Bosses and their fights

[virgil]

When your party is getting their B&E on, what are common goals/concerns/problems when designing and running the guy in charge of the place?

In terms of plot, I occasionally run into concerns on making any particular villain too powerful for their role, which crops up when trying to maintain a challenge with the party. I also worry about how to handle a villain that logically has the means to get himself raised, or some of the consequences if the villain actually had a life outside its lair.

That's only a little bit of thought on what kind of plot considerations. Probably the most difficult aspect for me is the actual mechanical considerations.

Past the low levels, a party of level appropriate characters can bring considerable force to bear without even using any teamwork. This makes 4v1 fights a challenge to design, as an 8th level party can easily dump over 100+ damage in a single round, making many lucky to survive two whole rounds. If action-denial or similar is used to much effect, then our boss is basically hoping for a good initiative to actually do anything. Finding anything that can survive and act for an entire three or four rounds is almost the same as finding something that can one-shot a character.

The longer they last, the faster they can kill, which makes upgrading a boss difficult because a linear lifespan increase is an almost exponential damage output.

Then there's the option of toning down the boss and giving him friends to help him, which can get cumbersome if ill-designed. You need to take into account that you need to plan well for this, because you can just as easily end up punishing yourself by making the boss not as big. As a rule, players are going to team up and focus fire on the boss. This is surprisingly easy with spells and bows (or flying melee if the minions aren't airborne), making the presence of minions superfluous in terms of actually extending the boss's lifespan.

We return to the same problem. Putting a nametag on the villain makes their insurance premiums skyrocket, and life-expectancy is directly proportional to CPR (characters per round). I have contemplated using this in my games...
Boss Template: Triple hit points, raise saving throws by +4. Increase CR by 2.

It's a means of adding padding to the Rocket Launcher Tag that is D&D, theoretically allowing me to still have a boss that has an actual lifespan without as much worry about one-shotting anybody.

I'm curious as to what everyone else's thoughts are on boss fight design.

[Koumei]

You could give them a friend who casts Shield Other on them, and maybe nail a few captives to their armour. So let's say 20HP worth of captives explode in a fine red mist on the first round (unless the PCs decide they need to find a way to save those poor little people), and half damage taken after that.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

I'm curious as to what everyone else's thoughts are on boss fight design.

Probably the most important aspect of boss fights, as in normal encounters, is the economy of actions. If the players actions outnumber the boss's actions by 4 to 1, then he won't last long. Since your priority is to make the boss last longer, we need to look at the problem from another angle. In other words, you need to slow down the meaningful actions that the players can tag the boss with.

The longer they last, the faster they can kill, which makes upgrading a boss difficult because a linear lifespan increase is an almost exponential damage output.

This is only true when you assume that the boss is sitting in the middle of the Pc's and getting gang-hacked. There are other ways to make a boss last longer without increasing its offense. There are some common scenario's that are often used in both stories and games:

-The grind before the boss. If the players have 3 or more moderate to challenging encounters before the boss, then they will have used much of their expendable resources. They will therefore have less offense to tag the boss with, and will have to fight defensively because their ability to remove enemy damage will be lessened.

-The Boss's Lair. Most boss fights occur either in his lair or on his terms. Since that is the case, he will plan for it. The boss's lair will have architecture both mundane and magical that will impede the players movement and attacks, as well as protecting himself and his minions.

-Divided Attention. The boss can do something to divert attacks away from himself. If the party focuses everything on the boss, something horrible will happen. This can be as cliche as lowering a prisoner into the shark tank.

-Standard battlefield control abilities.

[Maxus]

May I also suggest--

-Giving the boss his own Team Evil to back him up?

[Orion]

First of all, it's actually completely acceptable for the boss to one-shot PCs in a variety of circumstances.

Particularly if the party has powerful combat healing or dispells available to get downed characters fighting again.

The logical extension of this principle is the juggling boss. He repeatedly and briefly denies actions so that only one or two players can act against him at a time.

The ultimate BBEG of my last campaign was an orc Monk/Vampire Paragon. He had fighting styles that let him stun with a slam and trip when attacked, with an enlarge person on himself, juggernaut, and combat school. the first several people to approach him on a given round got tripped or disarmed without being able to attack. He could then stun somebody on his turn, or use his hypno-gaze to lock down a ranged attacker.

Of course, he also had some drow vampires throwing down web, grease, etc., because as mentioned above, minions do help.

Also, I almost always seed the BBEG's lair with action-denying traps like webs, sepia snake sigils, shallow illusion-covered pits, etc.

Note that you don't have to get super-funky with the custom NPCs, just choose opponents carefully. Some monsters are better bosses than others.

