In my experience the best way to have the "back and forth" of who's winning and who's not winning is by stealing a page from video games and using boss phases. Now this was only for my BBEG but I had 3 phases. First one was weaker BBEG but had a TON of 1 hp minions players had to rip though before they could hit the BBEG (BBEG had reaction to push minions in the way of attacks lol was great at making them feel powerful but out numbered). Second one was when the BBEG hit 2/3rds HP, BBEG lost their minion reaction and started eating damage like crazy, I lowered AC in this phase but raised attacks allowing my players to get crazy hits off but luring them into getting slammed Third one 1/3rd HP, raised the AC back up (give them a weird shield, carapace, or a spell) and gave them a weaker attack that can hit almost everyone everytime. this was when all felt lost, they had been doing so much damage but now theyre extremely hurt and using the last of their abilities and they can't hit. FINALLY some one kills the BBEG. I don't do phased fight often as I think they can make combat confusing bc targets are changing but for my big bad? It was totally worth it.
Thats sound so gooood thank you I'm stealing that ! ( lowering AC and raising AC is cool I never thought of that ) for my inspiration I'm going to steal Wakfu MMORPG boss battle , that's what recommend cause its a turn by turn rpg
Using phases is excellent advice. The best video game boss battles require an initial set of tactics, then change at key moments, forcing you to change tactics, as the boss reveals a different type of attack or as the environment/lair becomes more hostile or treacherous. Lair actions are common, and having to interact with objects in the lair to shift things in your favor is also a great way to keep players on their toes. And this works for low-level bosses as well as the big bad.
yeah my best bost fight was when I did a staged one. Stage one, basic encounter, at 1/2 hp, it escaped up to a ledge, and summoned a half dozen minions to and started to heal. After the minions came the final fight where it used it tentacles for sweeping attacks and the melee fighters had to platform to get in range
Getting ready for the final boss battle after two years of a campaign. They're level 17 and wildly powerful. My biggest challenge has been giving them a challenging fight without just negating all their powerful abilities.
Lair actions and wave after wave of different kinds of minions will help... Plus have them solve a puzzle before the BBEG’s force shield generator goes down. Think of the complex bosses in video games.
You can also make environmental hazards. One boss fight I was a player for had a conveyor belt that moved 15ft per round over a garbage incinerator. If it pulls you over the edge, that's immediate, permanent death. Debris continues to fall throughout the battle. It created a unique challenge where a significant amount of effort had to go into positioning.
Sorry in advance for the word vomit. If you just want the spark notes: make side objectives that must be accomplished or else the boss is very difficult-to-near-impossible to kill, have the boss set up shop in terrain hazards that they're immune to but that players aren't, mess around with what spaces the players can safely occupy, and create places that are more advantageous to players but also far more dangerous to occupy. Just ran a fight of 17th levels vs a "psuedo-tarrasque", sort of a mix between a tarrasque and a previous character. Few things I learned from that: Run your boss in stages. Mine had two health pools of 330. Here was a kicker: when it hit the second health pool, the terrain suddenly gave way to a lava chasm, with the party standing scattered on rocks. The "tarrasque" switched attack styles, doing aggressive amounts of damage with its regular attacks while losing the bite and swallow attack that was such a huge pain in stage one. Additionally, it dove into the lava, smashed the rocks the party was standing on, and generally used its fire immunity, swim speed, burrow speed, and earth glide to sometimes negate the party's ability to attack. Add in a mechanic that, if they don't deal with, makes the boss freakishly hard until its dealt with, like RC Schmidt said. In my case, on the tarrasque's turn, 7 illusions of a character that the tarrasque absolutely hated appeared, and shot harmless illusory bullets. However, if any remained by its next turn, it got resistance to all damage. That turned its health from 660 to 1440 while these illusions weren't dealt with, which 17th level players DEFINITELY cannot dish out. Whats worse, come phase 2, the illusions spawned at different altitudes and locations all throughout the chasm, forcing some members to spend abilities, speed, spells, and other things just getting to the illusions, let alone taking them out. It took them a few rounds to many to figure that mechanic out, so they chose to flee, but for the first time in a while, they felt really challenged, and quickly restrategized to go back and win. Other idea mechanics like this might include: an accessory creature to the boss that provides an insane amount of healing, shielding, rage bonuses, or some other really powerful boon, but only while its alive; glowing sigils that appear all over the room that someone has to touch and whisper a secret word or a dispel magic or something, or else they explode all the party for about 10d10 damage (that's a setback trap for 17th level, btw); the villain merges into or passes through terrain, making it untargetable until the party reaches it again (maybe by teleporting or smashing holes it walls, whatevs), while it regens, buffs itself, gets more turns to recover its "roll a 5 or 6" ability; the boss is holding a magical artifact in its hand that makes it immune to death or damage or something while the boss holds it, and they teleport it back to their hand at the start of their turn; etc... Also, make the boss clever by ambient features that the villain is immune to that the party isn't, eg., the Lich is immune to poison, so it drops a giant poisonous cloud that spreads throughout the chamber, blinding and incapacitating characters that breath it in (maybe don't include a save DC, so instead the issue becomes finding a way to pass through this cloud without touching it, like leaping over it or teleporting or something), giant pits of lava that fire immune creatures have zero problem with diving into and waiting to recharge powers, a giant gravity well that pulls players away from the spellcasting boss, the progenitor vampire built its lair inside a cavern that lacks breathable air, etc... You can even make these ambient effects as simple as messing with where the players "stand". Break the ground, tilt it heavily, blow them in directions, create cyclones in the air that spike flyers to the dirt below unless they stay in the eyes of the storms, make fear effects that cause players to start running and climbing down cliffs, etc... Literally, just messing with where characters can safely stand messes with them. Branching off this topic, put stuff at different places that requires them to choose what they tackle because they've got to move to get there. In one of Luke's videos, he talked about a beholder fight at different levels with different tubes to get places. You can also split the boss from the probably necessary side objective, or make the optimal point to exacerbate a boss's weaknesses be far more dangerous than other spaces, ie, you wanna hit that chink in the dragon's stomach? You gotta stand on the rock flying through the fire tornado to hit that.
The challenge (for me) is that some nights, the DM can't roll above a 7 and players can't roll below a 15. And other nights, it's reversed. If the players are rolling well, it's easier to beef things up for the boss. But if the players are rolling like crap, it's hard to dial it back and maintain believability.
I have been thinking of an unorthodox one shot, where the characters meet the boss monster right away. Firsts they hear about the monster and how horrific it is. On the way they hear more terrible things and some of its supposed weaknesses. When they enter the dungeon they see bodies of formidable creatures. As soon as they turn a corner a mini boss level monster runs at them, but instead of attacking he is screaming and yells “Get out of my way!” He then sets off a trap on the way out and they now have no way to escape. Now they have to fight the boss right away and end up depleting most of their resources in the proses. As they go through the dungeon they aren’t given any opportunity to rest and as they get closer to the McGuffey, monsters get progressively weaker. Eventually they end up they having to fight a relatively weak opponent, which should actually be a bit of a challenge.
My favorite boss hack is Holograms. Works in nearly every setting. Magic crystals which project the boss. High tech emitter cameras in the bosses hideout. Now you can monologue and not get fireballed. Ezpz 😂 obviously this also includes just speaking thru inanimate objects as well. Hallway made of speaking stones = zone of villainous monologuing. Yes please!
And you get to gloat when the inevitable fireball happens just to break only one of the projectors and another one just continues to work and they’ve burned a fireball over it.
This is there you can have more opponents added if too easy, or stop if it's too difficult. Plus it helps to be very familiar with the character's abilities, and the player's playstyle.
Yes one of the most challenging things in D&D 5th edition is finding the right amount of challenge for a group. That is probably one of the most challenging things a dungeon master has to do in my opinion. There's so many variables it depends on the monsters it depends on the group it depends on the players it's kind of crazy.
@@theDMLair It ALSO depends on the dice. One of my TPK's happened during an encounter that was supposed to be a typical, fairly easy encounter. The players could NOT hit and the baddies could NOT miss!!!! (It was a random encounter that happened in the wilderness. The party could have retreated but chose not to. My rule is I'll save them from my mistakes, not from their choices or from the dice.)
@Sarah Stoeck - knocking a player to zero makes them only two melee hits from death. A bloodthirsty/tactical foe could have killed them quite easily. Sounded like a good challenge to me if you dropped two of them.
I recently took part in a boss battle at the end of a superhero One-Shot, in which my fighter-samurai build was able to deal over 100 damage in a single turn (Thanks to action surge). Only after that battle I learned, that it was enought to kill that enemy, but DM wanted us to escape rather than win, so they raised boss's hp up to 600, more than tripling it. I have very conflicting emotions about it. On one hand it was a very well executed fight and we did end up escaping thanks to our patry caster outsmarting the enemy, rather than due to DM helping us (And it was pretty satisfying), but on the other hand I feel cheated and not treated fairly, as if the world bent to not allow a certain thing to happen.
5:35 - just a thought here, and I’m guessing most people already do this in some aspect, but giving the boss a second/multiple stages of power (e.I. A powerful second wind) is a good way to reverse the effect of hope you could have just given your characters. He mentions “phases” later at 11:15, I just thought it was good to connect the two pieces of advice together.
A cool legendary action idea Checker but with a sword. In another words, after the first attack, if any other character was with in 10-15 feat way from original target, he attacks again
Best tip as a dm I can give... have a NPC fall into water during any fight to make it memorable. If that npc I'd a father or mother or is a child themselves, so many players will bend over backwards to save them. Even if your boss battle is just math against math on a plan surface the thrill of holding a dragon back while others swim to save someone is a good feeling that everyone can get behind.
