Your Best Made Encounters!

[Dralnu]

What are your favorite combat encounters that you either planned as a DM or had to fight through as a player?

I got one:

PCs are invading a vampire's crypt and come across a group of mooks being led by a vampire in full plate wielding a greatsword and another wearing robes with arcane symbols. The PCs assume the robed one is a caster. In fact, they say "target the caster first" and rush towards him. The robed one starts beating them senseless with punches and kicks while the full plate vampire fires a lightning bolt.

Turns out the robed guy was a vampire monk (unarmed strikes + energy drain = win). The one in "full plate" was actually an illusionist wizard with major image to look/sound like armor and took greatsword proficiency.

My players are now more cautious about targeting the obvious "caster" first.

[akragster]

Honestly, I love fighting encounters where someone uses Dominate Person (especially this nasty version for vampires)/Geas. Due to my Fighter's non-existent Will Save, I usually start slicing up my team members.

It may sound like I'm being evil, but if I'm told to kill my teammates, I will enjoy it.

[rayne_dragon]

My 4e DM had a room with a mosaic on the floor made of 5' x 5' tiles... each colour of which had the effect of one of the beholder eye beams. Each round a different colour would activate. The walls were also covered in spikes and the doors would lock the moment anyone started fighting in the room. The group we fought in there was sort of an enemy adventuring party, although not an equal challenge to us. I loved a) when the disintigrate beam activated destroying a ton of furniture and b) as my Wizard, using push powers to send a bunch of guys flying in all directions onto various spikey ornaments and killing them.

[Vangor]

Living Adamantine Tower, Storm, and set of Braziers. Magical golem crafting experiment had transferred the life from all living things nearby and animated tons of objects, those being the first.

Living Adamantine Tower was a colossal construct with sweeping attacks (50ft long adamantine sheets) requiring reflex saves to avoid damage and fall prone. Failure caused an automatic bullrush attempt. To hit resolved damage normally, but the bullrush was unavoidable.

Living Storm was a colossal elemental which caused weather effects to blind and buffet enemies. Lightning bolts galore, too, effectively a chain lightning ray spell with reflex half. Extremely difficult to hit and required constant countering by spells.

Living Braziers, four of em, were a huge fire elemental which could split itself into two large and again into two medium elementals. Were tied to the braziers, requiring them to be destroyed or they would reignite, and would radiate and spew flame.

The campaign was for 9 players all ECL17, designed to TPK frequently. If they TPK'd, would all resurrect and the encounter would be bypassed. However, winning without a TPK or deaths would give unique loot, such as gloves from the Living Storm causing ray spells to chain for half. The group had wanted this, usually requesting facing more difficult enemies such as beholders, dragons, etc., which I had to play dumb to avoid TPKs.

[Bobikus]

PC and a companion NPC in an "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" campaign I was DMing (and pretty much making up the encounters as we go) were traveling east a couple days after the start of a zombie infection outbreak. Anytime one of them fell asleep, a voice would speak to them, telling them to continue heading east.

Eventually they reached a small town where a group of survivors brought them to a hideout in a basement below a broken down house and explained that the voice they had been hearing belonged to a powerful undead who had been luring survivors to the old prison in the town and keeping them in the prison cells until he was ready to feed upon them, and was controlling the zombies in the town

The PCs decided to go distract the 'zombie-lord' while the NPCs get the captured people out of the city. Companion NPC was too wounded to follow at first, so he stayed behind. The full group cleared a path through the streets to reach the prison, and the PC with the shotgun climbed up on the roof to take out the acid spewing zombies on the wall so the group could scale the wall.

Once on top of the wall, the group looked down into the prison yard, and saw that it was covered in bones, with a sarcophagus in the middle, surrounded by bone. The NPC group went to the cell blocks to look for any captive survivors, while the PCs went into the courtyard.

As the PCs approached the sarcophagus, 3 of the corpses rose to their feet, and quickly grabbed a bunch of the bones around them to graft to their bodies as makeshift armor and weapons, and attacked the group.

Once the PCs defeated the 3 zombies, the sarcophagus overflowed with blood then burst open, and the monster that was speaking to them in their sleep climbed out. The monster was 15 feet tall, and was covered with armor made out of bone that was warped into the shape of plate armor. It had large batlike wings covered in human skin, and had a bone sword and bow, with a 3rd arm allowing it to use the sword and bone at once. One of the more insane PCs decided to call the monster "Greg".

Greg flew up into the air and launched bone arrows down at the PCs, who tried shooting holes in its wings with pistol fire. After realizing that Greg could regenerate, the girl with the shotgun pulled that back out and began shooting larger holes in the wings until finally Greg had to land.

Once Greg landed, it made another of the corpses rise up, arm itself with the surrounding bones, and join Greg in attacking the party on the ground. Greg attacked with the sword until the sword wielding preacher in the party was able to disarm him, at which point Greg picked up his cohort and swung him around like a massive club. Eventually Greg was forced to devour his cohort to regenerate enough to get back into the air.

Once back into the air, Greg used his fire breathing aspect to deal heavy damage to the PCs, then began shooting more arrows, one of them injuring the shotgun-wielding girl enough that she passed out. Getting desperate, one of the PCs got out one of the walkie-talkies they had with them to try contacting their companion NPC. They tried to continue attacking, but weren't able to get a solid hit on the flying target with their handguns, and Greg focused his attacks on anyone attempting to get to the girl's shotgun.

