Unique battle styles?

[ZeroGear]

We have all been there at some point:
The group has gotten all the way though the dungeon, bested the traps, defeated the monsters, found the secret rooms, and managed to get very close to the final boss, or even to him, only for the battle to be very much like every other one with a more powerful creature to fight.
I am not accusing anyone of being uncreative, because sometimes these kinds of situations are just what the party wants, but what if the battle was a little more unique? What are some of the most interesting battle styles you have used as a group or DM. Or, what are some good ideas that can be used to challenge strategically minded groups?

Here are two examples:
1) The Dark Rim.

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This combat engouter takes place in a room that is at least 60ft to a side. Along the outer edge of the room is a 10ft thick rim of Darkness that becomes complete when the door closes.
In this darkness are at least two characters, usually being quite combat oriented, both dressed in identical outfits. Utilizing magic items that allow them to see even within the Darkness, they take turns charging out of the rim to attack someone standing in the light area if the room. While one is attacking the group, the other moves around in the darkness to either get into position or heal using a potion, so it looks like there is only one enemy in the room (as they are dressed in identical outfits).
Smart players will be able to overcome this challenge in a number of different ways, such as breaking the Darkness with a Lighht spell, readying themselves against charges, grappling the attacker when he chomes to harm them, or using never-miss spells like Magic Missile (which may reveal the existence of another foe depending on how it it targeted).
One can make this encounter herder by giving the foes Rings of Shielding or speed boosting items, capitalizing on the Spring Attack feat, increasing the number of foes, adding healers in the Darkness, or adding ranged enemies to the mix.

Ghost Smoke

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Less of a set-up and more of a combat style, this utilizes spells that cause miss chance, such as the Fog Cloud spell, to destabilize opponents. By playing on the strength of The Blindfight feat or the Blindsense/Blindsight trait (gaining them either though racial abilities, class abilities, spells, magic itmes, or feats) to accurately hit foes while the smoke/fog lessens the chance of getting hit.
Smart players will find that using area-effect spells, grapples, and certain utility spells (such as Gust of Wind and True Seeing) will make the fight easier.
One cam increase the difficulty of this challenge by adding in effects such as Blurr, Blink, Image spells and Obscuring Armor, or using smaller creatures that can hide in the mist more effectively. Traps chan also be added (if this is a prepared room) as they are easily obscured by the fog, while poisoned weapons will cause concern since the secondary effect will most likely take place in a more drawn-out encounter. Necromancers chan also capitalize on this set-up as skeletons have an easier time creeping up on unsuspecting foes, or even hiding underground.

What are some ideas you have, or what have you already run across?

[Terracotta]

I find that the simplest way of making a boss fight more interesting is to use the terrain in a thematic fashion. Acid pits, steam jets, columns, statues, tables, chandeliers, battlements, complex staircases...

One of the nastiest low-level boss fights I ever ran simply had the enemy standing on a narrow bridge that the party had to cross in single file. They couldn't simply drop the bridge and kill him that way because they had to use it, too. Even the simple act of limiting the number of melee attacks they could bring to bear made them have to carefully consider how they were going at him.

[Tarvon000]

The biggest problem seems to me that most monsters don't have any abilities that force players to change their tactics. So I thought up a new ability some monster could have:

Create Worker (Ex or Su): A monster with this ability creates a specific smaller, weaker monster every 1d4 rounds. Ideally, this weaker monster would not be able to constitute any sort of threat on its own, even to a 1st-level group, but would have decent saving throws and the evasion ability or some other way to keep the spellcaster from just killing them with a fireball. It would also avoid combat, possibly hiding behind its creator. When there are enough of these monsters, they can somehow call into existence another one of the monsters that created them or potentially an even more powerful monster, probably destroying themselves in the process.

I'm not sure exactly how this would change the players' tactics, but I know that very few monsters exist that get more dangerous the longer you battle them or that can be very powerful but only under certain conditions that could potentially arise in the future. It also gives players more choices in combat (can I kill the big monster in time or will the smaller ones turn the tide of battle if I don't destroy them now?)

