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Grail
2012-08-11, 05:47 AM
So, last night in Pathfinder, 7 2nd level PC's and a 1st level NPC retainer came across a single Ghast, CR 2. This was supposed to be a decent encounter, but not life threatening. Well, 3 characters paralysed, 2 unconscious when the Ghast finally went down, and I fudged a crit against one of them to be a miss.

This got me thinking about fights that weren't supposed to be lethal, but turned decidedly so.

So, a couple from me before I ask for some from you.

Palladium. A group of five fifth level characters with excellent magical equipment came across a single fifth level knight. The Knight was wearing decent armour and carried a battleaxe, no magical equipment. He was a wanted criminal, so the characters tried to take him in. The Knight knew that he'd be hung, so he fought back. End result, TPK, the Knight is barely scratched.

SLA Industries using GURPS. Two heavily armoured and decked out operatives in downtown had a run in with a group of low level gang members without armour and only carrying light handguns. The operatives started to push the gangers around. One of the gangers whipped out a pistol and shot, the fight began and ended up with both op's dead.

3.5 DnD. A group of 6 3rd level characters tracked down a single ogre to his lair. The characters launched an ambush on the ogre, completely took it by surprise. After a short fight, the ogre was dead, but so were four of the characters.

SilverLeaf167
2012-08-11, 06:28 AM
Well, this might not quite count, but... a couple sessions ago, a supposedly rather easy fight against a bunch of modified undead almost got the party Cleric and Warlock killed.
In fact, because it felt stupid for us to let a character die in his first battle in an anticlimactic way, I first had to fudge the Warlock to be just unconscious instead of dead after being struck by a critical hit, and then make the attacking skeleton move on to other targets instead of finishing him off.
Other minor examples include an umber hulk that made the Barbarian slaughter a bunch of villagers and a trap that squished the party Rogue, but apart from that, encounters designed by me actually tend to be a little easier than I meant them to be.

RandomNPC
2012-08-11, 09:59 AM
My players will randomly fall into great builds, then have a dry spell of half-hearted meh before coming up with something awesome again.

One fight I tossed in a watered down Magma Hurler (mini handbook) two small fire elementals, and a medium one.

I was going to allow the spiked chain trip guy to trip them, the party was a low level but I really wanted to use the encounter. He was a no-show and nobody wanted to play him, so he took a "shortcut" to town. I knocked off the medium elemental and tossed the rest at the party. Without being able to knock them prone, party was wiped in three rounds.

lyko555
2012-08-11, 11:24 AM
i once had my party of 4 lvl 5s attacked in an inn by the 6 lvl 1 peasants with long swords. It went horrible by the time the last peasant had fallen three of them had been in the negatives twice.

same group 3 lvls later i attacked with a small swarm of tiny vipers. i had meant to just have a small little cr 4 fight to enhance the swamp they were wandering through killed 1 of em and the rest barely made it alive.

Remmirath
2012-08-11, 11:58 AM
In my last D20 Modern game, the party ended up getting completely slaughtered by a group of robots patrolling the hall. This was not intentional, although it turned out to be fortuitous (I ended up being unable to attend the game for the next several months anyhow); the robots were fairly easily avoided, and patrolled in small groups. However, the PCs decided to lure a large number of them to an ambush point and attack them.

The ambush point they chose was a part of the hallway where they could be attacked from both sides. They had apparently not taken this into account and were only prepared for attack from one direction. They also weren't well-equipped to handle that large a number of attackers. Not one made it out.

One that I averted just before the PCs actually entered the room: the group was going to go kill the Lich-Queen of the Githyanki, because they were taking up the mission of a dead PC who had wanted to do that. The problem here was that I had originally filled one room with about one hundred Githyanki who all had silver swords.

Now, the PCs were numerous and very high level (the numbers alone were not the problem), but I realised that with that many vorpal swords in the room people's heads were going to be flying a bit more than intended, and the main threat was supposed to be the Lich-Queen and not her guards. I trimmed down the numbers so that only a few of them actually possessed silver swords and it turned out all right.

