![Image](http://cdn.chud.com/9/90/90033d3b_WhenYouDieItWillBeWithoutHonor01.jpeg)
Various superhero team covers often imply a team of heroes fighting one strong villain, though what's actually inside the covers can vary.
![Image](http://www.comicbookbrain.com/_imagery/2012-11-21/fantastic-four-cover-1.jpg)
![Image](https://dailyanimeart.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/kaguya-reaches-out-to-naruto-and-sasuke.png)
![Image](http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111102231036/dragonball/images/9/93/Raditz_vs_Goku,Piccolo..jpg)
There's also your "Team vs Boss" fights where the team loses to show how strong the boss is
![Image](http://www.m5zn.com/newuploads/2014/01/19/jpg//5d75f00cd05710d.jpg)
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Just to clarify my thoughts... I'm not saying there shouldn't be creatures with "must be this tall to ride" numbers. I'm saying that the official monster selection does not contain good "boss monsters" to use in order to have a good encounter that the party has a real chance to win, and that the official guidelines to match monster numbers to CR precludes having monsters that work well as boss monsters.OgreBattle wrote:"and thus bounded accuracy solves the problem!"But you can't just climb the CR ladder, because each CR jump increases defense and offense across the board - so a CR+2 is a decent miniboss, maybe, but a CR+4 one-shots the fighter, dodges almost every attack and effect, and whatever gets through is piddling compared to its giant pile of HP.
I am pretty sure the very concept of a "boss monster" demands assymetrical design to make it function in any remotely balanced way.DSMatticus wrote:The thing about multimonsters that rubs me the wrong way is that they're completely PC/NPC asymmetrical. Yes, pretending a bunch of dudes are actually four dudes stacked on top of eachother in a trenchcoat adds the actions and survivability needed for a boss, but now the orc barbarian king the party is trying to murder is built on a completely different structure than the orc barbarian king that is in the party.
This is a legitimate issue, but I don't think it's a fatal one. Since letting a PC play as a multi-part creature isn't (AFAICT) actually overpowered, but is a lot of extra pen-and-paper work, you could think of it as an alternate progression available to anyone but which PCs simply have no real incentive to take. Or you could restrict it to the sorts of beasts nobody really expects to have in their party. Or you could lampshade it with fluff by having all the bosses be empowered by the same antagonistic phlebotinum source.DSMatticus wrote:The thing about multimonsters that rubs me the wrong way is that they're completely PC/NPC asymmetrical.
Seerow wrote:I am pretty sure the very concept of a "boss monster" demands assymetrical design to make it function in any remotely balanced way.
D&D has problems with boss fights specifically because it is so overwhelmingly binary. Charm monster either removes you from the fight or does absolutely nothing. There is no intermediate result where people aren't removed from the fight but are one step closer to being removed from the fight.DSM wrote:D&D is really big on binary results that fuck dudes up. Either you have an appropriate immunity/counter or you lose. Either you make the saving throw or you lose. Either you avoid the full attack/ubercharge or you lose. 4v1 is never really going to make an interesting fight in D&D, because 4v1 is just an exercise in iterative probability. There's no incremental progress or back and forth or thought, it's just full-on hardcounters and RNG bullshit.
I could see such a system being an extension of D&D3.5's sunder rules. Cutting off the heads of a hydra and arms of a kraken already uses the sunder mechanic. So a dragon's wings and a beholder's eyestalks is treated as 'equipment'* that grants various effects like flight and magic rays, and like fighting a hydra losing various body parts also deals damage to the monster as a whole. Against weak foes that you can strike down with a single blow you wouldn't bother with sundering.We had a couple threads on multi-part boss monsters, where the boss was mechanically a number of creatures occupying the same square. There were issues, but it did address action economy, not dying to a single SoD, and not being off the scale with the PCs. I tried it out a few times and it worked okay. I know Koumei wrote up a few of them, but I don't know if she got to put them into practice.
DSMatticus wrote:Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I am filled with an unfathomable hatred.
DSMatticus wrote:Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I am filled with an unfathomable hatred.
Well, under the mounted combat comparison, the teleporting outsider also isn't a concern because teleporting outsiders can only carry 50 lbs with them and barring tiny character shenanigans, the rest of the stack wouldn't make it. Restricting full attacks as hard as you do creates an incentive to make all stacks very casty. I don't think we need that incentive.DSMatticus wrote:Preventing the Big Boss from taking multiple full attacks is not supposed to be conditional on movement, it's just supposed to be a thing all the time. Condensing a bunch of full attacks into a single character would be both very brutal focus fire and a very boring fight. I am deliberately disincentivizing four archers/three closet trolls plus a teleporting outsider.
