What have been your best/worst 4e combat encounters?

[Dausuul]

Best fight as a DM: I'd have to say my favorite was the battle with the orc warchief, Mogor the Invincible. Mogor was a custom solo monster, an orc who fought with a sword in one hand and a warhammer in the other. The sword dealt nasty damage, while the warhammer had various knockback effects.

Mogor had a special shtick: He was called "the Invincible" for a reason. His sword was the stolen family heirloom of the eladrin warlord PC, and while he held it he could not be slain - he regenerated 50 hp per round, and if he went down, he popped back up again with 150 hp. To add insult to injury, he'd had iron bands welded into place around his sword hand, so that he physically could not be made to let go of the sword.

The only way to take him down was to target the sword hand (a very difficult target, AC 28 for a 6th-level party), and do enough damage to break the iron bands and sever the hand. After that, he lost his invincible-ness and his sword attacks, but he was still a bad-ass solo.

The background of the encounter: Mogor was leading an orc army against a goblin stronghold. The PCs were not friendly with either side and wanted them both to take heavy losses. They had infiltrated the goblin stronghold through the ruins underneath it, and made a deal with the leader of a band of human mercenaries who had been dragooned into service by the goblins.

The PCs debated strategy for a while and finally decided to draw Mogor down into the ruins below the castle proper, into a big room with pillars holding up the ceiling, formerly the lair of a dragon (the PCs had already slain the dragon on their way in). The pillars were badly corroded by the dragon's acid and could be knocked down with enough damage. Some Dungeoneering checks revealed that four pillars would be enough to bring down the roof. The PCs figured this would be their failsafe; if they couldn't take Mogor, they'd collapse the roof on him and hope some of them made it out. They weakened several pillars before the fight, then went upstairs to find Mogor.

Mogor and his soldiers had just broken through the castle's defenses. The PCs got his attention and led him down through the dungeons and into the dragon's lair, where the mercenaries were waiting. Mogor burst in at the head of a horde of orcs, and the mercenaries engaged the orcs (NPC fight, handled by DM fiat) while Mogor himself went for the PCs.

The PCs encircled Mogor and hit him with several well-aimed daily powers, giving themselves major boosts to their attack rolls. This was vitally important, since it let them target his sword hand effectively. Then they set to work beating him down while the orcs pushed the mercenaries back. It took a while and he did a lot of damage, but finally they cut off his sword hand.

By this point, most of the mercenaries had fallen, and orcs continued to flood into the lair. The eladrin warlord scooped up his family sword, and the party knocked out the pillars while Mogor, undaunted, smashed at them with his warhammer. Then, as the roof started to crack and crumble, the PCs fought their way through the orcs to escape.

At the last moment, Mogor threw his warhammer aside and grabbed hold of the eladrin warlord (who had already used his fey step), trying to drag him back into the room so they would both be crushed. The eladrin made an excellent Athletics check and broke free, and one of the other PCs - the human fighter, I think - hauled him out of the lair just as the ceiling came down, burying Mogor under tons of rock. It was a hell of a conclusion.

Worst fight as a DM: I'd have to say the third fight in the very first session of my campaign, where I put a 1st-level party without a wizard up against two dire rats and three rat swarms. It was very cramped quarters - I hadn't yet learned the importance of maneuvering room in 4E - and the party lacked any effective way to fight swarms. The fighter got overwhelmed and eaten, straight from positive hit points to negative bloodied in a single round of swarm attacks. That fight was a mess.

Of course, there was also the preview session I ran with the Raiders of Oakhurst dungeon. The fight with the black dragon was godawful, just endless grinding and grinding with the players unable to make much of a dent in its hit points while it wore them down one by one. Bah.

Best fight as a player: The bridge fight Vayden described above (I was the pyromancer).

Worst fight as a player: There isn't any one fight that stands out as worst to me from the player perspective, because in 4E, the worst fights are the boring ones that slip into "grindspace," which means they're not very memorable. Some of the Keep on the Shadowfell fights were like that, as were most of the fights in our abortive "orc warriors" campaign.

 

[RefinedBean]

Best fight: A long, grueling "guerrilla tactics" war against a Lizardfolk siege of a keep mired in a swamp. The DM created an entire map with texture, terrain, a to-scale keep, and other awesome stuff. We took pictures. It was an epic fight that took the entire session (4+ hours). I'd give more specifics, but it's a converted Age of Worms battle and I don't want to spoil anything.

