Has anyone made good bar fight encounters?

[Noumenon]

The bar fight encounter is a classic of D&D, it's great for blowing off steam and I have a PC who's a waitress by trade so I really want to run one. But there are some issues...

• I can't steal a bar fight encounter from a module or dungeon delve, because they usually don't have any
• It's nonlethal: that means nonstandard combat and no fireballs, which is tough on the PCs.
• It's spontaneous, so I can't plan CR-appropriate encounter groups and say "the villain recruited them that way."
• It's in town, so I can't use many monsters.
• It's versus regular humans, so at level 4 your normal opposition is outmatched. (I'm running 3.5; in 4E I could always do like this guy and just make humans with interesting bar-fight related abilities.)
• It's not very dramatic, since the only available motivation is "someone's spoiling for a fight" or gambling losses. Bar fights don't advance the plot.

How do you make interesting, challenging, level-appropriate, story-advancing bar fights? And can you point me to a PDF or Dungeon magazine I can steal from?

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

- Fights can start for lots of reasons: drunk patron, jealous boyfriend, someone is shortchanged, gang activity, a thief is caught red-handed, assassination/drive-by attempt, duel, law enforcement chasing someone, gamblers' disagreement, accident, practical joke, very poorly thrown dart, etc.

- Terrain can be interesting. Overturned furniture provides difficult terrain, cover, etc. Spilled drinks make the floor slippery in spots. Some drinks are flammable, starting a fire. Also, there might be surprises: a weak spot in the floor might collapse, the door might blow in during a storm, etc.

- Lighting makes a difference A dim bar-- or certain parts of it-- is easily plunged into darkness if even one or two lamps are snuffed out. If there's a storm out, intermittent lightning strikes can randomly well illuminate the place, even if it's dark otherwise.

- Cramped quarters, corners, windows, chimneys, chandeliers, stairs, etc, all make interesting features that limit movement and action, or forced some alternative/creative movement modes.

- Combat doesn't have to be non-lethal, especially when folks start swinging improvised weapons like table legs or broken beer bottles. And as long as PCs aren't many levels ahead of the rest of the patrons, they can still be threatened if outnumbered-- sepecially if the PCs are trying to fight non-lethally while their foes are using lethal means.

- Certain monsters could find themselves in a bar, depending upon setting or specifics of the bar. Some patrons or staff might be shapechanges. The bar likely keeps guard animals or employs bouncers (humanoids, constructs, undead). Law enforcement in some settings might be monstrous, outsiders, constructs, etc. A bar with a large aquarium could find itself with a floor full of electric eels or lobsters. Mounted trophy heads could be animated by a necromancer. A furnace or stove could be powered by a fire elemental, or a cistern might contain a water elemental. And woe be unto he who releases the toilet otyugh.

EDIT: Ihe only (3e) PDF that springs to mind is "Mad Kaiser's The Bare Knuckle Bar Fightin' Guide".

 

[Diamond Cross]

Yep, and it always starts with a drunken Klingon.

That DM was a big Star Trek fan, and whenever we went into a bar there'd be a Klingon in it. For some unknown reason.

Even when we're in a Inn/Pub in the Forgotten Realms.

Ah well.

 

[Dausuul]

My usual way of handling a bar fight is to say, "Okay, you beat holy hell out of some dude. Now what?" I mean, unless the PCs are very low level or the bar is in the Forgotten Realms, there's no other logical outcome. The D&D game is really not well suited to playing out bar fights.

If you want to make a challenging bar fight, have some retired hero get drunk and turn out to be a jerk when he's got a few pints in him. Said hero acts obnoxious toward the PCs. PCs being PCs, fisticuffs will likely ensue.

 

[Storminator]

A good bar fight spread. It starts out with 2 guys in the corner, but one of them swings and misses and hits a 3rd guy, who throws his drink at a fourth guy, that picks up the first guy (because he thought he did it...) and flings him down the bar, spill drinks and food and landing on the card table revealing the hidden cards of the halfling who gets chased by his fellow gamblers into the table of adventurers who start laying the smack until the kitchen catches fire...

And then the orcs overrun the town and the real adventure begins.

PS

 

[Lord Captian Tobacco]

It's spontaneous, so I can't plan CR-appropriate encounter groups and say "the villain recruited them that way."

Why not?

The villian may need some breathing room and this is a great way to slow down the party. If they spend the night in the pokie, the bad guy has that much more of a head-start on his plan.

The villian may be out to trash the PCs reputation (picking on the little people) and plant a 'ringer' ('Look. They can't even win a fist fight.') or even as a bad guy, kill the patsie and blame it on the PCs.

All the players need to fall into this trap is a little goading and an over-reaction.

 

[megamania]

The one bar fight I did was in a Darksun campaign. The PCs were mistaken to be templar snitches and attacked.

It was designed to get them out of that area (aka run for it) but PCS do what PCs do best- mess with the DM's grand schemes of influence and power.

Anyhow- battle went as planned until one PC rolled a natural twenty on his "Luck roll" (Wisdom check for something not there but should be... aka a weapon under the bar)

So one player is suddenly with a weapon while the others run down the length of the bar and leap into the wall (hoping the dry rot wood would break) and crash through it. Soon everyone was on the run but the whole town will never forget the fight.



That is my one and only true bar fight.

What did I do to prepare for it?

Lots of low level NPCs. On a card I set up 3-4 distinctive personality traits and quotes to throw out there. From there.... go with the flow. Think of the most likely outcomes and prepare for them but remember..... there are always PCs that decide to leap through the wall rather than try the door where a lead to the next adventure is waiting....

 

[Noumenon]

I ended up running it as a real encounter. The bar is called the Brass Dwarf and we'd established the presence of the actual brass dwarf figurine, so I decided it was related to Castle Whiterock's Clockwork Academy and had some people try to steal it. One started a regular bar fight as a distraction while the thief failed to sneak and get the statue, then when attention was on the thief the first one stammered out a scroll of summon monster iii and then there was a huge centipede to fight. Went fine.

 

[Merkuri]

I don't remember why we were in a bar fight, but a few years ago our game went there. The DM came up with a mechanic where each player would roll at the beginning of their turn to see what sort of random event happened on their turn. These events included beer getting spilled at your feet, getting hit with a randomly thrown bottle, a nearby drunk missing his target and punching you instead, all had random small in-game effects. I think there were some that offered bonuses, even though all of those I remembered had penalties.

I seem to recall that some of us actually climbed up into the rafters of the bar to try to avoid these random effects, so we'd take pot-shots at the enemies below from up in the ceiling. It was a lot of fun, and the random effects helped capture the chaos of a bar fight.

 

[caelum]

Looks like you've already solved your problem, but I think there are a lot of fun terrain and environment elements one can use to make it memorable. See the article "Tossing Kegs and Smashing Chairs" in Kobold Quarterly #8, which I believe is also available in the Best of KQ issue available free to ENWorld supporters. It's 3.5 based.