Making the Boss Battle

[Lord.Sorasen]

My group is right about to face the boss of the cursed city they reside in. But the thing is, I have no idea how to make this boss fun. I want this battle to be something special and engaging. I feel like the battles I've done so far were at one point really fun, but the typical manner of combat (it's been mummies mummies mummies for like three weeks, so no more mummies) we deploy is beginning to grow stale. I feel like I might have made combat boring, so I want to make this battle here something memorable.

Here's what I have on this boss:

It's a half-fiend dustblight, from the book Sandstorm, though since the party knows of neither of these it's entirely cool to homebrew this much as the need comes by. This winged dustblight was once the primary species of enemy the party had to fear, but they haven't seen one in a long while, so the shape of it is absolutely required. I'd like it to be almost impossible to kill but not almost impossible to fight. I've been considering it having it temporarily stopped whenever it takes a certain amount of damage, and having it rise after a set number of rounds. I want to see it killed through some other device other than hitting it directly, if that makes sense at all. I'm really not too picky on its method of attack or anything of that sort. With this in mind I guess I'm not really giving you any prerequisites at all. Sorry about that :smallsigh:

For the record, the party consists of one person at ECL 9, and 2 at ECL 8, and for some reason 1 at ECL 5. Nobody in the group has any death effects.

[AslanCross]

In my experience, terrain makes an otherwise mundane boss encounter interesting, and an otherwise challenging encounter utterly terrifying. Let the boss fight them on its own turf and own terms.

[Big Fau]

You are using a CR3 with the Half-Fiend template, and expect it to challenge an ECL 7(.5) party? Solo?


While this would make a decent meat-shield, you are going to need three of them for it to act as a "Boss Battle". Especially considering they have no special powers at all, and only 5d8HD. And a very weak feat selection.

[holywhippet]

Could you make the final battle in a fallen temple or something? Have the power of the owning deity supressed using seals and symbols. If the party breaks the seals or erases the symbols it will either weaken the boss or if they clear enough of them away the power of the deity will flood in and blast the boss.

[Lord.Sorasen]

You are using a CR3 with the Half-Fiend template, and expect it to challenge an ECL 7(.5) party? Solo?


While this would make a decent meat-shield, you are going to need three of them for it to act as a "Boss Battle". Especially considering they have no special powers at all, and only 5d8HD. And a very weak feat selection.

Well it's also got an int score. I expected to give it class levels at the least. Or at least up its racial hit dice. Possibly make it large. It's definitely not strong enough out of the box.

---

Also, I guess that is something worth mentioning. This battle takes place in an old castle of sorts, which the blight in question inhabits. I like the "break the seals" idea quite a bit, actually.

[MammonAzrael]

So the wings are required then? Because honestly that seems like a very strange clash with their tendency to burrow and lie in wait for pray beneath the sand. The Mineral Warrior template (Underdark - Forgotten Realms, page 96) is a great way to add some resilience.

How intelligent do you want this thing? Remember that you should use at least an elite array (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm#eliteArray) for it, if not better.

Check out Softsand on page 26 of Sandstorm, could be a solid terrain hazard.

If the race is still pretty close to their Sandstorm description, include a bunch of ashworms.

What I'd like, if you can, is more information on how you've modified the base dustblights, both their crunch and fluff. I've got a couple ideas, but would like some more info before posting them...also, more info on the party would be good.

[Madcrafter]

Interesting terrain is a good suggestion. You can also put some sort of traplike element in the area, either dangerous to the party, or to the monster (if they can lure it to the right location/distract it for long enough). Putting in an alternative objective other than killing the thing could add some intrest ("We have to stop the ritual!" "But that thing is in the way!").

One other thing you can do is steal a leaf from video games, and break the fight up into phases. This can work wonders for breaking the monotony of "I hit it with my sword, again." eg. The monster has some cleric levels. After doing enough damage, it casts fly and takes to the air, slinging spells down on the hapless adventurers as minions flood the room. For each mook they kill, the monster seems to gain power from their deaths (consumptive field). When is has been buffed enough, it swoops down on the party and engages them in melee, with its now larger strength score.

