Combined puzzle fight encounter?

[gadren]

Has anyone ever seen any encounters in any roleplaying game that did a good job of combining a puzzle with a combat encounter?

Can you make up any good ones yourself?

[Malimar]

The premise of this thread intrigues me, because I've got one player who loves puzzle-solving and I want to try to set up an encounter where he's solving a puzzle while the rest of the party is fighting, but I'm not certain how to actually do that.

[Beta Centauri]

There are a few in the 4th Edition Dungeon Delve book, and I doubt those are the first. I don't do a lot of puzzles myself, but I always try to have something going on in an encounter besides combat, some other goal that the characters can achieve.

The trickiness lies in how much time the GM wants the players to have to work things out. A puzzle by itself with no timer can be worked on at leisure, with real time corresponding to game time. Once you're in initiative, it's natural to wonder how long the characters really have to figure things out. That's not always easily agreed on.

So, I'd start with a simple puzzle that isn't vital to the encounter: flip the switches with the words under them in order to form a sentence and the golem shuts down. The order is not devilishly hard to figure out, but the switches are spaced around the room and the golem will protect them.

Later, the situation can involve magic square puzzles or whatever, but start simple.

And, as always with puzzles, don't hinge the game on them. The game should continue to be fun whether or not the puzzle is solved or even engaged with.

[Phoenixguard09]

I will also be following this closely.

The only thing I can think of is the classic 'patterns on the floor designate the safe path, every other tile is trapped.' And then chuck in a ****-ton of enemies who flood the room, hitting traps all over the place and watch the pyrotechnics.

[Beta Centauri]

A lot of the combat you see in movies has something else going on that requires skill and thought. In fact, the battle often can't be won without solving that portion, or can't be won well. Take The Avengers: The invasion can be stopped with a nuke or by shutting off the device, or with both; brute force can buy time and can enable access to the device or steering of the nuke, but can't win the day itself. There's not exactly a "puzzle" there, but there are pieces that need to come together in not-entirely-obvious ways.

[Thrudd]

The timing is the thing, isn't it? To maintain the sense of urgency, you need a timer on the player trying to solve the puzzle while the others are fighting.

For instance, one player is trying to solve a switch flipping puzzle on a door while the others protect him from enemies on the area. The puzzle player rolls initiative like the others. When his turn comes up, flip over a piece of paper with a diagram of the puzzle for him to study, give him ten seconds or however long a combat round is to look at it, then flip it back. He can declare what switches will be flipped, if any, at that time, marking them on the paper. Then combat continues with the next in initiative order. If any attackers are able to get to him, he doesn't get to look at the puzzle that round because his character has to defend himself.

This could work with just about any sort of physical puzzle that you could hand to the player to manipulate, just let him work on it only for the duration of the combat round and then take it away/cover it up while the other players and monsters take their turns.