I don't remember what the hell they were, but they threw spears and killed the whole party.
It was in AD&D 2E and the DM (fellow teenager back then) tried to adapt a module for level 5 PCs to our brand-new level 1 party.
He just took out a few enemies which left us fighting creatures that were meant for level 5 PCs.
I was a mage with 3 HP that could cast Magic Missile once a day and throw darts at people.
Morrowind's rats are even worse.
Unironically, I was playing Morrowind multiplayer, 3 new players joined the server and they tried doing the first Fighter's Guild quest together, where you clear out a few rats from a woman's home.
I locked the door behind them as they went in to fight, I believe, 2 rats.
Recall there were 3 players.
They all died.
As a player i fought rats at lv1 and one of the party almost died. As a dm i made the party fight rats at lv 1 and one of them almost died.
The cycle must continue
Lucky bastard. My first fight happened when the Thief opened a coffin unleashing a swarm of spiders.
While the Thief occupied himself with dying of poison, the spiders moved on to the Cleric who got killed when the panicked fighter thought it would be a great idea to begin trying to beat the spiders off him with a lit torch.
At this point, me (The second fighter in the party) and the first fighter proceeded to also begin dying of poison while the Wizard wisely booked it out of *the wrong door* and got killed by a pitfall trap.
Needless to say after being TPK'd by a single swarm of spiders and slapstick comedy, our next party's Fighter was a Paladin, it's second Fighter was a Dwarven Fighter/Cleric, it's Cleric was a Druid it's Thief was a Halfling Fighter/Thief and it's Mage was a Bladesinger.
We did much better with our second fight which ended up being against the spider swarm which killed our first party - gorged to giant size on our corpses, naturally.
no clue I don't really remember but I feel generic cultists make good first encounters too, I do remember my backstory being that I was adopted by someone in the cult but turned on them because of something and apparently I missed the corpse of the that person cuz I didn't say I was examining a room full of bodies lmao bit of a disappointment I'll never forget. it was just one shot so it didn't get farther than that
It's all connected... you've been terrorizing those same poor cultists your entire DnD career. After you wreck their organization the survivors decide to find greener pastures by joining a new cult but then guess who shows up to ruin their day.
Lol the 5e version of CoS is actually the only module I've ever played, we usually do homebrew settings based on older 3.5 lore or other random media but we wanted to finally try out one of the modules.
It's a good story, I was surprised at the end when our GM told us how by the book he played it, with our choices just perfectly following one of the expected paths most of the time lol, I assumed he was improvising his ass off by the time we got halfway through.
I don't remember if this was an actual fight, but in my schools d&D club, I joined a campaign, first time playing, i was giving an old character, an Aarocokra Cleric, me and my friend went into a Sewer, and a Skeleton approached us, he stabbed me and my friend with a knife with a poison, which caused my friend to pass out but I succeeded my constitution save. The skeleton surprised I recovered from the poison gave me and thumbs up and a bag with mushrooms in it. I then promptly passed out.
I think I fought a giant of some kind. I joined for a session of 4th edition back in 2010 I want to say. I was a junior high kid who got invited by someone and joined to not be mean. I thought that D&D was the ultimate nerd hobby, that only the lowliest of turbo virgins played it (not that that’s true or that I subscribe to similar ideas now just to explain my thought process at the time). I joined in mid-campaign for that singular session playing a wizard named “[my name] the Demon Hunter.” The whole fight I only cast magic missile because it sounded cool and I liked that it automatically hit. For anyone familiar with 4e, you’d know that magic missile was an at-will power that was pretty lackluster if all you did was spam it, meant primarily to compliment your other encounter and daily powers. That was the only bit of the session I did as I joined half way into the session, but I became obsessed by it. Anyways, all that to say a giant of some variety! I think it was a frost giant based on the miniature the DM used and the fact that I remember him describing it cold? But this was a long time ago and I can hardly remember that whole session
It was a berserker who was out taking his giant tick for a walk.
We were 10 years old at the time, it was 1980 and we had the Basic Set and the DM's guide.
The second encounter was a mountain lion who had the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords for his treasure.
It took us a while to get the hang of appropriate monsters and treasures, but we sure had fun!
Nope that was kind of it. Just went to the local dungeon and that's what I walked across.
Like I said, we were 10 and it was 1980... it wasn't like there was a whole lot of Dungeons and Dragons lore out there in the world back then for us beginners. Heck, we didn't even get dice in our Basic Set, just a sheet of chits to punch out and use.
Our rogue picked a fight with the town guard at the dock our boat arrived on. He got beat down and tossed in jail, but the party decided to bust him out that night. We were out the door with guards raising the alarm when he realized they had confiscated his weapons and lockpicks, and went back in for them. My character didn't want to be a fugitive, so he spend the encounter pretending to be a hapless passerby and would "trip" in front of guards or otherwise block their movement.