Knaight
2012-08-11, 12:36 PM
I tend to play enemies intelligently, which can lead to escalation. This has made a few fights surprisingly lethal. The most notable of these was in my Alchemquest Fudge game. The PCs were all on a small catamarang, and were attacked by a slightly large one. There was an exchange of fire for a while, and then somebody decided to ram. So, at that point it turned into vicious melee fighting, on a highly unstable and fairly narrow platform being tossed around the waves. Later, somebody kicked a character who was already fairly injured from sword slashes into the water, on the idea that the pain from salt water might lead them to pass out from shock and drown.

So, at this point we have a pair of boats, locked together, and next to them there is a figure writhing in pain bleeding copiously. Enter sharks. And, as if it wasn't already hard enough to stay on the boat, somebody decided that it would be a good idea to throw some alchemically produced lubricant all over the place to disentangle their boat, and light the enemies boat on fire. Which brings us to the part where everyone is now on a fairly slippery, thin platform bobbing above shark infested waters. It ended about as well as anticipated.

The cherry on the top of this is that the PCs had a significant ranged weapon superiority from fairly early on (they had several bolt action rifles, tungsten bullets for hull and barricade piercing, and one very nice bow in the hands of a veritable sniper, up against a few low grade bows and one standard rifle that ended up in the water fairly quickly), and it was originally their enemies that needed to board to even out the fight - which could probably have been avoided, given that the PCs boat was actually pretty good. There was certainly no need for sharks to get involved.

Bearpunch
2012-08-11, 01:34 PM
Just a few days ago, I was hosting a pathfinder session, where one 4th level rogue, a 5th level Shapeshifter Ranger, and another 5th level ranged ranger, along with a 2nd level commoner fought three werewolves. Now, these were extremely toned down werewolves, they didn't have longswords, so I gave them two claw attacks at a really low bonus. All things considered, this fight should have been threatening, but not super dangerous, as they all had some sort of silver weapon. Thanks to my pc-murder die I use, three crits later, everyone but the ranged ranger was knocked out.

The players don't like werewolves anymore.

The Dark Fiddler
2012-08-11, 03:12 PM
Now that I know how lethal Dark Heresy can be, this isn't really surprisingly lethal, but I think the story counts, due to the fact that it was our first encounter in the system (and pretty much the first thing that happened in the first session, too). One of the sample missions, so you may recognize it.

Our group, a Guardsman, an Assassin, and a Psyker (me) end up on some planet to deal with some disappearances that are going on. We come up to the dock, and get off our boat; I'm a bit seasick due to failing my Toughness check. A few of the local hooligans come up to us and demand we pay them 10 thrones each to pass, but we spent all of our money during character creation, so we decide that, no, we won't be doing that. I just walk past them, and try to use Forget Me to make them... well, forget me. Doesn't work. The Assassin pulls a knife or something, so the thugs pull a knife. Combat starts, and I end up getting my knee serrated open in the first round. We only survived because the Port Authority came and broke up the fight.

Lord Tyger
2012-08-11, 03:21 PM
The game was Pathfinder. The place, the basement of a wizard's tower (all but one of the wizards having been subdued). The fight- a giant amoeba against three casters. Each party member was unconscious at one point in the fight, the healer (a life oracle) twice, having been brought up to zero hitpoints and then knocked back unconscious by healing the druid.

Things get rough when you don't have any meatshields at low levels, apparently.

Kazyan
2012-08-11, 03:33 PM
DnD 3.5. Level 10 Knight, Fighter, Spontaneous Theurge, Healbot Cleric, and level 9 Totemist. 4 Ambush Drakes show up with some kind of template that I'm not supposed to know about, but was supposed to make them CR 9 in total.

Theurge and familiar die to a breath weapon. Revivify is cast. Totemist gets pummeled to 0 HP and flees (kinda). Healbot hides in his bag of holding when at single-digit HP and about to get killed. Knight is Dexterity-damaged to 0. With over half his HP gone, the Fighter saves us with Cleave and a critical hit.

