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In Keep on the Shadowfell, there's two encounters in a hobgoblin barracks. The hobgoblins knew the party was coming, thanks to a bit of treachery, and so they were waiting. (I combined the two encounters into one and reduced the size a bit.) When the characters crossed a specific line, the hobgoblins dropped a portcullis and cut the party in half. Wizard and rogue on one side, cleric and fighter on the other. Then the hobgoblins ambushed the party from each side.
The wizard and rogue were on the ropes, facing a hobgoblin hexer and some of his warriors, and went down several times. I was certain it was going to be a TPK (I had a prisoner-escape plot lined up just in case) but they pulled out all the stops. The wizard had previously lit a hobgoblin bed on fire (it's kinda his thing) and they had shut the door on it, filling the room with greasy smoke. The rogue went back and darted in and out of concealment over and over, just barely staying alive (he had three hit points--then one!). He blinded one hobgoblin with some Kruthik poison they had previously harvested, and the wizard used "Ghost Sound" to lure him into a pit. Meanwhile, the fighter is going toe-to-toe with the hobgoblin commander and the cleric is desperately trying to keep everyone alive. Great fun.
As I look back, the best encounters have definitely been the ones with the most interesting terrain and player options. My players' eyes light up whenever they see a pit, and they've made a point of selecting forced movement powers. The climactic battle against Kalarel in the same adventure was not nearly as much fun--a bit of a grind, and it just didn't have a lot of interesting stuff on the battlefield.
Best Fight: It was us vs. A hobgoblin warlord, a dire wolf and some hobgob archers. During the fight a pair of duergar and a hobgoblin spellcaster show up and add more pain to our mysery. We ended up having to run around the entire dungeon taking cover and fighting for every square inch against these guys. Almost every character dorpped at least once. The whole fight too three hours and I ENJOYED EVERY SECOND. I usually get very bored with drawn out fights, but not this time.
Worst Fight: I can't think of one, honestly. There have been boring fights. There always are, no matter the game.
__________________ <Pretentious, poorly spelled, and poorly worded saying goes here>
As a DM the most boring fight was where the players did not manover. A paladin, ranger, wizard and cleric vs 2 Hobgoblin Soldiers and a couple of goblin skirmisher types.
There first 4e session but veteran players but they let the hobgoblin soldiers keep formation and would not flank. The ranger could not hit the side of a barn from the inside and it was a complete grind.
The worst from my perpective was probably ok for the player but I completely messed up the graveyard interlude in Keep on the Shadowfel. It was only made memorable becasue once i knew the encouter had gone south I had Nirnan flee and two of the party followed the other two going to examin the glowing circle. In the woods at night Nirnan get the drop on the paladin with a rope across two trees and a coup de grace before the rogue catches up. The following fight the rogue and paladin are dropped and making death saves. One of the other players, having decided a few turns in to the chase to follow also is blundering through the forest and Nirnan decides to flee with her foes unslain and the rogue roll 20 on the death save, pops up and fells Nirnan with a thrown dagger.
Best fight as DM, the Underpriest of Orcus encounter where with a well times fey step the eladrin wizard get herself in to a position where she drops the user priest a berserker and can't quite remember what else down the hole to the next level with thundewave and killed the lot, ending the encounter.
Although previous fight was almost as good, when the rogue coup de graced an immobilided ghoul with a daily doing more than its bloodied damage and more or less saving the day because they were in trouble up to that point.
As a player, well the best and the worst in the one fight. Not sure what the DM had us up against. We were raiding bandit camps and had mopped up two of them easily enough. We were down some healing surges and nobody had action point but aside from my character (Half elven feylock/wizard) and the dragonborn fighter,Eladrin rogue and elf ranger, every one had their dailies. We got surprise and the dragonborn and rogue took out a good few minions. I missed as did the ranger. The bandits concentrate fire on the dragonborn fighter, taking him to bloodied and the rogue takes some damage in the next two rounds.
Next round the fighter, and ranger miss the guy on the fighter with their dailies but the rogue hits and takes out his opponent. So the rogue move to flank the guy on the fighter. The fighter gets taken out and the following round the now flanked rogue goes down as well.
Before any one can get to them the fighter dies (fails 3 out of 4 rolls) and the rogue follows a round later.