You may posit that, but there's no reason it has to be true. The availability of helpful 13th-level clerics is one of those things that is extremely setting-dependent. Under your model, Grendel invariably has his arm back in short order; under my model, you can have that happen, but you can also plausibly have big bosses questing for the magic to restore their missing parts.As for 'restorection,' either way a cleric or a well-stocked supply of magical healing is going to get Grendel's arm back within a day (immediately under restorection). If Grendel doesn't have access to those things, the not-quite-dead effect means he can grow his arm back through natural rest in about a week (half that with complete bed rest). I'm going to posit that any downtime sufficient for Grendel to regrow his arm naturally is also enough downtime to get his hands on a restoration+magical healing.
I do not like any solution where grabbing a monster with single person teleport-esque effects does not give you single person teleport-esque effects. If you pick blink dog, you can dimension door.angelfromanotherpin wrote:Well, under the mounted combat comparison, the teleporting outsider also isn't a concern because teleporting outsiders can only carry 50 lbs with them and barring tiny character shenanigans, the rest of the stack wouldn't make it.
Restoration is a 4th level cleric spell, not a 7th. I'm pretty sure Grendel can get his remaining hand on a level 7 cleric within a week.angelfromanotherpin wrote:You may posit that, but there's no reason it has to be true. The availability of helpful 13th-level clerics is one of those things that is extremely setting-dependent. Under your model, Grendel invariably has his arm back in short order; under my model, you can have that happen, but you can also plausibly have big bosses questing for the magic to restore their missing parts.
Your preference is frankly weird to me. It's just straight-up contrary to the mechanic being a refluffing of multiple creatures standing near (or on) each other. The object is not to portray a creature who simultaneously is each of their component creatures, it's to portray a specific creature by selecting components that collectively produce the effects you want.DSMatticus wrote:I do not like any solution where grabbing a monster with single person teleport-esque effects does not give you single person teleport-esque effects. If you pick blink dog, you can dimension door.
Possibly, but if you mount Grendel's severed arm on your wall, he doesn't have the 'remains' of the fallen creature and needs the true rez effect rather than the raise effect. I guess boss monsters could also quest for their missing parts directly, that's pretty cool too.Restoration is a 4th level cleric spell, not a 7th. I'm pretty sure Grendel can get his remaining hand on a level 7 cleric within a week.
D&D has no permanent injuries if you are at a sufficient level. But characters can be killed before they have access to Raise Dead, maimed before they have access to Regenerate, and disintegrated before they have access to True Rez.It's really no different than exactly what you'd expect. D&D doesn't have permanent injuries, so if you stop paying attention to someone for any span of time they'll be back exactly as they were.
Let's talk about your example, Grendel. Let's say Grendel is an outsider with a standard action teleport. Grendel's arm does not have a standard action teleport. Should Grendel be able to teleport? Does his arm fall off if he does? How the fuck do I make fiendish Big Bosses if all the components aren't one creature for the purposes of teleport?angelfromanotherpin wrote:Your preference is frankly weird to me. It's just straight-up contrary to the mechanic being a refluffing of multiple creatures standing near (or on) each other. The object is not to portray a creature who simultaneously is each of their component creatures, it's to portray a specific creature by selecting components that collectively produce the effects you want.
Being able to move and full attack is not the end of the world. Yes, it's very good, but cleric archers exist and can take their full attacks against anyone within 110ft. And if you grab a blink dog at Big Boss 1, that is basically the only thing you're getting for it. Big Boss is worthless for your personal awesomeness and blink dogs are worthless except for dimension door. So you gave up a level to grab a short range free action teleport that you're basically going to use like pounce except with less downsides and no charge bonuses. Seriously, that's fine. I would rather you do that than go Big Boss 5, strap four competent archers together, and have them rain full attack death on something.angelfromanotherpin wrote:I also don't know if you could have chosen a worse example than a fucking Blink Dog to make a case for contagious teleportation. A blink dog has a ridiculous mobility effect and is only CR 2 because its offense is strictly bullshit and it specifically can't be used as a delivery system for badder dudes. No matter how casual you are when you slap an enormous buff on that ability for... reasons, you are still slapping an enormous buff on that ability. At that point I start to wonder what other abilities you intend to buff or debuff, and if you intend to write them down somewhere.
Big Boss has a prereq of level 5. Sure, NPC's have access to whatever resources you say they do, but we are starting pretty damn close to "sufficient level."angelfromanotherpin wrote:D&D has no permanent injuries if you are at a sufficient level.