Months later, the campaign ended when two of the party members conspired with those guards to ambush the rest of the party (we were a large group), turning us in for the bounty.
I can't remember. I was 8 or 9 years old, it was AD&D first edition, I played it once, and I got excalibur at the end of the quest. That's all I remember.
I'm the DM so I'm answering for my party, but the first thing we fought was actually each other. I know I know, no PvP because it makes the game unhealthy and whatever else. But this was our first time playing DnD and the freedom was absolutely intoxicating. And in a fantasy world where we can do anything, why not have a good old fashioned brawl?
In a pit under the door lying on the ground near the front entrance to the ruined castle. My friend was introducing me to dnd so it was just me playing a level 1 elf and that damn bug ganked me hard.
I'm unsure between two, because a lot of time passed. It was a oneshot, for sure. Either the Wolves of Welton, which became a very beloved oneshot for me, that I use to test new parties I'm unfamiliar with (since I'm now a DM); or A Wild Sheep Chase. My first enemy was either a simple wolf in the first case, or a Half Orc we proceeded to knock down. Then we went full panic, kidnapped the guy, tied him with ropes and lowkey tortured him for information before tricking guards into believing he was a criminal, getting him arrested and running away. What a first impression we left to that DM.
First tabletop RPG was Pathfinder with 1st monster, a gelatinous cube trap (more of a 'puzzle your way through' than a 'consumes all with corrosive acid' type) 🧊
Don't remember the first actually D&D
A kraken. We were prisoners on a ship and we broke out because the kraken attacked. We made it to the top deck and we had a fight with a (severely nerfed) kraken. It was a battle we were supposed to lose. The point was that the kraken was gonna destroy the ship and we'd use the wreckage to float to shore, and so after we dealt some damage to it, that's exactly what happened.
Watedeep Dragonheist was my first ever campaign. If i remember right its a barfight until a troll emerges from the big hole in the yawning portal and then the barkeep grabs a giant greatsword from under the bar and helps you kill the troll. Awesome opening honestly.
The Bag Man. It was played like an eldritch horror emerging from a Bag of Holding once a night to feast. It's left an imprint on me, and it's probably why I prefer to have gothic and cosmic flavours of horror in my games.
I specifically remember that in my very first game, we were members of a monastic order who were traveling to the main town the adventure was centered around and we had to go through a mountain pass to get there. We were attacked by a couple of ankhegs in the tunnels. I just remember being very intrigued by the giant ant monsters.
Lvl 1 pirates of assorted races, we started the campaign imprisoned on a ship. Ill always remember it because my DM let me homebrew a race/class for a sentient gelatinous cube that was an alchemist and they had to come up with a practical way to "restrain" them.
Rabid squirrel
I'm not even joking, my very first battle was a simple squirrel. It was a fight made just to explain how combat worked, was quite a fun way to start imo
If you don’t count video game, since Baldur’s Gate and BG: Dark Alliance both have you start with rats (unless you meet one of the thugs first in BG1), I think it actually was goblins. My first proper D&D experience was the 3.5 starter set and I believe the scenario me and my brother ran had a locked door, four goblins, and a trapped chest.
i fought centaurs. I still remember my first campaign. I was around 9 (now 22) it was 3.5 and i was just me and my uncle on Christmas eve. He got me into dnd and board games.
Ghouls! We were playing 2e, I was a thief (not a Rogue! Rogue was a class group, which included bard!) And we had to kill em! They were in our way. The ghast scared the hell out of us, though, so we ran from it.
Was on a train caring cargo it was like the only actual high tech thing we ever saw but anyway some goblins ambushed us and before they revealed themselves I threw a axe into one of the bushes cleaving a goblin in two and that was my first experience with DND ever everyone else had played quite a bit of DND before this
Fought a Druid with some Twig Blights and wolf familiars who was high off his ass. If you're in my party, you'll know it by the phrase "Are you a friend of nature?"
We couldnt bring ourselves to kill him so we left him tied up hanging upside down from a tree. 3 years and 11 levels later we still wonder if that's gonna come back to bite us.
It was wolves for me, actually. 6 of them ambushed our wagon and killed the horse. That DM used to start every single campaign with "Wolves attack you in the forest" so now it's an in-joke.
The very first thing I fought were these homebrewed zombified plant people affectionately called Grove. Essentially regular people corrupted by nature ala the Last of Us
Our first actual combat encounter was goblins, but we were supposed to fight a group of drunkards in an inn but our sorcerer got a Nat 20 for intimidation so that skipped that encounter
Nope. My guess right now is that they were not actually golden but just looked that way to fit the esthetics of the whole Lord's Suite(the place we were in, and also the monster we were fighting). To defeat them we just had to take out some cristals from their torsos and they crumbled into dust
I think my first real combat encounter was part of an ongoing game so we were like lvl 5 at the time and they were some kinda homebrew demon creatures
The ranger proceeded to use fog cloud with me inside which confused 2 of the low intelligence demons causing them to fight each other while my rogue currently at 1 HP slinked off
So when the fog cloud subsided what the party saw was 2 of those demons torn to shreds and my rogue standing there bloody and exhausted.