Eventually, Greg prepared for a second fire breath, but before he could, the Companion NPC fired a rifleshot from the prison wall, hitting Greg and causing him to miss with his second breath. While Greg angrily turned to fire an arrow at the companion, one of the PCs was able to reach the girl's shotgun and start blasting hole's in Gregs wings until he was on the ground again.

Once on the ground, the preacher and the axe-wielding fireman quickly got into melee with Greg, and was able to break Greg's armor, giving an easier shot at its heart. Without his armor though, Greg was faster and even without his sword, had claws on his hands capable of tearing through the PC's kevlar vests easily. Greg launched a flurry of attacks at the PCs, at one point even picking one up to throw at another, until eventually two were left, both at low health. Eventually one of the two left finally got a clean heart shot on Greg, putting him down for good.

With Greg dead, and the captive survivors saved by the NPC group, the team was able to clear out the prison yard and use the prison as a stronghold to keep people safe from future zombie attacks in the area.

[Dralnu]

These are awesome. Let's hear more!

[ScionoftheVoid]

Malasynep Mindmage (Frostburn) with well designed lair. Whole place was underwater, with numerous thin walls. Anyone getting to the treaure hoard had to go past a being with constant heatsense, burrow and swim speeds. Who was on the other side of an ice wall.

And that's if they didn't accidentally go down the wrong tunnel and end up in the one with the resting Malasynep (which my players did). "You see a large dark shape beneath you. As you approach you see the shape has eyes. And teeth! Roll initiative!"

They couldn't escape because it could go through the walls, and the being is intelligent as well as having Swallow Whole, which led to the following (roughly):

Player: It's a huge fish thing that's just eaten him, right?
DM: Yeah.
Player: I do the Men In Black routine to try and get it to eat me!
DM:... It backs off slightly before opening its mouth. You see sparks leap between its teeth as it blasts you with a Lightning Bolt, take *XD6* damage.

[claricorp]

One of my favorites I made was a pair of remorhaz(es?) who fought in a donut shaped, icy arena with a pit at the bottom. At the bottom of said pit there were some hungry oozes. Lots of being eaten and then thrown up into the pit, trying to climb up its icy walls, making tunnels and such. It was quite a bit of fun.

[Bobikus]

The same afmbe group just also defeated a zombie nurse that threw exploding zombie babies.

[Dralnu]

Awesome stuff. The ooze pit fight reminded me of another one I did:

PCs are up against Tucker's Kobolds inside a dragon's cave lair. Kobold archers are firing at them from across a huge pit. The only way across is a rope bridge. The PCs rush onto the bridge to fight the kobolds, triggering a topsy-turvy trap (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060127a) that drops one of them into the pit, which contains a hungry Black Pudding. The first PC that successfully crossed the bridge onto the stone platform with the kobolds triggered a Hold Person Hidden Catapult trap, (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060127a) also throwing them into the pit with the (now multiple, the fallen PC was hacking at it and it split into more) hungry oozes. All while the kobold archers kept shooting away and cackling like mad.

MORE! NEED MORE! :smallbiggrin:

[Amphetryon]

Relatively generic fun here: I had a 'mad scientist' Kineticist Psion in control of 3 Flesh Golems. Every attack he made, healed the Flesh Golems.

[Dralnu]

I still have to do the "healing golem" schtick. It's classic and wonderful.

This thread has the potential of becoming a great resource for DM tips and tricks! Let's see more!

[Adam...?]

I've posted this before a few weeks back, but it's an encounter I'm rather proud of, so I'll paste it in here.

As far as interesting encounters are concerned, I pulled a "House of Leaves" on my players while they were still pretty low level.

They thought they were exploring a haunted house, so when they first explored the place, I drew a very detailed battle map of a small, two-story building. Thus, when no evil ghosts or monsters jumped out to attack them, they were rather confused. After a few minutes or searching, they found the closet that lead to the infinite corridor of doom. They spent a couple days exploring, and I throw them off guard with shifting hallways, weird noises, and spatially impossible rooms. A few days later, they admit to being completely lost, and start worrying about a lack of food, and protection from elements, as the temperature has dropped to near freezing.

So before they start getting incapacitated, I throw them a bone, and they find their way back. As soon as they're all back in the "normal" house, **** hits the fan, and I have them roll initiative. Versus the house, who I decide deserves two turns a round. I give the house the ability to shift the direction of gravity, expand the dimensions of rooms, or contract them to perform slam attacks against players (with free bull rush attempts), all in an attempt to knock the PCs back into the closet, which has now become a bottomless black pit. The house started off the surprise round by shifting gravity so that the wall with the now-expanding pit effectively became the floor. The PCs end up falling against it, and the two nearest the pit o' death, the fighter and cleric, pass their reflex saves, and thus manage to grab onto the ledge to avoid plummeting to their doom.

The party monk broke an arm jumping out a window to avoid being squished between two walls. The rogue got a lucky toss with a rope/grappling hook, and managed to climb "up" to the staircase and crawl across the second floor. The cleric and fighter were climbing up the rope when the the room expanded vertically, leaving them dangling about 50 ft. in the air. Fighter lost his grip, and ended up falling into the pit. Cleric managed some ridiculous rope swing/jump combo to make his way to the front door. Meanwhile, the rogue was forced to jump "down" about 70 ft. of hallway to dive head first out a second story window. Shot out of it like a rocket, and fell most of the way to the ground before pasting himself on the neighboring house. Lucky bastard survived the fall damage.

All around, a good time.