Looking for interesting tactical battles

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Watching the Eye of Anubis campaign for lo these many months has taught me many things, but chief among them: I don't do such interesting battles. I always try to put battles in interesting locations at least, but NeoTiamat does such a good job of making each battle a tactically interesting mini-game of sorts. I guess my battles have interesting fluff, but NeoT's have interesting crunch as well, like alternate win conditions, uses for non-combat skills, terrain challenges, etc.

Anyway, I'm not just posting to praise NeoT, I'm looking for any good online sources, netbooks, etc. for tactically interesting battle encounters. Locations, synergistic monster types, etc. to inspire me a bit in coming up with my own.... or for me to steal from. I assumed that with the OGL, there'd be a ton of such things online, but Google is failing me. Anyone know of good sources for such things?

[lordsathien]

I remember one encounter I had where the players used a spiral staircase the BBEG chased them up and when he reached the top, he was pushed down the steps, asleep. He was low enough in level and failed his save against sleep and I ruled he took damage as if he had fallen...it was about 50 feet up.

[Jester of the FoS]

I started a 4e game lately and I've used it as a playground for experimentation.

One semi-successful encounter was on a thin cliff side trail on run away wagons being attacked by goblins.

I've also done narrow fights on a cliff, fights in a flooded room with a current and drain, and one in a collapsed tower caught horizontally in a cliff.

[The Giamarga]

Some thread on ENworld:
Faerie encounters
Creative combat objectives

...and on Wizards boards:
Stuck for ideas? Get instant encounters at the Encounter Resource Thread. (Excellent thread on WotC)
Want Lore sections for pre-MMIV monsters? Visit the Monster Lore Compendium. (including many Ravenloft specific contributions by John Mangrum)
WotC Random Encounters Archive.

The contenders in Paizo's RPG Superstar 2008 had to design an encounter in Round 5:link

And then there's always The Mother of All Encounter Tables by Necromancer Games, which received some favourable reviews. Alas i don't own it yet. Also I'm sure AEG's d20 Toolbox and the newer Ultimate Toolbox contain some interesting encountertables too. (The first has fewer content but with d20 details, the second is way bigger and completely generic)

[NeoTiamat]

Well, this is ego-boosting. *gets swelled head*

On the whole, the Eye of Anubis has been a very educational experience for me, so my philosophy of battle-creation has been evolving over time. I started with reasonably 'tame' battles, then started spicing them up with more and more stuff. Eventually I realized my PCs were ignoring about half my 'spice', so I'm falling back to simpler maps now with just a few BIG elements.

Still, since Gonzoron has said such nice things about me, I'll go all pretentious and start dispensing advice which I haven't yet given up on.

• <> Size is a very good way of changing the feeling of a battle. D&D advocates that most battlefields should be about fifteen squares by fifteen squares, give or take. People can maneuver around, spells can be aimed well, all that. This is good and all, but you can alter the feel of a fight very strongly by making a much smaller or a much larger map.
  
  So for instance, have a battle in a tunnel, which is only two or three squares wide, and limited ability to maneuver. (Then have big monster Overrun the melee guys. Lovely chaos).
  
  Or right now, I've got the PCs on an absolutely huge map, about 40 squares by 40 squares. When using such big maps, I've basically got several encounters going on simultaneously, and I've arranged it so that the PCs are seperated into several groups. It feels more like a grand strategy, and forces the PCs to make choices. Do they go and fight the undead saber tooth tigers blocking the gates, handle the raging mob, or try and fight off the zombie-rogues in the middle?
  
  <> Generally, if you're going to make a fight with unique terrain or environment, you've got to make the effects of such strong. PCs generally have enough to worry about without trying to grab another +2 to AC from Cover.
  
  Best example of doing this, I think, is a fight at the start of the campaign, where the PCs were on a slanted roof in the middle of a rainstorm. There were endless opportunities to slip, fall, and go crashing off the roof into an unruly heap at the bottom.
  
  Now that I think of it, weather is a very good way of messing with the conditions without much set up. A fight in a sandstorm might deal small constant damage to everyone and reduce visibility. A blizzard could also reduce visibility, and inflict gradually increasing penalties unless the PCs are wearing the right clothing. Rain makes everything wet, which combined with treacherous terrain makes it more treacherous, and, of course, reduce visibility.
  
  <> Alternative Victory Conditions are fairly simple, I find, so long as you focus on what the PCs are actually trying to accomplish. If the PCs need to recover an artifact (standard situation), and there's a guardian monster, I'd make the victory condition getting the artifact and getting out, and the monster incidental. Suddenly the PCs need to think not so much about maximum damage, but how to get to the artifact past the monster, do whatever they need to do to secure it (I'm fond of some kind of Full Round Action with an attached skill check), and how to get back out.
  
  Now that I think of it, you can actually pick up some ideas just by looking over the kinds of maps First-Person Shooters have. The above is pretty much a classic "Capture the Flag" situation. You might require the PCs to defeat a specific monster in an Assassination style map (say they're facing a band of orcs and goblins who'll turn and run if their chieftain is slain, or zombies which fall if the animating necromancer dies).

Hope this helps some.

[A G Thing]

I have run a couple interesting encounters as well... Not all the same game of course.

I had a forest laced with spider webs that eventually got so thick the PC's had to stop on the trail they were on. They were ambushed by spider riding goblins who had the advantage of movement at first. The webs were sticky and the goblins tried to knock them onto them, but when one of the players cast a fire spell this turned into a very interesting encounter when the map started to burn and spread.

Then there was an encounter in a cave that was being used by enslaved kobolds, that had three hostages that they would sacrifice in a ritual that had some complex steps... They had to prevent the ritual from being completed and save them so they had to split up in the large chamber to do such.

I then had the bridge with a cultist operated giant rolling statue and the pit when part of it lifts up behind them. They got behind the construct defeated the one who controled it and after getting clear of the thing they made it roll off the gap into the pit.

Had one map where they had been chased by a magma creature into an area with a portal to the Demon Web. They battled the drow inside but the portal was opened. They then hid in the room as the magma creature beat on the door and demons began to pour out of the portal. The demons and magma creature found each other first and they sat for the first of the fight as the two of them battled it out.

I also had the scene that Monsiure Croquemitane crawling along a house and using the windows to attack which led to a chase across the roof tops. They battled and fell and climbed and slipped on loose tiles, and finally they managed to knock him from the roofs and end it.

I have done more but I think that is enough from now.l

[Nathan of the FoS]

My own favorites:

An anti-interesting-space battle; the PCs started the campaign with three or four fights in a gladiatorial arena. :lukas:

Later in their gladiatorial career, the PCs were forced to fight in a series of tunnels 5 feet high and 2.5 feet wide, with a one-way glass ceiling. Not too problematic for the two halflings and the gnome, pretty miserable for the 7 foot tall half-orc monk. (The employer of their gladiatorial team and the other team's employer had a party on the upper level while watching the gladiators go at it.)

Much later, a fight in a museum, and one in a crashed spaceship where all the floors had roughly a 30 degree slant. The all-time PC favorite was looting a sunken ship, though, which had been occupied by a couple of scrags and a nest of poisonous snakes.