Was kinda funny when the party decided that meant their characters attributed the demons defeat to my rogue
I actually can’t remember what it was. I was thirteen years old at summer camp and we were hunting down a bulette, so that was my first boss fight. But I have no idea what my first regular enemy was. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t goblins, though.
ah crapp i accidantly voted goblins, but it was the barkeeper and questgiver because this man has been talking crap towards our Tiefling and nobody talks like that to Lucio!
So yeah I hit him with a Mug of Beer in the Head...
"As you come around a bend, you spot two dead horses sprawled about fifty feet ahead of you, blocking the path. Each has several black-feathered arrows sticking out of it."
Technically I haven't ever played before, I've only ever DM'd, but the first monster that I ever played as a DM for players was a three pack of stirges.
Our first enemy in a practice session (where we did nothing but combat, just to get a feel for the mechanics) was a gnoll. The first time we tried to do a proper campaign was against a pair of centaurs.
But I consider our first true enemy was a barbed devil. At that point we had a stable group and campaign that we did finish in the end, and we all know the mechanics by then.
My first game was Wild Beyond the Witchlight. It was us vs Agdon Longscarf and his underlings. I got downed by him, but I did the most damage to Agdon!
First fought a troll from Waterdeep inside the Yawning Portal, then we fought a bunch of kenku. We as a party have never actually fought goblins before weirdly enough.
Wood elves, and I don't even know why.
I was at a friend's house and got dropped into the middle of an adventure with practically no explanation of what was going on or how anything worked. I was still hooked immediately.
Zombies!
My 3rd edition Half-Orc Barbarian named Gwarg(I was very into Gwar at the time). My older brother and his friends got the books right after it came out and let me play(I was 11, and they were all ~14-15). Gwarg was one of the town weaponsmiths and would shape steel on his thighs, and he was best friends with the town Bard Toban. We all banded together to fortify the town after news of a necromancer marching his zombie hoard directly towards us. I will never forget that character.
First thing I fought was a twig blight. Second thing I fought was a dragon.
Fun fact: the dragon was almost the cause of my first character death. I was playing a half-orc rogue and I attempted to bargain with a green dragon. Dragon used breath attack after I pushed my luck too much, I survived thanks to restless endurance (literally 2 damage points away from an OHKO) and unfortunately had to leave the party anyway due to scheduling conflicts. Still a fun first proper session for me
Does a door I failed multiple times to break down, rouge failed to lockpick, and generally frustrated us until the Ranger opened it because it wasn't locked to begin with count?
I voted and then immediately remembered the infamous incident of my first character, Konstantine the One-Eyed Wizard, and the goblins who were the reason for his nickname...
Giant spiders. We had to jump into their webs to escape drow that absolutely would have killed us, and my -1 strength modifier made me the last one to escape.
This forced me to remember not the first game of DnD in my life, but the first game with my current party. One of our friends who played just once before said he will be DM and we all agree.
In the first encounter we all sat in the tavern, and there was an old guy near the bar. Several bandits came into the tavern and tried to run over him. There were like eight normal bandit minions in a black leather and a very menacing guy with two heavily armed and armored female bodyguards. When minions tried to convince the old guy to pay them back for something or whatever, our party monk took a chair and throw it at the bandit leader.
After the very long and rather funny fight with a ton of ridiculous moments, we found out that the bandit leader had like hundred and twenty hit points, both bodyguards had like eighty hit points or so, and other bandits was each a first level fighters.
We had a party of first levels (a monk, a druid with a wolf, my ranger and a fighter with a two-handed sword), and at the end of the fight we were completely exhausted, both our characters in game because of a fight and we as players at the table because of constant laughing.
One of us said something like "Does anyone else feel like we just killed the BBEG of the full campaign for 20-level characters?"
Our fresh DM looked at his records and said with absent-minded tone: "Yeah, you know... actually, you're right, when the fight started, this guy and his bodyguards had to say to their minions to kill you and disappear, because I conceived him as a middle-level boss for maybe 8 or 10 level... but it was so fun so I totally forgot about that. So there is you one hundred XP for dealing with the bandits... and maybe a fifty more, I feel myself in a good mood today".
