Tying Sacrificial Pawn to Legendary Resistance makes the official mechanic so much less frustrating and much, much more interesting! Great video and ideas as always
Yeah..beating the BBEG in 1 turn with any of the dozen instant win spells covered on this channel is a different kind of frustrating. Legendary Resistances are an expendable resource. They run out. If you made the monster use one, you didn't "Waste your turn" you helped wear down their stamina and defenses
I've homebrewed how legendary monsters work 1. legendary actions are performed on the monsters turn, so that legendary monsters have an action, bonus action legendary action, reaction, and movement... They can only use one of the options from the legendary actions but get all their uses of it. So if a guy gets 3 attacks with his legendary actions per turn or moves 30 feet for one of 3 legendary actions without proccing AoOs he can either move an additional 90 feet without proccing AoOs on his turn or he can make 3 extra attacks, he cannot do both and he cannot mix and match 2. For legendary resistances he can either use the sacrificial pawn option or he can decide to use his legendary resistance reaction (which gives a +5 to all saves, chosen before he rolls) and eats his legendary action next turn.... Makes it feel like the wizard didn't waste his turn and either significantly impacted the boss' action economy, or one shot a minion.
@@agentchaos9332 that's the theory, I don't find that it feels that way in play, especially if the boss doesn't get his resistance worn down before he gets murdered (very possible since it only procs when he fails a save, and bosses usually have decent saving throws anyways). Which is why I homebrewed how my legendary monsters work above. Gives him a defense against the "I win" spells, but doesn't make the wizard feel useless
@@ADT1995 if the WIZARD feels useless because they forced a monster to use legendary resistance when they have so many options that don't interact with that mechanic, that's not the fault of LR, that's the fault of the player's own mentality.
One other idea for "Sacrificial Pawn": If the big bad is some cult leader, bent on resurrection via sacrifice; if the party kills the big bad, but leaves any of their "most trusted minions" alive, the minions could sacrifice themselves to transfer their life essence back into the big bad (simple math: 4 minions at start, each can restore 25 percent of the big bad should they get offed before their pawns). Edit: WOW, this exploded! I'm glad you all like the idea. Thank you.
I was just thinking, what if the big boss has contingency, revivify on himself, and if any of his minions dies after he does, he gets resurrected back to full health... especially if you have a bunch of fearful kobolds who run away, but turn into big damn heros and kamikaze themselves onto the players adter the boss is dead...
Also, my favorite use of Shield Generator was by Mark "Sherlock" Hulmes in the first High Rollers campaign. There was a guy playing a piano, and he was cursed and couldn't stop playing. And as he played, a hulking creature made of corpses attacked the party. As the party hit the creature, zombies fell off and attacked the party. IIRC, the party had to smash the piano or kill the guy, something along those lines. It was a great mixture of combat and roleplay, as the party had to figure out the "gimmick" of the fight, while avoiding a huge hulking shambling creature made of corpses that kept creating more mobs to fight.
This was something that dr. Miguelito Loveless used in the old Wild Wild West TV series. He was a genius that made impossible - magical - items to vex Mr. West..One of those items was an organ he played to animate a freakishly strong automaton ..
10:30 i made a flind boss monster with “carnivorous resistance” where it can, 3 times per day, eat a smaller gnoll that’s within 10 feet of it in order to succeed on a saving throw. glad to see someone else had the same idea!
The “Look out Sir” (sacrificial pawn) should be something players see at lower then the BBEG ideally when they hit higher ranked commanders so they see this coming. And yeah I love the final form trope. It is even better with hyper powerful baddies that clearly are bored because they “under estimate the PC”. And you can put that up twice with the other benefit being you can get an idea is how much you can really push the PCs and have less chance of a wipe wile making it really dramatic. And the puzzle idea has a slight variation- use the players as the solving the issue. Elements of their back story being the puzzle solutions - a trinket they have just fits like a key (let them know) on the portal. Have a skill monkey that always is at the back of battles - let them roll those skills and let the team support them instead. Those moments of you are the answer or you always had the solution really fun stuff.
A great example of a puzzle fight is in the first campaign of Critical Role, where they are fighting an Androsphynx and he is using attacks (defensively), lair actions, and legendary actions to make it lethal while they solve the riddle, which is his name, so he'll help them. SUPER cool and thematic. Like one of the better dungeons I had ever seen.
The first one reminds me a lot of Soulslike games Since they have a set rest point, the game chooses how big of a path you must complete before facing the boss As a new player, that walk in Bloodborne to the Cleric Beast definitely roughed me up a couple times
I love using phases in fights. It feels so much more cinematic. I like to change things up thematically, and with each phase the boss gets either harder to hit but doesn't hit as hard or easier to hit but hits harder. Abilities might get added/removed in keeping with the theme, or a restriction that previously existed is lifted, etc. You can end up making each phase feel very unique with just some light tweaks.
I love a phase change in a fight, and some of these examples sound like a lot of fun, I can't wait to put the inspiration to work. One thing I want to recommend, is something I saw a long time ago on the Angry GM blog (want to make sure I give credit), that literally changed how I've run boss fights many years now. He called it something like, 2 snakes in 1. Basically - you pack multiple monsters into the same monster, each with its own initiative, but you call it all the same monster. The example was just duplicating the same monster, but I like to mix monsters usually. For example, I had a boss fight where the party came across this T-Rex, but in the world a lot of animals had the ability to absorb ambient magic, etc... So I wanted to give it some cool magical properties. So I picked another monster with some more fun powers (can't recall what it was, but let's just say the Spirit Naga, because it's the same CR which makes it easier). So I put my T-Rex on the map, give it 2 turns in initiative, 1 for the T-Rex, one for the Spirit-Naga-Rex. We'll say the T-Rex was first. On its first initiative turn, I use the T-Rex to attack, with its stat block. Players attack, I subtract the damage. Next initiative is up, it's the Spirit-Naga-Rex's turn. I'll have it cast lightning bolt, because it discharges some of the stored magical energy as an attack. Players go, initiative comes around, and we start again next round. Once they've done 75 damage to the creature (the HP of the Spirit Naga), I remove its turn from the initiative. Its magic is spent and it's weakened (I decided ahead of time the Spirit Naga would be the first phase to die, as losing its magic ability mid-fight made more sense than forgetting how to claw and bite). Now it only has 1 turn, loses the Spirit-Naga-Rex powers, and is just a normal T-Rex. Battle continues, and I subtract HP from the T-Rex until it dies. It works easiest when you just replicate the same monsters, like 2 T-Rexs packed into one. There's a little more to it balancing it when combining different monsters, since they have different stats, so I generally pick the primary monster, use those as the attributes maybe make some adjustments, and work from there, but balancing D&D fights is way more art & on the go adjustments than science, IMO, so I don't find it as a huge issue. The alternative way to go, is enraging monsters, where you clear one bar of hit points, then once it's dead, instead of removing it, you give it a second turn, and players have to now clear another bar of hit points, while the monster has 2 turns in initiative. It really creates a lot of surprise and tension. For me, this has drastically changed how boss fights work. You can essentially build an encounter with 2 or even 3 monsters, which is better for D&D's action economy, by packing them all into "the same monsters" that has multiple turns in the initiative, resulting in the fun dramatic single boss fight, while mechanically balancing things better.. For spell saves & powers that relate to a creature's next turn, I do count each turn in initiative as a new turn, so if a player cast Hold Monster on my T-Rex, and the T-Rex initiative fails the save, its next turn in initiative, the Spirit-Naga-Rex would also be paralyzed, but would also get to make a saving throw at the end of its turn, freeing the whole creature from the effect. Anyway, just wanted to share that recommendation in case it might be helpful to anyone else.
This is pretty cool. Could also be a variation of sacrificial mount. Like a Naga ridding a T-Rex. Now the T-Rex loses HP first. So many ways you can use this. Also, want to stop the player from single targetting one enemy? Have them switch between stat blocks every round. Say a multi-elemental construct. One round it is fluid like water, the next it is fiery and so on. So you have an encounter with 2-4 different elementals and near the end you get to see how it loses forms it can transform into.
Done the final form thing. There was a spore druid the party fought who turned into a shambling mound when his hitpoints hit 0. Also, because he had the Fungal Infestation ability, it meant he got a little more mileage out of his minions than he otherwise would have. Easily one of the best boss fights I've ran.
The sacrificial pawn really reminds me of the final battle of Star Wars KoToR, where Malak had the captured Jedi whose health he would drain to revitalize his own (although that might be more of a modified Shield Generator, idk), and 13:22 my first thought is "Witch King of Angmar on a Fell Beast", seems like books/ movies/ shows/ games can be a powerful inspiration for innovative mechanics
One variant of what was discussed at 18:45 that I like is the 3-form boss: First form is the mundane Big Bad Second form is a giant mutated superpowered monster that's a near mindless berserker, wildly throwing around insanely powerful/destructive attacks without either rhyme nor reason And the third form is far more humanoid than the second form and statistically weaker, but it's basically the Big Bad having gained some degree of control over the mutations and powers. So while they are TECHNICALLY weaker than the second form, they can apply the weakened versions of it's powers in intelligent/tactical ways (For example, Form 2 has Gravity Manipulation powers that it only uses to either slam the party into the floor / ceiling or slamming objects into them, while Form 3 has a weaker version of that power that they can use to forcibly manoeuvre the party or manipulate the arena in creative ways)
I like the area of malice idea. The campaign that I'm starting up is going to have areas of blight where the realm of the evil gods seeps into the world. I think areas around that where characters can't long rest for fear of terrible nightmares or some malady, makes perfect sense.