At the cost of 6,000 gp (familiar gets rezzed for RP reasons), we're back to normal, but that was a tough one.

Sith_Happens
2012-08-11, 04:59 PM
There was certainly no need for sharks to get involved.

Of course there was. Everything's better with sharks.:smallwink:

Grail
2012-08-11, 06:56 PM
Another from me, this time AD&D 2e, I was a player in this one.

5 4th level characters and 2 2nd levl npc henchmen were attacked by a group of giant centipedes as we moved across a field. After the initial round of combat, my character was the only one not paralysed from the poison. I lasted 3 more rounds before I too went down. Then they ate us alive.

jackattack
2012-08-11, 07:36 PM
Well, there was this rope bridge...

Suffice it to say, we referred to that incident as the "conga line of death".

Knaight
2012-08-11, 07:59 PM
Well, there was this rope bridge...

Suffice it to say, we referred to that incident as the "conga line of death".

I'm guessing you slowly fought them back over the bridge, and they cut the end with everyone on it. That about right?

vartan
2012-08-11, 09:20 PM
Given that it was a first level adventure, I think that most people found Keep on the Shadowfell's Irontooth encounter was surprisingly deadly.

jackattack
2012-08-12, 04:29 PM
I'm guessing you slowly fought them back over the bridge, and they cut the end with everyone on it. That about right?

IIRC...

The first guy tried to cross the chasm on the rope bridge and fell off.

The second guy rushed out on the rope bridge and caught him, but couldn't keep his footing and fell off.

The third guy leaped out and caught the second guy and snagged the rope bridge, but the rope snapped under the weight of three men.

The fourth guy had tied a new rope around himself, and jumped after all of them.

The fifth and sixth members of the party managed to haul all four of them back up using the new rope on the fourth guy.

It was not our most shining moment.

Yora
2012-08-12, 05:14 PM
"boy, that escalated quickly."

this had to be said. ; )

Conners
2012-08-12, 07:03 PM
IIRC...

The first guy tried to cross the chasm on the rope bridge and fell off.

The second guy rushed out on the rope bridge and caught him, but couldn't keep his footing and fell off.

The third guy leaped out and caught the second guy and snagged the rope bridge, but the rope snapped under the weight of three men.

The fourth guy had tied a new rope around himself, and jumped after all of them.

The fifth and sixth members of the party managed to haul all four of them back up using the new rope on the fourth guy.

It was not our most shining moment. That is awesomely cinematic.

Kane0
2012-08-12, 07:05 PM
1. Party enters a local temple
2. Local temple clerics mistake us for infamous god-killers
3. Clerics raise crossbows at us in fear
4. We attempt diplomacy, with the true neutral party member pointing his finger at another and saying "He did it"
5. Diplomacy luckily succeeds, we run away
6. Once we have gotten to safety, the blamed character (who rolled the successful diplomacy) turns on and kills the true neutral character

So in the end the clerics that we were supposed to fight turned out a harmless misunderstanding followed by a sudden PvP.

Was a fun session. :smallsmile:

Ranting Fool
2012-08-12, 07:21 PM
Well not quite epic but.

A DM made wondering uncontrolled Golem Siege weapon attack the party while they are having breakfast (Flesh golem but 4 legged and a tail catapult that does circle of death, not scary as all PC's to high to die to it) the two casters back away after buffing the melee guys with haste "making sure to get the horses on the wagon and the pack animals" one wizard jumps on the wagon and readys himself to drive it off as soon as the other wizard grabs the rains of the donkey's and jumps on the back.

Wizard 2 grabs rains and jumps on back. Hasted horse take off as Wizard one drives away. Wizard two is very nearly pulled off the wagon to land in the dirt as even hasted Donkey's don't like to run ( a quick reflex save to allow him to drop the rains)

All because they like their pack horses, it's not like they don't have a bunch of bags of holding and the ability to learn teleport. Though it would have been very funny for one of the Wizards to fall flat on their face for such a mundane thing.