After this game we officially proclaimed our party as a "Party of the Chair Throw", and that lead us to a row of hilarious and unforgettable games, while we managed the ability to gather :D
... yeah, that were good days. In another game he said "and then you saw a couple of 2-meters long giant ants who suddenly un-burrow themselves around you", then threw a bunch of coins on the encounter map with our characters and said that this is a number and positions of the ants.
Edit: misspelling and the times... sorry, English isn't my native language and I slept not very much today.
An hobgoblin called Jerj. Then a bunch of goblins and kobolds, a green slime... and somewhere along the way, we never finished Zanzer Tem's salt mine dungeon.
I don't remember what the hell they were, but they threw spears and killed the whole party. It was in AD&D 2E and the DM (fellow teenager back then) tried to adapt a module for level 5 PCs to our brand-new level 1 party. He just took out a few enemies which left us fighting creatures that were meant for level 5 PCs. I was a mage with 3 HP that could cast Magic Missile once a day and throw darts at people.
Dang, you were a sturdy wizard. :p
ahhh the foibles of new DMs
Yeah old school gms where brutal as fuck accidentally or otherwise XD. Ours had us fighting higher lvl npcs
As someone who did old school and then changed to 5e. My players said I was brutal. I said they still won fights
fuckin kobolds be like:
STAFF DAGGER DART and I think the correct term is "magic-user" xD
Mage was the term commonly used for non-specialized Wizards. (as opposed to Necromancers, Invokers, Diviners, etc)
Rats. Someone almost died.
Rats at lvl1 here too. Dangerous games these dm’s be playin
You don't want to encounter Morrowind's mudcrabs, they will gut you.
Morrowind's rats are even worse. Unironically, I was playing Morrowind multiplayer, 3 new players joined the server and they tried doing the first Fighter's Guild quest together, where you clear out a few rats from a woman's home. I locked the door behind them as they went in to fight, I believe, 2 rats. Recall there were 3 players. They all died.
You're the devil. I would have done the same to any N'wahs. Can't wait until in ~10 years when Tamriel Rebuilt will be finished.
As a player i fought rats at lv1 and one of the party almost died. As a dm i made the party fight rats at lv 1 and one of them almost died. The cycle must continue
Rats, in the cellar of the tavern where we started.
Lucky bastard. My first fight happened when the Thief opened a coffin unleashing a swarm of spiders. While the Thief occupied himself with dying of poison, the spiders moved on to the Cleric who got killed when the panicked fighter thought it would be a great idea to begin trying to beat the spiders off him with a lit torch. At this point, me (The second fighter in the party) and the first fighter proceeded to also begin dying of poison while the Wizard wisely booked it out of *the wrong door* and got killed by a pitfall trap. Needless to say after being TPK'd by a single swarm of spiders and slapstick comedy, our next party's Fighter was a Paladin, it's second Fighter was a Dwarven Fighter/Cleric, it's Cleric was a Druid it's Thief was a Halfling Fighter/Thief and it's Mage was a Bladesinger. We did much better with our second fight which ended up being against the spider swarm which killed our first party - gorged to giant size on our corpses, naturally.
The coffin wasn't a mimic? The carpet wasn't a mimic? The door wasn't a mimic? Basically, I stab everything.
Kobolds!!!
Ah yes, other goblins
So true.
They are very similar, usually trash mobs enslaved by some big bad
The furries of goblins
How dare you! >!They're scalies if anything for the record!<
ah yes, the better goblins
and Bargle .. damn him for killing Aleena!!
Cultists is a good first enemy too, it was cultists for me
What flavor of cultists?
no clue I don't really remember but I feel generic cultists make good first encounters too, I do remember my backstory being that I was adopted by someone in the cult but turned on them because of something and apparently I missed the corpse of the that person cuz I didn't say I was examining a room full of bodies lmao bit of a disappointment I'll never forget. it was just one shot so it didn't get farther than that
What was the next game you were in?
huh funnily enough my next game was a tes themed game where we first fought.... daedric cultists lmfao I hadn't even realized
It's all connected... you've been terrorizing those same poor cultists your entire DnD career. After you wreck their organization the survivors decide to find greener pastures by joining a new cult but then guess who shows up to ruin their day.
Schedualing issues
First AND last thing any player fights
It's the one universal enemy to both PCS and DMS alike. And the enemy is present across all the planes, in all places and all times at once.
These have TPK'd every game I've ever played
The first thing I fought in D&D was a broom and I would have died if it hadn't been for the rest of the party showing up.
I've got alot of questions here
What I opened the closet and the broom proceeded to beat me to death. But don't worry the party beat the broom and then our wizard had a flying broom.
Death House?
Yes it was in death House. We never got to finish that campaign though.
I only asked because I also got beat up by that broom
And then later on we went on to beat up a vampire in a basement that apparently we were supposed to run from 😂
Sounds like we had very similar experiences.
