Killer Encounter Combos #1, Level 6 Encounter
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 06:21PM I’ve decided to start a series of posts here at U20 called Killer Encounter Combos, where I describe an encounter site, provide a map, some monsters that work well together, their tactics, and describe a series of events. This one’s for 4E.
Please, enjoy.
The Setup
The players notice a flickering light source down the hall/cave/stairwell. As they enter the room, read to them the following.
Three upright, flaming braziers sit staggered in this room, apparently fashioned by a macabre architect whose only building materials were coffins and dirt. The walls, floor, and even the 30-foot domed ceiling bristle with sarcophagi of all shapes and materials, jammed together at odd angles. Crumbling stone columns struggle with the ceiling’s weight, and a strange chill seeps through your clothing and armour.
Serious art skillz. The exes are braziers (I only used two).
The Critters
One Flameskull - Hidden in one brazier. The other braziers contain an everburning skull, one each.
Two Chillborn Zombies – Hidden in two ground-level coffins.
Two Rotwing Zombies – Hidden in two roof-level coffins.
XP - 1200 (You could toss in a couple of zombie rotters to clutter the battlefield and to bring this up to 1276 XP)
The keys to this encounter's challenge.
The Combat
The flaming skull initiates combat by breathing a fireball on the scout, or by dropping its encounter power on the whole group (if they’re foolish enough to wander in as a group). The zombies bust out of their coffins, and initiative is rolled.
Keep the chillborn zombies in melee (charge in whenever possible—move action to move 4 squares, then a standard action to charge another 4) so they are immobilizing enemies and making full use of their ongoing cold damage plus their stacking cold auras (allowing you to deal up to 15 cold damage at the start of the player’s turns).
The flying zombies should also charge as often as possible to take advantage of their extra 2d6 damage on a successful flying charge, and the flaming skull has plenty of movement (fly 10) and range (also 10) to maneuver between columns and nail the PCs for a very respectable 2d6+6 fire damage.
Extra Mileage
- Add a hulking zombie for a level 7 encounter and have it bash over a column or two to potentially crush the PCs for 1d10+4 damage, knocking them prone, and creating difficult terrain or a low wall.
- Destroying four columns could collapse the roof.
- PCs should be able to smash the columns over with DC 17 or 21 strength checks (moderate and hard DCs for 6th level).
Reader Comments (6)
I really like where you're going with this series: a one-shot encounter that I can drop into my campaign with minimal work (for the DM) that will spice up the game. I look forward to reading future articles in the "Killer Encounter Combos" series. Please keep them coming.
We've been trying to do something very similar with skill challenges on our blog and look forward to seeing your take on a Killer Encounter Combo skill challenge.
Thanks Ameron, glad to hear you're interested. I like the idea myself as it lets me provide something useful to the community without busting my buns, and encounter design really comes naturally to me (at least, it's a lot of fun, so it feels natural).
This particular encounter resulted in a TPK last weekend. Never my goal, but noteworthy in my group as we have some very hardy power-gamers pulling the strings.
What's your website URL? I've harassed Sqaurespace a few times to work on a commentluv-style solution, but until that's availble I'm cool with seeing URLs in my comments, if you care to share (especailly since I could use some skill challenge advice).
Haha - serious art skills, indeed! :D
Like Ameron saifd, thanks for the easy-to-use content. I might just skip the flameskull and add in a couple more chillborn zombies for a really terrigble encounter. :)
Nice! I like the idea of the zombie hulk smashing the columns and the possibility of the roof dropping in. Deadly.
@ Goblineer: A fine idea, but I'd be concerned about causing a TPK with no way for your players to avoid it. The stacking aura damage is an anomoly in the rules, and if you start dealing 15-20 damage on your PCs—for free—you'll find that 6th-level PCs with 60 HP will all be dead (and a little sad, like mine were) in a hurry.
My PCs were barely overcome with the encounter as set (the flameskull toasted the last guy with 13 hp left).
Hey kaeosdad, welcome to the site (at least, I don't recognize your name). I'm glad you like the idea. That was the original encounter plan but I ran out of XP to spend... although the rotwing zombies were rather disappointing. You could get rid of both of them and toss in the zombie hulk (in an extra-large casket) and still have a 6th-level encounter.
Thanks guys.
@ RPG Ike: Thanks for letting me plug my site.
Over at Dungeon's Master (http://dungeonsmaster.com) we're in the process of amassing a library of skill challenges. Much like your "Killer Encounter Combos" article, our skill challenges are one-shot deals that you can just drop into your existing game. A few sample scenarios are included in the Setup section of each skill challenge which should help DMs explain how and why the PCs find themselves in a given situation.
We just launched on February 1, but we've got a lot of good stuff published so far. Please come and check us out.