Encounters Gone Horribly Wrong

[Cheesegear]

So, as a DM, you plan your encounter to the CR of your party, sometimes they're even Deadly! Someone might even die! This is gonna be good...

The Bard wins initiative, and drops Hypnotic Pattern.
Hill Giants and Ogres have negatives to their Wisdom saves.
All hostiles become Incapacitated until they take damage.
The party proceeds to butcher the Hill Giant and multiple Ogres one by one.
That's game, kids.



When have you gone into (or set up) an encounter that has immediately turned trivially easy - or very, very difficult?

[Tawmis]

I used to allow "Called Shots" to the hands, for example.
And what I did was increase the target's AC by 3.
So for example if something's AC was 10 and they do a called shot to the hand, the AC became 13.
And no matter what if they didn't meet that 13 - even if they exceeded the base 10 required - it was a miss.

So there I am - a Green Hag has manipulated the party into killing some centaurs in the woods where a dryad has been killed (which is what drew the Green Hag's attention, because of the great tragedy that took place).

Party figures out they've been duped by the hag, joins forces with the centaurs and goes after the hag.

The hag realizing her game is up, reveals herself, holding the dryad's dead heart in her hands to channel powerful magic to open the portal.

Fight is happening, things are going well (party is getting a good beating, so it looks to be a good challenge, but I expect them to win).

One of the cleric's casts Faerie Fire - now the party has Advantage (and the green hag's invisibility trick is out the window).

Suddenly the cleric runs up and calls for a called shot to the hand to cut it off and make it drop the heart.

Green Hag's AC is 17, so he needs a 20.

I tell him to roll it.

Natural 20.

Frick.

So he does enough damage to not only knock out the heart, but cut deep enough that the hag's hand is useless. That's OK, she has her other hand.

She RAKES the cleric for some serious damage.

Next round. Calls for a called shot to her other hand.

Natural. Freaking. 20. Again.

Both 20's were done without even needing to roll the dice again with advantage.

Needless to say, she tried to run, the Wizard casts grease, she failed. She falls.

Cleric jumps on her, runs her through basically.

I then had to improvise immediately other encounters after that, since the hag fight was supposed to last all night.

So the party ended up running into a displacer beast (which they saw before entering the forest, knowing it was out of place in these woods)....

Needless to say, I changed my "Called shots" rule to say you must have Inspiration to do it (not Bardic but normal Inspiration), to allow for a heroic moment like a called shot.

[Sparky McDibben]

Set up a nasty encounter with a necromancer about to send an army of undead into a forgotten tomb in search of a terrifying relic. The necromancer (the party has figured out with some good skill checks) is human, over 300 years old, and very much not supposed to be able to be in this area. He has like 20 zombie minions and a wraith, and he's going to make more in about four hours from the ranger's kidnapped (NPC) druid friend.

The party is one ranger and one eldritch knight, both level 5. They had encountered a band of orcs in search of a glorious death earlier.

I figured they would go get the orcs and we'd have a pitched fight, right?

I know, that was stupid.

The ranger slides down the slope overhead and starts skewering the necromancer. The eldritch knight goes for the prisoners. Well, you can guess what happened next. The necromancer dimension door-ed out of there, the wraith went after the ranger, and the zombies started after the eldritch knight. The ranger realized how bad off she was a little too late, and died. The eldritch knight died a little while later when a flood of undead chased him down and rent his (delicious) flesh.

Tl;dr I gave the party a puzzle with a "correct" answer instead of relying on them improvising a solution, which resulted in a TPK. On the plus side, the TPK resulted in them being resurrected by a vampire death cleric and hunting her rival necromancers across the world. Fun times.

[Maelynn]

Natural 20.

Natural. Freaking. 20. Again.

This is just something you can't really expect to happen. Instead of trying to come up with something to prevent these kinds of things, I'd applaud the epic way the fight went and make sure I have either an extra failsafe prepared (kind of like an 'OHFORKINGHELL' button for the Hag) or make sure I prepare 2 sessions in advance.

The latter is something I usually go for already anyway, simply because I've no idea what the party will do and I don't consider myself experienced enough yet to just make up whole encounters/events on the fly. If they snuff an encounter that was supposed to last all night, at least I'll have the next step ready and waiting. It doesn't just give me a bit of peace, it also ensures the session doesn't grind to a halt simply because there's isn't enough for them to continue.

