A new way to track Boss hit points?

[Oramac]

Ok, playground, I've been toying with this idea for a little while and looking for feedback.

Instead of just tracking Boss monster hit points as normal in the MM, I'm thinking of changing it to track rounds of combat, plus X% of the monster's max hit points.

Typically, I know I want the boss to feel epic and dangerous. That doesn't work so well when the party gets super lucky on crits and burns through a boss's total HP in 2-3 rounds.

Instead, I'm going to say a particular boss will live for X rounds plus Y hit points. For example, I might say an ancient dragon would live for 5 rounds plus 150 hit points.

This way, the boss has plenty of time to be epic, and still gives the players a good achievable possibility of victory.

Obviously, the actual number of rounds and hit points can change, but this is an example.

Also, this would only be for story-related monsters. Not every random monster they encounter.

Thoughts?

[UrielAwakened]

D&D has pretty much always been really bad at cinematic boss fights. 4e came the closest to getting it right I think.

There are various attempts at things like multiple stages and whatnot floating around but I've never liked any of them. I personally have taken to maximizing the hit dice for any bosses I use just to give them some additional survivability. This is basically a doubling of its hit points. I don't increase the CR however, it's still worth the same XP as it would have been with its normal hit points. This coupled with legendary actions and resistances is a bit of a workable solution IMO.

How do you feel about an escalation die? It's a mechanic from 13th age. It's a value that increases from 1-6 for each round of combat. PCs get a bonus to their attacks (and I would presume saving throw DCs in 5e) equal to the escalation die.

You could start all of your bosses with a bonus to AC and saves (maybe +3 or +4? Maybe more for harder bosses that you want to last longer?) and then as the escalation die ticks up, it becomes easier for your PCs to hit it.

This helps replicate a cinematic fight without screwing with monster math too much.

[hymer]

I'm wondering what you'd tell your players, and how they'd react. They know? Five rounds spent Dodging, BCing, and running away. Hardly cool, and not a little artificial. They don't know? Badly screws over the people who burst, and generally messes with people who spend resources on attacking.

I'd suggest looking into ways for monsters to survive their defeats instead. If the showdown wasn't sufficiently dramatic, you can put on another one later in the campaign, and this time add something extra to the fight. This also allows the players the enjoyment of being lucky or good.

[Kane0]

I do things the other way around occasionally. When a 'boss' monster gets reduced to 0 HP i'll have it live on for another turn or two for some extra oomph and cinematic effect before it diesm usually noting it as 'bloodied' and giving advantage/disadvantage as appropriate for a last stand or being on the ropes. Assuming max or near max HP instead of the average given in the MM also helps.

[Anonymouswizard]

My first thought is that it's not great, it's literally going against the basics of entertaining encounter design, but that's me being melodramatic.

The short answer is, sometimes blowing through a boss's hp in one or two rounds does feel epic. At the very least it becomes 'that time we totally wasted the final encounter'.

But really the simple way to make boss encounters more exciting is to include more than the boss. You get to the Dragon King's throne room and you see the ancient wyrm himself sitting on his throne of adamantium, but there's also his court vizier with access to fifth level spells, some of his courtiers (a bunch of high level lizardmen, kobolds, and half-dragons), and a whole lot of filler mooks. At which point the PC's hirelings hold the line against the mooks while the PCs bound up to the king's throne to battle the great dragon and his allies in a mighty battle of spells and steel. The courtier's bodyguards (who exist to be collateral damage) are downed by a fireball from the wizard before the king unleashes his mighty breath weapon, and then freezes in terror as the PCs enact their plan, with the bard turning him into a demon before the fighter uses this sword of demon slaying to kill him in one round.

[UrielAwakened]

Sometimes you just don't want a fight to be a whole bunch of things.

You want to be able to make epic-feeling creatures capable of taking on an entire party and having a chance of winning.

