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View Full Version : Awesome Encounters: Yay or Nay?



alchemyprime
2010-01-14, 01:29 AM
So, I'm statting up three custom encounters for my group for Friday. We're playtesting the super-hi-powered Prime20. So, for kicks and giggles, I decided we'd do three encounters.

1. CR 7: Fiendish Cold Minotaur. Shouldn't be too hard.
2. CR 9: Two half-dragon (white) advanced unicorns, with all the goods switched to evils and vice versa (so Magic Circle against Good, CE unicorns).
3. Half-drow paladin, Frost Giant and a Frost Giant RIDING AN ICE ELEMENTAL T REX!

Are these awesome? Yay or Nay?

And also:

Post your most awesome encounter. Judge the person's above you with a Yay or Nay. If a Nay, PROVE THEM WRONG! If a Yay, ONE UP THEM!

Sound fun?

absolmorph
2010-01-14, 02:04 AM
Those do sound awesome.
It's gonna take me some time to work on one-upping them.

Soterion
2010-01-14, 02:07 AM
I say yay. Yay, I say!

Frost Giant RIDING AN ICE ELEMENTAL T-REX who is playing a totally sweet guitar solo!

Munchkin-Masher
2010-01-14, 02:22 AM
Yay 'tis be made of awesome and all things cewl.

Schylerwalker
2010-01-14, 02:49 AM
Yay 'tis be made of awesome and all things cewl.

Literally. :smallconfused:

taltamir
2010-01-14, 02:51 AM
is your party evil? because it seems the enemies they are facing are a mix of good and evil people/beings... often working together.

alchemyprime
2010-01-14, 03:37 AM
is your party evil? because it seems the enemies they are facing are a mix of good and evil people/beings... often working together.

Again. I refluffed the Paladin and Unicorn to be evil variants. It's a G/N party, with their own CG paladin. (I allow all alignments into paladinhood, but you gotta STAY that alignment or REALLY try hard to change into another kind.)

So we have a Paladin of the Breaking Dawn (CG, themed around hope and liberation) and a Paladin of the Red Rivers (CE, themed around murder and insanity). Breaking Dawn is a hero, Red Rivers is a villain.

arguskos
2010-01-14, 11:59 AM
My most awesome encounter was against a level 13 party, many years ago. They were in a massive desert with purple sand, hunting for a destroyed city, when their enemies found them first. Three Purple Worms sprung up around them, while a Lich Wizard 11 riding a Mature Adult Blue Dragon soared overhead blasting them with spells. It was glorious, since that combat took place during a sandstorm, so it was this awesome image of giant sandworms the color of the flying sand attacking the party while lightning periodically blasted down into the players. So much fun cinematically.

Mando Knight
2010-01-14, 12:15 PM
Frost Giant riding an Iceasaurus Rex is the awesomest of the encounters.

Though, really, even a lot of "plain vanilla" encounters (Red Dragon, Tiamat, etc.) can be kicked up to eleven without adding anything beyond their standard habitats and throwing in some over-the-top RPing. I mean, Ridley mostly just flies up and down shooting fireballs in Super Metroid, and has an equally predictable attack pattern in the Metroid Prime trilogy and Smash Bros Brawl, but he's considered one of the most awesome bosses of all time...

I mean, he was audacious enough to take one of the boss battle themes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk-WRQu1DcY) from Super Metroid and make it his. And then warrant sever (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDP9oCBbuoI)al re (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcpVyER_UTA)mixes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpU7oSBJWCo). And he's the most frequently encountered of all of the Metroid bosses, missing out on only Metroid II and Metroid Prime 2.

alchemyprime
2010-01-14, 12:57 PM
Frost Giant riding an Iceasaurus Rex is the awesomest of the encounters.

Though, really, even a lot of "plain vanilla" encounters (Red Dragon, Tiamat, etc.) can be kicked up to eleven without adding anything beyond their standard habitats and throwing in some over-the-top RPing. I mean, Ridley mostly just flies up and down shooting fireballs in Super Metroid, and has an equally predictable attack pattern in the Metroid Prime trilogy and Smash Bros Brawl, but he's considered one of the most awesome bosses of all time...

