Most well-designed (combat) encounter you've run/played

[yougi]

As a DM, I love to design encounters that go outside the box. Yes, it's nice to have a damage-fest every now and then, but they get old fast: I've never heard of a player meeting his DM from 10 years before and going "you remember when our 4th level party fought those 6 Ogres in a 40'x40' room? we still talk about that sometimes!". Now, sometimes the encounters are made memorable by something that happens (e.g. someone's fate is decided by a single dice roll), and others are memorable by design: that is, they are simply better-crafted than your average fight.

Which brings me to my question: what was the most well-crafted combat encounter you've ever been a part of, either as DM or player. This serves two purposes: first, bragging rights (come on, no DM ever gets enough love), and second, helping the less experienced/imaginative come up with something spectacular.

And before you ask, no, I don't have enough planned for this week's session. :)

Here are some of mine:

1- Fire Arena: PCs come in a large room with a ceiling over 50' high. As they get in, the room is split in two by a large 30' high wall of fire (not the spell, but a mechanical trap) erupting in the middle. I give them a Reflex save, and I ask them to write on a piece of to which side they "dodged" the fire. On each side is summoned a Fire Elemental, which they have to deal with. Furthermore, a flying wizard throws fireballs around while flying circles around the room.

2- Voice from the Darkness: This stars the lieutenant of a criminal organization, a Harpy Warlock who can cast both the darkness and the see through darkness invocations. She is flying in a large sphere of darkness in the corner of a room, and singing to attract attackers to her. However, there are many pits around the room, in which the PCs fall. To make things worse, a few Ogres are walking around, bull rushing those who resist the song into the pits

3- Loom of Doom: The PCs were investigating a silk mill. As they get in a room with a mezzanine, two Rogues push a loom towards them, blocking the door. In addition to damage, the targets are entangled, as are those who come in. The rogues are waiting right over their heads with Spiked Chains, hoping to Sneak Attack as much as possible. On the other side of the room is a Sorcerer casting Fireballs, forcing them to get out of the doorway.

4- Dragonball Boss: Taking inspiration from one of my favorite manga, I've once made a DB-type boss: it had three forms, and everytime you thought you killed it, it would go to the next. Mine was a Drow Priestess, which would fight normally (with a Drow Fighter and a bunch of undead with her). When taken down to her last hitpoints, she would transform to a Bebilith (you know, Spider demon...). When the Bebilith was dealt with, it would take it's final form, an augmented Drider.

What about yours?

[mishka_shaw]

1- Fire Arena: PCs come in a large room with a ceiling over 50' high. As they get in, the room is split in two by a large 30' high wall of fire (not the spell, but a mechanical trap) erupting in the middle. I give them a Reflex save, and I ask them to write on a piece of to which side they "dodge" the fire. On each side is summoned a Fire Elemental, which they have to deal with. Furthermore, a flying wizard throws fireballs around while flying circles around the room.

That sounds awesome.

Our DM had a cool battle where the floor was like a chessboard and white squares phased you to a white dimension and black was a black dimension. So you had to attack the enemy by standing on their colour square. It proved more difficult than we first thought since you couldn't see the enemy if you were in an opposing colour square, also it made healing/attacks of opportunity really intresting.

[Story]

Steve the Aboleth sounds pretty memorable.

[Absol197]

That sounds awesome.

Our DM had a cool battle where the floor was like a chessboard and white squares phased you to a white dimension and black was a black dimension. So you had to attack the enemy by standing on their colour square. It proved more difficult than we first thought since you couldn't see the enemy if you were in an opposing colour square, also it made healing/attacks of opportunity really intresting.

I am stealing this. I don't even care.


~Phoenix~

P.S. :smallsmile:

[Quietus]

A couple from a game I ran with forumites a while back :

The Hydra
Early in the game I'd planned a somewhat Zelda-style dungeon that was man made, intended to throw adventurers in and sell illusion "videos" of the resulting hijinx to rich patrons - think reality TV. One of the rooms contained a hydra, which the players became familiar with after declining to run the area.

Cut to several games later. Ethergaunts have appeared, and are being overly threatening. They've attacked the resort that has served as a de facto base of operations. Players deal with the direct assault, only to hear an angry hydra roaring as it's released. The ethergaunts had dumped ten separate buffs onto a hydra that was *very* pissed off at having been stuck beneath a resort and used as entertainment. Among those buffs were haste, stoneskin, fly, and greater invisibility. The players eventually managed to dispel the offending stoneskin and the hydra went down in about one round after that, but that fight was memorable, for me.