Now there is 4 of them, 3 in the clearing and one in the woods sniping at us with a crossbow. We know from our scouting that the woods are trapped. Trip wire stuff mostly. So with judicous uses of eyebite and cover and elderitch blast I get another one but then I am down. The ranger makes it to me and makes the heal check and I get my healing surge. We get the other two but the sniper in the woods has us pinned down. The ranger sneaks into the woods avoids the traps. Spots the sniper hits with his encounter but gets dropped in the return fire. So now (with my wisdom of 5; -3 on perception) I have to go into the woods after the ranger. I avoid the traps by assidously beating the ground infront of me with my spear (feck stealth). I get shot at and manage to get some shots back but am dropped. The ranger rolls a 20 on the death save, I roll a 20, more exchange of fire and the ranger drops again. I make the heal check and go prone behind a tree and snipe at the bandit. We get him in the next round or two.
So what would have been a very non descript tpk became a very tense and exiting fight, though with pots of luck on our part.
I really love the 20 on the death save rule.
2 Owlbears - The party was ambushed in a swamp by two owlbears. They were two levels higher and elite. I wanted it to be a tough fight. Four players. The owlbear never missed the barbarian, and dropped him too far away from the warlord for healing. The warlord went down next, and the rogue finished one owlbear. The swordmage and rogue were left trying to defeat the last one, then the rogue went down. The swordmage lasted another 2 rounds. - I actually called mulligan for my party. They were almost killed, but a dryad, recognizing the primal energy in the barbarian, saved them. We all had a good laugh.
Goblins - First session in 4e, I throw a goblin hexer and some goblins at my players in an ice cave. They were all thinking in 3e terms, the rogue hiding and trying to throw ranged (even though he had mostly melee powers), the cleric was having trouble moving forward to engage. The wizard was blinded and so he hid and the warlock wouldn't move beyond stepping out to throw eldritch blast and then hiding again. The entire party died horribly. Looking back, the encounter was probably waaaay too tough, and the players hadn't even figured out HOW to play...
Best - Open the Gates - The party is trying to retake a city they lost in a battle some months ago. They sneak into the city with the intention of opening the gates, allowing the army to enter. Unfortunately, they were noticed by the reserve guard at the gates causing an insane battle. The barbarian dropped three times before ending the guard captain. They used about half their total daily powers and are almost completely out of healing surges. They did, however, get the gate open. Somehow they'll have to fight their way through the city without dying...
__________________ "..Death greets me warm; Now I will just say goodbye.."
Thanks for the link, Vayden. I'm really liking this thread and the other one should be handy too. Hopefully other people find this kind of information useful as well.
__________________ shilsen is broken - Crothian (and this is why)
My Eberron Story Hour. Updated November 12. Almost at the climax!
Goblins - First session in 4e, I throw a goblin hexer and some goblins at my players in an ice cave. They were all thinking in 3e terms, the rogue hiding and trying to throw ranged (even though he had mostly melee powers), the cleric was having trouble moving forward to engage. The wizard was blinded and so he hid and the warlock wouldn't move beyond stepping out to throw eldritch blast and then hiding again. The entire party died horribly. Looking back, the encounter was probably waaaay too tough, and the players hadn't even figured out HOW to play...
Haha. That reminds me of our first session as players. We were all, players and DM, still in 3e mode, so it was a tiny, cramped little goblin warren with no space for either side to maneuver, and we got attacked by 3 swarms with no wizard in the party. Our fighter got dropped from un-bloodied to straight-up dead in one turn by the swarms, and we barely escaped from the whole thing with our lives. I'm eternally grateful to Dausuul for running our group's first 4e campaign - I was able to watch him learn and adapt, and that helped me get off to a better start once I launched my campaign.
__________________ Rick Reroll -- Deadly Rickster Utility 26 Daily
Choose one: you reroll one die roll you just made and keep the higher result; or the DM rerolls one die roll he just made and keeps the lower result.
Haha. That reminds me of our first session as players. We were all, players and DM, still in 3e mode, so it was a tiny, cramped little goblin warren with no space for either side to maneuver, and we got attacked by 3 swarms with no wizard in the party. Our fighter got dropped from un-bloodied to straight-up dead in one turn by the swarms, and we barely escaped from the whole thing with our lives.
Yup, that's the one I listed as my worst above.
__________________ Have you ever known a person who always behaved exactly the way you expected? Real people don't stay in character.
