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

[ExploderWizard]

We don't get to game as often as I would like, so our best and worst combats are from KOTS (which we may finish in a year, who knows?)

Best:
Our party was trying to find an NPC and went searching at an outdoor quarry/ dig site.
The NPC's at the site, and thier beasties were not very nice to us and we were forced to defend ourselves. I think the main reason this fight was so fun was because we were "doing it wrong"

The warlock was using his powers to gain temp hp and hit the main bad guy with a major shot just before the bad guy turned invisible.
The power inflicted damage on the target when the warlord was struck. Once the bad guy turned invisible, our 20 CON warlock charged into battle provoking 3 opportunity attacks on purpose.
We all laughed at him as he took enough damage to drop him to 2 hp. The invisible villan keeled over and was reduced to less than 0 from the damage. We started calling the warlock Balboa.
" Hey Mortimer what are you doing?" "Winning!"

Worst:
The first Irontooth experience was the worst. The encounter reminded me so much of boss mob "phases". We had a strong suspicion that there may
have been a leader type in the vicinity so we held back our big powers until he showed up. Once we saw the big bad we concentrated our biggest attacks on him and actually hit a lot.
We had no idea about the insane number of hit points involved. Once we bloodied him and he entered super-macho man mode, he
proceeded to wipe us out. It was pretty funny and we all had a good laugh. We just imagined the waterfall as a swirling instance portal and it all made sense.
The next set of PC's that headed for that place were armed with mighty metagame knowledge and the fight was a bit of a challenge but not overwhelming.
Knowing that we needed to keep DPS slow and even until the boss entered phase 2 made a world of difference.
It was that fight that really highlighted the MMO-like quality of gameplay for us.

 

[Subumloc]

I'm a DM and I'm running a converted Red hand of Doom; the party started at 8th level and now is 10th.

Worst encounter so far: a Solo Fen Hydra, with a slight level adjustment. The hydra in nothing more than a huge HP bucket, with four attacks per round that do little damage and nothing else. This, coupled with a streak of bad rolls from the strikers (a warlock and a ranger) resulted in what is so far the only real "grind" encounter IME.

Best Encounter: in the last sessions, every encounter has been a real blast, because the party has begun to understand how to interact with the environment to gain the uper hand in fights, and to really cooperate. For example, they have recently won a hard fight with an elite NPC thanks to a well placed Wall of Fire combined with a bull rush from the ranger and a slow effect from the warlock. More in general, I love when the players start improvising (like climbing up a wall and jumping down opponents or the like).

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Best encounter: Curiously, all of the contenders are from an LFR mod: Impiltur 1-1.

The players were going to attack a goblin encampment but there is no real reason to start the encounter with the players in the "place your characters here" box. So I drew out what was visible of the encounter and the players came up with a plan: they were going to split the party with half of the party approaching through the brambles to the south of the goblin encampment and half of them approaching from the north. Pushing their way through the heavy, thorny brambles, the divided party faced stiff resistance from goblins who (barely) heard them coming but prevailed after a challenging fight that saw the rogue climb through a window to get to a goblin sharpshooter who was hiding in the cavern, get shot up and then climb back out the window to follow the goblin as the goblin executed a fighting retreat.

Worst Encounter: Again, there are two contenders, but I am going to go with: an elite, insubstantial insane priestess in ruined temple sanctuary filled with smart targetting traps (that the monster can move across with impunity) and difficult terrain. Beating through 100+ insubstantial hit points with a cure serious wounds and a healing word is dull beyond belief. Doing so while being beat on with a spiritual weapon her recharge powers made for serious grindspace.

Worst. encounter. concept. ever.

 

[jbear]

The best ones: The ones I've tweaked and added my own personal touches to

The Worst ones: Ready made encounters I've run as is.