Take the Bone Devil, for instance. It has formidable passive defenses(flight, invisiblity, DR/Good, SR) so unless the party comes prepped, not everyone will even be able to take the fight to it. It has Wall of Ice at will, so it's lair is pre-divided into lots of little square ice-cells, with the devil having the option to wall people in *more* with an action. It also has major image, although the duration doesn't allow for many tricks with that. Still, the bone devil fight with ice walls channeling you toward pits and wizards getting entombed and telelpounced by invisible devils while the warriors hack throuhg ice to reunite the group-- thats a harrowing encounter that practically writes itself.

[Koumei]

Particularly if the party has powerful combat healing or dispells available to get downed characters fighting again.

4E seriously introduced the Phoenix Down. If you import that into the game of your choice, you can do the Final Fantasy shuffle, where every round the boss BAMFs someone, and someone else throws a Phoenix Down on them. Now, each turn someone spends an action bringing someone else back. Sometimes, someone is still dead when their turn comes round, and sometimes, someone decides to properly restore hit points on one or more ressed people.

Of course, 4E also has an item that can raise someone for a single encounter, working once per day on each person. According to that you could carry your friends around as corpses and raise them at the start of the fight, fighting just once per day.

[Talisman]

Of course, 4E also has an item that can raise someone for a single encounter, working once per day on each person. According to that you could carry your friends around as corpses and raise them at the start of the fight, fighting just once per day.

Awesome.

[Jerry]

Of course, 4E also has an item that can raise someone for a single encounter, working once per day on each person. According to that you could carry your friends around as corpses and raise them at the start of the fight, fighting just once per day.

I hope what you're saying is not true, because otherwise that would just be weird, even for D&D.

[Koumei]

I hope what you're saying is not true, because otherwise that would just be weird, even for D&D.

Whoops. I misread it. They have to have died after the end of your last turn, not before. So you can spend 125K (level 20 item) to temp-res someone once, but you can use it as often as you like if you keep getting new friends or if they tend to die on a daily basis.

Although the Phoenix Do... "Potion of Life" also costs 125K and is single use (it's level 30).

Man, this game is so shit.

[Voss]

Boss Template: Triple hit points, raise saving throws by +4. Increase CR by 2.

It's a means of adding padding to the Rocket Launcher Tag that is D&D, theoretically allowing me to still have a boss that has an actual lifespan without as much worry about one-shotting anybody.

I'm curious as to what everyone else's thoughts are on boss fight design.

This is pretty much explicitly the 4e method: Make it artificial and dumb and drag out the encounter for the sake of faux-drama. If you don't like one-shotting, you really have to take *that* out of the game (but without taking everything interesting out of the game, which is what the 4e folks did, sadly). Trying to 'fix' it by fudging the boss-monster (rather than dealing with the issue thats actually giving you problems) is going to come across as lame, if it doesn't just come across as if you're actively trying to screw the party.

The other part, of course, is the +4 to saves isn't really worth anything. It doesn't prevent the dice from fluking out- they just have to throw more Save or Dies at the monster. It make take an extra round or two, but the strategy itself is still completely valid, and much better than trying to chew through the extra 100+ hit points you've arbitrarily given it.

And intelligent players will notice that the Big Bad isn't behaving accord to normal rules. Odds are, they'll resent it (I know I would), because the DM is essentially forcing the encounter to adhere to the script in his head, not whats 'fair' (and yeah, I know, thats a tricky concept), or even according to the rules of the game (which is what they expect).

Seriously, what most boss fights need is minions (real ones, not the crap 4e ones). The 'dogpile on the monster' encounter that 3rd edition and its stupid CR shit encourages isn't a lot of fun, because, yeah, you're always going to win, and win easy because the party can do 4-5 times as much as the boss.

Seriously, the way the game is structured, you've pretty much got to accept that death is quick and easy for anybody, but so is rez magic. Either that or you have to toss out the entire fundamental structure of the system.

[Username17]

The easiest way to simulate Boss Monsters is to have a leader monster have medium attack and a fair amount of resilience, and have him surrounded by imps/skeletons/thugs/whatever that have a low individual damage output ad a very low combat resilience.

At the point where you can one-shot a skeleton, and the skeleton is handing out 1/3 the DPS of the Necromancer, the Necromancer ends up sticking around dramatically until the end of the combat so long as it takes even 4 attacks to drop him.


-Username17

[virgil]

The 4E method of adding padding is to the point of taking a full minute of the party wailing on the monster until it goes down. There is such as thing as a good idea when used in moderation.

I can already see sufficient damage output from an 8th level party to kill a 10th level monster in slightly less than 2 rounds, which is about their average lifespan when the entire party forgoes damage in favour of SoD.

Ignoring the rules of the game would be when I choose to not increase the CR of the monster when making it a 'boss'. I could do the same thing by having the monster bring in a clone, except I have the possibility of putting too much offense in one round.

Frank's suggestion is one idea, but it almost doesn't feel like enough to counter the psychology of the average player. Even if he's not showing himself to be a massive threat offensively, they will choose him first and foremost.

[Koumei]

I think we once discussed the idea of doing things the Grandia way: a boss is several monsters, all attached. Let's take the iconic dragon.

