PDA

View Full Version : Tactically Interesting Encounter Ideas



sonofzeal
2009-05-21, 05:54 PM
So, I may be in the position of having to throw together something on extremely short notice, so I thought I'd post here and share some ideas beforehand. The idea is to come up with encounters that are {a} memorable, and {b} encourage creativity in the players. My personal group is ECL 9, all books allowed, and the only players I can guarantee are a Sorcerer and a Soulbow. Here's some I've already used, in case anyone wants to steal some.


1) The Bridge Challenge. Players enter a large room with a 100' long pool filling the middle. There's a rope bridge over the length of the pool, and a Naityan Rakshasa (ToB) on the other side. The Rakshasa greets them, claims that he regenerates from wounds unless he's underwater (bluff), demonstrates by cutting off a fingertip and then using Alter Form to replace it, then says he'll give them the key to the next area if they get him in the water in single combat. If at any point he feels they "cheated", he'll break his word and try to kill them anyway (remember, he's Chaotic), using the water for concealment. Recommended houserule - shifting forms is a free action once per round, but he HAS to shift forms every round.

2) The Wailing Wall. Players enter a large room with a 10' cliff facing them in the middle. The cliff is covered with spikes, and the ground before it is slick with algae. As soon as they enter the room, three Crazed Kuo-Toa (MM5) jump down at them, and four Harpooners (MM5) pop up and start flinging. Crazed ones just attack, and Harpooners try to catch people and drag them into the spikes in the wall. Balance checks on the ground are pretty easy, but there's not much grip against the Harpooners. However, the Harpooners are easily demoralized and afraid of things they don't understand, so the party can gain temporary respite pretty easily with illusions (but they'll still use their ledge for cover against things below it). The Crazed ones always attack the nearest tangible target, meaning only quasi-real illusions will hold their attention if there's still PCs around. Recommended houserule - play up Kuo-Toa insanity here, and have the Harpooners interact oddly with any mind-affecting magic.

3) The Ritual of Nine. The players enter a long, narrow room coated top to bottom with horribly slick slime. At the other end are eight Kuo-Toa (MM1) with single levels of Clerics, bowing down to an Exalted Whip (MM5). The Clerics count as "prone" meaning their AC against ranged is impressive, and the Exalted Whip has good AC and regenerates quickly. Every 1d4 rounds, they fire a powerful lightning bolt down the room at the PCs, with the Exalted Whip aiming it. Make it difficult to get any forward progress over the slime, but reward creative attempts to overcome it (and remind players of the sticky shields looted from the Harpooners if necessary). Recommended houserule - reduce Lightning recharge rate to 1d2 unless the players get into serious danger, and double the Exalted Whip's regeneration until the ritual is broken. Have the Exalted Whip prebuffed with Divine Power, and all of them prebuffed with Entropic Shield.


So, three tactically interesting encounters, ones that allow for several solutions to obvious problems without being excessively lethal. Got any of your own I could use?

TheCountAlucard
2009-05-21, 06:13 PM
Dunno how relevant this is, but I thought some factors in the encounter were fairly interesting...

Spoilered for length and campaign details. In one of my games, the party Warlock decided to participate in an arena event, for whatever reason. I informed the player that it was gladiatorial combat, in which the participants would fight their opponents to the death. Healing magic would be banned during the matches, meaning he couldn't use his wand of Cure Light Wounds, but other magic is allowed, such as his Eldritch Blast. He said that was fine by him.

I told him he'd probably be pitted against three unarmed prisoners, but that a small cache of weapons was resting in the center of the arena. I also told him that there was a random chance of being pitted against one or more vicious beasts instead, such as giant scorpions, bears, or even a chimera. If such a thing were to occur, he would be paid double at the end of the match, assuming he survived. Again, he accepted.

Did I mention that he was level 2 at the time? He had taken the Spider Walk and Devil's Sight invocations, IIRC.