I'm running two groups of 4e. All new players pretty much except 3. The first group I began with I ran things pretty much as the adventures came a) becasue I was learning how to play 4e myself and b) I had no time to invest in spicing things up with a cool story etc. I ran the adventure that comes in the DMG. Surprisingly everyone enjoyed the encounter with the dragon at the end. As I looked through my nice shiney KotSF adventure set grave doubts arose as to the grindy repetitiveness of Hobgoblin Encounters. I have already added horror elements to being in the Keep itself and tied in the LFR version of it to swap out Shadow Ritualists for some of the Hobgoblins, but I feel I need to invent more options for the players to be able to choose fun exciting non-combat paths through a lot of the slog work of the keep (which is huge, especially considering how rarely we get a chance to play... we would be down there for years).

With my second group I invested Story time creation into adapting the LFR Escape from Sembia and it really came to life. A death defying escap over building tops to lose themselves in the busy evening market, distracting the guards with rearing horses and hiding in the eerie ruins of old town.

When they escaped through Ye Olde Gate, towards the mountains they met with the Hobgoblins in Ye Olde Ruined Keep and it turned sour. I hadn't tweaked it. I didn't realise I should have. I hadn't run a battle with Soldiers before. What a slog! The only light relieft was occasionaly throwing their Paladin into the fire. In the end when the had obviously won and yet three of them were still on there feet the Hobgoblins fled out of sheer boredom. (word of advice: be careful using too many soldiers: very hard to hit, plenty of HP, not very fun. Maybe Brutes are a better choice: Hard hitting and easier to hit... everyone is happy.)

So, having learnt my lesson, and having had so much fun during the skill challenge escape (my first ever) I decided to introduce a new player into the game via a combat encounter with a Skill Challenge running at the same time.

I must admit, I have preferred to adopt Stalker0's Obsidian system (although I adjust it to my own personal needs/preferences). Worth checking out!!!

The party was approached by a talking cat with a strange triangular shaped pendant necklace which begged them to free its sister from the darkness. (The cat was the new characters pet... not a familiar... just a cool pet... under the effects of the character's sisters Animal Messenger Ritual). The new character a Drow Warlock had escaped from the underdark after shaming her house. She was to be punished for heresy although the true reason for her impending death was the prophesy of the family witch that their house would suffer nothing but disaster as long as she was alive. Anyway I digress... I set up a three tiered shrine made up of 6 magic circles and a circle of stones and sacrificial altar where a "shadow drider" was being summoned. Each magic circle had a differnt effect: slow, immobilse, poison damage, sleep,blindness which attacked the will or fortitude of someone outside the ritual taking place. An opposing Drow house, whos interest was to keep her alive, thus ensuring their rivals continued bad luck, had organized the distraction of the leaders mid-ritual as the sister searched for help.

The party arrived to face 12 Drow minions (reskinned elven archers with an attack power that blinded) and semi invisible shadow claws (minions reskinned from somewhere else, I cant remember), young children that slowly turned upon them as the srambled up the narrow stairs.

They had to disarm the magic circles, to be able to enter the Stone Circles and free the Warlock. Little did the know the children were not performing the ritual, but stopping it til the Master returned. So when the last child fell the ritual kicked back in.

The had to free the warlock from the shadow drider which now had a painful life draining aura around it that damaged anyone inside the circle of stones and yet was invunerable to attacks. And then escape from the sacrificial altar with the never-seen-but-deeply-feared "real drow" hot on their trail.

A trail which led them into a desecrated cementary. (The skeleton Encounter frome Escape from Sembia). As the passed through the terrifying cementary (which attacked each of their will each round they lingered... which was quite funny the all went back to back and marched defensively at half their speed thus receiving three attacks before reaching the other side) the passed a menacing tree that emenated anger and supernatural hatred and had 5 skulls dangling from its branches... as soon as they left the other side of the cementary the skulls began to call back to them in no recognisable language (I had written out the script backwards and when i read it it sounded like latin)... then in front of them 5 headless skeletons arose from the shrubbery...nee...ehem....

The most fun part was when the first attached the skeltons and the head of the one struck called out rorre!!! (error) and then when he rolled a critical fumble (which sometimes I roll again to confirm the seriousness of the fumble... in this case a 4 was bad enough for me to rule he had blasted his fellow skeleton in the back) the unwary victim cried 'Norbac' !(in Spanish, Cabron = Bastard!) and suddenly one of them caught on.

