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From your own experience, either as a DM or a player, what was the best single battle you've ever experienced in Pathfinder? Which one was the most fun while still being a tactical challenge? What other aspects of the battle contributed to it being so memorable? I'm interested in hearing about well-designed fights, not just ones where the players tried something crazy or the dice resulted in highly improbably outcomes.
In other words: What single Pathfinder combat encounter made you reflect on it and say, "Wow, that was a really well-designed fight!"
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I hate to double post, but I think that something I just wrote in another thread about overpowered PCs rally fits the bill of what you're looking for. This is more general advice than a specific battle, but I use this philosophy whenever I design encounters:
Build encounters with numerous challenges and choices in them of varying threat levels. There are a number of elements that make for a memorable encounter:
- Low level mooks to swamp the PCs. If they can't hit the PCs because of a low attack bonus, then they need to use flanking and "aid another" to stack bonuses. Better yet - have them try to grapple/pin the PCs down. Each enemy joining the grapple adds +2 to the CMB check, so a PC who is completely surrounded is facing a grapple check of at least +17 or higher if they all tackle him at once. Also they can use dirty tricks on the PCs, which is always fun. Also - a crap ton of low-level mooks with ranged attacks can still be scary. 30-40 goblins shooting at a single PC are going to hit him with a natural 20 at least a couple of times and possibly crit as well. (and you get to roll handfuls of d20s, which always makes the players nervous)
- Mid-level enforcers to deal damage. Big guys with reach and high strength. Once the mooks can grapple/pin/gum-up the PCs, these guys move in to take advantage and smack them hard. If the PCs can get through the mooks, they'll take them down, but while that's going on...
- High level Bosses to threaten and de-buff. Usually spellcasters. Blindness, Feeblemind, Baleful polymorph, etc. Save-or-Suck spells. Ugly area effects or conditions. If they aren't magical foes, then massive ranged attacks to wear down or take out the PCs and make them vulnerable to the mooks and enforcers.
- Environmental hazards. Poison gasses, falling rocks, icy floors, localized lightning, explosions, etc. PCs always get nervous when they find out that the room itself has a place in the initiative order.
The point is to present the players with choices: Which threat am I going to try to mitigate/elminate? If I sweep aside the mooks, then the enforcers will hit me. If I take out an enforcer, then the Boss will nerf me down. If I attack the boss, I have to pass through the room hazards. If I shut down the room hazards, then the mooks will have more room to swamp me. The threats all layer up on one another and the PCs suddenly have meaningful decisions to make other than "I hit it with my sword".
You don't have to use all of these elements at once, and there is other stuff you can add to the mix: hostages, doomsday devices that need shutting down, etc. You'll want to mix and match all this stuff in varying amounts.
Also, the PCs may STILL steamroll the encounter... but that's okay. If they need to make choices, then they will feel like they were challenged, even if the danger was slight.
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First campaign of Pathfinder I ever played in, as well as the first time fore basically everyone in the party. Fairly high leveled, I think we were at roughly 14-16 at the time. We needed to get to this decimated area of the island where monstrosities had taken over. In our way, in the gap between two mountains, was a Hellknight fortress.
Now, the GM had this idea that we were going to try and make a deal with the knights. He figured that we'd try and do some jobs for them, some side quests he'd planned out, to try and earn passage through their gate. But we didn't have time for that. There was a relic on the other side of that gate that we needed, and fast. So my fiance, who was looking through the Druid spell list, sees the spell that lets you turn trees into catapults. So without missing a beat, she casts multiple spells that turn acorns into bombs, turns the trees around the fortress into catapults, loads up the adamantine golem corpse we'd been hauling around, and starts the assault. The hellknights had no idea what hit them.
What followed was a huge battle. It wasn't anything super tactical, no massive set pieces or anything. It was just a battalion of enemies charging out on horses (as soon as they realized they were under attack, took a turn or two to spread the word and mount up) versus our group of 6 players. Catapult trees were destroyed, horses trampled riders, and at a certain point, we were more or less all backed into each other and surrounded. Thankfully, between a permanently large Barbarian, my fiance turning into a huge Dino, my Eidolon, and our Ranger's combat patrol, the enemies closing in basically walked into a blender. To be fair, the Hellknights werent nearly all that stated up, but the entire thing felt great to just mow down an army. It wasn't easy, they still hurt, but it was a ton of fun.
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That sounds like it was a blast, DHAnubis! I have a similar tale:
Our group was exploring an old crypt when we awoke a terrible undead horde, which was WAY too large for us to take on at that level. Naturally, we fled as fast as we could. As we neared the exit leading back to the surface, though, my character (good aligned) realized that we were about to unleash this plague of undead on the surrounding countryside, which included a couple small villages.
So, he stopped in the final room and gave an epic speech along the lines of, "It's up to us, guys. We either stop them here or they kill everyone in those towns." The players all looked at each other and said, "Yeah, let's go out as heroes."
The DM kindly gave us a few minutes to prepare, which we used to erect barricades out of sarcophagi, set up traps, cast some buffs, and summon some creatures. What followed was the craziest battle you've ever seen, with us using every trick in the book to stay alive. We spent literally 100% of our resources: every spell, potion, and arrow. By the end of it, my character was clinging to his last few hit points, slashing at zombies with a broken scimitar he picked up off of a skeleton. Most of the party went down, but miraculously none of them actually died. We defeated the horde and dragged ourselves out of that crypt with an epic story to share!
Very nice. I do very much miss events like that. Lately, with people's school and work schedules, sessions of the campaigns I am in/running have felt very... muted? It feels mechanical and doesn't seem like anyone is really excited anymore. Seeing stories like this really makes me want to spice things up again.
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Seeing stories like this really makes me want to spice things up again.
In my experience, the level of drama in a game (or even just a battle) is largely dependent on having a good understanding between the DM and the players. I've had DMs who roll their eyes if you try anything other than attack with your primary weapon on your turn. "Uhg, don't make me look up the rules for feinting." On the other side of the table, I've had entire groups of players with absolutely no initiative; they would just stare blankly at me between fights and wait for me to tell them what they fight next.
As a DM or player, we need to be more vocal about what kind of game we want to run or play in. Personally, I love high stakes games where player actions really matter (which should be obvious from my story above), but stuff like that requires a really open-minded, quick-thinking DM, which not everyone is lucky enough to have.
I'm thankful that at least my players have initiative usually, and tend to come up with interesting options on how to solve things. There was at one point an aerial battle that was taking place below a natural land bridge the players were on. One enemy, one...ally, more or less, clashing on the way down the mountain. My fiance, who is a mishmash of classes, but mostly a Scholar, decided "Well, I could shoot at them....but I bought these skis and damn it, I'm gonna use them." So instead of pulling out her rifle, she decided to ski down the side of the mountain and launch herself at them to break up the fight. It worked too. The fall was another issue. The party witch then decided to Entangle/Black Tentacles (I cant remember at this point which) the opponent to the side of the mountain while the gunslinger full rounded the mountainside with some explosive ammo. Buried the opponent in an avalanche.
