Kill the PCs! Kill them! Kill them! Kiiiiiiil Theeeeeeeem!

[LokiDR]

Monk, hit and run taticts. When the players get annoyed, the monk runs down a hall filled with pit traps. he keeps jumping, but the PCs fall.

Varient: halfling, and presure sensitive traps.
Varient: slippers of spider climb/vampire
Varient: Leave obvious paths for the party to flank or surround an enemie. Make the paths narrow and filled with pits.

Two words, arrow ally. Arrow slits on each side.

For the gauntlet feel, use lobbers. The fire blindly, with a "spotter". Who cares about 50% miss chance if the PCs can't fire back?

 

[s/LaSH]

Allow me to steal one of my posts from the Thousand Ways To Freak Out Your Players thread, and suggest actually using worgs as intelligent adversaries. To summarise my ideas:

Worgs have brains at least on a par with Wile E. Coyote. They have high physical strength. With a little effort, they can create simple woodland traps such as falling trees, pit traps, and rolling rocks. More complex traps are a little difficult.

Worgs can speak. Even if they don't know Common, they still might know one word: "Help!" Makes for a wonderful lure right into the ten-foot pit with the spikes in the bottom.

If the worgs get away with it, they'll amass loot. What do we do with loot? Sell it to an Assassin's guild, of course. In return, you get acid, poisons, specially-made crossbows that a worg can use etc...

Finally, if the worgs are allied to the assassins, the assassins take care of the worgs when they're in town. "Yes, it's my guard dog. No, he wasn't listening to your plans. He's just a dog."

And here's an auxillary idea: Worg crossbows. Made especially by the Assassin's Guild, a worg crossbow is a special mechanism that allows creatures without thumbs to use a missile weapon. It holds the crossbow slightly off the ground, and is steadied with one paw on a crosspiece; the other paw operates a pair of pedals. One cocks the crossbow quickly and smoothly (the worg can then drop a quarrel into the crossbow with its jaws). The other releases the trigger. It's a clumsy arrangement, so I'd suggest doubling the weight and cost of a heavy crossbow, taking two rounds to even set up (another 2 rounds to load each quarrel), and applying a -2 penalty to all attack rolls... but NOBODY expects worgs with crossbows.

 

[BBrendolfus]

ot, just killed yet another pc...

'the scenario'
Throw a curve ball against expectations. Pc's attack hill giant advanced base for their 'recce' mission. Hill Giants are hosting an ambassador ghoul sorceror of the ghoul prince (for next plot forshadowing) and pc's do not abort attack even after a 'woe' augury and knowledge of a magic user. Waiting a day until he left and until the giants sent off a foraging party would have made a battle much easier...

Resultant mess, 2 pc's dead, 3 pc's in flight, 8 dead hill giants, enraged giant leaders, sorceror single-handedly victorious due to scrolls.

My 'tactic' came down to recently awarding the party coin to upgrade magic items but making the next encounter 4 ecls above them. Overconfidence and lack of caution did the dirty.

 

[vtaltos]

Archers. use lots of archers. flying ones. with prestige classes. any archery based prestige class. distance bows and far shot. lots of dead pcs.

 

[Xarlen]

You forgot a flying, improved invisibilitied shielded Archer.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Any enemy with teleporting...fiends a great for this...

I had an Osyluth that would appear, grab a PC, and then teleport to a sealed room where he would deal with the PC on a one-on-one basis. Guzzle a few healing potions, and repeat.

Mwahahah.

 

[Xarlen]

Almost like a demonic version of the 'Zed' scene in Pulp Fiction.