It's our birthday, and we want to give you the gift of D&D Beyond! Every day this week, join our community challenge for a chance to win 1 of 5 daily bundles, and to be entered to win a Legendary Bundle at the end of the week.
Each day will be a new challenge in a different one of our community spaces—including here in this forum thread for one of our upcoming days—so keep an eye on our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Discord for all the chances to win.
I'll update this post each day with the latest challenge so that you don't miss out! 😉
Based on the Tuesday challenge of exciting encounters, I decided to go with this one. This is part of a mini-mega dungeon based off the many rooms of the classic Nickelodeon show, Legends of the Hidden Temple (https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/69c0262c-6784-4538-831a-8fce0d943a53). I'm sure I'm not the first to create and encounter with that in mine, I'm also sure I won't be the last, but here the rub. My players skipped it, along with several other rooms actually, but each room had a themed encounter and this one was the Pirate's Cove. Filled with nasty undead pirates to prevent the players from taking a boat and sailing past a good chunk of the map. It was a built in shortcut that they did not partake in. They still ended up skipping a bunch of stuff, but it was not the fault of the undead pirate encounter/shortcut that I had actually created.
Still a fun idea, I'm sure I'll get the opportunity to revisit it some day.
I was DMing a short campaign themed after the 1995 movie Jumanji. Some keypoints of the story were bound to the 14 riddles in the movie. The players talk about plans to handle each encounters they remember form the movie, the first one being bats. The cleric has his own plan to handle these creatures: the Blindness/Deafness spell! So he keeps the spell prepared the whole time and he always saves at least one 2nd level slot - even in deadly situations - to use it. "You will thank me when we will meet those creatures", he says. As the story goes on, the players manage to trigger 13 out of the 14 riddles in the movie. Guess which encounter they never met!
The riddle of the encounter: They fly at night, you’d better run. These winged things are not much fun. The link of the encounter: link
I was running DDAL10-00 for my new group and they were on the one where they have to investigate strange/scary sounds coming from the cave. Once they made it to the cavern with the zombies, they were very surprised once the extra zombies started showing up. Took them several rounds before completing the puzzle to stop the zombie flood, then an extra couple of rounds to clear out the zombies that had made it out.
I ran a one shot once called the Lonely hat where an inn keeper wanted to repay his life debts to every adventure he has met now that he is wealthy, but he needed them to find one last treasure before he could pay them. my players spent a week on a side quest (in game) in town before going on a 3 day adventure and skipped through half the puzzles and extra treasure on their way to their objective. I guess they will never know what that burnt wooden key is or was for 😞. it's always amazed me at how you think you thought of everything and then one of your players finds a solution you never thought of.
This one is inspired from a random encounter in Skyrim. The adventurers come across a weary traveler asking for help who turns out to be a vampire in disguise! I've never run this one but is meant to be incorporated into a campaign where the players encounter many people on the road, some helpful, some neutral, and some dangerous.
I once ran an encounter with a Chaotic God who challenged my players to a game of Ijnamuj. It was basically Jumanji with skill challenges based on how they rolled in the game board. There were assasin snipers, earthquakes, a player was turned into a wererat, the boardgame grew wings and tried to escape, and even when they broke their wings a swarm of giant ants tried to take it underground. Easily the best encounter I've ever run
Some of you have cleverly used Gleam to grab today's theme! I'm digging these stories already. I've updated the earlier post with all the challenge information for today!
Don't forget to include a link to the encounter in DDB to qualify! ;)
I'm sharing my first encounter that I have yet to run. Its the encounter from Lost Mine of Phandelver. I am very new to D&D and getting some friends together to play this. It may be simple, but I am excited!
I recently ran a Level 16 One Shot for a good friend of mine who was moving, as a going away party. We ran an all evil alignment party, and while the final battle was super epic, the opening "hot start" might have been my favorite encounter I've ever ran. Hope you enjoy it!
TLDR: Evil Characters on an Assassination Mission, Scorching Heat, Giant Spiders & Giant Scorpions, Ambush by a Giant Purple Worm, Harvest the Poison for later!
Last week I made a special one-shot encounter to thanks my players to help design some low-level encounters for a project of mine. They made level 20 characters and I just tease that they will fight a high CR enemy without giving more details. They were expecting the tarrasque since they were a group of seven player. They were quite surprise when tiamat show up after Arkhan and his crew summon her. The fight was not an easy one, but the heroes prevail!
