A year or two ago, I ran an adventure where the PCs were asked by an underground civilization of gnomes to help with a problem. The gnomes had been using clockwork mining equipment for years, and recently the machinery had gone out of control and begun attacking the miners.
Over the course of the adventure, the PCs learned that the issue was that the bound elementals which powered the mining equipment were being set free by a gnomish extremist faction. These gnome extremists considered binding the elementals this way to be tantamount to slavery. By the end of the adventure, some of the PCs were inclined to agree.
The final battle of this adventure happened when the gnomes' largest piece of mining equipment, their massive excavator (for which I had a great miniature) smashed through the cave wall of their underground city and began approaching the capital, intent on demolishing as many buildings as possible.
We've all run those boring battles where the fighters run up and smash monsters and the monsters smash back. I wanted this one to be something different. Something special. So as the PCs rolled initiative, I laid out for them the rules that would govern this battle. Primarily, they needed to know that the excavator could not be hurt by normal weapon attacks or by spells. What? Yeah. The thing was just too massive. It would be easier to destroy a house with your swords and magic missiles than it would be to destroy this two-story steel behemoth.
Instead, the characters were left to figure out during the battle how they could possibly stop this thing from destroying the city. To help, I placed a 3x5 file card in front of them. It read:
Investigation, DC 12
Study the excavator, and try to determine an effective way to attack it
So while the excavator slowly advanced on its turn, getting closer to the gnome city, the PCs could attack the clockwork mining equipment, or spend their action making that investigation check. Each investigation success would give them another file card, at random, giving them more options. I placed six buildings on the map and let them know that their goal was to save as many as possible.
Behind the screen, I had what the excavator would do each round all planned out:
Round 1: Excavator moves forward and fires its eye beam at a building, damaging it to 50%
Round 2: Two clockwork drills appear and begin fighting. Excavator moves forward and makes arm attacks at any characters in range.
Round 3: Excavator moves forward and throws a mine cart at a PC (ranged attack)
Round 4: Three dwarven guards appear to help. Excavator moves forward and fires its eye beam at a PC - lots of dust in the air creates a heavily obscured area; if the targeted PC succeeds in a stealth check then the eye beam has disadvantage.
Round 5: Excavator makes arm attacks, but does not move. Instead, it shakes violently if anyone is on it - any PCs atop it have disadvantage on their acrobatics checks to stay up this round.
Round 6: Excavator moves forward and reaches up to smash at the cave ceiling - everyone within 10 feet of it takes 6d6 bludgeoning damage from falling rock, DC14 DEX save for half
Round 7: Two more dwarven guards appear. Excavator moves forward and makes arm attacks
Round 8: Excavator moves forward and makes arm attacks
Round 9: Excavator moves forward and fires its eye beam
Round 10: Excavator reaches and destroys the first building, and one additional building each round.
The rest of the cards were revealed in random order, but here is the first:
Battle Goal: Disconnect Arm (x2)
Get to each shoulder in order to disable that arm, either by mechanical sabotage or simply by smashing them.
• Climb up to the shoulder: 1 action, Athletics DC13
• When a character begins his turn atop the shoulder, he must make a DC10 acrobatics check to remain on his feet or else fall, taking 2d6 falling damage.
• Disable the arm: 1 action, Athletics DC14 or Sleight of Hand DC 15 - a success disables the arm. Two sleight of hand failures jam the mechanism and raise the DC to 16
• This battle goal may be accomplished twice.
I don't recall the specifics of the arm attacks, but they were infrequent, inaccurate, and very damaging.
Battle Goal: Disable Eyebeam
Get up to the eye and extract the fire elemental within
• Climb up to the eye: 1 action, Athletics DC15
• When a character begins his turn at the eye, he must make a DC12 acrobatics check to remain on his feet or else fall, taking 3d6 falling damage.
• Extract the elemental: 1 action, Arcana DC 14
Success: eyebeam is disabled; hostile fire elemental appears
Failure: eyebeam gets attack of opportunity on PC
The eyebeam was dangerous not only because it could attack at range, but also because it could destroy buildings before the excavator had even reached them.
Battle Goal: Sabotage Wormfoot Drive
The excavator will soon be reaching structures! Sabotage three legs on one side in order to disable movement.
A single leg can be disabled in one of two ways:
• Pry and wrench the leg, rendering it useless: 1 action, DC 16 Athletics check. On a failure, the character is injured by the leg: 6d6 bludgeoning damage, DC14 DEX save for half
• Do a total of 20hp damage. Any damage of less than 5hp is not recorded, and the leg is immune to piercing and resistant to slashing damage.
• This battle goal must be completed three times to stop the excavator from moving entirely.
I think I invented the term "wormfoot drive", but I'm not sure. I like it.
Battle Goal: Extinguish Steam Mephit Chamber
Putting out the boiler on its back will slow it drastically
• PCs should describe how they go about this task
• Extinguishing the chamber slows the excavator by 50%
This should be the easiest of the challenges. Allow the PC to describe how they will go about extinguishing the mephit chamber, encouraging creativity, then give them a DC 8 check for success.
Battle Goal: Rally Support (x2)
Looking around, you see many gnomes watching in terror as the mining equipment advances inexorably toward their homes. If only someone could convince them to help!
• Convince gnomes to help: Persuasion DC 13
• Success brings NPC allies
So this was my skill challenge boss battle. While the lesser traditional clockwork minions attacked, the excavator ran through its paces. It worked very well. PCs were forced to divide their efforts between the traditional monsters and the real threat. In the adventure I ran, the PCs managed to stop the excavator after two buildings were destroyed. The gnomes weren't very happy about it, due largely to some other shenanigans that had gone down earlier, and they threw the PCs in jail for their trouble. Shortly after, a sympathetic gnome official had them released, and later delivered a clockwork automaton to help plow fields on a PC's farm.
If you decide to use a variant of this in your own game, I suggest that you make up the attack stats of the excavator on your own, and scale the entire encounter to your PCs' level. It was a fun adventure, and I hope that someone else is able to use it and get nearly the same kind of enjoyment from it that we did.
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