Dynamic Encounters: Monsters Ate My Money

Dominic Matte

Today I ran the first D&D session I've done in months! Hooray! Two of the three encounters were relatively simple compared to what I've been used to planning for The Long Game, but for the third I decided I'd try something different: tying the party's pay directly to their performance in combat.

Here's the setup: rust monsters are attacking the mining camp, and the party is charged with defending 10 stacks of pure steel ingots scattered across the battlefield. For each stack that survives the fight, the party earns 250g - or for those not inclined to simple math, 2500g if they manage to protect every stack. The catch is that the rust monsters can break down an entire stack of ingots with one standard action, so the party needed to control the bugs' movement and burn them down as fast as possible.

As the PCs were surprised by the attack, the first couple of rust monsters managed to consume a couple of piles of ingots in the first round or two. This group of players is pretty strong on damage - despite rusting weapons and the barbarian's loss of his greatspear, they managed to down the beasts pretty quickly. They were a little light on control, though, so despite the warforged fighter blocking access to one group of ingots, the party ended up losing a couple more stacks as the fight went on. They ended the battle with six stacks surviving, and so they earned 1500g as their reward.

Probably the high point of the battle was the heightened tension when a swarm of baby rust monsters latched on to the warforged and started eating away at his steel plating. Fortunately he survived relatively unscathed.