Best and Worst ideas for an encounter

[King of Casuals]

What was the most/least fun that you've had while fighting enemies in an RPG? DMs, if you want some gamer feedback, be sure to pay attention.

Best: Party's ship gets attacked by Sahuagins (sea goblins) riding sharks. Their high priest is riding a megalodon and snaps the PC ship in half, and they have to fight off goblins and giant sharks on a sinking ship.

Worst: Magic weapons that attack on their own. No satisfaction comes from killing them, as you just destroyed something that should make you happy.

[Lacco]

I played very little (no one wants to GM), but...

Best: Shootout in a cathedral that continued as swordfight on its roof in a storm when we ran out of ammo
I thought why it was the best and came with this:

• he set the atmosphere from the beginning (right after mass, still , lots of people still in due to the storm, candles everywhere),
• he let us pick our enemies, positions (they were hiding in the crowd, so for a while we just moved around, positioning, making it a bit tense),
• came up with several roleplaying (and challenging) sub-encounters for each player (I got a hostage situation due to me playing a professional assassin with a creed not to harm bystanders, the street sam got a "honorable" duel challenge during the shootout),
• he made each round interesting - not one of his NPCs did "I attack him" during the fight - they shouted insults, dodged, emptied magazines just to make us back down a bit...
• and after both I and my opponent (a bit of personal issue from the past) both emptied our magazines (in hindsight, I think he didn't empty his, but he ran with it) we drew swords and moved to the roof (where our mage was having his aerial combat).
• he gave us both huge penalties for the footing, so we hardly had enough dice to move and due to this we managed to fight for several rounds, both managed to lose our weapons (not at the same time), both had to dodge magic/bullets...

Unfortunately - it was a one shot, he lived too far away. I try to make my combats as fun as he did.

Worst: We were thrown into arena. And each of us got to fight NPC of exactly the same class, only 2 levels higher. I-attack-you-attack. And when my fighter was nearly dead, I landed a critical (a multi-critical, about 5x the damage I usually dealt) and should have killed the opponent, he "went berserk" - and got additional HP, stronger attacks and cut me down in one blow.

[Hazrond]

Best (Pathfinder): village full of zombies (roughly 14, plus a boss zombie), cue the two level 1 caster PCs dashing from house to house as the horde follows, slowly being whittled down with acid splashes and sparked fires, while the paladin and boss zombie duel in a nearby house over the survival of the only living adult NPC as well as a small child.

Worst (3.5): a cult of 14 dread necromancers who specialize in casting blindness, deafness, and summon undead, with summon undead getting roughly 4 castings D:<

[YossarianLives]

Best (3.5) Attacked by orcish raiders on horseback while escorting several large chests of treasure and a king who we had just rescued after his castle had been overrun in a fast-moving magical cart along the edge of a cliff.

Worst (3.5) fighting hordes of enemies who couldn't hit us but had massive amount of AC and HP in a completely empty room that we couldn't leave until we had defeated the enemy.

[goto124]

Worst: Magic weapons that attack on their own. No satisfaction comes from killing them, as you just destroyed something that should make you happy.

*rolls Diplomancy check*
'Hey man, calm down- we could be friends! I could help you travel the world and cut down as many monsters as one could ever wish for! Isn't it lovely?'

Do social and combat-turned-social encounters count?

[King of Casuals]

*rolls Diplomancy check*
'Hey man, calm down- we could be friends! I could help you travel the world and cut down as many monsters as one could ever wish for! Isn't it lovely?'

Do social and combat-turned-social encounters count?

Sure, as long as it fits the theme

[DigoDragon]

One of my favorite all-time encounters was fighting a group of cultists in a mansion where the GM allowed us to interact with every piece of environment there. It's fun to get creative with pool balls, chairs, and paintings in a combat. At one point the fridge door got used to take out a cultist. The other aspect is that the mansion is full of interconnected halls and rooms, so there's a lot of running around and cover to make the fight interesting.

My least favorite... I think the worst encounters I've had are those where the enemy No Sells every attack you throw at them; weapons, diplomacy, magic. It really kills my motivation to keep trying if the opponent seems neigh invincible to any action I attempt.

