Im going to run a L4D themed encounter for my campaing in this setting community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
The players have been running all day trying to get to safety before night falls and the dead rise. I am going to have them all make 3 endurance checks with each failure being a -1 to their actions for the encounter to represent how tired they all are. Between them and safety are the dead bursting out of the ground with them randomly popping out on the battle grid I am using. The players need to get across the grid to safety before they are pulled down by the mass of zombies. I am going to allow the players to take their move actions together if they stay in a formation to represent them moving quickly together helping each other. If they break up I will go back to separate move actions. I am going to make all the zombies minions with a few random ghouls thrown in.
Does this seem like to much? Do the mechanics seem to work?
I am also intrested if anyone has tried a Shadows of the Clossus themed encounter with players trying to climb on a giant construct as it moves around? If you did I would like to hear how it worked out or what other people's thoughts where on it.
Why not both? How about having to cross some kind of desert of black sand while battling a titanic monster. PCs can climb up its legs to get to vulnerable areas (in true Shadow of the Colossus style, this would be the only way it can be damaged). But, the kicker is that you don't want to be on the ground when the dead rise out of the ground and swarm the surface. Maybe they even try to climb up after you and you have to kick them back down. The point is, you're climbing both to take the fight to the enemy's weak spots and to escape being torn limb from limb.
I have a similar L4D encounter planned for my next session. I'm throwing a fair number of non-minions in there as well though. The catch on my encounter is that it is taking place in town and the party will likely have to try to "sneak" into shelter and secure said shelter if they want to take a rest. If they just try to stand and fight they'll end up fighting several encounters worth of monsters in a row without a rest.
To help them out I'm also using the terrain feature in DMG2 that allows a creature to regain an encounter power that's already been used. Of course it works both ways if the monsters get to it first. 