Too many people dismiss this very real problem with 5e encounter design: It's just not easy to make one monster a threat within the rules of the game without making it worth way too much XP according to the math. If you don't like the idea of an escalation die, here's my solution:



Pick a monster you like. Up its size if its not a humanoid.
Give it three spells you think are cool. Put them on a die roll recharge system (4-6 depending on how good the spells are each).
Give it legendary actions and legendary resistances. One action should be a basic attack. One should be one of its spells you gave it. One should be some kind of movement.
Give it 2x-4x times as much HP.
Keep it the same CR.


So for instance: The terrifying Frost Chimera:

228 HP
Huge Monstosity

Give it Ray of Frost (at-will, fires from all three heads), Sleet Storm (rechage 5-6), and Cone of Cold (recharge 6). Replace its breath weapon with a cold-damaging one while you're at it. Give it 3 legendary resistances, and 3 legendary actions: A bite, a ray of frost volley (2 points, all 3 heads), and a leaping flight that lets it jump 50 feet away.

CR 6 boss. Done.

[Jama7301]

I've heard people say that one of the main issues with Solo monsters is it's action economy, and how it gets out-actioned by the PCs. I wonder if giving it an extra turn per round for every 2 or 3 PCs would affect that. Make rechargable abilities only trigger once per round, rather than turn, but it may help with the action deficiency.

Then again, this flies in the face of normal encounter design, and would probably throw CR way off too.

[UrielAwakened]

I've heard people say that one of the main issues with Solo monsters is it's action economy, and how it gets out-actioned by the PCs. I wonder if giving it an extra turn per round for every 2 or 3 PCs would affect that. Make rechargable abilities only trigger once per round, rather than turn, but it may help with the action deficiency.

Then again, this flies in the face of normal encounter design, and would probably throw CR way off too.

Normal encounter design is already a mess of bad math. Give it legendary action attacks and it's usually able to keep up.

[MrStabby]

I find that a combination of magic items and helpful environment is a big winner.

Take an efreet as a bad guy. Lets add a magic item appropriate for an Evil dude who has survived to terrify the material plane - a ring of resistance to radiant damage is pretty good for that. Put him in a blisteringly hot forge: at the start of each player's turn make a con save or take d6 fire damage (terrifying for PCs that fall unconscious and pretty rough for concentration spells)

Power him up a little: +1 to proficiency bonus and +2 to Str and maybe 20 HP but importantly add a little extra spell power to add flexibility and to help make him more resistant to cheesy tricks. I would add misty step and shield as a spell option (in the 3 times per day), and bump the 1/day spells to twice per day.

Finally add legendary actions and saves.

Misty step helps prevent some cheese, legendary saves and shield make him last a bit longer whilst at the same time the PCs see resources being depleted (nova can still happen, just after these resources have gone, so a little later on in the fight). Legendary actions makes offensive power more comparable to the party.

The environment is important though as it also applies pressure to the PCs; they cannot just play things defensively either. They need to burn through the Efreet's defences and it is a tough act for them.

Anyway, this is how I design boss encounters. It does work pretty well. Also really importantly is to not throw the boss at the PCs at the start of the day. It is tough to have a fight with the party at full strength, especially if you have telegraphed that there is no threat likely to attack them after the boss either.

[Oramac]

Sometimes you just don't want a fight to be a whole bunch of things.

You want to be able to make epic-feeling creatures capable of taking on an entire party and having a chance of winning.

Too many people dismiss this very real problem with 5e encounter design: It's just not easy to make one monster a threat within the rules of the game without making it worth way too much XP according to the math.

snip

Yup. This. Exactly this.

I'm trying to make the Big Bad Guy be the Big Bad GUY. Not the big bad group-of-guys.

Good idea UrielAwakened!


snip

Anyway, this is how I design boss encounters. It does work pretty well. Also really importantly is to not throw the boss at the PCs at the start of the day. It is tough to have a fight with the party at full strength, especially if you have telegraphed that there is no threat likely to attack them after the boss either.

Also good ideas MrStabby. Thank you!