Worst fight: Another group fought a Fettered Dracolich from the FRCG...only for some reason, it had the HP and defenses of the 18th level Dracolich from the MM. We tried TWICE to take it on, but our heavy hitters needed a 19-20 on the die to hit, and that just wasn't happening despite my Warlord's help. The DM was pretty much ready to quit 4E until we double-checked his math and figured out where the error was. (He still has no idea how he made the mistake).

So we ended up extending the session by another hour and gave it another go. Third time was definitely the charm.

 

[Vayden]

By this point, most of the mercenaries had fallen, and orcs continued to flood into the lair. The eladrin warlord scooped up his family sword, and the party knocked out the pillars while Mogor, undaunted, smashed at them with his warhammer. Then, as the roof started to crack and crumble, the PCs fought their way through the orcs to escape.

At the last moment, Mogor threw his warhammer aside and grabbed hold of the eladrin warlord (who had already used his fey step), trying to drag him back into the room so they would both be crushed. The eladrin made an excellent Athletics check and broke free, and one of the other PCs - the human fighter, I think - hauled him out of the lair just as the ceiling came down, burying Mogor under tons of rock. It was a hell of a conclusion.

Yeah, that fight with Mogor was amazing. (I was the Eladrin Warlord). The one with the vampire in the chapel with the moving bands of deadly shadow was one of your best jobs ever too (and on basically a throw-away fight!) But for me, the spider-web thing stuck out as my favorite so far, just for the moment of thinking I'd lost the character and then suddenly coming back. Although I admit that if I'd managed to kill Mogor with my own hand instead of 5 tons of falling rock, I might rate that one as my favorite.

 

[Wootz]

Well, I guess my best fights don't stand a chance compared to the ones already discussed (dammit...) but I do have a terrible one that probably tops the lot.

We were supposed to retreive an amulet (a sword? a relic of some sort? we were told to go get it but were never told what exactly we were supposed to retreive) so we walk into the first room. There's some goblins looking the other way. We try to gain a surprise round with a stealth check (what a waste of a natural 20) only to have it rejected by the DM, saying there are rats in the room that see us and start yelling, thus alerting the goblins. So now there are rats thrown into the encounter. Whatever. a party of 3 level 1 characters against 3 goblin blackblades, and 5 rat swarms. Most uninteresting way to fall into grindspace.

Skip ahead 45 minutes, we move into the next room only to throw a switch (there were a lot of switches for one room, each setting of another ridiculous trap) and have MORE rat swarms chasing us. 2 hours we spent fighting off rats, only to swear off rats from any D&D game for the rest of forever.

 

[dnddays]

If you want people to stop comparing D&D 4e to WoW you have to stop using the term reskin, lol.

Anyway, I haven't had a chance to play too many 4e games yet due to life, but our first combat in KotS against that kobold ambush comes to mind as the best, if only because it was the first time any party in any version of D&D I've run had realistically been challenged by kobolds. Having my players ask me, exaserbatedly, "He's not dead yet?!" and to later have a player stand up and shout "I hate kobolds!" after the battle brought a smile to my face.

Finally, kobolds challenged a party and it wasn't in Dragon Mountain!

 

[Vayden]

On a side note, I think the game really picks up at 5th level - once players have 2 dailies at their disposal, they seem to stop hoarding dailies quite so much, and the encounters before the "boss fight" start to get more interesting.

 

[Rechan]

I will likely post a more thorough answer. But here's a 'my worst, because of sheer luck':

The PCs were in a room full of traps. The floor was designed to crumble if you staye din one spot too long. A scything blade trap was going. The controls for the spiked trap (and the Key for a room they needed) was behind a steel gate. The steel gate was also trapped.

A rotwing zombie was flying around the room.

A PC charged the steel gate, the zombie charged the PC. The PC set off the steel gate trap; it swung open. It misses the PC, but hit the zombie. The zombie ends up pinned to the wall, and unable to escape, while taking ongoing damage from the spikes in the gate.

The PCs just grab the key and stroll out (after taking some damage from the scything blade trap).

It lasted all of 2 rounds. After I had spent so long designing that room, too.

 

[fba827]

I can't explain specifics since our games are all homebrew and nothing I say will make sense out of context. So I'll leave it generic...

The best/most memorable/most exciting encounters have been ones with varied terrain and/or mix of monster tactics and abilities. We very easily get in to a rut when it's an open field... but toss us in some corridors with maybe a pit in the middle and we have to break out of our rut and get more creative. Plus, having the mix of monsters keeps it from getting boring to fight "yet another kobold in this army"

On the flip side, something I've realized (and it's buried in the DMG somewhere), if the battle is going very one sided in favor of the PCs but it's just taking too long to widdle away his hp, then don't be afraid to pretend he dies one or two hits sooner than he would otherwise -- dragging out a fight that is obvious just becomes tedious.