You have the head (level-appropriate hit points, gaze attack, roar, breath weapon, sharp toothy things, maybe a horn, maybe spells). You have the body (lots of hit points, but half of these can be shuffled to other locations as healing. Maybe it can even provide a single "resurrect head". It also has arms and legs with sharp bits.

Next you have the wings (probably a single entity), with flappy things that hurt people, the flight speed, and the ability to create windstorms and annoying area effects, and finally, there is the tail, which hits people and might do some kind of magic. It could also be used as a body-healer (not resurrecter though), and pick people up to throw them.

So a fight would go like this:

Wizard: COSMIC DOOM!
Head: *explodes*
Party: Takes fire damage from the exploding head.
Cleric: Heh, cool. Here, I'll heal you all.
Body: *resurrects head*
Head: Fuck off! *gaze attacks Wizard for paralysis*
Wings: Let's fly, bitch! Also, take an attack penalty, because we blow sand about!
Rogue: Shit, I climb up the wall and sneak attack the tail with my bow.
Tail: Bitch! *grabs the rogue and throws it 100' away*
Fighter: I go last ;_; Beowulf-style deadly leap! *hacks half the HP off the tail*
Wizard: I'm paralysed ;_;

And so on.

[Maxus]

It'd certainly give a boss monster the extra actions to help compete with the party.

Oh, and you got me to laugh.

[Amra]

Give your boss a bunch of mooks; make sure they're spread out and that they've got plenty of hit points. Give them all White Raven Tactics. Boss gets to act until you get bored, or until everyone not on Team Evil is as dead as a proverbially dead thing.

Apply said tactic in moderation and the BBEG can have as many actions as you want him to have in a combat round. No worries!

[Judging__Eagle]

Wizard: COSMIC DOOM!
Head: *explodes*
Party: Takes fire damage from the exploding head.
Cleric: Heh, cool. Here, I'll heal you all.
Body: *resurrects head*
Head: Fuck off! *gaze attacks Wizard for paralysis*
Wings: Let's fly, bitch! Also, take an attack penalty, because we blow sand about!
Rogue: Shit, I climb up the wall and sneak attack the tail with my bow.
Tail: Bitch! *grabs the rogue and throws it 100' away*
Fighter: I go last ;_; Beowulf-style deadly leap! *hacks half the HP off the tail*
Wizard: I'm paralysed ;_;

And so on.

Your description of the actions reminds me of how Rhyste used to write the same.


Personally, I think it's more interesting when the PCs act in a logical fashion and target the boss first.

The fall-out is always intriguing for me to watch as a GM. Do the PCs kill the mooks, negotiate with their lieutenants to work for them or surrender?

But then, for me the biggest enjoyment for me is watching the players deal with the consequences of their actions. They killed the boss, what do they do to his minions? What if the minions start fleeing in the face of their obvious power?

[RandomCasualty2]

Give your boss a bunch of mooks; make sure they're spread out and that they've got plenty of hit points. Give them all White Raven Tactics. Boss gets to act until you get bored, or until everyone not on Team Evil is as dead as a proverbially dead thing.

Apply said tactic in moderation and the BBEG can have as many actions as you want him to have in a combat round. No worries!

I think the natural response here would be all the PCs taking leadership and getting a cohort with white raven tactics.

[Jacob_Orlove]

White Raven Tactics has a range of like ten feet, though. The party Wizard can throw down Confusion and the BBEG is in serious trouble. Plenty of other spells are also crazy good against a tightly packed group of enemies like that, but Confusion is probably the most hilarious.

[Fwib]

Have the Boss's minions be all away hiding at his castle, casting their buffs on him through the ring-gate he has on the inside of his armor.

[Amra]

I think the natural response here would be all the PCs taking leadership and getting a cohort with white raven tactics.

Only _after_ the first time you did it

Being vaguely serious for a minute though, do a lot of people experience the bad-guys-not-getting-enough-actions problem? Does it very much depend on what level you're playing at? Do you usually run "boss" fights with one BBEG as opposed to a level-appropriate group of opponents?

I'm curious

[Koumei]

As a DM, I found the low levels to actually take a while with many of the monsters I used: low damage output, substantial DR. Dryads actually take a fair beating, for instance, and there's nothing quite so embarrassing as spending five rounds wailing on an animated chair.

[Amra]

LMAO! I think I've got my next encounter lined up For some reason, I often forget to use comedy animated items and that could fit rather well with what's going on at the moment


EDIT: Should have elaborated a little; I'm thinking about an enchanted house full of animated soft furnishings that are little more than annoyances, but the boss fight is a really badass paisley-print three-piece suite. Actions galore for the BBEF[1] when the party have to tackle a sofa, two armchairs and optional footstool.[2]



[1] Big, Bad, Evil Furniture
[2] With Improved Trip because, seriously, who *hasn't* tripped over one of those damn things