Can't think of a good monster for a boss-fight.

[Wampyr]

I'm currently running a campaign for three level eight players; a dragonborn vengeance paladin, a fire genasi wild-magic sorcerer , and a half-satyr lore bard (just using half-elf stats with a simple head butt attack). Already they have fought two battles styled after a typical video game boss-fight. In the first one they fought a homebrew abberation that wielded a great sword and smacked the party around with his tentacles (this was at level 1). Then they fought two mind flayers. One teleported around while the other stayed near the party for the most part, this was much more challenging (they were only level 6).

I'm looking for a boss that would be fun and challenging. For the future I have planned a boss fight one with an adult red dragon, then another with two young white dragons and a vampire, and while I'm tempted to use dragons for my upcoming boss battle, I think it would be repetitive with two more dragon encounters coming up.

To fit my campaign I would need a powerful monster that is sentient and fairly intelligent. Any ideas?

[Mith]

For one game I ran, the boss was "two staged" because the paladin saved his spell slots for only smites meaning that he carved through hit point pools quickly. This staging allowed him to burn the smites and still have the boss be standing besides inflating the the hp pool.

Idea: A body snatching parasite has taken control of a giant of proper stature for facing the party. The parasite wraps around the giant's body with tendrils. When the party faces the giant, the hybrid giant fights like a regular giant with perhaps a whip like ability with extra tendrils that Allow it to have more range control. When the host is killed, the parasite tears itself free. It has fewer hit points, but is is fast and focuses on grappling it's foes. Perhaps the one who slays the host is deemed to be a worthy host, and the parasite focuses on trying to possess them.

[coredump]

Death Slaad

Polymorphed to look like something else.

[The Goose]

Does it need to be a singular creature? Because if you make the sentient, fairly intelligent creature the mastermind for a later encounter, I think it's time for a bizarro mirror match with his minions.

Oathbreaker Paladin, Dragon Sorcerer, and a Satire Bard could be interesting.

Alternatively you could scale down a lich encounter. They fit the bill, and would be substantially different than a dragon encounter.

[Findulidas]

If they like complicated fights then you can do one with several monsters and one is actually the real master just puppettering the others, but it seems like hes not at all. Like a necromancer with several zombies and the necromancer is actually not the guy with the evil magic, its one of the zombies in the back pretending to be just a mook.

The necromancer himself could be an almost immortal skeletal puppet until you destroy the real guy. This is quite common in harder rpgs. I bet the group would blow some strong magical spells on the main guy until the figure out hes not the real target.

[Unoriginal]

To fit my campaign I would need a powerful monster that is sentient and fairly intelligent. Any ideas?

Can you tell us more about your campaign?

It'd be easier to find something thematically fitting that way.

[MrFahrenheit]

At level eight, you should aim for either:

A. A pair or trio of boss-styled monsters (a mind flayer arcanist + two mind flayers)
B. A solo boss of much higher CR (adult white dragon)
Or C. A solo boss at or around appropriate CR, but after denying the party long rest (if not short as well), so they're short on resources.

[Wampyr]

Can you tell us more about your campaign?

It'd be easier to find something thematically fitting that way.

Well, the boss fight is set to take place in the audience hall/throne room in Castle Never (I'm using the Forgotten Realms campaign setting). This boss is supposed to be a high ranking general (or some other leader role to that effect) appointed by a mysterious conqueror who took control of the Viking-esque isles in the west and most of the Northern Sword Coast. The conqueror is a former Neverember Lord who was murdered and striked from the history books for trying to usurp the throne from his father.

So to fit in the boss would have to be intelligent enough to be entrusted with the rule of a city and its surrounding lands, and ideally it would have to have some motivation for helping someone conquer the Sword Coast (but I'm in no way opposed to a figure who would want to take human lands for no other reason than to be evil).

[Wampyr]

For one game I ran, the boss was "two staged" because the paladin saved his spell slots for only smites meaning that he carved through hit point pools quickly. This staging allowed him to burn the smites and still have the boss be standing besides inflating the the hp pool.

Idea: A body snatching parasite has taken control of a giant of proper stature for facing the party. The parasite wraps around the giant's body with tendrils. When the party faces the giant, the hybrid giant fights like a regular giant with perhaps a whip like ability with extra tendrils that Allow it to have more range control. When the host is killed, the parasite tears itself free. It has fewer hit points, but is is fast and focuses on grappling it's foes. Perhaps the one who slays the host is deemed to be a worthy host, and the parasite focuses on trying to possess them.

I like this one. The party has encountered unexplained demonic monsters that appear as masses of rotting meat and tentacles. Sometimes in the form of blobs, sometimes stretching over the skeleton of some creature.

Since giants would have reason to want to retake the Sword Coast, the boss could be a cloud giant who serves the conqueror and purposefully allowed himself to be filled with the parasite. Then when he dies the thing bursts from his corpse and runs wild.


If they like complicated fights then you can do one with several monsters and one is actually the real master just puppettering the others, but it seems like hes not at all. Like a necromancer with several zombies and the necromancer is actually not the guy with the evil magic, its one of the zombies in the back pretending to be just a mook.

The necromancer himself could be an almost immortal skeletal puppet until you destroy the real guy. This is quite common in harder rpgs. I bet the group would blow some strong magical spells on the main guy until the figure out hes not the real target.

That would be a fun one. Might be hard to stifle my laughter as the party focuses a dressed up mook only to realize that they've wasted everything on the cannon fodder.

