Creating an Endbringer Fight

[Thealtruistorc]

Hello Everyone.

Those of you who have read the web serial Worm know how insane the Endbringers are. Intelligent, Powerful, and Obscenely Durable, these apocalyptic entities have the capacity to dole out absurd amounts of destruction and give even the most powerful heroes out there a run for their money. Defeating one requires an army of substantially powered superhumans, and killing one is nigh-unthinkable.

Naturally, I'm curious how to simulate this in D&D.

Now, I know that simulating the abilities of Behemoth or Simurgh wouldn't be that hard. What I want to do is to replicate the experience of fighting an Endbringer. The idea is something that can cause massive large-scale damage, take hits that would level countries, and keep on trucking even in the face of many, many high-level players. I want to create an encounter that feels truly epic in scale, that awes players with how durable and how massively destructive a single creature can be.

Is this possible, or does the power scaling in 3.5 render any sort of titan creature irrelevant after a while? What can be done to rope in players with a large-scale and wildly destructive encounter such as what I am describing?

[J-H]

I'd stat it out as a deity, but with absurd HP, fast healing 100 or greater, yuuuge DR and a bunch of SLAs and extra actions (or things it can do as a free action).

I'm not sure that it'll be fun for the players, though - they won't really be able to do anything, and it's going to be powerful enough to totally wreck a 4-man party in 1-2 rounds.

[AvatarVecna]

Recreating the toughness Endbringers display in-canon using D&D mechanics would probably be done best by basing it off the object hardness/HP rules, just ramped up to ridiculous levels (where every few millimeters in is a layer of material twice as tough as the last layer), but how exactly "twice as tough" should translate into mechanics can be tricky. If you can find the HP/hardness in the D&D rules for the materials some of the outer layers were comparable to, you can figure out how they compare. Now, having a creature that has variable DR/FH/HP makes the system unhappy, so...good luck.

The bigger problem is giving your players the feel of an Endbringer fight; namely, I'm not sure why you'd want to. The tone of an Endbringer fight is "armies of powerful superheroes go into the fight, maybe half of them come back if it's a good day and Overdeity Scion showed up early". This is an epic creature that can theoretically tank hurled galaxies, contact with black holes, and causality paradoxes; this is the kind of epic creature that should actually give an epic high-op wizard a run for their money.

[Zancloufer]

I would make some sort of "modular" monster. Kind of like a hydra, except each joint, each finger, individual eyes etc have their own AC, HP, DR, saving throws etc.

For example: Each of the four toes on it's two feet are "medium sized" creatures with 20 HD 20+ in all saves, DR 10/- and have ~20 AC (12 touch, 18 flatfooted). It's "Foot" is one size larger and has ~50% more HP/DR/HD etc. Would be a little complicated when you figure what actions it can take, especially when you start blowing limbs off, but I think that might make it a "creature would work. The party literally spends 5 minutes trying to blow it's FOOT OFF. The thing's 'final HD' (all limbs,/body parts combined) should be in the thousands.

[AmberVael]

Is this possible, or does the power scaling in 3.5 render any sort of titan creature irrelevant after a while? What can be done to rope in players with a large-scale and wildly destructive encounter such as what I am describing?

I think its possible, but you'd need to design a lot of custom mechanics for it. Here are some basic points that need considering.

1) Save or die/lose effects
One of the major things that single creatures run into is that there are a number of ways to be taken out or rendered into a non-threat in a single shot. The obvious answer is to give a single big bad monster immunity to things like that, but that is honestly a fairly boring way to handle it, and can be quite dissatisfying to anyone playing a character that relies on them.
Here's a few suggestions on how to allow these effects to still have an impact, but be lessened in the face of an Endbringer style threat.

Ablative layers. This concept from the actual Endbringers can be used rather interestingly here. Have the monster take damage in layers, rather than having a single HP total. Rather than being instantly killed by something like Phantasmal Killer (PS, please don't actually use Phantasmal Killer) or being immune to it, have the monster simply lose a layer.
Adaptive resistance. Gradually overcoming or becoming inured to specific forces can allow a monster to be impacted by abilities, but give it a sense of more overwhelming power. Maybe a web holds it at first, but it slowly grows more capable of tearing through it or avoiding it. You can combine this concept with the ablative layers concept, with anything that destroys a layer becoming less effective against later layers.
Too big. One thing about endbringers and a lot of fun monsters is that they're BIG. Use this. Something that might normally affect the monster as a whole might affect only a part. Perhaps a dominate monster spell partially works, gaining control over a limb rather than an entire body. (Maybe explain that one with a weirdly distributed nervous system?) Or a slow effect could slow down its legs, but not the rest.