I love the look Kelly gives when Monty says he eats his burger first, then the fries. You gotta eat the fries first! Otherwise they get cold! Good video. Most of my bosses are just level 20 characters, so I do things like "cast a cantrip," "regain a spell slot/once per short rest ability," or "regain a reaction" if they are on their own and use reactions like Shield/Counterspell/Deflect Arrows/Uncanny Dodge.
Glyph of warding, spells in the BBGs lair allows them to maintain multiple concentration spells...like licks hand touches pillar with spell and bam activates haste, or eyebite, or stone skin, or so many spells. Great episode love the ideas, uses minion as shield for reaction...amazing! Also time limit triggers curse players loosing 1 point of main stat every 12 hours from corruption aura.
I recently ran a complex encounter in which the party of four was fighting against a corrupted version of a pit fiend, held within a dungeon by a powerful binding spell, which had to be undone to end the encounter. In order to banish the pit fiend back to hell they had to overwrite the three arcane sigils of the binding spell, for which I handed out physical copies for them to draw on and stopped the time. If they wanted, they could all move to one sigil and draw together as long as only one character stood on the sigil when it was finished or work seperately. When a character finished their sigil, they got trapped inside, unable to leave but they were able to cast spells etc. When all of the sigils were finished, the characters inside them would take damage, which they had to be able to survive for the magic to take hold. At the same time, the fiend had an ability that, when not enough damage was dealt to it during the last round, would send a wave of necrotic energy out, damaging anyone in the room. If the pit fiend was slain, it would trigger a mythic form which had an aura of corruption turning healing spells in its vicinity into necrotic damage if the character did not manage to beat a Charisma save. And as a finishing touch, the drawing characters had to make Sleight of Hand checks after every turn drawing to keep their spellcraft as subtle as possible because their total checks determined the damage that the characters engaged with the pit fiend had to beat for it to keep its ire drawn on them. (Like a slight of hand check of 5 would correspond to 15 damage that had to be dealt while a check of 20+ would add nothing) I told the players about the mechanics (apart from the combat capabilities of the pit fiend) during the session a week before and already handed out the sigils they had to draw, so that they could practice it and come up with strategies on how to beat the encounter. It was the most stressfull one I ever run but it was an absolute blast for everybody!
So cool to see Demeo as a sponsor! Bought the game recently for PS5, and now I’m even more pumped to try it out since it seems to have the stamp of approval from the Dudes!
I’ve been using “secret service” bodyguard minions like you guys mentioned as a physical representation of Legendary Resistance or a damage sponge, and they have been really funny in practice. They are a blast to RP.
I once ran a Zelda campaign in Pathfinder and I did a Boss Phase style enemy. If you recall the Darknut enemies (in Twilight Princess and Wind Waker) they were massive defensive walls. However, as players pick off weak areas of their armour with magic and well-placed called shots, the armour slowly gets dismantled. For this example, I made them constructs with tons of defensive resistances. When their stat block had about 1/2 HP, the remaining armour drops as they turned into these rogue-like entities that fully commit to offensive attacks and quick maneuvers. Their stat blocks completely changed from being very defensive to being extremely offensive nova damage dealers. If players faced multiple Darknut foes, they had to think before striking them. Since the enemies were "Zelda Themed", they really worked!
Been using something like "Legendary Malovelence" in my Curse of Strahd for over a year. The PCs have to be in a settlement or in one of the ancient stone circles spotted around the land to make a Long Rest without being attacked by something from the random encounter table. Been great combined with longer travel times needed to get from A to B. Players are stratigicly planning and with the need to be at locations at given times and all encounters being "Deadly" has them often strapped for resources but brave the random encounter role anyway or miss that meeting with Van Richten or be back in Valakia in time to defend the Church from the Vampire Attack.
One of my proudest creations and ideas i've used for a 'boss' encounter was a fight my party had at around lvl 11. It was a fight against these 2 powerful shadow creatures that could only be touched or harmed while in complete darkness. In bright light they were completely invisible and intangible, in dim light you could see them but only radiant damage could harm them but they became solid enough to fight properly in full darkness. So it forced the players to effectively limit their own fighting capabilities in order to combat the boss, by spending time to extinguish all the light sources in the room and then having to fight the enemies in the dark. I'm a big fan of just taking existing enemies and giving them new abilities or immunities or power gimmicks to make unique encounters out of them.
I like encounters with a puzzle attached. In one of my first encounters for my then lvl 2 group I used twig blights. After chopping some wood and igniting a fire in the wilderness, my group was attacked by a giant twig blight that summoned 1D4 additional twig blights every round. The group had the options to either kill the giant one or to simply douse their fire (I didn't tell them that ofc), which would pacify the giant blight and end the fight immediately - and get a small reward for that. My group - or well, the barbarian of the group - decided to make some more firewood out of the blights. I don't make every fight into a puzzle, but when I do, I always try to give several options, one of which is to simply bull charge through.
One more for Sacrificial Pawn (probably from this channel): The dragon has like a tribe of kobolds worshipping them, all of the kobolds have the Mounted Combatant feat and are taking turns riding the dragon. The feat means that the dragon would be cosidered mount and any damage aimed at a mount gets transferred to the rider. Fun.
I have been working on homebrewing Monster Manuevers for martial monsters. Basically battle master maneuvers specifically made for a monster with legendary actions adding a manuever each legendary action. These limited maneuvers (depending on your cr) restart at the beginning of the monster's turn. Gives the monster a sense of controlling the battlefield through sheer skill in combat.
For Legendary Malevolence, a justification for why Rope Trick and Leommund'd Tiny Hut won't work is because the enemy boss simply has spellcasters with Dispel Magic handy, making it moot, as they van gather reinforcements, surround the hut and put the players in a very dangerous scenario.
So how would this stop Genielock at higher levels where (s)he and the party can just pop into the Vessel for an hour and get a long rest? Asking as a long-time Genielock player because more than once I've irritated my DM by using it plus Pact of the Chain to have my Imp dip off with the vessel into a corner and the party can take a power nap and be ready to kick off the big brawl
@@BR4IN1N4J4R I mean nothing stopping the DM having enemies find the vessel and either capture it or destroy it, ejecting the party. Also not to mention that's not how the vessel works, you can't get a long rest in an hour at all, you can get a short rest in 10 minutes in it, but you'd still need everyone in it for 8 hours to get the long rest, which is plenty of time for any monsters to come along and scoop up the vessel or break it, interrupting everyone's rest. If you're really a long time Genielock player then you should know how the Sanctuary Vessel works. Nowhere does it say you get a long rest in an hour.
@@Noobie2k7here aren't many ways to make destroying the vessel make sense. Most likely, the minions would just take it to the boss or treasure room. Outside of genie, I would think you still have plane shift.
so many awesome ideas in here and with helpful advice and examples. i especially like how you implemented these ideas in your Drakkenheim games, so we can see how the concepts worked
My friends & I are currently using some homebrew books to run a 5e campaign in the world of the Monster Hunter game series and my friend Taylor, who is GMing for us, has a really cool boss mechanic he uses. Big creatures in the missions have 2-3 health bars, instead of their normal health, and it effects their actions in combat. A creature may have 3 health bars, start with 3 different spaces on the turn order, and lose extra turns as the health bars are depleted or vice versa (gain more turns in each round of combat as health bars are removed). He also has a mechanic where the boss monsters can shake off status effects at the cost of some of their health.
Not my idea but I read somewhere about telegraphed AOE boss moves where the players have to get off of certain battle-map squares or take other actions to avoid them.
The first one is the classic Ravenloft mist (glad you mention it for castle Ravenloft; it was essentially by default in 1 and 2e AD&D, I guess they removed it for 5e). The second one is the classic Warhammer “Look out Sir”( a good idea to implement for every single villain in DnD)
Man like a week ago the only thing I knew about DnD was the name, I assumed it was some nerd game. But my God the way you guys talk about it and explain it so passionately actually makes me so excited to learn more. I wish I could have experienced this years ago and had some friends without a stigma for TTRPGs, (Christian background so you can see where I’m coming from) it makes me sad and happy at the same time that I just discovered how awesome this community is. Thank you guys.
Pulp Cthulhu, an add-on for 7th ED Call of Cthulhu, has a feature similar to Sacrificial Pawn called "Look Out, Master!". Bad guy can spend all his Luck points to have a minion or just someone within range take the hit for him. Granted it's a one-time thing until he regains Luck Points, but it can be a great way to give a boss time to escape.
I like some of these, especially the environment preventing a long rest. I could see the party having nightmares the first night preventing getting spells back. Elves are making willpower checks each hour to meditate. Give the players a taste the first time other then just saying they can’t. Or the player on watch spots things moving, then is either raising the alarm every hour, or risk an ambush
15:42 CALL OF THE NETHERDEEP TOO! SPOILERS! Alyxian has three forms you have to go through to get to the end of the module. They don’t ALL have to be killed outright iirc which is why it was so interesting to me that they included it.
