It was my first time running a campaign and the party was entering the beholders lair. The battle was a bit more intense then my part expected with one player getting disintegrated, two others being turned into stone, and 2 dying. There was only one player left at the end of it, I was honestly shocked it didn't end up being a TPK but fortunately it ended in one of the most intense encounters the group still talks about today.
My adventurers had been shown various altars with colored gems which they had picked up while exploring an ancient temple crawling with undead. They ended at a room with a rainbow colored wall of light blocking their progress. They were forced to place the gems in the correct sequence (following the light spectrum) in slots in the stone next to it. The light extinguished to show the final room had a deep scar running down into the darkness below and several undead shambling about. In each corner was a plinth with a socket for a gem.
The team took immediately to attacking the monsters and ignored the plinths. Every round though a new monster would claw his way from the dark depths. Finally one character realized they could not defeat the endless mobs and began gathering the gems. At this point it turned into a mad rush for that character to sprint to each spot and use his bonus to place the gem in its position creating a beam of light which weakened the enemies but did not slow their flow from the depths. As characters went down to the onslaught it turned into a last ditch effort of throwing the final gem across the chasm to on character standing next to the final plinth. A dexterity roll one point above the minimum I had decided on allowed the character to barely catch the gem and slap it into its position on his turn.
A blinding white light erupted as all the colors merged and burned the remaining undead to ash. A net of light sealed the darkness below, finishing the quest.
I was putting together a one shot where a Bone Devil had made a pact with an aspiring gem cutter. The Bone Devil granted the aspiring gem cutter amazing, other worldly talent, in exchange for a weekly sacrifice of a heart transmutated into a gem that the Bone Devil would consume. So as the gem cutter started killing people in town to gather hearts, and after several weeks of bodies dropping, the party is hired to investigate.
They ended up in two back to back encounters, including one where they killed the gem cutter as she tries to escape. I figured that they would retreat and take a long rest before finishing their investigation. Nope.
So, they're investigating the shop and find a basement. Upon entering they find the Bone Devil and a few Bearded Devils waiting for them. And on a table off to the side they can see 7 hearts that were transmutated into gems. As they enter the basement the Bone Devil addresses them.
So they're all about half strength, and like any good BBEG, he starts monologuing and explaining how he didn't have an invested interest in the town or the gem cutter, and just wanted his sacrifice. The party starts negotiating with the Bone Devil as the bearded devils wait with bated breath. They say they just want the killings to end and that if the Bone Devil leaves, takes his minions, and the killing stops, the affair will be considered closed and the party will report the aspiring gem cutter as the culprit. A couple of good party dice rolls and bad monster rolls later, The Bone Devil has no interest in the town, and states that there is always another dolt willing to make a deal, and states he will leave.
The party quickly flees the basement, exits the shop to find the town guard has arrived to help them out after hearing reports of all the battles in the area. The Captain of the Guard enters the shop to complete his investigation and finds that the shop and basement are empty. They're hailed as heroes for stopping the killings. I'd guess it's better to be lucky than good.
A player (playing an Order of the Lycan Blood Hunter) had to drop out of my Curse of Strahd campaign, and I made her character count. She saved an NPC's life by infecting them with Lycanthropy, but the two of them were then kidnapped by the Barovian werewolves and forced to fight to the death; winner joins the pack. Joined by Rudolph van Richten and Ezmerelda D'Avenir, the players broke up the fight club, but had to rappel down the cliffside due to fortunately placed variant of the Magic Circle spell.
This was more of an arc than a single encounter. I used a night hag disguised as a healer come to help with a form of sleeping sickness that was afflicting the hamlet, but in actuality she would feed on the life of those in town while they slept. Using the soulmongers ability they would work on the townsfolk until they expire and then bring them to an ancient tree deep in the nearby forest. This tree acted as a gateway to a pocket dimension where the a nightmare shepherd created a world of his own. The souls harvested would be twisted into denizens to populate the plane bringing the nightmare to life. The players were captured and brought into the nightmare realm where they had to fight their way to and defeat the nightmare shepherd to escape.