So, the arena is a circular area, with a high wall around it. In the center of the arena is a quartet of tall pillars, each chained to one corner of a square metal grate resting on the ground. A mechanism is designed to raise or lower the grate at the whim of the arena officials operating it.

I roll the dice, and... the Warlock is pitted against an ogre and two orcs. I roll again, and the weapons resting on the grate are a warhammer, a dagger, and a pickaxe.

Was a great fight. Thanks to a string of lucky rolls, the Warlock managed to bisect the ogre, fry one of the orcs, and explode the head of the other, despite having been knocked down to 2 hp in the first round. :smallbiggrin:

AslanCross
2009-05-21, 06:53 PM
My encounters tend to be a lot simpler, since my players usually have short attention spans and thus keep asking what the rules of the encounter are, so I just make the environment as weird as possible.

1. The Puzzle Box Library: I got this idea from someone who posted in this forum about a beholder encounter in a library. The encounter takes place in an airship or other flying facility, with a very large convex porthole or viewing dome at the lowest level that opens to the sky below. The only way of standing safely over the viewing dome is a narrow catwalk that spans the circumference of the window. Directly above it is a cube shaped room (my dimensions were 60'x60'x60'), which has no floor and opens directly to the window below. The only way non-flying creatures can traverse the room is by a 10' wide bridge that cuts through the center of the room.

On the walls are multiple shelves mounted on rails, so they can be pushed back and forth with ease despite their weight. The room is guarded by a beholder.

Many options for telekinesis rays here, and if they get the beholder really angry, it can blast the bridge or the shelves with disintegrate.

I'll have to admit it's really quite complex to execute and might require creativity on your part, since it has a lot of 3D movement. I haven't done it myself, but I think it's a cool twist on a library battle.

2. Chain Rave:
The BBEG (a half-fiend ogre mage) is accompanied by two chain devils. The BBEG has a mass of thick, heavy chains dangling from his waist. All the chain devils do is use their Dancing Chains attack to make the BBEG's chains attack (while he attacks on his own), resulting in an odd angle of attack. In fact, the chain devils could stay as far back as their ability's range allows. Originally this battle was intended for the roof of a castle with loose shingles.

3. Train battle:
If you run Eberron or a steampunk setting, you should run one of these sometime. Narrow terrain + the threat of falling + the threat of crashing = lots of fun.

4. The Ballroom:
Probably not anything new, but a large, open room with a giant chandelier has a lot of potential for fun and danger. I had three noble hostages hanging from the ceiling, bound in curtains and ropes, while the villains (a tiefling swordsage and a naztharune rakshasa) were hanging on the chandelier while the PCs enter. When the PCs do, they release the chandelier to flatten the PCs and darken the room, and then attack.

5. Night Twist's Haunt:
Monster Manual III's Night Twist is a pretty nasty plant monster with a lot of creepy abilities, but it has one significant weakness: It can barely move. 10 feet isn't going to do much.

Thankfully, its reach is immense, so what do we do here? Surround the night twist with difficult terrain: bog, tangled mangrove roots, skeletons---no five foot steps, halved movement, no charging, and likely chances of PCs hurting themselves on the sharp terrain.

Now if only the Night Twist had the dex to use Combat Reflexes.

6. Magma Chasm
Again, not anything new, but the Eyes of the Lich Queen adventure has a twist on this. The room is almost completely without a floor, with only narrow ledges on each side of the chasm. Falling is of course almost certain death, so there are a few ways to cross:
-Floating platforms lead up to a fixed platform in the center.
-Climbing the rough surface of the walls can bring a character across the chasm.
-If you're really suicidal (the swordsage in our party did this), jump across.
The central platform is populated by two Canoloths (Monster Manual III). They have nasty reach for their size due to their extending tongues, which also paralyze on contact. The swordsage jumped over the gap, provoked AOOs from the Canoloths, and got paralyzed and grabbed in midair.

