To All You DM’s Out There

[Wampyr]

What is your favorite encounter that you’ve ever run?

Doesn’t have to be original, doesn’t have to be complicated, doesn’t have to be just one. ;)

Here’s mine:

My favorite was my players pitted against a clay golem. They figured out that it’s high AC could be lowered by dealing fire damage to it (making it brittle and breakable). I wasn’t particularly excited about the encounter, it was really just a filler thing so I could have a little time to plan for an unexpected decision, but my players made such a botch of it that it is now burned into my memory.

At one point the bard was pinned under a cart, the paladin fell out of a tree, and the sorcerer started a forest fire then turned into a potted plant... all simultaneously.

[Ganymede]

My favorite encounter was during the 3e Burning Plague adventure.

The players had killed their way through the kobolds and had discovered the chieftan's two young children. It was quite an enjoyable experience seeing them grapple with how to deal with the two kobold kids.

They eventually talked the druid of a nearby grove to raise them.

[strangebloke]

Barbarian has been roped into a duel.

Ceremonial drink exchanged between combatants. Drink is poisoned, but enemy is immune to poison.

Enemy is hasted and blessed.

Various political entities who have a stake in the fight can interfere with various objections, altering the goalposts in the fight.

If the party notices the casters that are buffing the enemy, they can try to disrupt them... or perhaps do something more devious.

It was the culmination of a really fun intrigue arc, and there were so many moving parts that I had a lot of fun with it.

[quinron]

A night hag is up on an escarpment at an altar, performing a fiendish ritual. The floor below the escarpment is covered in oil, and a trio of lemures with a basket full of jars of alchemist's fire are waiting for the party to come in.

Party arrives; lemures throw down alchemist's fire and light the room up, with the barbarian caught in the flames. The wizard and sorcerer are using ray of frost to slowly clear a path to the escarpment and the ranger is plinking away at both the lemures and the hag when, suddenly, the rogue sprints through the fire, climbs up onto the escarpment, and attacks the hag.

When she's been badly injured, the hag goes ethereal and flees through the cave walls. The ranger tracks her back through the caverns to her magic items, and just as she comes out to grab them, the sorcerer throws a flask of holy water and melts her like the Wicked Witch of the West.

[Kane0]

Party is riding along on their horses en route to the next town. I roll for random encounter, get Bulette. Seems alright, good CR for the party and the right terrain.

Bulette is hungry and burrowing around looking for a meal, lunges out and chomps a horse as it's surprise turn, instantly ripping it in half. Party freaks out and scramble to climb any nearby tree or otherwise get off the ground with ranged weapons out, bulette goes back underground with its food. Some of the other horses begin to flee, the PCs wait for a few rounds before figuring it's gone and run to fetch their horses. Bulette comes back just as the furthest one is being reigned in and eats that too.

Now the party are down two horses and rather miffed that they are being ignored. They sit themselves on a small hill with clear visibility and get the horses to walk in a circle around them. After about half an hour of this the bulette makes its appearance for a third meal of horse, but they aren't surprised this time. They manage to get enough ranged attacks in to drop it before it can run away with horse number 3, although it is mostly certainly dead from the Bulette's lunge.

Our most memorable filler encounter in *ages*

[Asmotherion]

I literally can't deside.

Dragons initially appearing as Casters or Fighters, and then showing their true form are my top picks, followed by making anything a Half Dragon, sometimes non-obviously at first sight. Still, I don't do it that often, in order not to make them predictable.

I like running shapeshifters, like Lycanthropes or Warlocks with the Mask of Many Faces Invocation as minor encounters, to have the party investigate the town; It makes a good oportunity to meet the locals.

I also like to put a Major Vilain in a position of obvious power and authority, like a Necromancer Council Led by a Lich running a Citty State, and whoever oppenly questions their authority gets fed to the Lich's Phylactery. The ones who don't oppenly go against the system are dealt with more subtly.

Illithids (Mind Flayers) and other aberations are also some of my favorite creatures to run, and if I get the chance, I will get one to be in the wereabouts.

[the_brazenburn]

My absolute favorite was related to events other than the encounter itself. Just the weekend before or so, we'd gone to see Thor:Ragnarok in the theaters, and enjoyed it very much. When D&Ding time came, I'd planned out a really cool encounter with a guy in a plague doctor's bird mask, wielding a pair of garden shears, in a creepy hedge maze. (To my consternation, they named this enemy El Snippo). Just as the players rolled initiative, Immigrant Song started playing on the radio. The whole table erupted in cheers, and for the sake of general bad-assery I granted everybody initiative.