I ran this encounter in two parallel campaigns in the same homebrewed setting. The party was crossing a dungeon I set into the old city sewers. At some point, one of the players noticed a crack in the wall which they peered through to see an old dusty room which seemed to be a mage's hideout. The room was in complete disorder with a broom lying on the floor, open and tattered books spread everywhere, seemingly haven fallen out of the chained library in the back of the room, as well as a few moldy jars on a shelf. The party decided to enlargen the crack and tear down parts of the wall after thinking there were no creatures in the room. As one of them stepped in and crouched down to investigate the broom lying on the floor, a book came zipping right at them - they passed the DEX save but initiated combat against a swarm of animated books. When the whole party got engaged, more and more objects started coming to life - a rug of smothering, an animated chained library as well as the animated broom started attacking the players from all sides, seemingly powered by some residue magic of the old mage who used to live here.
The party struggled at first, being surprised by objects they didn't expect to come alive. But once they figured out what was going on and rightfully assumed that the animated objects were vulnerable to fire, they quickly took down the objects. However, both of the times I ran this encounter, a peculiar conflict of interests hindered the party: both times, one of the players randomly decided to try and catch and tame the broom! One of them indeed managed to incapacitate the broom and restrain it to their backpack before the other players could kill it. In the other group however, the broom was quickly seared to cinders by the party's wizard.
As the party finished up combat and looting the room, they continued crossing the sewers and eventually stumbled across an old ghost bound to one of the dungeon chambers. When they told the ghost about the room, the ghost went
"Oh! That's my old hideout! Is everything still intact? Is my broom Johnny well and animate?"
That made for some chuckles at the table and the players had to awkwardly pretend like the broom was long gone.
But now, I have to figure out a system for my player to tame an animated broom! To be fair, I should have expected as much shenanigans from my players :p
This is a remembrance from over 30 years ago! I cannot remember all of the details, but I certainly remember how I felt when I heard the description of this demon queen.
We had a very large party of mid to high level adventureres along with "the orb" so the battle was long, but the party was victorious.
this was the final fight my players had to go through to clear their name of a murder they didn’t commit. A wealthy weapons dealer making deals with demons summoned a big bad that my players mopped the floor with.
The party was my wife playing a Water Genasi (sea themed) Sorcerer, and my daughter playing a Luxodon Monk.
So, the encounter was meant to be hard, but not deadly, and they suddenly made it very easy. They were supposed to face off with two burglars from a thieves guild who had stolen an experiment from some powerful spell casters. They caught up with them at the local inn -- where the party was also staying. The experiment was an other encounter if they triggered it by exposing the case it was in to lightening, which I expected to happen because my wife's character's spells are almost all lightening and water themed. However, I'd forgotten she had gotten ahold of a bunch of oil in a pervious encounter. And I didn't think anything of it.. Until she uses an action on one turn to throw the oil against the wall, and on her next turn used fire bolt to light the place up. It killed the dark elf outright, and I made the orc decide to try to bolt out the window with the experiment when he saw his companion killed and the hotel on fire. He tried to take the case but lost a contested strength check with the monk and thus losing the case before jumping out the window and running away.
Now the fight wasn't a fight, it was save the inn before it burns down. The Luxodon Monk used step of the wind race down stairs, fill her trunk with water from the kitchen, and return, while the sorcerer was trying to save the documents the thieves left behind from the flames to find out who hired them. After the monk used her the trunk as a fire hose to put out the room, the sorcerer then successfully convinced the inn keeper it wasn't their fault (Nat 20 persuasion check) but paid for damages anyway.
I once was running Tomb of Annihilation; and the PCs had a tentative alliance with some bush league Red Wizards of Thay in order to collect magic MacGuffin keys to get into the megadungeon - during their first negotiation, the Red Wizards demonstrated they had one such MacGuffin and visibly put it into a Bag of Holding.
Expecting a double-cross, the PCs ambush the wizards to punk their stuff, so one of the Red Wizards took their dagger and ripped the Bag of Holding, spilling the all-important plot-driving MacGuffin into the astral plane. Then I mimed the Wizard's gurgling laugh with a punctured lung and cracked teeth.
The look on my players faces when they thought the campaign was over was *priceless.*
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I am a Canadian Dungeon Master, which means I reflexively apologize when the monsters score a critical hit on the players' characters.
I designed some Random encounters to test and learn game mechanics in DnD. I used my „Sammlung“ (https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/618103e6-cf6b-4ca9-a6c6-4d33cdd9ef6f) to collect some monsters at and above difficulty rating and played some deadly rounds with 3 characters. These were designed to reflect our current party and I happily killed ourselfs….what a fun….it was only simulation to learn the group and action mechanics. I did this during holiday evening after hiking in german and austrian mountains….watched by my familiy that deemed me mad 😎😁. I will never forget.