Great video Luke, thanks for the info. I used to make my bosses "fair" and they would wind up getting destroyed by clever players, now I make them brutal so we can all have fun muwahahaha. In my big campaign, the 6 players will eventually get to lv 20 with boons and blessings and feel like gods, well their main antagonist is my homebrewed devil lord with a couple thousand hp over 3 forms, he goes from their size to the size of a castle. Fate of the world battle, and he has good action economy, but to scare them he has an ability in later forms to create a giant DBZ sphere of flaming+nectrotic+force energy that takes an entire turn to use, so he's vulnerable, but when he unleashes it and they fail their save they can take upwards of 300 damage (of course he can only use it a couple times). So if he uses it once they'll be concerned, but then if he tries to do it again they'll be panicking to space out and unload damage to bring him down before he can nearly kill someone again.
Yeah I tend to make my boss fights brutal almost all the time. My players are usually survive and the experiences just better when they're challenged but when and feel like their victory was well-earned. And I get to have fun with my monsters too.
One of the things I try to consider with bosses is what can the boss set up before initiative. If I want a barbarian type creature I want to get their Rage to be woven into the narrative description of that boss. I’m running a mage boss they should already have mage armour on, and they should already have a spell ready as a reaction. If one player decides they don’t want to hear more of their monologue and tries to attack them then that boss used their held Misty Stepp to avoid that attack. They get to continue their monologue in a smug manner and that player is now even more pissed that they were made to feel stupid. All it takes is one bad initiative roll and now your boss gets wailed on because they couldn’t set up on turn one. Give your bosses a turn 0.
Great video! The enthusiasm alone makes it worth watching. Once the players take a bit of a beating and then gain the upper hand, you can have minions arrive and join in to swing the battle in favor of the boss. The best is to have weak minions eat up some melee time and some other weak minions heal/restore/buff the boss. Then the boss gets back in the fight. This gives you some great back and forth. Just don't use it too much :-) Again, once the players start to get the upper hand again, the boss can fight his way over and grab that hidden magic item / power source / temple dais that gives him another boost.
Regarding the back and forth of battle, I once wrote some outlines for a momentum mechanic. As one side does certain actions, they build momentum for their side, giving them bonuses to hit. At the same time, delayed by a round or two, the other side gains an underdog bonus. Once the underdog bonus is greater than the momentum bonus, the momentum resets, to be fought over once again. I never fleshed it out fully, as my group disbanded, but momentum seems like the thing you want to ebb and flow for that back and forth.
The way I encourage back and forth swings in combat is with triggered effects. Boss hits half hp? He falls back and summons more allies while attacking from ranged. He falls below a quarter? He gets 1 extra action on his turn, and removes all detrimental effects. Or automatically recharges a power or spellslot. Though sometimes dice rolls are dice rolls, but it helps stop things from getting stale after the opening barrage is spent. Also using legendary actions with good timing, which is more art than science, but polymorphing the melee that just crit them, or banishing the cleric after they heal someone can terrify the party.
W A Y S T A R looks real cool. This video is very helpful and full of very useful information. I had an idea for a flying archlich in the process of becoming a demilich. On initiative count 20, the columns of the grand chamber would rotate and shift positions, allowing the archlich to use them for cover and extra movement.
I like to make sure the big boss has one or two minion clerics close by whose main job is to cast dispel magic on the PC's shenanigans, bless, bane, bestow curse, and of course, Spiritual Weapon so they have something to do with their bonus action!
One way I make combat and boss battles specifically feel more grand and epic is, I grant my players, and the bbeg an Epic action, akin to a mythic action, something the players use that isn’t in their kit they can do, at level 1 this attack is equivalent to any 3rd level spell, or can be home brewed between player and dm, but allows the player to describe an epic stunt or magic unique to them. This scales at their ASIs to the level of spell they can produce, a fighter getting more ASIs allows them to do more epic stunts. The bbeg also has one. These I say is either a once per climax or whenever a player cries, I have them roll a second d20, if that also crits , it becomes an epic action
Yes, this is good advise. I attacked my group of four level 3 PCs and the NPC bard who was acompanying them with 11 highway men of variouse sorts. The players were all convinced they were gona die when the first volley of arrows put the bard down and bleeding out for the duration of the fight... 😎
Yo, love the immediate no bs list right at the beginning. Vague enough to keep interest in the details, and straight forward enough to know what the video is getting at. I think it's the dm in us that makes us want to provide a bunch of context before explaining something to somebody, and people get annoyed with us for taking too long to get to the point. This is like that foreshadowing in the narrative structure you mentioned. It's like playing a later part of the video in the beginning as a preview, but infinitely less shitty.
My very first ever group is about to fight Cryovian in Dragon of Icespire Peak, thinking about whipping sno-cones at them during each Cold Breath blast...
@@dahelmang I'm thinking about adding a possible avalanche if the PCs start casting spells all willy-nilly. It will keep difficult terrain, remove the slippery terrain effect it already had, but will also give the dragon a chance to use the burrowing movement and make the PCs lose sight of it. Every PC decided to get Charm of the Storm from the Tower of Storms, thinking of using that as the trigger since it has a 100 ft. range and would hit the mountain sides. Make them think twice about steam rolling my dragon with it.
This was possibly the most important video you have done this year Luke. It was probably the most important DM-Tips video of 2022. It was greatly needed. Good work my man, good work 👏🍻
I haven't used him yet, but I made a berserker lord who has a rage ability for his minions. Sort of a lair action/group action where every turn he's still alive, the entire warrior band gains an extra attack. My PCs are very very powerful and absolutely confident, so this is to give them a sense if urgency to the boss fight.
I love your videos so much! I've been learning a lot from your videos and my friends say I've improved a lot. I'm having a boss fight next session and this was great help!
Legendary actions are a must, and having either phases or an alternative win condition for the boss is a highly recommended. The lich with the arcane ritual that slowly fills up and wipes all living material is a great way to give urgency to the fight and it shows that the big bad has a plan to win and this fight is the last shot the players have of stopping their plans. Movement legendary actions (either separate or combined with another effect) is something I haven’t thought of before and will be shamelessly stealing and adding to all of my future bosses. As an alternative to spell like abilities give your monsters spells that they can cast as a legendary action. (Be sure to slip up and give away the spell name.) Make the players choose between taking an aoe spell that does damage or a soft control spell (command, sleep, slow, etc) now the players have agency in choosing what they counter spell and feel like they can influence the boss but the bosses raw power gives a time limit as they only have so many spell slots.
My best boss fight was with a mad wizard who had been experimenting on goblins. The goblins were intelligent, knew how to fight well and had techniques that would let them join hands and cast low level damage spells. My players hated them lol
A way I find works well is firstly contingent on having the PCs pay attention; aside from that, you may tell a more arcane-focused character skilled in magical esoterica "It is obvious to (insert pc name) that X" when you first step into a boss room before introducing a powerful sense of magic wafting off an object in the center of the room, or the warlock senses a somewhat familiar present oh so slightly different than their patron on an item and is summarily ordered by said patron to thwart the plans of their rival neighbor in whichever outer plane they inhabit, etc. Instead of just phases or puzzles, try combining them for particularly impactful bosses. Let's say the party is rounding up the last loose ends before challenging the leader of a radical druidic circle intent on slaughtering the civilized folk in their surroundings to enrich the local environment through ritualistic sacrifice. You begin narration as they step into a moonlit grove rolling just high enough to avoid the rogue's passive perception for an awakened squirrel's sneak before it darts off. The party is given three turns before the boss arrives and during which the druid in the party deciphers a sigil on a pillar of luminous stone shining eerily under the moonlight, EOT. The party begins searching around the outskirts of the clearing, and the rogue picks up a distant sound while the druid reads the second set of sigils, EOT. A loud stomping sound emanates from the forest, bringing to mind rumors of a group of elephants they have heard about under the boss's command as they rush to the scene. The party spends their last turn gathering near the pillar while the druid reads the final sigil, EOT. The boss steps forward, and you do a fitting villain monologue. It is interrupted by a spell, arrow, or thrown weapon, yadda yadda. As the fight begins, the pillar starts glowing more intensely as each elephant steps forward into the clearing, the underbrush coiling around them before hardening, giving each elephant a +3 to ac as the first sigil pulses in time with each additional elephant armored. While describing this, the druid player blurts out, "Guys, search for the glowing (insert lore appropriate McGuffin, well use a scarlet flower) flower and destroy it!" a quick investigation from the wizard finds a slightly hidden glowing spot near the pillar before ending his turn, the rogue lobs a knife severing the stem of said flower despite the protest of the boss and the armoring stops. Let's say the boss got 2 out of his 4 elephants armored before the flower was cut, allowing the elephants to engage in melee the boss begins phase two, spreading his arms the grass starts turning an ominous pitch black as the air itself seems to freeze. The druid calls out the key to the mechanism, and the party balances ending the effect with dealing with the aggressive elephants, should a pc charge the boss, they will find the cold gets more intense the closer they get taking progressively more necrotic damage, and eventually, exhaustion should they continue forward, after half of his herd goes down the druid lowers his arms and offers apologies to a setting appropriate nature deity before chanting in a strange garbled language as the clearing seems to freeze the life of all animals and plants in the clearing affiliated with the boss instantly snuffs out before they are disintegrated and absorbed by the boss becoming a hulking treant made out of a seemingly onyx glazed hardwood as he steps forwards into melee, the pacing should be set so that overcoming the first hurdle seems easy, followed by triumphing over the minions allowing a breath, and immediately plunged into the final form causing them to realize they expended some of their resources and only now are engaging the boss. In this form, the boss has a charge mechanic allowing him to gather power in a ruby-colored flower situated on the base of his spine. Players may remove or inhibit power by directly attacking it (most likely martials) or inflicting saving throws that cause the boss to expend energy shaking off. When the boss accumulates a certain charge level based on how desperate you want it to be, he can spend said charge to blast out necrotic damage or summon minions to share the firepower, depending on the situation. Viola an engaging swingy encounter with more than just a hitpoint slog without too much work. I hope it helps!