I plan on adding two of these to my current campaign. Having a Mythic Transformation for the "final" boss, and preventing Long Rests in the final dungeon. My idea for stopping Long Rests is just a simple, slow, magic draining effect. So that if a spell stays in one place for a long time (an hour), it will fizzle. This way, they can throw up a Tiny Hut to get a Short Rest, but will know that they won't have any defenses if they stay in one place for any longer.
Absolutely brilliant ideas, I will use all in my Out of Abyss! I'm using a two phase boss encounter with Demogorgon, second phase, near death, he splits into two monsters and go rampage havoc madness, even maybe fight between them, If the players pull this off. In tomb of annihilation, I created a stone guardian of a tomb, with all resistances possible and almost impossible to kill, only after the players make a blood sacrifice on the altar (bleeding for many rounds, until reach an amount of HP) the stone golem became a flesh golem and lose all resistances. It's a like a fight that you have to kite the monster away from the characters that are bleeding in the altar and win some time until the guardian is deadly, killable.
I've used that minion sacrifice mechanic in one of my sessions. Had an evil queen whose guards would eat the blows targeting her. Haven't used any of the others yet though. I should try those puzzle fights though.
5:18 Tapping into the dream stream through your stats heals your wounds and restores your very soul (spell slots). But some creatures exist in both and do not have to toggle such creatures can find you in eathar & find you fully.
Talking about change in scenery, I had a Wild Magic Sorcerer BBEG who had a special wild magic surge table. It would immediately cast a spell that had a spell casting time of greater than 1-action, at no cost to the sorcerer, but also sometimes it would benefit the party as well. One of those spells cast was Mirage arcane, turning the ruins in the feywild they were in into a freezing hilltop. The sorcerer then cast gift of alacrity on its next surge, which since combat had already started, was useless, but still, it was a cool way to add powerful random effects.
Sacrificial pawn can also be made in a way that The Minion have a Sacrifice Ability where when the boss is hit they can choose to Burst into flame or what ever to cast Shield or something similar on the Boss.. turning the Hit into a miss
Hi Kelly! Hi Monty! Love the videos. Thanks for the tips. I am going to add legendary traits to my next boss, Fanatical Devotion to have the minions shift up to their speed toward my boss to become the target of an attack and Sacrificial Pawn to do the soul drain minion to auto save for my boss. Made a goblin queen Archfey with a 4 armed troll body guard and a bunch of goblin/hobgoblins, Darklings, red caps and quicklings. Thanks again!
Tip for anyone planning on using the 'Shield Generator' for their bosses, don't make the thing protecting them small enough to fit into a Bag of Holding or Portable Hole. I had a Necromancer that was drawing power from a Lich''s Phylactery to protect themselves, and one of my players grabbed the phylactery mid-combat and hid it in a Bag of Holding. The combat was over pretty soon after that
In my Drakkenheim, I ran a miniboss as 4 creatures. Each of the 'parts' had its own pool of HP and its own actions, but the PCs could target different areas to disable the attacks coming from it. It was inspired by some video game bodd battles that do similar things.
One thing to remember with stats is that only Fighters add their Strength to attack and damage. The d8 for Fighters in Basic most likely comes from the supplements. Judging by my perusal of S&W, you can tell how close Basic is to OD&D. From my understanding, it was intended for new players to stay will the Holmes set and then move onto OD&D.
Something that helps add drama to boss fights I run is the fact that they don’t follow the same rules as PCs. Sometimes they have multiple reactions to use, or can cast multiple spells per round, can concentrate on multiple spells, etc. One thing they all share is that they don’t roll for initiative. When they’re in their lair, they always go on initiative 18.
Gotta rock the glyph of warding! If the big bad can cast spells or pay someone else to do it for them, then not only is every surface a potential trap for the party, it’s also a potential buff for the baddies.
The methods in this video also play well into the cr system. The temptations is boss=higher cr, which can sometimes be very dangerous for the party and end up killing them when you just wanted to make the fight challenging. These are all methods that essentially string several encounters together, therefore increasing difficulty (and the narrative) so making it a fun and challenging fight without as much risk for killing characters (and leaving players out of the cool boss fight).
In my Drakkenheim, I added extra minions to certain boss fights that could heal the boss. For example, in the Black Ivory Inn, there was a Gibbering Mouther 'chorus' with the Protean Abomination. The abomination could use a legendary action to absorb a live or dead mouther and heal itself but the mouther's current HP+10, or on other rounds, it could spend 2 legendary actions to spawn 1d2 more mouthers. I had to increase it like that because that was the last outer city scenario they takled, and they were too powerful for the regular setup. More encounters should have variable options to tune it for different levels.
Puzzle boss is my favourite, but my players tend to take challenges head on so our last session ended like this: - One player was rolling death saving throws (Survived due to luck) - One player had 6hp left and a parasite stuck to his body and hurting him whenever he attempted to attack the boss (They're gonna be getting rid of the parasite next session) - Another player was paralysed - The final player had firebolts and a dream They were lucky their enemy had 27 hp left and didn't want to risk revealing that getting it to 0 hp wouldn't kill it, and decided to teleport out of that situation.
Boss phases are also a great way to allow your boss to escape! Players get to see that the boss has a phase beyond what's expected, the boss gets to live another day and strategize for the future, returning later with more knowledge about the party's makeup, strengths, and weaknesses.
If you're doing a battle in where you know the party can't just use a spell to instantly control or remove the boss from the fight, there is a very simple way to prolong a fight and it's from a small anecdote I heard a few years ago that goes something like this: I was at a game store one day and noticed a D&D game in the corner. I walked over and watched them play. The party was fighting a dragon and what I thought was odd was that the DM was not tracking the dragon's HP. After the game, I went over to the DM and decided to ask him about it. "Hey, what was that dragon's HP?" I inquired. "The dragon? Oh, I dunno. I didn't give him any." was his reply. I was confused. "Well, then how do you know when the dragon dies?" The DM smirked. "When it stops being fun." It sounds very basic, but the DM is the one who sets the scene and can alter things in subtle ways to give the party as much enjoyment as possible. After all, everyone is there to have fun... so give it to them! Fudge the boss' HP so that he can tank the Paladin going nova. Give him something he can take as a legendary action that lets him heal some of the damage back. Let him have that simulacrum to die in his place when you don't want the BBEG to die yet. So long as you make it fun for the players, who cares how it happened?
I had a party of four ninth level character two-round a death tyrant in its lair. They succeeded on the first few eye ray saves, stunned it, dropped it to the ground, and destroyed it extremely quickly. This would have been very useful.
Really solid advices in this video - I am already looking forward to implementing some of these into my upcoming battles. Would also say that several of these would work great for spicing up "regular" combat encounters in campaigns that do not include your standard 4 combat encounters per adventuring day-type campaigns. I usually run 1-2 combat encounters per session and so want them to have a little more oomf :D
Love seeing demeo as the sponser! I started playing it on the since it as soon as it came out on the quest 2. It’s an amazing game so it makes me happy to see it get some love
Good stuff! Always like making the boss battle epic. One of my recent ones involved floating balls of chaos roaming through the battlefield that triggered spells in players, poisoned them, or gave a level of exhaustion but healed, recharged spell slots, or gave temp hp for the baddies. Once it hit someone it bounced off in a random direction so the players had to dedicate somebody to intercept the ball before it hit the big bad or push a minion in front of one to launch it off before the big bad could get the benefit. Chaotic and terrifying once the exhaustion hit but players managed to win without a death.
I think stuff that takes away long rests are totally fine but it’s a different kind of challenge versus better. It’s the difference between a marathon and a sprint. The balance there is as a DM you need to make sure that each encounter can’t be a down to the wire from full health fight.
About the long rest mechanic you proposed. Something i tend to do is to just change up a bit how a long rest works depending on the enviorment. For example, a long rest in a town does work as it would normally, but a long rest in the wilderness deep within enemy territory is more stressful, so it only restores half your hit die and you have to expend them to regain hit points at all. If the area is heavily suffused with eldritch or wild magic, then spell slot recovery may also be more difficult, typically restoring one or two spell slots less for each leveled spell slot you have (for example; if you have four 1st level spell slots, you may only regain 3 of them or less on a long rest in such a territory). It makes the party a lot more wary about choosing their battles and looking for alternative solutions to encounters as well, since they cant just blast their way through every encounter and regain everything as easily.
Malevolence works really well for bodaks. The nightmarish gaze is etched into the experience beforehand and give a similar check to its gaze, with a minor condition attached like a point of exhaustion, for which they now have a warning and a better understanding of how dangerous the monster ahead of them is. A creature whose mere gaze can kill should have a sufficient warning, and i think his works excellently. The Gray Philosopher is a good Puzzle Boss.
One puzzle encounter I ran once that I thought was very fun was where the PC's were tested by Oghma in his library (which is basically his divine plane in my game). They were given a riddle hinting at the four elements (pretty easy) where they had to place something for each element in a corresponding brazier, while being attacked by a golem (which would hop into an oven and basically reform after 1 round if defeated), animated instruments that could charm them and floating books (again basically infinite books in the library but only a certain number at the same time) which cast spells at random (they managed to get hit by both Time Stop and Meteor Swarm in that combat - they just really liked to roll for 9th level spells for some reason). An additional element was that they were not allowed to destroy more than a certain number of books, because Oghma wouldn't like that. It was a really fun and memorable encounter.