The quickly deciphered the heads message that they begging the PC's to bring them their heads and release them from their suffering...Oh how close they had been to deciding to destroy the heads!!!!

So three ran to collect the heads suffering the fear attacks from the graveyards supernatural hatred and the other 3 bravely faced the fury of the mindless bodies pummeling them to near death while trying to keep the attackers at bay but not destroy them. Retreating finally into the graveyard where the bodies were unable to enter.

As they gave them their heads back the bodies entered and set their souls to rest near the dessecrated tree. The supernatural fear left. The spirit of the leaders guided them to some hidden treasure in one of the tombs and promised to watch over thei sleep i that night, and so they were rewarded with a peaceful rest as well.

I think I will keep this ind of attitude towards constructing my encounters: ways that combat can be ended with little 'encounter tiny adventures'. Not all but definitely enough to avoid ever having to have the monster flee out of share boredom.

Hope something in there can be useful to make your and your groups first experiences with 4e a fun one.

 

[LoneViper]

My personal favourite battle in 4E so far has been a solo encounter my 4th level group had with a Fen hydra. That fight was epic and really showed how a simply but well built solo can hold an entire party of PCs at bay and bring them to their limits. The fight took about hour to do but never seemed to drag. The terrain was varied (some rough, some los blocking, high ground etc) but nothing too outlandish.

Worst encounter so far: a Solo Fen Hydra, with a slight level adjustment. The hydra in nothing more than a huge HP bucket, with four attacks per round that do little damage and nothing else. This, coupled with a streak of bad rolls from the strikers (a warlock and a ranger) resulted in what is so far the only real "grind" encounter IME.

I'm surprised nobody else has commented on this... sounds like the Fen Hydra is a controversial pick!

I'd really like to know what the circumstances were in these two scenarios. Since the monster is the same, it would be neat to isolate the other factors and see what makes a fight that could be "worst ever" end up being "best ever." PC level? Terrain? Magic Item distribution? Tactics, of either PCs or enemies? Just lucky/unlucky dice?

I think it would be pretty helpful, especially when running Solo monsters. Holy Bovine, Subumloc, care to comment?

 

[Acid_crash]

Besides the combats that the DM handwaves to pass it by, I'd say the worst ones, IME, are the ones with solo's. We know we will win, they have huge hit points, and the DM just never puts any spirit into the encounter.

The best ones I've noticed are when the DM uses tactics against us with multiple opponents that we have to respond to and actually make us think, not just mindless hit or miss.

 

[gribble]

Somewhat disturbingly, after more than a year of weekly 4e games, I can't really recall any encounters that stand out as awesome...

Probably the best I can remember was against some sort of cyclops solo, where it was real seat of your pants stuff - I think in the end the fight came down to the party wizard rolling at natural 20 on a death save to get up and win the fight on a handful of hp (everyone else was down and out or otherwise unable to participate).

The worst have been about 90% of the encounters in the WotC P2/P3 adventures. Lots of hp grind, where the party never really felt threatened, but still had to wade through a metric ton of enemy hp.

 

[N0Man]

If you want people to stop comparing D&D 4e to WoW you have to stop using the term reskin, lol.

Huh? What does the term "reskin" have to do with WoW? I've played WoW since beta, and the only time I've heard "reskin" used is in term of UI modifications. If that's the connection you are making, then it should be pointed out that the term "reskin" existed long before WoW, and has not only referenced UI's of games, but UI's of operating systems, and textures for countless 3D games, among other things...

Sometimes the 4E to WoW comparisons really are a stretch...

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Best fights as DM were those on the second dungeon level in Sellswords of Punjar, played with some modifications. In 4e the good, memorable fights are the ones where the combatants have room to move and a lot of different things and effects are happening.

The worst fight was against the Blue Ooze in KotS. The players were already tired and their characters had spent their dailies. Two players were missing and I didn't scale the encounter properly (see the trend here? ) It was the roll-to-hit-roll-for-damage boredom well known from previous editions, especially against solo monsters without interesting abilites or movement modes.