[Randomthom]

One from the other side of the DM screen (a place I haven't often found myself in recent years)...

It's session 0.5, we've spent the first half making our characters then jumped straight in with the campaign. In a published module (I'll refrain from saying which to avoid spoilerificness) the party were inspecting a warehouse where some ne'er-do-wells were supposedly based. All seemed quiet and the large warehouse door was locked so we broke a window "quietly" then climbed in "quetly" and began to snoop around "stealthily".

I put those words in speech commas because the rolls were poor but I'm a firm believer that unless it is obvious in-game that you have failed then you should act as if you have succeeded. Alas passive perceptions weren't great in our group and before long we got jumped by a bunch of Kenku. 4 of them, 4 of us, they're 1/8th CR...

TPK

Nothing the party could do about it and the DM is a stickler for letting the dice fall as they may, even if it means a TPK in session not-yet-1... Our monk was dead (actual dead) before he got a turn due to 2 crits, one that left him on 1 hp and another that took him to -11 (he had 10hp at max). Rogue went next (to unconscious), my bard & the sorcerer survived another round after I got him up with a healing word... I don't think the DM rolled below a 16 in the whole encounter... 1 Kenku died.

Lvl 1 is swingy on the dice...

[Tawmis]

This is just something you can't really expect to happen. Instead of trying to come up with something to prevent these kinds of things, I'd applaud the epic way the fight went and make sure I have either an extra failsafe prepared (kind of like an 'OHFORKINGHELL' button for the Hag) or make sure I prepare 2 sessions in advance.

The latter is something I usually go for already anyway, simply because I've no idea what the party will do and I don't consider myself experienced enough yet to just make up whole encounters/events on the fly. If they snuff an encounter that was supposed to last all night, at least I'll have the next step ready and waiting. It doesn't just give me a bit of peace, it also ensures the session doesn't grind to a halt simply because there's isn't enough for them to continue.

I was ready to improv the moment I saw the second Natural 20. I was going to try to make her flee - but at that point, I was already thinking, they're going to encounter the displacer beast. But, I did applaud the two Nat 20's without even needing the "Advantage" roll of Faerie Fire (which is why I continued to allow it for that session, rather than say "No!" on the second natural 20). It made for a great scene. But I realized that someone could simply continue to try for called shot type stuff on every encounter, every round, with just a +3 to the target's AC, which in most cases, isn't hard to pull off at lower levels.

[Misterwhisper]

The party consisted of a swashbuckler, an evoker wizard, a bear Totem barbarian, and a vengeance paladin all level 7.

The group were stealthily infiltrating a cults lair, and have done extremely well despite the paladin being horrid at stealth.

They made it to the inner sanctum where the cult was performing a ritual that they needed to stop. The cultists were 3 level 7 warlocks and 5 grunt guards.

The ritual chamber was at the end of a 50 ft hallway that was 10 feet wide.

They waited outside the door and the barbarian was going to boot open the door and they would surprise them.

The barbarian rolled a 2 on the check to break open the door. The paladin rolled garbage initiative.

The door got slammed but not completely opened.

One hunger of hadar in front, one behind and many eldritch blasts later and it was reboot time.

[ImproperJustice]

I spent hours recently designing and equiping a party of NPCs to really challenge a party of strong 8th level characters.
One of the bad guys had like 150 HP.

Except the PCs get surprise.
Entire enemy team wasted or debuffed so hard they would be more effective dead, before they even got take an action.

On the flip side, I once witnessed a party of high level melee PCs get wiped by a Roper.
Retreat or changing tactics never occurred to them. They just all rushed in and got murdered

[RedMage125]

I had two such things go down in the same session. Fortunately, one was something routine that turned super ugly, and one was something taht was supposed to hard went super easy.

So, shortly after the 3.5e conversion, I had the party (~lvl 5 or 6) trying to stop a kobold war camp. I know that sounds silly, but these were disciplined kobolds. Most of the soldiers were level 3 warriors, either crossbowmen in leather or spearmen in scale. A few were lvl 3 sorcerers. The captains were 2 lvl 7 fighters, and 2 Sorcerer5/Dragon Disciple 2. The leader was a mutant (Medium-Sized) Sorcerer 6/Dragon Disciple 4. And accompanying the kobold leader was one of the most BA NPCs I had crafted yet. She was a Drow Fighter/Rogue (I don't remember the level split), but she had a spiked chain, Improved feint, improved Trip, and Weapon Specialization. So she could feint, trip, and free-action Sneak Attack.