I've started a campaign with my friend that wanted a D&D initiation for a while and after a few session, our sorcerer's running gag was to try to deceive people for no reason be telling she could not read. She used that strategy again on the road to the next city. I had prepared an encounter with an ogre, the big man would ask if the party wanted to pass the bridge and if so they would have to pay him a fee (and combat if they ever decided to brute force their way into this). Once again, the sorceress used her charismatic skills to try and persuade the ogre that she couldn't read. The ogre failed his insight check (suprising! xD) and she gave him a piece of paper with stuff written on it. While the ogre was trying to read what was written, they all took a suprise round over him because they didn't want to pay. He got destroyed in a few turn thanks to that first round. That was such a creative way of winning the fight, I felt so happy that my newbie players used their imagination instead of straight on fighting.
I surprised my players with a ship of undead, a drowned master as captain mentally controlling the ship and action lairs and working for a kraken. They were better not jump in the water infestect of giant zombies sharks.
It was for the finale of my campaign (Dragon of Icespire Peak) which I run. It was all wrecked because of a half-orc fighter who manage to get crits and used action surge with a flame tongue great sword. So the combat ended in the fighter's turn. So to pad time, I added an ancient white dragon as a freebie for other players hit. The combat with ancient white dragon was more exciting. I didn't kill the player characters, I ended by saying they woke up.
I think that one of the most fun encounter I ran was a War Priest with Antilife Shell - the party (Circle of the Shepard Druid, Diviner mage, battle-master fighter and Arcane Archer fighter) had to really work hard to get him down as they couldn't get near him to attack him!
Don't forget you can have a load of fun with those caster monster if you switch out the spells and work out some good combos of spells.
The players really enjoyed this encounter too as they had to get creative to overcome the challenge!
I sadly never got to run this, because the players decided to head to different direction in the game. Summary in English since the encounter was written in my native language:
The players could have accepted a task from Falcon the Hunter to figure out what was wrong with a treant nearby. It had been attacking his customers(city boy type nobles mostly) and his bussiness had been dwindling for a long time. All he can tell them that the treant attacks anything and everything that comes near it and Falcon has a broken leg to attest to that. There's also a corrupted dryad hanging around the treant.
If they had accepted the task they would have found three NPCs near the treant, who would have been arguing about what to do with it. One of them wanting to find a way to help the obviously corrupted treant while the other two wanting to just destroy it.
Then depending on PC actions the encounter could have gone at least three ways: they help the treant and get blessings + an ally, they help the two NPCs to kill the treant and their former group memeber(they get loot and 2 allies) or they convince the the two attacking NPCs to help the treant as well and get blessing+ 3 allies.
I was planning on rping the treant as terrifying rotting beast while corrupt and if the PCs managed to heal it as Grandmother Willow and the dryad as kind of disney pocahontas type(except you know getting cursed for her love instead of living to fall in love with another man)
My party, two clerics, bard, sorcerer & rogue, was traveling in the Underdark to rescue a friendly dwarf from an old duergar outpost. After being greeted by several gricks as they entered, they discovered the entrance to a cave after hours of searching in the basement. Unfortunately, they were not particularly adept at sneaking up and caused quite a bit of noise. When they reached a large room, they saw their friend lying motionless in a ritual circle at the far end. Completely careless, they ran into the room, towards the dwarf, only to be ambushed a fraction of a second later by six duergar, who had been completely invisible before. Because of the unforeseen attack and the previous weakening by the Gricks, an extremely exciting fight developed, at the end of which everyone barely escaped with their lives. Due to the fact that the fight dragged on for a long time and they had already lost some time before, they could only recover their dwarf friend dead.