The best fights I've played were usually the ones that were actually hard. Our group consists of a rogue, ranger, warlock, and cleric. Basically the general plan is dish out so much damage that things die before our cleric runs out of heals.
Optimized characters combined with synergistic powers and solid tactics means 90% of the time it works and we breeze through the fights, sometimes not even using half our encounter powers and using only 1 or two surges total. And fight that isn't an absolute breeze is a nice contrast.
Anyway, on to the fights:
Level 2: We were in the sewers of the imperial capital looking for a cult of Orcus. After fighting various undead and an elite Otyugh, we headed into the hidden cult temple. On entering, we saw two flaming skeletons, closed, and engaged. We were fighting them when our warlock went down a nearby hallway to get out of their line of sight and stealth, setting of the crossbow traps.
The traps were supposed to be a second encounter and suddenly we're fighting them AND the two skeletons, who aren't even bloodied yet. We barely managed to take them out, finding a door at the end of the hallway that was barred. Low on surges and powers, we decided to leave.
While we were in the hallway, my ranger heard the door open, so we charged back and found a cultist staring at the traps trying to figure out what happened. We charged and he retreated, leading us into a room with three more cultists in it, thus sending us into about our 4th fight of the day with no action points or dailies. We somehow managed to drop the cultists and fled to rest (and level up).
The next day we came back, busted through the re-barred door, and found ourselves in the temple dormatory. We were discussing what to do when the 8 intelligence halfling rogue opened the door to the rest of the (unexplored) temple and shouted "Invaders!"
We hastily scrambled for ambush positions. A minute later 8 cultists ran in - none of them minions (keep in mind we were level 2). As we ambushed them, two of them fled back into the temple. We performed a fighting retreat through the temple and only had a few of them dropped when the two that had fled came back with two corruption corpses (artillery zombies). We pulled out every trick in the book, used up all our dailies and our couple healing potions and managed to finish them.
The head cleric/demon that we fought was almost anticlimactic compared to the fights that led up to him. During other people's turns, I was leaning back in my seat, trying to figure out how the hell we were going to survive. Our DM admitted that he had fudged a couple rolls during the second fight and we all told him to never fudge again.
We had a devourer fight that was pretty intense since we fought it(level 11 elite) at level 6. It swollowed my ranger and the cleric and almost got the warlock. Then we got a few lucky trip attacks with our tamed direwolf and managed to take it down.
We actually had a fight last night that was pretty intense. Our level 10 party, minus our warlock vs a Eye of Flame beholder. It was in a room that was only 20 feet tall, which ended up saving our bacon. My ranger is melee, as is the cleric, while the rogue is hybrid. Our warlock (who wasn't there) is our main controller AND ranged attacker, so at first we were almost innefectual.
Then it dropped our cleric from full health to dying in one round... that main eye 10 fire vulnerability combined with a flame attack cirt then ongoing fire and a random second free flame attack at the start of the clerics turn did a number. My ranger got him up again with a potion, only to have the cleric take a second random flame attack at the start of his turn and drop again.
I pulled the downed cleric out of sight and healed him again as the beholder turned on the rogue that had snuck around it. It dropped him in a couple rounds as the cleric healed himself and my ranger up to just over bloodied.
My ranger charged the beholder, leaping into the air in order to reach it with his swords and marked it with his fighter multi-class ability. The cleric managed to reach the rogue before he burned to death and get him up. My finishing blows dropped it, but its flame explosion dropped me, leaving my ranger fire-vulnerable and on fire, 1 round from burning to death from ongoing. The cleric was fortunately able to reach me and get me up.
Worst fights: The one that stands out the most was the bullette we fought right after we fought the devourer. It's high defenses and low damage made for a long, boring fight, especially for my ranger since I was out of encounters and dailies by round 4 and we all ended up doing the same at-will for about 6 more rounds. That bullette's skull is now the fireplace in the halfling's inn though.
__________________ Robots, assassins, hobgoblins, the Ashen Tower, polite beholders, land pirates, gnome genocide, the Corpse Ramp, artifacts, exploding zombie dragons, flying islands, dying heroes, blood feuds, vanished races, the Black City: Rise of Felskein.
Last edited by Iron Sky; 12th January 2009 at 06:06 AM..
The only truly enjoyable combat I've experienced was when the party battled a gelatinous cube in whatever the name of the first official 4e module was.
Otherwise I've unfortunately found them pretty tedious to the point where I'm hoping we start having less combat and more roleplaying.
