PDA

View Full Version : Favorite/Most Interesting Encounters



Admiral Squish
2010-03-04, 04:26 PM
Okay, I've seen favorite characters, names, lines, stories, deaths... But I've never seen an encounters thread before. So, I want to hear about the most interesting and unique encounters you've ever had. Traps, monsters, puzzles... Whatever encounter that really made you go 'hey, that was kinda awesome!'

I have two stories of this one. The first one was in an eberron game. My party had just come back from a dungeon after a long crawl to get this hobgoblin artifact. Now, in this game the party was mostly physical. The DM also ruled that jump and climb DCs were halved in Sharn, along with falling damage, due to the whole manifest zone dealie.

So, the encounter starts when a goblin in black appears out of nowhere, snatches the artifact out of my hands, and bolts. Needless to say, the party was less than happy. Me, a warforged monk, along with the party's drow scout and the changeling hexblade began the pursuit. It was interesting. It was a very skillmonkey encounter, with everyone running as fast as they can after this little gobbo ninja, trying to take shots at it whenever possible. Jumping up entire stories, leaping from crosswalk to crosswalk, and this gobbo is apparently an actual ninja, because it would periodically disappear and reappear about a round later.

Eventually, enough lucky shots whittled it down and dropped it. By then, the pursuit team was eight or nine stories up and a good thousand feet from their starting spot. The whole encounter like a very authentic ninja battle. A little anime, but heck, it was fun. :P

The second story, I was DMing for.
This was a homebrewed world where giants were taking over thwo world through the use of an army of ancient warforged. As a last-dich effort, the humanoid races put all their heads together and put together an airship, the only airship out there. Guess who was part of the crew? Anyways, this gave them a pretty significant advantage in battle. So I was looking for creative ways to slowly decrease their advantage. At first, the party just faced 'forged mounted on giant wasps. Then things started getting less simple.

My favorite encounter in this whole campaign went like this. The party had just finished off a wave of mounted 'forged and their passengers. Then, four boulders arc up and land on the deck. But the boulders open up, and out roll a set of small-sized warforged with adamantine scythes. The party brace themselves for a fight when, suddenly, the lot of them vanish, and they hear the sound of footsteps heading down the stairs.

The looks on their faces were PRICELESS. I could just see the shift from confident to 'oh $hit...'. The party split up and pursued. They ended up fighting one in the engine room, one in the armory, one in the kitchen, and one in the bunk-room.

The party was forced to suddenly be creative. The one in the kitchen was the best. The ranger dumped a bag of flour into the air to reveal the thing, then dumped a bucket of boiling bacon-grease on it. The one in the engine room was hacking at cables and pipes as fast as it could while the big dumb fighter was chasing all over the room for it.

Overall, I liked the encounter because it made the players think differently. It also made them very protective: I wasn't just threatening THEM, I was threatening their ONLY HOPE. Plus, it was interesting to try to see them fight an enemy that really wasn't interested in fighting them, just doing as much damage as possible.

So, tell your stories! I want to hear them!

Everyman
2010-03-05, 12:41 PM
I enjoyed my first druid NPC I ran in a campaign. It wasn't that he was paticularly well-built or strong. It was the foresight I put into his tactics. Like using Meld Into Stone to fade in and out of the landscape, throwing the occasional Magic Stone to rattle the PCs while they tried to find him. When they did? They found him sitting down, eyes closed, savoring a bit of jerky. They charged, and ended up on the receiving end of a Enlarged rhino, which ALSO had Meld Into Stone...and had been trained to charge creatures through terrain.

The terror on their faces as they tried to dodge this thing, as well as the looks of satisfaction when they finally won the encounter, was priceless.

Stubbed Tongue
2010-03-05, 03:34 PM
I enjoyed my first druid NPC I ran in a campaign. It wasn't that he was paticularly well-built or strong. It was the foresight I put into his tactics. Like using Meld Into Stone to fade in and out of the landscape, throwing the occasional Magic Stone to rattle the PCs while they tried to find him. When they did? They found him sitting down, eyes closed, savoring a bit of jerky. They charged, and ended up on the receiving end of a Enlarged rhino, which ALSO had Meld Into Stone...and had been trained to charge creatures through terrain.

The terror on their faces as they tried to dodge this thing, as well as the looks of satisfaction when they finally won the encounter, was priceless.

May I use that idea? Would you mind? You of course will be credited with it.

Everyman
2010-03-05, 04:05 PM
May I use that idea? Would you mind? You of course will be credited with it.

I'd be honored. Please let me know how it goes (and remember, trample is your friend).

Stubbed Tongue
2010-03-05, 08:52 PM
I'd be honored. Please let me know how it goes (and remember, trample is your friend).

Oh yeah, love trample.