[Lord.Sorasen]

So the wings are required then? Because honestly that seems like a very strange clash with their tendency to burrow and lie in wait for pray beneath the sand. The Mineral Warrior template (Underdark - Forgotten Realms, page 96) is a great way to add some resilience.

How intelligent do you want this thing? Remember that you should use at least an elite array (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm#eliteArray) for it, if not better.

Check out Softsand on page 26 of Sandstorm, could be a solid terrain hazard.

If the race is still pretty close to their Sandstorm description, include a bunch of ashworms.

What I'd like, if you can, is more information on how you've modified the base dustblights, both their crunch and fluff. I've got a couple ideas, but would like some more info before posting them...also, more info on the party would be good.

To be really honest, nothing much other than most of the crunch remains. The wings are necessary as that's how they've been to the party so far, and as I said they've been used pretty iconically. I guess it was a bad idea for me to make them dustblight at all: I mostly liked the image to be entirely honest, but that's what they are and that's how it will have to be.

On the other hand, other than "it has wings and it claws and bites things," the party has no idea what it can do. So I'm free to modify it much more than it currently is.

Essentially, it's a custom monster with a base monster's portrait. I can honestly change whatever I want past how it looks.

The fluff is that it's the remains of the Vasharan, which are detailed in the Book of Vile Darkness. The idea is that rather than just having them attempt murder immediately, they had a society for a short while, close to the Gods, before growing jealous and stealing the secret of immortality. As punishment, the Gods allowed them their immortal bodies, but twisted their forms so that they would live eternally in anguish. Their city was buried under the sand, yadda yadda. I used the half-fiend template to give it demonic properties, but I'm free to do whatever.

Crunch wise, I didn't do much other than rise the hit dice and give it the half-fiend template. But I think I'd honestly rather do more if that makes sense. I like the elite array concept but I worry how that would effect CR. I also expected to give them class levels: various class levels as there are more than one... This one I'm not certain of: at the least, cleric is out for obvious reasons.

The party is pretty standard, and not really optimized at all. We've got a level 5 cleric, chaotic neutral so she actually channels negative energy rather than positive. She's got the capability to be useful I hear, but she is a half-elf and she picked run and improved toughness as feats (actually she picked toughness but I changed it. She is aware of how useless these feats are and picked them anyway for who knows why). She should be the primary healer but she never seems to be for whatever reason. Next we have a scout 2/druid 7. He took the alternate class feature that gives him monk-speed and monk-armor and track and favored enemy in exchange for wild shape in order to be less overpowered, and he has a feat that stacks druid and scout levels for skirmish and the above mentioned bonuses. He would be the most powerful member but he intentionally plays at a lower level by focusing on being a scout. Our heavy hitter is a half-ogre template neandertal psychic warrior 7. He has been planning from the beginning to expansion himself into a gargantuan creature, and finally it's attained. However, he only deals about 50 damage an attack, and because he has a suglinn he only gets one a round barring AoO. He has improved unarmed strike, so his AoO range is more or less the map. Our final member is a warforged dragonfire adept 8, with adamantine body, who gave up practical combat invocations in order to serve as a tank. Seems fairly effective at it, taking advantage of warforged immunity to everything and entangling invocation.

The party most importantly has no arcane caster (they used to have a beguiler but she had to leave the group really early on). They used to have a paladin but she left as well, maybe to appear later... But that's not really important.

Even if it doesn't at all fit fluff-wise, I'd love to see what you came up with; I could always try adapting and I am so dead on ideas right now for whatever reason.

[MammonAzrael]

Ok. You'd like it to be resilient. Able to take a beating, and get back up. The players feel like they're in a fight, and not against a glass cannon or something.

