Hardest encounter so far?

[Inevitability]

Tell me, what has been the hardest combat encounter you or your party has had so far? I'd love to hear some stories.

My party has had two;


The first battle was with an Young Red Dragon, altered to be white. First round of combat; Breath Weapon. The raging barbarian and paladin both dropped into single digits, and the monk got pretty beaten up. The only one who ended up unharmed was the rogue, who had been hiding below a foot of snow (stupid evasion...). Next round the monk uses a Stunning Attack, immobilizing the dragon long enough for the party to tear it apart, but I had the feeling that if I played the dragon a bit smarter (such as it staying out of the PC's reach) they'd have lost.

The second battle was only two PC's against four mummies. The fight started relatively well, and two mummies went down. The other two took down the barbarian (first time it ever happened) before being barely killed by the monk. The aftermatch was just as problematic, with the barbarian's newly acquired Mummy Rot putting him in what amounted to a permanent coma.

[Naanomi]

A Marid with a group of Sharks in a big chamber filled with fast currents of water that were hard to detect and pushed people around ended in a TPK for us

[asorel]

So far, the only hard battle my party had was at first level. They were facing a pack of Kobolds. The bard and the rogue were both in death saving throws, and the rest of the party had low health as well. The warlock managed to scare off the Kobolds using Minor Illusion, and a few high Intimidate checks. As soon as the party hit 2nd level, they've been slaughtering everything in their path.

[Rallicus]

None, my players blast through every encounter I throw at them.

Feels bad man. But not really, I prefer narrative focused games anyway.

[Ancientchild]

At 2nd level my players nearly died to a simple ambush. There are four PCs and none of them had a good perception score. A group of 4 bandits and a guard from the NPC section of the MM nearly killed them all simply because The other side all getting surprise actions before they got to act meant they did not have many hit points to work with. 3 out of 4 PCs dropped although only one of them actually died before the fourth won the fight by the skin of his teeth with action surge combined with luckily rolling a crit on both hits to turn the tide. The PC who actually died was replaced by a new character next session. Low and behold that character had a great perception score :smallsmile:

[Slipperychicken]

At 2nd level my players nearly died to a simple ambush. There are four PCs and none of them had a good perception score. A group of 4 bandits and a guard from the NPC section of the MM nearly killed them all simply because The other side all getting surprise actions before they got to act meant they did not have many hit points to work with. 3 out of 4 PCs dropped although only one of them actually died before the fourth won the fight by the skin of his teeth with action surge combined with luckily rolling a crit on both hits to turn the tide. The PC who actually died was replaced by a new character next session. Low and behold that character had a great perception score :smallsmile:

That should teach them. For a variety of reasons, perception is often cited as the most important skill in the game. It's wise to build parties with that fact in mind.

[Ancientchild]

That should teach them. For a variety of reasons, perception is often cited as the most important skill in the game. It's wise to build parties with that fact in mind.

I know right? The funny thing is I've been DMing with these people for years and they have played a bunch of 3.0, 3.5 and 4th. They certainly knew spot, listen and perception were important then so I'm not sure what happened. I think they just all assumed someone else would cover it.

[Ralanr]

I'm having trouble between two. The first one was when my group/friends and I fought a group of maybe 10 merrows and two water weirds (We only won cause apparently I had a bone devil in my drinking jug. Random magic items at low levels...) Really tough fight, one of the river boats sunk and the party necromancer almost drowned. The only reason why I'm not sure about this one is because of the bone devil saving our ass.

The second would be the tournament preliminaries. Each of us had to fight two rounds to enter the kings tournament (Helps us get closer to the king so we can stop a war). This was difficult for a few reasons. One, we had to fight in smaller rings rather than open terrain, making it pretty much impossible to keep away from an opponent. The second was that we fought against DM made characters instead of CR humanoids. The Wizard and Bard weren't too hard to deal with for those that got them (Hell the highlight of the evening was that our halfing wizard beat the bard's shins in with a metal pipe. Seriously, it's like he forgot how to use spells!), but the Fighter was the worst cause he was a level 4 champion with GWF, a greatsword, and 20 str. We rolled random on who we got, the fighter came up to three of us out of the six. Only my barb won against that guy, due to shoving him up against the wall and wailing on him near the end. And he almost died/became unconscious, using up 2 rages!

