What have been your best/worst 4e combat encounters?

[shilsen]

After years of DMing 3e/3.5e, I'm going to be running my first 4e session soon. To that end, as the title says, I'm interested in hearing about the best or worst combat encounters that you've experienced in 4e thus far, whether as DM or player. What was particularly memorable about it? What made it so good (or, conversely, so bad)? What did it teach you to do, or not to do, in a 4e game? Did it reveal something about 4e combat that you hadn't realized earlier?

In short, I'm curious.

 

[timbannock]

After years of DMing 3e/3.5e, I'm going to be running my first 4e session soon. To that end, as the title says, I'm interested in hearing about the best or worst combat encounters that you've experienced in 4e thus far, whether as DM or player. What was particularly memorable about it? What made it so good (or, conversely, so bad)? What did it teach you to do, or not to do, in a 4e game? Did it reveal something about 4e combat that you hadn't realized earlier?

In short, I'm curious.

Best: Players went up against Szartharrax in Kobold Hall, and I used an article by Mr. Mearls to add a bunch of little situational effects: icicle "stalactites" that could be busted and impaled anyone in the square below (damage + dazed); small pools of water that had no effect other than flash-freezing anytime a Cold power went off in the square; I made the big pillars into icy pillars that could be smashed or toppled to cause an area burst of ice shards.

The PCs came in (three players, two of whom were playing 2 characters each) and the fight was epic. The players made use of the icy stalactites, but had bad rolls so they abandoned that (thinking it was "too hard," when in actuality it was just that they were rolling 2s and 3s to hit!). A few got stuck in flash-freeze pools for a round or so, but they locked down Szar real fast. At that point, even though the fight got a little static (I should have made Szar a little more brazen and willing to take some Opportunity Attacks), it was great because 2 PCs dropped and the fight looked grim.

But then, on the final Death save, both players rolled 20s! Szar's time was short after that.


Worst:

A bunch of goblins raided a village in the middle of the night. The fight was a foregone conclusion, but it took FOREVER to clean up the gobs because, once again, the players were rolling like $$@. In hindsight, I should have just said "they are minions, see you killing their friends, have a heart-attack, and die."

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I'll start!

Best 4e combat - I modified an encounter in Keep on the Shadowfell to make it more dangerous. What ended up happening is that as the party moved through a small maze of corridors, zombies attacked from all sides! Including behind them.

What made it great was that it used several different sorts of monster - a couple of artillery who could weaken those they hit, lots of minions, and several brutes. It also featured a leader who stood right back and actually led the monsters, keeping the players on their toes. He also then ran away so that the party will have to fight him again later!

There were also some terror runes on the floor that caused one character to run screaming down the corridor towards another bunch of zombies, and the many corridors meant the players tried some fun stuff with outflanking.

A really great fight, showcasing what 4e is good at.

I've had some less fun encounters - mostly where I've not properly upscaled an encounter to reflect how many PC's I have (up to 8 if they all turn up!). If it's lots of minions then they normally last only a round or two - very anti-climatic.

 

[Nebulous]

Best 4e Fight: Probably the graveyard attack in Keep on the Shadowfell. That was fun. I modified it with a new enemy, an inqusitor from 2e, and scads of zombie minions.

Worst 4e Fight: I hesitate to say "worst" because none really stand out to me as particularly painful, dull or broken. There have been plenty of times where i forgot to use a monster's power so an encounter turns out easier than it should have. The last fight of KotS was easier than it should have been, for example.

 

[EATherrian]

It's funny because all of our combats have been exciting but tense. Mostly it is because in my group we all roll horribly. I've hit with my Warlock's Daily once in about 25 tries. So far I think combat in 4E is much less forgiving of bad die rolls than I remember earlier editions to be.

 

[Vayden]

Hmm. I will answer first as a DM, then as a player:

From behind the screen:

My personal favorite by far has been a night fight on a bridge - the players were holding one end of the bridge to keep an undead army from sacking Fallcrest. I think they were 5th level at the time, though they might have been 6th. The bridge was rigged to collapse, and their job was to A) kill as many undead as possible then B) pull back, luring a good chunk of undead forward so that the villagers could drop the bridge when it was full of undead and isolate a chunk of the undead army on the Fallcrest side of the river where it could be destroyed without reinforcements.