I wanted to run an epic level 20 one shot for my birthday. Drawing inspiration from some of the charity streams, including B Dave Walter's God Squad from last year's anniversary event I wanted to include the chance of many very powerful beings showing up. I didn't have the charity format though as it was going to be a home game, so drawing on the Chaos magic idea from Heroes of the Planes I decided I would have Nat 1s and Nat 20s also become chaos rolls that would have the potential to change the terrain of the battle, grant some benefit or summon one of the' Mega Monsters' which could be allies or enemies; including Tiamat, and an Ancient Silver Dragon for Bahamut. I couldn't quite think of enough to put it into a d100 table, so settled for a d20. Then I hopped over to the encounter builder and starting pulling monsters to face, and came up with this: the idea was a group of level 20 adventurers would be called in because a city had vanished into the Astral Plane and they were to find it and bring it back. While there, they would run into an Astral Dreadnought and very likely end up in the pocket space inside it where they would fight a fiend and a couple of other creatures and hopefully all the rest of the chaos would begin to happen. However, I didn't actually get to run this encounter or my back up one from the preview of Dragon of Icespire Peak. In fact, though I had panned and wanted to play D&D all that weekend the closest I got was throwing some LEGO animals into a modified version of Escape, which worked out, at least everyone had some fun. And now I get the chance to improve my design.
The best encounter I ever ran is also the first encounter I ever ran in D&D and on DNDBeyond! It is the Goblin Ambush from Lost mine of Phandelver. This really set the tone and kickstarted my groups and my passion for D&D!
It was my first time running a campaign and the party was entering the beholders lair. The battle was a bit more intense then my part expected with one player getting disintegrated, two others being turned into stone, and 2 dying. There was only one player left at the end of it, I was honestly shocked it didn't end up being a TPK but fortunately it ended in one of the most intense encounters the group still talks about today.
My adventurers had been shown various altars with colored gems which they had picked up while exploring an ancient temple crawling with undead. They ended at a room with a rainbow colored wall of light blocking their progress. They were forced to place the gems in the correct sequence (following the light spectrum) in slots in the stone next to it. The light extinguished to show the final room had a deep scar running down into the darkness below and several undead shambling about. In each corner was a plinth with a socket for a gem.
The team took immediately to attacking the monsters and ignored the plinths. Every round though a new monster would claw his way from the dark depths. Finally one character realized they could not defeat the endless mobs and began gathering the gems. At this point it turned into a mad rush for that character to sprint to each spot and use his bonus to place the gem in its position creating a beam of light which weakened the enemies but did not slow their flow from the depths. As characters went down to the onslaught it turned into a last ditch effort of throwing the final gem across the chasm to on character standing next to the final plinth. A dexterity roll one point above the minimum I had decided on allowed the character to barely catch the gem and slap it into its position on his turn.
A blinding white light erupted as all the colors merged and burned the remaining undead to ash. A net of light sealed the darkness below, finishing the quest.
I was putting together a one shot where a Bone Devil had made a pact with an aspiring gem cutter. The Bone Devil granted the aspiring gem cutter amazing, other worldly talent, in exchange for a weekly sacrifice of a heart transmutated into a gem that the Bone Devil would consume. So as the gem cutter started killing people in town to gather hearts, and after several weeks of bodies dropping, the party is hired to investigate.
They ended up in two back to back encounters, including one where they killed the gem cutter as she tries to escape. I figured that they would retreat and take a long rest before finishing their investigation. Nope.
So, they're investigating the shop and find a basement. Upon entering they find the Bone Devil and a few Bearded Devils waiting for them. And on a table off to the side they can see 7 hearts that were transmutated into gems. As they enter the basement the Bone Devil addresses them.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/bb8646c4-bd4a-47f0-80ca-6d399ca4c8c4
So they're all about half strength, and like any good BBEG, he starts monologuing and explaining how he didn't have an invested interest in the town or the gem cutter, and just wanted his sacrifice. The party starts negotiating with the Bone Devil as the bearded devils wait with bated breath. They say they just want the killings to end and that if the Bone Devil leaves, takes his minions, and the killing stops, the affair will be considered closed and the party will report the aspiring gem cutter as the culprit. A couple of good party dice rolls and bad monster rolls later, The Bone Devil has no interest in the town, and states that there is always another dolt willing to make a deal, and states he will leave.
The party quickly flees the basement, exits the shop to find the town guard has arrived to help them out after hearing reports of all the battles in the area. The Captain of the Guard enters the shop to complete his investigation and finds that the shop and basement are empty. They're hailed as heroes for stopping the killings. I'd guess it's better to be lucky than good.
~ May all your rolls Crit ~
A player (playing an Order of the Lycan Blood Hunter) had to drop out of my Curse of Strahd campaign, and I made her character count. She saved an NPC's life by infecting them with Lycanthropy, but the two of them were then kidnapped by the Barovian werewolves and forced to fight to the death; winner joins the pack. Joined by Rudolph van Richten and Ezmerelda D'Avenir, the players broke up the fight club, but had to rappel down the cliffside due to fortunately placed variant of the Magic Circle spell.
