What's some of the more memorable combat encounters you've

>>51523686
>in a ruined town, suddenly a young green dragon starts hovering above
>demands to know why we're intruding on its kingdom
>tell it we were going to take it for our own and make it our camp
>it gets pissed, begins to prepare breath attack
>at this point we roll initiative
>dragon rolls a fucking 2
>everyone else in the party goes first
>I jump up and yank it to the ground
>get 25 on a dc 25 strength check my dm told me to make
>pull it to the ground and its prone
>stunning strike it
>entire party pulls out all stops to deal raw fucking damage
>fighter crits, procs an attack from me so I get to attack it again after dealing 3d6 fall damage to it
>its stunned
>our final attack wave ends with our druid poking it with a rapier to kill it from 3hp
>everyone loses their shit, dm is pissed because he didn't get to do a single fucking thing


basically make your dragon job like an idiot and it will be hilarious

Actually hit players when they get hit to force them to take combat seriously.

>>51523686
Probably one of my most memorable encounters I ran was against one simple Warg.

I was playing a low magic fantasy, campaign with friends, who were part of a mercenary company fighting through war torn lands against goblins. After days of fighting and being tired, they were relocated to a quiet relief station with a detachment of men in a Graveyard that was a strategic outpost between the major town and their abandoned village HQ.

I basically had the "undescribed creature" start slowly killing their men, dragging them off, showing a hint of cognition with how it toyed with them. They freaked out and started planting traps, getting closer to it day after day, but they were quickly losing men. I had them badly injure it with a trap, but it escaped and they tracked it right back to under their own noses, the Gravekeeper's own house on the premises that they never checked out. They laid in wait during the day for it to return at night, and ambushed it, It dismembered a player and threw him through a window, but was stabbed to death by the rest of the party.

>>51524070
high stakes combat. splash players with bleach, stab them, taze them. discourage their foolishness

>>51523686
>attacked by flying monsters while balancing on a narrow walkway
>stuck in a swamp while archers pelt you from afar
>fight against waves of enemies that gradually deplete your resources
or similarly
>enemy who pursues you for a long period, preventing you from resting
>holed up in a castle under siege, resisting a superior force

The party enters the podunk port town of Osha and are greeted by a guard who gripes about the recent additions to their honorable force. The Keystone Corps have been sent in from the capital because the amount of illegal goods traced back to here is unacceptable. The guard admits they're tough and doing a lot of good, but they're soldiers not peacekeepers and shouldn't they find a way to fight in that case?
Anyway, they walk into a sting operation and utterly fail to convince the bait that they don't wish to buy what he's selling and the Keystone boys come marching in. One heavily armoured man, three spearmen and a drummer. Everyone thinks "LOL, town guards gonna get wrecked."
First round the three spearmen split the fighter from the paladin and everyone fails to land even a single blow. The heavily armoured man singles out the warlock because he hates gnomes and the warlock is definitely a gnome. The wizard gets a Sphere of Flame off, successfully blocking the entrance and searing the drummer. The drummer drummed.
Second round, with the drummer's buff in place, the spearmen exchange blows with the fighter who they figure would be easier to hit. They're right and they knock him down to half health. He makes the long term smart decision short term bad decision and uses his turn to maneuver toward the drummer. The paladin strikes at the spearmen and misses. The warlock attempts Charm Person in the middle of combat against a gnome racist and of course that fails. The bait, who is another PC I mean to introduce that session, throws a torch through the sphere of flame and lights his own tavern on fire. Later he'd successfully defraud the instance man.
Con't

>>51528310
It's only now that they realize the fighter's movent has now foiled any attempts the paladin could have made of healing him, and the paladin opts for a more aggressive role in this fight and uses Hunter's Mark on the drummer because they know enough to geek the mage first. The armoured man savages the warlock who flees upstairs and wonders why he tried to spell that man in the first place. He burns his last spell slot fleeing. The drummer drums.
Third round, fire spreads. The spearmen break off, two to protect the drummer and one to geek the wizard. The two take the defense and the one scores a blow on the wizard who makes his concentration save and continues to reign fire on his enemies as he is wont to do. The fighter gets caught on a broken stool and is dropped prone, and the paladin rolls poorly. The armoured man pursues the warlock, who has convinced the guests upstairs to help him out. After taking a spear from the armoured man, the warlock falls unconscious and the dwarf fulfilled his three second old promise and tossed the bleeding, unconcious mess our the second story window. He survived, by God! The drummer drummed.
Fourth round, the fighter falls and the fire spreads further. The wizard fails his concentration check and the sphere finally vanishes. The drummer and two spearmen who protected him made an exit, or at least tried. The paladin threw a desperation javelin and scorred a particularly agonizing critical and killed the fucker. The wizard escaped through a window. The armoured man doubled checked to make sure the gnome was dead, declared he was, and returned downstairs.
Con't

>>51524053
>in a ruined town, suddenly a young green dragon starts hovering above
>demands to know why we're intruding on its kingdom

> I SHOOT MY BOW AT HIS FACE!!
> I THROW A FIREBALL

> Really, guys?
> Okay, roll for initiative.

> I'VE GOT A 29!!!
> I'VE GOT A 16!!!

> (Dragon rolls a nat 1, so... 3)

yay

>>51528486
Fifth round, the paladin drags the fighter out of the burning building and finds himself confronted by the two spearmen. He flees to find the body of the warlock and uses lay on hands to revive him. The wizard made the flee the scene, but was cut off as the armoured man leapt from the second story, landed in front of him, and dropped the wizard to the ground with one strike.
Sixth round, the paladin and warlock engage the spearmen. The warlock gets lucky, takes no blows and manages to kill the weaker of the spearmen and the paladin manages to get behind them and revive the fighter in a better position. The armoured man then turned up and downed the paladin.
The fighter and warlock killed the last spearman, kited the armoured man for a round before he declares the fight over, them criminals, and their tactics weak and leaves.

