Multifaceted Encounters - Get creative!

[interwyrm]

From the Types of Challenges thread:

1. Combat: This includes a wide variety of combat challenges, including straightforward fights, battles with creatures using special abilities, mook encounters, etc.

2. Bypass Obstacle: Challenges that can be overcome by skills such as Balance, Climb, Open Lock, Jump, and Swim, and similar spells and abilities.

3. Persuasion: Challenges that can be overcome by skills such as Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate, and similar spells and abilities. Roleplaying encounters can be lumped under this category.

4. Acquire Information: Challenges that can be overcome by skills such as Decipher Script, Gather Information, Listen, Knowledge, Search, Sense Motive, Speak Language, Spot and Spellcraft, and similar spells and abilities. Puzzles can be put under this category.

5. Stealth: Challenges that can be overcome by skills such as Disguise, Forgery, Hide, and Move Silently, and similar spells and abilities.

6. Endurance: Dangers that cannot be detected or avoided (in parties without a rogue or some other character with Trapfinding, traps would fall under this category), and must be mitigated by skills such as Heal and Survival, defensive and curative spells and abilities, or simply by having good saving throws or a large number of hit points.​

Are there any other types of challenges that you can think of?

I've recently found that every single encounter is better when it combines any two of those building blocks.

So... here's the idea: Exercise your creative juices and put together some encounters which combine two or more of the above elements. I'm thinking that the elements should either combine to make a more difficult encounter, or provide alternate paths to defeat the encounter.

If you feel like it, give an EL as well.

 

[diaglo]

time.
only on the 4th cycle of the moon when moon X and planet Y are aligned will the secret vault open.

this will require the players to pace themselves. and do much in the way of resource planning and tracking.

you must swim down into the depths of the underwater world. and at the exact moment the vault will open. you have only a brief amount of time to enter. the vault will seal soon after to avoid flooding the whole complex. and then another moment to leave from another way. the clues to find the way and the exact time to exit are scattered throughout the vault

 

[Old Drew Id]

Here are some that I came up with for how to get into a guarded castle.

1. Combat - Kill the guards to enter the castle.
2. Combat / Bypass Obstacle - Swim the moat and climb the wall around the castle while the guards are firing arrows at you. When you get to the top, kill the guards.
3. Combat / Persuasion - Kill some of the guards and intimidate the remainder into letting you pass.
4. Combat / Acquire Information - Kill some of the guards so that the remainder will give you the password to get the rest of the way in.
5. Combat / Stealth - Kill the guards without alerting the rest of the castle.
6. Combat / Endurance - Kill the crocodiles in the sewer tunnel under the castle, while avoiding nausea from the foul stench.
7. Bypass Obstacle - Unlock the back gate.
8. Bypass Obstacle / Persuasion - Swim the moat and climb the wall to the 5-year-old prince’s window and convince him to open up to let you in.
9. Bypass Obstacle / Acquire Information - Climb onto the roof of the guard shack to spy on the guards and learn their patterns.
10. Bypass Obstacle / Stealth - Sneak in like a cat burglar.
11. Bypass Obstacle / Endurance - Climb down through the chimney, while there is a fire going.
12. Persuasion - Convince the guards that you’re the carpet cleaner.
13. Persuasion / Acquire Information - Get hired on as one of the new guards.
14. Persuasion / Stealth - Flirt with a guard to distract him while other party members sneak past.
15. Persuasion / Endurance - Convince a derelict guard to have a drink with you while on duty and get him drunk.
16. Acquire Information - Track down an ex-guard with a grudge who knows where they keep the password.
17. Acquire Information / Stealth - Find out where the guards do their laundry, steal some uniforms, and impersonate them.
18. Acquire Information / Endurance - Get drunk with an off-duty guard and trick him into revealing key information.
19. Stealth - Forge a pass.
20. Stealth / Endurance - Drug the guards’ food, while avoiding the effects yourself through a prepared antidote.
21. Endurance - Crawl through the sewer tunnel while avoiding nausea from the foul stench.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

At this very moment, the heroes in Midwood are swimming down through an icy pond, fighting a piranha swarm, and attempting to then kill a river troll (scrag) that has kidnapped two children (and the party's gnome cleric) to eat them later.

Oh, and they're all of second level.