I mean, he was audacious enough to take one of the boss battle themes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk-WRQu1DcY) from Super Metroid and make it his. And then warrant sever (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDP9oCBbuoI)al re (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcpVyER_UTA)mixes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpU7oSBJWCo). And he's the most frequently encountered of all of the Metroid bosses, missing out on only Metroid II and Metroid Prime 2.

This is true. Personally, I was just looking for something cinematic.

(BTW @arguskos, I totally love that battle scene. Mind if I take that for a battle when we end up in the desert?)

Glimbur
2010-01-14, 01:03 PM
I was running a campaign last summer for a mixture of new and experienced players. In the course of human events they ran in to a storm elemental. It KO'd the Totemist, and was one attack away from killing the warlock. The rogue was pretty useless. I had it run away, because it was also one attack away from death itself.

Fast forward to the end of the campaign. The PC's have organized a revolution against the council of nobles, and are breaking into Fast Eddie's house to kill him. Fast Eddie's guards don't put up much of a fight, but then he pulls out a dinosaur... which had merged with the Storm Elemental. I homebrewed some things onto a dinosaur base, mostly DR/- and a breath weapon.

It's a good thing the campaign was ending anyway, because it was my first TPK.

arguskos
2010-01-14, 01:08 PM
(BTW @arguskos, I totally love that battle scene. Mind if I take that for a battle when we end up in the desert?)
Help yourself. Be warned though, if you run it well and remember to account for the sandstorm, it's a pretty lethal encounter.

AirGuitarGod32
2010-01-14, 02:34 PM
I say yay, to a degree. I say add one more fight.

This fight would be during a blizzard/white-out which means...

A pack of feindish smilodons who can hide in the snow more easily, along with their Arctic Goblin allies, who, like their smiliodon companions, can hide in the blizzard.

This could be tough counting in the blizzard in combination with a cold damage over time. This damage should be minor, such as maybe 1 per round to all without Cold Endurance.

Gamerlord
2010-01-14, 02:35 PM
Horde of gnolls over a volcano was the ""coolest" encounter I ever did.

AirGuitarGod32
2010-01-14, 02:39 PM
Horde of gnolls over a volcano was the ""coolest" encounter I ever did.

I was in something similar, but it was vs a pair of Colossal Half-Fiend Red Dragons/Disciples of Ashardalon with an Half-Fiend Half-Styx Dragon Binder//Warlock in an epic gestalt game. It was really tough, especially when the Binder//Warlock tried to "ressurect" Ashardalon to destroy the world from the mouth of this "Portal to Hell"

drengnikrafe
2010-01-14, 03:23 PM
The only awesomeish encounter I've ever been any part of involved hundreds of monsters (each treated as individual creatures), being backed up by Minotaurs riding Rhinos and Warforged Bards. Of course, after ample absue of Action Points, Sudden Metamagics, and Fireball, that encounter... exploded. So it's more of the entire battlefield erupting in scorching fire that eliminated the entire opposition that was cool.

kentma57
2010-01-14, 03:39 PM
Sounds as much fun as my halfling raptor cavalry. :smallbiggrin:

Tanuki Tales
2010-01-14, 03:48 PM
The most awesome encounter I ever ran into is the reason my friend Doug is never allowed to DM. Ever. Again.

The party was investigating a church to find the cause for local swarms of rats breeding like mad and then going insane. It was about midnight and the church was surrounded by several leafless trees. Place was absolutely quiet and we found absolutely nothing around the perimeter of the church.

This is about when all the trees ripped themselves out of the ground and started towards the party.

Now, the reason we don't let Doug DM anymore is because he is notorious for rolling 5 natural 20s in a row. It was a TPK, but it was the Cleric who really got owned and made this encounter "awesome".

He was a Cleric of Pelor and he got punted. He proceeded to fly for quite some distance before being anally impaled....on the steeple of a Church of Pelor. Got to love the Burning Hate.

Barbarian MD
2010-01-14, 05:56 PM
I'll one-up you.

Add these: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6018203&postcount=5

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-01-14, 07:08 PM
I've posted my most awesome encounter here before: the demilich fight here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6480387&postcount=11) was the final BBEG "encounter" for the first--and last--epic campaign my PCs let me run.