Duels against classes are a nightmare.

[Grand Warchief]

I'm having trouble between two. The first one was when my group/friends and I fought a group of maybe 10 merrows and two water weirds (We only won cause apparently I had a bone devil in my drinking jug. Random magic items at low levels...) Really tough fight, one of the river boats sunk and the party necromancer almost drowned. The only reason why I'm not sure about this one is because of the bone devil saving our ass.

The second would be the tournament preliminaries. Each of us had to fight two rounds to enter the kings tournament (Helps us get closer to the king so we can stop a war). This was difficult for a few reasons. One, we had to fight in smaller rings rather than open terrain, making it pretty much impossible to keep away from an opponent. The second was that we fought against DM made characters instead of CR humanoids. The Wizard and Bard weren't too hard to deal with for those that got them (Hell the highlight of the evening was that our halfing wizard beat the bard's shins in with a metal pipe. Seriously, it's like he forgot how to use spells!), but the Fighter was the worst cause he was a level 4 champion with GWF, a greatsword, and 20 str. We rolled random on who we got, the fighter came up to three of us out of the six. Only my barb won against that guy, due to shoving him up against the wall and wailing on him near the end. And he almost died/became unconscious, using up 2 rages!

Duels against classes are a nightmare.


It's often stated that adventurers are the most dangerous creatures in DnD existence. My dm once made up fight a group of them. Toughest fight ever.

[Tenmujiin]

Snip
Sounds like your DM got caught up in caster supremacy and decided his fighter needed a buff or he rolled for stats (not a good idea on NPCs IMO), RaW the fighter could have at most 19 strength at lv 4 assuming he didn't roll for stats.


My group's worst fight was when we were infiltrating a cult, the DM made it quite clear we were out of our depth (combat wise) but our paladin player decided he was fed up with the group's lies and attacked the cultists (he was basically playing a lawful stupid paladin though his charcter had SLIGHTY more depth than that). As a 3rd lv party of 5 we were up against about 20 cultists including an at least 5th level wizard and and 2 at least 3rd lv clerics. Thankfully the DM broke off the session after the paladin shluted he was going to kill them all sp we had plenty of time to plan. :smallsmile:

Turns out we were basically up agaist the next 3 levels of encounters in the one fight.

Luckly our monk was able to drop scilence on the casters (shadow monk) and the rogue used the confusion to slip into the shadows and the other 2 of us 'pretended' to side with the cultists. The non-caster cultists swarmed the paladin and our monk disengaged past to grapple the mage. My tempest cleric realised we had a chance and ate two readyed attacks (two cultists kept guard on him) with only one hitting, killed the one that hit him with the tempest return damage and droped a maximised shatter on the paladin, knocking him down to about 2 hp, killing all but two of the cultists attacking him. The rogue helped the bard deal with his guards and then they charged the casters. Between the three casters we still had a tough fight the monk and paladin went down but were gotten back up by the bard and I, the final caster alive rolled (openly) a nat 20 and almost max damage rolls on his 2nd lv inflict wounds instantly killing the rogue from full hp.:smallfrown:

[TrexPushups]

Finding time to play.

Finding a babysitter.

[MOLOKH]

Some weird things are happening with the encounters I'm running.

At level 2 the party almost died against four Giant Crabs. They were underwater though. They then breezed through most encounters, but when the time came for the climactic battle consisting of several smaller encounters, they decided to split up, turning the whole thing into a slaughter. Three Lizardmen almost took down half the party at level 4 and I had to pull some strings so the PCs don't wipe.

Later, still at level 4 and with a 3rd level ranger NPC with them, they decided to take a detour to the extremely dangerous Cyclops Island. They survived a Cyclops throwing rocks at them from a high cliff while they were searching for a place to dock, found the tribe's caves, killed one inside with no problems, then somehow managed to kill another three with liberal use of a choke point, caltrops and Darkness.

At level 5 they took down a Blue Slaad and a couple of Red Slaadi (with help from some low level NPCs) and destroyed a pirate ship with a dozen 2nd level fighters.

