Different types of boss "battles"?

[Xaroth]

So, I was talking with my group, and we ended the session just before we got to the next boss fight. One of them said something interesting that's kinda, stuck in my head now.

"It's looking like this fight's going to be another damage race."

So, my question isn't about my own group this time. Aside from "damage race" (hit each other and hope the enemy dies before you do), what other sorta boss battles are there? I'm drawing a blank.

[weckar]

The best boss battles (IMO) use the environment somehow.
We had one where we COULD damage race... or we could collapse the cave on his head.

Another option is a boss that can be tackled using social skills.

[Thaneus]

Well what you need to figure out what your "plot arc" makes this encounter interesting.
The classic "Damage-Race" is the easiest, since its a group battle royal and the victor is clear.

There are several other ways to make an encounter but they are harder to script.
For example "Battle of attrition", you PCs are trapped, no way to get away themselves because Mr. Universe Wizard already popped his teleport for the day or "this place must not fall" but they know(hope) they get reinforcements. A bit like the New St. Gettisburg mission in StarCraft.

The "Get the MacGuffin and then get the hell out of here" because standing your ground will just flood you with monsters.

"The Chase" grab some horses and off ya go.

Inspire yourself by some action movies, nearly all had been used.

[noob]

That is infinitely restraining to imagine bosses as damage races.
Basically a boss that is a damage race(deals lots of damage and have life) or vulnerable to the environment usually can be circumvented entirely in one or two spells(like solid fog)
With spell-casting a boss that is alone can be beaten in 344^345 ways that are not damage and cost one or two actions.
A boss that gives trouble is usually one who is not dumb to the point that he have vulnerability to damage and it will have immunity to tons of things and freedom of movement and spellcasting that he will use for things other than damaging players.

Basically using the terms that are used in videogames in dnd is like using your fist to try to kill an enigma: it is going to means weird stuff and is not going to be possible.

Environment is in 99% of the cases a non issue when you reach level 3: the players make the environment themselves be it by the barbarian who carries a steel wall and stairs and place them where he wants or the wizard that can make the team fly and grant them cover with some tenser disks and spells like fog clouds the team can make the scene and/or ignore it.
Making boss fights who use environment is going to be possible only at very low level.
All the examples given by the above posters would not be played the way they imagine them at all: like who does a straight damage battle when you could have a rigged one just by casting one spell or having your barbarian carry a steel wall and place it properly to give your team time to prepare?
Or why have a boss fight about either collapsing a roof or dealing damage when the villain had the weird idea of staying in that room?
If the villain stood in a room where the roof is collapsible then it means that either 1: he is sure to survive the collapsing roof and wants the adventurers to believe he is dead
2: He is so dumb he should have died years ago and now you kill him just by casting solid fog and then starting to cause the roof to collapse(if he was not under freedom of movement) or you just throw your bag full of giant rocks(under the effect of shrink object) and make it unshrink thus making 8 heavy rocks fall on his head and killing him.

"Get the MacGuffin and then get the hell out of here" For fleeing either you use teleport to exit or it is an anti teleport zone and so you probably then use the famous shrinked lead cone on your head that you unskrink to protect you and your team from the zone and then you teleport away
Or it was an antimagic zone and so you all enter the giant lead box the barbarian is carrying and teleport.
The getting part is the hard one if it is an antimagic zone or an anti teleport zone you will probably use voidstone(non magical sphere of annihilation) to dig all the way to the mac guffin in some seconds (get above the antimagic/antiteleport zone right above the mac guffin then you fall together with your voidstone to dig your way to the mac guffin)
If it is low level then there is probably neither anti-teleport zones nor antimagic zones so if the team had the great idea of taking scrolls of teleport to get the mac guffin and if the mac guffin is not worth two teleport scrolls it was probably not going to cause anything bad because it means that the villain wanting it is not even ready to spend some coins on getting it(or else the mac guffin would have a high value)

[OldTrees1]

Crack open Dungeonscape. It has a good primer on encounter design that highlights the qualitative differences in how enemies contribute and effect an encounter.

Damage Race sounds like 2 scenarios dominated by a single factor: The enemy is always inflicting damage and the party can always engage the enemy. You can handle such a scenario by racing to the bottom with reckless offense or by toughing it out with steady defense.

However discontinuous engagement would result in a different structure.

The Dungeon Lord ambushes you throughout their abnormally large "boss room". The party might even split up to try to corner the dungeon lord when the dungeon lord is being defensive. More about the search than about damage.

The Chase is all about the engagement distance between the parties. The chased party wants to shrink the engagement distant relative to the actual distance (increase the actual distance or decrease the engagement distance) while the chaser wants the opposite. More about movement/range than about damage.

The Citadel is a keep surrounded by many layered defenses. You could use artillery to attack over the defenses or you could breach the defenses to increase the impact of your attacks. I like to use a Necromancer as an example here:

(Roughly EL 14)The Lich(Dread Necromancer 11) sits on their throne of bones flanked by two Boneclaw (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20040905a&page=2) bodyguards with longbows. In front of them are 3 10ft wide weigh-bearing(15ft radius 3d6 Ref 20 halves) columns of ice each containing a Bleakborn (http://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/block/Bleakborn). Next to the columns is a small contingent of Skeletons wielding longswords and heavy shields.

