[BRAINSTORM] Cool Battlefields!

[greywulf]

- On a swing bridge
- The spokes of a windmill
- Underwater, in a coral reef. Lots of places to hide, plus valuable air pockets
- Shrunk to the size of mice, inside a treasure chest, falling over lots of gold coins
- Inside a Gargantuan Construct (there's a Dungeon adventure about that)
- In the belly of a Dragon
- In a living Plane. Imagine a floor made of flesh, one eye watching you.......
- Stuck inside a mirror. You can only move sideways.
- In a methane filled mine. Beward of sparks and fireballs.
- A ship's rigging. At night. In a storm
- In a monastry where violence is forbidden, so all attacks are resolved using Sleight of Hand checks instead of your melee roll. "Thwack!".....smile as Very High Level Monk walks past. "Thwack!".....
- In a theater during a show to a packed audience
- Inside a burning orphanage. Always good for a laugh.

And I love the idea of a fight in a bouncy castle That's getting yoinked.

 

[Emirikol]

I take handfuls of rocks, cardboard houses and shrubbery and drop them on the mat. You'd be surprised what you can come up with

jh

 

[resscane]

This was the battle for Drakthars way in Shackled city. What an amazing battle with the set up. I played the wizard in the 2nd picture w/ the staff w/ lightning. You wouldn't think a little sloping cavern could cause problems.., but it was viscious.

http://www.dwarvenforge.com/dwarvenforums/viewtopic.php?id=906

Invincible Overlord set this up. He was at the Dwarven Forge booth at Gencon this year. He makes some amazing builds. You can find more on the sight. Truly inspirational.

 

[Elemental]

On the back of a giant monster. Bonus points if it's flying.

A museum. With priceless works of art to get destroyed, the skeleton of some wondrous creature to get demolished (on the plus side, it's teeth make for excellent improvised weapons), antique weapons and terrified visitors fleeing everywhere.

A parching savanna, a few minutes before the huge monsoon rolls in. Halfway through the fight, everyone gets drenched by pounding rain, visibility drops to near zero, the ground turns to mud and all the lightning makes it a bad time to be wearing metal armour.

In a huge summoning circle. The ritual is almost complete, all that is required is a blood sacrifice. Make sure you don't kill any of those evil acolytes within the bounds of the circle, right?

 

[Kafkonia]

A number of small floating cubes in the sky -- 5' to 10' per side. Each cube face has its own subjective gravity, and periodically the cubes will rotate. This means that occasionally people will have to fight opponents who appear to be suspended above them, standing at right angles to them, etc. This would be heck to map, though.

 

[Rhun]

I once ran a combat on a cliff face resembling the gameboard from the video game Q-bert. Lots of 5' squares, and you'd either have to jump or climb to the squares above and below. It was a lot of fun. Lots of chances to gain a height advantage over your foe, and just as many opportunities to slip and fall...

 

[Jacob the Impaler]

The best encounter I ever ran was fairly simple location-wise. It was in the basement of an old tower that had been taken over by a mixed group of outcast monsters. Orcs, goblins, kobolds, hobgoblins, bugbears, ogres, gnolls, a crazy guy with a cape and goggles...The party fought an onslaught of just about everything for about two hours.

The floor was covered in about an inch of water, and there was a 10' pit in the middle of the room filled with it. The party managed to drown a few gnolls under the floating body of an ogre. Kobolds dropped alchemist's fire, giant centipedes and rocks from trap doors in the ceiling. They even rolled down a massive barrel holding monstrous spiders when the party tried to climb the stairs.

If you have trouble, try putting simple ideas together. A pit, trap doors in the ceiling, stairs, water, for example. You'll probably come up with something original and fun.