Also, encounters that aren't spun (a little) towards the group's composition can be a bit frustrating. I'm not saying to always spin it, just once in a while... if you have controllers in the party, toss in more minions. If you have lots of strikers and defenders, toss in lots of brutes and soldiers. And so on.. it'll take a few encounters to realize what the right mix is... again, don't always do it, but once in a while (otherwise you'll see your party wizard get frustrated for never being able to do more than nick the bbeg, or your strikers will get annoyed to whip out 30 points of damage to overkill minion after minion).

that's just been my experience so far anyway.

By the way, great thread, i like reading this stuff (it's given me a little inspiration and also insight as to what my players may be thinking)

 

[Vayden]

On the flip side, something I've realized (and it's buried in the DMG somewhere), if the battle is going very one sided in favor of the PCs but it's just taking too long to widdle away his hp, then don't be afraid to pretend he dies one or two hits sooner than he would otherwise -- dragging out a fight that is obvious just becomes tedious.

Also, encounters that aren't spun (a little) towards the group's composition can be a bit frustrating. I'm not saying to always spin it, just once in a while... if you have controllers in the party, toss in more minions. If you have lots of strikers and defenders, toss in lots of brutes and soldiers. And so on.. it'll take a few encounters to realize what the right mix is... again, don't always do it, but once in a while (otherwise you'll see your party wizard get frustrated for never being able to do more than nick the bbeg, or your strikers will get annoyed to whip out 30 points of damage to overkill minion after minion).

Yep, good advice there. Shilsen, I actually just threw this thread here up earlier today - might give you some more of what you're looking for: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...tion-aka-only-you-can-prevent-grindspace.html

 

[Dausuul]

The one with the vampire in the chapel with the moving bands of deadly shadow was one of your best jobs ever too (and on basically a throw-away fight!)

Ah yes, the cathedral fight...

The PCs had just entered an infernal cathedral in the Shadowfell, and emerged into the nave (for those unfamiliar with cathedral architecture, that's the big main room with the really high arched ceiling). There were statues in alcoves along the sides, and red stained glass windows through which shifting lights shone.

The lights through the windows produced bands of shadow which moved along the floor. Each band was 1 square wide, and they were spaced 3 squares apart. Each round, they moved one square toward the entrance. When one of them moved past the end of the nave, it vanished and a new one appeared at the other end. If you passed through a shadow-band, it inflicted (IIRC) 15 points of necrotic damage, and each one dealt damage separately, so if you just charged straight down the middle, you'd almost certainly kill yourself. I represented the shadow-bands with strips of black cloth on the battlemat.

The alcoves in the walls were out of the path of the shadow-bands, so the PCs could duck in and hide there. However, when they did so, the statues would animate and attack them. Disabling the statues was relatively easy but did take a little time, so the PCs had to work their way down the nave, ducking into an alcove to avoid the shadow-bands, killing the statue there, then darting around into the next alcove.

At the far end of the cathedral was a vampire wizard (another custom monster, I think based off a sahuagin priest - I usually have at least one homebrewed monster per session) who blasted the PCs with long-range lightning attacks as they approached. As soon as they got close, she started using her vampiric powers to dominate and bite. Ordinarily, the party would have made short work of her by herself; but because the shadow-bands and the statues slowed them up so much, she really wore them down before they were finally able to close and finish her. She almost got away, too.

I didn't actually expect that fight to be as dramatic as it was; it wasn't even a boss fight, just one encounter on the way into the dungeon below the cathedral. But it ended up being a really memorable battle, and one that emphasized for me just how important terrain is to making a good fight.

Another thing worth noting about that battle is that it didn't put the PCs in any great danger. They had to work for their victory, but at no point was it really a close contest. But the challenge of negotiating the treacherous terrain, and the vampire's ability to pull out new surprises as they got closer, kept everyone excited and engaged. That also was a lesson to me: Not every exciting fight has to end with half the party on the floor and the rest in single digits.

But for me, the spider-web thing stuck out as my favorite so far, just for the moment of thinking I'd lost the character and then suddenly coming back. Although I admit that if I'd managed to kill Mogor with my own hand instead of 5 tons of falling rock, I might rate that one as my favorite.

Yeah, the spider-web thing was very cool, but mainly because your character pulled it out with a spectacular save at the last instant - it wasn't anything about the encounter setup that made it stand out.