[kieza]

I'll second interesting environment. One style that I've used is something which has the potential to do lots and lots of damage (or inconvenience the party some other way) unless someone uses their actions on it.

Examples:
-One or more sturdy, heavy, but unlockable doors which must be held shut (using a standard action) lest reinforcements arrive.
-A magic circle which contains a powerful-looking elemental, but which is losing power. If nobody spends a standard action to reinforce it (using Arcana), the strength of the field drops. If it drops three times, the elemental gets loose. For added nastiness, if it's a fire elemental, the players take automatic fire damage every round once the field has weakened.
-There's a gate ahead which the party needs to get through, but the guards have noticed the party and started lowering a porticullis. Luckily, the group is on the inside, and they can run to the gatehouse and put a brake on the winch, but somebody needs to stay there and make sure it doesn't slip again.

Another interesting one: the party can't actually hurt the boss or whatever it is. This can be because he's completely intangible, behind a ward, or whatever, but it means that the party needs to find some way of making him vulnerable before they can attack.

Examples:
-The villain is a mad scientist, and he's hiding behind a very strong forcefield. The players have noticed that similar forcefields throughout his castle-laboratory are easily disrupted by electricity, but they don't have anyone who can cast lightning bolts. Fortunately, some of the scientist's minions are constructs...which discharge lots and lots of electricity when they die. The party needs to lure some in and kill them next to the field, preferably avoiding the massive damage death-burst.
-The villain is a necromancer who is both intangible and invisible, and the party can't see or hear him...but he can hurt them just fine. However, the necromancer has a bunch of souls/ghosts/wraiths/whatever bound to his will, and the party has already discovered that they're itching for revenge. The ghosts can see and hurt the necromancer, so if the party can destroy their bonds (while fighting them), they'll help the party locate the necromancer by attacking him and rendering him briefly visible. (In a variation, the ghosts can't hurt him, but they can possess a party member in order to do so.)

[Terracotta]

In the first D&D game I ever played, the DM sent us through a temple of trials. All of these rooms had some sort of hazard and required you to get a key and open the door to the next room.

When we entered one of these rooms, about the size of a high school gymnasium, we discovered that the floor was brittle and cracked under our feet, though it mostly held. The second thing we discovered was that there was a hundred foot deep pool of water underneath the floor. This is because a kraken burst through it, and it had the key in its mouth. It was way outside our CR range, so we had to focus on not dying and getting the key.

[arguskos]

I've run a few pretty funky combats in my day...

1. The Eye of Ugin: In this final boss encounter, the PCs had to fight an enemy who was simply better than they were in every way (ie. he was killing one to two people a round and was pulling punches in order to insult them). This in and of itself was not notable. However, the legendary power source turned weapon that was actively discharging lethal bolts of energy that was also in that room is quite notable. They were forced to take down the baddie while dodging the bolts (and at least one struck him, severely damaging him, thanks to PC cleverness). This was more of a "unique and dangerous hazard" than anything else.

2. The arguskos Special: This is basically my trademark encounter. It's not a boss encounter, not really, but it IS a challenge encounter. The encounter takes place in a lightless hurricane-filled void. In this void there is a rock spar about 300 ft long and hourglass shaped. On one end is a metallic cage with a prisoner inside. On the other are three portals that are one-way and spawn minor, but aggravating enemies continually. Separating the two ends, at the narrow (5 ft wide) center point, is the entry and exit point, a two-way portal. Upon entry to this chamber, each individual is shunted to one side of the portal (there is no way to cross it, due to the hurricane winds, a dimension lock effect, and no walkway space around the portal). In order to leave, the prisoner must be released, but the cage has six complex locks, each made from a different (and increasingly sturdy) material. Good luck. And yes, it's been beaten, though never without cost. I've never seen a party escape without a death, and once almost TPK'd here. Don't try this one lightly.

