Right Behind You!
I’ve said it before, but I think that a surprise round is the strongest buff in the game. The chance to dictate the flow of battle is a huge advantage, and setting up a successful ambush is a tactical slam dunk. For GMs however, it is also a powerful storytelling tool.
Suppose your standard adventuring party marches into a run of the mill dungeon chamber. A pair of skeletons rise from the earthen floor and attack. If all goes according to plan then the following sequence happens:
- The caster lays down some kind of area control spell.
- The cleric buffs the front line dude.
- The front line dude charges.
- The rogue moves to flank.
Those are good (if not particularly exciting) tactics. Your players will feel efficient. They will feel like a team. They may not, however, feel particularly engaged. Especially not if that’s the way most of your encounters seem to go.
Suppose we change it up though? Instead of rising from the floor in plain view of the party, the skeletons drop from recesses in the darkened ceiling. It’s a surprise attack from the rear! In this scenario, the following sequence happens:
- The skeletons get a few free shots on a weaker party member.
- The caster must find a way to get himself out of danger.
- The cleric has to decide whether to heal or buff or wade in himself.
- The front line dude doesn’t have a clear charge path! Can he make it into melee this round?
- The rogue risks an opportunity attack if he wants to get into an advantageous position.
These are the same enemies, but the feel is entirely different. The party is beset by difficult choices, and the experience is one of tension rather than tactics. Obviously the scenarios won’t play out like this every time, but that’s not the point. As a GM, getting players outside of their comfort zone means giving them the chance to think like characters rather than tacticians. Would my rogue run in to save the sorcerer? Am I frightened enough to waste my dimension door? Do I care more about smiting the undead or healing the wounded? There are too many variables to set these situations up intentionally, but that’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to! If you just remember to present different situations rather than simply presenting different monsters, I find that these cool character moments tend to happen by themselves.
Question of the day then. Have you ever thrown your players for a loop with your encounter design? How did you get them out of their tactics-as-usual comfort zone? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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Of course! The simplest implementation of this being monsters that expect the party unless they try to sneak. The fighters will think twice before trying to break down a door, if they end up on the receiving end of four power attacks and a Ray of Enfeeblement.
What I particularly enjoyed was how a mind flayer’s Stunning Pulse turns an assault into a slow, back-to-back fighting retreat…especially if the area was shrouded in magical darkness and the only character with AoE spells was the one who got stunned…good times.
It’s amazing how a plan can fall apart depending on who fails their save. Suddenly everyone has to shift tactics to compensate. Good times.
I got to love Ambushes with Illusions, if your Players are good at not Meta Gaming that can be Fun as hell. Especially if the Wizard Suddenly looks like an Orc to the Fighter, and the Fighter suddenlys looks like a Vampire to the Wizard, and so on.
Good times!
End of “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lQHga-fQCk&t=0m35s
Nothing better.
I had the opposite setup recently. In the encounter, my vigilante player split off to change into costume while the rest of the party went on ahead into the creepy haunted crypt. As they’re exploring the first room:
“You hear a noise behind you. A figure descends the stair. It is tall, imposing, and dressed in black.”
“Oh hey. You’re here. Good.”
“The figure lurches towards you. Reaching out with clawed and rotting hands. Roll initiative!”
The undead attack was just that little bit different from the script. It gave the vigilante an excuse to enter the combat flanking the things on the stair, and that made it interesting. It’s exactly that kind of unconventional opening that I’m talking about.
Basically all of my encounters are designed to test my players in one way or another. The group as a whole is so powerful that only by throwing a wrench in the works can we get a challenge going.
My favorite recently would be the fight with the Hanging Tree, a monster that appears to be a normal tree if you fail a will save until it grabs you by the neck and hangs you on a branch.
I had one of the previous victims rise as a Spectre who flew around attacking those who passed the will save, and the area infested by a Haunt which could be activated by the Spectre to target everyone with Insanity.
So on the first round, several people failed the will save and started walking towards the tree only to get strung up immidiately. One cut himself down, the other had to be saved by the spellcaster (who was then not spending his round throwing out huge blasts of energy).