Great video! All these ideas is refreshing to the standard hit point sponges that bosses often are in ttrpg and games. Also constant adds ( minions ) are a cheap/ cop-out solution in a boss fight. So letting there be other uses for them like sacrifices etc and not a limitless wave of minions is much better way handling epic boss battles
I did a boss battle where the boss had 20 minion that were mostly harmless, slow, and couldn't make attacks of opportunity. The boss could sacrifice one to use a Legendary Resistance, with no limit, he also had an ability that he could sacrifice any number of them to regain X hit points per minion sacrificed, this ability was on a Recharge 5-6. There were a few other things going on as well, but having a max of 20 Legendary Resistances was really strong, but he only ended up using one as he needed to save the minions for healing.
I did the memory game with elementals too. Lol Mine was a little bit different in they had to reveal them all to unlock the door, but the catch was when they matched them it would spawn in 1,2,3,4,5, and 6 elementals if that type. In ascending order. After they saw what was going on they decided to try to get light and dark elements 3rd and 4th. Thinking they didn't want those to be the last 2. Good decision since those were by far stronger than the basic earth, fire, water, air elementals.
One of my favorite ones comes from overlord. Where a vampire summons minions but instead of using them to attack they attack the minions to suck out their HP to heal. I also like the minion shield wall. Make minions with sentinel and prevent melee with your caster.
Demeo has the best community! Have yet to find a nasty toxic player and when I started playing had a ton of people willing to help me learn and the strategies to use with different characters!
These sound a lot of fun. I'd love to play with some if these! My suggestion is to steal mechanics from mmo dungeons/raids. Surprisingly simple but excellent!
With undead minions or thralls of some kind or cutlist minions I have the boss game damage reduction based on the number of minions making the boss take considerably less damage until some of the minions get killed or the players find a creative way to break that connection.
Hey Monty, seems like you're in a little be of a better place than you have been in for the last few videos. It's great to see you back on your feet and I just want to tell you that you're doing great. I'm sending you the goodest of good vibes. You're awesome.
@7:35 my solution to players doing that is pretty fun and simple - basically, I just make the minions have REALLY annoying supportive spells and abilities that are worth splitting your attention from the main boss for. In particular, any healing thrown towards a boss is a GREAT way to instantly gain the ire and attention of the PCs, even if it's only a tiny amount like healing word 😂. I had a boss encounter set up like this and my players chose to ignore the minions - the result was AMAZING. This ONE mook managed to keep haste on the boss for the ENTIRE FIGHT and dropped THREE cure wounds on him, basically allowing the boss to be WAY more effective and survive longer because they didn't focus down the support first. Another one landed a crit thanks to the players making themselves easily flankable and piling around the boss. They still managed to pull through with a bit of luck (and because I didn't design the encounter to kill them for it), which was great, but they understood pretty well after that - you can't just focus fire down every boss mindlessly! In general, smart enemy / encounter design is great for encouraging players to change up their battle tactics. Part of getting your players to not focus fire in a boss encounter is making sure your minions provide adequate threat, and there's many good ways to go about that. Give your boss minions some teeth, people!
I’m going to try out the legendary malevolence idea in my campaign immediately. We are set in a desert and they are currently working their way to a cursed mine anyway! Also I love the phase mechanic!! I’ve been using it since my third or fourth session since I underestimated my party’s damage and wanted the encounter to be more fun.
SPOILERS FOR CALL OF THE NETHERDEEP - - - - - - - The final boss of Call of the Netherdeep does a good job of mixing some of your ideas. He's a phase boss that also implements puzzle elements. He starts off monstorous and becomes more human as the encounter goes on, but he's also able to draw power from three shrines in different ways. The PCs can disable these shrines, and also try to talk down the boss and redeem him. It makes the encounter highly memorable, and I'm really looking forward to the day I get to run it for my players.
For bosses, similar to the multiple stat-block approach, you can also just treat them as having multiple bundles of HP, rather than just a single one. So, rather than having 150 HP, they might have 3x 50 HP bundles and damage doesn't bleed across from one bundle to the next. Boss has got 105 HP left and just took 45 HP damage, nope - that's just 5 HP damage as it takes out the first 50 HP bundle and doesn't touch the next. This penalises the heavy hitters like Paladins' Smite, Rogues' Sneak Attack, or the occasional Critical Hit. You can even have a "special event" triggered, like some sort of AoE attack, or extra minions appear, when a HP bundle is eliminated.
I actually used that "sacrificial pawn" idea with a psychotic drow bbeg lieutenant my players were fighting. One of them had a charge ability and the lieutenant picked up the KoaToa next to her and used him as a meat shield. It was so hilarious
You guys just gave me the most wonderful idea for the campaign I'm making with the whole "Shield Generator" idea. In this campaign, there is a Lich-like creature who tried to become immortal to continue to protect his people and his daughter in the Shining Planes from Giant incursions and regional wars. He made Scarecrow-styled constructs that would act as road markers, some complicated enough to even act as guides or transportation, and all of them were capable to band together and fight against intruders. Long story short, he knew he needed to persist for these guardians to continue to function, as they were tied to him, and he researched ways to maintain a body after death. The process ended up tying his soul to his daughter, who became a creature of living fire whom any living thing she burned would add to the mage's strength. BUT. With this idea, he could have also tied his soul to several Scarecrow constructs in his lab, but the cost is the mage is entirely decrepit. A weak push could break him. This would give the team an obvious target to attack, but a shock at how this skeleton of a man won't be affected by any attack. Maybe, I could use the mage's power to give the Scarecrows regeneration, or maybe, after most of them are defeated and broken, he uses his magics to force them to come together in a Castlevania's Legion-style boss. I like this. Thanks guys.
I like the idea of the puzzle being used inversely. Where the PCs could be able to brute force the boss it will but it will be difficult. However if they solve puzzle during combat it will in someway make the fight easier. Perhaps remove resistances, stop lair actions, straight up half the health. Just so the PCs feel like we found a secret way to defeat the hard boss
Great, original video! My favorite boss special power from my game: As a Legendary Action, the boss could switch places with any one of her minions. That allowed her to swap out of troublesome situations (kind of like "sacrificial pawn") and into locations where she could do tremendous damage.
"Legendary Malevolence" is something I have had on an OC I came up with long before I even got into DnD. He is a central character in what would be a series of novels if I ever get to writing them down. He is a lich whose signature feature is this extreme rage, which makes EVERYONE terrified of him simply because he radiates such intense hatred and anger, acting very much like your Legendary Malevolence. The valley where his lair is located is so tainted by his rage that it has become this nightmare realm that drives people insane with fear, making them easy targets.
on the first point, I'm running out of the abyss, and in the travel sections the players can only take what i call a 'medium rest' when in between citis. It is the same amount of time as a long rest but they must use hit die to recover, then they recover half their hit dice, and they get one spell slot per level they can cast back. It really helped make the travel sections more dangerous and along with the survival theme of campaign. Then when they are safe in a city, then they can take a 'Full rest'.
I had a fight that, once the boss only had 100hp, it activated an anti-magic field that increased its HP/S. The source was a blue gem at the top of 1 of 4 15ft pillars, but each pillar had a blue gem. The gems were immune to ranged attacks, so they had to be climbed up to and smashed. I fucked up and made it so that they could still kill the boss and accidentally made it a damage sponge instead of an interesting fight
![5e Dungeon Masters Guide - Curse of Strahd - [Ch. 2 Cont.] [Ch. 5]](/img/n.gif)
I love how absolutely surprised Kelly looks at 7:26 - 7:34 when Monty is talking about eating a burger then the fries,.
Yeah, that look of “years of friendship and NOW I learn you’re a crazy person?!?!”
came here to say that. Kelly's face accurately depicts the correct reaction haha
Everyone knows that the fries are first xD
??? Y'all eat fries first? I expect this barbarism of the English but not y'all :(
Fries first. You can always reheat a burger but not the fries
Tying Sacrificial Pawn to Legendary Resistance makes the official mechanic so much less frustrating and much, much more interesting! Great video and ideas as always
Yea i think legendary resistance should need a big "roleplay needed" disclaimer.
If you just go " LR, you wasted your turn" than nobody likes that.
Yeah..beating the BBEG in 1 turn with any of the dozen instant win spells covered on this channel is a different kind of frustrating. Legendary Resistances are an expendable resource. They run out. If you made the monster use one, you didn't "Waste your turn" you helped wear down their stamina and defenses
I've homebrewed how legendary monsters work
1. legendary actions are performed on the monsters turn, so that legendary monsters have an action, bonus action legendary action, reaction, and movement... They can only use one of the options from the legendary actions but get all their uses of it. So if a guy gets 3 attacks with his legendary actions per turn or moves 30 feet for one of 3 legendary actions without proccing AoOs he can either move an additional 90 feet without proccing AoOs on his turn or he can make 3 extra attacks, he cannot do both and he cannot mix and match
2. For legendary resistances he can either use the sacrificial pawn option or he can decide to use his legendary resistance reaction (which gives a +5 to all saves, chosen before he rolls) and eats his legendary action next turn.... Makes it feel like the wizard didn't waste his turn and either significantly impacted the boss' action economy, or one shot a minion.
