The awesome encounter that wasn't.

[trollwad]

Sounds awesome as long as you have a chance to escape. Who wants an easy win all the time? Now, think about another approach (invisibility, fly, stealth, etc) or just go after easier pickings.

 

[frankthedm]

To me, I'm just surprised that 1. They kept tempting fate assuming monsters were always level appropriate. 2. They attacked something without knowing what it was. 3 They didn't pick up on the hints of being afraid of/hating gold.

Is it my fault?

You did everything right. If I felt the players deserved one more hint, I'd have had the Lupines involuntarily chuckle as the players drew silver weapons.

Mind you, the notion of gold weapons is really oddball in my book, maybe for a lycanthrope from Mesoamerican sun worshipers it could fit.

 

[akbearfoot]

And here I was thinking that having drow archers up in the trees above 60' darkvision limiits was perfectly valid if not overused.

Course, I always always always make sure to purchase things like scrolls of fog cloud, daylight, and obscuring mist JUST for occasions like this.

Even a silent image of a small hut or house surrounding the PCs could foil this sort of attack.




Gold sensitive lycanthropes seem odd to me too. But I would have considered your hints to be adequate....especially if you add in the chuckling when silver daggers were mentioned. Although if the PCs have never seen a gold weapon in game, or been informed that gold was a material that could be made into weapons, then it seems a little unfair in general, unless they had one of those 2-h raging leap attacking or Bo9S classes.

 

[moritheil]

You did everything right. If I felt the players deserved one more hint, I'd have had the Lupines involuntarily chuckle as the players drew silver weapons.

Mind you, the notion of gold weapons is really oddball in my book, maybe for a lycanthrope from Mesoamerican sun worshipers it could fit.

Well, he's got the right idea. A lot of DMs I know of swap silver and cold steel DR around in outsiders for their campaigns so as to not allow metagame knowledge to influence things. They occasionally substitute other materials, too, such as mithral or adamantine.

 

[Gort]

Recently our DM ran an encounter that had enemies shooting at us from what could only be called unassailable positions. They enemies encountered were most likely Drow. I say most likely because we never actually saw them. We were assaulted by an unknown number of highly proficient entities. They remained hidden and dished out copious amounts of damage. We did the only thing we could do ... we ran. (at first we attempted to mount a counter but quickly changed our minds when we were handed a large chunk of damage) I'm sure he had planned things to unfold differently but it led to some irritated players.

We kind of need more information. Why couldn't you assail the position? What form did this "chunk of damage" take? Are we talking arrows, magic, what?

And if you all got out okay, what's to stop you healing up and going back in 8 hours with a different approach?

 

[moritheil]

It's one thing to be handed some humble pie, I think it's quite another to be rendered powerless without the usual prerequisite act of PC foolishness.

Also, are you assuming that you didn't notice any PC foolishness, so none occurred, or do you have the DM's word that none occurred?

 

[NewJeffCT]

Actually, had the opposite of an almost awesome encounter happen in my current campaign - the friendly encounter that wasn't. The PCs started in a town that was quite xenophobic and also bigoted against non-humans. Not long after entering the town, the party elf got pegged by a rotten tomato and the whole gang got tossed into jail when a crowd around them got rowdy. (the town guard was fair & let the PCs out the next morning) - the PCs then went to find accommodations at a local inn/tavern and were accosted by some locals where I really played up their "out of town" status, including the ole "yer not from around here, are ya?" . So, needless to say, that they didn't exactly feel welcome in town...

I had a planned encounter later on when those locals went to get an evil cleric of a deity that believes in racial purity and used him to help try to knock some sense into the PCs and send them out of town... but, afterwards, I had planned what I thought was a nice friendly encounter - some locals who were more friendly to the PCs were going to applaud them for taking down the locals and the evil cleric, and then hook them into a major plot point.

Well, the evil priest stepped out in front of the PCs and said he had bribed the guards to stay out of that section of town for the night and then the locals tried to jump the players - after a tough combat, the PCs won and killed the evil cleric. However, they were so paranoid about being found amidst a bunch of dead locals, that they immediately high-tailed it out of town - not even stopping to bury the bodies or search them that thoroughly. I had thought I had said the guards were avoiding that part of town, but they still didn't want to take the chance.

I had planned to have some locals arrive when they were wrapping up the battle, and the locals would thank them for taking out the evil priest and then introduce them to a local group opposed to the neighboring nation of slavers through an NPC they had met earlier. However, that encounter didn't take place because they hightailed it outta Dodge so quickly, so they still have that sour taste in their mouths about the town - and, it's been several sessions later and I still haven't been able to work that plot point into the story yet.

 

[moritheil]

I had thought I had said the guards were avoiding that part of town, but they still didn't want to take the chance.

They killed a priest that they probably believe had considerable pull with the town guard. It's reasonable that they'd be concerned and not want to gamble their lives on the guard's reaction when it finally gets out.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Game with six fourth level PCs. Goblins, including some rangers, up on a talus ridge, firing bows at the party, lots of goblins - I want to say twenty or so, in groups of six and four.

The party has two scrolls of fireball, but either forget they have them, or decide not to 'waste' them on the goblins. Spellcasters have mostly buff spells of varying types, one sleep spell, and a couple of magic missile.

The party darned near got massacred, running up the slope, sliding back down. (Evil, bad, horrible rolls there - the DC was not all that high, but it took two successful rolls to get to the goblins' position.) The sleep spell did a good job putting one group of goblins down, but otherwise not a good showing. No deaths, but they ran away from an encounter that I thought that they would handle easily. They also spent an amazing number of Cure spells in the process.

Giving them something to use their fireballs on seemed like a good idea at the time. This was also the first time they only had one sleep spell.... And they were near enough to fifth level that it never even occurred to me that they would want to save their scrolls, after all, pretty soon they would have the spell themselves.

The lesson - never assume that the party will be willing to use their expendable magic items to defeat an encounter.

The Auld Grump

 

[Wiseblood]

We kind of need more information. Why couldn't you assail the position? What form did this "chunk of damage" take? Are we talking arrows, magic, what?

And if you all got out okay, what's to stop you healing up and going back in 8 hours with a different approach?

Sorry I haven't answered I've been terribly ill.
We could not find their location because they were mobile ( by enemies that were invisible to us Not due to magic but skill and terrain.) Arrows were the source of the damage. It was in the neighborhood of 40-60 points a round for a party of 6-7th level characters.

We didn't go back because we were being led to a destination by a DMPC so we never got even. It did not appear to be a plot advancing encounter either.