[daremetoidareyo]

Take the PCS off of the offensive and put them on the defensive.

Defend the mcguffin. Boss brings the heat to a specific target.
&
Hold off the monster that wildly outclasses the pc's for a certain number of rounds while others win a strategic victory.

[Bucky]

Borrowing some mechanics from TDDC (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLylLGJF4VZY7Wya1zdWY3ExLfitPCdJEN):

One boss battle has a bunch of defensive abilities, but shuts down on its own in one minute... having successfully rigged the place to explode.
One boss has some spare construct bodies around that can host his soul and keeps body-hopping until the party either destroys all available bodies, catches him without an immediate action available to hop or depletes his very large pool of "soul hp".
One boss has an illusionary body he can switch places with at will, meaning the party can't hit him at all unless they have both bodies covered.
One boss has a single weak spot and takes the form of a pool of corrosive goo a mile wide that attacks anyone trying to fly over it. The main thrust of the boss 'battle' is getting to the core without losing too many resources.

[Karl Aegis]

Your players were probably referring to the boss archetypes Blizzard explained back in The Burning Crusade days of World of Warcraft. Off the top of my head I can think of a few that were mentioned.

The Damage Race: The Boss keeps doing more and more damage until it either dies or you do. Example: Gruul

The Fight for Survival: The battle is less about killing the boss as quickly as possible and more about avoiding ways to get yourself killed so you can keep doing what you're doing. If you screw up you generally run out of resources before the boss dies. Example: Magtheridan

The Gear Check: If you have enough gear the fight is easy. If you don't, no matter your skill, the fight is impossible. Often has add monsters that must be killed quickly before your team is overwhelmed. Example: The Curator

Puzzle Boss: Things must be done in the right order or else your entire group is wiped out. Often required specific party compositions and abilities to defeat. Example: High King Maulgar. Expanded: You needed a mage to absorb damage from the ogre magi, a warlock to enslave the demon summoned and interrupt the warlock ogre, you needed a hunter pet to keep one of the guys away from the rest of the group and you needed someone to keep the big boss away from the guys doing the specific tasks listed above or else he would just walk over and kill your warlock in less than a second or something.

[Uncle Pine]

Broadly speaking, every combat encounter that doesn't end with a Dominate spell, being planeshifted to the positive energy plane without abilities to come back or similar effects is by definition going to be a damage race. If two parties are fighting, one of the two has to drop first for the other to win. It's how you get to the victory sequence that makes all the difference.

Giant immobile monsters that face the party alone are boring and everyone can be assumed to know this: you kill one and you kill all of them, but that's because they don't do anything bar initiating full attack routine #7 or using damaging ability #35. It's the same reason behind why Fighters are fundamentally boring if you don't spice them up.
Use spellcasters, use monsters with a brain (not full attacking fighters), change some of those horrid standard feats like Toughness and Iron Will into Martial Study, build ridiculous things like modular modular golems/oozes bosses or flying flaming hivenest wolves that shoot bats from their mouths (make sure all of this makes sense in context). Place a trap or two in the middle of the room and integrate it in the fight, have the fight happen on a ship with a lot of pirates and cutlasses and a bigger one that keeps trying to throw people overboard.
Building enemies that do more than "deal X amount of damage/round" and "soak Y damage before dying" has the neat side effect of being fun for you as a DM, because nothing beats playing as a wizard, fighter, rogue or cleric exploring an isolated tower in the forest once home of a famous spellcaster, except playing as a horde of crawling left hands, flying animated portraits shooting green beams from their eyes, invisible valets and a couple of harpies defending your home from a bunch of dudes in robes and armors who showed up one day to steal your stuff.

Tl;dr Throw cool **** at the players and they'll forget that every combat is "stuff gets killed" because it's a fantasy game with magical mojo around every corner.

[noob]

Why would you do so much useless stuff as dealing damage?
Damage dealers and traps just end up as poor defenseless creatures who never gets the occasion to ever attack against a team of people knowing how to use spells and inventory.

[tiercel]

Why would you do so much useless stuff as dealing damage?
Damage dealers and traps just end up as poor defenseless creatures who never gets the occasion to ever attack against a team of people knowing how to use spells and inventory.

A boss without good saves and/or immunities isn't a boss, he/she/it is a one-round LOL waiting to happen, not a "battle."

Damage is something most party members can contribute toward, either directly, or via buffing and debuffing. So it's not a matter of "knowing how to use spells and inventory" necessarily obviating damage, but likely facilitating it.

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I second the idea that a memorable boss battle should have one or more unusual aspects to it, both in RP (make your PCs really *want* to take on this BBEG by time of the encounter) and in crunch (make your PCs scramble to deal with terrain/time pressure/unusual ability or combo/synergy between BBEG and Trusted Lieutenants/etc).