2) Endurance
If you have a big bad monster, you want it to be able to last. But I'm sure you've played a game before where you're just hitting an enemy over and over and over and its health just slowly ticks down. (Oh come on, it used HARDEN again?!). Its not very fun.
You want your players to make progress, and to feel they're making progress, but you don't want that progress to be killing your awesome big bad dude. So have them accomplish objectives, or achieve something cool. Maybe they first accomplish knocking the thing away from a city, but it gets back up and they have to rush out to fight it before it closes back in. Maybe they expose a weak point, or deprive it of a power. Or heck, there's a reason bosses with multiple forms are a thing. Beating that first form feels good, but the second form means the boss is still up and kicking. You've made progress, but you haven't won. Plan out some ways for your players to win and make progress before the fight is completely won.

3) Actions
So, here's one way a single titan creature hurts after a while: they get one set of actions, the party gets four or five. It makes them seem ponderous and slow. The players have time to set up shenanigans and can practically dance around it. Trying to make an actual Endbringer in D&D without considering this would be laughable, because after a few thousand actions from a few thousand heroes there's no way it would still be fighting, even if they couldn't kill it. You could find SOME way to mess it up.
One of the ways people make endgame encounters work is by throwing the players up against a group rather than a solo enemy. And you can do this, with drops of blood that become monsters, or converting nearby peasants into monsters or dominated thralls, or summoning monsters, etc. But as a GM, you could also just design the monster to have additional actions. My advice is not to actually just give the monster several turns (let alone several turns in a row), but instead to stat it out piecemeal. Its arm has a statblock. Its leg has a statblock. Its head has a statblock. Or whatever combination feels right for the creature, but the result should be that several pieces of it can act independently and each do unique, horrific things. Maybe its arms swing and take out castle towers, while its legs stomp legions flat and its head breathes fire on everything, I dunno. This is also a great way to accomplish ablative endurance and allow players a sense of progress, because if an arm is statted out independently, its really easy for you as a GM to say "you lopped off its arm" and know exactly how its been affected, and for the players to have a notable impact before its dead. Knowing you just got rid of that nasty claw attack that has been mauling people will feel pretty good.

[Extra Anchovies]

Is this possible, or does the power scaling in 3.5 render any sort of titan creature irrelevant after a while?

It gets irrelevant pretty quickly, actually. Omniscificer, Idiot and/or d2 Crusader, Chicken-Infested+Greater Consumptive Field, Cancer Mage/Hulking Hurler with Festering Anger and a fast-time demiplane... there's a lot of arbitrarily-high and truly-infinite numbers tricks that can be accomplished well before 20th.

[AmberVael]

It gets irrelevant pretty quickly, actually. Omniscificer, Idiot and/or d2 Crusader, Chicken-Infested+Greater Consumptive Field, Cancer Mage/Hulking Hurler with Festering Anger and a fast-time demiplane... there's a lot of arbitrarily-high and truly-infinite numbers tricks that can be accomplished well before 20th.

I'd argue a titanic creature is probably more relevant to your average game than any of these theoretical builds. (Also, taking Cancer Mage levels? Really?)

[Zanos]

Just give it DR X/- and energy immunities until you're confident nothing could hurt it. Describe damage appropriately and in a misleading fashion. Many of the in universe powers didn't recognize them as human or "living" enough to directly work either, so throw a huge pile of appropriate immunities on there too.

As an aside, such a fight is probably not super fun in an RPG. The enemy is basically immune to everything you do, and if you get its attention it kills you instantly.

All the damage dealt to the endbringers in worm was cosmetic. Behemoth functioned uninhibited with all of his flesh destroyed. Construct immunities are probably justified. The only thing that could truly harm them was Sion, who is basically God, and Eidolon, who is basically God when he can get it up.

