BBEG - 1 guy, a lot of trouble.

[Nibbens]

Okay, so I've recently become a fan of this (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nx-o8VAjhUwh3nnfzDQT-JA5eFLnN_BZJiBitGjBMDg/edit?pli=1), and i've taken everything it says to heart. Yada-yada. Now, the way to create harder encounter, I know, is to use the BBEG + a bunch of little guys to cloud up the field (balancing the action economy), and rely on "save for half damage" effects as well.

However, sometimes you want a boss encounter to be just that, 1 guy who can take a beating and dish one back. BUT, my question is is there any way to create a single boss who HAS the necessary action economy, and can qualify for all the shenanigans above? Does anyone know of a system that works for bosses like this?

[NightbringerGGZ]

So something to take into account is that monster's don't have to follow core rules. You're allowed to make stuff up and invent additional affects.

For instance, I used to play in a zelda-themed campaign which meant that almost every boss fight was a 1 BBEG encounter. Usually these bosses had some kind of effect that had to be overcome in order to bypass rather large amounts of ER/DR. For instance, one encounter was inside a kind of cathedral setting with a boss who was surrounded by whirling shadows which reduced damage. We had to figure out how to get light into the room in order to reduce and eventually dispel the effect completely before we could damage the boss.

Another common idea I've seen is to give this boss additional turns per round. Take your initial Initiative roll, add or subtract 10 and take two turns with the boss. That'll give you extra actions and put additional pressure on the party members as they can't all take actions before your next one.

You can also throw landscape obstacles in the path of the party. This is a typical part of dragon fights (the boss flies, you can't) but you can also do things that are more creative. In one of my homebrew games the party entered into a massive chamber beneath a temple where they encountered a Lovecraftian style beast. The chamber floor was inscribed with snaking paths that rose up and weaved among each other, forcing the players to run up and down these ramps and paths. Pillars were used to dodge the direct gaze of the monster and floating clouds of poison required the players to change levels frequently. Of course the BBEG was basically swimming through the air and striking out at those who were nearby, or would move to another part of the chamber to attack specific players / release poison clouds.

[(Un)Inspired]

3.5 works fine for a BBEG of the type you're looking for.

Just build him so he can take more actions that the pcs with contingency, craft contingen spell, celerity, quicken spell, twin spell, split ray, and time stop.

After that it's just a matter of figuring out what type of offense you want to run.

Heavy D+blasting?

Alpha Striking with SoD?

Drawn out polymorph fight?

CoDzilla melee?

I never understand why people want to house rule "bosses" to have extra turns when there's already 1st party rules for doing it.

[icefractal]

I never understand why people want to house rule "bosses" to have extra turns when there's already 1st party rules for doing it.Because you need to be a fairly high-op (and high level) caster to reliably have multiple turns/round (and deal with conditions that would shut you down), and that's going to be a TPK unless the players are similarly optimized.

Also, a lot of methods that a PC would use to prevent being shut down work by completely negating the condition - which is not so fun when it's the BBEG and the PCs are having everything they do ignored. What's desirable from a gameplay dynamic PoV is for the BBEG to potentially suffer the condition, but recover after a round, or only lose their "extra" set of actions. And that's not something that's easy to do with existing class abilities.

[Nibbens]

Because you need to be a fairly high-op (and high level) caster to reliably have multiple turns/round (and deal with conditions that would shut you down), and that's going to be a TPK unless the players are similarly optimized.

Also, a lot of methods that a PC would use to prevent being shut down work by completely negating the condition - which is not so fun when it's the BBEG and the PCs are having everything they do ignored. What's desirable from a gameplay dynamic PoV is for the BBEG to potentially suffer the condition, but recover after a round, or only lose their "extra" set of actions. And that's not something that's easy to do with existing class abilities.


And there is my problem... :/

[Vhaidara]

And there is my problem... :/

For this kind of fight, you generally want an EXTREMELY tanky enemy who does VERY low damage per rounds with resistance to debuffing (not necessarily just saves, but abilities that reduce penalties from debuffs).

My advice would be to give him an action every round for every 2 PCs. Give him like 100hp per CR, and make him to extremely low damage per round (maybe spread out). Some kind of healing mechanic where the party has to interrupt him during the turn has potential. Make it so that debuffs only apply to one or two of his turns.

[Karsh]

Another common idea I've seen is to give this boss additional turns per round. Take your initial Initiative roll, add or subtract 10 and take two turns with the boss. That'll give you extra actions and put additional pressure on the party members as they can't all take actions before your next one.

I agree with this. Mythic enemies can have an ability that lets them act on their Initiative and their Initiative -20. That ability halves the action economy deficit. There's no reason you can't stick that on a monster even if you're not using Mythic rules. If that still doesn't get around the issue of PCs being able to focus fire on one big target, give it max HP for its hit dice.

[(Un)Inspired]

Because you need to be a fairly high-op (and high level) caster to reliably have multiple turns/round (and deal with conditions that would shut you down), and that's going to be a TPK unless the players are similarly optimized.

Also, a lot of methods that a PC would use to prevent being shut down work by completely negating the condition - which is not so fun when it's the BBEG and the PCs are having everything they do ignored. What's desirable from a gameplay dynamic PoV is for the BBEG to potentially suffer the condition, but recover after a round, or only lose their "extra" set of actions. And that's not something that's easy to do with existing class abilities.

Interesting.

I disagree about your optimization claims. If you build towards simply having multiple actions there's no need to optimize the character offensively to the point that TPKs are inevitable.

I would be much, much, much more frustrated as a player if I successfully stunned an enemy (for instance) and the DM told me that he still got at least one turn because of special homebrew rules as opposed to my stun being avoided by clever use of existing rules.

If your players would be happier with enemies like that why not just give the BBEG actions whenever you feel like it saying "he has mystic control over time". Why record hp for him? Just pretend to and have him die after he's been pummeled by what you deem to be a suitable amount by the pcs?

[Almarck]

Depending on how big the enemy and what it is, you may want to consider "hard points". Basically, like a hydra has multiple heads that can attack and the like, the creature, what ever it is has multiple parts of it able to do multiple things... Such as say, launch missiles in constructs, spew acid gas, that sort of things, but only so many hardpoints can do things at a time.

If the players are attacking blindly, have them randomly determine in secret what do they attack. The creature itself, or its hardpoints.

One thing I have always wanted to do for a big epic boss fight is a really big mechanical tank that's got like ten different hardpoints that worked together to do things. The PCs, in order to beat the boss, they have to defy logic and crawl onto it and chew out its hardpoints one at a time to disable it.