Link
This was more of an arc than a single encounter. I used a night hag disguised as a healer come to help with a form of sleeping sickness that was afflicting the hamlet, but in actuality she would feed on the life of those in town while they slept. Using the soulmongers ability they would work on the townsfolk until they expire and then bring them to an ancient tree deep in the nearby forest. This tree acted as a gateway to a pocket dimension where the a nightmare shepherd created a world of his own. The souls harvested would be twisted into denizens to populate the plane bringing the nightmare to life. The players were captured and brought into the nightmare realm where they had to fight their way to and defeat the nightmare shepherd to escape.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/a3843c64-bb5b-4ad0-a621-04c30b6310a2
I ran this encounter in two parallel campaigns in the same homebrewed setting. The party was crossing a dungeon I set into the old city sewers. At some point, one of the players noticed a crack in the wall which they peered through to see an old dusty room which seemed to be a mage's hideout. The room was in complete disorder with a broom lying on the floor, open and tattered books spread everywhere, seemingly haven fallen out of the chained library in the back of the room, as well as a few moldy jars on a shelf. The party decided to enlargen the crack and tear down parts of the wall after thinking there were no creatures in the room. As one of them stepped in and crouched down to investigate the broom lying on the floor, a book came zipping right at them - they passed the DEX save but initiated combat against a swarm of animated books. When the whole party got engaged, more and more objects started coming to life - a rug of smothering, an animated chained library as well as the animated broom started attacking the players from all sides, seemingly powered by some residue magic of the old mage who used to live here.
The party struggled at first, being surprised by objects they didn't expect to come alive. But once they figured out what was going on and rightfully assumed that the animated objects were vulnerable to fire, they quickly took down the objects. However, both of the times I ran this encounter, a peculiar conflict of interests hindered the party: both times, one of the players randomly decided to try and catch and tame the broom! One of them indeed managed to incapacitate the broom and restrain it to their backpack before the other players could kill it. In the other group however, the broom was quickly seared to cinders by the party's wizard.
As the party finished up combat and looting the room, they continued crossing the sewers and eventually stumbled across an old ghost bound to one of the dungeon chambers. When they told the ghost about the room, the ghost went
"Oh! That's my old hideout! Is everything still intact? Is my broom Johnny well and animate?"
That made for some chuckles at the table and the players had to awkwardly pretend like the broom was long gone.
But now, I have to figure out a system for my player to tame an animated broom! To be fair, I should have expected as much shenanigans from my players :p
Link to the encounter:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/2895b04e-af28-4885-9f2f-eb70eb3cad50
they/them
This is a remembrance from over 30 years ago! I cannot remember all of the details, but I certainly remember how I felt when I heard the description of this demon queen.
We had a very large party of mid to high level adventureres along with "the orb" so the battle was long, but the party was victorious.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/95eecfe0-5e49-46a3-a611-845b63479630
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/e30ccabc-156d-4af3-9c3b-1e40f698f4c5
this was the final fight my players had to go through to clear their name of a murder they didn’t commit. A wealthy weapons dealer making deals with demons summoned a big bad that my players mopped the floor with.
The party was my wife playing a Water Genasi (sea themed) Sorcerer, and my daughter playing a Luxodon Monk.
So, the encounter was meant to be hard, but not deadly, and they suddenly made it very easy. They were supposed to face off with two burglars from a thieves guild who had stolen an experiment from some powerful spell casters. They caught up with them at the local inn -- where the party was also staying. The experiment was an other encounter if they triggered it by exposing the case it was in to lightening, which I expected to happen because my wife's character's spells are almost all lightening and water themed. However, I'd forgotten she had gotten ahold of a bunch of oil in a pervious encounter. And I didn't think anything of it.. Until she uses an action on one turn to throw the oil against the wall, and on her next turn used fire bolt to light the place up. It killed the dark elf outright, and I made the orc decide to try to bolt out the window with the experiment when he saw his companion killed and the hotel on fire. He tried to take the case but lost a contested strength check with the monk and thus losing the case before jumping out the window and running away.