Meanwhile, the Spectre was draining levels from various people and finally activated the Haunt leaving two of them insane.
They managed to win anyways with some good crits, and to knock out their insane party members for transport back to base, but it certainly did not go as expected.
Everyone had fun though, and I had some genuinely creepy music going as I described the situation and the tree.
Multi-threat encounters are the best. Using hazards like haunts can absolutely change the tone of a fight, and has a way of elevating both the trap and the combat.
Out of curiosity, which haunt did you use?
My personal favorite way to get them out of their comfort zone is the “ambush of opportunity.” Basically, when a sneaky enemy that doesn’t like the party waits until they’re engaged in a fight before attacking. Suddenly, it turns the routine fight and tactics into a mad scamble as their expected combat is thrown for a loop. My personal favorite monster for this is the invisible stalker. Super sneaky, very mobile, very good at tracking the party, and easily explained as “someone rich/magically inclined hates you.” Best part is if the attack doesn’t go well it can usually escape and try again later, leaving your players properly paranoid.
In one encounter, the players were boarding and attacking a merchant ship and the mercenaries on it. It was going well for them, standard tatics working alright. Then I send a note to the sorcerer telling him he hears a whisper in his ear, two blasts of compressed air slam against his back, and he takes the listed damage. Cue sudden panic from the sorc and soon the rest of the party as a new and unseen foe suddenly ramps starts attacking their backline and throws their expected encounter for a wide loop. Best part was I’d established the invisible stalker was hunting them beforehand, but the sorc missed that session and the other players forgot to fill him in. He was fortunate the party had revivify.
Last night, my players teleported themselves out of an ambush, popping up in a more advantageous position about 80 ft away. Unfortunately for them, there was another group of enemies in a nearby chamber.
“Ha ha!” thought I. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire!”
Unfortunately for me, the party had a couple of gargoyle allies who were tagging along, and these new enemies had no way to get through DR 10/magic. The ambush fizzled and my players felt like geniuses yet again.
IllGetYouNextTime.jpg
First of all, how dare there be another Jack! At least he’s not an aether elemental like me.
Second, this isn’t related to the question, but the content of the picture. Our Magus is a Bladebound magus, and Nero the Black Blade can telepathically communicate with the party. Sometimes he warns us of dangers in the night, sometimes he makes comments based on our actions, and sometimes he asks to absorb some evil magic to get more powerful, fun times. He’s controlled by the DM.
Anyway, he knows Aklo, and once cockblocked our magus by telepathically whispering aklo into the guy’s ears. We kinda ship them together now.
Well thanks for that. You just sent me scrambling on a wild have-I-been-doing-it-wrong-this-whole-time? check.
Our bladebound magus is the only one who can speak with his blade. In consequence, everyone else thought he was crazy for the first couple of levels.
I noticed that too, but our DM liked it more the other way 🙂
100% your DM’s prerogative. It’s good fun either way.
my favorite ambush was a combined puzzle and ambush. The party walks into a room and sees a seemingly bottomless chasm between them and the door on the otherside… its too far to jump, the aaracockra isn’t strong enough to carry anyone across, and they only have 1 50 foot rope which isn’t quite long enough to help them get across. A bit of checking around later and they discover that there is an invisible maze that winds across this chasm, and so they begin to make their way across, tapping the space in front of them with a quarterstaff as if they were blind… when Darkmantles drop from the ceiling wrapping around the heads of the halfling fighter and aaracockra sorcerer (so now they actually ARE blind)
long story short the aaracockra crashed into the invisible maze floor and fell into the pit (which dropped them back on the starting side dealing 20 feet worth of falling damage) which finished off the darkmantle and knocked the aaracockra unconscious… the fighter was mostly fine once he killed the darkmantle on his head, and the druid used burning sphere to kill the remaining darkmantles
it really added some tension to an otherwise simple fight/puzzle
Right on! Compare that to “a pair of darkmantles drop from the ceiling.” Much cooler setup than yet-another-wandering-monster.
