Need Help Designing an Encounter Area For Worg Riding Werewolves

[Syntallah]

My PCs are about to encounter a group of werewolves riding battle worgs. As skirmishers they have good movement and move-related abilities. My problem is, my encounters always seem to degenerate into static slugfests with nobody ever moving about.

This encounter is led by a villain the PCs have been chasing for a few weeks and I want it to be memorable. Therefore, I am beseeching the awesome community here to help me design a cool encounter area in which to unleash (pun intended, lol) my werewolves....

 

[Ferghis]

If movement is gonna play a big role, use terrain. Add a steep hillside (successful easy climb check & free hand to move through; wargs can jump up), and thorny bushes (choose to treat as difficult terrain or be target of an attack vs AC; again, wargs can jump over). Maybe players can get a hold of steel traps (if enemy fails perception check and moves through without treating it as difficult terrain, attack vs Reflex, hit: restrained) to make it a bit more interesting for them.

Make sure the bad guys can use ride-by attacks that allow them to get out of melee without drawing OAs (perhaps only on a hit?).

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

My PCs are about to encounter a group of werewolves riding battle worgs. As skirmishers they have good movement and move-related abilities. My problem is, my encounters always seem to degenerate into static slugfests with nobody ever moving about.

This encounter is led by a villain the PCs have been chasing for a few weeks and I want it to be memorable. Therefore, I am beseeching the awesome community here to help me design a cool encounter area in which to unleash (pun intended, lol) my werewolves....

When are you going to run this? I just noticed this languishing on page 2 (well, page 1 now).

Players get so scared of opportunity attacks its weird. Fortunately DMs seem less prone to this "paralyzing" fear. You might want to touch up your skirmishers. I'd give them Defensive Mobility as a trait (or a cooler-sounding trait) that gives defense bonuses against opportunity attacks. Maybe this bonus can apply to anyone riding the worgs too. Skirmishing werewolves can also shift a lot, perhaps as effects attached to their at-wills. If you're worried about the defenders have a controller with a dazing attack that targets Will. (You can't take opportunity or immediate actions when dazed.) Skirmishers should just ignore opportunity attacks from non-defenders anyway; it's not that much damage.

In a relatively wide open field, the defenders cannot protect everyone. Get to the back line (using separate routes) and start munching on the squishies.

Or force your PCs to move. Have hills with cover, and attack from there. Use lots of ranged. PCs have to go up after your NPCs, plus going uphill should cost extra squares. Naturally, skirmishers can move downhill at full speed.

 

[Syntallah]

Gonna run it in the next week or two...

I'm leaning towards the front of a mine complex at the back of a box canyon. There are two shelf/plateaus, one on either side of the entrance. One is 15' high, the other 20'. The worgs should be able to jump up the 15' without much effort and the 20' is makeable. I will have a cave-in trap try to split the Party up at the actual entrance, and a wave of minions (miners) come at the PCs from one of the outside shelves (the worg/werewolves will start on the other and commence to strafe the PCs).

Pretty much different from any recent encounter area, but not exactly high paragon / fantastic...

 

[doghead]

I would be looking to try and create a scenario where movement is the imperative rather than killing.

For example, if the PC's are trying to get to the villain before he or she can achieve something, then setting in for a slugfest becomes counter-productive. I would be looking at complex environment like a town or caves or thick forest with waves of attackers, creating something of a game of hide and seek with the PC's main aim being to remain undetected and keep moving.

Alternatively, the PC's are trying to protect something moving, like a wagon, then if they stop to fight, the enemy can just go around them.

Having the target of the enemies attacks something other than the PC's could work. For example, the PC's are defending a town and its inhabitants, then the enemy will try and avoid the PC's in favour of killing softer targets, forcing the PC's to pursue the enemy.