Now the fight wasn't a fight, it was save the inn before it burns down. The Luxodon Monk used step of the wind race down stairs, fill her trunk with water from the kitchen, and return, while the sorcerer was trying to save the documents the thieves left behind from the flames to find out who hired them. After the monk used her the trunk as a fire hose to put out the room, the sorcerer then successfully convinced the inn keeper it wasn't their fault (Nat 20 persuasion check) but paid for damages anyway.
The Original Fight:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/acf24d27-e83b-4d24-a0d4-19be875c76e7
The Experiment that would have been unleashed if the case had been hit with electricity/lightening
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/67e968b6-8534-4ffd-aaba-fc1b9f11b205
I once was running Tomb of Annihilation; and the PCs had a tentative alliance with some bush league Red Wizards of Thay in order to collect magic MacGuffin keys to get into the megadungeon - during their first negotiation, the Red Wizards demonstrated they had one such MacGuffin and visibly put it into a Bag of Holding.
Expecting a double-cross, the PCs ambush the wizards to punk their stuff, so one of the Red Wizards took their dagger and ripped the Bag of Holding, spilling the all-important plot-driving MacGuffin into the astral plane. Then I mimed the Wizard's gurgling laugh with a punctured lung and cracked teeth.
The look on my players faces when they thought the campaign was over was *priceless.*
I am a Canadian Dungeon Master, which means I reflexively apologize when the monsters score a critical hit on the players' characters.
I designed some Random encounters to test and learn game mechanics in DnD. I used my „Sammlung“ (https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/618103e6-cf6b-4ca9-a6c6-4d33cdd9ef6f) to collect some monsters at and above difficulty rating and played some deadly rounds with 3 characters. These were designed to reflect our current party and I happily killed ourselfs….what a fun….it was only simulation to learn the group and action mechanics. I did this during holiday evening after hiking in german and austrian mountains….watched by my familiy that deemed me mad 😎😁. I will never forget.
I've started a campaign with my friend that wanted a D&D initiation for a while and after a few session, our sorcerer's running gag was to try to deceive people for no reason be telling she could not read. She used that strategy again on the road to the next city.
I had prepared an encounter with an ogre, the big man would ask if the party wanted to pass the bridge and if so they would have to pay him a fee (and combat if they ever decided to brute force their way into this). Once again, the sorceress used her charismatic skills to try and persuade the ogre that she couldn't read. The ogre failed his insight check (suprising! xD) and she gave him a piece of paper with stuff written on it. While the ogre was trying to read what was written, they all took a suprise round over him because they didn't want to pay. He got destroyed in a few turn thanks to that first round. That was such a creative way of winning the fight, I felt so happy that my newbie players used their imagination instead of straight on fighting.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/7a4213c0-c2f4-4d58-917e-c218964b7654
I surprised my players with a ship of undead, a drowned master as captain mentally controlling the ship and action lairs and working for a kraken. They were better not jump in the water infestect of giant zombies sharks.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/8dbc2845-9ae1-45fe-80ba-368a2e4d337f
It was for the finale of my campaign (Dragon of Icespire Peak) which I run. It was all wrecked because of a half-orc fighter who manage to get crits and used action surge with a flame tongue great sword. So the combat ended in the fighter's turn. So to pad time, I added an ancient white dragon as a freebie for other players hit. The combat with ancient white dragon was more exciting. I didn't kill the player characters, I ended by saying they woke up.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/e07ff68a-2ede-4683-a7ac-a707609ccf1f
I think that one of the most fun encounter I ran was a War Priest with Antilife Shell - the party (Circle of the Shepard Druid, Diviner mage, battle-master fighter and Arcane Archer fighter) had to really work hard to get him down as they couldn't get near him to attack him!
Don't forget you can have a load of fun with those caster monster if you switch out the spells and work out some good combos of spells.
The players really enjoyed this encounter too as they had to get creative to overcome the challenge!
I sadly never got to run this, because the players decided to head to different direction in the game. Summary in English since the encounter was written in my native language:
The players could have accepted a task from Falcon the Hunter to figure out what was wrong with a treant nearby. It had been attacking his customers(city boy type nobles mostly) and his bussiness had been dwindling for a long time. All he can tell them that the treant attacks anything and everything that comes near it and Falcon has a broken leg to attest to that. There's also a corrupted dryad hanging around the treant.
