Monsters( Or Encounters) That You Enjoyed

[Magnera]

This is just one of those threads where people post their experiences about the subject. In this case, monsters or encounters that you enjoyed running or experiencing.

One of my most memorable ones was a Stoney Kracken! (Kraken with Mineral Warrior template, it was the DM's not mine.) We were a party of 4 at about 10th level. (Paladin, Ranger, Wizard and Sorcerer) Darn thing was going to run over a hamlet if we didn't stop it. I remember the encounter only cause of my mental image of a Kracken made out of stone suddenly moving more than 40 MPH when we were fighting it.

There was also a time when we got ambushed by a five headed, winged, Remorhaz. Goodness that fight was all sorts of crazy.

Finaly, I remember us having a social encounter with a Gargantuan, three headed Chihuahua that liked to play 'ball' with a very heavy Adamantine sphere.

What are some of your most memorable encounters or monsters? Remember to have fun with it!

[sabelo2000]

My favorite was the illithid who owned a Cave of Madness. When my dwarf paladin (and company) went in to clear things out, the mind flayer out-diplomacized me by asserting that, as lawful owner of the cave (he had a Deed and everything) we were trespassing, and furthermore owed him damages for all his pets and minions we had killed.

As a postscript to that, once we had his Deed revoked on account of negligent endangerment (he didn't have sufficient fences/doors to prevent neighborhood children wandering in and dying) the Cave of Madness was THE most frustrating dungeon we've ever been in.

[Gwendol]

Ok, I'll bite... a succubus?

[Chilingsworth]

My favorite was the illithid who owned a Cave of Madness. When my dwarf paladin (and company) went in to clear things out, the mind flayer out-diplomacized me by asserting that, as lawful owner of the cave (he had a Deed and everything) we were trespassing, and furthermore owed him damages for all his pets and minions we had killed.

As a postscript to that, once we had his Deed revoked on account of negligent endangerment (he didn't have sufficient fences/doors to prevent neighborhood children wandering in and dying) the Cave of Madness was THE most frustrating dungeon we've ever been in.

Well, good on you for not playing the cliched "Paladin Brand Smit-o-matic."

Also on your DM for not forcing you to do so.

I remember a merfolk vampire my party and I fought, part of a premade. Interesting twist on the vampire, and it looked cool, too.

[sabelo2000]

My favorite encounter as a DM was a wraith who, due to a misreading of 3.0 Uncanny Dodge, fought and lost against a rogue who failed his Spot checks the entire time and didn't even know the wraith was in the room.

We were in tears laughing by the end of it...

[supermonkeyjoe]

My favourite encounter to run and apparently one of the players favourites was one in an Eberron campaign where the party at level 12ish fought a CR 18 death giant who was about to undergo a ritual to turn himself into a titan and wreck Stormreach, after running around for a session, gathering as much information as possible, they recruited as many competent warriors as possible and headed out to an ancient ruin to stop the giant, they found him mid-ritual and air-dropped in via featherfall,

The battle ended up being pretty epic, there were 4 PCs; human rogue, changeling druid/master of many forms, kalashtar paladin and elf wizard and the NPCs; a small group of were-rat rogues, a paladin of the silver flame, a warforged druid, a warforged Titan, a thri-kreen barbarian,a half stone giant fighter, and a human crossbow sniper who was shooting from the circling airship. The preparation and encounter lasted nearly two sessions, the Giant had the ability to bind and unbind vestiges instantly due to the location which gave him the ability to change tactics round to round and the PCs had to compensate for this.

The way I ran the fight was to abstract the NPCs abilities and have each player command a couple of NPCs on their turn, "attack the giant", "heal that person" etc. I gave them all static damage and healing and a couple of special abilities for each NPC.

After eventually defeating the giant with only a couple of casualties the PCs thought they had won but the half-completed ritual backfired and they had to deal with the angry manifestations of Vestiges trying to break through into reality, this mostly involved damage control and trying to stay alive while the wildshaped druid and warforged titan ran around destroying all the monoliths to sever the connection to the nothingness beyond space, they eventually prevailed with only one NPC being pulled into oblivion.

There was much rejoicing.

[Longstrider]

Minotaur Tipping.

[killem2]

Fighting a Shadow at level 1 with only 2 people who had the ability to harm it and those were very limited usages.

lol

[Morbis Meh]

Fighting a Shadow at level 1 with only 2 people who had the ability to harm it and those were very limited usages.

lol

That is a rather harsh encounter for level one... not to mention the fact that the other people present had no way to contribute to the encounter.

One topic, I have played in many interesting encounters and there are a couple that I really enjoyed and a few i have shared in the past.