I love doing random encounters that have a reason to be in a certain place and time rather than just doing mindless, pointless combat for the sake of combat. That said I also like to lean heavily on the "Hard/Deadly" encounters [for which the encounter builder is perfect] to get that added sense of danger and to encite in my players a feeling of "not every fight is worth fighting".
I'm currently running the Frozen Sick module for the second time but added into my own campaign, and this time around I decided I wanted to make the sailing trip feel more like an episode of Deadliest Catch rather than a travelling montage. Which is why I made a random table of weather effects that improve/reduce the chances of making the trip on schedule as well as different attacks on a lone ship travelling through treacherous, frozen waters. This includes being attacked by Giant Octopus and Crabs; Merrows; Chuuls and even a faction of Arctic Pirates for reasons that are campaign specific, not at the same time obviously, but I've combined them into a single encounter for ease of running it. I am yet to run this but through my own playtest I think my players will enjoy it and find the challenge appealing.
Unfortunately, I can't link to the encounter as it is no longer on D&D Beyond, however, the (Level 2) Party had been traveling through a small, river trading town called Fairwater when they were asked to investigate some trouble on the road. After a short skirmish (in which the Party healed more of the Bandits than they hurt), the Bandits were chased to a cave and tunnel system beneath a waterfall. Despite another fight (in which, again, more healing than hurting), the Party joined the leader of the Bandits and proceeded to travel 2 days away from a distress message they'd been given to march into a swamp and face a pair of Hags (knowing full well what they were getting in to due to repeated warnings by local Fey) in their own lair to attempt to rescue the Bandit Leader's daughter on the night of her 13th birthday. After driving the Hags out, the LG Paladin and NE Sorceress proceeded to argue for an hour over whether or not to kill the child. The Paladin said, "Yes," but the Sorceress wanted to save the girl's life. The argument became moot at midnight when the Hag coven, now at full power, fought back to defend their home. The Party was allowed to retreat due to certain otherwise positive treatment by the rest of the Party during the argument. Not sure where things may have gone from there due to Pandemic issues shutting down our game and not quite prepped for online gaming (until much more recently).
Haven't run it yet, but I've been working on a Plague of Ancients Dungeoncraft Adventure for the Rime of the Frostmaiden DDAL10 campaign I'm running. Expanding on part of the book where the party meets a grieving Mammoth who's Giant Master's Great Axe had been stolen. The party will eventually meet the other adventurer's who stole the Great Axe and murdered the Ice Giant and have to choose between helping them escape and angry group of Giants or helping the Giants exact revenge in a chase sequence fight.
My latest encounter was when i took my players to a dark cave that was a lot bigger than expected they were all level 5, the big problem was i forgot they were level 5 so i made them fight a hombrew godzilla creature that was a lot stronger than i remembered. Also after that encounter they had to fight a bunch of bandits to collect the special orb in the cave so it made it harder to fight godzilla and the bandits. One of the players almost died twice and it made it fun since it took longer than expected to do the encounter but the reward behind all this combat made it worth it
I never got the chance to run this encounter but I wish I could have! It would have been the final fight for the party against a BBEG in a homebrew oneshot. I was so pumped when I created it but unfortunately, schedules don't always match up.
Party was fighting Venomfang too well, even playing smart. 5 lvl 4’s were eating him up, and he couldn’t roll to regain its breathe weapon. Missed it 4 rolls in a row. Had to do something, so a second young dragon, this time a black one, flew in. Did a ton of damage first breath weapon, and it never rerolled for it again. Both dragons defeated almost effortlessly, only one unconscious PC. Unbelievable, but the players loved it!
I made a fun encounter to introduce my kids to DnD. I used a simplified ruleset I found online so there would be less for them to keep track of. I had a printed map and some papercraft minis. I even let them "decorate" their own minis. It was a large forest map (36" x 48") and I basically let them run wild. One of them decided it would be good to get smart with the local crown's guard and got thoroughly beat down as a 1st level character. He also decided it would be a good idea to play loud music near a sleeping young blue dragon. LOL I let him do it because I wanted them all to see the freedom of choice, but also the consequences of choice. The others talked the blue dragon into leaving them alone since it was really just sleepy, and had to use all their healing potions to get their brother back to health. They did some more exploring and I ended the adventure with a scale Ancient Red Dragon Papercraft mini that they had never seen. The look on their faces was priceless. They all died horrible deaths from massive fire damage on its first attack. I then had them "wake up from a nightmare", but realizing that they had all had the same dream. They still talk about "that time we played that game and the brother killed them all".