3. How Many Of You ARE There, Anyways?!: In this situation, the magical power of d4's is brought to light. Each round (or every two rounds, for less-skilled parties), 1d4 worth of minor enemies spawn. When these enemies reach a critical mass (around 8 usually), 1d4 worth of slightly harder enemies spawn. Again, when they reach a critical mass (again, typically 8), the third wave of 1d4 pretty hard enemies spawn. Note that spawning a higher wave does *not* remove the lesser wave, meaning that if you don't keep up with it, it overwhelms you rapidly. In order to defeat the encounter, you have to kill a specific number of the most powerful enemies (typically 4), at which point the spawning ceases and you just have to mop up. Example critters might be goblins-->orcs-->ogres or small-->medium-->large elementals. You get the idea.

4. The Tarrasque In A Box: Ok, the name doesn't quite explain it. Basically, you take a complex, multi-leveled, highly detailed and interactive environment that is also fairly open (a good example is a large warehouse with several catwalks on the higher levels) and shove a gigantic monster in there that, for whatever reason, can't get out (a good critter would be the Tarrasque... if it wasn't able to simply rip the building apart in most cases). To win, they've got to kill it, but it can reach everywhere pretty much and they can't really hide from it. How do you kill it? Great question. Have a good time!

[TurtleKing]

Try using spell turrets from DMGII. Putting a simple spell such as Magic Missile makes for an effective defense. Stick that on a battlement means at least one less archer needed so all relevant costs are used elsewhere. Could also use them as the "guns" for a ship firing at another.

[mcv]

A couple of interesting fights I've been in as player: (all in 3.5)

The roof top chase:
In a city, we need to find someone before the authorities do. We knock on the door, she escapes onto the roof. We need to figure out how to get to the roof first (some PCs can climb, my druid had Spider Climb (best spell ever), others may need help with ropes). By the time we get to the roof, our target has a head start.

Instead of a standard grid, we used a custom movement system. Every roof was an area with its own movement rules; usually some obstacle and/or a potential shortcut. Make the right a skill check to move an extra area that turn, while overcoming obstacles. Once you're on the same roof as the target, you can attack. When the target gets to the last roof, she escapes.

The invisible sniper
This was in a mansion with a creepy zombie party. Lots of rooms, two floors, and a central dance room spanning both floors with stairs going up and a balcony along the top floor (which was mostly one open space with a big hole in the middle). The dance room was filled with zombies that slowly danced. Every once in a while, a voice called "changez" and the zombies would switch dance partners. If a PC is nearby, a zombie would grab the PC. Other rooms also contained zombies, which mostly left the PCs alone unless disturbed, though a few would attack.

In the middle of this all was an invisible (and insane!) rogue, occasionally firing shots at us, sneak attack and all, and then quickly turning invisible again, and sneaking to a new spot for the next shot. If threatened, she could stay hidden longer, leap over the balcony, etc. She was very quick and nimble, good at sneaking, etc.

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We ended up taking her out by my druid turning into a wolf (with Longstrider, Spider Climb and Jump) tracking her down by scent and then quickly running across all squares in that room until he bumped into her. Once we did that, she couldn't get enough distance to shoot at us anymore. It still took a while until we actually managed to organize well enough to do meaningful damage after each discovery.

Enemies you can't hurt:
Vampire spawn. Nasty, nasty things, can only be hit by magic spells or silver (magic weapons apparently don't work), and we weren't prepared for that. You need to be really, really creative if you want to do some meaningful damage, and in fact we ran away twice, realizing we couldn't win.

No room:
Narrow corridors, moving single file, narrow gaps to squeeze through, and suddenly little buggers attack in the rear, cast Darkness, and all our fighters are in the wrong place. Now try to regroup while you can't move.

Under water:
Always fun. Opportunity for unusual creatures (sea hag, sea cat), many weapons don't work so well, and neither do fire spells. And can you talk under water to cast those spells (assuming you can even breathe). Having a druid is really, really nice, though.

Doors and corridors:
Most of the above weren't really boss fights. Our major boss fight wasn't quite so exotic, but simply having them know you're coming, and they're prepared in a room with two doors, one which they will defend, and another through which to attack you in the rear, can still be nasty. Oh yeah, innocent civilians tied to the beds. You don't want to kill them, do you?

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After half our party was down, I decided to fry the civilians anyway. Sorry, but withdrawing was just not an option anymore.