I ran vecna, you might be overlooking his reactions and just how powerful they are. He shuts down most casters and gets to teleport away from players after a single attack. My Vecna TPK'd 4 level 20s with decent gear, end of the fight he was at full HP.
@@lordoftheearth1 Having never seen an arcane archer ever played, I can't tell you anything about them. But, when I ran him there was lots of LOS blocking terrain (it was HIS throne room after all, he made it to his advantage), and after taking a SINGLE attack, he simply used his reaction to return some damage and teleport out of the players reach/LOS. Vecana's a hyper intelligent NPC. If the room isn't to his advantage, if the adds aren't to his advantage, and if he's not focus firing the biggest threats, you're playing him wrong.
My method for swinging the pendulum in a fight I have planned, which I took as inspiration from the Divinity: Original Sin games: changing conditions. In the big fights in that game especially, set pieces play out that continually change the fight as it's happening. The enemy shows up (or the party does) and oh no, the fight has begun. After the first round, the enemy is struggling and summons reinforcements (scaled to how well the party did in the first round). Did they totally smash the first wave? Guess what, the second wave is much bigger and damn, there's no way they can get through all that so easily a second time. Now it looks like the party will lose, but wait! Remember that important NPC they befriended before? Well they show up just in time, with reinforcements of their own, swinging things back in the party's favor. Heals go out to the wounded (or even downed) players and the fight looks even now. But tragedy strikes! The BBEG throws out their most powerful ability, or if he's really struggling, maybe they summon a very powerful ally that's almost a boss all their own. That NPC the party really liked gets struck down. You bastard, you killed Kenny. Now the party is willing to dig deep and spend whatever resources they need to kill this guy, because it's personal. Tension, drama, and because you're the DM, you control the pace. Don't even do this on a schedule. When the fight swings one way, swing it the other. A swing doesn't push itself. It's on you to do that.
I ran a campaign where the party had to fight a minmaxed single class character I created from each class, which was one level higher and had 1 magic item. I made the BBEG a wizard necromancer they met at lvl 8, I planned for it to be a tpk, and the mage took all their magic items, before reviving the players as undead thralls. They were never so thrilled as they were when they finally defeated him at 13th level. And they never raged harder than when they found he came back as a lineage race build. But when they finally killed him and his endless zombie hoard and his endless clones at 19th level, I never saw them happier.
As a dm you could have something whitch notifys the players of the next boss phase but the gaps of hitpoints between each phase could be different. But the players don't know this, giving the feel that they are winning and then loseing and then wining and then losing then winning until they kill the boss. 👍
This is great advice!👍 Another construct is to treat the final boss fight as its own 5 room dungeon...rooms may or not be geographic changes...but the events of entry, puzzle, setback, main conflict, and reward can combine around a single enemy in various sequences for that big payoff session.
Great points all around. I like adding in scripted actions each round. They almost always happen during the players turns. As well, I use minions. These can add a lot of action economy. Even if they don't deal much damage, they distract the players and keep the BBEG alive one more round. Having your goblin boss give all it's minions a free attack or movement on a players turn is wild.
One way to purposefully replicate the ebb and flow of the battle is to not have your big bad use all his best abilities right at the beginning. Have him deliberately save some of his abilities--potions, spells, magic items etc.--for a pivotal moment in the battle. You might also include alternate objectives for the players to accomplish as part of defeating the big bad. It's not just a slug fest where you slowly whittle the villain down to 0 hp. Maybe there are objects around the room that must be destroyed before the villain can even be harmed (obviously the villain will be trying to stop them). Maybe there are hordes of bad guys coming in (I usually make these 10 hp or less) to protect the villain and the PCs have to stop the flow first. Giving the players secondary objectives to accomplish before they can accomplish the primary one--namely, carve your names into the villains chest--allows them to feel as though the battle is nigh impossible but also gives them a feeling of progress and accomplishment as they crawl their way toward ultimate victory.
If you look for this swing feeling try to read the Infinity RPG. They have this DM resource thing that DMs can spend to get fights tougher. They receive it when players aquire bonuses. So the better players do the bigger shift to the worse DM can provide.
So for my big campaign that I've been running for a few months now, my players (level 6 at the moment) will be fighting a Pirate Lich Lord who was once an infamous pirate known as, Captain John Avery. I plan for the boss fight to take place over a large ocean just off the mainland of where the campaign primarily takes place. The idea is after he is awakened (by the party no doubt) he will have an armada of over a hundred ghost ships that the party will need to defeat chunks of in the middle of a nasty storm to even "get a chance" of progressing towards Avery. That is kind of like phase one. Phase two will be them actually being able to confront Avery, but due to Avery's rage a massive hurricane is going to take over what once was just a storm. They'll get a few chances to damage Avery's ship or Avery himself, but I'm thinking of doing a new kind of combat that I'll introduce with lower level pirate encounters early on, where the helmsman uses dex to maneuver the ships, and the players can actually physically damage ships with cannons, target specific spots, and even board ships later on. Avery's ship because it is a ghost ship is going to have a lot of HP, a lot cannons, magical cannon balls, pirates that board the players' ship, etc. Then, for the third phase, they'll take on Avery after presumably boarding his ship, or he'll board theirs. By now the party should have weakened him and vice versa. The party can take various types of damage from the encounter, including the damage on their ship or what have you. I was thinking as well that Avery can have a dodge mechanic where he can submerge his ship entirely and pop out somewhere else. I have loads of ideas and kind of just wanted to idea dump into this comment section. 3 phases, ship combat, minions (the ghost ships won't be too difficult to destroy, kind of like SOT ghost ships), magic, and physical beat 'em up combat full-fledged pirate style. I think turning the tides of battle with these 3 phases isn't going to be too difficult, and the players can feel badass by taking out Avery's smaller vessels, but then feel overwhelmed as they're getting boarded by ghost and skeleton pirates while fighting the BBEG himself. I will make Avery brutal but fair, and the possibility of player deaths will be high since they do not have a cleric (I will stock them up on lots of potions and enchanted items from other adventures to slightly "mimic" what a cleric could do that they can use in the fight). Anyone can comment and feel free to tell me what you think. Toss a suggestion or three as well.... They won't be fighting Avery until probably March. There are also plenty of smaller boss battles that are Avery's right hands, guardians keeping him locked away, etc etc. This is just specifically for the BBEG.
You could replicate that "rollercoast" feeling with a little trick. Speaking of D&D 5e, you could increase the proficiency bonus in the middle phase of the boss fight, and then lower it in the last phase. You could probably link that change to the monster hp.
Being a new DM has certainly been a learning process and keeping track of everything that comes with the territory. This is all good information to keep in mind, but I think that what is most complicated for me is that I prepped for the game assuming that the players were going to go a certain way and they didn't so I had to improvise everything. I obviously don't want to put constraints on where the PCs go but I also don't want to be fumbling through the book to be figuring out what happens in each area, who is in the area, what fights are to happen, etc. What would be the best way to prep while still allowing flexibility for the PCs and knowing the important details for wherever they decide to go? Running Lost Mines of Phandelver by the way PC's Lvl. 2 and they decided to move onto the Manor. PCs are pre-gen that came with the box.
My favorite boss battle was the group against a Draco Lich. Two of the four went down. The Monk had a dragon slayer sword. He attacked the tail and brought it to 0 hp. I had the Draco Lich turn around (hitting the remaining member with it's tail) and attack the Monk. It dropped the two players down to 2 hp. Then the Monk, grappled in the Draco Liche's mouth, attacked with the sword in it's face. The Draco Lich collapsed. Near death for the regain players, that was the most epic fight.
This is one of my favorite videos that you have done (and that is saying something as you have a lot of videos I like) I love the pointing out the narrative structure plan for a boss battle, love talking about having fun, and absolutely love the sentiment that the boss is fighting to win. In regards to a point that you said you don't like, where you talk about more or less the dm fudging the outcome to help the players, I agree, if you do it a couple of times, the players get used to it and it reduces their fear of tpk or even just a loss. I do try to include at least some escape possibility in case things go badly for the party (due to poor luck or poor pre-planning by the party or I(the dm) overrated the party capability) One of my favorite campaigns had the party overrate their own ability and go up against the boss sooner than they should have, and I could have helped them out, but I felt I gave them plenty of warning that they weren't ready for that event, and they managed to escape (well not all of them)
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You'll love to know that my Into the Fey campaign is reaching high tension. There are three quests remaining as options and the townsfolk are starting to panic because people going missing all over the place and the guards can't do anything. I'm implementing panic this session to REALLY ramp things up. My players have been in Aeredale for about three game weeks, and tensions have been increasing slowly. The time is ripe to ramp things up, as all three remaining quests before the finale revolve around people going missing. Here we go!!
This video hit hard after the last session in which our DM decided to ambush us out of nowhere with one of the final bosses of the game (or at least one of the stronger ones). Our party had 3 players at 11 and 3 NPCs with their power being around lvls 6-9. We had a lot of our resources missing but we were all at full HP (at least 400 hp total plus a few heals). We were returning after completing one hard mission from a patron to get our reward, and at some point we found something unusual in the area, as we were looking around the boss ambushed us and almost killed one of the NPCs in the surprise round. The fight started and we understood that the boss had a F@CKTON of HP (at least 600, more likely close to 700). Fortunately he only had normal single-target attacks (3 plus legendary actions), and decent AC (20 or 21). But he had a huge bonus to his hit (at least +13 maybe even higher so he almost never missed an attack), insane mobility, plus a disable without a saving throw once per round (to one target), so getting away was not an option. After 8 rounds of him just pounding us with his normal attacks while taking 6-8 of our attacks/spells per round, he completely annihilated us, and then we found ourselves prisoners of his faction. A fight like this should have been an easy stomp for us, it was a 6 vs 1 with the boss lacking aoe capabilities and with our group having casters and healers with a decent amount of our slots and abilities still available, but we were not supposed to win that fight... That was a very bad boss fight with a total let down of an outcome.
this video will be very helpful in my planning out and homebrewing the boss of a high level campaign I am planning and need to homebrew in the stat block and action block for Malcanthet the demon lord queen of the succubi as a final boss. Given this campaign has run several prestige levels beyond level 20 having her summon other powerful demons as a legendary action should make the players realize even with all those prestige levels a demon lord will be no push over and they will have to worry (if the rolls for the summons go well and I the dice gods give me a couple Balor to drop in and not just a bunch fodder.)
this info doesn't completely suck. quite the contrary, this info is vital! I'm running the early death of my campaign the day after tomorrow, & all you said here will be tried to be used. thx, Lord Baconeater!