I would be interested to hear how you eventually run this, and how it goes.

thotd

 

[doghead]

I'm leaning towards the front of a mine complex at the back of a box canyon. There are two shelf/plateaus, one on either side of the entrance. One is 15' high, the other 20'. The worgs should be able to jump up the 15' without much effort and the 20' is makeable. I will have a cave-in trap try to split the Party up at the actual entrance, and a wave of minions (miners) come at the PCs from one of the outside shelves (the worg/werewolves will start on the other and commence to strafe the PCs).

Looking at this I think you are still going to end up with a fairly static encounter, especially if it commences at the entrance to the mine. The character are going to want to clear the canyon before proceeding in order to avoid leaving enemies at their back. So they are not going to move forwards, and will probably be unwilling to pull back unless the odds are overwhelming.

Rather than having ledges, you could have the enemy dug in up the sides of the canyon. If they are in good defensive/well camouflaged positions it would make it difficult to attack them from the floor of the canyon. Instead of a frontal assault, the PC's have the option of using their skirmishing skills to clear the defenders out in a series of small fights. Start the encounter some way back from the entrance to the mine.

Do the enemy know that the PC's are coming? If they know that the PC's are coming, but don't know exactly when, then I would be inclined to run a sort of infiltration/raid encounter. I would set it in a forest say, with lots of cover and run it up as a form of skill challenge using sneak/deception/misdirection to remain undetected and with failure resulting in an encounters with the enemy. Then the goal for the PC's would be to prevent the alarm being raised and to resolve the encounter quickly before more enemy arrive.

thotd

 

[Sunseeker]

This instantly reminded me of the Junkions from the old 1994 Transformers movie. Specifically, that the Junkions had both their humanoid and their motorcycle forms, and when you knocked one pair down, they switched places. To translate this into what I am seeing here, are werewolves with an ability to shift between an offensive "hybrid" form and a defensive mount-like "worg" form as a swift action. As riders or in their "hyrbid" form they receive increased offense and reduced defenses, while in their "worg" form they have increased defenses and regeneration. They operate as grouped pairs, so make these respective bonuses and the swift changing only effective while they are adjacent or occupying the same square(ie: mounted). So the goal is to, once they are knocked down, to keep them separate and break the pair, ie: a rider w/o a mount or a mount w/o a rider is a significantly easier target.

To make this work though, you need to keep the party moving during the fight. The party should be more interested in reaching their goal than fighting the worgs, I'm not sure what sort of party you've got, but play to their interests. All else fails, they're fighting werewolves, and werewolves come from somewhere, perhaps there is a ritual being performed on the unlucky villagers from a nearby town who are being forcibly transformed into werewolves, and then mind-controlled into fighting the party as these pairs I have mentioned. So fighting the worgs and their riders serves no purpose as their numbers are being replenished faster than they're being killed.(adding a new pair every round sounds dangerous). And the various powers the worgs and their riders get stem from this ritual as well, so the idea is to press the party to stop the ritual, and not stand around and engage the werewolves.

If the party holds their ground, force them to move by say, giving the werewolves a push or knockback on a charge while mounted.

Anyway, I hope that gives you some food for thought.

 

[Herobizkit]

Archers. Controller/Leaders with ranged attacks. That's usually enough to keep the players moving.

 

[pemerton]

I would be looking to try and create a scenario where movement is the imperative rather than killing.

For example, if the PC's are trying to get to the villain before he or she can achieve something, then setting in for a slugfest becomes counter-productive.

When I ran a (modified version of) Well of Demons (in H2), the final encounter involved the PCs trying to stop a ritual where peasants were being sacrificed. At the start of the encounter, the PCs held the doorway into the ritual room, and advanced cautiously against the bruisers trying to stop them.

Then one of the peasants died from the ritual.

The PCs then broke their formation, and moved in to try and save the other peasants before the ritual killed them too. So, as you say, nothing induces movement like stakes that go beyond the fighting itself.

 

[doghead]

Archers. Controller/Leaders with ranged attacks. That's usually enough to keep the players moving.

Including some sort of ranged area effect to keep them from forming a defence circle.

thotd