@@agentchaos9332 that's the theory, I don't find that it feels that way in play, especially if the boss doesn't get his resistance worn down before he gets murdered (very possible since it only procs when he fails a save, and bosses usually have decent saving throws anyways). Which is why I homebrewed how my legendary monsters work above. Gives him a defense against the "I win" spells, but doesn't make the wizard feel useless
@@ADT1995 if the WIZARD feels useless because they forced a monster to use legendary resistance when they have so many options that don't interact with that mechanic, that's not the fault of LR, that's the fault of the player's own mentality.
One other idea for "Sacrificial Pawn": If the big bad is some cult leader, bent on resurrection via sacrifice; if the party kills the big bad, but leaves any of their "most trusted minions" alive, the minions could sacrifice themselves to transfer their life essence back into the big bad (simple math: 4 minions at start, each can restore 25 percent of the big bad should they get offed before their pawns).
Edit: WOW, this exploded! I'm glad you all like the idea. Thank you.
In my game i used a family of mercenaries so they could switch who Suceeded and distribute all damage equally
@@carlosbaroni1158 Sounds ruthless. Lol. Hope your party had a good challenge to joyfully reminisce about for sessions to come.
In a similar vein, multiple but unique forms/bodies for the big bad. For example, killing the fire body may transfer the soul to the ice body, etc.
I was just thinking, what if the big boss has contingency, revivify on himself, and if any of his minions dies after he does, he gets resurrected back to full health... especially if you have a bunch of fearful kobolds who run away, but turn into big damn heros and kamikaze themselves onto the players adter the boss is dead...
Goblin king who as a reaction, can have a goblin minion jump in front of him to take the hit.
Also, my favorite use of Shield Generator was by Mark "Sherlock" Hulmes in the first High Rollers campaign. There was a guy playing a piano, and he was cursed and couldn't stop playing. And as he played, a hulking creature made of corpses attacked the party. As the party hit the creature, zombies fell off and attacked the party. IIRC, the party had to smash the piano or kill the guy, something along those lines. It was a great mixture of combat and roleplay, as the party had to figure out the "gimmick" of the fight, while avoiding a huge hulking shambling creature made of corpses that kept creating more mobs to fight.
This was something that dr. Miguelito Loveless used in the old Wild Wild West TV series. He was a genius that made impossible - magical - items to vex Mr. West..One of those items was an organ he played to animate a freakishly strong automaton ..
10:30 i made a flind boss monster with “carnivorous resistance” where it can, 3 times per day, eat a smaller gnoll that’s within 10 feet of it in order to succeed on a saving throw. glad to see someone else had the same idea!
The “Look out Sir” (sacrificial pawn) should be something players see at lower then the BBEG ideally when they hit higher ranked commanders so they see this coming.
And yeah I love the final form trope. It is even better with hyper powerful baddies that clearly are bored because they “under estimate the PC”. And you can put that up twice with the other benefit being you can get an idea is how much you can really push the PCs and have less chance of a wipe wile making it really dramatic.
And the puzzle idea has a slight variation- use the players as the solving the issue. Elements of their back story being the puzzle solutions - a trinket they have just fits like a key (let them know) on the portal. Have a skill monkey that always is at the back of battles - let them roll those skills and let the team support them instead. Those moments of you are the answer or you always had the solution really fun stuff.
A great example of a puzzle fight is in the first campaign of Critical Role, where they are fighting an Androsphynx and he is using attacks (defensively), lair actions, and legendary actions to make it lethal while they solve the riddle, which is his name, so he'll help them. SUPER cool and thematic. Like one of the better dungeons I had ever seen.
Also in the first campaign: Thordak's heart crystal, which was sort of a "shield generator" or "boss phase".
The first one reminds me a lot of Soulslike games
Since they have a set rest point, the game chooses how big of a path you must complete before facing the boss
As a new player, that walk in Bloodborne to the Cleric Beast definitely roughed me up a couple times
Except in dark souls, you can usually run by all the mobs to get to the boss faster haha
I love using phases in fights. It feels so much more cinematic. I like to change things up thematically, and with each phase the boss gets either harder to hit but doesn't hit as hard or easier to hit but hits harder. Abilities might get added/removed in keeping with the theme, or a restriction that previously existed is lifted, etc. You can end up making each phase feel very unique with just some light tweaks.
I love a phase change in a fight, and some of these examples sound like a lot of fun, I can't wait to put the inspiration to work.
One thing I want to recommend, is something I saw a long time ago on the Angry GM blog (want to make sure I give credit), that literally changed how I've run boss fights many years now. He called it something like, 2 snakes in 1. Basically - you pack multiple monsters into the same monster, each with its own initiative, but you call it all the same monster. The example was just duplicating the same monster, but I like to mix monsters usually.
For example, I had a boss fight where the party came across this T-Rex, but in the world a lot of animals had the ability to absorb ambient magic, etc... So I wanted to give it some cool magical properties. So I picked another monster with some more fun powers (can't recall what it was, but let's just say the Spirit Naga, because it's the same CR which makes it easier). So I put my T-Rex on the map, give it 2 turns in initiative, 1 for the T-Rex, one for the Spirit-Naga-Rex. We'll say the T-Rex was first.
On its first initiative turn, I use the T-Rex to attack, with its stat block. Players attack, I subtract the damage. Next initiative is up, it's the Spirit-Naga-Rex's turn. I'll have it cast lightning bolt, because it discharges some of the stored magical energy as an attack. Players go, initiative comes around, and we start again next round.
Once they've done 75 damage to the creature (the HP of the Spirit Naga), I remove its turn from the initiative. Its magic is spent and it's weakened (I decided ahead of time the Spirit Naga would be the first phase to die, as losing its magic ability mid-fight made more sense than forgetting how to claw and bite). Now it only has 1 turn, loses the Spirit-Naga-Rex powers, and is just a normal T-Rex. Battle continues, and I subtract HP from the T-Rex until it dies.
It works easiest when you just replicate the same monsters, like 2 T-Rexs packed into one. There's a little more to it balancing it when combining different monsters, since they have different stats, so I generally pick the primary monster, use those as the attributes maybe make some adjustments, and work from there, but balancing D&D fights is way more art & on the go adjustments than science, IMO, so I don't find it as a huge issue.
The alternative way to go, is enraging monsters, where you clear one bar of hit points, then once it's dead, instead of removing it, you give it a second turn, and players have to now clear another bar of hit points, while the monster has 2 turns in initiative. It really creates a lot of surprise and tension.
For me, this has drastically changed how boss fights work. You can essentially build an encounter with 2 or even 3 monsters, which is better for D&D's action economy, by packing them all into "the same monsters" that has multiple turns in the initiative, resulting in the fun dramatic single boss fight, while mechanically balancing things better.. For spell saves & powers that relate to a creature's next turn, I do count each turn in initiative as a new turn, so if a player cast Hold Monster on my T-Rex, and the T-Rex initiative fails the save, its next turn in initiative, the Spirit-Naga-Rex would also be paralyzed, but would also get to make a saving throw at the end of its turn, freeing the whole creature from the effect.
Anyway, just wanted to share that recommendation in case it might be helpful to anyone else.
Wow, this is elegant solution.
This is pretty cool.
Could also be a variation of sacrificial mount. Like a Naga ridding a T-Rex. Now the T-Rex loses HP first. So many ways you can use this.
Also, want to stop the player from single targetting one enemy? Have them switch between stat blocks every round. Say a multi-elemental construct. One round it is fluid like water, the next it is fiery and so on. So you have an encounter with 2-4 different elementals and near the end you get to see how it loses forms it can transform into.
Done the final form thing. There was a spore druid the party fought who turned into a shambling mound when his hitpoints hit 0. Also, because he had the Fungal Infestation ability, it meant he got a little more mileage out of his minions than he otherwise would have.
Easily one of the best boss fights I've ran.
The sacrificial pawn really reminds me of the final battle of Star Wars KoToR, where Malak had the captured Jedi whose health he would drain to revitalize his own (although that might be more of a modified Shield Generator, idk), and 13:22 my first thought is "Witch King of Angmar on a Fell Beast", seems like books/ movies/ shows/ games can be a powerful inspiration for innovative mechanics
One variant of what was discussed at 18:45 that I like is the 3-form boss:
First form is the mundane Big Bad
Second form is a giant mutated superpowered monster that's a near mindless berserker, wildly throwing around insanely powerful/destructive attacks without either rhyme nor reason
And the third form is far more humanoid than the second form and statistically weaker, but it's basically the Big Bad having gained some degree of control over the mutations and powers. So while they are TECHNICALLY weaker than the second form, they can apply the weakened versions of it's powers in intelligent/tactical ways (For example, Form 2 has Gravity Manipulation powers that it only uses to either slam the party into the floor / ceiling or slamming objects into them, while Form 3 has a weaker version of that power that they can use to forcibly manoeuvre the party or manipulate the arena in creative ways)
This may be one of the best videos of this year in the TTRPG scene imo. Great job!
