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I'm DMing Kingmaker and during our last game my players encountered the Cult to Gyronna and sought to investigate. The sent the one female PC and Lily (who I've fancied up as a duelist and is currently involved with a PC) to infiltrate and the other PCs to follow close behind. My players are all level 6 and are a Heal Bot Cleric, a Switch Hitting Ranger, a Charge Machine Dragoon and a Comical Frog-like Gunslinger. All in all, they are very optimized and blow through a lot of encounters. As such, I like to mix things up with them some and add a few things here and there. Sometimes I slap advanced on a monster, sometimes I add a couple more mooks, whatever. Even then, the players seem to massacre most encounters and the generic hex encounters are mostly quick and sometimes, honestly, just a bit tedious as its simple a matter of how quickly they gun them down. However, the joy my players get from gluing a new hex onto their explored maps, their willingness to get involved when the story presents itself, their interactions with, great ideas and combats when they meet bosses/big encounters makes it all worth it.
Anyway, back to the story. The Cult encounter looks like one thats WAY easy for where the players should (especially since they were using Lily to help) so I decided to spice it up just a bit, and it turned out to be a very memorable encounter. When the fight started Niska wound up confusing both the infiltrating good guys (Lily and the Cleric) who started duking it out with each other. To make matters even more entertaining, before the went in, the Cleric cast Shield Other on Lily to make sure she was out of danger. The Cleric started beating herself to death. The cult members and Niska go down in the blink of an eye to the Ranger's (Lily's boyfriend) many shot. So after 2 rounds of PC v. Cult combat, the battle went for at least another 10 as the Ranger tried to grapple his girlfriend Lily to keep her from doing any more harm, to which Lily crited her boyfriend. This ensued, with Lily dropping her beloved ranger to -7 and on the last turn of her confusion. While this is going on the slightly klepto Gunslinger went to investigate/steal the bloodshot eye gem stone. This was where I spiced things up. I put an identical madness effect on the stone for anyone who touched it. So while the party is trying to end a cat fight the gunslinger turns around and starts blast teammates.
All in all, an encounter that my party normally would have just mowed down in 2 rounds turned into an extra memorable 15ish round fight against each other that saw 3 of the 4 party members hit negative HP.
Anyone else have fun tales of spicing up encounters out there? Any other suggestions for spicing them up besides the standard advanced template/extra mooks?
I saved the Niska fight for later on in the module -- they were at least level 5 or 6 by the time they fought them, and it was somewhere above APL. The players were looking for a kidnapped baby.
They were all hiding out in a barn with an unlocked door. Downstairs, the cat's eye gem was used as the focus for an Unhallow (Darkness spell). On the altar was the baby. Behind them, on the wall, was a Symbol of Pain keyed to Good creatures. The Cleric of Gyronna was accompanied by three or four Rogues of a lower level; they were all Dhampyrs rather than human, and as such, heal from the same Negative energy that damages good creatures. Niska had the Quicken(?) Channeling feat from one of the Ultimate books, meaning she could channel twice in a round.
Granted, in our games, we run channel as affecting everything; you don't simply choose whether you're only healing or harming undead. This was actually a mistake we made when converting to Pathfinder and never started doing it the right way.
So the players approached the barn, looked inside, and it was dark. The party mage flew up above and considered bringing everybody in through the window, dispelled the Darkness, and everybody walked inside anyway. A pressure plate warned the cultists below that somebody was approaching, so the priestess began casting spells (off the top of my head, I remember Divine Favor, possibly Shield of Faith, possibly potions for the lackeys ...).
I can't exactly give the round-by-round, but I recall the following:
They filed into the room one-by-one, some of them having to use Squeezing rules to enter (Large-sized Druid, mounted charger's mount, possibly the animal companion). As they entered, they were hit by the Symbol of Pain because they had dispelled the Darkness spell earlier. The party wizard's first action was to Resilient Sphere the baby. The enemy Cleric's first action was to activate Aura of Madness and spent most of the rest of her actions channeling negative energy to harm the intruders and heal her minions, keeping them alive for an obnoxious length of time compared to their level.
In retrospect, I would modify a couple things; the Cleric was too far back (30+ feet) to have legally affected the party as soon as they entered the room. In addition, the room should have been completely dark anyway (they have Darkvision as Dhampyrs), which would have given a better home-field advantage to the enemies.
I too have ramped up the effect of Gyronna
afterall in the river kingdoms to the south she has a big bad base
Ive also had her trying to benefit from both the party clearing out beasties and all their new settlements. Im sure she loves to meddle with such things
It also kept the party on the back foot as they dont know who N.... actually is, and whether or not G is the big bad of the APs
Plus Gyronna is a nice counter to that sexist pig erastil!!