I had a very tense moment yesterday when I encountered a cavalcade of monsters on the bottom of a ravine, most of which I was able to kill by drawing them out, but among them were two witches, so I had to adjust my tactics from hit-and-run to shit-and-run. Witches are fucking scary. What's worse, my failsafe strategy is always to deposit a bucket of lava behind me so the monsters just run into it and burn themselves to death, but witches don't give a fuck, they just drink a potion of fire resistance. I was able to retreat to the top of my staircase, which I'd blocked off, where I was able to kill one with the last of my arrows, but my sword and pickaxe were both on the verge of breaking in half (I had resorted to shoveling zombies to death), so I wasn't about to face the last one head-on. I didn't just want to leave because I left a furnace with a full stack of iron at the bottom, right where that witch was. The solution was to sneak to the bottom, very carefully, and encase the witch into cobblestone while its back was turned. Success!
Then a bit later I died while trying to break through a zombie dungeon, but that turned out all right because I recovered my stuff.