I'm gonna skip past some of the nitty details because most people won't care, but the PCs split the party. Party Fighter, Wizard, and Cleric were basically invisible in the back of the camp. They screwed that up, and ended up drawing a lot of the leaders' attention to themselves. The rest of the party (Paladin, Rogue, Bard) was trying to create a distraction at the gate. Here's some of the highlights.

For reference, btw, I do "confirmation rolls" for critical misses. Allows for occasional fumbles, without making them too harsh, or too often. So basically, if you roll a natural 1, you roll again, with the same bonuses. If that second roll would have hit, then your nat 1 is just a regular miss. you screw up the confirmation roll, and you get a critical failure.

Incident 1:
So the half-elf Paladin in full plate armor on his heavy warhorse with his lance is charging a group of 9 kobolds on foot. He rolls a 1. Rolls to confirm. Another 1.

This is like candy.

I tell him that his lance dipped too low, his horse comes to a dead stop, and he is vaulted from his saddle, landing prone in the square behind the creature he was targetting. Which was also occupied by another kobold, which did not survive 200+ pounds of steel-clad half-elf landing on it. But he was now on his back, turn over, surrounded on all 8 sides by kobolds.

Everything was SNAFU after that. The rogue had been quitely taking out the kobold crossbowmen in the guard towers, the bard was gone for a few more rounds, having bee the only one to successfully draw off a patrol. And the guys in the back of the camp? They got their crap together and dimension door-ed back to the front of the camp.

Mind you, most of the camp is now mobilized, and what was intended to be a "sneak through the camp and take them out in groups of 7-9" was now "entire camp at once, including all 3 remaining captains, the leader, and the drow".

So there's this huge cluster of a battle. Fortunately, the party wizard had a few fireballs memorized, and huge chunks of kobolds got vaporized instantly.

Incident 2:
So that awesome drow Fighter Rogue has entered the fray, and the party Fighter (Weapon Master PrC, used a Greatsword) ended up using his entire turn to get adjacent to her, and she failed to trip him a second time. Party Cleric casts Hold Person on her. I'm like, "yeah, go ahead, she's got Spell Resistance". Cleric rolls like an 18 on the dice. Well, crap. Okay, no panic, she has an okay Will Save, +2 racial bonus against all spells, and additional +2 because it's an Enchantment...my NPC can make this save on like a 7. So of course I rolled a 4. No biggie, it's her turn in a few more initiative counts, and she gets a new save then. But before her, the party Fighter goes. He already had his d20 in his hand, ready to Full Attack her.

But not anymore. No, now he gently sets his d20 on the table before him...folds his hands...produces the most obnoxious grin he can...and says, "Coup De Grace". Auto-crit with a greatsword at full power attack from a level 6 fighter was 4d6+12+(his STR mod x2), and was too high for her to make the save to survive.

THIS WAS THE ONLY HIT THAT NPC TOOK THE WHOLE FIGHT.

The party managed to pull a win out of their hat, but it was dicey for awhile.

And rather amusing was the single, solitary kobold left in a guard tower who would, once per round on his initiative, take a pot shot with his little 1d6 dmg Small Light Crossbow. Party nicknamed him "the mosquito".

[SpikeFightwicky]

Does the opposite count? I had an encounter that was supposed to be Medium (party of 6 lvl 8 PCs VS 1 Hobgoblin Devastator, 1 Hobgoblin Captain & 3 teams of 4 plain hobgoblins, but staggered so that teams 2 and 3 and show up on rounds 3 and 4, respectively (not the exact numbers, maybe off by one or two)). According to the DMG guidelines, it was just barely above the "EASY", and it was the first encounter after I took over this high level game. Plus, they were going to flee after 4 rounds because they were on guard duty until the "all clear" horn sounded at the end of round 4. I was looking to gauge the party's effectiveness. They tried for diplomacy first, since they suspected (correctly) some third party subterfuge, but that failed when the third party countermeasures went into effect.