At level 6 they had quite a bit of trouble against a Hydra due to their lack of relative Knowledge skills and fire damage. Luckily they had a low-level Druid with them spamming Fire Blast so they survived. Then, a Roper clinging to the side of a well 40 ft down almost killed two PCs and they only survived because the Warlock was flying over and blasting at it. The final thing they took down was a slightly weaker and reworked Nycaloth. It was mostly a couple of PCs distracting him and the Paladin healing the dying ones for 1 with Lay on Hands so they can make some attacks before they go down again.

Overall I'm through using the guidelines for encounter building and I'll just throw whatever I feel is a worthy challenge or thematically appropriate at the party.

[goto124]

I once read in the Campaign Quotes thread, about a battle that was going easy until Leochou threw a smoke grenade. The DM was angry at the player for this.

Don't think the system was 5e though.

[AmbientRaven]

A Wizard, Ranger, Bard/lock and Monk whom were all level 4 fighting a Behir (CR11, breath could 1 shot any of us), and winning.

The bards ability to speak Draconic and use suggestion and command came in very handy!

[Inevitability]

A Wizard, Ranger, Bard/lock and Monk whom were all level 4 fighting a Behir (CR11, breath could 1 shot any of us), and winning.

The bards ability to speak Draconic and use suggestion and command came in very handy!

Tell me, how did you manage to encounter one at 4th level? Did you do something unexpected or does your DM have the weirdest random encounter tables either?

[goto124]

The bard could Diplomance mindcontrol the Behir, so maybe it's what the DM had in mind...

[AmbientRaven]

Tell me, how did you manage to encounter one at 4th level? Did you do something unexpected or does your DM have the weirdest random encounter tables either?

We pushed to deep into a side tunnel of a dungeon we were in, inadvertently leading us to its lair. It was supposed to be a quest for higher level.

[TheOOB]

I was playing Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and the Dragon fight in the last chapter really gave my players a run for their money. The legendary actions really caused problems. By the end of the fight the paladin was using 1 hp lay on hands to get people up from dying.

[Submortimer]

Cloud Giant and three medium sized air elementals. We were all level 4. There were six of us...but we were all level 4. we had to run away.

[ImSAMazing]

We were all lvl 9, and we just escaped from a political problem(3 parties: us , a vampire(and his army of 300+ soldiers) and a half dragon OP monster). We got on our boat, but then... A Roc with a Troll on it attacked us and our ship. Me(a high-elf wizard) was the only one with fly, so I flew up and attacked the Roc and the Troll with animate objects. I hitted the Roc hard, but then the Paladin did command: "land". So I needed to attack the Troll. First round: did much damage, but then the Troll stopped my concentration on animate objects. Next round I killed him, but without fire/acid. He came back to life while he was in my hands... Killed him with firebolt. But our monk and rogue were busy fighting the Roc. They did much damage, but the Roc hitted the monk to 0 HP. He flew away, with the monk in his claws. I was just able to fireball him, which killed him. Our monk just survived the fall. it was our hardest (and funnest! ) encounter so far.

[hymer]

Four second or third level characters, I forget, finding themselves an (apparently) unlimited supply of crawling claws. They bottled the CCs up right outside a door and began hammering away, I guess thinking they could shut the rest out when they'd had enough. But they waited a round too long, and two characters dropped to zero hp in that round. The two remaining closed the door, but still faced the six or so claws that had made it outside. It ended with one guy standing with about 3hp and the cleric all out of spells and Heal feat uses. I think there were two cases of guys getting back up only to get clawed (if you'll pardon me) back down.
Pretty sure that's the closest I've gotten to seeing a TPK yet in 5e. In the end, they all made it.

[Dralnu]

A party of level 3's: war cleric, divination wizard, and two assassin rogues.

They're trekking through a foggy swamp at night when suddenly mushrooms start spewing spores as they pass by, obscuring vision. An orb of light comes to them, urging them to follow, saying it's not safe. The orb leads them into quicksand -- the cleric and wizard are stuck.

The orb of light was a will-o'-wisp. It intentionally led them into quicksand to be more easily devoured by the grell that swoops in to attack. The grell has blindsight so obscured vision doesn't bother it. The wisp spent its time taunting the PCs until they managed to kill the grell, then attacked in rage.