I like the area of malice idea. The campaign that I'm starting up is going to have areas of blight where the realm of the evil gods seeps into the world. I think areas around that where characters can't long rest for fear of terrible nightmares or some malady, makes perfect sense.
Yes- you can sleep, but it won't be restful..it will be filled with nightmares and night terrors..
Or aa trade of you get rest but also get cursed and need to blow a spellslot from the moment you wake up.
I love the look Kelly gives when Monty says he eats his burger first, then the fries.
You gotta eat the fries first! Otherwise they get cold!
Good video. Most of my bosses are just level 20 characters, so I do things like "cast a cantrip," "regain a spell slot/once per short rest ability," or "regain a reaction" if they are on their own and use reactions like Shield/Counterspell/Deflect Arrows/Uncanny Dodge.
Glyph of warding, spells in the BBGs lair allows them to maintain multiple concentration spells...like licks hand touches pillar with spell and bam activates haste, or eyebite, or stone skin, or so many spells. Great episode love the ideas, uses minion as shield for reaction...amazing! Also time limit triggers curse players loosing 1 point of main stat every 12 hours from corruption aura.
I recently ran a complex encounter in which the party of four was fighting against a corrupted version of a pit fiend, held within a dungeon by a powerful binding spell, which had to be undone to end the encounter.
In order to banish the pit fiend back to hell they had to overwrite the three arcane sigils of the binding spell, for which I handed out physical copies for them to draw on and stopped the time. If they wanted, they could all move to one sigil and draw together as long as only one character stood on the sigil when it was finished or work seperately. When a character finished their sigil, they got trapped inside, unable to leave but they were able to cast spells etc. When all of the sigils were finished, the characters inside them would take damage, which they had to be able to survive for the magic to take hold.
At the same time, the fiend had an ability that, when not enough damage was dealt to it during the last round, would send a wave of necrotic energy out, damaging anyone in the room. If the pit fiend was slain, it would trigger a mythic form which had an aura of corruption turning healing spells in its vicinity into necrotic damage if the character did not manage to beat a Charisma save. And as a finishing touch, the drawing characters had to make Sleight of Hand checks after every turn drawing to keep their spellcraft as subtle as possible because their total checks determined the damage that the characters engaged with the pit fiend had to beat for it to keep its ire drawn on them. (Like a slight of hand check of 5 would correspond to 15 damage that had to be dealt while a check of 20+ would add nothing)
I told the players about the mechanics (apart from the combat capabilities of the pit fiend) during the session a week before and already handed out the sigils they had to draw, so that they could practice it and come up with strategies on how to beat the encounter.
It was the most stressfull one I ever run but it was an absolute blast for everybody!
So cool to see Demeo as a sponsor! Bought the game recently for PS5, and now I’m even more pumped to try it out since it seems to have the stamp of approval from the Dudes!
I love the look on Kelly's face when Monty says "I eat the burger, then I eat the fries". Like he's saying "dude what's wrong with you!!" 😂
I’ve been using “secret service” bodyguard minions like you guys mentioned as a physical representation of Legendary Resistance or a damage sponge, and they have been really funny in practice. They are a blast to RP.
I once ran a Zelda campaign in Pathfinder and I did a Boss Phase style enemy.
If you recall the Darknut enemies (in Twilight Princess and Wind Waker) they were massive defensive walls. However, as players pick off weak areas of their armour with magic and well-placed called shots, the armour slowly gets dismantled. For this example, I made them constructs with tons of defensive resistances.
When their stat block had about 1/2 HP, the remaining armour drops as they turned into these rogue-like entities that fully commit to offensive attacks and quick maneuvers. Their stat blocks completely changed from being very defensive to being extremely offensive nova damage dealers.
If players faced multiple Darknut foes, they had to think before striking them.
Since the enemies were "Zelda Themed", they really worked!
Been using something like "Legendary Malovelence" in my Curse of Strahd for over a year. The PCs have to be in a settlement or in one of the ancient stone circles spotted around the land to make a Long Rest without being attacked by something from the random encounter table. Been great combined with longer travel times needed to get from A to B. Players are stratigicly planning and with the need to be at locations at given times and all encounters being "Deadly" has them often strapped for resources but brave the random encounter role anyway or miss that meeting with Van Richten or be back in Valakia in time to defend the Church from the Vampire Attack.
One of my proudest creations and ideas i've used for a 'boss' encounter was a fight my party had at around lvl 11. It was a fight against these 2 powerful shadow creatures that could only be touched or harmed while in complete darkness. In bright light they were completely invisible and intangible, in dim light you could see them but only radiant damage could harm them but they became solid enough to fight properly in full darkness. So it forced the players to effectively limit their own fighting capabilities in order to combat the boss, by spending time to extinguish all the light sources in the room and then having to fight the enemies in the dark.
I'm a big fan of just taking existing enemies and giving them new abilities or immunities or power gimmicks to make unique encounters out of them.
I like encounters with a puzzle attached. In one of my first encounters for my then lvl 2 group I used twig blights. After chopping some wood and igniting a fire in the wilderness, my group was attacked by a giant twig blight that summoned 1D4 additional twig blights every round. The group had the options to either kill the giant one or to simply douse their fire (I didn't tell them that ofc), which would pacify the giant blight and end the fight immediately - and get a small reward for that. My group - or well, the barbarian of the group - decided to make some more firewood out of the blights.
I don't make every fight into a puzzle, but when I do, I always try to give several options, one of which is to simply bull charge through.
One more for Sacrificial Pawn (probably from this channel): The dragon has like a tribe of kobolds worshipping them, all of the kobolds have the Mounted Combatant feat and are taking turns riding the dragon. The feat means that the dragon would be cosidered mount and any damage aimed at a mount gets transferred to the rider. Fun.
I have been working on homebrewing Monster Manuevers for martial monsters. Basically battle master maneuvers specifically made for a monster with legendary actions adding a manuever each legendary action. These limited maneuvers (depending on your cr) restart at the beginning of the monster's turn. Gives the monster a sense of controlling the battlefield through sheer skill in combat.
For Legendary Malevolence, a justification for why Rope Trick and Leommund'd Tiny Hut won't work is because the enemy boss simply has spellcasters with Dispel Magic handy, making it moot, as they van gather reinforcements, surround the hut and put the players in a very dangerous scenario.
So how would this stop Genielock at higher levels where (s)he and the party can just pop into the Vessel for an hour and get a long rest? Asking as a long-time Genielock player because more than once I've irritated my DM by using it plus Pact of the Chain to have my Imp dip off with the vessel into a corner and the party can take a power nap and be ready to kick off the big brawl
@@BR4IN1N4J4R I mean nothing stopping the DM having enemies find the vessel and either capture it or destroy it, ejecting the party. Also not to mention that's not how the vessel works, you can't get a long rest in an hour at all, you can get a short rest in 10 minutes in it, but you'd still need everyone in it for 8 hours to get the long rest, which is plenty of time for any monsters to come along and scoop up the vessel or break it, interrupting everyone's rest.
If you're really a long time Genielock player then you should know how the Sanctuary Vessel works. Nowhere does it say you get a long rest in an hour.
@@Noobie2k7here aren't many ways to make destroying the vessel make sense. Most likely, the minions would just take it to the boss or treasure room.
Outside of genie, I would think you still have plane shift.
so many awesome ideas in here and with helpful advice and examples. i especially like how you implemented these ideas in your Drakkenheim games, so we can see how the concepts worked
My friends & I are currently using some homebrew books to run a 5e campaign in the world of the Monster Hunter game series and my friend Taylor, who is GMing for us, has a really cool boss mechanic he uses. Big creatures in the missions have 2-3 health bars, instead of their normal health, and it effects their actions in combat. A creature may have 3 health bars, start with 3 different spaces on the turn order, and lose extra turns as the health bars are depleted or vice versa (gain more turns in each round of combat as health bars are removed). He also has a mechanic where the boss monsters can shake off status effects at the cost of some of their health.
Not my idea but I read somewhere about telegraphed AOE boss moves where the players have to get off of certain battle-map squares or take other actions to avoid them.
@7:27 LOL, Kelly's face when Monty says he eats the burger and then the fries is fantastic 🤣
The first one is the classic Ravenloft mist (glad you mention it for castle Ravenloft; it was essentially by default in 1 and 2e AD&D, I guess they removed it for 5e). The second one is the classic Warhammer “Look out Sir”( a good idea to implement for every single villain in DnD)
Man like a week ago the only thing I knew about DnD was the name, I assumed it was some nerd game. But my God the way you guys talk about it and explain it so passionately actually makes me so excited to learn more. I wish I could have experienced this years ago and had some friends without a stigma for TTRPGs, (Christian background so you can see where I’m coming from) it makes me sad and happy at the same time that I just discovered how awesome this community is. Thank you guys.
Pulp Cthulhu, an add-on for 7th ED Call of Cthulhu, has a feature similar to Sacrificial Pawn called "Look Out, Master!".
Bad guy can spend all his Luck points to have a minion or just someone within range take the hit for him. Granted it's a one-time thing until he regains Luck Points, but it can be a great way to give a boss time to escape.
I like some of these, especially the environment preventing a long rest. I could see the party having nightmares the first night preventing getting spells back. Elves are making willpower checks each hour to meditate. Give the players a taste the first time other then just saying they can’t.