They've been fighting lots of mummies, which are decently tough and have an aura and a disease.

The boss is the leader of the Vasharans, twisted and cursed humans.

Have the battle occur in a large open space, like a parade ground or arena. The entire expanse is floored with sand, with broken pillars sunken throughout. Some or all of this sand is actually softsand, making navigation much more difficult - standing and traversing the broken pillars should be possible. The sand should be no more than 10-15 feet deep.

Arrayed in the area, clearly the focus of the surrounding construction, are three altars raised up from the sand, with a stone pathway leading to each. Atop each of the side altars is a bloated and disgusting corpse, while the BBEG is doing whatever around the center altar. The two corpses are 2 Bloodhulk fighters from Monster Manual IV, page 20, made by the BBEG and commanded to kill intruders.

The entire area is under the effects of desecrate spell, granting the bloodhulks extra power (and corpsecrafter, too!). Keep track of the amount of damage that is dealt with weapons, or would somehow cause blood to be spilled (not things like fireball or magic missile). the BBEG will come down behind the bloodhulks and happily mix it up with the party.

Last of the Vasharan

5th level cleric
Medium Aberration
Hit Dice: 10d8 (85 hp)
Initiative: +7
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares), fly 30 ft. (average)
Armor Class: 28 (+1 Dex, +8 natural, +9 full plate), touch 11, flat-footed 27
Base Attack/Grapple: +6/+14
Attack: +1 vile greataxe +16 melee (1d12+13+1 vile/x3) or Claw +15 melee (1d4+8+1 vile)
Full Attack: +1 vile greataxe +16/+11 melee (1d12+13+1 vile/x3) and Bite +12 (1d8+8+1 vile) or 2 Claws +14 melee (1d4+8+1 vile) and Bite +12 (1d8+8+1 vile)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Rebuke undead, smite good, spell-like abilities, spells
Special Qualities: Damage reduction 5/good or silver, darkvision 60 ft., immune to poison, low-light vision, resistance to acid 10, cold 10, electricity 10, and fire 10, spell resistance 20
Saves: Fort +9, Ref +9, Will +11
Abilities Str 26, Dex 24, Con 18, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 12
Skills: 8*8 + 2*5
Feats: Vile Natural AttackBonus, Weapon Focus (Greataxe)Bonus, Multiattack, Corpsecrafter, Practiced Spellcaster, Fell Weaken
Challenge Rating: 10
Treasure: +1 vile greataxe, +1 light fortification fullplate, heartseeking amulet
Alignment: Neutral Evil

SLAs
Darkness, Poison 3/day, desecrate, unholy blight, contagion 1/day

Spells - Domains Death/War (CL 9)
0th (5) -
1st (4+1) -
2nd (3+1) -
3rd (2+1) - fell weaken spiritual weapon

Obviously the numbers can be played with quite a bit, and the spells can be whatever. If you like it I can help more or not if you wish. Your cleric should like the armor, and your warrior the amulet. add other treasure for the other two and that should be fine (as long as it isn't nuts...maybe a scout's headband?)

When the Last of the Vasharan is reduced to less than 0 hit points, he screams in rage and swiftly crumbles into dust. His equipment swiftly sinks into the sands as his remains scatter about the area. A DC 15 spot check each round can notice the blood split over the area is slowly being sucked into the sand, and Xd6 rounds later the sand where the vasharan died will bulge up, mixed with blood, and congeal into the vasharan, minus his equipment. A DC 15 spot check can notice the blood being sucked into the sand, while a DC 20 check will notice faintly glowing runes on the three altars.

At this point the BBEG will switch tactics likely using his flight (which was previously hampered by his armor) to stay out of range and cast spells. Should the opportunity present itself, or when there are no more spells to cast, he will charge in and lay about with his natural attacks, spilling as much blood as he can.