The most recent amusing encounter that I made:
Recently I made a rather entertaining encounter involving 2 traps and 2 monters. The were 4 PC's: an elven swordsage, a half orc crusader, a half ogre psywar and a human factotum. The location was an underground room that only had a single table in the center and two doors to the left and right. The swordsage and crusader decided to go in without the factotum, a slight error. He opens one door and soon finds that he is facing a mimic and is soon grappled. Now after some damage he breaks free of the door and moves back waiting for it to strike but it doesn't since it is magically bound to the wall. After catiously beating it to death the factotum goes to examine the table for clues/traps... and springs the first trap, a catapult trap, and flies to the opposite side of the room where he flies into the other door, another Mimic. Meanwhile the psywar charges in to help his fellow comrade and springs the 2nd catapult trap and thus flies into the wall where the first mimic was defeated. The entire situation was rather slapstick and very humourous and the swordsage ended up critting twice, once on each mimic, thus for a laugh I gave him favoured enemy: mimics to add to his character.

[killem2]

That is a rather harsh encounter for level one... not to mention the fact that the other people present had no way to contribute to the encounter.

One topic, I have played in many interesting encounters and there are a couple that I really enjoyed and a few i have shared in the past.

The most recent amusing encounter that I made:
Recently I made a rather entertaining encounter involving 2 traps and 2 monters. The were 4 PC's: an elven swordsage, a half orc crusader, a half ogre psywar and a human factotum. The location was an underground room that only had a single table in the center and two doors to the left and right. The swordsage and crusader decided to go in without the factotum, a slight error. He opens one door and soon finds that he is facing a mimic and is soon grappled. Now after some damage he breaks free of the door and moves back waiting for it to strike but it doesn't since it is magically bound to the wall. After catiously beating it to death the factotum goes to examine the table for clues/traps... and springs the first trap, a catapult trap, and flies to the opposite side of the room where he flies into the other door, another Mimic. Meanwhile the psywar charges in to help his fellow comrade and springs the 2nd catapult trap and thus flies into the wall where the first mimic was defeated. The entire situation was rather slapstick and very humourous and the swordsage ended up critting twice, once on each mimic, thus for a laugh I gave him favoured enemy: mimics to add to his character.

Yeah that was my fault, first session, never DM before, didn't realize they HAD to have magical weapons to hit. >_<

But they beat it, couple people went down on some abilities but nothing horrible, and they got MAJOR exp for it.

[Morbis Meh]

Yeah that was my fault, first session, never DM before, didn't realize they HAD to have magical weapons to hit. >_<

But they beat it, couple people went down on some abilities but nothing horrible, and they got MAJOR exp for it.

Hey everyone makes mistakes... and when i think of the encounter I am reminded of the ghostbusters.... ah nostalgia! :smallsmile:

[awa]

2 for me I recall fighting a vampire and 2 spawn at level 4 with a cleric effectively soloing the fight i only won because the dm ruled that getting hit over the head with a silver holy symbol bypassed fast heal and it kept trying to dominate me and i kept making the saves.

the second was a nezumi ranger totemist level 2 who was in a fight with some kind of big cat probably a leopard i got the last round of the fight it had grappled me and dropped me to -9 so i still grapple bit it finishing it off.

[Immabozo]

I loved an encounter where our level 10 or so group was ambushed (low magic world) by about 20-30 low level fighters. When we killed most of them, the remainder of them ran over a ridge. When we gave chase (with me at the head of the group with the highest movement) and we ran over the top of the ridge, there was an ambush, off of the ambush. About 15 level 1 or 2 wizards all shot magic missiles at me with a readied action as soon as I ran over the hill. I had tons of hit points, so I was only at 2/3 my full hit points and retreated until everyone caught up and then we all charged and defeated the 15 casters and another 8 or so warriors.

We were defending in a siege.

We decided to then, make a counter attack, keeping one survivor and getting information from him on troop movements and moved to intercept a battalion going over a mountain pass with siege equipment.

We positioned one of our characters at the opening of the pass, facing toward where they would come from down the pass. This character was a gnome who operated a mechanical hydra that he rode around in (and moved insanely slowly!).

The rest of us took positions on the cliffs overlooking the pass. When the troops saw the hydra, the hesitated (remember, low magic world). There was 4 rows of 25 across and then another undefined whole bunch with the siege equipment a good few hundred yards behind (and well out of sight).

When this happened, the cleric (inside the hydra) cast shape stone and raised a stone wall in front of them and then the wizard cast a firewall on the back (fourth) row, which still did a little heat damage to the third row, then the psion did a firewall on the third row, our half dragon swooped down and used his lightning breath weapon on the first row (120 feet, bouncing off the walls, a 25 foot wide canyon, hit everyone 4 times, most of the row a fifth time and on their turn, the survivors all surrendered.