In the part where he was talking about the boss having a massive health pool, i shit you not the character art he used for the BBEG is literally the same art I used for a bad guy in my campaign i made literally an hour prior to watching this
I just got a party together for a new game and its going to be maddness. We are going for a planehopping Gestalt campaign. Everyone is crazy hyped and i am ready for arc one. Cant wait to see what comes of it all. This video is going to help with the bossfight tho
For sci-fi, check out Stars Without Number! It's an even faster system than 5e and is super adaptable. Also, thanks for the tips! Running CoS and am dreading the last fight.
"A boss without anything on their dead corpse is a POOR boss indeed." I immediately imagined an old man in dirty rags, fighting characters with his legendary Cane of Walking!
1) In character insult the PC's and their weak abilities 2) Fudge 100% of the dice rolls to tell a story 3) TPK the group on the 1st attempt 4) Fudge 100% of the dice rolls and let the new group win when you feel it's time for the BBEG to die
These are absolutely great ideas...I ran the Tomb of Annihilation and the final battle with Acererak was ...well..a hit point slog. Next time I run it, definitely going to be a utilizing these tips.
This actually reminds me of a good D&D Horror Story on how not to do a final boss fight. The short of it is if you will imagine spending almost a year and a half in a campaign where you're trying to stop the machinations of an evil War Lord, and when you finally confront him; just as initiative is rolled, the DM suddenly has the warlord clutch his chest and fall over dead from a heart attack what's the minions committing ritual suicide in response. The Story Goes that the DM that pulled that little stunt is no longer among the living.
So after a year and a half of building up to the boss fight they confront the boss and he just dies in front of them without their having to do anything? That sounds absolutely anti-climatic and a horrible way for a game to end. Did the dungeon master think they were doing something like crazy clever or something? I don't know sometimes when dungeon Masters think they're being clever it's not nearly as enjoyable as if they were to just run a quote unquote normal game
@@theDMLair , I heard it secondhand so I couldn't necessarily tell you what the guy was thinking (might have thought it'd been a funny twist or something like that); but it's probably safe to say that while I may have been laughing about it as someone who was listening to a story, the guys players most definitely were not since their PCS were ready to tear the warlord asunder with their own hands for the villain and nemesis he had become at that point.
Idea for a Boss fight.... A hag, and a bunch of Pixie Minions.... Goal of boss: Complete their ritual to create a big bruiser of a monster or perhaps a group of them.... (I'm thinking a flesh Golem or flesh golems made from a bunch of cow carcases she buried under a tree in the middle of a barren clearing, and stiched together by the tree roots of said tree....) The hag of course will be performing a ritual to cast call lightning on the tree which will animate the cowflesh golems.... (And if I remember the spell right, as long as the storm persists the Hag can then use call Lightning to heal the flesh golems and damage the players..... Throw in some pixies who are there to stop the players from disrupting the ritual.... (I'm thinking they will try to open up by trying to polymorph the players into "Goldfish"(Quippers) and then swoop in to try to pick up the players they succesfully turn into fish.... (They will then try to fly them up in the air and then drop them to inflict fall damage....) How tough does this sound as a boss fight?
I'm thinking now one way to increase the chance of a fight going back and forth is giving the boss a bullcrap ability that you hold off on doing, or if you wanna play it straight write something that makes it unusable until a certain condition is met, like half HP (similar to mythic actions). Something big like sudden action surge, a contingency effect, some bonus action spells or big effect. Maybe the enviromeny can somehow change to give it an edge, even momentarily. It does go a bit against the most optimum strategy if you dont give it arbitrary restrictions, and it's not guaranteed because dice (which is fine, but there you go. Tho I prefer trying to just achieve that through great monster and level design instead of using such parlor tricks, but that's hard to achieve, and you dont know if you succeeded until the fight is over.
Yes some sort of ability or something that has a timer or has a recharge or Triggers on round one three and five. You could build that swing into the fight doing stuff like that.
I’m running an adventure and the boss is a chain devil who when the pcs attack it uses it’s control chain abilities to decapitate four of their friends chained to the walls of the dungeon lmao
Good way of making a boss fight swing back and forth between who gets to beat who is to give the boss "Villain Actions" which trigger at specific rounds. For example: Round 1: Big bad says something and laughs... and summons some baddies to help him. Round somewhere between 3-5: Boss feels like he might need some more help of some kind... *Add a variable to the combat which helps the villain* Round close to death: Boss either transforms or becomes stronger for some reason. Example: Describe the boss as being very weak and spitting blood... and then he grins and drinks an evil looking potion and he reacts badly to it and suddenly he transforms into a weird monster. Double his damage and give him some AOE effect or something like that.. These actions can be triggered sooner or later depending on how the battle is going. They are basically "battle phases". And this can be applied to any boss. Just flavor it accordingly. Another tip that seems like cheating? Make the music more dramatic with each "Phase" (If you arent using battle music for your fights anyhow.. what is wrong with you? :p)
As well as legendary actions bosses should have desperate actions. These are a limited range of actions the boss does not want to do but will if they see no choice. Their most loyal captain sacrifices herself jumping in the path of an attack against them. They set off charges that start their lair collapsing around the party and themselves. They start sacrificing their own health or that of their minions to give their magic a huge boost to power. They reveal secrets that make NPCs or even party members change sides but make their own followers feel betrayed. They let a demon free knowing they can't control it. Even if the villain gets away or wins it is a loss and changes things for them permanently.
I've got an idea I'm going to try to make my boss battle as epic as possible. I'm not going to track my boss' Health at all and just kill my boss when it's the most suspenseful and exciting thing to do.
I'm styling my campaign as many different one shots hoping to fill my sessions with a whole story each because in my D&D group I'm only one of the DMs and scheduling is already difficult. I'm working on a shapeshifter boss thinking of using a hydra stat block and adding some stuff.
Wow, this is really helpful. Man though, I'm surprised they actually screwed up Vecna, I mean, come on! I'm definitely gonna be using these tips for my boss battles, including my upcoming Yeti King battle, sadly since it doesn't exactly speak I can't actually do more of a social thing with it... but still this is gonna be especially helpful. Also, that boss, well, it's only the first of many within the campaign I'm running. So yeah, this definitely helps a lot. Keep up the awesome content!
On the note of puzzles during combat, could I have an example. I'm curious to see how one would set up that the characters would be made aware of the puzzle in the first place.
"In 5e, dropping to 0 hit points doesn't mean much." Very true. This is why we use a house rule that every time a PC drops to zero they gain a level of exhaustion.
Exhaustion for dropping once is absolutely overkill, you can use the Pathfinder rule which adds 1 point to the death saving throw every time you fall (you need an 11 the second time instead of a 10, and so on), and when you reach 4 points (the next time you fall after your saving throw becomes 13), you instantly die. This is more fair than exhaustion because it doesn't give you disadvantage in a lot of stuff every time you fall, you can still keep fighting optimally, but with the fear of not falling again.
@@CharroArgentino Nah. That way is unnecessarily overcomplicated. We've used the rule for years. We never liked that PCs would be so casual about being knocked out. It should be something they try hard to avoid.
In my experience the best way to have the "back and forth" of who's winning and who's not winning is by stealing a page from video games and using boss phases. Now this was only for my BBEG but I had 3 phases.
First one was weaker BBEG but had a TON of 1 hp minions players had to rip though before they could hit the BBEG (BBEG had reaction to push minions in the way of attacks lol was great at making them feel powerful but out numbered).
Second one was when the BBEG hit 2/3rds HP, BBEG lost their minion reaction and started eating damage like crazy, I lowered AC in this phase but raised attacks allowing my players to get crazy hits off but luring them into getting slammed
Third one 1/3rd HP, raised the AC back up (give them a weird shield, carapace, or a spell) and gave them a weaker attack that can hit almost everyone everytime. this was when all felt lost, they had been doing so much damage but now theyre extremely hurt and using the last of their abilities and they can't hit.
FINALLY some one kills the BBEG. I don't do phased fight often as I think they can make combat confusing bc targets are changing but for my big bad? It was totally worth it.
Thats sound so gooood thank you I'm stealing that ! ( lowering AC and raising AC is cool I never thought of that ) for my inspiration I'm going to steal Wakfu MMORPG boss battle , that's what recommend cause its a turn by turn rpg
Using phases is excellent advice. The best video game boss battles require an initial set of tactics, then change at key moments, forcing you to change tactics, as the boss reveals a different type of attack or as the environment/lair becomes more hostile or treacherous. Lair actions are common, and having to interact with objects in the lair to shift things in your favor is also a great way to keep players on their toes. And this works for low-level bosses as well as the big bad.
came here to make this comment!
yeah my best bost fight was when I did a staged one. Stage one, basic encounter, at 1/2 hp, it escaped up to a ledge, and summoned a half dozen minions to and started to heal. After the minions came the final fight where it used it tentacles for sweeping attacks and the melee fighters had to platform to get in range
Getting ready for the final boss battle after two years of a campaign. They're level 17 and wildly powerful. My biggest challenge has been giving them a challenging fight without just negating all their powerful abilities.
The boss has been following their progress and watched what abilities most commonly wiped parties of enemies.
