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

[Truename]

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.

 

[Dragonbait]

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.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

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.

 

[Ktulu]

Worst: A toss up between:

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...

 

[shilsen]

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

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.

 

[Vayden]

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.

 

[Dausuul]

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.

 

[Iron Sky]

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.

 

[Ant]

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.

 

[Holy Bovine]

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.