The vasharan will have regenerated with up to full hit points. This depends on how much blood has been spilled. Every time he is killed, he will regenerate, as long as there is blood to be absorbed. If he is destroyed and there is no blood left to absorb, he will regenerate as soon as more blood is introduced. The only way to stop this regeneration is to destroy the three altars.

If you like this idea, we can further refine it. For now, it is way later than I intended to be up, so I'm off. :smalltongue:

[Karoht]

Team tactics and use of the terrain are great ways of increasing the overall challenge and fun factor without necessarily raising the CR of the monsters.

IE-Fighting in ruins of a castle? Shove broken walls over onto party members. Make it a Reflex save to escape the damage. Keeping them wary of their positioning can make the fight longer. Also, use those ruins to break Line of Sight to keep the party caster from insta-nuking, for as long as you feasibly can.

IE-Fighting in a Library? Have people shove books out onto the floor, and start shooting through the gap with things like crossbows.

IE-Fighting in some kind of Laboratory with workstations? Have lab workers hide behind the work tables (cover), and lob flasks of chemical X into the room everywhere they can. I recommend gasseous effects that spread over time, and of course the lab workers are immune to it all from working with the stuff every day.


Just a few examples.
Also, MammonAzrael's suggestion is pretty keen.

[marcielle]

First make the boss not much stronger than a mook. But add a twist.
THE WHOLE TEMPLE is the boss battle.For example, his minions are actively enacting a ritual so that the boss will achieve incredible power. While the ritual is active, he keeps being resurrected whenever he is killed and gets stronger the closer it gets to completion.
Make it so there is a time limit. Not for death, that would be hard to calculate so it would be challenging but not impossible. Better to just have the boss mega-buffed to the point he will kill a PC every 2 rounds or can barely be hit by them.
Make it so he can ONLY be permanently killed by achieving various objectives around the temple. Like smashing relics or defeating certain well-protected mooks. All the while being chased by the ever growing boss. Force them to chose between splitting up or trekking all across the temple.

[Fable Wright]

Give the boss Flyby attack. One simple way to make the fight that much cooler, and help merge the flying/burrowing aspects of it; the boss makes a flyby attack, moves 5ft forward after that, burrows out of range. The next round, pops out of the ground somewhere completely different, flyby attack, burrow again. Rinse and repeat. For more fun, Duskblade 3 or more on this, giving it Arcane Channeling. Could make for a great pursuing encounter, slightly less so in a confined space, but still fun.

[Lord.Sorasen]

Just finished boss battle, and it was awesome. Thanks for all the help e'eryone!

[Karoht]

Details? How'd it all go?

[Lord.Sorasen]

I mostly went with MammonAzrael's plan of action. They approached, they freaked out, but they mostly dealt with it. The poor warforged has 27 health left of her original 80-something, and to make that worse it's vile damage. The cleric was actually missing which was unfortunate, but the group was otherwise ready to play so I ran it anyway. I have to face the fact that I have a party of 3 really dedicated members and a more questionable one.

The team defeated the dustblight ok, then dashed off to fight bloodballs. They managed to finish just as the dustblight rose from the sand. I should have had him summon up some more monsters... Or supplied the party with more than one of him the second, armorless time around. I also should have learned how a cleric casts offensively at range. I ended up giving him lightning bolt a la wizard spell due to my inexperience, which was annoying to them but not entirely impossible to simply avoid. In the end, it the halfgiant suglinned the thing and the scout skirmished his stars of arvandor and it was done for a while... Long enough for them to destroy the altars. Should I have been able to redo it, I would have:

1. Made the altars some sort of bigger deal. Perhaps they'd be monsters that attempt to get away.
2. Learned a more powerful way to fight with a level 5 cleric than simply 5d6 with reflex for half.
3. Made more than one blight rise from the ground for round 2? Quite possibly this based on how fast it went.
4. Also I forgot to account for the blight's light fortitude aspect of armor, and didn't end up actually using the heart sinking amulet. And the smite good. I really need to be better at using all the monster's powers. I can imagine that would have made quite a big difference offensively.

