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Tael
2011-04-14, 07:56 PM
So, I'd like this thread to be a repository of generally cool encounter ideas, for DMs everywhere to dip into. Any system is fine, but try to keep it non-specific.

I'll start:
I've always wanted to run an encounter where the PC's fight are lured either underground or inside a creature's lair, and suddenly in traditional zelda fashion, the door slams shut behind them. The creature is probably a vampire of some sort, except with ridiculous regeneration. It's also extremely sensitive to light however, and suffers massive damage from natural sunlight. The PC's must either face an extremely long grueling battle, slowly whittling away it's health, or find some way to expose it to sunlight. Whether this is by breaking down the door and dragging it out, or smashing a hole in the ceiling, whatever works.

I look forward to your suggestions!

dsmiles
2011-04-14, 08:10 PM
I had this group when I was stationed overseas in Korea. I ran them through this epic (in scope, not level) underground dungeon complex below some ruins. There was a hole in a wall that led them deep into the Underdark, where they encountered some drow (who happened to be mind controlled). After fighting their way through the drow towards a source of (what they thought was) fresh water (they were out, and a cave-in trapped them). They ended up fighting an aboleth savant, who mind controlled nearly the entire party. The aboleth had polluted the water, and there was a minor artifact on a small outcropping that stuck out...about 50 feet into the underground sea. The players (correctly) guessed that this artifact was why the drow had come in the first place, and that it had something to do with turning any liquid into fresh water. So there was this titanic battle between the remaining party members (a halfling monk, and a human shaper), some drow (who just arrived and were not yet mind controlled), and the aboleth (with the rest of the party: a half-ogre ranger, a human rogue, and a grey elf sorcerer). The drow retreated after suffering heavy casualties due to the sorcerer. The monk jumped up on the aboleth and QPed it. It rolled a 1 on its save.

Volos
2011-04-15, 01:57 AM
I have run this particular scenario for an encounter before, and my players had a lot of fun with it. The players enter a dungeon and meet little to no resistance, triggering no traps (or only non-dangerous ones), and running into almost no monsters. Then as they reach the center of the dungeon, and retrieve the object they were supposed to obtain something strange happens. The entire dungeon turns upside down! Now they are on the 'floor', and have to deal with all of the traps, hidden creatures, and anything else they missed on the way in.

Another that I had thought of running, but avoiding doing so to keep my players from quitting was a sudden random mind switch. Some cursed items, creature, ancient spell, or whatever ends up switching the minds of the characters with little to no warning. OOCly this means you grab everyone's sheet and hand it to someone else. Then roleplay and rollplay takes place as the players attempt to get rid of the cursed items while dealing with being each other for long enough to make a story/personal impact.

Greensleeves
2011-04-15, 07:14 AM
Well, I've got a few ideas.

One is pretty much restricted to Eberron or other equally magipunk-y settings. A fight with some foe (I used a Rakshasa Zakya against a level 4-5 party, I think) on top a speeding lighting rail, heading straight for a gorge/building/populated area/mountain wall what have you. So they need to be aware of their surroundings, finish the battle quickly and try to stop the train.

Another that I haven't gotten to play yet is a fairly simple one. Encounter of choice on a bridge far up in the mountains, in the middle of a lightning storm, that strikes with enough force to destroy parts of the bridge. Changing environment, environmental hazard and cool scenery.

Trellan
2011-04-15, 08:44 AM
Similar to the bridge in the lightning storm, I had a "boss" fight with a minor big bad that I never got to use because the campaign died. This particular big bad was a barbarian focused on pouncing and close combat. He had also fused himself with a keep, giving him control over it but making it so he could never leave. His "throne room" was on the roof of the keep on top of a high mesa that dropped off into a deep river valley on all sides (think Grand Canyon).