Environment is one thing I'm not very good at using in general. I definitely need to practice that.

[Eric Diaz]

Some things I've tried or considered:

- Give monsters "death saving throws" but let them take actions until they die. Describe monsters as near dead or maybe even mutilated, etc; each attack means one failed save as usual, etc.
- Add some legendary actions to monster.
- Give 1d4 reactions per round, allowing an attack as a reaction.

[Unoriginal]

Some pieces of advice I can tell you, Oramac:

1. Don't script your Boss Fight too much. Saying "Bad Guy will like X number of rounds no matter what" is a good way of making the players feel useless as you're removing their agency to make them pawns in what you think should happen.

2. If you think that the Boss will struggle because they're alone vs many PCs, give your Boss Legendary actions that will allow them to act more the more there is people involved (as legendary actions are at the end of a PC's turn).

Legendary actions, even if you want to limit them to attacks, will make the Boss much more able to deal with multiple opponents.

3. In case you think your Boss still need more "oomph", give them Lair actions. Not only it'll allow the Boss to affect a lot of people at once, if you make some of the Lair action be stuff that hinder the PCs' movements or combat options, you'll have a much easier time controlling the battlefield.

4. If you still think the Boss is too fragile, you can give them Legendary Resistance a few time per day and some level of Regeneration or another way to re-gain HPs (like a Lair or Legendary action).

[Sigreid]

IMO this is a terrible idea. It removes a good chunk of the value of character planning and decision making. If it works for your table, fine. I'd be ticked.

[UrielAwakened]

PCs don't need to be rewarded 100% of the time.

Challenge and adversity and setbacks are important too.

I agree that having an arbitrary round limit isn't the best solution but having bosses that PCs can't just brute-force their way through or nova or SoD is a great idea.

Also if I were you I would scale number of legendary actions if you have more than 5 PCs.

A boss should get 1 more legendary action for each PC above 5. So if your party is 6, it has 4 actions, 7 it gets 5, etc...

Honestly though just straight-up doubling its hit points is almost necessary if you have anyone at all that can nova.

[clash]

An alternative for survival to just giving it more hit points is to give it shields kinda like a prismatic wall. Where certain effects or damage types destroy each shield but do nothing to the next one. That controls how much damage they can do it at once without taking the player agency out of the picture.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've only done something similar once. I had a boss that, while they had a fixed # of hitpoints, couldn't be reduced below 1 HP until the ritual powering him was destroyed (which took several rounds, as they had to remove magical spikes from poor souls). One of the 3 parties that faced him took quite a while to figure it out--I think he took something like 2.5x his total HP in damage. Of course, another managed to defeat him without combat--if they were careful they could end the ritual without waking him up.

As a player, I'd be irritated with a "You can't kill this for N rounds" thing. I agree that for solos you need legendary actions and preferably lair actions, as well as high HP and ideally some way to escape from control effects (otherwise a monk with stunning strike will lock them down hard).

[Unoriginal]

PCs don't need to be rewarded 100% of the time.

Challenge and adversity and setbacks are important too.

I agree that having an arbitrary round limit isn't the best solution but having bosses that PCs can't just brute-force their way through or nova or SoD is a great idea.

It's not a question of PCs being rewarded or not, or of challenges and setbacks. Getting your butt kicked by a strong Boss can be amazing.

The point is that with the method OP proposed, the Boss is not threatening because they're tough or awesome, they're just arbitrarily impossible to defeat for X number of rounds because DM say so.

There is nothing epic about the DM going "the PCs' actions do nothing because my NPC couldn't show off". It's basic railroading, just like saying "and the assassin kills the king and runs away, you can't do anything. Yes, even those of you who are super-fast/have ranged options."

If you don't want PCs to brute-force something, then you could do a social encounter against a vastly more powerful being who *is more than likely* to wreck them in a fight if it starts, or make it a puzzle boss. For exemple, the Boss is immune to X number of things until you destroy the thing in the boss room that grant them this immunity ("destroy the Effrit statue to remove the boss's fire immunity", or the like).