Or the player on watch spots things moving, then is either raising the alarm every hour, or risk an ambush
15:42 CALL OF THE NETHERDEEP TOO! SPOILERS!
Alyxian has three forms you have to go through to get to the end of the module. They don’t ALL have to be killed outright iirc which is why it was so interesting to me that they included it.
I plan on adding two of these to my current campaign.
Having a Mythic Transformation for the "final" boss, and preventing Long Rests in the final dungeon.
My idea for stopping Long Rests is just a simple, slow, magic draining effect. So that if a spell stays in one place for a long time (an hour), it will fizzle.
This way, they can throw up a Tiny Hut to get a Short Rest, but will know that they won't have any defenses if they stay in one place for any longer.
"Has your group trounced your BBEG?" The look on Kelly's face... "Yes. I have. Thank you for giving me that experience."
You guys gives us so much inspiration, thats really great!
Absolutely brilliant ideas, I will use all in my Out of Abyss! I'm using a two phase boss encounter with Demogorgon, second phase, near death, he splits into two monsters and go rampage havoc madness, even maybe fight between them, If the players pull this off.
In tomb of annihilation, I created a stone guardian of a tomb, with all resistances possible and almost impossible to kill, only after the players make a blood sacrifice on the altar (bleeding for many rounds, until reach an amount of HP) the stone golem became a flesh golem and lose all resistances. It's a like a fight that you have to kite the monster away from the characters that are bleeding in the altar and win some time until the guardian is deadly, killable.
I've used that minion sacrifice mechanic in one of my sessions. Had an evil queen whose guards would eat the blows targeting her. Haven't used any of the others yet though. I should try those puzzle fights though.
5:18 Tapping into the dream stream through your stats heals your wounds and restores your very soul (spell slots). But some creatures exist in both and do not have to toggle such creatures can find you in eathar & find you fully.
Talking about change in scenery, I had a Wild Magic Sorcerer BBEG who had a special wild magic surge table. It would immediately cast a spell that had a spell casting time of greater than 1-action, at no cost to the sorcerer, but also sometimes it would benefit the party as well. One of those spells cast was Mirage arcane, turning the ruins in the feywild they were in into a freezing hilltop. The sorcerer then cast gift of alacrity on its next surge, which since combat had already started, was useless, but still, it was a cool way to add powerful random effects.
Sacrificial pawn can also be made in a way that The Minion have a Sacrifice Ability where when the boss is hit they can choose to Burst into flame or what ever to cast Shield or something similar on the Boss.. turning the Hit into a miss
Hi Kelly! Hi Monty! Love the videos.
Thanks for the tips.
I am going to add legendary traits to my next boss, Fanatical Devotion to have the minions shift up to their speed toward my boss to become the target of an attack and Sacrificial Pawn to do the soul drain minion to auto save for my boss.
Made a goblin queen Archfey with a 4 armed troll body guard and a bunch of goblin/hobgoblins, Darklings, red caps and quicklings.
Thanks again!
Tip for anyone planning on using the 'Shield Generator' for their bosses, don't make the thing protecting them small enough to fit into a Bag of Holding or Portable Hole.
I had a Necromancer that was drawing power from a Lich''s Phylactery to protect themselves, and one of my players grabbed the phylactery mid-combat and hid it in a Bag of Holding. The combat was over pretty soon after that
In my Drakkenheim, I ran a miniboss as 4 creatures. Each of the 'parts' had its own pool of HP and its own actions, but the PCs could target different areas to disable the attacks coming from it. It was inspired by some video game bodd battles that do similar things.
One thing to remember with stats is that only Fighters add their Strength to attack and damage.
The d8 for Fighters in Basic most likely comes from the supplements. Judging by my perusal of S&W, you can tell how close Basic is to OD&D.
From my understanding, it was intended for new players to stay will the Holmes set and then move onto OD&D.
in my opinion your level 20 one-shot with treantmonk had some pretty great examples of puzzle bosses
Something that helps add drama to boss fights I run is the fact that they don’t follow the same rules as PCs. Sometimes they have multiple reactions to use, or can cast multiple spells per round, can concentrate on multiple spells, etc. One thing they all share is that they don’t roll for initiative. When they’re in their lair, they always go on initiative 18.
Gotta rock the glyph of warding! If the big bad can cast spells or pay someone else to do it for them, then not only is every surface a potential trap for the party, it’s also a potential buff for the baddies.
While I’m not sure if there was ever a ruling on this for players, but RAW the big bad could stack concentration buffs with this
The methods in this video also play well into the cr system. The temptations is boss=higher cr, which can sometimes be very dangerous for the party and end up killing them when you just wanted to make the fight challenging. These are all methods that essentially string several encounters together, therefore increasing difficulty (and the narrative) so making it a fun and challenging fight without as much risk for killing characters (and leaving players out of the cool boss fight).
In my Drakkenheim, I added extra minions to certain boss fights that could heal the boss. For example, in the Black Ivory Inn, there was a Gibbering Mouther 'chorus' with the Protean Abomination. The abomination could use a legendary action to absorb a live or dead mouther and heal itself but the mouther's current HP+10, or on other rounds, it could spend 2 legendary actions to spawn 1d2 more mouthers. I had to increase it like that because that was the last outer city scenario they takled, and they were too powerful for the regular setup. More encounters should have variable options to tune it for different levels.
Puzzle boss is my favourite, but my players tend to take challenges head on so our last session ended like this:
- One player was rolling death saving throws (Survived due to luck)
- One player had 6hp left and a parasite stuck to his body and hurting him whenever he attempted to attack the boss (They're gonna be getting rid of the parasite next session)
- Another player was paralysed
- The final player had firebolts and a dream
They were lucky their enemy had 27 hp left and didn't want to risk revealing that getting it to 0 hp wouldn't kill it, and decided to teleport out of that situation.
Boss phases are also a great way to allow your boss to escape! Players get to see that the boss has a phase beyond what's expected, the boss gets to live another day and strategize for the future, returning later with more knowledge about the party's makeup, strengths, and weaknesses.
If you're doing a battle in where you know the party can't just use a spell to instantly control or remove the boss from the fight, there is a very simple way to prolong a fight and it's from a small anecdote I heard a few years ago that goes something like this:
I was at a game store one day and noticed a D&D game in the corner. I walked over and watched them play. The party was fighting a dragon and what I thought was odd was that the DM was not tracking the dragon's HP. After the game, I went over to the DM and decided to ask him about it.
"Hey, what was that dragon's HP?" I inquired.
"The dragon? Oh, I dunno. I didn't give him any." was his reply.
I was confused. "Well, then how do you know when the dragon dies?"
The DM smirked. "When it stops being fun."
It sounds very basic, but the DM is the one who sets the scene and can alter things in subtle ways to give the party as much enjoyment as possible. After all, everyone is there to have fun... so give it to them! Fudge the boss' HP so that he can tank the Paladin going nova. Give him something he can take as a legendary action that lets him heal some of the damage back. Let him have that simulacrum to die in his place when you don't want the BBEG to die yet. So long as you make it fun for the players, who cares how it happened?
I had a party of four ninth level character two-round a death tyrant in its lair. They succeeded on the first few eye ray saves, stunned it, dropped it to the ground, and destroyed it extremely quickly. This would have been very useful.
Really solid advices in this video - I am already looking forward to implementing some of these into my upcoming battles. Would also say that several of these would work great for spicing up "regular" combat encounters in campaigns that do not include your standard 4 combat encounters per adventuring day-type campaigns. I usually run 1-2 combat encounters per session and so want them to have a little more oomf :D
Love seeing demeo as the sponser! I started playing it on the since it as soon as it came out on the quest 2. It’s an amazing game so it makes me happy to see it get some love
Good stuff! Always like making the boss battle epic. One of my recent ones involved floating balls of chaos roaming through the battlefield that triggered spells in players, poisoned them, or gave a level of exhaustion but healed, recharged spell slots, or gave temp hp for the baddies. Once it hit someone it bounced off in a random direction so the players had to dedicate somebody to intercept the ball before it hit the big bad or push a minion in front of one to launch it off before the big bad could get the benefit. Chaotic and terrifying once the exhaustion hit but players managed to win without a death.
I think stuff that takes away long rests are totally fine but it’s a different kind of challenge versus better. It’s the difference between a marathon and a sprint. The balance there is as a DM you need to make sure that each encounter can’t be a down to the wire from full health fight.
About the long rest mechanic you proposed. Something i tend to do is to just change up a bit how a long rest works depending on the enviorment. For example, a long rest in a town does work as it would normally, but a long rest in the wilderness deep within enemy territory is more stressful, so it only restores half your hit die and you have to expend them to regain hit points at all. If the area is heavily suffused with eldritch or wild magic, then spell slot recovery may also be more difficult, typically restoring one or two spell slots less for each leveled spell slot you have (for example; if you have four 1st level spell slots, you may only regain 3 of them or less on a long rest in such a territory). It makes the party a lot more wary about choosing their battles and looking for alternative solutions to encounters as well, since they cant just blast their way through every encounter and regain everything as easily.
Malevolence works really well for bodaks. The nightmarish gaze is etched into the experience beforehand and give a similar check to its gaze, with a minor condition attached like a point of exhaustion, for which they now have a warning and a better understanding of how dangerous the monster ahead of them is. A creature whose mere gaze can kill should have a sufficient warning, and i think his works excellently.