That was a fun combat, as I recall.

[DMThac0]

I have a difficult time choosing as well, so I'll go with most recent memory:

The party has finally made their way out of the town they were in, after defeating a were-rat, saving a child's mother from being possessed by a shade, and finding out that what felt like a trivial bit of info given almost 8 months ago was actually important. They had started back down their path to the capitol city when they met a wagon train which was occupied almost solely by Halflings, there was this one human. The group find out that this is the famous Tinker Train, they gather in for the night and celebrate life, victory, and basically enjoy some down time. The monk, my fiancee, decides to start bragging about her prowess and skills to the caravan's leader. A number of gold coins later there is a wager made and an arrow catching competition is begun, Aloxyis (our monk) rolls amazingly and snares all but 2 of the shots made at her. The caravan leader then says to her that his hunting dog can do a better job, and whistles for his pet, a Labrador like dog comes trotting up. The caravan leader launches an arrow in a long high arc, tells the dog to wait, and at the last possible moment sends the dog out. The players watch as the dog jumps up, and then subsequently falls to the ground and doesn't move, the arrow sticking up in the air. The players are aghast as Aloxyis runs to save the dog, only to find out that it had caught the arrow and they had played a very mean trick. The group lost their money, the party continued, and plot points were made.

[sithlordnergal]

Hmmm, my favorite encounter I ran was one meant to thin the ranks of the party a bit. For context, the party had gained the allegiance of a Bandit Captain, a T-Rex, and some regular bandits in Tomb of Annihilation.

I threw an ice giant, two hill giants, and several flying pterafolk to deal with the T-Rex at the very least. It was pretty fun, as one of the party members charged in riding the friendly t-rex.

It also gave everyone a chance to shine, with the archery focused Ranger taking down the flying units, the two tanks dealing with the hill giants, and the Bard riding the t-rex to deal with the ice giant. It also accomplished my goal, killing the t-rex.

[poolio]

My favorite encounter was during the 3e Burning Plague adventure.

The players had killed their way through the kobolds and had discovered the chieftan's two young children. It was quite an enjoyable experience seeing them grapple with how to deal with the two kobold kids.

They eventually talked the druid of a nearby grove to raise them.

I Love that adventure! I've run it i don't know how many times, it's great especially for new players cause it's got a little bit of everything, traps, role playing with the miners wife, two types of common enemies, and as you pointed out, consequences for just murdering everything, a real 10/10 adventure that I'm sure I'll be running again some day.

Okay back to the topic at hand, spoilers for the "out of the abyss" book ahead, my players had finally made it to the maze engine and had started it up, they managed to get two magic items to pop up, in a row, that result in itself is only a 3% chance to happen, and on top of that it was the same magic item twice! Out of 100 different possible things that could pop up, I'm not the best at calculating odds but even i know the odds of this happening is pretty slim lol

But before they could get the items, one of them hit the go back to the start of the game result, and because of that the rest of the night was them getting sweet sweet revenge on the drow priestess that ran the prison you start in, only one of the players by this point was still on his first character so all the other players got to have fun little RP with themselves, it ended with slaughter of all the drow, and one player deciding his character had actually met his own personal goal and so had no reason to continue adventuring (I've never actually seen a character end their adventuring career alive so that was neat) and took all the prisoners to safety, and a bunch of players getting some closure on personal objectives but deciding to finish their mission, after that session i got text messages from some saying that was the best thing they've ever had happen to a character and were thanking me for the game after, it felt really satisfying to know they had such a great time, and that it all happened completely by chance just makes it all the better :)

[MintyNinja]

I haven't sprung any wildly complicated combats on my players yet, they're still pretty low level. But, when they were level 2, they did attack a group of cultists on the road. The Goal was clear: Save the Paladin that the Cultists had just struck down. Well the players (a rogue, a paladin, and a wizard) charged in and fought tooth and nail against these Fanatics. Part way through the second round, though, they realized that one of their enemies was a spellcaster, but his spells kept failing. There were a few more rounds of the NPC Paladin going up and down as the PC Paladin kept trying to Lay on Hands him while surrounded by cultists. Eventually, the NPC Caster Crit with Inflict Wounds, on the Rogue. The other players focused up and whittled down the enemy caster but it was too late for the Rogue. And thus the crumpled remains of Twinblade Timm marked the spot where they saved the Paladin known as Brother Perinor. There's even a tavern song about it.