[Lassan]

I'm legit surprised that no one else brought this one up.....

The "anti-party" boss fight,

or it's variant; Party Vs. Boss + his horde of loyal minions.

both of these fights, avoid the "damage race" mentality, and shift the players (and the DM) into the

Dogfight, duelist, battle between equals mentality.

seriously, one of the hardest fights I had in the Hordes of The Underdark campaign of, Neverwinter Nights, which was based on the 3.0 ruleset was when you fought an evil, epic level party
whilst adventuring through the hells.

Load up the baddies with class levels, Artifacts/relics, phat gear, and crazy ass broken builds, (there are PLENTY of pre-fabed optimized builds on various forums and D&D wiki's) and you my friend, have a hell of a fight to give your players!!

alternately, load up the "boss" with PC levels, magic gear, and give his loyal minions some "royal guard" themed support abilities that play to his strengths, allow them to heal him,
tank for him, that kind of thing, and all of a sudden it's not just "slaughter the orc king" or "slaughter 100 orcs" it's "slaughter Gra'zz The Orc king, and his elite bodyguards, the Red Fist!!"

The downside to this approach, is that it is inherently more dangerous to the party as any anti-party that can threaten the party, has the potential to TPK it, and may in fact mechanically leverage the first weakness the party reveals (which the party, likewise should be theoretically capable of doing)

The other downside, is aside from the risk of a single mistake making the fight go boring and one-sided fast, is that should the party win, they will in general, have nearly doubled their effective wealth off the loot of their fallen enemies. (this can be limited by giving the anti-party several race or alignment based items that the party can sell, but not use.)

Overall, this is more of a DM strategy that should be used sparingly, rather than each and every boss battle, but used properly it is an excellent part of a DM's toolkit.

[tiercel]

The "anti-party" boss fight,

or it's variant; Party Vs. Boss + his horde of loyal minions.

This. Party vs party is memorable and an "even" (potentially) challenge, but I pretty much never have a "pure" boss battle in the PCs v 1 format. You can pull it off with some opponents - most notably dragons - but in general a boss battle is usually a lot better if, instead of one CR N boss, you have a pair of CR N-2 bosses or a CR N-1 boss and his four CR N-5 lieutenants. (Summons, animal companions, etc also work well obviously.). The action economy of four PC actions to one BBEG action is hard to balance; also, if your PCs one-shot your BBEG, a Loyal Minion can at least try to heal or spirit him away for Round 2: the Grudge Match.

Even when you go "opponent PC" boss fight, balancing loot is usually just a matter of having a gauntlet of treasure-poor challenges... if nothing else because the Evil PCs have done what PCs do: gather up all of the sweet loot :)

[Necroticplague]

Problem with bosses other than just 'damage race' (a.k.a, 'King Mook', 'HP Sponge', ect.) is the existence of martials. Martials can interact with bosses almost entirely through just dealing or taking damage to them within the mechanics of the game.

One type of boss fight I can think of is a 'Status Roulette', where the battle is a single-stroke battle if you know what the enemy is weak against, and it's basically a race to find their weakness before you're wiped (e.x.: 'possible to stone? What about expulsion? x-zone? Death? Poison? Zombie+pheonix down? Gravity?). However, the existence of saves complicates this (did he save, or is he immune?), as well as being something that martials (and usually skillmonkeys too) are fundamentally incapable of doing. So it's basically just a caster-only game while the martials just stand there and delay, which is boring as heck for the martials, and really makes the game's weak points glaring. Unless, of course, the weakness is 'HP damage', in which case, we're back to the damage race.

[Albertus Magus]

Guide to Alternate Goals in Combat (www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?454210-Thread-from-the-Wizard-Forums-Guide-to-Alternate-Goals-in-Combat).

I'll leave this here for inspiration.

[Deeds]

Guide to Alternate Goals in Combat (www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?454210-Thread-from-the-Wizard-Forums-Guide-to-Alternate-Goals-in-Combat).

I'll leave this here for inspiration.

Thanks for this link! I'll refer to this so I can mix it up.

On topic: I'm a big fan of spellcaster boss + his mooks and his environment advantage. The reverse is also true; big baddie plus his spellcasting buffers & dispellers.

[Sheogoroth]

A recent favorite of mine I like to call "The River and the Cannon"

You have an ENDLESS tide of weaker mobs that can be dispatched like nothing pouring in from behind the immobile Glass Cannon in the back, their sole purpose is to tie up the players while the cannon sets up his spells(typically just crazy channel abilities that fire off every 2-3 rounds- a huge gust of wind that pushes the party back or sends them flying, lightening bolts, mass enervate, waves of fire, dominate person for 3 rounds, all very flashy AOE moves that generally burn up some of his disposable minions)
You can adapt the cannon with some kind of area spell shield or partial concealment so the party needs to get close to fire off anything at him. Then the party either needs to push back the mob or have one guy make a break for it to get in close and do some damage while getting hacked by the incoming mob.

I also like "This Isn't Even my Final Form!" Boss fights, where the boss undergoes a transformation or radical tactic change at various health pool thresholds.