If they had accepted the task they would have found three NPCs near the treant, who would have been arguing about what to do with it. One of them wanting to find a way to help the obviously corrupted treant while the other two wanting to just destroy it.
Then depending on PC actions the encounter could have gone at least three ways: they help the treant and get blessings + an ally, they help the two NPCs to kill the treant and their former group memeber(they get loot and 2 allies) or they convince the the two attacking NPCs to help the treant as well and get blessing+ 3 allies.
I was planning on rping the treant as terrifying rotting beast while corrupt and if the PCs managed to heal it as Grandmother Willow and the dryad as kind of disney pocahontas type(except you know getting cursed for her love instead of living to fall in love with another man)
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/44ab951f-fb96-4ea7-81db-9c15e0a3ada4
My party, two clerics, bard, sorcerer & rogue, was traveling in the Underdark to rescue a friendly dwarf from an old duergar outpost. After being greeted by several gricks as they entered, they discovered the entrance to a cave after hours of searching in the basement. Unfortunately, they were not particularly adept at sneaking up and caused quite a bit of noise. When they reached a large room, they saw their friend lying motionless in a ritual circle at the far end. Completely careless, they ran into the room, towards the dwarf, only to be ambushed a fraction of a second later by six duergar, who had been completely invisible before. Because of the unforeseen attack and the previous weakening by the Gricks, an extremely exciting fight developed, at the end of which everyone barely escaped with their lives.
Due to the fact that the fight dragged on for a long time and they had already lost some time before, they could only recover their dwarf friend dead.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/91d64308-4245-4614-98e6-8fd28c2a5358
I wanted to run an epic level 20 one shot for my birthday. Drawing inspiration from some of the charity streams, including B Dave Walter's God Squad from last year's anniversary event I wanted to include the chance of many very powerful beings showing up. I didn't have the charity format though as it was going to be a home game, so drawing on the Chaos magic idea from Heroes of the Planes I decided I would have Nat 1s and Nat 20s also become chaos rolls that would have the potential to change the terrain of the battle, grant some benefit or summon one of the' Mega Monsters' which could be allies or enemies; including Tiamat, and an Ancient Silver Dragon for Bahamut. I couldn't quite think of enough to put it into a d100 table, so settled for a d20. Then I hopped over to the encounter builder and starting pulling monsters to face, and came up with this: the idea was a group of level 20 adventurers would be called in because a city had vanished into the Astral Plane and they were to find it and bring it back. While there, they would run into an Astral Dreadnought and very likely end up in the pocket space inside it where they would fight a fiend and a couple of other creatures and hopefully all the rest of the chaos would begin to happen. However, I didn't actually get to run this encounter or my back up one from the preview of Dragon of Icespire Peak. In fact, though I had panned and wanted to play D&D all that weekend the closest I got was throwing some LEGO animals into a modified version of Escape, which worked out, at least everyone had some fun. And now I get the chance to improve my design.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/f81528bd-9393-4b92-b8f4-6fb56753693f
My chaos roll table
Mega Monster Sibriex/Empyrean/Solar
Terrain Shift- Plane of Fire
All PCs do double damage on their next turn
The PC gets an Inspiration to use
Mega Monster- Leviathan/Kraken
Terrain Shift- Air
All PC's Hit Points are Restored
Terrain Shift- Desert
Downed PCs are revived to half health
Mega Monster Tarrasque/Warforged Colossus/Zaratan
Terrain Shift- Water
The PC gets an Inspiration to use
Terrain Shift- Jungle
Player's get 2 free re-rolls they can use
Mega Monster- Trostani/Zuggtmoy
The PC gets a Nat 20 they can use.
All PC's Spell slots are completely restored
Terrain Shift- Artic
Inspiration
Mega Monster Tiamat/Bahamut/Elder Tempest
Some homebrew: Curse Eater and more-here other- here
The best encounter I ever ran is also the first encounter I ever ran in D&D and on DNDBeyond! It is the Goblin Ambush from Lost mine of Phandelver. This really set the tone and kickstarted my groups and my passion for D&D!
https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/360258e6-f19a-4fde-8b1a-6d91ed137f9e
Just a little group of spiders waiting to the little flies to step in to their web. This is a flavored group of spider mounstrositys to act as Arasta progeny. https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounters/b9933b63-63df-4814-8e46-bf69d3558210.
A lot of web shooters, a lot of advantage attacks, more trouble than the group could think at first glance.