Very close to TPK. Cleric and Wizard were down, the rogues barely up.

[MrStabby]

My players are usually pretty tight about reconnaissance and researching their enemies but once they just made some silly errors. They were up against a wizard at the top of his tower - they burst in and with assassinate, action surge and a couple of high level spells managed to end that fight pretty quickly, or they would have done if the guy they were attacking was the wizard rather than a disguised henchman.

With so many resources and the surprise round gone they had a pretty tough time overcoming the illusionist and his lab assistants. The barbarian was out of action for a while after falling into a pit trap covered by an illusion (there were stairs out but he failed to disbelieve the wall blocking his way. In the end though it was how they won - the barbarian on full hitpoints was able to rage, grapple the wizard and jump off the tower. The fall killed the wizard but the Barbarian survived. Left conscious at the top of the tower was the paladin who managed to stabilise every other party member.


There has only been one other occasion where the party nearly dies and that was in an ambush by Kobalds. It should have been a pretty easy encounter but the terrain and preparation was a big deal - caltrops, ball bearings, tripwires, nets and teamwork coupled with a surprise round and some pretty bad rolls by the PCs made it a near wipeout. The only thing that saved them was negotiating a truce - one upside of being a lawful good Paladin (or at least looking like one) is that when you swear to your god that you will perform a task in exchange for mercy, you are believed. It kind of derailed my plot for a while but getting the PCs involved in the intrigues of Kobold Politics was pretty fun.

[Quintessence]

4 of us at level 3 against a cyclops... His first attack downed our paladin who proceeded to roll 2 natural 1's on his death saving throw and died immediately...

[Torched Forever]

A party of 4 level 2 players (2 Fighter, 1 Rouge, 1 Warlock) on a one shot adventure. The fighters were at the front and walked straight into a gelatinous cube hiding in a doorway. Both of the fighters got trapped inside and took some serious damage. They got out every once in a while but would get caught again after one round of fighting. The rouge and warlock hung back and whittled down its HP while the fighters were busy dying. In the end the fighters both got dropped and died while the rouge and warlock only survived thanks to the 10ft. knockback off eldritch blast.

[Gnomes2169]

So far the hardest encounter I've DM'd was a level 12 encounter in the Rise of Tiamat adventure path. My party is quite a bit better equipped than the one in the path, so I decided to spice up one of the areas slightly and...

The party was in the heart of Chuth's lair, and the dragon and its rider were conspicuously absent from the cavern (likely raiding some place or another). My party of a Totem bearbarian (dragonborn), oath of devotion paladin (human), drow sorcerer, Yuan-ti monk (homebrewed the race for the player) and high-elf wizard had just vanquished the three ettin after a rather hilarious set of events (The drow and dragonborn worked together to play out a "Species awareness board of review" act, and ultimately got all three Ettin fighting one another while the party snuck away the elven prisoners. And then the party gang-stabbed the still-fighting giants. It was rather amusing).

The party just started to move out from that roflstomping and the drow spotted a group of enemies at the other side of the cavern. After telling the party about it, they decided to just bum rush the hostile force and... well, some rather nasty things happened.

The group was a young green dragon (I'm giving Chuth a son, as a motivation for future drama that the dragon will cause... as I said, I changed a few things), a dragonclaw (this one died in the first round) and then five (yes, five) dragonfangs. While numbers-wise these enemies weren't nearly beyond the scope of the party's resources (especially given the Yuan-Ti's immunity to poison), a few different, rather nasty factors came into effect. First off, the dragonfangs all had advantage on attacks against the barbarian and monk for the first round of combat due to having an ally next to both of them, and they almost took the monk down in a single round (they survived for 2 rounds after that). They also have the fanatic advantage ability, giving them +3d6 damage against targets if they have advantage on the attack rolls, their attacks dealt an extra 3d6 poison damage, and with all of the factors added in the cultists dealt about 30 damage a hit on average (or 18 against the Yuan-ti) with each of their melee attacks (they get 2), and they have an alternate attack where they shoot an enemy with a energy-damage ball that deals 5d8 damage of the chosen type (and that benefits from Fanatic Advantage), which deal an average of 33 poison damage in one shot.