They're crouched down at their of the bridge, a bonfire crackling behind them, listening to the sound of skirmishers dying in the darkness somewhere on the far side of the river - after a while, wounded skirmishers start slipping back across the bridge - the last one stops to light the bonfire on the far side of the bridge to increase visibility for the party, but it costs him his life - gravehound zombies pull him down halfway across the bridge and tear him to shreds. When they finish, the 7 gravehounds turn toward the party and lope towards them, at which point the pyromancer wizard lets off his fireball, hitting 6 of the 7 and doing half damage to the 7th and rolling close to max damage (I think it ended being around 130 points of damage total between all 7 of them). With that as the opening salvo, they quickly destroy the gravehounds. That nets them a short rest while the main undead army marches up. After assessing the situation, the undead general orders forward a 50 skeletons - 2 boneshards, 2 flame-throwing ones, and 46 minions. In front of the skeletons shambles a zombie bear with one paw hacked off and replaced with a magical axe (zombie hulk with some customization by me). The defenders lock down the bear, the wizard's flaming sphere and the cleric's consecrated ground move out onto the bridge creating an endless death zone for minions, and a fierce melee engages (complete with surprise flying zombies landing behind them). Finally, after expending most of their resources, the party stands triumphant - bruised, battered, but alive. We break for the week as the undead general rides out to parley with them.

Now, the first part of the fight had just been on my battlemat. When the players showed up the next week, they found that I'd built the entire bridge and both banks out of dungeon tiles, their minis were grouped defensively at one end of the bridge, and I'd set up every humanoid mini I owned on the other side of the bridge to give them a sense of scale on how many undead they still had left to fight. There was noticeably less pre-game banter as they surveyed the situation and exchanged "oh crap, he's going to TPK us again" looks.

Anyway, parley with the undead general is unsuccessful ("Would you like to join my side?" "Do we have to die to do it?" "Yeah, kind of" "Sorry, thanks but no") and they retreat back to their side to face a rush of zombies, this time with the general staying in the middle of the bridge and buffing his troops from the rear. Just as combat joins, they hear screams from beneath the bridge as ghouls (who took advantage of the parley to crawl under the bridge) kill the villagers who were supposed to knock the bridge down. The entire near side of the bridge is difficult terrain now due to the pools of blood and piles of shattered, burned skeletons. The fighter scrambles under the bridge (and is horrified to find himself facing 3 ghouls with no back-up), the paladin wades to the front line, and the cleric, wizard and warlock unleash hell. Fight lasted many, many rounds and went back and forth several times - finally the paladin managed to fight his way to the undead general and bull-rush him off the bridge, at the same time as the cleric rolled a crit on his athletics check to swing under the bridge and save the fighter from certain death (the fighter had just been coup-de-graced twice and was 2 hp away from negative bloodied).

After that the NPC wizard sets the bridge on fire, they collapse the bridge sending another 100 or so undead into the river, big heroes etc. All told I think they personally knocked off 80 + undead in those 3 fights, along with another 100-150 taken out by the bridge. Of course, that just meant Fallcrest's militia was outnumbered 3 to 1 instead of 4 to 1, but that's another story . . .

Worst fight as a DM so far - I've had a handful that ended up not being interesting for various reasons. I'd have to say the worst one was the time I TPKed them (final fight in KotS). They were missing a couple players for that session, I didn't scale the combat down correctly, and then they had 2 turns in a row of horrible tactics and horrible luck, and suddenly the fighter has been dragged into the portal, the warlord is unconscious, and the rogue is standing there bloodied and out-numbered 3 to 1 . . . not quite how I planned it, but sometimes TPK happens. Oh well, it ended up being a great excuse to run my zombie horror game ("some incompetent group of heroes didn't stop Kalarel! There's zombies everywhere! Run!")

As a player:

My personal favorite fight was the one where my warlord was on the wrong side of a nasty set of spiderwebs, in negative hp, had two failed death saves, and the rest of the party had no way to get to me before the spider did. I had pretty much resigned myself to my death and was working on new character concepts while everyone else took their turns, when it came around to me and I rolled a nat 20 on my death save with my lucky red d20. It's not all that, but it felt great to pop back onto my feet, and I've been very attached to that character ever since.

Worst fight would probably have to be in the game where I have the wizard - we'd just hit paragon, and were wandering down a tunnel some where when we got randomnly ambushed by a motley collection of slaad and destrachan. It was a crappy fight on every level - bad encounter design, horribly boring terrain, poor party cooperation, fight went on an hour and a half longer than it should have . . . gah that was an ugly night.

 

[Zephrin the Lost]

I've run a few dragons against 1st level teams and it's gone very well. One dragon I reskinned as a large acid-spewing centipede - the vermin of an island-sized roc nest- and that went very well. A very intense fight that pushed the players to the limit. I'm eager to use more solos.

The worst may have been 2 hobgoblin soldiers, which became the definition of grind as they never had a chance to kill the PC's but were hard to hit and had lots of HP.

--Z

 

[shilsen]

Thanks for the anecdotes. That's really helpful, and I can see that I'm going to be stealing (with proper attribution, of course) a lot from things which have been posted.

Oh, and Vayden - DAMN! Those two bridge fights sound positively epic.

Keep 'em coming, please.

 

[Vayden]

Oh, and Vayden - DAMN! Those two bridge fights sound positively epic.

Keep 'em coming, please.

