Share your stories of when easy/random encounters turned out surprisingly fun!
For me, I gave my party an easy encounter with some cultists to show that something was going on in the area. One party member ended up impersonating a cultist and getting far more information then I'd expected, while the others snuck around behind them to set up an ambush. It led to hilarious roleplay where the cultists eventually caught on because the players weren't aware of an important event that had occurred a few days ago, and then the players revealed their strength and took one of the cultists prisoner.
My players entered chapter 3 of Lost Mine of Phandelver 2 sessions ago which is when the adventure starts having them roll random encounters. They rolled an encounter the first night and were attacked by 6 hobgoblins. The goblins attacked at range for a round and then dropped their bows and charged into melee. In those 2 rounds, the party took out half of them, even with their 18 AC. The party was feeling very cocky about the hobgoblin's low HP. Then the Hobgoblins started attacking with their Martial Advantage damage and dropped two of the PCs before all was said and done. Great bit of tension and a sobering fight for the party.
What was especially great though was I have been using these loot tables to give players some fun but ultimately meaningless loot. Players love loot, give them silly loot whenever possible. One of the things they got was a messenger raven with a battle report tied to its leg. I used this to throwback all the way to the first session. In their first night sleeping on the high road, they heard a nearby encounter, the sound of metal clanging against metal, and eventually the howling of wolves. The next morning they found the bodies of the wolves and deduced something in heavy armor had hunted the wolves. They were very excited when they realized these hobgoblins were the culprits.
I had a small warm up fight involving some goblins who were killing the giant spiders in their nest - the PC was a drow druid, so naturally this was a death sentence.
She killed all but one, who ran. She ran after it, and tripped over. It ran out and rolled about 5 to hide, and she ran out and rolled a 3 to find it. The next round she found it, stood back to a tree and holding a small twig over its face.
She went to attack it, and missed, so it scrambled up the tree, and so proceeded a improvised-projectile battle of the goblin throwing lumps of wood and the druid throwing rocks, none of which hit for a good 3-4 rounds, until the goblin rolled a 1 on the attack, slipped out of the tree and died on landing!
We also had a fun moment in a random bugbear encounter where a combination of a critical hit from a crossbow and then a nat 1 from the bugbear meant that the bugbear missed the PC and instead batted its own trained (and falling from the air with a bolt through it) bloodhawk out of the air with its club!
My players fought some wolves as a random encounter in a haunted forest. After killing off a few wolves, the last wolf fled. One PC decided to track the wolf, so I figured it had fled into its den. Alone, the druid crawled into the den where the wolf was hiding, so it attacked her twice. Each turn she tried to cast a spell to talk to it, and then tried to persuade the wolf that she was its friend, fed it, and eventually it became a henchman. I had to come up with a name for it on the spot, and essentially come up with a personality for it, and as she asked more and more questions, a backstory... (always challenging for the DM when PCs start asking questions of NPCs that clearly were just 'random person X' in a fight or somebody they grabbed on the road).
So Fleetwind goes with them, eventually they reach a long-dead city and Fleetwind goes missing. He gets corrupted by the magic there and led around by other corrupted dogs led by a Death Dog, which eventually attack the party. They could have killed the Death Dog and freed him, but the rogue had never liked Fleetwind, so he killed him first and when the blue light faded from the remaining dogs eyes, realised his mistake at the end of the fight.
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Share your stories of when easy/random encounters turned out surprisingly fun!
For me, I gave my party an easy encounter with some cultists to show that something was going on in the area. One party member ended up impersonating a cultist and getting far more information then I'd expected, while the others snuck around behind them to set up an ambush. It led to hilarious roleplay where the cultists eventually caught on because the players weren't aware of an important event that had occurred a few days ago, and then the players revealed their strength and took one of the cultists prisoner.
What are yours?
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep
My players entered chapter 3 of Lost Mine of Phandelver 2 sessions ago which is when the adventure starts having them roll random encounters. They rolled an encounter the first night and were attacked by 6 hobgoblins. The goblins attacked at range for a round and then dropped their bows and charged into melee. In those 2 rounds, the party took out half of them, even with their 18 AC. The party was feeling very cocky about the hobgoblin's low HP. Then the Hobgoblins started attacking with their Martial Advantage damage and dropped two of the PCs before all was said and done. Great bit of tension and a sobering fight for the party.
What was especially great though was I have been using these loot tables to give players some fun but ultimately meaningless loot. Players love loot, give them silly loot whenever possible. One of the things they got was a messenger raven with a battle report tied to its leg. I used this to throwback all the way to the first session. In their first night sleeping on the high road, they heard a nearby encounter, the sound of metal clanging against metal, and eventually the howling of wolves. The next morning they found the bodies of the wolves and deduced something in heavy armor had hunted the wolves. They were very excited when they realized these hobgoblins were the culprits.
I had a small warm up fight involving some goblins who were killing the giant spiders in their nest - the PC was a drow druid, so naturally this was a death sentence.
She killed all but one, who ran. She ran after it, and tripped over. It ran out and rolled about 5 to hide, and she ran out and rolled a 3 to find it. The next round she found it, stood back to a tree and holding a small twig over its face.
She went to attack it, and missed, so it scrambled up the tree, and so proceeded a improvised-projectile battle of the goblin throwing lumps of wood and the druid throwing rocks, none of which hit for a good 3-4 rounds, until the goblin rolled a 1 on the attack, slipped out of the tree and died on landing!
We also had a fun moment in a random bugbear encounter where a combination of a critical hit from a crossbow and then a nat 1 from the bugbear meant that the bugbear missed the PC and instead batted its own trained (and falling from the air with a bolt through it) bloodhawk out of the air with its club!
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My players fought some wolves as a random encounter in a haunted forest. After killing off a few wolves, the last wolf fled. One PC decided to track the wolf, so I figured it had fled into its den. Alone, the druid crawled into the den where the wolf was hiding, so it attacked her twice. Each turn she tried to cast a spell to talk to it, and then tried to persuade the wolf that she was its friend, fed it, and eventually it became a henchman. I had to come up with a name for it on the spot, and essentially come up with a personality for it, and as she asked more and more questions, a backstory... (always challenging for the DM when PCs start asking questions of NPCs that clearly were just 'random person X' in a fight or somebody they grabbed on the road).
So Fleetwind goes with them, eventually they reach a long-dead city and Fleetwind goes missing. He gets corrupted by the magic there and led around by other corrupted dogs led by a Death Dog, which eventually attack the party. They could have killed the Death Dog and freed him, but the rogue had never liked Fleetwind, so he killed him first and when the blue light faded from the remaining dogs eyes, realised his mistake at the end of the fight.