In two rounds, with two not-so lucky crits (every attack had advantage, remember) and a few higher-than-average damage rolls, the 93 HP monk, 159 HP raging barbarian and 101 HP paladin were down to 12, 7 and 23 HP respectively, and the sorcerer finally managed to freeze two of the last three (half-health) dragonfangs in place with Hypnotic Pattern, and the wizard (barely) took down the dragon with a level 3 magic missile. It was some simple mop-up work after that, but the entire party was scrambling to deal with these insanely lethal foes. I feel like the party would have done better if the enemies had been closer (they started ~100 feet away in pitch black darkness), and if the enemies hadn't been able to free-cast on the party, and feel like the dragon itself didn't do all too much over all. I suppose I'll see how much those two influenced the battle, since there is still one last battle for the party to get through before Chuth and the rider return, and it is 5 dragonfangs and 1 dragonclaw in a much more confined area without dragon backup. We'll see if the party's short rest (where the monk spent all of her hit dice, the paladin spent 9 and the barbarian spent 7) is enough to handle these lethal little buggers...

Edit: Sorry, dragonfangs, not dragonwings. Though I may make the next group dragonwings, depending on how merciful I feel.

TL;DR, dragon cultist special abilities stack horrendously and make them terrifyingly lethal. They don't need no dragon, and they are fine with their below-average HP (especially at range and with focus-firing).

[unwise]

So far for me, a solo level 6 Paladin PC vs a young green dragon. It took place in a swamp, and started with the dragon flying low. He chugged a jump potion, his horse got the buff too, rode up a ramp (broken skiff) and lept at it and crash tackled it to the ground. Horse impact + thunderwave smite knocking it into the swamp water. It fought for another turn, he smote it again and it had taken such severe damage it started to fight sneakily. It swam and hid in the swamp to strike again, he had sentinel though, so hit it with a smite that brands it and stops it hiding.

In three turns he had poured every smite he had left into the thing. Its important to remember that enemies do not know that a PC has got lucky, or that he cannot keep doing smites every turn. So it eventually managed to run away. It popped up later and breath attacked the party, taking most of them down and almost dropping the paladin. He made a great con and intimidate roll to pretend to be unaffected though, so the dragon fled fearing the reprisal.

[Mandragola]

I've had a couple of TPKs.

The first was in hotdq, which is normal...

The second was a bit weird. It involved a few skeletons zombies in a desecrated area that gave them advantage on saves. Didn't help that two traps went off when we came into the room - poison gas and a pit trap. We ran out and waited for the gas to clear. The skeletons got taken out relatively easily but the damn zombies just could not be killed! It was kind of a stupid fight honestly as we kept on bashing the things to 0hp but they'd always make their save against dying. We tried hitting them with searing light but they'd always make their save against that too.

[ghost_warlock]

Hardest was a party of seven 7th-level characters against:


An aboleth, in lair, increased to Huge size (d12 HD and +1 to all relevant save DCs).
Kuo-toa archpriest
2 water weirds
2 kuo-toa whips
2 kuo-toa monitors
8 standard kuo-toa


Several of the party members were making death saves, and the NPC harpy with a couple bard levels drown, but they otherwise emerged victorious.

Meanwhile, the same party (minus the harpy and the character for a player who couldn't make it to the session) slaughtered a beholder death tyrant (in lair) and six zombies in 2-1/2 rounds tonight. The characters took less than 30 damage between them.

[Giant2005]

My group's hardest encounter wasn't really very hard at all. It was against an ex party member (The player changed characters and left his old character to the vices of the DM), the DM souped up the Sorcerer to have stats that would make Tiamat terrified and that isn't even hyperbole - the character had the same AC as Tiamat and took about 800 HP before dropping. The only thing Tiamat had on it was the legendary actions.
Anyway, what made the fight so much easier than it should have been is the fact that my group uses some really stupid rules that give extra effects to criticals and natural ones that I think came from Pathfinder. My character got really lucky and crit that thing at least once per round for about 5 rounds straight. Those crits each carried riders that did various things like causing blindness, ongoing bleed damage and attribute damage. The enemy had so many debuffs stacked on it that it was entirely helpless - we actually ended that fight with more health than we started with and gained an entire level for our trouble.

