Encounters that didn't work

[Biggus]

Last night I put my players up against a pack of displacer beasts and it was...really boring. None of them had any special detection powers, so it just meant the combat dragged on for twice as long as normal. And since the displacer beasts don't have any other special abilities to make the combat interesting, they performed basically like a pack of ordinary animals with double hit points.

Not long before that I put an epic party up against eight different monsters, and it also became glacially slow but for the opposite reason: there were so many full attack routines with four or more attacks, plus swift actions and long lists of special abilities that it took over an hour to play a single round of combat.

What encounters have you tried that didn't work?

[Beni-Kujaku]

In a printed module, there was an encounter that the PCs were supposed to lose, either by running away or getting captured (them winning would undercut basically the whole second part of the module). Way too many enemies, and one or two above their level. The problem is, my party was a tad too optimized for the module. I had accounted for that, and added the final boss of the module to the encounter to be sure that they would still lose, but they still thought they'd play it out, resulting in a slugfest with more than a dozen NPCs with different statblocks getting their turn each round, and the PCs slowly realizing that they were getting railroaded and losing interest in the fight. Not the best session.

[Tzardok]

During the first time I was the DM, I had two encounters that didn't work. First, I had the group encounter a gang of troglodytes that were attacking a traveller. I thought it was a level appropriate encounter because I had calculated the encounter level according to the rules in the DMG, but fact was that even two dozen baseline troglodytes are simply not a threat to a level 5 group.

Second, I had the same group encounter a hieracosphinx ... that they killed in a single round.

During that session I learned a bit of stuff about making encounters too weak. I managed to apply that during my second time when the boss I created had been a bit too weak and I stealthily boosted him up during the fight to make it more exciting.

[Biggus]

First, I had the group encounter a gang of troglodytes that were attacking a traveller. I thought it was a level appropriate encounter because I had calculated the encounter level according to the rules in the DMG, but fact was that even two dozen baseline troglodytes are simply not a threat to a level 5 group.

Yeah, I've had that problem. If the PCs have decent AC for their level sometimes mooks even just a few levels below them find it almost impossible to hit them.

[Kurald Galain]

In a printed module, there was an encounter that the PCs were supposed to lose,

Oh, I had one of those. Well, I was a player in that campaign, but it still didn't work. In my case, it ended up with a long dragged-out battle that ended up being a waste of time because the DM fiat'ed us into losing in the end.

Then there was one where my character had been possessed for a long time and the party finally found out, so this ended up in a boss fight with me against the rest of the party, and me getting a generous buff from the possessing entity. Problem is, I was the party's main damage dealer. So I won initiative, pulled an alpha strike on the first turn, and took down the others in a surprisingly quick battle; and the DM had to bring in a DMPC deus ex machina to prevent TPK.

And then there was an encounter where we had to fight our way into a heavily defended cave system, rescue an NPC held there, and fight our way back out. However, we also had two casters capable of Dimension Door, so we resolved that issue in half a round and with zero attack rolls. At least the DM had a good laugh with us about that one.

[Quertus]

I miss the days when the fun of a Displacer Beast encounter was the tension between the joy and effectiveness of throwing a Fireball vs the value of not burning the hide to make Cloaks of Displacement.

[Eurus]

I made a big scary sphinx monster as a boss, and it got the worst rolls I've ever seen in an encounter. It was hilarious, but also felt like a bunch of wasted effort. All these cool abilities and attacks I designed for it, and the thing just could not roll above a 5. A humbling reminder of the chaos of existence, and also the value of a good DM screen to roll behind.

[RexDart]

As a player, a fight with a Will-o-Wisp that nobody in the party could hit without rolling a 20. (Maybe the fighter could hit on a 19 or 20.) It was hitting us too, but not doing enough damage to actually be dangerous, so the whole thing was just incredibly tedious.

It was extremely uncharacteristic for our DM - likely an encounter inherited from the underlying module that he didn't catch and remove or modify as he usually does. It also was basically acting as a guard for a plot-important device, and didn't have the "usually avoids combat" behavior described in the Monster Manual, so there was no apparent solution other than standing around taking endless potshots at the thing until eventually it took enough to be defeated.

[ShurikVch]

During the first time I was the DM, I had two encounters that didn't work. First, I had the group encounter a gang of troglodytes that were attacking a traveller. I thought it was a level appropriate encounter because I had calculated the encounter level according to the rules in the DMG, but fact was that even two dozen baseline troglodytes are simply not a threat to a level 5 group.

As a player, a fight with a Will-o-Wisp that nobody in the party could hit without rolling a 20. (Maybe the fighter could hit on a 19 or 20.)

Did anybody tried to use Aid Another?

[JNAProductions]

Not exactly "didn't work" but similar to Eurus' example.

I made a CR 10 boss baddie with grapples, teleports, and lots of mobility. Then the party's Paladin//Monk started jiggling, Entrancing the boss, and making them unable to move away from said PC. So there went... 90% of their fun abilities.

However! The party befriended this NPC, they joined up for a lot of the game, and on a later encounter, I got to use this peep's abilities. Eliciting a "Whoa what the heck, they just hulked the hell out!" to which I let the party know that that's what WOULD'VE happened to them, had she not jiggled.

[glass]

Not so much "didn't work" as "isn't working", since the encounter is technically ongoing, due to last having failed to conclude the combat despite going half an hour past our usual finish time. Anyway, at last night's sessions I accidentally included a couple of extra monsters in an already-tricky encounter (and this is PF2, which tends to be...unforgiving).

Nobody is dead yet, but two PCs have been knocked unconscious (one still is) and another two are Confused, out of five. Although the enemy are also somewhat depleted, it was looking like a potential TPK. Fortunately, I realised the error and have taken steps to rectify it.