The gimmick of the encounter was going to be, essentially, that the keep was also a living entity connected to the barbarian. Every round it would get actions such as opening holes in an attempt to drop PCs to the floor below (thus forcing them to waste a round or more getting back up) or raising walls to cut them off. As the barbarian started losing hp, the edges of the keep would crumble away, forcing the PCs into closer and closer combat with a skilled close-range combatant. At lower health, the keep would start doing more dramatic effects like tilting the entire roof at a steep angle, forcing the PCs to take reduced actions in order to avoid falling off. Meanwhile, the barbarian would be pouncing around and attempting to bull-rush people off the edge if they got too close to it (since he was physically incapable of leaving the keep, there was no danger of him falling). I also envisioned it happening in the middle of a lightning storm because, well, it seemed cool in my head :smallredface:

Of course, this was in a setting with a homebrew magic system that didn't really involve any flying spells or abilities, things that would pretty much nullify all of the challenge and would be easily available in normal D&D at the level they were... It was also part of an arc that involved travel between different realities, and a series of big-bads were the anchors. This meant it wouldn't really be a problem to the PCs that the whole keep collapses when the barbarian dies because they would get sucked into a different dimension as they tumbled down with the rubble. So yeah, maybe it doesn't transfer that well. :smallfrown:

Warlawk
2011-04-15, 09:55 AM
This one was taken from a similar thread at the WotC boards, and I used it in an Eberron game once.

A floating building in sharn, in the case of my game it was a fancy dinner place. The PCs were supposed to meet someone there to exchange a McGuffin. Turns out they were being set up and when they found out and spotted the guys they attacked. During the attack they damaged the "trigger item" which detonated the magic charges planted on the supports for the diner which destroyed the magic keeping it afloat and it started to plummet out of the sky.

This leaves the PCs in combat inside the diner as it tumbles down out of the sky. Now, in Sharn everything that flies like that has a Feather Fall effect (I don't recall if it's because of the concurrence with the plane of air, or just required for construction) so it started to fall slowly. Every other round it required either a tumble check or movement of at least XX feet to avoid falling as the falling building rotated and the floor became a wall with the wall becoming the floor etc. I had a couple of random rolls worked out to choose targets to make saving throws against falling knives/dangerous debris and against things like landing on a window when you moved to the wall/floor. After a set number of rounds the building would crash to a horrible death on a major platform of the tower below.

It worked out great in play and the session was a hit.

I also ran a session in that same eberron game with the players needing to recover something from down in the Foundries. This left them fighting on a bunch of catwalks that ran over the smelting pits. It was a major smelting pit so there were still big chunks of stone and ore that formed solid semi stable "islands" within the molten pits of fiery death. This lead to a lot of bull rush and push style attacks to throw people off the catwalks. There was a few enemies held in reserve of the main force and if the McGuffin was recovered or the recovery attempt failed they were going to roll big chunks of stone/ore off a big ledge to try and collapse the catwalks down into the smelting pit.

I had another session in mind for the game where the players were on a mountain side at an exclusive bed and breakfast/resort kinda place when the forces working against them caused an avalanche. I think I had notes for crazy sledding escape down the slopes as well as being trapped in a buried building building that could collapse and trying to escape the place. Would have to go dig out the notes to remember exactly what was in mind.

It's already been mentioned in the thread that a lightning rail/train scene with fights on top of the moving train can be a lot of fun. These scenes were for an Eberron game I was running as an intro for 4E, trying to kinda play up the crazy action movie style interesting locations for the game. Unfortunately it kinda petered out because the group just didn't like the 4e system very much. Might have to reuse the ideas in a 3E game next time I end up running though, mostly because I just really like having the players set as spies working for the mostly defunct CIA (Cyreen Intelligence Agency).

banthesun
2011-04-15, 10:10 AM
*awesome*

I would love to be one of your players.

Actually all of these ideas are really cool. Probably the most interesting encounter I planned (the campaign died a few scenes before this) was escaping up a stairway through a burning zeppelin chased by a horde of vampires who'd all replaced half their bodies with machinery.

Just_Ice
2011-04-15, 11:13 AM
I ran a 4E fight where the players fought a huge Minotaur berserker and its two cohorts on a gigantic chandelier. The big Minotaur would shake the whole thing as it moved, and tip it depending on what end it was on, and people would slide unless they made a reflex save or fort save. The players could also mess with the chains by pulling a rusted winch to lower it 15 feet on one side. The intelligent cohort minotaurs threw volleys of hammers and hung on to the chains while the big one just charged everyone it could.

A really good fight I was in was in a 3.5 campaign involving a lot of spelunking. We were climbing down a long cave in a "2-D side view" and a Huge bat engaged us as we went. That sucker refused to die, but I managed to eventually rope my way onto its back and crash it into the pit below. It would have been cooler if everyone could hit it (as it stood, the AC and flying and lighting meant that hits were very rare) but it was solid nonetheless.