[AmbientRaven]

The Game I DM:
hardest faced was 6 Were creatures at level 7.

game I played:
A Behir, when we were level 4, with only a bard, a ranger, a monk and a wizard (who ran away on round 3 and returned the round it died)

[Fwiffo86]

Played

Party: 20lvl Rogue/burglar, Sorc/dragon, Cleric/life, Barbarian/frenzy-Warrior/bm, monk/open hand

Hardest encounter:

Tiamat + 1 ancient dragon of each chromatic color (5).

Party obliterated round 3. Unavoidable combat as per Throne of Bloodstone storyline.

Special Note: You can only successfully save against 8 breath weapons on round 1 and 2-4 per round after that for so long.

[Draken]

Ran my group through this one yesterday!

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee260/Draken_album/GRICK%20MAP.png (http://s235.photobucket.com/user/Draken_album/media/GRICK%20MAP.png.html)

Now, this demands explanations!

Enemies are six* Gricks (CR 2), seven Carrion Crawlers (CR 2) and a Grick Alpha (CR 6).

*This was reconstructed from after the fight and I sort of forgot to put one of the gricks back in. It was in the room with a single solitary carrion crawler.

Party is level four, comprised of:

- A Variant Human Valor Bard (modified to be int based) dual wielding a mundane scimitar and a +1 Scimitar that can be activated to deal radiant damage, and also deals an extra 1d6 thunder damage due to a socketed magical gem.

- A Lightfoot Halfling Thief Rogue making ample use of Giant Spider Poison (2d8 damage on a failed save, half on success) and Crossbow expert with a +1 Hand Crossbow and mundane Rapier (I subscribe to the school that you can just go Hand crossbow and use it by itself, for the record, the rapier was not used at all in this fight).

- An Arakkoa (homebrewed, not aaracokra, he can't fly yet, but he is good at jumping, I made the race before the aaracokra was out too) Battlemaster Fighter. Great Weapon style. +1 Adamantine Greatsword socketed with a gem that gives an extra 1d6 thunder damage on hit. Adamantine Full Plate. Heavy Weapon Master.

- A Yuan-ti (homebrewed, we can treat her as a dwarf for all intents and purposes, really) Pureblood Evoker Wizard (modified to be Cha based). Has proficiency in shields (campaign mechanics). Has a +1 Staff that serves as an implement (hand can be used for any somatic components, counts as focus, yada yada) and adds +1 fire damage to all spells cast.

- DMPC - One of many that are rotated at the team's preference. This particular one is essentially a Guard raised up to 4th level and given the Shield Master feat. Also has the class features of a 2nd level fighter. Sword and board with defensive fighting style.

--------

As you can see, this place is made up of a bunch of rooms. Water spots are difficult terrain, which the monsters don't care for. Movement between rooms is made by using the Pipes indicated by the yellow arrow things. Moving in the direction of the flow costs 5 feet for the whole pipe. Moving against it costs all remaining movement. Some of the pipes are blocked by grates, these can be broken.

The monsters fight to their deaths, but only leave their rooms if there are enemies in the adjacent room. All gricks acted on one init and all crawlers acted on another. The Alpha is too large to use the pipes and so it stays in its room guarding the nest's eggs!

Starting point for the players was the northeast corridor, they could deploy anywhere on the ground just outside the pool with the grick and carrion crawler.

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This fight took around 15 turns in total! The bard was zeroed once. The bard, the fighter, the rogue and the guard were paralyzed by the crawlers a few times and lost a few turns to that! They used 4 or 5 healing potions in this fight! A Flaming Sphere cast by the wizard did work for its full duration. I got some five or six critical hits, some of which were denied by the adamantine full plate (a number of which were caused by paralysis, not by natural 20s). The grick Alpha got one round of attacks in before it finally died, and the fighter only kept standing from its tentacle attack at 1 hit point thanks to Heavy Armor Mastery.

They moved through the pipes, room by room, until reaching the alpha's room last. Utterly battered by the harrowing gauntlet.

-----------

All in all it was a cool fight, I would say. But I doubt I am ever using enemies that paralyze again. They are simply annoying for players.

They got a short rest after this fight and have two more fights to look forward to for this mission. Hohohohoho.