My 'encounter' was simple. A large easily covered pit on the ground with a 40ft drop that the adventuring party were to easily see. Within the pit were rock pillars so they could hop skip and jump across and the easiest of DCs - 5 Acrobatics Check. To make it a bit more interesting I had there be 4 Piercers on the cavern ceiling, waiting to drop and catch them on the shoulder or something, aiming to wear them down slightly so they wouldn't meet my end of dungeon boss in full tank mode.
Over goes the water genasi. Over goes the dragonborn fighter. Up steps the Bard. Natural 1.
He falls 40 feet and takes 4D6 damage and is prone, but conscious.
Then the Piercers fall. First one hits and puts him unconscious, second one hits, automatic crit and 2x death fails. The final 2 miss (I had to show my rolls to prove I didn't fudge them!) The two that miss splat on the ground. The two that hit bounce away and land on the ground nearby him.
The race is on.
The Piercers going 5ft per round vs the remaining party deciding to jump 40ft to floor to save.
They land. Badly. The dragon born goes unconscious nearby the moving piercer. The Genasi lands safe and heals the Bard. The Piercer attacks the dragonborn, critical hit, 2x death failure. The other Piercer goes to finish him off (at 5ft per round, basically a slug) and goes to attack.
The bard, now up, uses cutting words and the Piercer's attack does 0 damage thanks to a solid roll.
After that they cleaned up but my heart was in my mount at this point! The adventurers were level 7 at this point and it should have been super easy!!!
It's our birthday, and we want to give you the gift of D&D Beyond! Every day this week, join our community challenge for a chance to win 1 of 5 daily bundles, and to be entered to win a Legendary Bundle at the end of the week.
Each day will be a new challenge in a different one of our community spaces—including here in this forum thread for one of our upcoming days—so keep an eye on our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Discord for all the chances to win.
I'll update this post each day with the latest challenge so that you don't miss out! 😉
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Based on the Tuesday challenge of exciting encounters, I decided to go with this one. This is part of a mini-mega dungeon based off the many rooms of the classic Nickelodeon show, Legends of the Hidden Temple (https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/69c0262c-6784-4538-831a-8fce0d943a53). I'm sure I'm not the first to create and encounter with that in mine, I'm also sure I won't be the last, but here the rub. My players skipped it, along with several other rooms actually, but each room had a themed encounter and this one was the Pirate's Cove. Filled with nasty undead pirates to prevent the players from taking a boat and sailing past a good chunk of the map. It was a built in shortcut that they did not partake in. They still ended up skipping a bunch of stuff, but it was not the fault of the undead pirate encounter/shortcut that I had actually created.
Still a fun idea, I'm sure I'll get the opportunity to revisit it some day.
I was DMing a short campaign themed after the 1995 movie Jumanji.
Some keypoints of the story were bound to the 14 riddles in the movie.
The players talk about plans to handle each encounters they remember form the movie, the first one being bats.
The cleric has his own plan to handle these creatures: the Blindness/Deafness spell!
So he keeps the spell prepared the whole time and he always saves at least one 2nd level slot - even in deadly situations - to use it.
"You will thank me when we will meet those creatures", he says.
As the story goes on, the players manage to trigger 13 out of the 14 riddles in the movie. Guess which encounter they never met!
The riddle of the encounter:
They fly at night, you’d better run. These winged things are not much fun.
The link of the encounter:
link
I was running DDAL10-00 for my new group and they were on the one where they have to investigate strange/scary sounds coming from the cave. Once they made it to the cavern with the zombies, they were very surprised once the extra zombies started showing up. Took them several rounds before completing the puzzle to stop the zombie flood, then an extra couple of rounds to clear out the zombies that had made it out.
Link to the encounter.
I ran a one shot once called the Lonely hat where an inn keeper wanted to repay his life debts to every adventure he has met now that he is wealthy, but he needed them to find one last treasure before he could pay them. my players spent a week on a side quest (in game) in town before going on a 3 day adventure and skipped through half the puzzles and extra treasure on their way to their objective. I guess they will never know what that burnt wooden key is or was for 😞. it's always amazed me at how you think you thought of everything and then one of your players finds a solution you never thought of.