[Bagelson]

The time bomb
The BBEG has started a process that will majorly screw up the lives of anyone in the vicinity for the foreseeable future should it complete. Whether a breaking dam, a summoning spell or an aligning orbital cannon, the PCs only have a certain number of rounds to beat the mastermind before it goes off.

The BBEG may even have some of the previously mentioned minions at hand. This to force the players to choose between aiming all their damage at the BBEG while taking ping damage from the minions, or clear the minions so they can survive long enough to take him down.

[DigoDragon]

The time bomb
The BBEG has started a process that will majorly screw up the lives of anyone in the vicinity for the foreseeable future should it complete. Whether a breaking dam, a summoning spell or an aligning orbital cannon, the PCs only have a certain number of rounds to beat the mastermind before it goes off.

I did one of these. A black dragon was using his kobold minions to destroy a dam and flood out a local mining town. The PCs were on the dam fighting off kobold miners who were setting up explosives. The dragon was flying around doing what dragons do best.
Despite the fact the PCs failed to prevent the dam's destruction, they loved every round of that fight.

[boomwolf]

"Flesh" is one of my most horrible semi-bosses the players ever faces, and they were so traumatized from the first encounter they took paranoid actions every time the approached him again...

See, "Flesh" does not play by normal rules, he does not even have a real "size", "place", "HP" or such, he is a mass of flesh covering a giant area of the dungeon, with multiple "organs" scattered around his "territory", each organ has his own actions, and no matter how much of his body you destroy, there is always more, and the bugger can grow more parts! (he had a limit of how much he can grow every round, and how big he can be in full size, but it was still massive, and fast.)

The party usually clear out an area of him, thinking to themselves "this is easy, he can't even respond well", but when they realize the bugger is scattered across multiple levels of a damn maze, and that as much as they destroy he just grows back almost as fast, but without wasting valuable spells and such, and he can grow it anywhere that he still has some of him left, they usually find themselves surrounded by his body with only the place they stand being "clear", and quickly growing in, and thats when they make a destruction-run for it away from him, and each time they need to cross his, they try to shenanigan ways to know a short path before entering, because staying inside is risky...

Only upside of the dude is that he literally ate almost every enemy type in the dungeon, not only the PC's, so drawing others to him might make help in a way, or serve as a defensive mechanism from many of the horrors of that dungeon (hoards of kobolds for example, little guys are really scared of him...)


On other notes, the entire maze was very teleport-unfriendly, with a fallen Archean mini-boss being the only one that knows the safe teleportation zones, so he could come, go, and send demonic minions as he please anywhere-but could not be chased the same.

another zone was the spider tunnels, they were hanging in mid-air, and the spiders were more then willing to drop tunnel parts into the bottomless chasm below if they could not defend it properly, so they had to move quick, not to mention that spiders can squeeze through tunnels WAY too small for humanoids, so they could freely flank, ambush and hit-and-run on the party, they only bothered with static defenses in tunnels leading to the queen.

The blackscale kobold tribe (yes, same dungeon.) tended to fight in Moria-goblin style, except they had young dungeonbred dragons around, lots of them. (the dragons were actually the bosses of the kobolds, but same thing), and they rarely repeated in dragon type. (I used most dragons in the draconomicon there...)

Then you got the clockworks (the only thing flesh can't eat), that could literally rebuild their fallen if one survived and they could get their hands on the corpses of others, so you need to take extreme measures to make sure there won't be anything to salvage and rebuild. took them a while to figure that the groups that kept attacking them were in fact mostly the same few.


And that's only the factions...there were many more "freelancers" around, like random elementals and occasional undead former adventurers...

[Madeiner]

Have a look here

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showp...7&postcount=24

[Golden Ladybug]

-A ridiculously evil Dungeon, with disgustingly awesome enemies-

I bow to you, my friend, and I think I'm going to have to steal some of that.