>>51528610
My players were pretty glad that despite all of them going down they survived and ultimately won. The heroism of the paladin was not, however, repayed in their next encounter with the Keystone Corps, when they left him for dead after some extremely short sighted planning and a series of verbal slip ups.

Playing a dwarf ranger 8 fighter 4 tempest 1 in D&D 3.5, the DM was rolling random treasure and a +1 flaming nunchukau came up. So I decided, I am going to kill something with this. Especially since the dungeon we are in is guarded by some really weak stuff in the outer parts. So now I have, on my inventory sheet, the skull of a troll I killed with +1 flaming nunchuks. I figured if we are fighting easy-ass shit at the moment I might as well make it a bit of a challenge.

That same character was also swallowed by a Root of All Evil when he was level 8. I chopped my way out of its stomach as allowed by the swallow whole ability. The creature was described to us by the DM as a "large demonic parsnip" so I always tell people I've chopped my way out of the belly of a giant demonic parsnip monster.

>See yakfolk slaver camp
>Decide to pose as traders ourselves
>Bind me, the party monk, as a slave due to unarrmed
>Sale goes without any problems
>Realize we didn't have a plan afterwards
>Proceed to kill everyone

Sometimes we don't think too far ahead.

So we were playing that Kingmaker PF adventure module, and we were attacking the bandit fortress in the wilderness. There was just our gnome fighter, dwarf monk, and my elf wizard. Against 11 bandits. Our "brilliant plan:"

>I pulled out my longbow, and snuck to a ditch, a log, a large rock, or something for cover about 500 feet away from the fort's walls.
>Waited there alone from pre-dawn to mid-morning, while the dwarf and fighter snuck around the back, running into a swarm of zombies on the way.
>I cast True Strike and then sniped one of the guards.
>Bandits unhappy. I waste some arrows to shoot at heavy range penalties, and draw the attention of the fort.
>Team melee midgets gets to the fort walls, and somehow over. They claimed it was Climb checks, I insist that it was a stepladder.
>A few bandits sortie against me, but a few Magic Missiles drop them. Melee midgets engage the minibosses, I hustle up to that fight.
>Scary bandit lord dropped quickly.

It was memorable to me because we had tactics that somehow worked, and that our GM was a little bummed that we didn't try infiltrating the fort, and learning the backstories of people there. He was annoyed that we just assaulted it like we were playing Skyrim. My wizard/rogue build was inspired by my latest character in Skyrim.
Feels good to be cancer.

The players were working as an overnight "cold iron" watch aboard a starship waiting for repairs which meant they were glorified security guards watching monitors, walking along passageways, checking doors, and the like.

A group of smugglers wanted to search the ship for a package one of their friends had hidden aboard. They asked the players first, then tried to bribe them, then tried beating them up, and finally decided to take over the ship.

The smugglers broke in wearing spacesuits and carrying tranq pistols & stun grenades. They quickly tranqed one of a pair of players who'd been out patrolling but the other ducked into a compartment. One smuggler followed that player while the rest headed for the bridge.

When the smuggler entered the compartment, the player hit in the helmet with a FIRE EXTINGUISHER.

The player rolled really well, so I said he'd knocked the smuggler down. The player kept bashing away rolling really well, so I told him he'd cracked and partially stove in the smuggler's helmet's face shield. Finally the player jammed the extinguisher's nozzle against the cracked face shield and squeezed the trigger. The chemicals in the extinguisher did the rest.

4 man party in DW, monk, beguiler, druid and summoner, all primarily focused on fire. We were against a mutated magical knight, a succub and freaking glabrezu who could take us out singlehandedly. Not only had we to defeat them, but alse we had to stop them from using a sword that would release an unstoppable evil. It was high staked, action packed and exciting. Wanna details?

>>51529790
Oh, and the druid was slowly dying frim getting herself poisoned by succubis hellfire.

I thought that Grave Titan isn't supposed to be undead though. It isn't a zombie in MTG after all.

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37KB, 500x585px

> Party has been working for the BBEG for some time
> Decide it's finally time to rebel and stop the villain's plans, but first they need to assassinate his bodyguard
> Lure the BBEG's lieutenant, a half-giant bounty hunter, into the forest in the frozen north, then try to get the drop on him
> They fail
> Bounty hunter is insanely strong, but also incredibly fast
> Fights the party leader to a standstill in melee, then flings bombs at the party, forcing them back
> When they're able to reach the party leader, she's down to maybe 10 HP and the bounty hunter is 60' away, his longbow drawn
> Bounty hunter's composite longbow is powerful enough that its arrows can split trees
> A running battle ensues, with both the party and the bounty hunter using trees as cover, a means of vertical ascension and impromptu weapons (destroying trees at the base and causing them to collapse onto the party, the bounty hunter, or block entrances and exits to the glade)
> Battle ends up being like a game of 3D chess
> Every party member had to contribute something to take him down
> Use the Bhaalspawn battle music from Throne of Bhaal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qJMJgLEQJs)

Oddly enough, that ended up being one of my favorite villains. I ended up bringing him (well, the concept of him) into a new setting for my last 5e campaign, where he and a couple of half-dragon veterans were the final boss battle. A great ape tore him apart like a wishbone and threw him into the reactor of a golem -- but that's another story.