Lair actions and wave after wave of different kinds of minions will help... Plus have them solve a puzzle before the BBEG’s force shield generator goes down. Think of the complex bosses in video games.
You can also make environmental hazards. One boss fight I was a player for had a conveyor belt that moved 15ft per round over a garbage incinerator. If it pulls you over the edge, that's immediate, permanent death. Debris continues to fall throughout the battle. It created a unique challenge where a significant amount of effort had to go into positioning.
@@jayspeidell That sounds a little like Toy Story 3.
Sorry in advance for the word vomit. If you just want the spark notes: make side objectives that must be accomplished or else the boss is very difficult-to-near-impossible to kill, have the boss set up shop in terrain hazards that they're immune to but that players aren't, mess around with what spaces the players can safely occupy, and create places that are more advantageous to players but also far more dangerous to occupy.
Just ran a fight of 17th levels vs a "psuedo-tarrasque", sort of a mix between a tarrasque and a previous character. Few things I learned from that:
Run your boss in stages. Mine had two health pools of 330. Here was a kicker: when it hit the second health pool, the terrain suddenly gave way to a lava chasm, with the party standing scattered on rocks. The "tarrasque" switched attack styles, doing aggressive amounts of damage with its regular attacks while losing the bite and swallow attack that was such a huge pain in stage one. Additionally, it dove into the lava, smashed the rocks the party was standing on, and generally used its fire immunity, swim speed, burrow speed, and earth glide to sometimes negate the party's ability to attack.
Add in a mechanic that, if they don't deal with, makes the boss freakishly hard until its dealt with, like RC Schmidt said. In my case, on the tarrasque's turn, 7 illusions of a character that the tarrasque absolutely hated appeared, and shot harmless illusory bullets. However, if any remained by its next turn, it got resistance to all damage. That turned its health from 660 to 1440 while these illusions weren't dealt with, which 17th level players DEFINITELY cannot dish out. Whats worse, come phase 2, the illusions spawned at different altitudes and locations all throughout the chasm, forcing some members to spend abilities, speed, spells, and other things just getting to the illusions, let alone taking them out. It took them a few rounds to many to figure that mechanic out, so they chose to flee, but for the first time in a while, they felt really challenged, and quickly restrategized to go back and win.
Other idea mechanics like this might include: an accessory creature to the boss that provides an insane amount of healing, shielding, rage bonuses, or some other really powerful boon, but only while its alive; glowing sigils that appear all over the room that someone has to touch and whisper a secret word or a dispel magic or something, or else they explode all the party for about 10d10 damage (that's a setback trap for 17th level, btw); the villain merges into or passes through terrain, making it untargetable until the party reaches it again (maybe by teleporting or smashing holes it walls, whatevs), while it regens, buffs itself, gets more turns to recover its "roll a 5 or 6" ability; the boss is holding a magical artifact in its hand that makes it immune to death or damage or something while the boss holds it, and they teleport it back to their hand at the start of their turn; etc...
Also, make the boss clever by ambient features that the villain is immune to that the party isn't, eg., the Lich is immune to poison, so it drops a giant poisonous cloud that spreads throughout the chamber, blinding and incapacitating characters that breath it in (maybe don't include a save DC, so instead the issue becomes finding a way to pass through this cloud without touching it, like leaping over it or teleporting or something), giant pits of lava that fire immune creatures have zero problem with diving into and waiting to recharge powers, a giant gravity well that pulls players away from the spellcasting boss, the progenitor vampire built its lair inside a cavern that lacks breathable air, etc...
You can even make these ambient effects as simple as messing with where the players "stand". Break the ground, tilt it heavily, blow them in directions, create cyclones in the air that spike flyers to the dirt below unless they stay in the eyes of the storms, make fear effects that cause players to start running and climbing down cliffs, etc... Literally, just messing with where characters can safely stand messes with them. Branching off this topic, put stuff at different places that requires them to choose what they tackle because they've got to move to get there. In one of Luke's videos, he talked about a beholder fight at different levels with different tubes to get places. You can also split the boss from the probably necessary side objective, or make the optimal point to exacerbate a boss's weaknesses be far more dangerous than other spaces, ie, you wanna hit that chink in the dragon's stomach? You gotta stand on the rock flying through the fire tornado to hit that.
The challenge (for me) is that some nights, the DM can't roll above a 7 and players can't roll below a 15. And other nights, it's reversed. If the players are rolling well, it's easier to beef things up for the boss. But if the players are rolling like crap, it's hard to dial it back and maintain believability.
I have been thinking of an unorthodox one shot, where the characters meet the boss monster right away.
Firsts they hear about the monster and how horrific it is. On the way they hear more terrible things and some of its supposed weaknesses. When they enter the dungeon they see bodies of formidable creatures. As soon as they turn a corner a mini boss level monster runs at them, but instead of attacking he is screaming and yells “Get out of my way!” He then sets off a trap on the way out and they now have no way to escape.
Now they have to fight the boss right away and end up depleting most of their resources in the proses. As they go through the dungeon they aren’t given any opportunity to rest and as they get closer to the McGuffey, monsters get progressively weaker. Eventually they end up they having to fight a relatively weak opponent, which should actually be a bit of a challenge.
My favorite boss hack is Holograms. Works in nearly every setting. Magic crystals which project the boss. High tech emitter cameras in the bosses hideout. Now you can monologue and not get fireballed. Ezpz 😂 obviously this also includes just speaking thru inanimate objects as well. Hallway made of speaking stones = zone of villainous monologuing. Yes please!
And you get to gloat when the inevitable fireball happens just to break only one of the projectors and another one just continues to work and they’ve burned a fireball over it.
Finding the right amount of challenge for the group is the hardest part I think
If they are fearful of dying then it makes for a good fight
You can easily achieve that by just turning the challenge up to super deadly - that usually makes your players fearful.
This is there you can have more opponents added if too easy, or stop if it's too difficult. Plus it helps to be very familiar with the character's abilities, and the player's playstyle.
Yes one of the most challenging things in D&D 5th edition is finding the right amount of challenge for a group. That is probably one of the most challenging things a dungeon master has to do in my opinion. There's so many variables it depends on the monsters it depends on the group it depends on the players it's kind of crazy.
@@theDMLair It ALSO depends on the dice. One of my TPK's happened during an encounter that was supposed to be a typical, fairly easy encounter. The players could NOT hit and the baddies could NOT miss!!!! (It was a random encounter that happened in the wilderness. The party could have retreated but chose not to. My rule is I'll save them from my mistakes, not from their choices or from the dice.)
@Sarah Stoeck - knocking a player to zero makes them only two melee hits from death. A bloodthirsty/tactical foe could have killed them quite easily. Sounded like a good challenge to me if you dropped two of them.
My first boss for my players in my Campaign. A owl bear came first, then a wave of Bug bears, then a Mind flayer.
I recently took part in a boss battle at the end of a superhero One-Shot, in which my fighter-samurai build was able to deal over 100 damage in a single turn (Thanks to action surge). Only after that battle I learned, that it was enought to kill that enemy, but DM wanted us to escape rather than win, so they raised boss's hp up to 600, more than tripling it.
I have very conflicting emotions about it. On one hand it was a very well executed fight and we did end up escaping thanks to our patry caster outsmarting the enemy, rather than due to DM helping us (And it was pretty satisfying), but on the other hand I feel cheated and not treated fairly, as if the world bent to not allow a certain thing to happen.
Yes sometimes you miscalculate as a dm but i bet it would of been better not telling you. Personally I would take the l and let you have your victory
5:35 - just a thought here, and I’m guessing most people already do this in some aspect, but giving the boss a second/multiple stages of power (e.I. A powerful second wind) is a good way to reverse the effect of hope you could have just given your characters.
He mentions “phases” later at 11:15, I just thought it was good to connect the two pieces of advice together.
A cool legendary action idea
Checker but with a sword. In another words, after the first attack, if any other character was with in 10-15 feat way from original target, he attacks again
Best tip as a dm I can give... have a NPC fall into water during any fight to make it memorable. If that npc I'd a father or mother or is a child themselves, so many players will bend over backwards to save them. Even if your boss battle is just math against math on a plan surface the thrill of holding a dragon back while others swim to save someone is a good feeling that everyone can get behind.
One of the things in the Theros book were the mutli-stage bosses, where they get effectively healed when the stages end.
Great video Luke, thanks for the info. I used to make my bosses "fair" and they would wind up getting destroyed by clever players, now I make them brutal so we can all have fun muwahahaha.
In my big campaign, the 6 players will eventually get to lv 20 with boons and blessings and feel like gods, well their main antagonist is my homebrewed devil lord with a couple thousand hp over 3 forms, he goes from their size to the size of a castle. Fate of the world battle, and he has good action economy, but to scare them he has an ability in later forms to create a giant DBZ sphere of flaming+nectrotic+force energy that takes an entire turn to use, so he's vulnerable, but when he unleashes it and they fail their save they can take upwards of 300 damage (of course he can only use it a couple times). So if he uses it once they'll be concerned, but then if he tries to do it again they'll be panicking to space out and unload damage to bring him down before he can nearly kill someone again.
Yeah I tend to make my boss fights brutal almost all the time. My players are usually survive and the experiences just better when they're challenged but when and feel like their victory was well-earned. And I get to have fun with my monsters too.
Aww that sounds awsome
dude, you have so much useful "evergreen" content its insane.
One of the things I try to consider with bosses is what can the boss set up before initiative. If I want a barbarian type creature I want to get their Rage to be woven into the narrative description of that boss. I’m running a mage boss they should already have mage armour on, and they should already have a spell ready as a reaction. If one player decides they don’t want to hear more of their monologue and tries to attack them then that boss used their held Misty Stepp to avoid that attack. They get to continue their monologue in a smug manner and that player is now even more pissed that they were made to feel stupid. All it takes is one bad initiative roll and now your boss gets wailed on because they couldn’t set up on turn one. Give your bosses a turn 0.