[pwykersotz]

If you are going to implement this, I would say that reversing your process is a better way. Having a boss that lives 3 rounds past the 150 hit points is far more interesting.

But I'm with the others here, having an arbitrary round number is pretty harsh. Other options could include Damage Thresholds for tanky enemies (you have to deal X damage or more to deal any damage at all), limit to the number of HP damage you can deal every round (the boss with 150hp can't take more than 50 per round).

Or you could turn the paradigm on its head. Make the boss a force where if you don't deal 50 damage to him every round, he can unleash MUCH more powerful effects. Have the key to beating him be to figure out what in the battlefield is giving him these powers and taking out that effect. There's lots of options.

Personally, I seldom use any of these. If the players aren't meant to kill a boss, they are often encountering an illusion or a projection. If they are, then I let the system do its work. It's always worked out okay for me.

[Sigreid]

PCs don't need to be rewarded 100% of the time.

Challenge and adversity and setbacks are important too.

I agree that having an arbitrary round limit isn't the best solution but having bosses that PCs can't just brute-force their way through or nova or SoD is a great idea.

Also if I were you I would scale number of legendary actions if you have more than 5 PCs.

A boss should get 1 more legendary action for each PC above 5. So if your party is 6, it has 4 actions, 7 it gets 5, etc...

Honestly though just straight-up doubling its hit points is almost necessary if you have anyone at all that can nova.

I agree with everything you've said here. Regeneration, resistances and a battle field pre-prepared to favor the boss can also work. I just think the OP's idea of minimum rounds to defeat is artificial and going to lead to players feeling like "why bother coming up with a plan". Plans shouldn't always work, but they shouldn't just be negated either.

[Eric Diaz]

What about monster PARTS?

After losing X HP they lose a limb, head, etc, and maybe their damage per round gets diminished accordingly. (EDIT: say, claw/claw/bite becomes claw/bite after you chop off an arm... just don't let this turn into Monty Python).

It works well with beholders. (EDIT: also, dragon tails, two-headed monsters, partially dismembered undead, etc).

Maybe not everyone will appreciate the de-escalation, but I think it is a good idea; gives some spotlight to non-nova PCs, since no one will spend all resources on a half-dead monster.

At the same time, the de-escalation avoids a TPK, while letting the monster display all cool tricks.

Of course, this shouldn't last for several rounds.

EDIT: another cool idea is giving bosses a magical shield or artifact that will give the boss some strong defenses until broken.

[UrielAwakened]

What about monster PARTS?

After losing X HP they lose a limb, head, etc, and maybe their damage per round gets diminished accordingly.

It works well with beholders.

Maybe not everyone will appreciate the de-escalation, but I think it is a good idea; gives some spotlight to non-nova PCs, since no one will spend all resources on a half-dead monster.

At the same time, the de-escalation avoids a TPK, while letting the monster display all cool tricks.

Of course, this shouldn't last for several rounds.

I tried this. They're almost always better off just focusing on the part that kills the monster fastest. And it doesn't really work as an all-purpose approach, really only the biggest monsters.

And yeah like you said, de-escalating a fight is sort of the opposite energy you want to inject into a longer battle. You want to escalate things as it goes, not de-escalate them.

[Eric Diaz]

I tried this. They're almost always better off just focusing on the part that kills the monster fastest. And it doesn't really work as an all-purpose approach, really only the biggest monsters.

And yeah like you said, de-escalating a fight is sort of the opposite energy you want to inject into a longer battle. You want to escalate things as it goes, not de-escalate them.

Yeah, I agree it works better for some monsters than other. De-escalation is not always ideal, specially in a longer battle, but might work for the OP to turn a shorter battle somewhat longer without amking it much harder.

Sorry for the ninja edit BTW.

[Unoriginal]

You could also make the Boss count as two of the fights of the day. Once they reach 0 HP, give them a second phase with new HPs and powers.