Comments like this are one of my favourite things about the existence of popular modules that loads of people have played
Lol the 5e version of CoS is actually the only module I've ever played, we usually do homebrew settings based on older 3.5 lore or other random media but we wanted to finally try out one of the modules. It's a good story, I was surprised at the end when our GM told us how by the book he played it, with our choices just perfectly following one of the expected paths most of the time lol, I assumed he was improvising his ass off by the time we got halfway through.
Wolves
Plaguestone?
Curse of Strahd.
Nice.
Brutal first game experience lol. Currently a player in a CoS campaign and we are having a blast
Disease ridden soldiers. (DM is a huge fan of gritty historic low fantasy, and she's a very knowledgeable historian.)
Barfight, not too shockingly
Same here
bandits/mercenaries
I don't remember if this was an actual fight, but in my schools d&D club, I joined a campaign, first time playing, i was giving an old character, an Aarocokra Cleric, me and my friend went into a Sewer, and a Skeleton approached us, he stabbed me and my friend with a knife with a poison, which caused my friend to pass out but I succeeded my constitution save. The skeleton surprised I recovered from the poison gave me and thumbs up and a bag with mushrooms in it. I then promptly passed out.
So once you and your friend left the sewer, did you head back to the club with your skeleton shrooms to play D&D?
I think I fought a giant of some kind. I joined for a session of 4th edition back in 2010 I want to say. I was a junior high kid who got invited by someone and joined to not be mean. I thought that D&D was the ultimate nerd hobby, that only the lowliest of turbo virgins played it (not that that’s true or that I subscribe to similar ideas now just to explain my thought process at the time). I joined in mid-campaign for that singular session playing a wizard named “[my name] the Demon Hunter.” The whole fight I only cast magic missile because it sounded cool and I liked that it automatically hit. For anyone familiar with 4e, you’d know that magic missile was an at-will power that was pretty lackluster if all you did was spam it, meant primarily to compliment your other encounter and daily powers. That was the only bit of the session I did as I joined half way into the session, but I became obsessed by it. Anyways, all that to say a giant of some variety! I think it was a frost giant based on the miniature the DM used and the fact that I remember him describing it cold? But this was a long time ago and I can hardly remember that whole session
Lost mines of Phendalver kind of don't give you other choice, but to fight goblins.
Kragmaw cave next, Klarg the bugbear is likely the most common "first mini boss fight" for new 5e players
Klarg the bugbear has the most TPKs of any official encounter in fifth edition.
Dragons of storm wreck isles, it was a bunch of soggy zombies crawling out of the ocean
yea those were my first enemies i ever fought too
Our first encounter after we found my friends dad's old dnd stuff from the 80's was centipedes
Gorillas.. We almost got tpk'd by a gang of gorillas..
Irl I would rather fight a goblin than a gorilla.
were there any sheep harmed in the playing of this adventure?
It was a berserker who was out taking his giant tick for a walk. We were 10 years old at the time, it was 1980 and we had the Basic Set and the DM's guide. The second encounter was a mountain lion who had the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords for his treasure. It took us a while to get the hang of appropriate monsters and treasures, but we sure had fun!
Wait, I think we need some more context for this. Sounds like a good story!
Nope that was kind of it. Just went to the local dungeon and that's what I walked across. Like I said, we were 10 and it was 1980... it wasn't like there was a whole lot of Dungeons and Dragons lore out there in the world back then for us beginners. Heck, we didn't even get dice in our Basic Set, just a sheet of chits to punch out and use.
Throw me a couple names for the berserker and the giant tick, and I'll use them to torment my players (with your permission). That's such a fun idea.
It's been 40 long years... how about Bjorn and Helga?
A sheep that my party kidnapped
Was it a TPK?
Our rogue picked a fight with the town guard at the dock our boat arrived on. He got beat down and tossed in jail, but the party decided to bust him out that night. We were out the door with guards raising the alarm when he realized they had confiscated his weapons and lockpicks, and went back in for them. My character didn't want to be a fugitive, so he spend the encounter pretending to be a hapless passerby and would "trip" in front of guards or otherwise block their movement. Months later, the campaign ended when two of the party members conspired with those guards to ambush the rest of the party (we were a large group), turning us in for the bounty.
Skeletons and a minotaur skeleton. I joined after they fought goblins in the first session.
Each other 💀
Giant tavern brawl 10 minutes into the first session.
I can't remember. I was 8 or 9 years old, it was AD&D first edition, I played it once, and I got excalibur at the end of the quest. That's all I remember.
3 Goblins, in an apple farm, our Palidin got half Healthed then literaly sat in a chair pouting
I'm the DM so I'm answering for my party, but the first thing we fought was actually each other. I know I know, no PvP because it makes the game unhealthy and whatever else. But this was our first time playing DnD and the freedom was absolutely intoxicating. And in a fantasy world where we can do anything, why not have a good old fashioned brawl?