Great video! The enthusiasm alone makes it worth watching. Once the players take a bit of a beating and then gain the upper hand, you can have minions arrive and join in to swing the battle in favor of the boss. The best is to have weak minions eat up some melee time and some other weak minions heal/restore/buff the boss. Then the boss gets back in the fight. This gives you some great back and forth. Just don't use it too much :-) Again, once the players start to get the upper hand again, the boss can fight his way over and grab that hidden magic item / power source / temple dais that gives him another boost.
Thanks for the tips. Reminds me of how the final bosses in most early videogames work with the "we're winning" to "oh no we can't win."
Regarding the back and forth of battle, I once wrote some outlines for a momentum mechanic. As one side does certain actions, they build momentum for their side, giving them bonuses to hit. At the same time, delayed by a round or two, the other side gains an underdog bonus. Once the underdog bonus is greater than the momentum bonus, the momentum resets, to be fought over once again.
I never fleshed it out fully, as my group disbanded, but momentum seems like the thing you want to ebb and flow for that back and forth.
It's these videos that make me love being a DM. There's just another level of creativity with it that you don't get with being a PC
I thought it was going to be another rant from someone who likes too much his voice, but this was actually really helpful. Thank you.
Here's to bosses that are more like Vader than Kylo Ren.
The way I encourage back and forth swings in combat is with triggered effects. Boss hits half hp? He falls back and summons more allies while attacking from ranged. He falls below a quarter? He gets 1 extra action on his turn, and removes all detrimental effects. Or automatically recharges a power or spellslot. Though sometimes dice rolls are dice rolls, but it helps stop things from getting stale after the opening barrage is spent. Also using legendary actions with good timing, which is more art than science, but polymorphing the melee that just crit them, or banishing the cleric after they heal someone can terrify the party.
Great suggestions all around. Taking notes myself.
W A Y S T A R looks real cool. This video is very helpful and full of very useful information.
I had an idea for a flying archlich in the process of becoming a demilich. On initiative count 20, the columns of the grand chamber would rotate and shift positions, allowing the archlich to use them for cover and extra movement.
I try to invoke hopelessness and my players just give up. It's really irritating.
I like to make sure the big boss has one or two minion clerics close by whose main job is to cast dispel magic on the PC's shenanigans, bless, bane, bestow curse, and of course, Spiritual Weapon so they have something to do with their bonus action!
One way I make combat and boss battles specifically feel more grand and epic is, I grant my players, and the bbeg an Epic action, akin to a mythic action, something the players use that isn’t in their kit they can do, at level 1 this attack is equivalent to any 3rd level spell, or can be home brewed between player and dm, but allows the player to describe an epic stunt or magic unique to them. This scales at their ASIs to the level of spell they can produce, a fighter getting more ASIs allows them to do more epic stunts. The bbeg also has one. These I say is either a once per climax or whenever a player cries, I have them roll a second d20, if that also crits , it becomes an epic action
Yes, this is good advise. I attacked my group of four level 3 PCs and the NPC bard who was acompanying them with 11 highway men of variouse sorts. The players were all convinced they were gona die when the first volley of arrows put the bard down and bleeding out for the duration of the fight... 😎
Yo, love the immediate no bs list right at the beginning. Vague enough to keep interest in the details, and straight forward enough to know what the video is getting at. I think it's the dm in us that makes us want to provide a bunch of context before explaining something to somebody, and people get annoyed with us for taking too long to get to the point. This is like that foreshadowing in the narrative structure you mentioned. It's like playing a later part of the video in the beginning as a preview, but infinitely less shitty.
My very first ever group is about to fight Cryovian in Dragon of Icespire Peak, thinking about whipping sno-cones at them during each Cold Breath blast...
Nice! Have you come up with any lair or legendary actions for the dragon?
@@dahelmang I'm thinking about adding a possible avalanche if the PCs start casting spells all willy-nilly. It will keep difficult terrain, remove the slippery terrain effect it already had, but will also give the dragon a chance to use the burrowing movement and make the PCs lose sight of it. Every PC decided to get Charm of the Storm from the Tower of Storms, thinking of using that as the trigger since it has a 100 ft. range and would hit the mountain sides. Make them think twice about steam rolling my dragon with it.
@@null_error_valuable awesome!
This was possibly the most important video you have done this year Luke. It was probably the most important DM-Tips video of 2022. It was greatly needed. Good work my man, good work 👏🍻
I haven't used him yet, but I made a berserker lord who has a rage ability for his minions. Sort of a lair action/group action where every turn he's still alive, the entire warrior band gains an extra attack. My PCs are very very powerful and absolutely confident, so this is to give them a sense if urgency to the boss fight.
I started DMing this year and your videos have helped me greatly and my player thank you for leading me over the simple and not so simple pot hole
That's awesome. I'm so happy to be able to help.:-)
I love your videos so much! I've been learning a lot from your videos and my friends say I've improved a lot. I'm having a boss fight next session and this was great help!
Legendary actions are a must, and having either phases or an alternative win condition for the boss is a highly recommended.
The lich with the arcane ritual that slowly fills up and wipes all living material is a great way to give urgency to the fight and it shows that the big bad has a plan to win and this fight is the last shot the players have of stopping their plans.
Movement legendary actions (either separate or combined with another effect) is something I haven’t thought of before and will be shamelessly stealing and adding to all of my future bosses.
As an alternative to spell like abilities give your monsters spells that they can cast as a legendary action. (Be sure to slip up and give away the spell name.)
Make the players choose between taking an aoe spell that does damage or a soft control spell (command, sleep, slow, etc) now the players have agency in choosing what they counter spell and feel like they can influence the boss but the bosses raw power gives a time limit as they only have so many spell slots.
My best boss fight was with a mad wizard who had been experimenting on goblins. The goblins were intelligent, knew how to fight well and had techniques that would let them join hands and cast low level damage spells. My players hated them lol
A way I find works well is firstly contingent on having the PCs pay attention; aside from that, you may tell a more arcane-focused character skilled in magical esoterica "It is obvious to (insert pc name) that X" when you first step into a boss room before introducing a powerful sense of magic wafting off an object in the center of the room, or the warlock senses a somewhat familiar present oh so slightly different than their patron on an item and is summarily ordered by said patron to thwart the plans of their rival neighbor in whichever outer plane they inhabit, etc.
Instead of just phases or puzzles, try combining them for particularly impactful bosses. Let's say the party is rounding up the last loose ends before challenging the leader of a radical druidic circle intent on slaughtering the civilized folk in their surroundings to enrich the local environment through ritualistic sacrifice. You begin narration as they step into a moonlit grove rolling just high enough to avoid the rogue's passive perception for an awakened squirrel's sneak before it darts off. The party is given three turns before the boss arrives and during which the druid in the party deciphers a sigil on a pillar of luminous stone shining eerily under the moonlight, EOT. The party begins searching around the outskirts of the clearing, and the rogue picks up a distant sound while the druid reads the second set of sigils, EOT. A loud stomping sound emanates from the forest, bringing to mind rumors of a group of elephants they have heard about under the boss's command as they rush to the scene. The party spends their last turn gathering near the pillar while the druid reads the final sigil, EOT. The boss steps forward, and you do a fitting villain monologue. It is interrupted by a spell, arrow, or thrown weapon, yadda yadda.
As the fight begins, the pillar starts glowing more intensely as each elephant steps forward into the clearing, the underbrush coiling around them before hardening, giving each elephant a +3 to ac as the first sigil pulses in time with each additional elephant armored. While describing this, the druid player blurts out, "Guys, search for the glowing (insert lore appropriate McGuffin, well use a scarlet flower) flower and destroy it!" a quick investigation from the wizard finds a slightly hidden glowing spot near the pillar before ending his turn, the rogue lobs a knife severing the stem of said flower despite the protest of the boss and the armoring stops. Let's say the boss got 2 out of his 4 elephants armored before the flower was cut, allowing the elephants to engage in melee the boss begins phase two, spreading his arms the grass starts turning an ominous pitch black as the air itself seems to freeze. The druid calls out the key to the mechanism, and the party balances ending the effect with dealing with the aggressive elephants, should a pc charge the boss, they will find the cold gets more intense the closer they get taking progressively more necrotic damage, and eventually, exhaustion should they continue forward, after half of his herd goes down the druid lowers his arms and offers apologies to a setting appropriate nature deity before chanting in a strange garbled language as the clearing seems to freeze the life of all animals and plants in the clearing affiliated with the boss instantly snuffs out before they are disintegrated and absorbed by the boss becoming a hulking treant made out of a seemingly onyx glazed hardwood as he steps forwards into melee, the pacing should be set so that overcoming the first hurdle seems easy, followed by triumphing over the minions allowing a breath, and immediately plunged into the final form causing them to realize they expended some of their resources and only now are engaging the boss. In this form, the boss has a charge mechanic allowing him to gather power in a ruby-colored flower situated on the base of his spine. Players may remove or inhibit power by directly attacking it (most likely martials) or inflicting saving throws that cause the boss to expend energy shaking off. When the boss accumulates a certain charge level based on how desperate you want it to be, he can spend said charge to blast out necrotic damage or summon minions to share the firepower, depending on the situation. Viola an engaging swingy encounter with more than just a hitpoint slog without too much work. I hope it helps!
I ran vecna, you might be overlooking his reactions and just how powerful they are. He shuts down most casters and gets to teleport away from players after a single attack.
My Vecna TPK'd 4 level 20s with decent gear, end of the fight he was at full HP.
Vecna is really weak against martials. 2 level 20 human Arcane Archer Fighters have enough adpr to kill vecna in 1 turn
@@lordoftheearth1 Having never seen an arcane archer ever played, I can't tell you anything about them. But, when I ran him there was lots of LOS blocking terrain (it was HIS throne room after all, he made it to his advantage), and after taking a SINGLE attack, he simply used his reaction to return some damage and teleport out of the players reach/LOS.