Hehe. I loved it. If you ask my players, that may actually be their 3rd or 4th favorite fight from that campaign. Other good ones from there:

4th level - the monastery siege:

The party was trying to take over a ruined monastery as a safe point for a bunch of villagers from Winterhaven who they'd evacuated ahead of the undead apocalypse. They found the monastery was occupied by goblins and besieged by skeletons - they rode their horses into the midst of the skeletons (4 boneshards and 25 minions) and had their first big fight with the new post-TPK party. It was an absolutely huge melee with minions dying left and right, and the boneshard's explosion effects chaining off of each other. Loads of fun.

6th level - Well of Demons

I pulled the Well of Demons mini-dungeon out of Thunderspire and re-skinned it as an extra-planar dungeon in a pocket dimension. When they got to the big set piece fight with the dragon and the rolling spiked ball of doom they just cut loose - they ended up bull-rushing and sliding the dragon into the path of the spiked ball multiple times. Poor dragon never stood a chance.

7th level - The Battle for Fallcrest

They used the delay from the bridge fight to go recruit an army of gnolls (retrieved a gnoll artifact I made up from the Well of Demons) and came back to smash into the rear of the undead army in the middle of the town. After a series of punishing melees and a skill challenge to keep the gnolls disciplined instead of falling into unorganized blood-lust, they finally cornered the undead general in the Square of the Fountains. I went all out no holds barred at them - one level 8 elite controller (general), 3 level 6 soldiers (Eaters of Knowledge from Pyramid of Shadows), 2 level 7 artillery on the roofs (trog. impaler re-skinned and another different Eater of Knowledge), a zombie hulk (level 8 brute) and a tomb guardian skeleton (level 10 brute that I dropped to level 9). The fight surged back and forth across the courtyard, people switching positions multiple times - at one point I had the entire party bloodied, the cleric was dying 2 or 3 different times, and I think most of them were in single digit hitpoints when they finally won. That one was a lot of fun too.

 

[WampusCat43]

The most disappointing battle I had taught me a number of lessons, both 4e and DMing in general. I built the whole climactic encounter around a beautiful map I had downloaded from rpgmapshare (can't find the link at the moment). It was basically two towers connected by a narrow bridge, with a 3rd tower nearby but separate. I had everything all printed out and ready to go. The BBEG was on top of the bigger tower, shining his foozle all over the town, drawing undead to the attack that was going on. He was surrounded by bodyguards, and had a sniper on the 3rd tower. The PCs would have to come up through the trapdoor (which had a trap on it), fight their way across the bridge, take out the BBEG, and shut down the foozle to save the town from wholesale slaughter. Sounded great.

Of course, it all blew up in my face.

The rogue scrambled up the outside of the building to scout around. No problem - I just laid the minis he saw out on the map. They immediately decided to go up through the big tower, right underneath the BBEG, rather than going through the trapdoor. Sound plan, except I hadn't allowed for it. I had no idea what was in the big tower.

Panic ensues. Desperately, I said "Nothing. It's just ornamental. No one comes up this way." Railroaded them into coming up the way I wanted them to go. Mistake #1.

The trap goes off, doing quite a bit of damage. This was the first time they had come across a trap in 4e, so they weren't used to looking for them. Mistake #2.

The PCs, dutifully following my script, emerged onto the roof. The sniper opened fire, pinning them down. This actually went as planned. The problem was, as the tanks moved across the bridge (under fire), the BBEG (a skull lord), simply blasted them back. They couldn't make any headway, and used up all their big gun powers. Mistake #3 - make sure your very hard encounters are preceded by a long rest. I hadn't done that.

The PCs realized they had no hope of winning this battle and retreated. Their only hope was a long rest, while over a hundred villagers died around them. This was my biggest mistake. I had no backup plan in case they were unable to achieve their mission. They returned the next morning and pulled it out, but it was a very unsatisfying ending to what I hoped would be a great and glorious battle.


One of the battles I thought was coolest (although the players may not agree) was just prior to the one above. A sahaugin prince and priest came up out of the harbor, riding a giant slug and leading a squad of undead minions. They proceeded up a narrow street like a panzer tank with infantry, destroying property and scattering bystanders. The PCs mowed down the minions, but ran afoul of the slug's spit, which immobilized a couple of them. The prince then dismounted and beat the tar out of them. Laid all but one of them out (the rogue, who had snuck around and was having a shootout with the priest), then just turned and walked away. This gave the PCs time to recover and regroup, and they eventually won.


I think the biggest skill the DM has to learn in 4e is how to adjust on the fly. You should be able to see in the early rounds if the PCs are screwed or not. If so, you need to think about lowering the bad guy numbers (HP, defenses, damage, whatever) or, if too late, a reasonable action for the bad guy to take when the PCs go down, that won't result in a TPK. Good luck.


Oh, and gnolls are fun, too, when the PCs start get a little cocky. There's a great variety of them available on the 'net, and those suckers are fast! They force the PCs to react fluidly, or one of their number will get ganged up on and taken down very quickly.