Note that I don't blame the DM for this -- he does a sterling job.
My personal favourite battle in 4E so far has been a solo encounter my 4th level group had with a Fen hydra. That fight was epic and really showed how a simply but well built solo can hold an entire party of PCs at bay and bring them to their limits. The fight took about hour to do but never seemed to drag. The terrain was varied (some rough, some los blocking, high ground etc) but nothing too outlandish.
The worse 4E battle I ever ran was the same group against 5 hobgoblin soldiers and a Warcaster, The cramped quarters I had the fight take place in and the high defenses of the soldiers (and their inability to hit the PCs) made for a boring 2+ hour grind. i learned to make my encounter much more varied in the future with creatures from every role category.
__________________ "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." - Samuel Johnson 18th century English author.
We don't get to game as often as I would like, so our best and worst combats are from KOTS (which we may finish in a year, who knows?)
Best:
Our party was trying to find an NPC and went searching at an outdoor quarry/ dig site.
The NPC's at the site, and thier beasties were not very nice to us and we were forced to defend ourselves. I think the main reason this fight was so fun was because we were "doing it wrong"
The warlock was using his powers to gain temp hp and hit the main bad guy with a major shot just before the bad guy turned invisible.
The power inflicted damage on the target when the warlord was struck. Once the bad guy turned invisible, our 20 CON warlock charged into battle provoking 3 opportunity attacks on purpose.
We all laughed at him as he took enough damage to drop him to 2 hp. The invisible villan keeled over and was reduced to less than 0 from the damage. We started calling the warlock Balboa.
" Hey Mortimer what are you doing?" "Winning!"
Worst:
The first Irontooth experience was the worst. The encounter reminded me so much of boss mob "phases". We had a strong suspicion that there may
have been a leader type in the vicinity so we held back our big powers until he showed up. Once we saw the big bad we concentrated our biggest attacks on him and actually hit a lot.
We had no idea about the insane number of hit points involved. Once we bloodied him and he entered super-macho man mode, he
proceeded to wipe us out. It was pretty funny and we all had a good laugh. We just imagined the waterfall as a swirling instance portal and it all made sense.
The next set of PC's that headed for that place were armed with mighty metagame knowledge and the fight was a bit of a challenge but not overwhelming.
Knowing that we needed to keep DPS slow and even until the boss entered phase 2 made a world of difference.
It was that fight that really highlighted the MMO-like quality of gameplay for us.
I'm a DM and I'm running a converted Red hand of Doom; the party started at 8th level and now is 10th.
Worst encounter so far: a Solo Fen Hydra, with a slight level adjustment. The hydra in nothing more than a huge HP bucket, with four attacks per round that do little damage and nothing else. This, coupled with a streak of bad rolls from the strikers (a warlock and a ranger) resulted in what is so far the only real "grind" encounter IME.
Best Encounter: in the last sessions, every encounter has been a real blast, because the party has begun to understand how to interact with the environment to gain the uper hand in fights, and to really cooperate. For example, they have recently won a hard fight with an elite NPC thanks to a well placed Wall of Fire combined with a bull rush from the ranger and a slow effect from the warlock. More in general, I love when the players start improvising (like climbing up a wall and jumping down opponents or the like).
__________________ dragonslair.it - 4e e-tools form Italy:
Best encounter: Curiously, all of the contenders are from an LFR mod: Impiltur 1-1.
The players were going to attack a goblin encampment but there is no real reason to start the encounter with the players in the "place your characters here" box. So I drew out what was visible of the encounter and the players came up with a plan: they were going to split the party with half of the party approaching through the brambles to the south of the goblin encampment and half of them approaching from the north. Pushing their way through the heavy, thorny brambles, the divided party faced stiff resistance from goblins who (barely) heard them coming but prevailed after a challenging fight that saw the rogue climb through a window to get to a goblin sharpshooter who was hiding in the cavern, get shot up and then climb back out the window to follow the goblin as the goblin executed a fighting retreat.
Worst Encounter: Again, there are two contenders, but I am going to go with: an elite, insubstantial insane priestess in ruined temple sanctuary filled with smart targetting traps (that the monster can move across with impunity) and difficult terrain. Beating through 100+ insubstantial hit points with a cure serious wounds and a healing word is dull beyond belief. Doing so while being beat on with a spiritual weapon her recharge powers made for serious grindspace.