Our party’s standard ambush:
1. Cleric sees ambush coming because he has stupidly high passive perception.
2. Warlock gets caught in melee and mortally wounded.
Then it’s a standard encounter meaning
1. Melee characters go on the offensive
2. Cleric attempts to fireball the whole scene, is persuaded otherwise, and then goes to what appears to be his only other level, sacred flame.
3. Evoker either uses Bigby’s Hand, Sickening Radiance, or other, less powerful spells except in the case when he buffs someone instead.
4. Party defeats encounter at the cost of lots of health.
I sense a degree of dissatisfaction with your party’s SOP.
It’s certainly been getting better as of late. The cleric has a better understanding of friendly fire after having been exposed to it himself, and the warlock has gained the ability to hover.
Oh dude… I just got the best mental image of your socially awkward warlock: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hover-hand
Not directly relevant to your question, but an example of surprise round shenanigans:
I recently discovered a Spectre while looking around in a tomb. It was invisible, so it got a surprise round and hit me with an incorporeal touch attack while I was flat-footed. Then it won initiative with its +7 initiative and flat-footeded touch attacked me again. Each of those attacks automatically inflicts two negative levels (no save for 24 hours). So I went from Level 8 to Level 4 before I even got to take a turn. That altered plans a bit.
In one of the two campaigns I’ve plotted out but haven’t been able to DM yet, one of the encounters is a pair of hunters (husband and wife plus a big ol’ wolf animal companion). One is a Slayer, one is a Trapper Ranger, and they’ve been going around the island the PCs are trapped on hunting stuff for sport. (Said island, incidentally, is covered in undead, mutated animals and people driven insane by otherworldly energies – like these two.) The PCs have encountered the hunters’ handiwork before (finding already-dead stuff), and the hunters have been tracking the PCs for a while. One night, while the PCs are in a bunker they’ve found that gives them protection at night, the Trapper will sneak over and cover the ground just outside of the bunker with traps. Thus, when the PCs come out for the morning, they’ll set off all the traps, get shot at with arrows from the treeline and face a wolf and a woman with a greatsword, sneak attack and Shatter Defenses. Plus, the hunters will know the party’s general capabilities and strategies (having observed them), so they’ll likely have other tactics I haven’t thought of yet since I don’t know what the PCs will be like.
In my other not-yet-used campaign, the PCs will be exploring some ruins and find a weird door. As they (presumably) check it out and try to open it and read the runes on it, the nearby, invisible, perfectly still Dark Tapestry Oracle will perform a surprise round Brain Drain – not a ton of damage (d4/level) but thematic (she’s using it to learn about them) and will hopefully freak them out. (Me: “The runes are faded, but you can just barely make them out. They say ‘Darkness that once left shall once more return. The fall of man lies in the twilight embers. Our only hope is-‘ Hey, Steve, can you make a Will save? Thanks. You take 5d4 damage as your brain feels like it’s squeezing against your skull. You feel confident that something is in your mind, and it’s right… over… there!” *cue BBEG becoming visible and either PCs freaking out seeing her or PCs freaking out failing to Perceive higher than her likely high Stealth roll*)
Ghosts and spectres are nasty. Hard to make Perception checks against the flying, invisible, incorporeal thing that doesn’t need to breathe.
Of your two encounters, I think I like the hunters more. The foreshadowing is a nice touch, and helps make an ambush feel like fair ball. Of course, you’ll have to deal with players’ Perception checks vs. trap setting there, but that’s par for the course.
In the black tapestry bit, you might add an element of “some of the inscriptions are clearer than others. It’s as if new ones have been added recently.” That way the brain drain doesn’t come from 100% out of nowhere.
Good luck finding players for the game campaigns, btw. Both sound like a blast.