Gestalt aboleth mage transmuter
Same game. Players had been trying to work with an aboleth to get a head up against the ethergaunts, and said aboleth was asking for an ethergaunt body to devour - I'd added the fluff that aboleths could assimilate memories from eating corpses, which when added to their genetic memory, creates some terrifyingly knowledgeable creatures.

Said players had also, earlier in the game, found an orb that had transmutation-related abilities, and was established to have an evil soul trapped inside - mechanically, an incomplete phylactery, but they didn't know that particular part. They'd tried various things, including shoving this orb into the body of a dead ethergaunt.. not long enough for the transmuter to rise in the ethergaunt's body, but long enough for it to get a foothold. They then fed this ethergaunt to the aboleth, where - remember the memories part? - the transmuter got a foothold, just enough to give the aboleth a fascination with the orb, also known as the phylactery.

The combat - the players finally realized what the aboleth was after, and got protective of the orb. They knew bad things were going on, but not what, exactly. Thus began the game of keepaway, which failed miserably when the aboleth landed a Dominate on the cleric while she had the orb. Now the players are trying to stop a cleric (in a high op game) from handing over the orb, for reasons they don't know. Ultimately, the players failed, the aboleth got the orb, the transmuter became a gestalt part of the aboleth, and it flew off with its newly enabled magic. The players finally began to realize *just* what had happened.. and the fact that they'd just created their own greatest enemy in the game. When we're talking a high-op game involving ethergaunts as the main opponents, that's kind of amazing.

[Karoht]

Steve the Aboleth sounds pretty memorable.
Yeup, Steve the Aboleth gets a seconding vote from me.

[mucco]

I've had some.

Fighting a Notre-Dame sized animated cathedral, which was summoning gargoyles, throwing statues in cone sprays, and making its towers crumble onto the party. It has a myriad of clockwork thingies that repaired it over time.

Fighting a half-orc-half-manticore and a kool-aid man who had summoned several smoke elementals, while dimensionally shackled to the moon. The fight ended with the party gish gloriously charging through a wall of force with AMF on himself (rule of cool) and killing himself and the enemy in the process. Then the party had problems coming back to Earth due to the distance of the Teleport spell being too short, the lack of oxygen, and their inability to go the way they came from. The solution included them staying in an extradimensional pocket while the undead party member orbited around the earth for a while.

Also, working on one upcoming fight that I cannot disclose, because my players read the forum sometimes... :smallamused: Hoping it turns out well though!

[Acanous]

Yeup, Steve the Aboleth gets a seconding vote from me.

You know, I came in here to post "Steve the Aboleth", but I was ninja'd. Twice.

So I'll go "Dovahkiin Bard" instead, who used Snowsight Goggles, Boots of the Mountain King, and a wand of Snowstorm to run around merrily hitting PC's with Dragonfire Inspiration'd Inspire Courage'd Weird Words. Guy had half the party flip the table on me.

[Dimers]

Wizard, advanced-HD constrictor skeleton, druid with a dire moose animal companion. The wizard was (by the time the party got there) riding a phantom steed. These villains were covered with an illusion spell to make them look like a genie on a pegasus, a naga, and an abiel queen riding a seriously oversized gorgon -- that was the dire moose, Animal Growth-ed to Gargantuan size. The PCs took lots of precautions against stoning to get ready for the fight. :smallamused:

The wizard went down in one round (after ruining all the party's tanks with one heavily-metamagicked ray of enfeeblement), but the dire moose very nearly trampled the whole party to death. They went through every heal item they owned and burned the party psion down to 2 power points during that combat.

I call it well-designed because it fit the story and the characters, and because it was fine-tuned to really make the players sweat. They were worried for their characters' skins. I could've just had the druid fire seeds a couple of them to death, but instead I got juuuuust what I wanted.

[Seharvepernfan]

Ha, that reminds me of mine!

I was DMing for my friend, who was playing a high-stats monk. There were two DMpcs tagging along with him - they wanted to explore a newly found cavern on his land. They were "adventurers/explorers" - skillmonkeys with a hint of gish.

At the back of the cavern was a sheer cliff extending down into an abyss. About 100ft down the cliffside was a circular opening emitting mist, so they set up ropes and went to check it out.

Turns out, the opening was carved to look like a gaping serpents maw. The opening opened into a square 30ft.x30ft. room, the floor covered in bones and mostly-intact serpent skeletons. If they had cast detect poison, some of the fangs would have pinged. On the other side of the room was a circular iron seal (it would have pinged as well) covered in contact poison. The seal depicted a feather-wearing jungle warrior with a spear and dagger fighting and being constricted by a giant snake.