The best ones: The ones I've tweaked and added my own personal touches to
The Worst ones: Ready made encounters I've run as is.
I'm running two groups of 4e. All new players pretty much except 3. The first group I began with I ran things pretty much as the adventures came a) becasue I was learning how to play 4e myself and b) I had no time to invest in spicing things up with a cool story etc. I ran the adventure that comes in the DMG. Surprisingly everyone enjoyed the encounter with the dragon at the end. As I looked through my nice shiney KotSF adventure set grave doubts arose as to the grindy repetitiveness of Hobgoblin Encounters. I have already added horror elements to being in the Keep itself and tied in the LFR version of it to swap out Shadow Ritualists for some of the Hobgoblins, but I feel I need to invent more options for the players to be able to choose fun exciting non-combat paths through a lot of the slog work of the keep (which is huge, especially considering how rarely we get a chance to play... we would be down there for years).
With my second group I invested Story time creation into adapting the LFR Escape from Sembia and it really came to life. A death defying escap over building tops to lose themselves in the busy evening market, distracting the guards with rearing horses and hiding in the eerie ruins of old town.
When they escaped through Ye Olde Gate, towards the mountains they met with the Hobgoblins in Ye Olde Ruined Keep and it turned sour. I hadn't tweaked it. I didn't realise I should have. I hadn't run a battle with Soldiers before. What a slog! The only light relieft was occasionaly throwing their Paladin into the fire. In the end when the had obviously won and yet three of them were still on there feet the Hobgoblins fled out of sheer boredom. (word of advice: be careful using too many soldiers: very hard to hit, plenty of HP, not very fun. Maybe Brutes are a better choice: Hard hitting and easier to hit... everyone is happy.)
So, having learnt my lesson, and having had so much fun during the skill challenge escape (my first ever) I decided to introduce a new player into the game via a combat encounter with a Skill Challenge running at the same time.
I must admit, I have preferred to adopt Stalker0's Obsidian system (although I adjust it to my own personal needs/preferences). Worth checking out!!!
The party was approached by a talking cat with a strange triangular shaped pendant necklace which begged them to free its sister from the darkness. (The cat was the new characters pet... not a familiar... just a cool pet... under the effects of the character's sisters Animal Messenger Ritual). The new character a Drow Warlock had escaped from the underdark after shaming her house. She was to be punished for heresy although the true reason for her impending death was the prophesy of the family witch that their house would suffer nothing but disaster as long as she was alive. Anyway I digress... I set up a three tiered shrine made up of 6 magic circles and a circle of stones and sacrificial altar where a "shadow drider" was being summoned. Each magic circle had a differnt effect: slow, immobilse, poison damage, sleep,blindness which attacked the will or fortitude of someone outside the ritual taking place. An opposing Drow house, whos interest was to keep her alive, thus ensuring their rivals continued bad luck, had organized the distraction of the leaders mid-ritual as the sister searched for help.
The party arrived to face 12 Drow minions (reskinned elven archers with an attack power that blinded) and semi invisible shadow claws (minions reskinned from somewhere else, I cant remember), young children that slowly turned upon them as the srambled up the narrow stairs.
They had to disarm the magic circles, to be able to enter the Stone Circles and free the Warlock. Little did the know the children were not performing the ritual, but stopping it til the Master returned. So when the last child fell the ritual kicked back in.
The had to free the warlock from the shadow drider which now had a painful life draining aura around it that damaged anyone inside the circle of stones and yet was invunerable to attacks. And then escape from the sacrificial altar with the never-seen-but-deeply-feared "real drow" hot on their trail.
A trail which led them into a desecrated cementary. (The skeleton Encounter frome Escape from Sembia). As the passed through the terrifying cementary (which attacked each of their will each round they lingered... which was quite funny the all went back to back and marched defensively at half their speed thus receiving three attacks before reaching the other side) the passed a menacing tree that emenated anger and supernatural hatred and had 5 skulls dangling from its branches... as soon as they left the other side of the cementary the skulls began to call back to them in no recognisable language (I had written out the script backwards and when i read it it sounded like latin)... then in front of them 5 headless skeletons arose from the shrubbery...nee...ehem....