Vecana's a hyper intelligent NPC. If the room isn't to his advantage, if the adds aren't to his advantage, and if he's not focus firing the biggest threats, you're playing him wrong.
@@MJ-jd7rs I was just making a point that against people with bows he can easily die because of his lack of hit points, ac, and no legendary actions
Thank you, as a newish DM I needed this! My players kick my boss fights butts all the time! I can't wait to try some of these!
You mentioned not telling us to subscribe or hit the bell, and I’ll tell you right now, that subconsciously made me subscribe and hit the bell.
My method for swinging the pendulum in a fight I have planned, which I took as inspiration from the Divinity: Original Sin games: changing conditions. In the big fights in that game especially, set pieces play out that continually change the fight as it's happening.
The enemy shows up (or the party does) and oh no, the fight has begun. After the first round, the enemy is struggling and summons reinforcements (scaled to how well the party did in the first round). Did they totally smash the first wave? Guess what, the second wave is much bigger and damn, there's no way they can get through all that so easily a second time. Now it looks like the party will lose, but wait! Remember that important NPC they befriended before? Well they show up just in time, with reinforcements of their own, swinging things back in the party's favor. Heals go out to the wounded (or even downed) players and the fight looks even now.
But tragedy strikes! The BBEG throws out their most powerful ability, or if he's really struggling, maybe they summon a very powerful ally that's almost a boss all their own. That NPC the party really liked gets struck down. You bastard, you killed Kenny. Now the party is willing to dig deep and spend whatever resources they need to kill this guy, because it's personal. Tension, drama, and because you're the DM, you control the pace. Don't even do this on a schedule. When the fight swings one way, swing it the other. A swing doesn't push itself. It's on you to do that.
this is great. Thanks. I'm planning for my players to face Strahd in his castle and I want to make it as Epic as possible.
I ran a campaign where the party had to fight a minmaxed single class character I created from each class, which was one level higher and had 1 magic item. I made the BBEG a wizard necromancer they met at lvl 8, I planned for it to be a tpk, and the mage took all their magic items, before reviving the players as undead thralls. They were never so thrilled as they were when they finally defeated him at 13th level. And they never raged harder than when they found he came back as a lineage race build. But when they finally killed him and his endless zombie hoard and his endless clones at 19th level, I never saw them happier.
Both your older Boss videos are excellent and have helped me create some great bosses. Probably my favorite videos of yours.
As a dm you could have something whitch notifys the players of the next boss phase but the gaps of hitpoints between each phase could be different. But the players don't know this, giving the feel that they are winning and then loseing and then wining and then losing then winning until they kill the boss. 👍
This is great advice!👍
Another construct is to treat the final boss fight as its own 5 room dungeon...rooms may or not be geographic changes...but the events of entry, puzzle, setback, main conflict, and reward can combine around a single enemy in various sequences for that big payoff session.
I'm about 2 or 3 sessions from Tiamat in the Rise of Tiamat campaign and you have given me so many ideas!
Great points all around. I like adding in scripted actions each round. They almost always happen during the players turns. As well, I use minions. These can add a lot of action economy. Even if they don't deal much damage, they distract the players and keep the BBEG alive one more round. Having your goblin boss give all it's minions a free attack or movement on a players turn is wild.
I rang the bell. It is missing a donger. Or maybe when you ring it, it emits a zone of silence.... OOooh!
One way to purposefully replicate the ebb and flow of the battle is to not have your big bad use all his best abilities right at the beginning. Have him deliberately save some of his abilities--potions, spells, magic items etc.--for a pivotal moment in the battle. You might also include alternate objectives for the players to accomplish as part of defeating the big bad. It's not just a slug fest where you slowly whittle the villain down to 0 hp. Maybe there are objects around the room that must be destroyed before the villain can even be harmed (obviously the villain will be trying to stop them). Maybe there are hordes of bad guys coming in (I usually make these 10 hp or less) to protect the villain and the PCs have to stop the flow first.
Giving the players secondary objectives to accomplish before they can accomplish the primary one--namely, carve your names into the villains chest--allows them to feel as though the battle is nigh impossible but also gives them a feeling of progress and accomplishment as they crawl their way toward ultimate victory.
If you look for this swing feeling try to read the Infinity RPG. They have this DM resource thing that DMs can spend to get fights tougher. They receive it when players aquire bonuses. So the better players do the bigger shift to the worse DM can provide.
Perhaps the DM can have the boss hold back on some of its powers for a round or two to give the feel of the back and forth.
So for my big campaign that I've been running for a few months now, my players (level 6 at the moment) will be fighting a Pirate Lich Lord who was once an infamous pirate known as, Captain John Avery. I plan for the boss fight to take place over a large ocean just off the mainland of where the campaign primarily takes place. The idea is after he is awakened (by the party no doubt) he will have an armada of over a hundred ghost ships that the party will need to defeat chunks of in the middle of a nasty storm to even "get a chance" of progressing towards Avery. That is kind of like phase one. Phase two will be them actually being able to confront Avery, but due to Avery's rage a massive hurricane is going to take over what once was just a storm. They'll get a few chances to damage Avery's ship or Avery himself, but I'm thinking of doing a new kind of combat that I'll introduce with lower level pirate encounters early on, where the helmsman uses dex to maneuver the ships, and the players can actually physically damage ships with cannons, target specific spots, and even board ships later on. Avery's ship because it is a ghost ship is going to have a lot of HP, a lot cannons, magical cannon balls, pirates that board the players' ship, etc. Then, for the third phase, they'll take on Avery after presumably boarding his ship, or he'll board theirs. By now the party should have weakened him and vice versa. The party can take various types of damage from the encounter, including the damage on their ship or what have you. I was thinking as well that Avery can have a dodge mechanic where he can submerge his ship entirely and pop out somewhere else. I have loads of ideas and kind of just wanted to idea dump into this comment section.
3 phases, ship combat, minions (the ghost ships won't be too difficult to destroy, kind of like SOT ghost ships), magic, and physical beat 'em up combat full-fledged pirate style. I think turning the tides of battle with these 3 phases isn't going to be too difficult, and the players can feel badass by taking out Avery's smaller vessels, but then feel overwhelmed as they're getting boarded by ghost and skeleton pirates while fighting the BBEG himself. I will make Avery brutal but fair, and the possibility of player deaths will be high since they do not have a cleric (I will stock them up on lots of potions and enchanted items from other adventures to slightly "mimic" what a cleric could do that they can use in the fight).
Anyone can comment and feel free to tell me what you think. Toss a suggestion or three as well.... They won't be fighting Avery until probably March. There are also plenty of smaller boss battles that are Avery's right hands, guardians keeping him locked away, etc etc. This is just specifically for the BBEG.
You could replicate that "rollercoast" feeling with a little trick. Speaking of D&D 5e, you could increase the proficiency bonus in the middle phase of the boss fight, and then lower it in the last phase. You could probably link that change to the monster hp.
Love the intro. No BS, just right into it.
This might be my favorite video so far!
Being a new DM has certainly been a learning process and keeping track of everything that comes with the territory. This is all good information to keep in mind, but I think that what is most complicated for me is that I prepped for the game assuming that the players were going to go a certain way and they didn't so I had to improvise everything.
I obviously don't want to put constraints on where the PCs go but I also don't want to be fumbling through the book to be figuring out what happens in each area, who is in the area, what fights are to happen, etc.
What would be the best way to prep while still allowing flexibility for the PCs and knowing the important details for wherever they decide to go? Running Lost Mines of Phandelver by the way PC's Lvl. 2 and they decided to move onto the Manor. PCs are pre-gen that came with the box.
5:20
You can have backup arive and attack the back line after they flanked the players
My favorite boss battle was the group against a Draco Lich. Two of the four went down. The Monk had a dragon slayer sword. He attacked the tail and brought it to 0 hp. I had the Draco Lich turn around (hitting the remaining member with it's tail) and attack the Monk. It dropped the two players down to 2 hp. Then the Monk, grappled in the Draco Liche's mouth, attacked with the sword in it's face. The Draco Lich collapsed. Near death for the regain players, that was the most epic fight.
This is one of my favorite videos that you have done (and that is saying something as you have a lot of videos I like) I love the pointing out the narrative structure plan for a boss battle, love talking about having fun, and absolutely love the sentiment that the boss is fighting to win. In regards to a point that you said you don't like, where you talk about more or less the dm fudging the outcome to help the players, I agree, if you do it a couple of times, the players get used to it and it reduces their fear of tpk or even just a loss.
I do try to include at least some escape possibility in case things go badly for the party (due to poor luck or poor pre-planning by the party or I(the dm) overrated the party capability) One of my favorite campaigns had the party overrate their own ability and go up against the boss sooner than they should have, and I could have helped them out, but I felt I gave them plenty of warning that they weren't ready for that event, and they managed to escape (well not all of them)
watching this before my first boss fight session gave me some great ideas !!!
Be evil, counterspell those healing words! Especially if your players are counterspelling you (You might have some angry players)!
Here is a comment for the Al Gore rhythm
What tricks do you use to make D&D boss fights epic and memorable?
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You'll love to know that my Into the Fey campaign is reaching high tension. There are three quests remaining as options and the townsfolk are starting to panic because people going missing all over the place and the guards can't do anything. I'm implementing panic this session to REALLY ramp things up.
My players have been in Aeredale for about three game weeks, and tensions have been increasing slowly. The time is ripe to ramp things up, as all three remaining quests before the finale revolve around people going missing.
Here we go!!
This video hit hard after the last session in which our DM decided to ambush us out of nowhere with one of the final bosses of the game (or at least one of the stronger ones).
Our party had 3 players at 11 and 3 NPCs with their power being around lvls 6-9. We had a lot of our resources missing but we were all at full HP (at least 400 hp total plus a few heals).