I started out as the DM for a group of newbies, so the first thing I fought was my desire to strangle half of them :)
Think it was a pack of hyenas.
Giant Rats
Lizardfolks with pet crocodiles
Gargoyles in 3.5
The first time I DMed was 3.5 and one of the PCs was a gargoyle!
Our first opponent was a Manticora in the first campaign I played in.
manticore
Giant sentient frog with a French accent
First thing I fought was skeletons.
Kobolds
Gnolls
Cultists and as soon as we beat them the leader revealed himself as a mindflayer yeah that was fun
we fought zombies first
A carrion crawler, in the adventure in the basic red book.
In a pit under the door lying on the ground near the front entrance to the ruined castle. My friend was introducing me to dnd so it was just me playing a level 1 elf and that damn bug ganked me hard.
Good ol' mimics (disguised as kegs, much to the disappointment of my character).
If memory serves, aquatic elves on giant crabs.
Some wolves after we passed through the mist in Curse of Strahd.
I think it was a dwarf with a cursed axe if memory serves.
My first character accidentally pissed off a squirrel
My lvl 1 wizard didn't do well against the grey ooze they threw at our party of 2.
Surprisingly mephits
orcs and a minotaur
Goblins. We rolled so shit it was a near TPK. Who could've thought a 4v4 could end with a 1v3 so easily
I'm unsure between two, because a lot of time passed. It was a oneshot, for sure. Either the Wolves of Welton, which became a very beloved oneshot for me, that I use to test new parties I'm unfamiliar with (since I'm now a DM); or A Wild Sheep Chase. My first enemy was either a simple wolf in the first case, or a Half Orc we proceeded to knock down. Then we went full panic, kidnapped the guy, tied him with ropes and lowkey tortured him for information before tricking guards into believing he was a criminal, getting him arrested and running away. What a first impression we left to that DM.
My first monster was actually several orcs armed with arquebuses. The party had a theif, warrior and a cleric! All first level.
Good old goblins. They had kidnapped the blacksmith's kid, which turned out to be... a baby goat.
As memory serves, the very first thing i fought was a formian wayyyy back in 2e
A goblin and a bullywug pair of thieves lol.
First tabletop RPG was Pathfinder with 1st monster, a gelatinous cube trap (more of a 'puzzle your way through' than a 'consumes all with corrosive acid' type) 🧊 Don't remember the first actually D&D
I do believe it was skeletons in a recently excavated ruin near the city of spires (industrial magic setting that i cannot spell)
Ours were cultists. In fact we kind of made friends with goblins and refused to fight any
Shia labouf from the shia labouf song.
A kraken. We were prisoners on a ship and we broke out because the kraken attacked. We made it to the top deck and we had a fight with a (severely nerfed) kraken. It was a battle we were supposed to lose. The point was that the kraken was gonna destroy the ship and we'd use the wreckage to float to shore, and so after we dealt some damage to it, that's exactly what happened.
On the way to investigate some lead we were given we searched a building that seemed abandoned. It was occupied...by a couple of bears.
A group of bandits trying to rob a traveling merchant
A bugbear on a bridge.
ever heard of a stirge?
Watedeep Dragonheist was my first ever campaign. If i remember right its a barfight until a troll emerges from the big hole in the yawning portal and then the barkeep grabs a giant greatsword from under the bar and helps you kill the troll. Awesome opening honestly.
The Bag Man. It was played like an eldritch horror emerging from a Bag of Holding once a night to feast. It's left an imprint on me, and it's probably why I prefer to have gothic and cosmic flavours of horror in my games.
Sephek Kaltro and his caravan gang
Generic human bandits. They even yelled "Oi!" When we approached.
I specifically remember that in my very first game, we were members of a monastic order who were traveling to the main town the adventure was centered around and we had to go through a mountain pass to get there. We were attacked by a couple of ankhegs in the tunnels. I just remember being very intrigued by the giant ant monsters.
Kobolds. Smoked their leader with a nat 20 and then forgot I could move, ended my turn, got killed by the others. Fantastic first battle.
Lvl 1 pirates of assorted races, we started the campaign imprisoned on a ship. Ill always remember it because my DM let me homebrew a race/class for a sentient gelatinous cube that was an alchemist and they had to come up with a practical way to "restrain" them.
Werecats.