[ExLibrisMortis]

These monsters canonically have ~200 layers. That means you're in for a long, long fight. I don't feel like playing it out already.

Instead of statting it up as a creature, with layers, hardness, regenerations etcetera, stat it up as an elder evil, with various levels of signs. Have the signs correspond to proximity to the Endbringer, with the most intense sign involving attacks. I don't know what these things are meant to be doing, but you can stat up something like:

Overwhelming Sign - 1 mile radius
Every 1d4 rounds, every creature is targeted by one of the following attacks or effects:
- CL 20 disintegrate, save DC 30 (no attack roll required).
- CL 20 avasculate, save DC 30 (no attack roll required).
- ML 20 cranial deluge, save DC 30.
- Melee +30, 4d6+20/17-20/x3 slashing and bludgeoning plus paralysis (1 rd, Fort DC 30 negates)
- Ranged +30/+25/+20, 1d6+10/x2 force plus 1d6+10 divine plus fear (frightened 10 rds, Will DC 30 reduces to shaken)

Again, I have no clue whether this matches anything in the actual story, but you can easily modify this to fit.

[AmberVael]

As an aside, such a fight is probably not super fun in an RPG. The enemy is basically immune to everything you do, and if you get its attention it kills you instantly.

These monsters canonically have ~200 layers. That means you're in for a long, long fight. I don't feel like playing it out already.

Yeah, I don't recommend attempting an exact replica of the Endbringers. The mechanics don't directly translate, and probably shouldn't as the genre is quite different, not to mention the difference between passively consuming media and actively being part of a story. But I do think you can capture the idea of combat with a behemoth, incredibly tough creature that is as much force of nature as creature, and that could be fun. There's a lot of potential inspiration to be had from the Endbringers, you just have to keep the differences in mind.

[Serafina]

You can partially solve the single-action problem by giving the Endbringer a lot of reactive actions, and actions that affect areas.

So Behemoth would get counters based around his energy aura. They don't cost any action, so you can't overwhelm them.
Leviathan could simply get large reach via his water echo, and unlimited attacks of opportunity.
The Simurgh could just get the ability to affect anything within her line of sight as per telekinesis - every object or person, again without getting overwhelmed.


As for their resistance:
The point of Endbringers is that you can't beat them. Or at the very least, you can't kill or permanently disable them.
Simply make them unbeatable via hitpoint damage. Don't go for immense DR or anything like that - you CAN do damage to them. The more damage, the more impressive it is. But no matter how much it is, it won't impede or kill them - even if you burn one down to it's skeleton, it'll still be going.
For other effects - actually, make them work. Everything that disables, that is. Trying to slow them down works - it's just that they can break out of things at an unpredictable time, and things rarely work twice. And since you're only slowing them down for a few rounds each time - well, if you're defending something, they'll still get there eventually.


The players should throw every resource they have at the Endbringer, while constantly dealing with dangerous counterattacks.
Let that Ubercharger do 2000 damage, it won't kill the Endbringer.
Let that Wizard throw down five different kinds of no-save, just lose - which then only stops the Endbringer for a few rounds.
Let that Cleric swarm it with summoned angels - only for them to get swatted by the Endbringers reflexive attacks.
Let the party escape, if they want to - it just means that whatever they were trying to defend is now dead or destroyed.


How to accomplish that within the set rules isn't particularly important, I think. There's a bunch of ways already listed. What's important is what impact it creates, and since you're making your own monster anyway there's no reason you can't just make up a rule that says "not killed by hitpoint damage or other things" and the like.

[Extra Anchovies]

The Endbringers aren't really enemies that can fought - they're narrative elements, more plot than foe. I don't think that sort of thing works in asymmetrical collaborative storytelling like D&D, because you have to choose between making it killable (which means it will be killed) or handwaving any attempts to kill it (in which case you're railroading the players in favor of telling your own story).


I'd argue a titanic creature is probably more relevant to your average game than any of these theoretical builds. (Also, taking Cancer Mage levels? Really?)
Well:

give even the most powerful heroes out there a run for their money. Defeating one requires an army of substantially powered superhumans...

<snip>

...keep on trucking even in the face of many, many high-level players.

