"First, as I stated, I had forgotten to teach you all how to attune to magic items. This resulted in a significant degradation of our capabilities, as from my calculations we lost two first level healing spells from Alice, the heals she did cast were less effective, she had less armor resulting in greater chance of taking damage - which she did take, and then Bridgette had degraded armor as well. I don't recall if she has any other buffs."

"Nothing important, at least. That's the big one," Bridgette replied.

"Second, my primary damage spell that I used was magic missile. It's a classic wizard trope, deals reliable damage. However, while I recognized that our foes were kobolds, I did not consider the damage output of the spell against the likely health of the creatures facing us. I can split those three darts between multiple targets, dealing reduced damage to each but potentially greater impact to the fight overall. Us gaming nerds call it 'action economy' when we plan our actions to maximize the impact we can have. According to my calculations, if I had split targeted each of my magic missile attacks, we could have taken down the kobolds before they struck Alice with that last damaging blow at a minimum, and possibly avoided other damage as well."

"Third and related to that, my targeting was not optimal. I believed that Bridgette was in the greatest danger, having three kobolds attacking her, and prioritized helping her take down the foes in melee range instead of the sling-wielding attackers. Those slings ended up doing a lot more damage to us, as those two kobolds essentially did whatever they wanted. I should have trusted in Bridgette's melee tanking abilities as well as Alice's healing and focused down the ranged foes instead."

Alice blinked, "Oh wow, that's a good point. I totally forgot to think of it like a video game and focus down ranged threats first, instead just panicking and all of us trying to kill whatever happened to be the nearest at the time."

Bridgette stood, patting Colin on the back. "Those were all good points, thank you. Here are mine."

"My first observation is that I failed because we got into combat. The mission was to get home. Period. If we could have avoided combat, we should have. We were complacent, walking along the same road we've walked down hundreds of times in our life, not thinking about the fact that we're in an apocalypse scenario and were explicitly warned that threats were coming. If we had been more watchful, acting like we were moving through hostile territory, the kobolds may not have been able to ambush us successfully. Part of this is that honestly the three of us don't have the best skills for this kind of watchful recon - it would be great if we had someone who did - but in the absence of more hands, we'll just have to try harder."

"For my second observation, related to the first. We've been practicing attacking and defending, but not movement in hostile terrain. We need to explicitly spend time working on our ability to patrol, or movement where we expect to get into a combat situation and need to be able to immediately shift from armed recon to attack mode. As a result, our patrol order was garbage. We were clustered together like Dorothy, the Lion, and the Scarecrow skipping down the yellow brick road. When ambushed, we immediately not only lost the initiative because the obvious fact we didn't see it coming, but then did ourselves a further disservice by tripping over each other, fouling our attempts to recover. We'll be spending time on the training ground moving as a unit and reacting to ambushes from different directions."

Alice butted in, "Wait, so are you Dorothy or am I?" Bridgette playfully swatted at Alice and shuffled her papers.

"My third observation and final observation is about my lack of weapons familiarity. I'm not saying I'm going to walk around with my greataxe on my shoulder, but if I can't pull it reliably from a sling in an instant when attacked, that weapon is a liability and I need to pick something else. I'll put in a lot more time on the training grounds to try to build those calluses and muscle memory, but if I can't get the hang of it, then I'm ditching the axe and finding something else, even if it's not as good of a fit toward my skill set."

"Anyway ... I think those are all the main points I had. Thank you both for raising yours as well. I'm going to spend the afternoon compiling them all and putting together an updated training schedule to help us overcome these flaws. Dismissed."

Alice let out a jaunty salute, blowing a kiss to Bridgette, as she and Colin walked out and Bridgette sat down with the papers, trying to find a way to prevent the near-catastrophe from happening again.