[Unoriginal]

Well, the boss fight is set to take place in the audience hall/throne room in Castle Never (I'm using the Forgotten Realms campaign setting). This boss is supposed to be a high ranking general (or some other leader role to that effect) appointed by a mysterious conqueror who took control of the Viking-esque isles in the west and most of the Northern Sword Coast. The conqueror is a former Neverember Lord who was murdered and striked from the history books for trying to usurp the throne from his father.

So to fit in the boss would have to be intelligent enough to be entrusted with the rule of a city and its surrounding lands, and ideally it would have to have some motivation for helping someone conquer the Sword Coast (but I'm in no way opposed to a figure who would want to take human lands for no other reason than to be evil).

Why not a vampire who has captured a vampire hunter and use them as power battery? If freed, the hunter helps the PCs.

[Beechgnome]

Well, the boss fight is set to take place in the audience hall/throne room in Castle Never (I'm using the Forgotten Realms campaign setting). This boss is supposed to be a high ranking general (or some other leader role to that effect) appointed by a mysterious conqueror who took control of the Viking-esque isles in the west and most of the Northern Sword Coast. The conqueror is a former Neverember Lord who was murdered and striked from the history books for trying to usurp the throne from his father.

So to fit in the boss would have to be intelligent enough to be entrusted with the rule of a city and its surrounding lands, and ideally it would have to have some motivation for helping someone conquer the Sword Coast (but I'm in no way opposed to a figure who would want to take human lands for no other reason than to be evil).

Some ideas:

a Githyanki Knight with Some warriors and, just to throw the party in terror, a trained intellect devourer or two.

A chained devil disguised as a human. When party enters, there are decorations hanging from walls... actually chains under illusion. He can have a few bearded devil troops and imps to mess around with party while he chains em up.

A medusa warrior... give him a few battlemaster maneuvers and better strength and have him wear a mask to hide his true nature until the fight begins. When that happens, some stone gargoyles swoop down to harry the party.

[Arcangel4774]

Mechanically, he could have an ability that let's him extend his will to other sets of armor. You could give him a large pool of health with a relatively low offensive capability. Then, he can sacrifice that health and give it to the new pieces of armor he extends his will to. It would be an interesting fight if he could do this mid-battle and change the dynamic of the battle multiple times.

If you like this idea and borrowing video game mechanics look at the Deacons of the Deep bossfight from Dark Souls. Basically an infinite mob of slow, weak, zombies that can be easily sloughtered, but only gives damage to the boss when the bosses spirit, if you will, is on the particular zombie your hitting.

[DireSickFish]

Blackguard in Volo's Guide To Monsters is CR8. Which should be fairly easy for them to beat at a medium challenge. Give him a few Thugs as mook fodder to up the challenge. But as the fight goes on explain that they are taking literal chunks out of the Blackguard. Visible bones and he keeps on fighting. Once he drops to 0 have his body slump to the floor in an unnatural position with less meat tissue to keep him in place.

Then his bones spring out of him in a new monstrous form. Use a Bone Devil CR9 and have him mock them with his demonic power as he renews the fight.

If you really want to extend the threat if not the fight have it look like a "mist" is traveling to the bodies of one of the thugs. And the bones are starting to crack into the Bone Devil again. Have your players think up a solution on how to stop him from body hopping to new corpses/bodies. Perhaps by destroying the corpses.

Then later int he game you can have him show up again. they only thought they defeated him because he didn't jump to anyone int hat room. He jumped into a living host and hates that the party ruined so much of his work.

[Wampyr]

Why not a vampire who has captured a vampire hunter and use them as power battery? If freed, the hunter helps the PCs.

I like this idea but sadly, I've reserved a fight with a vampire for later in the game.


Some ideas:

a Githyanki Knight with Some warriors and, just to throw the party in terror, a trained intellect devourer or two.

A chained devil disguised as a human. When party enters, there are decorations hanging from walls... actually chains under illusion. He can have a few bearded devil troops and imps to mess around with party while he chains em up.

A medusa warrior... give him a few battlemaster maneuvers and better strength and have him wear a mask to hide his true nature until the fight begins. When that happens, some stone gargoyles swoop down to harry the party.

These are so good. I especially like the chain devil in disguise; it would make a nice surprise.


If you like this idea and borrowing video game mechanics look at the Deacons of the Deep bossfight from Dark Souls. Basically an infinite mob of slow, weak, zombies that can be easily sloughtered, but only gives damage to the boss when the bosses spirit, if you will, is on the particular zombie your hitting.

It would be an interesting encounter but in Dark Souls I remember the fight being slow going and low risk.


Blackguard in Volo's Guide To Monsters is CR8. Which should be fairly easy for them to beat at a medium challenge. Give him a few Thugs as mook fodder to up the challenge. But as the fight goes on explain that they are taking literal chunks out of the Blackguard. Visible bones and he keeps on fighting. Once he drops to 0 have his body slump to the floor in an unnatural position with less meat tissue to keep him in place.

Then his bones spring out of him in a new monstrous form. Use a Bone Devil CR9 and have him mock them with his demonic power as he renews the fight.

If you really want to extend the threat if not the fight have it look like a "mist" is traveling to the bodies of one of the thugs. And the bones are starting to crack into the Bone Devil again. Have your players think up a solution on how to stop him from body hopping to new corpses/bodies. Perhaps by destroying the corpses.

Then later int he game you can have him show up again. they only thought they defeated him because he didn't jump to anyone int hat room. He jumped into a living host and hates that the party ruined so much of his work.

Wow that would work really well. There's a subplot involving the paladin in the party where he was sort of excommunicated unjustly by his order. I could have the blackguard be part of the paladin's order to evolve the story a bit more. And the recurring villain idea is always a welcome element in a campaign.