Community

I played in a new game this weekend.  The DM was about as new to the game as I am.

We encountered a group of goblinoids near a mining camp and gave battle.  Afterwards, we inspected the camp itself, which contained a tent.  Someone rolled a high perception check on the tent.  "There's uh, a map of the camp inside.  Which you can already see," says the DM.  Someone else rolls to take a closer look at the tent's contents.  "Look," says the DM, "it's just a tent!"  After that it was pretty much all over.

"I roll arcana to check the tent for magic!"

"I roll a histoy check to see if I know anything about the tent!"

"I attempt to use diplomacy to negotiate with the tent!"

"I climb the tent with athletics!"

And so on for a couple of minutes, as all the players displayed a rare moment of

The best encounters, in my book, are the ones where the party is pushed right to the edge of failure and then snatches victory from overwhelming odds.  Which is why I wanted to try to kill my party.

Six strong, the PCs, at level one, have overwhelmed everything I've thrown at them so far.  This included some up-level monsters and large mobs that were intended to be real threats.  So I leveled them up to level two and said to myself, "Okay, now the gloves come off."

For the next couple of encounters I had cooked up for them some serious brawls involving level four and even level five opponents.  During tonight's session they ran into the first of those encounters.

As much as I love monsters in 4e, I often wind up making my own or modifying existing monsters.  I have specific requirements

Sometimes a game session just doesn't go as planned: the encounters aren't working, the players aren't cooperating, plus you just have a little bad luck.  That was Sunday's session for me.

We had come to the first 'boss fight', which I had concieved as a combination solo/trap.  I'm wacky like that.  It seemed like a good idea on paper - have the players go toe-to-toe with a big, invincible monster that can be temporarily disarmed by having it trigger a type of trap that the players have already encountered.  If the players can survive five rounds with it in the ring, it disappears and they may proceed to the next area of the game.

The trick with making this work, though, was getting the players to figure out what they were supposed to do without outright spelling it out.  I thought