This one is inspired from a random encounter in Skyrim. The adventurers come across a weary traveler asking for help who turns out to be a vampire in disguise! I've never run this one but is meant to be incorporated into a campaign where the players encounter many people on the road, some helpful, some neutral, and some dangerous.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/ee235893-6bc8-449d-8f8d-9701990a71be
I once ran an encounter with a Chaotic God who challenged my players to a game of Ijnamuj. It was basically Jumanji with skill challenges based on how they rolled in the game board. There were assasin snipers, earthquakes, a player was turned into a wererat, the boardgame grew wings and tried to escape, and even when they broke their wings a swarm of giant ants tried to take it underground. Easily the best encounter I've ever run
But as I didn't use the DDB for the encounter I will just post my first encounter ever, from trying to escape a local jail in our first session https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/ad332556-b719-46bb-9b03-5334d170ef10
Some of you have cleverly used Gleam to grab today's theme! I'm digging these stories already. I've updated the earlier post with all the challenge information for today!
Don't forget to include a link to the encounter in DDB to qualify! ;)
I'm sharing my first encounter that I have yet to run. Its the encounter from Lost Mine of Phandelver. I am very new to D&D and getting some friends together to play this. It may be simple, but I am excited!
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/ebd5c040-f868-4ac8-8446-552df2a23582
I recently ran a Level 16 One Shot for a good friend of mine who was moving, as a going away party. We ran an all evil alignment party, and while the final battle was super epic, the opening "hot start" might have been my favorite encounter I've ever ran. Hope you enjoy it!
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/718ca522-ff30-4c8a-b50b-b9bfd45f31ca
TLDR: Evil Characters on an Assassination Mission, Scorching Heat, Giant Spiders & Giant Scorpions, Ambush by a Giant Purple Worm, Harvest the Poison for later!
Last week I made a special one-shot encounter to thanks my players to help design some low-level encounters for a project of mine. They made level 20 characters and I just tease that they will fight a high CR enemy without giving more details. They were expecting the tarrasque since they were a group of seven player. They were quite surprise when tiamat show up after Arkhan and his crew summon her. The fight was not an easy one, but the heroes prevail!
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/c711d9b6-ced6-4785-9171-8e6d7da057c2
I havn't run the encounter yet and it is quite a simple one. But i am really looking forward to runing the encounter agianst Shemshime from Candlekeep Mysteries
Encounter Builder for Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Fifth Edition (5e) - D&D Beyond (dndbeyond.com)
I love doing random encounters that have a reason to be in a certain place and time rather than just doing mindless, pointless combat for the sake of combat. That said I also like to lean heavily on the "Hard/Deadly" encounters [for which the encounter builder is perfect] to get that added sense of danger and to encite in my players a feeling of "not every fight is worth fighting".
I'm currently running the Frozen Sick module for the second time but added into my own campaign, and this time around I decided I wanted to make the sailing trip feel more like an episode of Deadliest Catch rather than a travelling montage. Which is why I made a random table of weather effects that improve/reduce the chances of making the trip on schedule as well as different attacks on a lone ship travelling through treacherous, frozen waters.
This includes being attacked by Giant Octopus and Crabs; Merrows; Chuuls and even a faction of Arctic Pirates for reasons that are campaign specific, not at the same time obviously, but I've combined them into a single encounter for ease of running it.
I am yet to run this but through my own playtest I think my players will enjoy it and find the challenge appealing.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/cf2ea404-439a-4aa3-9c9c-2623922eab1a
Unfortunately, I can't link to the encounter as it is no longer on D&D Beyond, however, the (Level 2) Party had been traveling through a small, river trading town called Fairwater when they were asked to investigate some trouble on the road. After a short skirmish (in which the Party healed more of the Bandits than they hurt), the Bandits were chased to a cave and tunnel system beneath a waterfall. Despite another fight (in which, again, more healing than hurting), the Party joined the leader of the Bandits and proceeded to travel 2 days away from a distress message they'd been given to march into a swamp and face a pair of Hags (knowing full well what they were getting in to due to repeated warnings by local Fey) in their own lair to attempt to rescue the Bandit Leader's daughter on the night of her 13th birthday. After driving the Hags out, the LG Paladin and NE Sorceress proceeded to argue for an hour over whether or not to kill the child. The Paladin said, "Yes," but the Sorceress wanted to save the girl's life. The argument became moot at midnight when the Hag coven, now at full power, fought back to defend their home. The Party was allowed to retreat due to certain otherwise positive treatment by the rest of the Party during the argument. Not sure where things may have gone from there due to Pandemic issues shutting down our game and not quite prepped for online gaming (until much more recently).