So we stripped them all completely nude and sent them running back to their friends, when there wasn't enough panicking in their running, one of our casters fire balled a group and put 10dpanick into the group and when we got to then siege equipment, the troops had all abandoned the siege equipment and ran away.

We then met another MASSIVE section of the attacking army and we had saved vials of a tailor made DM disease used against us that was INCREDIBLY difficult to naturally save against and magically incurable (a potion to heal it had to be distilled from the blood of a creature that had naturally made their fort saves and naturally cured the disease, as a wildshaping druid, I was the only one who was able to, and did, naturally recover from the disease, there were jokes about killing me). We unleashed it against the army there and they never made it to the battle.

We concluded the counter attack by sealing off (with a shape stone spell) the opening to the underdark where a lot of underdark allies of theirs were coming from to attack us. We then made it back to the town and readied our town for a siege, having just stopped a very large portion of the army coming to siege us.

[killem2]

Hey everyone makes mistakes... and when i think of the encounter I am reminded of the ghostbusters.... ah nostalgia! :smallsmile:


"Get it! Good one Ray."

"Come here Francine."

[GenericMook]

My favorite encounter, is when our DM set up an encounter with our old PCs. It was set in the same campaign setting, but set something like three hundred years later. The fight was four of us against the spirits of our former characters entombed in pseudo-Shadesteel golems.

The thing is, we tried to make knowledge check to figure out the real nature of the place, but it was so horribly forgotten that we never realized what it was.

Inside, our old PCs were just messing around, and relaxing with their quasi-immortality. You know, the sort of thing PCs would do if they were stuck with being entrusted with artifacts of power.

Upon entering the rotunda, we find two of the former-PCs in an arm wrestling contest, with the other two cheering the others on. They hear the door creak, and they look at us, with a long, awkward pause before the fight starts.

The worst part was, the DM used the exact same tricks that made that party of characters so awesome. It was a real PITA encounter, lasting a couple sessions (mostly due a munchkin contest between the two wizards).

It was amazing.

[Bubzors]

My favorite encounter I have... well encountered was when I was the DM and the party was fighting the BBEG on top of a tall tower. There was a portal to Hell the BBEG was opening, so Demons were popping out of that, and he had a pet blue dragon that was circling the tower and making runs with flyby attack at the party.

The party barbarian particularly hated this dragon, as it often showed up at inopportune moments to screw over said barbarian. So now it is a few rounds in the fight, with the main party dealing with the BBEG and the dragon just finishing a breath flyby attack. It was a little below the top of the tower about 40' off to the side, coming back around for another pass.

The barb player looks me in the eyes and says, "I make a jumping charge attack off of the tower." We all laughed for a minute before I realized he was serious. I explain to him that if he misses he will plummet some 300 odd feet, likely to his death, but he sticks to the plan. So using the rule of awesome, I allow him to make the jump check and attack. He makes the jump due to his crazy jump skill, then proceeds to get a critical on the attack on the dragon.

I rule that he had caught his great axe into the back of the dragon and that they spiral out of control towards the ground, both taking smaller fall damage since the dragon was trying to stay afloat. He then proceeds to one-on-one the dragon and kills it, while the rest of the party deals with the BBEG and accidentally gets sent to hell.

He returns to town, the triumphant sole surviving hero, hauling the head of the dragon with him, as the rest of the party does another adventure trying to survive a night in hell so they can plane shift back home.

When the rest of the party finally comes back, the barbarian is busy mounting the dragon's head on top of the fireplace. He looks at them and says, "Hey guys, what took you so long? Look who I finally killed!"

[Azoth]

As a DM one of my favorite encounters for my PCs was an entire dungeon keep I had designed. I got bored one summer with the stronghold builder's guide and the two grimtooth books. So I took about 2 months of pure free time to construct a massive castle spanning many floors above ground and even farther into the earth for its dungeons.

The back story was that the keep was a lost castle home to a king for a culture long forgotten to the analogs of history. My group of level 12 PCs managed to find a map to it among some ancient treasure from a dragon's hoard.

They knew nothing of the inhabitants, traps, or anything aside how to get there.

Well the dungeon levels had been infested with kobolds, and the keep itself watched over by gnomes. Several magical and physical barriers separated the two main levels from one another to keep the waring races from killing each other.

Suffice to say the place was crawling with illusions, traps, one way walls, shifting floors/walls, and many other goodies.

It was hilarious on my end to watch the players descend into paranoia fearing that every floor tile wasn't real, that every noise was the skittering of an unseen enemy, obvious traps may be real, things that looked safe were deadly.

We all had a blast with it over the next few months, but when it was over they took great joy in burning all my maps/notes to ash. They complimented the adventure, but made me swear to never do it again. I think it took years off all of our lives to play it. Our hearts were in our throats the whole time.