Yesterday I fulfilled a long-time dream but it didn't quite work out well.
The PCs went to investigate a problem regarding giant ants. They had a few skirmishes, tracked the ants down and finally entered their nest. They fought their way to the queens lair where the workers maintained the queen.
Everything had went fine so far but these workers really punished the players. One of the PCs and a super-important NPC met their fates. I was really surprised by this because I considered 9th-level and 7th-level PCs and the 3rd-level NPC superior compared to the four 5HD giant ant workers (CR2 each). Those bite-attacks were just lousy! However the ants' grapple proved to be effective and there was an unhappy ending...
Nevertheless I really enjoyed designing the colony, adding lot details to the hive and describing it all to my players. I researched a little bit about ants and it was really fun, kind of of surprisingly since I'm not very good at biology.
Total deaths: 1 PC
The PCs went to investigate a problem regarding giant ants. They had a few skirmishes, tracked the ants down and finally entered their nest. They fought their way to the queens lair where the workers maintained the queen.
Everything had went fine so far but these workers really punished the players. One of the PCs and a super-important NPC met their fates. I was really surprised by this because I considered 9th-level and 7th-level PCs and the 3rd-level NPC superior compared to the four 5HD giant ant workers (CR2 each). Those bite-attacks were just lousy! However the ants' grapple proved to be effective and there was an unhappy ending...
Nevertheless I really enjoyed designing the colony, adding lot details to the hive and describing it all to my players. I researched a little bit about ants and it was really fun, kind of of surprisingly since I'm not very good at biology.
Total deaths: 1 PC