Exploding Undead Minions Falling From The Sky

[weem]

I love reading about other DM's dynamic/exciting/unique encounters, so I thought I would post one I ran for my players during my last game. I was talking about it on another forum, so I thought I would share it here as well.

Essentially, the PC's were winding up a steep cliff-side path to a tower carved into the cliffs above. They were going up to see if a friend of theirs was indeed imprisoned within (a PC who had to miss the game). From the tower, a devil (with ties to what will be a major villain) began kicking off his undead slaves from a balcony down onto the ascending PC's. To top it off, he was shoving (stabbing) sharpened metal sticks of explosives into them before sending them over.

Various points on the path had cover from above so you could avoid any falling slave damage (if one fell on you it HURT), but then they would explode within a round or so. Some were able to stand and advance towards nearby players before detonating. However, some explosives were duds as well, so instead of exploding, the undead slave remained standing and fought them on the path.

The devil had a -2 attack vs their REF if they moved 5 or more squares. If they moved 2-4, he had his regular attack bonus, and if they only moved 1 (shifted) he had a +2. Of course the path had difficult terrain for steep portions, but there were also points along the way where a PC with a a good Athletics could quickly climb to the next path level, etc.

Anyway, it was fun and I just thought I would share.

Feel free to share any really fun encounters you have had recently. Doesn't have to be the most dynamic, or have had the best terrain or hazards, as long as it was really fun for both DM and Players

 

[Amaroq]

Actually I really enjoyed the encounter our DM tossed at us on Saturday. Our party druid is locked in an epic battle with a particular forest spirit gone evil, and we learned that a potential NPC ally was in trouble .. deep in the evil forest.

A teleportation Circle got us within a mile or so ... but as soon as we touched foot in the forest-spirit's woods, the trees began to come alive around us. Our goal was to race across a succession of battle maps to reach the cave where our NPC ally was making her last stand against more enraged trees. The maps consisted, usually, of 2-3 paths of "clear" terrain between 2 to 4 squares wide, with the remainder of the map comprised of Difficult Terrain.

At the end of each round, 2-4 new trees would "come to life" between us and our goal, usually 1-3 squares ahead of the lead character, in or adjacent to Difficult Terrain, imperfectly bunched but blocking our progress along the clear terrain in such a way that one had to concede an Opportunity Attack against them. Additional trees were coming to life all around us, so anybody who was lagging would tend to have a couple move trees placed off to the side or behind him, maybe 4-5 squares away and in Difficult Terrain.

Each individual tree behaved much like a Soldier, with a strong Opportunity Attack, a "Mark anybody he hits" power, and a "Mark attack" power which allowed him to swing at anybody moving away from him. On his turn, he had Move 5 (ignores Difficult Terrain), but was explicitly prohibited from the Run action or from taking a second action which Moves him in his turn. (E.g., no Shift-then-Move tactics, no Move-then-Charge, no Run, and no double-Move.) They were Vulnerable 10 Fire, I think, and had a "Grab" attack for restraint but no damage, as well as a "Slam" attack for pretty painful damage. Their Basic Melee Attack did fairly low damage but applied a stacking -1 penalty to AC and defense against Grab.

Clearly, "running the gauntlet" was a better strategy than "standing and fighting" - especially as the DM wound up instantiating 34 of these guys over the course of the battle!!

Our resources were:

Every character Mounted on a mount with move 8 or move 9.

Mounted characters could take a Standard action (must be taken by the rider), a Standard action (must be taken by the mount), a Move (either), and a Minor (either). (Aside: that's our house rule for mounted combat, assuming the rider has the Mounted Combat feat or equivalent. Riders without said feat use the standard Mounted Combat rules.)

The druid had a magic item which could fire a Burst 2 Within 10 area effect, which reduced the creature to a Super Minion. First hit knocked it prone and Bloodied it; second hit would shatter it into toothpicks. A fire keyword attack would kill it outright unless it made a saving throw.

A prone tree could only attack the Mount, not the Rider, but more importantly, since it couldn't move twice on its turn, we were guaranteed of getting away from it.

Trees recovered from the effect at the end of a Round.

. . . .

This played out brilliantly, it was one of the best encounters in a long time. He didn't reveal the mechanics to us ahead of time, we had to discover them as we went .. but once we did, we did the smart thing, delaying our initiative(s) until after the druid but before the trees, so a round tended to look like: druid zaps twice or three times, moves once or twice .. everybody else knocks down and escapes from the trees haranguing us, then makes best available speed.

Often, "best available" meant cutting through the Difficult Terrain, but with the possibility to make a Standard attack and then have the Mount move twice, you could still cover eight squares or so even going straight through Difficult Terrain .. which was enough to outpace the 5-square trees ..

If somebody got too far out ahead of the druid, the "zot" wouldn't arrive, so that person would get badly slowed as more non-minion trees showed up in front of him, and the druid's zot would arrive in time to get him free. Likewise, if somebody fell too far behind, usually Restrained by a tree, the druid would have to wait (or even go back) for them, so that would stop the front end of the party.

The druid never did try "zot"ting a tree twice to see if it would put it further back to sleep ...

. . .

The final encounter saw an in-combat Skill Challenge to complete a Ritual which would "blind" the evil forest spirit. Until that was complete, "zot" didn't work as well with the fully-awake-and-enraged trees at the final battle, but would work with the never-ending stream of trees from behind us. So, we wound up with one Defender in a bottleneck, assisted by "zot"s to keep the reinforcements two-hit-minions, while the other Defender and the rest of the party tried to keep the super-nasty full-strength trees off of the NPC and the Druid while the druid cast her ritual.

Once the ritual was complete, the full-strength trees became two-hit-minions and the reinforcements stopped coming.

. . .

Absolutely exhilirating, from my seat as a player: I hadn't been as tensely "into" a session in quite a while!!

 

[Rachel]

I will share something that may apply indirectly, but I do think it's fun and it's short and sweet.

Killing minions is fun, but who is to say that they need be killed in typical hack n' slash fashion? So, I am working on a lvl 1-3 adventure atm and here is the set-up:

There is a dirty little hovel where a large contingent of lizard-like humanoids (homebrew) have taken up residence (in what was once a city aqueduct). There are quite a few of them, but not so many that if you had to fight them sword-slashey that you couldnt do so. Carving through them would take some time, but the players certainly have that option, as well as other typical options like drawing them out in groups and slaying them (assuming they can keep scouts/runners from giving them away to all the rest).

But, as a more interesting option, there is an abandoned stone structure nearby, a house now in ruins. The door is heavy iron and there are many stones lying loose around it. The players will reach this dwelling before reaching the monsters, and inside they will find piles and piles of clearly flammable debris. They will also note a large barrel of oil used for scribing in a corner of the living area.

If you see where Im going with this, let's guess what would happen if you spread the oil about, herded the monsters into the home, played with fire (who doesn't love to do that?) then closed and wedged the door. Can you say, bar-b-q?