We were returning after completing one hard mission from a patron to get our reward, and at some point we found something unusual in the area, as we were looking around the boss ambushed us and almost killed one of the NPCs in the surprise round.
The fight started and we understood that the boss had a F@CKTON of HP (at least 600, more likely close to 700). Fortunately he only had normal single-target attacks (3 plus legendary actions), and decent AC (20 or 21). But he had a huge bonus to his hit (at least +13 maybe even higher so he almost never missed an attack), insane mobility, plus a disable without a saving throw once per round (to one target), so getting away was not an option.
After 8 rounds of him just pounding us with his normal attacks while taking 6-8 of our attacks/spells per round, he completely annihilated us, and then we found ourselves prisoners of his faction.
A fight like this should have been an easy stomp for us, it was a 6 vs 1 with the boss lacking aoe capabilities and with our group having casters and healers with a decent amount of our slots and abilities still available, but we were not supposed to win that fight...
That was a very bad boss fight with a total let down of an outcome.
Yea that was miss managed by the dm. If it was me the boss would of been far more powerful but if you beat it off then the victory is yours
this video will be very helpful in my planning out and homebrewing the boss of a high level campaign I am planning and need to homebrew in the stat block and action block for Malcanthet the demon lord queen of the succubi as a final boss. Given this campaign has run several prestige levels beyond level 20 having her summon other powerful demons as a legendary action should make the players realize even with all those prestige levels a demon lord will be no push over and they will have to worry (if the rolls for the summons go well and I the dice gods give me a couple Balor to drop in and not just a bunch fodder.)
this info doesn't completely suck. quite the contrary, this info is vital!
I'm running the early death of my campaign the day after tomorrow, & all you said here will be tried to be used.
thx, Lord Baconeater!
In the part where he was talking about the boss having a massive health pool, i shit you not the character art he used for the BBEG is literally the same art I used for a bad guy in my campaign i made literally an hour prior to watching this
my players are coming up to a boss soon, what a timely video
Lots of good ideas for my upcoming boss fight. Thank you!
I just got a party together for a new game and its going to be maddness. We are going for a planehopping Gestalt campaign. Everyone is crazy hyped and i am ready for arc one. Cant wait to see what comes of it all. This video is going to help with the bossfight tho
As always, Luke doesn't completely suck. Love these videos almost as much as I love bacon. Thank you, sir.
You are very welcome!
For sci-fi, check out Stars Without Number! It's an even faster system than 5e and is super adaptable.
Also, thanks for the tips! Running CoS and am dreading the last fight.
"A boss without anything on their dead corpse is a POOR boss indeed." I immediately imagined an old man in dirty rags, fighting characters with his legendary Cane of Walking!
1) In character insult the PC's and their weak abilities
2) Fudge 100% of the dice rolls to tell a story
3) TPK the group on the 1st attempt
4) Fudge 100% of the dice rolls and let the new group win when you feel it's time for the BBEG to die
These are absolutely great ideas...I ran the Tomb of Annihilation and the final battle with Acererak was ...well..a hit point slog. Next time I run it, definitely going to be a utilizing these tips.
This actually reminds me of a good D&D Horror Story on how not to do a final boss fight. The short of it is if you will imagine spending almost a year and a half in a campaign where you're trying to stop the machinations of an evil War Lord, and when you finally confront him; just as initiative is rolled, the DM suddenly has the warlord clutch his
chest and fall over dead from a heart attack what's the minions committing ritual suicide in response. The Story Goes that the DM that pulled that little stunt is no longer among the living.
So after a year and a half of building up to the boss fight they confront the boss and he just dies in front of them without their having to do anything? That sounds absolutely anti-climatic and a horrible way for a game to end. Did the dungeon master think they were doing something like crazy clever or something? I don't know sometimes when dungeon Masters think they're being clever it's not nearly as enjoyable as if they were to just run a quote unquote normal game
@@theDMLair , I heard it secondhand so I couldn't necessarily tell you what the guy was thinking (might have thought it'd been a funny twist or something like that); but it's probably safe to say that while I may have been laughing about it as someone who was listening to a story, the guys players most definitely were not since their PCS were ready to tear the warlord asunder with their own hands for the villain and nemesis he had become at that point.
Idea for a Boss fight.... A hag,
and a bunch of Pixie Minions....
Goal of boss: Complete their ritual to create a big bruiser of a monster or perhaps a group of them.... (I'm thinking a flesh Golem or flesh golems made from a bunch of cow carcases she buried under a tree in the middle of a barren clearing, and stiched together by the tree roots of said tree....) The hag of course will be performing a ritual to cast call lightning on the tree which will animate the cowflesh golems.... (And if I remember the spell right, as long as the storm persists the Hag can then use call Lightning to heal the flesh golems and damage the players.....
Throw in some pixies who are there to stop the players from disrupting the ritual.... (I'm thinking they will try to open up by trying to polymorph the players into "Goldfish"(Quippers) and then swoop in to try to pick up the players they succesfully turn into fish.... (They will then try to fly them up in the air and then drop them to inflict fall damage....)
How tough does this sound as a boss fight?
Love the information density in this video. Miss the skit at the beginning though.
Thank you! I do once monthly skit videos now. 😁
I'm thinking now one way to increase the chance of a fight going back and forth is giving the boss a bullcrap ability that you hold off on doing, or if you wanna play it straight write something that makes it unusable until a certain condition is met, like half HP (similar to mythic actions). Something big like sudden action surge, a contingency effect, some bonus action spells or big effect. Maybe the enviromeny can somehow change to give it an edge, even momentarily.
It does go a bit against the most optimum strategy if you dont give it arbitrary restrictions, and it's not guaranteed because dice (which is fine, but there you go. Tho I prefer trying to just achieve that through great monster and level design instead of using such parlor tricks, but that's hard to achieve, and you dont know if you succeeded until the fight is over.
Yes some sort of ability or something that has a timer or has a recharge or Triggers on round one three and five. You could build that swing into the fight doing stuff like that.
tl;dw: It's a good thing to evoke disappointment in your players xD
I’m running an adventure and the boss is a chain devil who when the pcs attack it uses it’s control chain abilities to decapitate four of their friends chained to the walls of the dungeon lmao
Good way of making a boss fight swing back and forth between who gets to beat who is to give the boss "Villain Actions" which trigger at specific rounds.
For example:
Round 1: Big bad says something and laughs... and summons some baddies to help him.
Round somewhere between 3-5: Boss feels like he might need some more help of some kind... *Add a variable to the combat which helps the villain*
Round close to death: Boss either transforms or becomes stronger for some reason. Example: Describe the boss as being very weak and spitting blood... and then he grins and drinks an evil looking potion and he reacts badly to it and suddenly he transforms into a weird monster. Double his damage and give him some AOE effect or something like that..
These actions can be triggered sooner or later depending on how the battle is going. They are basically "battle phases". And this can be applied to any boss. Just flavor it accordingly.
Another tip that seems like cheating? Make the music more dramatic with each "Phase" (If you arent using battle music for your fights anyhow.. what is wrong with you? :p)
Yeah that's a great idea. You build the swing into the boss fight by planning that stuff in advance I like it.
What a great and extremely helpful video!! Many thanks
“Nacromancer”? Still good advice
As well as legendary actions bosses should have desperate actions. These are a limited range of actions the boss does not want to do but will if they see no choice. Their most loyal captain sacrifices herself jumping in the path of an attack against them. They set off charges that start their lair collapsing around the party and themselves. They start sacrificing their own health or that of their minions to give their magic a huge boost to power. They reveal secrets that make NPCs or even party members change sides but make their own followers feel betrayed. They let a demon free knowing they can't control it. Even if the villain gets away or wins it is a loss and changes things for them permanently.
I've got an idea I'm going to try to make my boss battle as epic as possible. I'm not going to track my boss' Health at all and just kill my boss when it's the most suspenseful and exciting thing to do.
jojojo, i see what you did with that reverse psychology......"rings the bell"
"What is a boss fight without minions?" Thank You!!!
Gotta watch out for those Knackromancers.
My party has a big boss fight coming up and I need all this info, feed it to meeeeee!
I'm styling my campaign as many different one shots hoping to fill my sessions with a whole story each because in my D&D group I'm only one of the DMs and scheduling is already difficult. I'm working on a shapeshifter boss thinking of using a hydra stat block and adding some stuff.
Very helpful bro, helped me brainstorm
Wow, this is really helpful. Man though, I'm surprised they actually screwed up Vecna, I mean, come on! I'm definitely gonna be using these tips for my boss battles, including my upcoming Yeti King battle, sadly since it doesn't exactly speak I can't actually do more of a social thing with it... but still this is gonna be especially helpful. Also, that boss, well, it's only the first of many within the campaign I'm running. So yeah, this definitely helps a lot. Keep up the awesome content!
On the note of puzzles during combat, could I have an example. I'm curious to see how one would set up that the characters would be made aware of the puzzle in the first place.
This is really good information
Great guide. Thanks
This was amazing! Thanks so much!
Happy to help!!!
There is still hope for Luke, UA-cam
Thank you kodiak! I knew there was hope out there somewhere. Now if you could just ship me some bacon I would be invigorated and filled with hope. :-)
There IS good in him. I've felt it.
"In 5e, dropping to 0 hit points doesn't mean much." Very true. This is why we use a house rule that every time a PC drops to zero they gain a level of exhaustion.
Exhaustion for dropping once is absolutely overkill, you can use the Pathfinder rule which adds 1 point to the death saving throw every time you fall (you need an 11 the second time instead of a 10, and so on), and when you reach 4 points (the next time you fall after your saving throw becomes 13), you instantly die. This is more fair than exhaustion because it doesn't give you disadvantage in a lot of stuff every time you fall, you can still keep fighting optimally, but with the fear of not falling again.
@@CharroArgentino Nah. That way is unnecessarily overcomplicated.
We've used the rule for years. We never liked that PCs would be so casual about being knocked out. It should be something they try hard to avoid.