[Sigreid]

You could also make the Boss count as two of the fights of the day. Once they reach 0 HP, give them a second phase with new HPs and powers.

A boss that is a hive mind of a mirror of soul trapping. Defeat one and the next soul is released to fulfill it's bargain with the mirror.

[Oramac]

You could also make the Boss count as two of the fights of the day. Once they reach 0 HP, give them a second phase with new HPs and powers.

I'm actually sort of already doing this. The boss in question has 2 hit point thresholds built in.

At half hit points, he uses a custom ability called Chaotic Shuffle, where he moves up to 4 creatures 30 feet in any direction.

At 1/4 hit points, he enrages, immediately attacking whichever creature reduced him below the threshold and gaining a bonus to hit and damage (I'll narrate this accordingly so the PC's know about it).

[Oramac]

Thanks for all the ideas everyone!! I think this is going to be a truly epic boss fight.

[Sjappo]

Just to throw in my 2 CP. I think it is a very bad idea. PCs will notice it's the final encounter and nova for all they're worth. Which does absolutely nothing since the boss has plot armour. I would be royally pissed off as a player if I found out.

What I did once, based on (http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/) AngryGM's (http://theangrygm.com/elemental-boogaloo/) advice (http://theangrygm.com/oh-no-more-bosses-oozes-slimes-and-a-duplicating-wizard/), is give the boss more than 1 HP-pool and more than 1 initiative tick. After 1 HP-pool is depleted one initiative tick disappears. That way they're fighting one monster that is really 3 monsters. I did this with Mormesk the Wraith from LMoP and added a cinematic event when each HP-pool was depleted and changed the Mormesk's fighting style:

HP-pool 1: Mormesk as Wraith. Acted on 3 counts. Attacks in melee with claws.
Pool 1 depleted: Mormesk does a whirlwind pushing everyone 5 ft away and Mormesk takes flight through the roof.
HP-pool 2: Mormesk as flying wraith. Acts on 2 counts. Attacks with "Eldritch Blast" kinda power and fly-by attacks.
Pool 2 depleted: Mormesk is thrown from the air onto a ledge and transforms back into a mortal wizard
HP-pool 3: Mormesk as wizard. Acts on 1 count. Attacks with AoE spells.
Pool 3 depleted: death.

It was a pretty cool fight, if I say so myself.

[Edit] typo's.

[Kane0]

I like to call that the Babushka Boss. My favourite example is: Buffed BBEG (eg polymorph) > BBEG in shell (eg armor/golem > BBEG > Zombie BBEG > Skeletal BBEG > Ghostly BBEG

[Oramac]

What I did once, based on (http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/) AngryGM's (http://theangrygm.com/elemental-boogaloo/) advice (http://theangrygm.com/oh-no-more-bosses-oozes-slimes-and-a-duplicating-wizard/), is give the boss more than 1 HP-pool and more than 1 initiative tick.

SNIP

That's a pretty cool idea!

[UrielAwakened]

The problem with his idea is it loses actions and turns as you fight it.

Which, again, you want a boss fight to be hectic and climactic up until the end, not become an inevitable slog.

[Sigreid]

The problem with his idea is it loses actions and turns as you fight it.

Which, again, you want a boss fight to be hectic and climactic up until the end, not become an inevitable slog.

Could go the other way. Boss gets more actions and hits harder the closer it gets to death. In essence becoming more reckless and dangerous as it becomes more desperate.

[Vogie]

Another options is give your self options for a reverse-enrage that isn't at all apparent.

The evil Dragon will AutoReanimate if killed within the first 5 rounds... but if you kill it after those five rounds, no reanimation.

The Hydra regrows heads for the first 5 rounds, then stops afterwords.

et cetera.

This could be tied to something external, like a ritual, or an object in the room that, as a scripted spot in the fight, the BBEG stops or destroys. Or it can be something that you just have under the BBEG sheet, and you keep track of, in case the party gets really lucky, or otherwise cheeses the encounter in a way you didn't expect.