[dethkruzer]

The biggest problem seems to me that most monsters don't have any abilities that force players to change their tactics. So I thought up a new ability some monster could have:

Create Worker (Ex or Su): A monster with this ability creates a specific smaller, weaker monster every 1d4 rounds. Ideally, this weaker monster would not be able to constitute any sort of threat on its own, even to a 1st-level group, but would have decent saving throws and the evasion ability or some other way to keep the spellcaster from just killing them with a fireball. It would also avoid combat, possibly hiding behind its creator. When there are enough of these monsters, they can somehow call into existence another one of the monsters that created them or potentially an even more powerful monster, probably destroying themselves in the process.

I'm not sure exactly how this would change the players' tactics, but I know that very few monsters exist that get more dangerous the longer you battle them or that can be very powerful but only under certain conditions that could potentially arise in the future. It also gives players more choices in combat (can I kill the big monster in time or will the smaller ones turn the tide of battle if I don't destroy them now?)

(Not something i've done, but similiar)

In Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, there was a boss, who starts the fight be summoning four color-coded minions, with each minion having elemental strengths and weakness coresponding to their coloring. Neither the boss or the minions were all that strong, but could cause decent havoc if all five were there. Now, if you defeated all four minions, the boss would simply restore them, and if you kill the boss, but leave even a single minion alive, then said minions will resurrect the boss. Not exactly a difficult battle, but it could get rather infuriating if you didn't know what you're doing. (Even then it can be annoying, if you just happen to have a bout of bad luck.)

[mcv]

If you want reinforcements, but actually creating or summoning them doesn't feel right for the type of battle, it could also be in the form of real reinforcements.

When the combat starts, an alarm is sounded, and people (goblins, soldiers, whatever) respond to that. If the players have the right strategic positions, those reinforcements are easily defeated (at a doorway, or somewhere overlooking their entry), but as long as they haven't, the reinforcements keep spilling into the room and protecting their boss. And as long as the boss is alive, they need to focus on that and can't afford to focus on the reinforcements.

It will require quite a bit of testing and tweaking to get this right, I suspect.

[Fatebreaker]

As others have said, environment, environment, environment. Heck, take the exact same set of monsters, make a half-dozen different environments, and you'll have a half-dozen very different fights, with the monsters taking on very different roles. Go one step further and tailor the monsters to the environments and you've got yourself some very interesting fights. And presuming you've made sure that your enemies (and especially the enemy characters) are compelling, developed, and interesting, AND that your players have a compelling, developed, and interesting reason to stop them, a thematically-awesome set piece for an epic showdown is some pretty damn good icing on a pretty damn good cake.

One of my favorites was a vertical battle. The party was invading an ancient mountaintop castle now used by a clan of ninjas. Since mountaintops aren't known for having a lot of elbow room, the castle was mostly built up rather than out. Since ancient castles aren't known for their quality maintenance standards, a hefty chunk of the interior was hollow in unanticipated ways. Lots of stairwells, balconies, windows, and traditional architecture intermixed with giant gaping holes in the ceiling or floor, bridges that went nowhere, that sort of thing. Between ninjas jumping all over the place, hurling sharp pointy objects from above and below, and a pressing need to get to the Important Room at the top, all the tried-and-true two-dimensional tactics the players had run in every other game were mostly useless. Some players adapted well. Others did not. But it always comes up during the "best rpg moments" discussion we invariably have when we get together.

Ask yourself:
- Where is the fight taking place?
- What constraints does the location place on the participants, player and non-player alike?
- What can a smart player or opponent use to their advantage?
- What harmful terrain exists now, can be made to exist, or (like the breaking dam from DigoDragon) will exist after a certain period of time or a set of conditions are met?
- What monsters would best be able to take advantage of this battlefield, and is it appropriate for them to be present? What monsters will change the nature of the fight?
- How does movement factor into the fight? Can one side hold their ground? Does one side have an incentive to Go Elsewhere Really Fast?
- How, if at all, does time factor into the fight? Swashbuckling swordplay on a sinking ship is very different, from, say, a ship which is not sinking.
- What cool background stuff is happening, and how do I keep it in the background while using it to highlight the players actions in the spotlight?
- How is this different from other (similar) fights? If this boss is a wizard, and the last boss was a wizard, what makes this wizard-fight different from the last wizard-fight? What can I do to make this fight different while staying in character?