If they touched it, it would emit a Bane effect (it was technically a magic trap) and would summon a large half-fiend dire snake with a unique ability to vomit a swarm of snakes (as well as tiny, small, and medium snakes who would not be harmed by the swarm). It also animated several of the snake skeletons (with poisoned bites), who were spellstitched to boot (mage armor and iron bones). The whole room was difficult terrain due to the bones, was dark except for their light, and was misty as well.

Anyway, the seal was a sliding door, leading to a yuan-ti/drow dungeon with intelligent snakes (from a dragon mag issue that had intelligent snake worshippers of Set).

That was like 8 years ago. If I had run that today, I'd have chosen different spells for the spellstitched skeletons and I would have made the room something more than a 30ft. square square. I would at least have made it circular.

[AlanBruce]

I'm running a high level game (11th-12th) where the party faced off against two terrible assassins- a nymph and a protean scourge, both with a multitude of class levels. This happened in a Shangri-La style village. Abandoned by the world, where people lived on forever by the grace of a local goddess.

The goddess dies and turns out to be a gauntlet. Cue in these two offenders who wish the item for their own nefarious purposes. The spellthief pockets the gauntlet in his bag pack of holding and takes to the air, landing on the top of a statue against the nymph, exchanging taunts. The PS threatens the rest of the party to give them the item and, hopefully, keep their lives.

Cue in the battle. Spellthief fighting against the murderous nymph on top of a giant goddess statue, stealing a few of her SLA. Below, the PS hiding and SA the cleric, who was buffed to equal a god of war himself. Then, it happened.

The item burst from the bag of holding! As the spellthief's shiny trinkets, among them the mcguffin, fell in slow motion towards the earth, Spelltheif, Nymph, Protean Scourge, and Cleric all dash towards the sky to catch the item. Spellthief gets lucky and pockets it, hurting his cleric friend because the cleric wanted the item (believing it belonged to his church). Cleric is stabbed as he attempts a grapple above the hidden village and plummets to the ground below with a major loss of spells, bringing down a piece of the statue with him in the process. The PS and Nymph are quick to act, trapping the spellthief in a force cage and blinding him while calmly explaining to him his dire situation as the nymph takes out a scroll of create water. Spellthief smiles and uses the nymph's DD to leave as far as possible from the village. assassins track him down and teleport through an ancient fey wood. Finally, exhausted, the spellthief blindly stumbles into a fey grove which he and his teammates had helped earlier. The assassins infiltrate the place, pretending to be his party members. realizing the end of the grove and his life, the ST puts on the gauntlet, blasting the area with such tremendous force that he causes the two nigh unstoppable assassins to cower in fear and teleport away.

[Gildedragon]

Pirate attack vs a Party of 7 Level 6 PCs:
Stormy seas, theater of mind combat (to speed things up)
Pirates were after a magical item the PC's had. They were supposed to be beaten by the PC's by a narrow margin. The strategy was as follows:

Cleric: From Pirate Ship: Prayer. Fog Cloud. Binding Winds (on Druid's Flying Mount)
Pirate Commoners: Alchemical Sleep Gas, to put the crew to sleep
Bard: Song, Hideous Laughter on the PC Bard
Wizard 1: Flying: Color Spray, Displacement on Bard, Darkness to cover retreat (targeted on PC that is getting the upper hand of any of the pirates)
Wizard 2: On Floating Disk: Displacement on Figher, Ray of Enfeeblement (vs Monk and Barbarian), Darkness to cover retreat
Fighter (captain): Disarm, Grapple, and Trip anyone who is putting up a fight

Things go pretty much as planned, until the Rogue "joined" the pirates, doublecrosses them, and takes out the Cleric, forcing a retreat sooner than expected. The PC's kept the trinket, but their dislike for the NPC's has transformed them into recurring villains

[Karoht]

You know, I came in here to post "Steve the Aboleth", but I was ninja'd. Twice.

So I'll go "Dovahkiin Bard" instead, who used Snowsight Goggles, Boots of the Mountain King, and a wand of Snowstorm to run around merrily hitting PC's with Dragonfire Inspiration'd Inspire Courage'd Weird Words. Guy had half the party flip the table on me.
I would place the arguement that a near TPK is not typically considered a well-designed encounter, but such rationale is subjective and starts an off topic arguement.
That said, the Dovahkiin Bard was pretty darned cool, and a well-designed concept. Had be been a re-occuring villian like Steve and developed a solid personality, I think he could have eclipsed Steve.

Though now I am very much afraid of what will happen when Steve the Aboleth takes a few more levels of Bard and becomes Aboleth Mailman Bard.
Aboleth yells FUS RO DAH. The entire party WILL flip the table, mark my words.