Erik Vale
2012-08-12, 09:00 PM
When assaulting a castle, my group was distraction/prevent goblins from manning war machines.
By taking the time to teleport things safely, all the guards and all the other pc's in my group were brought down by goblins. I was the only survivor...

Techsmart
2012-08-12, 10:18 PM
IIRC...

The first guy tried to cross the chasm on the rope bridge and fell off.

The second guy rushed out on the rope bridge and caught him, but couldn't keep his footing and fell off.

The third guy leaped out and caught the second guy and snagged the rope bridge, but the rope snapped under the weight of three men.

The fourth guy had tied a new rope around himself, and jumped after all of them.

The fifth and sixth members of the party managed to haul all four of them back up using the new rope on the fourth guy.

It was not our most shining moment.

That sounds hilarious. Most of my party members would usually be: "Oh, he fell... okay... who's next to die?"

In my case, I was DMing 3.5. The party was already level 6 at the time of the encounter, and was helping the city while being assaulted by zombies. Rather than make the party fight 20 zombies in one go (the rest were handled by town guards), i sent them in waves of 5 (4 CR3 encounters, should be manageable). First wave, the party rolled 4 nat-1's, and the zombies got 3 nat-20's. The party ended up spending most of the time slowly falling back so that the town guard could help catch up. Instead of fighting 4 encounters, they barely survived 2, and relied on the town guard for the second one.

Had a second case in the same campaign. (background: the magic in this setting was maintained by several crystals, one for each school. The crystals were malfunctioning, so the players had to fix them) The players had to go into a mansion to obtain a crystal of extremely potent transmutation magic. The side-effect of this crystal's malfunctioning was to animate random inanimate objects. Most of the house went well, until the party made it to the kitchen. Long story short, my PCs are very wary of me and butcher knives. I also got to kill a player with a gazebo in that game.:smallbiggrin:

Silus
2012-08-12, 11:01 PM
Here's a subversion/reversal.

Pathfinder Society game Shades of Ice Part 2 (Spoilered for, well, spoilers)

So, we're in the second to last room of the adventure. The door ahead has ice on it and my brain is ticking away all the things that can generate ice like that. So we walk in, I (a squishy Dex Bard) bring up the rear with the 2H Paladin taking point.

BOOM! FROST BREATH FROM THE CEILING!

Down comes a Young White Dragon and some in the group muttered a "aww crap". We were, after all, around lvl 2-3 at the time.

First round of combat, Paladin takes his Greatsword, charges up a Smite and a Power Attack, and hits the thing for like 46 damage. Dragon takes a swipe, everyone else is freaking out. Second round, same thing, dragon drops.

"Huh. That was....shockingly easy..."

Compared to the FIRST encounter, which was a group of three Goblin Alchemists chucking bombs at us from the rafters.

olthar
2012-08-12, 11:50 PM
I once had a single shadow almost tpk a group of 4 level 5s.

I play that incorporeal creatures are intelligent enough to hide their number by moving togetherish in the same spot, which makes knowing how many of them there are difficult.

The party had killed 2 groups of 5 wandering shadows, and they were tired and strength drained. They got to the room they originated in and I decided that 5 of the 6 were wandering, which left only one in the room. The room was dark and they only saw the one shadow. Because they were tired and worried about how many shadows there were, the wizard did what all wizards who reach level 5 do and cast fireball. The fireball did nothing to the single shadow but dropped him and 2 of his friends to 0. The guy who was left standing was the thief, who happened to be the only guy who didn't own a +1 or better weapon (another story).

He was able to pick up the fighter's sword and kill it, but it was a close fight.

Grail
2012-08-13, 08:08 AM
IIRC...

The first guy tried to cross the chasm on the rope bridge and fell off.

The second guy rushed out on the rope bridge and caught him, but couldn't keep his footing and fell off.

The third guy leaped out and caught the second guy and snagged the rope bridge, but the rope snapped under the weight of three men.

The fourth guy had tied a new rope around himself, and jumped after all of them.

The fifth and sixth members of the party managed to haul all four of them back up using the new rope on the fourth guy.

It was not our most shining moment.

I'm guessing
Rise of the Runelords, module 1