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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4596134" data-attributes="member: 58197">Ah yes, the cathedral fight...The PCs had just entered an infernal cathedral in the Shadowfell, and emerged into the nave (for those unfamiliar with cathedral architecture, that's the big main room with the really high arched ceiling).  There were statues in alcoves along the sides, and red stained glass windows through which shifting lights shone.The lights through the windows produced bands of shadow which moved along the floor.  Each band was 1 square wide, and they were spaced 3 squares apart.  Each round, they moved one square toward the entrance.  When one of them moved past the end of the nave, it vanished and a new one appeared at the other end.  If you passed through a shadow-band, it inflicted (IIRC) 15 points of necrotic damage, and each one dealt damage separately, so if you just charged straight down the middle, you'd almost certainly kill yourself.  I represented the shadow-bands with strips of black cloth on the battlemat.The alcoves in the walls were out of the path of the shadow-bands, so the PCs could duck in and hide there.  However, when they did so, the statues would animate and attack them.  Disabling the statues was relatively easy but did take a little time, so the PCs had to work their way down the nave, ducking into an alcove to avoid the shadow-bands, killing the statue there, then darting around into the next alcove.At the far end of the cathedral was a vampire wizard (another custom monster, I think based off a sahuagin priest - I usually have at least one homebrewed monster per session) who blasted the PCs with long-range lightning attacks as they approached.  As soon as they got close, she started using her vampiric powers to dominate and bite.  Ordinarily, the party would have made short work of her by herself; but because the shadow-bands and the statues slowed them up so much, she really wore them down before they were finally able to close and finish her.  She almost got away, too.I didn't actually expect that fight to be as dramatic as it was; it wasn't even a boss fight, just one encounter on the way into the dungeon below the cathedral.  But it ended up being a really memorable battle, and one that emphasized for me just how important terrain is to making a good fight.Another thing worth noting about that battle is that it didn't put the PCs in any great danger.  They had to work for their victory, but at no point was it really a close contest.  But the challenge of negotiating the treacherous terrain, and the vampire's ability to pull out new surprises as they got closer, kept everyone excited and engaged.  That also was a lesson to me: Not every exciting fight has to end with half the party on the floor and the rest in single digits.Yeah, the spider-web thing was very cool, but mainly because your character pulled it out with a spectacular save at the last instant - it wasn't anything about the encounter setup that made it stand out.</blockquote>

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