7. Ship to Ship battle
YMMV, but ships provide a lot of interesting terrain tools for the PCs to use. They can cut rigging to drop sails, use ropes to swing across the field, and even use mounted weapons if they're present.
I once had a pirate ship ram the PC ship halfway through the encounter, leaving it listing at 45 degrees. The pirate captain tried to swing over on the ropes, but failed to stay on his feet, and almost fell over the side.
The pirates also had an elf sniper hiding in their rigging, taking potshots, while her animal companion (a shark) harried whoever was unfortunate enough to fall into the water.

8. Flooding Room
A dungeon classic, but in the Hell's Heart adventure it's not really a trap as much as a time limit for the encounter.
A noble and his entourage are bound and gagged at the bottom of an almost empty cistern. As part of the BBEG's plot, sewer pumps rigged to pump mind-altering drugs into the city's water supply are attached to the cistern such that if the PCs discover the plot, they have to choose between poisoning the city and drowning the baron, at least as far as I can remember.
However, they can rush to the cistern in time to save the baron and his men, but they're going to have to swim while the cistern floods.

All this time the BBEG is standing on a catwalk above, shooting with a crossbow, while his minion (a crazed Dr. Jekyll who is currently in his Mr. Hyde mode) protects him. Another minion (a wereshark-descended shifter) swims through the water to attack the PCs while they try to keep the baron alive.

woodenbandman
2009-05-21, 08:03 PM
Anything where the terrain moves. Similar to the lava platforms idea:

There is a 50 foot square room. There are several platforms that each move in a different set pattern every round. You can time your jumps to move across, but you have to balance while they're moving, and falling will kill you. Or alternately just hurt a lot.

Include annoying little flying enemies and a platform high up in the middle where enemies shoot at you from while you have to make it across the room, indy style.

Capricornus
2009-05-21, 08:15 PM
I just ran a session where the party was trying to kill an Elder Wyrm Black Dragon who had made his base in an old arcane planar observatory. The observatory had a chamber something like a star trek holodeck that created a planar environment inside it. Every two rounds the planes would shift (using the random planar destination chart from the DMG). Most planes had various environmental hazards. The Dragons had spells on them that protected them from them. Most amusing was when they ended up in the Elemental Plane of Water. Unfortunately I didn't get to see what would happen on the Negative Energy plane (or Positive energy for that matter). Maybe next time. The party had to retreat.

Another time I had a trapped room. When triggered, the room sealed itself off with slabs of stone and an anti-magic field was triggered. One of the random objects in the room was a Fiendish Gray Render that had been polymorphed. When the antimagic field turned on, he reverted to his natural form. Of course, the party had no non-magical light source and only one Dwarf in the party.

sonofzeal
2009-05-21, 10:49 PM
AslanCross - great ideas! Chain Rave will be used, Ballroom may come up (though I might change the villains), Night Twist's Haunt is awesome but too high a CR for my group, and Magma Battle sounds fun! I am using steampunk, but my campaign is a literal dungeoncrawl, so trains and ships are rather hard to fit in. Still, awesome ideas.


Anything where the terrain moves. Similar to the lava platforms idea:

There is a 50 foot square room. There are several platforms that each move in a different set pattern every round. You can time your jumps to move across, but you have to balance while they're moving, and falling will kill you. Or alternately just hurt a lot.

Include annoying little flying enemies and a platform high up in the middle where enemies shoot at you from while you have to make it across the room, indy style.
Sounds fun, will use!


Another time I had a trapped room. When triggered, the room sealed itself off with slabs of stone and an anti-magic field was triggered. One of the random objects in the room was a Fiendish Gray Render that had been polymorphed. When the antimagic field turned on, he reverted to his natural form. Of course, the party had no non-magical light source and only one Dwarf in the party.
Epic. I'll definitely steal this one at some point. The elemental one seems like too much bookkeeping for me though.