Also: That Vasharan monster data is really excellent. But I forgot to mention that this Vasharan isn't the last one, and I intend to use more. I would probably reverse level this guy to figure it out, but MammonAzrael, if it's possible, could you give me the chasis you added the cleric levels to? It appears different than the dustblight, such as in its bonus feats.

[MammonAzrael]

I'm glad it went well! Sorry I couldn't help flesh things out more before-hand.

For the Vasharan, originally I was going to just make it a human, add the half-fiend template, and work from there. But since you'd already had them based off dustblights before, I took that and ran with it.

Medium Aberration - This is to represent that they were human, but due to the curse they have mutated, not to outsiders, but to something twisted and warped. And to keep close to the original dustblights.

Hit Dice: 5d8 - racial HD ported from dustblight to serve as the base creature

Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares), fly 30 ft. (average) - I dropped the burrow speed. I don't know if you used it in the past, but it just didn't seem to fit the flavor of the creature. Could easily be re-added, but there should be a reason the twisted, winged human can burrow.

Armor Class: 28 (+1 Dex, +8 natural, +9 full plate), touch 11, flat-footed 27 - +7 natural armor from the dustblight, and +1 from the half-fiend template. The high AC seemed very solid in helping the creature tank. I hope you remembered to increase the DEX bonus to AC to +7 when he lost his full plate!

Attack: +1 vile greataxe +16 melee (1d12+13+1 vile/x3) or Claw +15 melee (1d4+8+1 vile)
Full Attack: +1 vile greataxe +16/+11 melee (1d12+13+1 vile/x3) and Bite +12 (1d8+8+1 vile) or 2 Claws +14 melee (1d4+8+1 vile) and Bite +12 (1d8+8+1 vile) - These are just the normal modifications from the half-fiend template. Well, that and the feats.

Special Attacks: smite good, spell-like abilities - Half-fiend template.

Special Qualities: Damage reduction 5/good or silver, darkvision 60 ft., immune to poison, low-light vision, resistance to acid 10, cold 10, electricity 10, and fire 10, spell resistance 20 - The half-fiend template normally grants DR/Magic, but that seemed rather meaningless at this point. Sliver and Good both felt solid, and I know you wanted him to be tough. Everything else is straight from the half-fiend template, unmodified.

Abilities Str 26, Dex 24, Con 18, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 12 - This is a combination of the stat adjustments from the dustblight and half-fiend template, and a better point buy. The "race" gives +14 Str, +10 Dex, +4 Con, +4 Wis. Which means this cleric had a base of 12 Str, 14 Dex, 14 Con, 10 Int, 12 Wis, and 12 Cha (26 point buy)

Skills: 8*8 - half-fiend template gives you a great number of skill points

Feats: Vile Natural AttackBonus, Weapon Focus (Greataxe)Bonus, Multiattack, Corpsecrafter, Practiced Spellcaster, Fell Weaken - Weapon Focus is the bonus feat from the War domain. I switched the Sand Dancer bonus feat for something I felt was far more flavorful for these cursed remnants of humanity (Vile natural Attack). I switched out Lightning Relfexes, because it just isn't that great. The others were gained via leveling.

Treasure: +1 vile greataxe, +1 light fortification fullplate, heartseeking amulet - It's a shame you didn't use the heartseeking amulet, as it could have landed some scary blows with the greataxe. It was inteded to be the treasure for the PsyWar. Full plate for the cleric, then random things for the other two.

I think that covers it. If you'd like, we can refine this more, make it into a solid and defined race.

[Lord.Sorasen]

No no, don't apologize. You helped me significantly, and either way the session happened 4 days earlier than it was supposed to.

Also, hate to repost, but what sort of thing would you consider in making the monster more specific? I'm sort of thinking of reworking its spell-like abilities right now. I'm not entirely sure what else.