And lastly, but most importantly,

- How does this fight fit into the story as a whole and the players story in particular?

A cool location may be a good fight. And it's a great way to make fights unique or to challenge a party grown complacent. But the fights players remember most will be the ones which they had a personal investment in.

[Saph]

This is one of my favourites - simple and effective. I've used it in many formats over the years, and it works equally well in fantasy and sci-fi games. Those of you who've played games like Left 4 Dead and Space Hulk will recognise the format.

The Gauntlet

You will need:

• Battlemat (or map of some kind, but miniatures + mat are best in my experience)
• A mostly but not completely linear environment. I usually use a long, winding corridor with side rooms. Place three or four open doorways/side corridors along the path. These will be your reinforcement points.
• Lots of enemies, in about three types. They should be minion-level difficulty, trivial in small amounts but dangerous in numbers.
• Time. This'll take a good couple of hours!

Setup: The party starts at one end of the map. The map is otherwise empty apart from the PCs. Every turn, a new wave of enemies spawns from the reinforcement points. The spawns continue indefinitely.

Objectives: The party are trying to reach the other end of the map. The enemies are trying to kill as many as possible of the party before they can make it there.

Tactics: This is great fun as a GM because it plays with the party's assumptions. Most tabletop gamers (especially D&D players) are conditioned to always try and kill all the enemies first, then do everything else afterwards. If they do that here, they'll kill enemies by the truckload . . . but they won't make any progress while they do it. Eventually they'll figure out that the spawns are unlimited and will start trying to press forward. This is where the fun begins.

The players have to balance eliminating enemies, protecting and healing their own party, and pressing forward. If they fall behind on any of the three, they'll quickly get in trouble. Smart players will keep up a steady advance while using battlefield control effects to block off pursuit.

The real challenge comes towards the end when the party reaches the last couple of reinforcement points and will have to deal with a mass of enemies that have built up while they were fighting the ones before. They'll have to fight their way through the ones that have built up while also fighting off the ones that are spawning behind and in front of them and also keeping up forward momentum.

Victory Conditions: If the party makes it all the way through to the exit, give them a way to shut it behind them and escape without further battle. They've earned it!

Variations: For more advanced parties, you can throw in extra complications:

• The party has to make side-trips and stops along the way to throw levers, seal off access points, insert gems, etc.
• The enemies have some sort of debilitating damage-over-time effect such as poison which slows individual party members down. Will the party wait for their wounded companions to catch up?
• The party has to escort a vulnerable NPC to the exit.
• The enemies have battlefield control effects of their own.
• The map contains obstacles, such as barriers that must be destroyed, narrow corridors that only allow one person at a time, rooms with natural hazards, pits, difficult terrain, etc.

[Friv]

Ones I have run or played in...

* We once had a battle that began on top of a tower, and then the tower began to collapse. The whole thing was sliding downwards, creating areas of unstable terrain and causing various sections of tower to change position relative to each other when they hit obstacles, and the players had to try and keep their footing, use the movement against their enemy, and not get overwhelmed.

* Another battle took place in an ancient arena dedicated to a war god. A massive rapidly-spinning millstone was in the centre, and a set of golems served as the enemies. The golems tried to reach the centre of the room to sharpen their weapons, which would give them massive damage bonuses, and the players had to try and slow down the millstone while holding back and eventually destroying the golems. We managed it with a few well-placed bull rushes knocking golems directly into the millstone, some sniping, and a lot of luck.

* One fight was actually a chase across a series of basically solid clouds, with a massive monster closing in from the distance and smaller, more annoying creatures swarming around the party. The goal was to reach the area the flying monster couldn't enter, which required balancing desperate running, not falling off, and fending off little bastards.

* One fight involved a monster that was drawing power from an additional source, so the players were actually fighting an escort mission, protecting the NPC who they'd brought in to seal the monster's power from the growing hordes of enemies arriving to eat his brains.

* Another fight involved a monster with a time limit on him - he was slowly self-destructing, and the more power he drew on, the faster he would explode. The players' goals were thus not to damage the enemy, but to force him to use more and more power to fight them, thereby hastening his demise (and, of course, to survive said power).