If anyone is curious, the fight is....

Spoiler: Spoilers for Abomination Vaults AP

Show

Four flickerwisps (level 2)
Four crawling hands (level 0)
Two grave wights (level 4)

Against a fourth-level party. The grave wights were the mistake, I didn't realise they were supposed to be tucked up in sarcophagi until triggered.

[Remuko]

Not exactly "didn't work" but similar to Eurus' example.

I made a CR 10 boss baddie with grapples, teleports, and lots of mobility. Then the party's Paladin//Monk started jiggling, Entrancing the boss, and making them unable to move away from said PC. So there went... 90% of their fun abilities.

However! The party befriended this NPC, they joined up for a lot of the game, and on a later encounter, I got to use this peep's abilities. Eliciting a "Whoa what the heck, they just hulked the hell out!" to which I let the party know that that's what WOULD'VE happened to them, had she not jiggled.

What do you mean by jiggling? I'm very confused at what was actually done here, it sounds so interesting.

[JNAProductions]

What do you mean by jiggling? I'm very confused at what was actually done here, it sounds so interesting.

Was a gestalt game.

PC was a Paladin//Way Of The Mother's Bounty Monk.

[Biggus]

Did anybody tried to use Aid Another?

Good point, 20 mooks averaging nearly 2 hits per round still isn't much but it's better than averaging 1 hit per round.

[RexDart]

Did anybody tried to use Aid Another?

I think so, now that you mention it - IIRC that's what made it possible to hit on a 19 or 18.

[vasilidor]

Both as a player and a DM I cannot stand scenarios in which the players are supposed to lose for the plot to go on.

[Harrow]

Both as a player and a DM I cannot stand scenarios in which the players are supposed to lose for the plot to go on.

There was a module I ran once that ran afoul that like half a dozen times. Against the same opponent. The whole thing was about chasing a dude, and you're supposed to keep running into him only for him to narrowly escape. It would have helped (a little) if the person who wrote the module actually knew how the escape abilities of the antagonist had worked. Or didn't work, as the case may be. What didn't help was the one part of the adventure where you were trying to catch up to him on horseback, spending like a week or two rolling on a random encounter table for every hour of travel and 8 hours of rest. The thing is, you couldn't skip the random encounters, because then you wouldn't have the gold and XP that the following modules expected of you. Having run it, I would consider running that series of modules again, but only after homebrewing something entirely new in place of this section. The big bad didn't even have anything to do with the ongoing plot...

[Bonzai]

As a player we were running through the published Eberron mods. My character was an extremely patriotic Karnathi Necromancer. He grew up being fed war propaganda and when he came of age, he was excited to serve in the military. He got posted in a border fort, and his job was to repair any damage to their skeletal steeds. He never saw any action, and the war ended, much to his disappointment. He had a very unfavorable view of Kaius the 3rd, and felt he was a pale shadow of Kaius the 1st.

I go through all that, to say that my character had a perspective that was vastly different from the norm. This impacted the campaign in some funny ways. First off, the Emerald Claw are supposed to be pretty standard villains that players should have no qualms about indiscriminately murdering. To my character, they were glorious war heroes. The fact that they were banished was just more proof of Kaius's unsuitability to rule. So my starting position with them was always respectful and friendly. The campaign did not really allow for that. Then there was another example where the party had to track down a vampire. As Necromancer I had no biases against undead, so we tried diplomacy. One successful charm undead spell later, and the whole campaign was cut short.

As a DM I will always remember an encounter I had planned for. I had recently watched "A Fist Full of Dollars", and was inspired. Instead of a town with two gang bosses, I thought why not a dungeon with two dragons? So I set up a scenario. A white dragon had a dungeon lair. She died, and her two daughters are now fighting to claim it and her treasure hord. Each claimed half the dungeon. One had a tribe of goblins serving her, the other a tribe of Kobalds. Their war was a stalemate, and enter the player's. Both dragons tried to recruit them to their cause and the party had free reign to deal with them. Once both were slain, they would be able to unseal the mother's inner lair. The twist was that the Mother had reanimated as a dracolich. The plan was that once they defeated her, there were two fresh dragon corpses nearby that she could come back in as a proto dracolich. So they would have to defeat her three times. That was the plan anyways. But the player's ended up turning one into a monkey, which one of the players made into a familiar. We would roll play that it had an odd habit of always sleeping on treasure. Lol.

[Remuko]

Was a gestalt game.

PC was a Paladin//Way Of The Mother's Bounty Monk.

Oh, that...that is a thing. Yeah I was definitely not familiar with this "subclass". The jiggling makes sense now.

[vasilidor]

One encounter that did not work was when I built a Grave Knight in Pathfinder and gave it undead followers. the party just noped out of trying to track it down.

[smetzger]

Both as a player and a DM I cannot stand scenarios in which the players are supposed to lose for the plot to go on.

A good way to deal with this is to just say "You lose, your captured whatever, maybe narrate it a little". Then give everyone some sort of boon/action point to make up for it.

[RexDart]

A good way to deal with this is to just say "You lose, your captured whatever, maybe narrate it a little". Then give everyone some sort of boon/action point to make up for it.

I think "caught in an inescapable trap" is somewhat more satisfying in a D&D narrative than "unwinnable fight" if you must have this sort of setup. Especially because the characters likely will fight and defeat the "unbeatable" foes at some point.

We're ultimately talking about a form of railroading, which is usually a necessary evil in any D&D campaign to some extent. The key is getting buy-in from the players that the railroad trip will be a fun one, so they're not constantly scheming to derail the train.