The fun thing is, the traps are still useful even if the players successfully perceive them all. They reduce the player’s ability to move as they are pelted with arrows, and even if they spot every trap they won’t KNOW that they’ve spotted every one, and will get cautious and paranoid. Especially if there’s a bear trap on every single tile. (Won’t be, but it would be funny.) The ambush isn’t the first time the PCs encounter traps (for example, the “abandoned” village full of low DC, low damage traps set by hungry ghouls), so I feel it’s fairer than if they never dealt with any.
Yeah, they’re both pretty crazy campaigns. The one with the island is full of stuff like a “Paladin” that is actually a construct (with electricity replacing positive energy in its abilities) trying to prevent more undead/mutants by killing everything living on the island, or a maze patrolled by an undead swarm of bones that can coagulate into a larger, single beast given enough space, or the stranded Drow soldiers who are so freaked out by everything that they’re actually willing to ally with PCs with minimal intention of screwing them over. And they’re not Drizzit-class good Drow either, they’re just regular grunts with a sense of self-preservation.
The other campaign features the aforementioned Dark Tapestry Oracle augmented with the Shadow-Traced template ( http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/shadow-traced-creature-cr-2/ ), allowing her to menace the party repeatedly using duplicates of herself while always leaving one in reserve so she can escape. That campaign also features an encounter that might count as an ambush for purposes of this discussion: as the party walks back into town after a day of adventuring, they encounter a man being attacked by a ghostly semi-incorporeal monster. They presumably fight it and likely attempt to use channel positive energy or the vials of holy water they recently found in loot, only to discover that such tactics have no effect on the creature. (Regular attacks are decently effective, as it is ectoplasmic, not truly incorporeal, so has DR 5/slashing.) They kill it and it fades away, but they encounter it again a few days later. Clues, some research and some hints by a local NPC eventually determine that it is not a true undead, but rather a Spiritualist Phantom, its host having been hiding nearby or masquerading as a victim or bystander during the attacks. The PCs must then deduce who the Spiritualist is (turns out that Level 2 Ranger who’s their guide in the woods has some extra levels…) and what they want, but the point is that the first Phantom encounter happens unexpectedly after what seemed to be the day’s last encounter. It’s not too difficult, though. Just enough to keep the players on their toes and start the mystery.
An undead swarm of bones that can coagulate into a larger, single beast you say? I hope it’s this thing:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/skeleton-medium/skeleton-multiplying-t-rex/
I love that thing.
I think that some of the weirdness you’re describing here is one of the big selling points of Pathfinder for me. A “bloated” system has a lot unconventional shenanigans buried inside of it. All you’ve got to do is shuffle ’em up and bash ’em together to get something new and exciting. If you’re going for pure Tolkien style fantasy, that might not be helpful. If you’re weird like me, that stuff is a blasty blast.
You know what’s good for “not the usual plan”? Slimes. They’ve all got different weird mechanics going on. Many of which amount to “get out of melee you fool!”
They’re also not going to be anyone’s favored enemy, players probably don’t have the special trick of every single one memorized and are often unduly terrified of the ones they do know, and they can’t be bluffed or otherwise tricked into ceasing to attack.
Ha! I’ve got fond memories of my players’ first encounter with an ochre jelly.
“What do you mean it splits in half!?”
Yeah one of the very first encounters in the 5e game I’m running was an Ochre Jelly and two Grey Slimes. They spent the whole time between doing things than normally work but didn’t and being confused and alarmed.
I was nice about it though and put the grey slimes not next to the full plated and silvered weaponed fighter. Of course I was also not nice and put the ochre jelly next to them so….
I seem to recall losing my masterwork sword in my very first game of D&D to some kind of slime.
“But… But I don’t know how any other weapons work!”
I thought it was a bit of a dick move for a first encounter, so good on ya for being a little lenient on the newbies.
Wait, in the skeleton example wouldn’t the cleric Turn Undead?
What? Don’t be absurd. The cleric in the example obviously channels negative energy. I mean… is out of turn attempts for the day. I mean… is an archetype that gives up turning. You’ve never heard of it. >_>
You forgot the dirtiest trick in the book.
The skeletons are animated objects. ^.^”
^ Yeah, that! <_<