I thought I would share an encounter and scenario I ran tonight. This week was a continuation of last weeks session and this was their 2nd fight of the day. I was ad hocing things as I had not done a very good job of designing this week I had a group of 5 6th level PCs
Lore Bard
Cleric of War
Wizard (diviner)
Battle Master Polearm master fighter with sentinel feat
Ranger (hunter)
THe basic idea was the PCs were being chased through hill terrains after using a kick in the door approach. I used a rough mini system of chase points. If the PCs took to long they got a chase point, if 3+/5 of them failed an athletics roll they got a chase point. If they went the wrong way they got a chase point etc. Each encounter they had they got a chase point.
Once the PCs collected enough chase points it was assumed the NPCs chasing them caught up as Ogre, Hill Giants and Dire Wolves all have faster movements than the PCs. I did have a hex map of the area but I made it kind of obvious what way to go due to the presence of roads, trails, a fort and watchtowers, howling wolves and drums. The idea was to herd the PCs to a dungeon they could flee through for safety.
The longer the PCs took the more encounters they would have and the harder the encounters got. I did explain to them there was a rough time limit and used clues when NPCs were near. I also used a real time timer sometimes to represent game rounds which ramped up the tempo with a dice counter being used. For every 18 second of real time that passed 3 rounds passed in game and they got a chase point.
This was the set up and encounter. Note the had already had a pair of deadly encounters that day they were down a few spells and the fighter was out of superiority dice.
2 Hill Giants
4 Ogres
4 Dire Wolves
The encounter was at a ford on a small river so I just drew in a rough map. The hill giant minis are Ogres, the fomorians are the hill giants and the various animals are dire wolves as I only have 1 dire wolf mini. All 3.5 minis on a laminated D&DM battlemat left over from 3.5. Skipped an ediiton so old stuff get reused. I kind of ad hoced the setup and used a very basic map, road, open field, river, ford.
Encounter number 2 was 4 hill giants. This was probably heading into TPK territory but I allowed them perception checks and they found the ravine I wanted them to find. Rolling in front of the PCs the giants failed their perception checks to find out where the PCs hid and one of them spoke Giant and heard them talk about going to get more dire wolves which were being used to track the PCs.
They avoided this fight, had they won it fight number 3 would have been fighter number 1 at double the size. I was rail roading the PCs in a way but they did have the option of trying to break through a pass guarded by giants, running through a watchtower infested hill area or swimming down a gorge so I was prepared if they wanted to try something different. They were not supposed to be able to win fight 3,4,5 etc short of some astounding luck.
The ravine lead to an ancient shallow tomb with an empty sarco erm stone coffin. They found a secret door and ented a dungeon lit by witchlght candles that gave off no heat and had stange feeling. This dungeon had two ways of going about it. The easy way and a hard way. The easy way was do not touch anything, follow the passage through looking for traps and you are all good. The Hall of Kings is a one way dungeon as such with a few carved rooms to travel through. Very linear as I wanted it nice and simple.
Trap number 1 hits them, and they get hit with a burning hands spell via glyph of warding type trap. Trap 2 was a trap within a trap and they find the 1st one and move to go around it and set off the real trap which hits half of them with a lightning bolt. They found trap 3 and avoid it, trap 4 is a magical trap that fires a 4d8 chromatic orb lightning orb at each PC. They find an alcove where they can short rest. They survive the hall of fire and lightning and take a short rest.
Further down they get to a treasure vault where the room is full of gold, silver, and a magical crown andd scepter. All of it glows a funny green colour. The easy way to do this is ignore it and keep going, off course a few of them want to loot. Everything here is cursed with a 2d12 DC 13 save for half poison save failure also results in the poisoned condition. The scepter was a blast scepter, the crown was cursed and reduces your intelligence to 3. The wizard attempts to indentify the crown and takes the poison damage and promptly gives up. He decides not to put the crown on for some strange reason. They leave the chamber and enter the chamber of secrets.
The chamber of secrets is a room with a pedestal on it with a spellbook with draconic writing on it. Everyone wants to leave the book alone, the Gnome wizard uses mage hand to lift the book off and run down the hall. A loud whining sound of increasing intensity starts up and the Gnome sees a large red flaming ball rolling towards him. Think Indiana Jones boulder rolling down the dungeon crossed with a flaming sphere spell. He runs back into the room and dives to the side only to have the ball explode in the room and everyone takes 8d6 save for half (DC 13).He is determined to keep that book though and the whirring sound gets louder and louder and I put a 3 round countdown dice on the table. The PCs actually roll initiative and start beating on the wizard to KO him and get the book back on the pedestal with a 1 left on the count down dice. If they had not the next trap was 2 rolling exploding balls and everyone would have taken 16d6 damage. 3 rounds after that it would have been 3 exploding balls etc etc etc.
The PCs go back to the short rest area and take a long rest.
The next 2 rooms have scenes detailing some ancient history of the world including mosaics showing chromatic and metallic dragons lead by Tiamat and Bahumat fighting stange beings riding a strange dragon type. The PCs had been fighitng Tiamats forces so this detail kind of threw them a bit. They also enter another chamber where it is depicted Gorum (war clerics god) is wearing ancient bronze armor and is absorbing power from a fallen deity like being while the strange dragon beings battle deity like beings in the sky. This room has 8 statues in it each one with different coloured gemstone eyes. A wraith like being comes out of one statue and communicates with the PCs speaking Draconic. He demands tribute (expected 500gp) in order to be allowed to leave to the next chamber. The PCs do not want to fight 8 Wraiths and chip in over 1500gp. Maybe I brutalized them to much so far IDK.
They get to the final chamber and I thought I would throw a modified (tougher) CR 10 critter at them and give them a Stone Golem who can use the slow effect as an attack and has superior magic resistance (advantage+half damage vs magical attacks) and the golem has more hit points as well. Stone Golem also had copper inlay and lightning effets hasted it and the wizard uses a witchbolt on it and hastes it. The fighter can actually do a decent job pinning the Golem with sentinel+polearm master feats but he flunks his save vs the Golems slow effect. They eventually kill the golem although the ranger lacked a magic weapon so she did half damage.
So 4 hour session, only 2 fights, a lot more exploration this session and my 2nd dungeon crawl in this campaign, the last one was level 3. Levels 4,5,6 were more social enncounters and set piece battles outside. I gave the PCs enough xp to hit level 7 and level up giving them more xp for the exploration and avoiding fights part as the goal was actually to avoided the NPC doom stacks.They found a site they can return to and try and retrieve the treasure. They found out some hints on the ancient past and they are in a gray area in terms of what are we doing as they thought defeating evil was a good idea but maybe there is a greater evil waiting in the shadows. There were a lot of skill checks used as well including athletics, sneak, perception, investigation, thieves tools, history and arcana. I ad hoced some chase rules and things like countdown dice and using real time to make the PCs hurry up to drive home the "theme" of tonights adventure.
I also used a lot of traps and that is rare for me along with dungeon crawls. Said traps were very nasty as well with burning hands, chromatic orbs, lighting bolts, fireballs, and a fireball/flamingsphere/meteor swarm concoction that went BOOM. Along with lots of poison and trapped treasure. The curses, poison, and traps depleted more PC resources than combat. The only reward they got tonight was survival as I tried hard to drive home the flee or die thing. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and wanted to play again Sunday but its a bad day for 3/6 players as one could not turn up tonight so we're having a break.