There was also a fight with orcs up the Steppes of a mountain, where anyone on higher ground ground got a +2 to hit and bull rush... but a -4 to be tripped or grappled. Needless to say, people fell.

Notreallyhere77
2011-04-15, 12:32 PM
I wanted to have a fight between the PCs and some vampires. Coolness? It was on a wide staircase, and the vamps had the high ground. And a surprise round, because they're all hiding behind large tapestries next to the wall. They would have lept down as the PCs were ascending the stairs, bull rushed them, and laughed as the PCs rolled down 80 ft and had to try again.
unfortunately, we never got to that part of the campaign.

I have another one, that I plan on using soon. Since at least one of my players reads these forums on occasion, I'm spoilering it.
The room is the inside of a small keep, little more than a watch tower. It measures 35x35, and the walls are 25 ft high. There is no roof, but there are four large columns that support where the ceiling used to be. Ten feet above the ground floor is a wooden walkway attached to the wall that encircles the room. This walkway is ten feet wide.
Two-to-six hobgoblin archers with shot on the run (and probably dash) will dart from one column, shooting at anyone on the ground floor within view. Two archers on adjacent sides of the room will have only their corner as a blind spot, and two archers across from each other have none. An archer hiding behind a column has full cover.
The walkway can be set on fire through conventional means, but the wood is old, dirty, and possibly damp, and ignores the first 5 points of fire damage per round. On a round in which the fire damage fails to beat the resistance, the fire dies.
What do you think?

Trellan
2011-04-16, 02:41 AM
I would love to be one of your players.

Haha, thanks. I'm glad somebody liked it. I put quite a bit of effort into the four boss fights involved in that arc, and I'm still more than a little bit heartbroken that I only ever got to run one of them. :smallfrown:

Shademan
2011-04-16, 05:13 AM
I have always wanted to somehow do a battle where the two combatants have to fight while running, mixing between long range and melee combat... but all the time running!

Cheesy74
2011-04-16, 10:03 AM
I've found a very simple way to keep players mobile and have an interesting fight is a crumbling floor. Simply put, at the end of every player and monster's turn, the square(s) they began their turn in crumble into a pit (or whatever else you can think of) below. If they're still there, reflex save or fall.

Add in things like gouts of flame spewing out of the pits hitting adjacent squares (to stop the metagamey "five foot and full-round as usual" guys), creatures that can attack through the holes in the floor, and an above-ground foe doing damage to the ground as part of its attacks, and you've got one hell of a challenging fight.

Until the wizard puts a wall of force over the floor, anyway. Antimagic wouldn't be a bad idea in this encounter.

Quietus
2011-04-16, 10:25 AM
I've found a very simple way to keep players mobile and have an interesting fight is a crumbling floor. Simply put, at the end of every player and monster's turn, the square(s) they began their turn in crumble into a pit (or whatever else you can think of) below. If they're still there, reflex save or fall.

Add in things like gouts of flame spewing out of the pits hitting adjacent squares (to stop the metagamey "five foot and full-round as usual" guys), creatures that can attack through the holes in the floor, and an above-ground foe doing damage to the ground as part of its attacks, and you've got one hell of a challenging fight.

Until the wizard puts a wall of force over the floor, anyway. Antimagic wouldn't be a bad idea in this encounter.

Walls of force must be vertical, so you can't just wall of force the floor. Also, even if you could, you'd have to do it when no one else was in the room, because you can't bring the wall into existence in a space that someone else occupies.

NichG
2011-04-16, 11:00 AM
This would need the right context, but you could combine the crumbling floor idea with the puzzle floor from the 3rd Indiana Jones movie.

To make it 'make sense', lets say you have a big chamber designed to construct enormous spell effects through an amplifier built into the architecture that taps a local ley line (wondrous architecture, basically). The floor of the chamber is covered in rune tiles, each of which activates when stood upon. If you activate certain patterns of runes in sequence, it creates a spell effect. However, if you just stand on a rune without making a sequence, the building energies surge and damage you as the spell discharges randomly rather than with a controlled effect.

Give the players a list of runespells that can be constructed perhaps, or do it with a boggle board so that things that are words in english correspond to similar spells.