Round 1 => The sorcerer rolls like a demon, everyone else rolls poorly. They only see the devastator, captain and 4x hobgoblins in formation. Sorcerer fireballs the captain and 4 hobgoblins (aw crap! I was hoping they wouldn't alpha strike the enemies and try to save their spells...). After "Empowering" the spell, she rolls, then rerolls, horrendously. One hobgoblin dead, the rest wounded. The hobgoblins move up and take dodge actions, the devastator opens up with a fireball. None of the PCs make the DC13 save, including the monk and the ranger who had +9 or something. I roll high. The party gets spooked and scatters, each looking for cover (they weren't used to fighting organized enemies, having fought wilderness monstrosities and undead beforehand). They all take dodge actions, except for the ranger, who misses twice. The druid goes Giant Constrictor Snake and moves up.

Round 2 => The sorcerer casts invisibility and backs off. The devastator casts Ice Storm, hitting the druid and the ranger, who each fail their save. The hobgoblins circle the huge snake and 4 out of 5 attacks hit, dropping the snake back into druid form. Two PCs maneuvered next to one of the tents the would collapse at the end of the round, revealing hobgob team 2, and their passive perceptions were enough that I told them they could hear "clanging and hushed goblinoid" from the tent as they walked by, and they decided instead to huddle at the tent, missing their ranged attacks against the hobgoblins. The monk was hasted and managed to drop one of the hobgoblins, missing their other attacks. End of the round, the tent collapses, revealing team 2, right in range of the two PCs. I roll initiative, which is low, but higher than all but the sorcerer.

Round 3 => Basically chaos... The devastator cast scorching ray (I didn't have the heart to fireball, which would have caught 5 out of 6 of them, so I held back), the sorcerer scorching ray'd the captain, missing all three (I let the PCs know that he was constantly barking orders - via leadership), and then another round of hobgob attacks. By the end of the round, two hobgobs fell, and 3 of the 6 party members were down, 2 of the remaining wounded). I sound the evacuation horn early, the devastator casting fog cloud to cover their escape through a bolt hole.

What left me confused was that the party was very cohesive when I was a player (even though I didn't play a leadership role, so it wasn't my absence that caused it), but this fight felt like my hobgoblins were up against panicky NPC villagers (though the real culprit was the horrible bad rolling they were doing). Also, they expended way more resources than I thought, with the sorcerer out of 3rd level spells and the party low on healing.


On the flip side, we had an encounter that was supposed to be an epic and brutal battle with 3 stone giants. Round 1, the warlock banishes two of them, the druid polymorphs the 3rd, and then we simply get the heck out of there as fast as we can

[Zuras]

My players found a cave filled with evil warriors, priests and warlocks.

Raiding parties periodically left to attack stuff from the cave, but because the front gate was relatively small, they assembled their mounts outside before leaving.

Party does a good job scouting and stealthing, so they are able to ambush the raiding party as it assembles, but as I narrate the enemy coming out and preparing their mounts, they get impatient and attack when only 3/4 of the raiding party is assembled. The stragglers run back inside and the party ends up facing almost the entire contents of the dungeon I prepped in a pitched battle instead of clearing it room by room.

They still won, since it was their first fight after a Long Rest, but only by using a bunch of the one-use items they had accumulated over the campaign, like potions of Speed and Heroism, and a one-use charm that let the Rogue cast Conjure Animals.

[TrashTrash]

The very first encounter we had as a party went... Less than spectacularly.

To make a 45 minute battle very short:
- I shot both of my party members instead of the goblins we were fighting... twice apiece.
- Our Paladin spent 90% of the fight rolling furiously to land a hit on a single goblin.
- When the goblins retreated into some bushes to regroup (Read: DM was throwing us a bone), our Fighter failed his accuracy roll and attacked an adjacent, goblin-free bush.
- Our Paladin had to roll death saves during the fight because while he was struggling to land a hit, the goblin definitely wasn't.

Twenty minutes later Paladin got beat up by racist guards and immediately tried to fight Thor.

I don't think I shot my actual target once during the whole session.

"Wrong bush" has become our party catchphrase, announced whenever someone finds out that, while close to the solution, they're only solution-adjacent.

We also killed a dragon we were supposed to run from at the end of that same session.