[DontEatRawHagis]

I once created a Legends of the Hidden Temple dungeon for my players to go through.

It wasn't till they finished did I ask if they caught the references. None of them had cable as kids so te reference was lost on them.

[JAL_1138]

Worst: Any encounter where the DM doesn't tell you what your character should perceive, e.g.,

Player: I attack! *roll*
DM: Roll damage.
Player: *rolls* 12!
DM: *neglects to mention anything like: "your attack seems to have no effect as your greatsword bounced harmlessly off the creature's thick hide."* Ok, who's next in initiative?
Enemy: *completely unharmed*

...three hours later, the enemy has soaked hundreds of HP without a scratch because no one was given any indication that weapon attacks weren't working at all rather than the homebrew critter just having a metric s***load of HP.

[JCAll]

I once created a Legends of the Hidden Temple dungeon for my players to go through.

It wasn't till they finished did I ask if they caught the references. None of them had cable as kids so te reference was lost on them.

How long did it take them to get through the shrine of the silver monkey?
And did they loot the silver monkey on the way out?

[VoxRationis]

Best: A fight against a white dragon where there was cover and a good deal of positioning to work out. My barbarian (this being the one with 9 Strength natively) dealt it mighty blows with his dragonbane greatsword, coming up behind it and slaying it as it tried to claw our wizard apart. Cover aside, it wasn't that tactically interesting of an encounter; it was just very fun to be so useful in the encounter, and for it to end so dramatically (killing a dragon with a dragonbane greatsword felt very appropriate).
Or possibly the encounter where the party's wizard reached into a cupboard without letting the rogue check first and was attacked by undead ferrets. That was just funny because the player who controlled the wizard was kind of impulsive and a pain in the neck.

Worst: After retrieving a magical hoop that was the MacGuffin for the campaign, the evil lich teleports in, snatches it out of our hands (with nary disarm check or opposed roll to be seen) and teleports out.

[Mr Beer]

My least favorite... I think the worst encounters I've had are those where the enemy No Sells every attack you throw at them; weapons, diplomacy, magic. It really kills my motivation to keep trying if the opponent seems neigh invincible to any action I attempt.

You should have just read the GM's mind...I'm sure there was exactly one right way to get through the encounter.

[Jay R]

Best possible encounter: They are too much for our party. We can't handle this. What was the DM thinking? Everybody, pull back - we'll try to bottle them up in the corridor. OK, we're holding them for now. Uh-oh, one or two more hits and I'll be down, and the rest aren't any better off. Wait a minute, on of them fell! Attack the rest! Pull out that one-time use item. No sense dying with that in our pocket. Two more down. Wait - they're all dropping. We did it! I can't believe we survived that!

Worst possible encounter: We find a Deck of Many Things.

[Camman1984]

Best :-

A well thought out battle on a burning paddlesteamer, spent ages using the whole ship in different ways.

Worst:-

one of those non-descriptive ones where we didnt even realise that our spells were healing the monster (Undoing the melee damage) and also increasing the monsters stats.

Dumbest:-

Our lawful stupid paladin challenging a guy who we KNEW was a god NPC because he insulted him by calling out his arrogance and blind faith, then him and the rest of the party continued attacking even when the DM described their attacks passing harmlessly through him and the NPC warning them to stop. My wizard casually stepped into his personal demiplane to wait that one out.

[VoxRationis]

Dumbest:-

Our lawful stupid paladin challenging a guy who we KNEW was a god NPC because he insulted him by calling out his arrogance and blind faith, then him and the rest of the party continued attacking even when the DM described their attacks passing harmlessly through him and the NPC warning them to stop. My wizard casually stepped into his personal demiplane to wait that one out.

I once had a player challenge a demigod, a Pharaoh with actual divine blood and power (and significant amounts of it, something like 18 cleric levels' worth of divine magic), to a fight. This after I expressly warned him that the guy was way beyond his 9th-level cleric's power.

[King of Casuals]

So I have become a GM of an extremely successful campaign in the year since I posted this thread, and I got a surprising amount of good advice from it. Most notably the "always tell your players when something has DR or health regen" thing.