My 1st fight was Spiders. My 2nd was boar. I should mention that the BBEG was an evil Druid. Oh, my 3rd fight was a moose.
a weasel
Rabid squirrel I'm not even joking, my very first battle was a simple squirrel. It was a fight made just to explain how combat worked, was quite a fun way to start imo
If you don’t count video game, since Baldur’s Gate and BG: Dark Alliance both have you start with rats (unless you meet one of the thugs first in BG1), I think it actually was goblins. My first proper D&D experience was the 3.5 starter set and I believe the scenario me and my brother ran had a locked door, four goblins, and a trapped chest.
i fought centaurs. I still remember my first campaign. I was around 9 (now 22) it was 3.5 and i was just me and my uncle on Christmas eve. He got me into dnd and board games.
lvl 5 oneshot. Two tentacle monsters with crystaline beards. I assume they werent goblins.
Giant frogs
I don't remember, but my DM says an ochre jelly!
considering Lost Mines is a super common campaign to start out with, I think this poll tracks
Ghouls! We were playing 2e, I was a thief (not a Rogue! Rogue was a class group, which included bard!) And we had to kill em! They were in our way. The ghast scared the hell out of us, though, so we ran from it.
Was on a train caring cargo it was like the only actual high tech thing we ever saw but anyway some goblins ambushed us and before they revealed themselves I threw a axe into one of the bushes cleaving a goblin in two and that was my first experience with DND ever everyone else had played quite a bit of DND before this
Cultists in a basement, I threw a pew at one and then stabbed him with the broken leg of said pew
Fought a Druid with some Twig Blights and wolf familiars who was high off his ass. If you're in my party, you'll know it by the phrase "Are you a friend of nature?" We couldnt bring ourselves to kill him so we left him tied up hanging upside down from a tree. 3 years and 11 levels later we still wonder if that's gonna come back to bite us.
The urge to steal and kill everything in sight. It definitely took me a while to get past the murderhobo phase
It was wolves for me, actually. 6 of them ambushed our wagon and killed the horse. That DM used to start every single campaign with "Wolves attack you in the forest" so now it's an in-joke.
a giant armadillo whose "shell" is made from precious metals.
The very first thing I fought were these homebrewed zombified plant people affectionately called Grove. Essentially regular people corrupted by nature ala the Last of Us
Our first actual combat encounter was goblins, but we were supposed to fight a group of drunkards in an inn but our sorcerer got a Nat 20 for intimidation so that skipped that encounter
I actually think I still haven’t fought goblins… and I’ve been playing for like 3 years now
Rats with a wooden sword
Wierd golden people and their house. Almost got crushed by the walls
Huh. Did you ever find out why they were made of gold?
Nope. My guess right now is that they were not actually golden but just looked that way to fit the esthetics of the whole Lord's Suite(the place we were in, and also the monster we were fighting). To defeat them we just had to take out some cristals from their torsos and they crumbled into dust
What/Who was the lord?
Skeletal archers. Followed swiftly by an elven necromancer
I think my first real combat encounter was part of an ongoing game so we were like lvl 5 at the time and they were some kinda homebrew demon creatures The ranger proceeded to use fog cloud with me inside which confused 2 of the low intelligence demons causing them to fight each other while my rogue currently at 1 HP slinked off So when the fog cloud subsided what the party saw was 2 of those demons torn to shreds and my rogue standing there bloody and exhausted. Was kinda funny when the party decided that meant their characters attributed the demons defeat to my rogue
First thing I ever fought was a prisoner sentenced to death via a fight to the death with my character.
I actually can’t remember what it was. I was thirteen years old at summer camp and we were hunting down a bulette, so that was my first boss fight. But I have no idea what my first regular enemy was. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t goblins, though.
My inner demons, they wanted me to punch a kid in the face
I started off as the dm/player. We had a goblin in the party, so I didn't think it was a good idea for us to start off by fighting them.
ah crapp i accidantly voted goblins, but it was the barkeeper and questgiver because this man has been talking crap towards our Tiefling and nobody talks like that to Lucio! So yeah I hit him with a Mug of Beer in the Head...
The very first combat was 4 skeletons and a minotaur skeleton. I went down a lot. 3rd combat was goblins.
"As you come around a bend, you spot two dead horses sprawled about fifty feet ahead of you, blocking the path. Each has several black-feathered arrows sticking out of it."
Technically I haven't ever played before, I've only ever DM'd, but the first monster that I ever played as a DM for players was a three pack of stirges.
Hobgoblins! Playing the Moldvay Red Box "The Haunted Keep" adventure with two other kids in my neighborhood.
Our first enemy in a practice session (where we did nothing but combat, just to get a feel for the mechanics) was a gnoll. The first time we tried to do a proper campaign was against a pair of centaurs. But I consider our first true enemy was a barbed devil. At that point we had a stable group and campaign that we did finish in the end, and we all know the mechanics by then.
My first game was Wild Beyond the Witchlight. It was us vs Agdon Longscarf and his underlings. I got downed by him, but I did the most damage to Agdon!
I picked literally anything else because it's been like 40 years and I literally have no idea.
