At the penultimate session of D&D Encounters last week, our party stumbled upon a drow Torture Theater - and one of the torturers was wearing half of the Pendant of Ashaba (the magic item for which we have been questing). We entered at a very strategic point - we entered the theater at the bottom of a five-foot pit full of dead bodies. Because of this and some pretty sweet stealthiness, we managed to get in a surprise round. Which was completely necessary, since about halfway through combat one of the drow summoned four demons... eep!
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| Grr. Argh. |
An interesting facet of this encounter was the directive to save the lives of the torture victims - half a dozen humans chained up in various placed on the board. It took a standard action and a pretty good Strength or Thievery check to get them free. This served as enough disincentive to keep most of us from even trying during most of the battle. The drow were focusing on us, anyway, so the NPCs were in no real danger. In the end, they were basically just placeholders with no real impact on how the encounter unfolded.
I once wrote an encounter for my home game with innocent bystanders in a tavern - but I asked my PCs to interact with them first, via an informal skill challenge. Once they had bonded with the NPCs, bam! Monster attack. And the baddies weren't picky about their targets (I made all the NPCs two-hit minions). I also gave my players the option of using a minor action to
help the NPCs in getting themselves out (e.g. Athletics to boost them out a window - the NPC still had to roll a check). The result was chaotic, but fun. I'm not sure this would work in the Encounters setting, however.
Next week: BOSS FIGHT!
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