The Gray Philosopher is a good Puzzle Boss.
One puzzle encounter I ran once that I thought was very fun was where the PC's were tested by Oghma in his library (which is basically his divine plane in my game). They were given a riddle hinting at the four elements (pretty easy) where they had to place something for each element in a corresponding brazier, while being attacked by a golem (which would hop into an oven and basically reform after 1 round if defeated), animated instruments that could charm them and floating books (again basically infinite books in the library but only a certain number at the same time) which cast spells at random (they managed to get hit by both Time Stop and Meteor Swarm in that combat - they just really liked to roll for 9th level spells for some reason). An additional element was that they were not allowed to destroy more than a certain number of books, because Oghma wouldn't like that. It was a really fun and memorable encounter.
Great video! All these ideas is refreshing to the standard hit point sponges that bosses often are in ttrpg and games. Also constant adds ( minions ) are a cheap/ cop-out solution in a boss fight. So letting there be other uses for them like sacrifices etc and not a limitless wave of minions is much better way handling epic boss battles
I did a boss battle where the boss had 20 minion that were mostly harmless, slow, and couldn't make attacks of opportunity. The boss could sacrifice one to use a Legendary Resistance, with no limit, he also had an ability that he could sacrifice any number of them to regain X hit points per minion sacrificed, this ability was on a Recharge 5-6. There were a few other things going on as well, but having a max of 20 Legendary Resistances was really strong, but he only ended up using one as he needed to save the minions for healing.
Fantastic video and one that should help A LOT of DMs. You two are great as always.
I did the memory game with elementals too. Lol
Mine was a little bit different in they had to reveal them all to unlock the door, but the catch was when they matched them it would spawn in 1,2,3,4,5, and 6 elementals if that type. In ascending order. After they saw what was going on they decided to try to get light and dark elements 3rd and 4th. Thinking they didn't want those to be the last 2. Good decision since those were by far stronger than the basic earth, fire, water, air elementals.
One of my favorite ones comes from overlord. Where a vampire summons minions but instead of using them to attack they attack the minions to suck out their HP to heal.
I also like the minion shield wall. Make minions with sentinel and prevent melee with your caster.
Demeo has the best community! Have yet to find a nasty toxic player and when I started playing had a ton of people willing to help me learn and the strategies to use with different characters!
These sound a lot of fun. I'd love to play with some if these!
My suggestion is to steal mechanics from mmo dungeons/raids. Surprisingly simple but excellent!
With undead minions or thralls of some kind or cutlist minions I have the boss game damage reduction based on the number of minions making the boss take considerably less damage until some of the minions get killed or the players find a creative way to break that connection.
19:18 isn't that what happens to Lavos in chrono trigger? He starts out that big tick thing and by the end he's like a little guru thing.
Hey Monty, seems like you're in a little be of a better place than you have been in for the last few videos. It's great to see you back on your feet and I just want to tell you that you're doing great. I'm sending you the goodest of good vibes. You're awesome.
You guys help bring the flavor to mundane battle! Thanks guys!
Love the content, love the homebrew stuff, love you guys!
@7:35 my solution to players doing that is pretty fun and simple - basically, I just make the minions have REALLY annoying supportive spells and abilities that are worth splitting your attention from the main boss for. In particular, any healing thrown towards a boss is a GREAT way to instantly gain the ire and attention of the PCs, even if it's only a tiny amount like healing word 😂. I had a boss encounter set up like this and my players chose to ignore the minions - the result was AMAZING. This ONE mook managed to keep haste on the boss for the ENTIRE FIGHT and dropped THREE cure wounds on him, basically allowing the boss to be WAY more effective and survive longer because they didn't focus down the support first. Another one landed a crit thanks to the players making themselves easily flankable and piling around the boss. They still managed to pull through with a bit of luck (and because I didn't design the encounter to kill them for it), which was great, but they understood pretty well after that - you can't just focus fire down every boss mindlessly!
In general, smart enemy / encounter design is great for encouraging players to change up their battle tactics. Part of getting your players to not focus fire in a boss encounter is making sure your minions provide adequate threat, and there's many good ways to go about that. Give your boss minions some teeth, people!
Bad Ass video! Dudes back doing what dudes do best!
These videos are just too good, I had to join the Patreon cause of the help they give me 💯
Glad you like them!
I’m going to try out the legendary malevolence idea in my campaign immediately. We are set in a desert and they are currently working their way to a cursed mine anyway!
Also I love the phase mechanic!! I’ve been using it since my third or fourth session since I underestimated my party’s damage and wanted the encounter to be more fun.
Excellent, as always. Thank you.
SPOILERS FOR CALL OF THE NETHERDEEP
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The final boss of Call of the Netherdeep does a good job of mixing some of your ideas. He's a phase boss that also implements puzzle elements. He starts off monstorous and becomes more human as the encounter goes on, but he's also able to draw power from three shrines in different ways. The PCs can disable these shrines, and also try to talk down the boss and redeem him. It makes the encounter highly memorable, and I'm really looking forward to the day I get to run it for my players.
For bosses, similar to the multiple stat-block approach, you can also just treat them as having multiple bundles of HP, rather than just a single one. So, rather than having 150 HP, they might have 3x 50 HP bundles and damage doesn't bleed across from one bundle to the next.
Boss has got 105 HP left and just took 45 HP damage, nope - that's just 5 HP damage as it takes out the first 50 HP bundle and doesn't touch the next.
This penalises the heavy hitters like Paladins' Smite, Rogues' Sneak Attack, or the occasional Critical Hit.
You can even have a "special event" triggered, like some sort of AoE attack, or extra minions appear, when a HP bundle is eliminated.
Can't wait to watch this! Taking notes on this episode of Dungeon Dudes for sure!
This was a very helpful video. Thanks guys.
I actually used that "sacrificial pawn" idea with a psychotic drow bbeg lieutenant my players were fighting. One of them had a charge ability and the lieutenant picked up the KoaToa next to her and used him as a meat shield. It was so hilarious
You guys just gave me the most wonderful idea for the campaign I'm making with the whole "Shield Generator" idea. In this campaign, there is a Lich-like creature who tried to become immortal to continue to protect his people and his daughter in the Shining Planes from Giant incursions and regional wars. He made Scarecrow-styled constructs that would act as road markers, some complicated enough to even act as guides or transportation, and all of them were capable to band together and fight against intruders. Long story short, he knew he needed to persist for these guardians to continue to function, as they were tied to him, and he researched ways to maintain a body after death. The process ended up tying his soul to his daughter, who became a creature of living fire whom any living thing she burned would add to the mage's strength.
BUT. With this idea, he could have also tied his soul to several Scarecrow constructs in his lab, but the cost is the mage is entirely decrepit. A weak push could break him. This would give the team an obvious target to attack, but a shock at how this skeleton of a man won't be affected by any attack. Maybe, I could use the mage's power to give the Scarecrows regeneration, or maybe, after most of them are defeated and broken, he uses his magics to force them to come together in a Castlevania's Legion-style boss.
I like this. Thanks guys.
For the sacrificial pawn, you could add that the boss takes half damage as the minions’ presence cause a magical barrier
I like the idea of the puzzle being used inversely. Where the PCs could be able to brute force the boss it will but it will be difficult. However if they solve puzzle during combat it will in someway make the fight easier. Perhaps remove resistances, stop lair actions, straight up half the health. Just so the PCs feel like we found a secret way to defeat the hard boss
These are some good ideas. I have been trying to think of ways to boost some major fights.
These were all so clever and fun! Thanks for sharing!
5:04 how would a justification be for a warforged boss’s malevolence?
Thanks as always guys! This was another fantastic video!
Great, original video!
My favorite boss special power from my game: As a Legendary Action, the boss could switch places with any one of her minions. That allowed her to swap out of troublesome situations (kind of like "sacrificial pawn") and into locations where she could do tremendous damage.
"Legendary Malevolence" is something I have had on an OC I came up with long before I even got into DnD. He is a central character in what would be a series of novels if I ever get to writing them down. He is a lich whose signature feature is this extreme rage, which makes EVERYONE terrified of him simply because he radiates such intense hatred and anger, acting very much like your Legendary Malevolence. The valley where his lair is located is so tainted by his rage that it has become this nightmare realm that drives people insane with fear, making them easy targets.
One of your best vids guys, thank you
on the first point, I'm running out of the abyss, and in the travel sections the players can only take what i call a 'medium rest' when in between citis. It is the same amount of time as a long rest but they must use hit die to recover, then they recover half their hit dice, and they get one spell slot per level they can cast back. It really helped make the travel sections more dangerous and along with the survival theme of campaign. Then when they are safe in a city, then they can take a 'Full rest'.
I had a fight that, once the boss only had 100hp, it activated an anti-magic field that increased its HP/S. The source was a blue gem at the top of 1 of 4 15ft pillars, but each pillar had a blue gem. The gems were immune to ranged attacks, so they had to be climbed up to and smashed. I fucked up and made it so that they could still kill the boss and accidentally made it a damage sponge instead of an interesting fight
'Vulnerable core' is Lavos. Literally did that concept in my system across a two-session combat in three phrases.