Haven't run it yet, but I've been working on a Plague of Ancients Dungeoncraft Adventure for the Rime of the Frostmaiden DDAL10 campaign I'm running. Expanding on part of the book where the party meets a grieving Mammoth who's Giant Master's Great Axe had been stolen. The party will eventually meet the other adventurer's who stole the Great Axe and murdered the Ice Giant and have to choose between helping them escape and angry group of Giants or helping the Giants exact revenge in a chase sequence fight.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/8365c2b1-b3e0-4dc0-b417-885899015cd0
My latest encounter was when i took my players to a dark cave that was a lot bigger than expected they were all level 5, the big problem was i forgot they were level 5 so i made them fight a hombrew godzilla creature that was a lot stronger than i remembered. Also after that encounter they had to fight a bunch of bandits to collect the special orb in the cave so it made it harder to fight godzilla and the bandits. One of the players almost died twice and it made it fun since it took longer than expected to do the encounter but the reward behind all this combat made it worth it
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/cad31454-0ac0-49dc-91b8-a9760450c3ee
I never got the chance to run this encounter but I wish I could have! It would have been the final fight for the party against a BBEG in a homebrew oneshot. I was so pumped when I created it but unfortunately, schedules don't always match up.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/243fde7a-77ef-44b0-8c12-9c9a85f0c02b
Party was fighting Venomfang too well, even playing smart. 5 lvl 4’s were eating him up, and he couldn’t roll to regain its breathe weapon. Missed it 4 rolls in a row. Had to do something, so a second young dragon, this time a black one, flew in. Did a ton of damage first breath weapon, and it never rerolled for it again. Both dragons defeated almost effortlessly, only one unconscious PC. Unbelievable, but the players loved it!
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/d3a7cc92-e0b0-4f44-b15b-0bddd41f562f
I made a fun encounter to introduce my kids to DnD. I used a simplified ruleset I found online so there would be less for them to keep track of. I had a printed map and some papercraft minis. I even let them "decorate" their own minis. It was a large forest map (36" x 48") and I basically let them run wild. One of them decided it would be good to get smart with the local crown's guard and got thoroughly beat down as a 1st level character. He also decided it would be a good idea to play loud music near a sleeping young blue dragon. LOL I let him do it because I wanted them all to see the freedom of choice, but also the consequences of choice. The others talked the blue dragon into leaving them alone since it was really just sleepy, and had to use all their healing potions to get their brother back to health. They did some more exploring and I ended the adventure with a scale Ancient Red Dragon Papercraft mini that they had never seen. The look on their faces was priceless. They all died horrible deaths from massive fire damage on its first attack. I then had them "wake up from a nightmare", but realizing that they had all had the same dream. They still talk about "that time we played that game and the brother killed them all".
I should do that more often. :-)
Recreated here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/65a37f28-2804-4f73-9e68-9d8f36a63ab6
My 'encounter' was simple. A large easily covered pit on the ground with a 40ft drop that the adventuring party were to easily see. Within the pit were rock pillars so they could hop skip and jump across and the easiest of DCs - 5 Acrobatics Check. To make it a bit more interesting I had there be 4 Piercers on the cavern ceiling, waiting to drop and catch them on the shoulder or something, aiming to wear them down slightly so they wouldn't meet my end of dungeon boss in full tank mode.
Over goes the water genasi. Over goes the dragonborn fighter. Up steps the Bard. Natural 1.
He falls 40 feet and takes 4D6 damage and is prone, but conscious.
Then the Piercers fall. First one hits and puts him unconscious, second one hits, automatic crit and 2x death fails. The final 2 miss (I had to show my rolls to prove I didn't fudge them!) The two that miss splat on the ground. The two that hit bounce away and land on the ground nearby him.
The race is on.
The Piercers going 5ft per round vs the remaining party deciding to jump 40ft to floor to save.
They land. Badly. The dragon born goes unconscious nearby the moving piercer. The Genasi lands safe and heals the Bard. The Piercer attacks the dragonborn, critical hit, 2x death failure. The other Piercer goes to finish him off (at 5ft per round, basically a slug) and goes to attack.
The bard, now up, uses cutting words and the Piercer's attack does 0 damage thanks to a solid roll.
After that they cleaned up but my heart was in my mount at this point! The adventurers were level 7 at this point and it should have been super easy!!!
The encounter is here - But it's just Piercers lol - https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/6e162b98-261f-4539-9340-28e5be321cc8