All of the stuff I listed need characters of no more than 12th level and don't involve cheesing a Wish. A large group of characters who're superpowered by D&D standards has essentially no limits to what it can do with its members' collective abilities.

[TheIronGolem]

The Endbringers are essentially Epic monsters in an E6 game.

[Tvtyrant]

Depends on how many rules you want to steal from other editions. You could give it multiple heads as fluff, and the ability to sacrifice a head to ignore all effects until the end of the current term. This borrows from healing surges in 4E, and means that the boss won't die to lethal damage or effects, or get tied up by crowd control but will visibly diminish.

[Demidos]

VERY Slight Spoilers ahead --

1) Assume the Endbringer to be effectively immune to the PCs. The fight should not focus on STOPPING the Endbringer so much as mitigating the damage it can do. This will give a similar feel to Worm. Players can save civilians, create terrain that will slow the creature, even give it pause for a few rounds -- but NOTHING can really kill it.

In terms of mechanics, I would rule something like 100 damage would make it lose its swift action, 300 more would make it lose its move, and 600 more than that would make it lose its standard (obviously based on your player's optimization levels). Indirect magic, even instantaneous magic like walls of stone, simply corrode away. If it fails a save against a save or die or similar effect it loses a move action, while other direct magic does not affect it. However, if it has not been able to act in 2 rounds, a giant wave of something shoots out (e.g. a telekinetic wave from the Simurgh, water from Levaiathan, fire and lightning from Behemoth), presumably torching anyone in the area who has been managing to keep the Endbringer pinned. Again, you have to emphasize the only thing that their actions are doing is buying time. Nothing more.

2) Include Area Effects - The suggestion to treat the Endbringer as an Elder Evil is great. For say, Behemoth or Leviathan, you can toss in difficult terrain from the ground being torn up, fires started in places that threaten families, etc. Behemoth might have an aura of Horrid Wilting, affecting all within x feet.

3) Include an objective -- Endbringers were usually headed for some goal, be it a weapons lab or a bomb or a crowded city. The encounter should be less of a combat and more of a puzzle -- figure out what the Endbringer wants and figure out a way to prevent it from achieving that goal, at which point it should rampage a little more and then retreat to its home base. Slowing the Endbringer is definitely a worthy goal, but can be almost guaranteed to fail after enough defenders have fallen.

4) Toss these suggestions onto an interesting base creature -- going from the ELH (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/abomination.htm), assuming you wanted the same endbringers, I would refluff the Dream Larvae as the Simurgh, the Phaeton as Leviathan, and the Atropal or Xixecal as Behemoth, although I am leery of actually assigning these monsters, as their large numbers can be a bit difficult. However, I would definitely NOT use their regular HP, and instead use the suggestions I mentioned in point 1.

[Aharon]

For build advice - obviously, this strongly depends on your players optimization levels, but something like Belial's Rovagug (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?396077-Rovagug) is probably in the right ball park for a high-op group.

[Eldan]

I did stat up Behemoth once on this forum, though he was basically a super-tarrasque. I do remember that at the time, a lot of people thought he wasn't strong enough. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?386411-Behemoth

[amalcon]

Three words: Alternate win condition. In order for a creature of that power level to work in a game where the PCs are active participants, they will need some way to attack it *other* than removing its hit points or hitting it with a severely disabling spell. If the PCs can reasonably have some effect through normal D&D things, it's not realistically going to stand up to an army; if they can't do anything, it's boring.

The old West End Games Star Wars RPG had stats for both X-Wings and the Death Star. While no reasonable number of X-Wings could fight the Death Star using the normal rules, anyone who's seen the movies knows that other approaches to that problem are available.

For an old D&D standard, there's the high level lich. The lich itself might beat the party handily. If the PCs get their hands on the phylactery, by hook or by crook, suddenly the balance of power shifts.

There are other options than just a less straightforward strategy that outright kills the villain. Maybe the PCs can take a hostage that the villain cares about, if it's that kind of game. Maybe if they bump it with a boat, it decides it's not worth the effort and goes to take a nap. Maybe it's controlled telepathically from elsewhere, and if they break that link, it goes off to do things that are on its power level instead of rampaging through town. Maybe it's too big to get underground, so the party can work to evacuate the population into the Underdark.