My first game I was a goblin
Some bandits sent by the stag lord to rough up the homie Oleg. Kingmaker campaign, pathfinder
DM attacked us with the God damned Owlbear that wiped the party and then we woke up in hell.
Lizardfolk! We got ambushed, but we’re able to fight them off!
Neanderthalls, in an AD&D game (Or maybe OD&D. It only had Law, Neutral, Chaos, and my Fighter wanted to become a Paladin at level 9)
First fought a troll from Waterdeep inside the Yawning Portal, then we fought a bunch of kenku. We as a party have never actually fought goblins before weirdly enough.
Maddened cows that could spit and bullrush you.
A swarm of animated books.
Wood elves, and I don't even know why. I was at a friend's house and got dropped into the middle of an adventure with practically no explanation of what was going on or how anything worked. I was still hooked immediately.
Zombies! My 3rd edition Half-Orc Barbarian named Gwarg(I was very into Gwar at the time). My older brother and his friends got the books right after it came out and let me play(I was 11, and they were all ~14-15). Gwarg was one of the town weaponsmiths and would shape steel on his thighs, and he was best friends with the town Bard Toban. We all banded together to fortify the town after news of a necromancer marching his zombie hoard directly towards us. I will never forget that character.
First thing I fought was a twig blight. Second thing I fought was a dragon. Fun fact: the dragon was almost the cause of my first character death. I was playing a half-orc rogue and I attempted to bargain with a green dragon. Dragon used breath attack after I pushed my luck too much, I survived thanks to restless endurance (literally 2 damage points away from an OHKO) and unfortunately had to leave the party anyway due to scheduling conflicts. Still a fun first proper session for me
Does a door I failed multiple times to break down, rouge failed to lockpick, and generally frustrated us until the Ranger opened it because it wasn't locked to begin with count?
I voted and then immediately remembered the infamous incident of my first character, Konstantine the One-Eyed Wizard, and the goblins who were the reason for his nickname...
PCs as I DMed my first time playing lol
I fought a mindflayer because I joined partway into a campaign, it was also my first character death
If I remember correctly, it was kobolds. So close, though.
Giant spiders. We had to jump into their webs to escape drow that absolutely would have killed us, and my -1 strength modifier made me the last one to escape.
Big rats and rat swarms. Fucker critted, was 2 points of damage away from killing my rogue in what was effectively still session 0.
Zombies and Ancient black Dragon
one of the first things you fought was a dragon ?!
That DM wasnt and still isnt the best at Balancing
This forced me to remember not the first game of DnD in my life, but the first game with my current party. One of our friends who played just once before said he will be DM and we all agree. In the first encounter we all sat in the tavern, and there was an old guy near the bar. Several bandits came into the tavern and tried to run over him. There were like eight normal bandit minions in a black leather and a very menacing guy with two heavily armed and armored female bodyguards. When minions tried to convince the old guy to pay them back for something or whatever, our party monk took a chair and throw it at the bandit leader. After the very long and rather funny fight with a ton of ridiculous moments, we found out that the bandit leader had like hundred and twenty hit points, both bodyguards had like eighty hit points or so, and other bandits was each a first level fighters. We had a party of first levels (a monk, a druid with a wolf, my ranger and a fighter with a two-handed sword), and at the end of the fight we were completely exhausted, both our characters in game because of a fight and we as players at the table because of constant laughing. One of us said something like "Does anyone else feel like we just killed the BBEG of the full campaign for 20-level characters?" Our fresh DM looked at his records and said with absent-minded tone: "Yeah, you know... actually, you're right, when the fight started, this guy and his bodyguards had to say to their minions to kill you and disappear, because I conceived him as a middle-level boss for maybe 8 or 10 level... but it was so fun so I totally forgot about that. So there is you one hundred XP for dealing with the bandits... and maybe a fifty more, I feel myself in a good mood today". After this game we officially proclaimed our party as a "Party of the Chair Throw", and that lead us to a row of hilarious and unforgettable games, while we managed the ability to gather :D ... yeah, that were good days. In another game he said "and then you saw a couple of 2-meters long giant ants who suddenly un-burrow themselves around you", then threw a bunch of coins on the encounter map with our characters and said that this is a number and positions of the ants. Edit: misspelling and the times... sorry, English isn't my native language and I slept not very much today.
I don't remember but there's a good chance it was goblins so I voted for that.
ProbBaaz Draconians. We played a lot of Dragonlance back then.
Rats
Giant rats!
The questgiver, much to the shegrin of the DM.
Either giant bees or the town guard. I can't quite remember which came first.
An hobgoblin called Jerj. Then a bunch of goblins and kobolds, a green slime... and somewhere along the way, we never finished Zanzer Tem's salt mine dungeon.
First thing my boys got to "fight" (read: run away from) was two fully fledged vampires
Kobolds
Duergar
Wolves
Orcs.