The most fun part was when the first attached the skeltons and the head of the one struck called out rorre!!! (error) and then when he rolled a critical fumble (which sometimes I roll again to confirm the seriousness of the fumble... in this case a 4 was bad enough for me to rule he had blasted his fellow skeleton in the back) the unwary victim cried 'Norbac' !(in Spanish, Cabron = Bastard!) and suddenly one of them caught on.
The quickly deciphered the heads message that they begging the PC's to bring them their heads and release them from their suffering...Oh how close they had been to deciding to destroy the heads!!!!
So three ran to collect the heads suffering the fear attacks from the graveyards supernatural hatred and the other 3 bravely faced the fury of the mindless bodies pummeling them to near death while trying to keep the attackers at bay but not destroy them. Retreating finally into the graveyard where the bodies were unable to enter.
As they gave them their heads back the bodies entered and set their souls to rest near the dessecrated tree. The supernatural fear left. The spirit of the leaders guided them to some hidden treasure in one of the tombs and promised to watch over thei sleep i that night, and so they were rewarded with a peaceful rest as well.
I think I will keep this ind of attitude towards constructing my encounters: ways that combat can be ended with little 'encounter tiny adventures'. Not all but definitely enough to avoid ever having to have the monster flee out of share boredom.
Hope something in there can be useful to make your and your groups first experiences with 4e a fun one.
My personal favourite battle in 4E so far has been a solo encounter my 4th level group had with a Fen hydra. That fight was epic and really showed how a simply but well built solo can hold an entire party of PCs at bay and bring them to their limits. The fight took about hour to do but never seemed to drag. The terrain was varied (some rough, some los blocking, high ground etc) but nothing too outlandish.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Subumloc
Worst encounter so far: a Solo Fen Hydra, with a slight level adjustment. The hydra in nothing more than a huge HP bucket, with four attacks per round that do little damage and nothing else. This, coupled with a streak of bad rolls from the strikers (a warlock and a ranger) resulted in what is so far the only real "grind" encounter IME.
I'm surprised nobody else has commented on this... sounds like the Fen Hydra is a controversial pick!
I'd really like to know what the circumstances were in these two scenarios. Since the monster is the same, it would be neat to isolate the other factors and see what makes a fight that could be "worst ever" end up being "best ever." PC level? Terrain? Magic Item distribution? Tactics, of either PCs or enemies? Just lucky/unlucky dice?
I think it would be pretty helpful, especially when running Solo monsters. Holy Bovine, Subumloc, care to comment?
Besides the combats that the DM handwaves to pass it by, I'd say the worst ones, IME, are the ones with solo's. We know we will win, they have huge hit points, and the DM just never puts any spirit into the encounter.
The best ones I've noticed are when the DM uses tactics against us with multiple opponents that we have to respond to and actually make us think, not just mindless hit or miss.
Somewhat disturbingly, after more than a year of weekly 4e games, I can't really recall any encounters that stand out as awesome...
Probably the best I can remember was against some sort of cyclops solo, where it was real seat of your pants stuff - I think in the end the fight came down to the party wizard rolling at natural 20 on a death save to get up and win the fight on a handful of hp (everyone else was down and out or otherwise unable to participate).
The worst have been about 90% of the encounters in the WotC P2/P3 adventures. Lots of hp grind, where the party never really felt threatened, but still had to wade through a metric ton of enemy hp.
If you want people to stop comparing D&D 4e to WoW you have to stop using the term reskin, lol.
Huh? What does the term "reskin" have to do with WoW? I've played WoW since beta, and the only time I've heard "reskin" used is in term of UI modifications. If that's the connection you are making, then it should be pointed out that the term "reskin" existed long before WoW, and has not only referenced UI's of games, but UI's of operating systems, and textures for countless 3D games, among other things...
Sometimes the 4E to WoW comparisons really are a stretch...
__________________ Law's Game Style: Storyteller 83%, Tactician 75%, Specialist 67%, Method Actor 58%, Power Gamer 33%, Casual Gamer 25%, Butt-Kicker 17%
Best fights as DM were those on the second dungeon level in Sellswords of Punjar, played with some modifications. In 4e the good, memorable fights are the ones where the combatants have room to move and a lot of different things and effects are happening.
The worst fight was against the Blue Ooze in KotS. The players were already tired and their characters had spent their dailies. Two players were missing and I didn't scale the encounter properly (see the trend here? ) It was the roll-to-hit-roll-for-damage boredom well known from previous editions, especially against solo monsters without interesting abilites or movement modes.
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