Acquire Information (to find the kids)/Bypass Obstacle/Combat

 

[blargney the second]

Blatantly inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean II:

The party must fend off tribal hostiles while rescuing a prisoner in a locked cage suspended from a rope bridge across a chasm. For added pressure, have one of the attackers blow a horn partway into the fight and let the players know that MORE baddies are on the way.

 

[delericho]

Water-logged Doom (EL 9)

All around the edges of this room at floor and ceiling, iron grilles can be seen. About an inch into these decorations, thick metal plates are in place. The door at the far side of the room sits closed, with no sign either of keyhole or handle. A gargoyle-like visage is embossed on the door, contorted in some manner of leering grimace. A strangely familiar regular wheezing can be heard in this room.

Characters entering this room may well suspect a trap, and they would be right to do so. However, the nature of the trap is difficult to discern, and the trap is almost impossible to disable.

Creature: the face on the door is, in fact, the animated door Bolt. Once an enemy of the Wizard who built this place, he now is forced to serve as a guardian for the rooms beyond. Bolt currently sleeps - if a Rogue or other character Searches the door for a trap or secret mechanism he wakens with a loud sneeze and a panicked cry. Waking Bolt triggers the Trap and releases the elementals.

Bolt: Medium Animated Object, hp 40, MM p. 13, except Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 12, Hardness 20, No moves or attacks.

Medium Water Elementals (4): hp 30 each, MM p.100

Tactics: The elementals immediately spring to the attack. They have no fear of death, and so fight without asking for or giving quarter. Bolt takes no part in the combat; his role is to guard the rooms beyond, and administer the test. He is quite happy to converse with PCs, being a lonely if somewhat curmudgeonly sort.

Trap: When Bolt is wakened, the other door to the room slams shut (Str DC 25 to prevent; characters within 5 feet of the door may make a Reflex save DC 20 to escape the room), and the metal plates above the room retract. Water starts pouring into the room, rapidly filling it. If either door to the room is opened, the plates below the floor retract to drain the water again.

Water-Filled Room Trap: CR 7; mechanical; NPC trigger; automatic reset; multiple targets (all within room); never miss; onset delay (10 rounds); water; Search DC 20 (on ceiling, not doors); Disable Device 40

Development: As combat breaks out, Bolt speaks again, as though remembering.

"Oh, I'm supposed to ask you the riddle. If you get it right, I'll open the door! Ahem...

My foe bears witness that there is aught I won't do;
it remains to be seen if my truth befits you.
To open the door that you might pass through
Lay low mine enemy with the bolt that flies true."

It amused the wizard to constantly torment his captured enemy whenever he sought access to the rooms beyond. As such, the answer to the riddle is to target Bolt with a Magic Missile.

There are several means by which the trap can be escaped:

1) Characters who are immune to drowning can simply wait. The room fills after 10 rounds. 10 rounds later, the lower plates retract and the room drains. After that, the door into the room (but not the one guarded by Bolt) opens again.

2) Character can hack down the doors. Each door has hardness 20 and 40 hit points. Note that hacking down the door Bolt guards slays the guardian, and constitutes an Evil action - Bolt is neither wicked nor an enemy of the PCs.

3) The locking mechanism on either door may be accessed by removing the front plate of the door (taking one character three rounds, or two characters one round) and the front pieces of the mechanism with a DC 32 Disable Device roll. Once that is done the lock can be opened with a DC 30 Open Locks roll. Each roll takes one round, so a skilled character can open either door with five rounds of undisturbed work. (As the mechanisms are removed, Bolt complains that "it tickles.")

4) The puzzle may be solved, and the door opened by targetting Bolt with a Magic Missile. As above, this is considered an Evil act.

5) Bolt may be persuaded to help. Although an enemy of the wizard, he is reluctant to simply release the PCs for fear of punishment. However, if his initial Indifferent attitude can be shifted to Friendly (Diplomacy DC 15, but note the -10 penalty to do so as a full-round action), he will dolorously advise the Wizard to "do what must be done" (mitigating the Evilness of solution 4). If he can be made Helpful (DC 30) he will simply unlock the door.

Bolt is also willing to assist the PCs in other ways, as he hates the wizard who built this place. The information he can provide should be tailored by the DM for the specifics of the dungeon the PCs have invaded.