Puzzle Bosses: Doing it right?

[Ursus the Grim]

Hey Playground, its Ursus trying to pick your brains again. I was considering how one would run a Legend of Zelda RPG when I realized that pretty much every boss is a puzzle boss.

This, I think, would be the hardest element to incorporate into an RPG. Puzzle bosses are pretty difficult to work well. Either you handfeed it to the players (Roll your Knowledge checks), or you stump them into frustrated rage.

This is a general thread to discuss puzzle monsters as worked into a d20 mechanic. Feel free to share anecdotes, suggestions, and rages.

[MesiDoomstalker]

I did this making my own version of the Temple of Time (the one from the games). I had one player trying to emulate Link (and was doing pretty well actually) and decided to throw him a bone (plus I was without books between sessions so I was working without monsters for the most part). I had a golem that mimicked the Link-players actions in order to solve puzzles along the way (the rest of the party was seperated and indirectly helped). At the end, the golem turned on him and attacked using whatever abilities the Link-player had used up to that point. He was a Psion//Fighter gestalt and had a power (can't remember its name) that basically just wiped the targets mind of the manifester's existence and used that as the way to beat the golem (it forgot everything it 'learned' and started attack as regular tonned down Stone Golem).

I think the key is to know your players tatics and try to do something that their current tatics or a slight modification of will defeat but isn't so threatening that if they don't figure it out in 2 or 3 rounds they are already dead. In the above example, the Link-player liked to spam the Forget Me power so I made it the weakness of the boss. Admittedly, this did alienate the other players but they all got their own personalized dungeons later in the campaign.

[Krazzman]

Oh lovely big guns....

You could probably do somethings like a gigantic eye that is protected by 2 Arms with boneplates. And the players have to figure a way to immobilize the arms to damage the "head".

Or a thing I have prepared for a dungeon they will probably go through if they want: A Crazed Bone-Plated-Cetipede which is only vulnerable to a certain point, or from the inside.

A Knight with an AC of about 22 on Level 1, dropped to 16 by sneaking up from behind and taking a standart action to loosen his armor.

Or a Band of knights, for every fallen one the others grow stronger and faster or the like.

Look at the bosses, see what you have to do and then hint it to them. Maybe let them fight a less hard version of it before.


Thats what I have in mind if you talk about Puzzle Bosses.

Have a nice Day
Krazzman

[marcielle]

Remember though, Link was ONE person. With a average DnD group, you can get team tactics and such things. If you have facing rules, you can have an enemy ONLY vulnerable from behind. This works better if you DON'T have a rogue as flanking is not an important tactic for non SA classes.

In Zelda you always found things you needed to beat the bosses only a while before actually fighting them. Drop the meelees elemental damage equiptment worth LESS than the ones they have now. But make the boss IMMUNE to everything but the correct elemental damage. For fun make it ABSORB force and normal magic effects that aren't elemental. Color coordinated elemental weakness for the players convenience. Maybe make a blue door that needed to be hit with lightning to be opened, repeat with all chromatic dragon colors BEFORE the fight. So they aren't just grasping at straws.

[AugustNights]

In my experience, having thrown a full metric pants-load of puzzles and puzzle bosses at what I can only assume is the average playing party, I have found that the key to making Puzzle-Bosses, and Puzzles in general in D&D, is in the number of solutions that are available both planed and unplanned.
A puzzle with a single solution works well in a videogame, though even that, I imagine, is debatable.
In D&D because of the number of minds coming together, and the very high amount of options each player has, single solutions work about how you described, to paraphrase, Stumped or Handed Out.
A puzzle with several solutions, in varying degrees of difficulty based on approach, I think you will find, will be more enjoyable.
At least, this is how I plan my puzzle bosses.

Videogames have a large advantage in controlling what sorts of equipment and spells a player has access to, and having plenty of time to map out the whole game. You on the other hand can either restrict player options heavily, create odd environmental things (Fire Spells don't work in the Temple of Water, and Fire Damage is necessarily to kill the Water-Monster, so you have to solve the puzzle), or assume that it's best to give the players multiple options.

So a quick example... The Bloodskeleton.

The Blood Skeleton is essentially a regular Troll Skeleton (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/skeleton.htm), with 5 levels of Fighter. (Yes not legal, but for the sake of example, lets pretend)
It also has SR 25 (High for it's CR, about 7ish, a 15% chance that the average spell caster's spells that allow for SR will effect it)
Increased DR 10/Silver and Magic (or whatever)
Further, it fights in a room with 3 blood pools that it can spend a move action at to regain 5d8+10 hp.
It has a vulnerability to... let's say cold damage.

Options
The Hard Way: Battle it out
Destroy Blood Bath: Blood Baths have Hardness 8 and 20 hp
Poison Blood Bath: Blood baths are magical, can be identified with a DC 20 Knowledge (Religion) or DC 25 Knowledge (Arcana). Beating the DC by 5 lets the learner know that a Cure spell would alter them so that any undead drinking from it would suffer 2d8+5 damage.
Destroy Blood-Gem: Blood Skeleton is identifiable with a DC 21 Knowledge (Religion) or DC 26 Knowledge (Arcana). Beating DC by 5 reveals Blood-Gem weakness. Shattering the blood gem (sunder) will remove SR and DR of the Skeleton.
Cold Tiles There are several Cold-Traps in this fight. Luring the Skeleton on to them will deal it damage that it is vulnerable against.
Idols of Dark Gods: A failed Knowledge Religion check by 5 against a DC 15 knowledge check, reveals that the Dark Idols power the skeleton and destroying them will damage the skeleton. (The Skeleton is best at destroying them so the players may try and trick it into doing so). Destroying the Idol deals 2d8+10 Negative Energy damage (as per inflict spells) in a 5 foot radius, DC 18 Will save for half.

Bonus points if you can make the traps less obvious. (Golem building laboratories with Bunsen burners and Electric devices, are always nice places to fight golems)

As an example, it offers some "Right Ways" to do it, and it offers some "Wrong Ways" to do it, but there are several answers, it's just that some are more difficult to pull off than others. And I like to leave room for players coming up with hairbrained ideas that should either work wonderfully for how genius they are, DM foul ups (I lost a L.10 Cleric once do to a miss-step, who fell off a tower, simply because he "stepped back" in being startled, and the players noted that he was standing on the ledge when he did so. He had no flying spells prepared. In retrospect, he wasn't very well prepared to fight on a tower, but he was ready to push a lot of people off), or really really bad ideas that if done can kinda sorta work.

I think I've lost what I was trying to say, but I hope that helps.