Two bosses, one fight

[Ryblackadder]

Once you reach a certain point in this game it feels like the bosses, as powerful as they are, can get a little too easy, especially if you’re like me and like to give magical items that specifically compliment how a PC plays. So I figured that these demon lord hunting dragon slaying adventurers should have something a little special thrown at them. So... what if I throw 2 bosses at them? Say for instance I throw 2 enemies with legendary actions, very high HP and super high stats such as a homebrewed Malcanthet and Pazuzu with CRs of 20 and 22 respectfully. Decently high damage output for Pazuzu with fast flying while Malcanthet keeps up the charm checks, poisoning, and even healing her son and empowering their minions. 7 level 20 characters with good team comp many lengendary weapons and good optimization, is this too much, just right, or am I being too soft?

[Unoriginal]

CR 20 means "is a Medium encounter for 4 lvl 20 adventurers".

4 lvl 20 adventurers would be able to fight your CR 20 demon lord 6 times in a day before starting to run low on ressources, in principle. Without any magic items.

So yeah, you're not going very hard at them.

I'd advise you to add a few additional powerful Demons.

Or give the Demon Lords a boatload of legendary magic items too.

[carrdrivesyou]

I once threw a group of encounters into one massive combat in 3.5. It was an elder Fang dragon, 12 paladins of Tiamat, 6 Dragon Shamans with homebrewed poison bites, 6 sorcerers throwing sonic spells, plus four favored souls of Tiamat healing the dragon. Also, the PCs were in the dragons lair which was the ruins of an old castle (large courtyard type).

They came out on top with only 1 PC death while they raised them the next day. It was designed as a TPK. It didn't happen. The moral of the story is to never doubt players or dice. They'll find a way to succeed. I promise.

[jas61292]

Bosses should almost always be run with allies. Whether that is another boss or just a bunch of minions, in is usually necessary to have a meaningful boss battle. Action economy is king, and while legendary and lair actions attempt to balance this, they fact is that it is almost impossible to find a solo monster that is actually a threat to a full party by itself, without going overboard.

I have not myself done too much with dual boss encounters, but that sounds like jut could be fun, especially if both have legendary actions.

[OzDragon]

It was designed as a TPK.


Any DM that purposely designs an encounter to be a TPK is no DM I want to play with.

[carrdrivesyou]

Any DM that purposely designs an encounter to be a TPK is no DM I want to play with.

Allow me to explain. The party in question here had a knack for walking over my encounters without so much as a second look. I had to constantly ramp up the CR of encounters until it just got ridiculous. So I threw together a cult of Tiamat in their way to make them think twice. They're smart players so I figured when they saw the encounter they would reconsider and maybe use hit and run tactics. But instead, they used a full frontal assault.

I mean, at level 14, they should not have the power to solve a CR30 something encounter. The cleric healed near to 1000 points of damage (no exaggeration).

They twisted my arm into running higher level campaigns (which I had not done previously), so the end result was this.

[Unoriginal]

Allow me to explain. The party in question here had a knack for walking over my encounters without so much as a second look. I had to constantly ramp up the CR of encounters until it just got ridiculous. So I threw together a cult of Tiamat in their way to make them think twice. They're smart players so I figured when they saw the encounter they would reconsider and maybe use hit and run tactics. But instead, they used a full frontal assault.

I mean, at level 14, they should not have the power to solve a CR30 something encounter. The cleric healed near to 1000 points of damage (no exaggeration).

They twisted my arm into running higher level campaigns (which I had not done previously), so the end result was this.

Let me guess, they were supra-optimized 3.5 characters with all sourcebooks allowed?

[DMThac0]

I have been ramping up the difficulty on my players, trying to figure out the threshold, where they are pushed to that razor's edge of life or death. It is a difficult thing, the game is geared to let them win.

A group of 6 lvl 5 characters; Barbarian, Sorc, Rogue, Bard, Druid and a Monk/Warlock. I had them fighting 4 cr 5 creatures, they beat them, had to fight a cr 7 creature. After the cr 7 creature was taken down to 50% HP they had to fight the 4 cr 5 creatures again. When they were done with the cr 5 creatures, they had to finish off the cr 7 creature. Twice during the fight they were allowed to heal to full. With all of that, they had 2 party members go down, no deaths, and still won.

You can push the players, you can challenge them, and you can throw a lot at them. Looking for a TPK fight isn't the answer, but you can sure as heck give them some really powerful encounters and they should have the resources to emerge victorious or get away.

[ImproperJustice]

I like the house rule where the boss gets to act at the end of each character’s turn.

Like Legendary actions, only that they work effectively.

Watch any action movie, boss bad guy always acts in reaction to the heroes. It’s awesome.

[Derpaligtr]

Once you reach a certain point in this game it feels like the bosses, as powerful as they are, can get a little too easy, especially if you’re like me and like to give magical items that specifically compliment how a PC plays. So I figured that these demon lord hunting dragon slaying adventurers should have something a little special thrown at them. So... what if I throw 2 bosses at them? Say for instance I throw 2 enemies with legendary actions, very high HP and super high stats such as a homebrewed Malcanthet and Pazuzu with CRs of 20 and 22 respectfully. Decently high damage output for Pazuzu with fast flying while Malcanthet keeps up the charm checks, poisoning, and even healing her son and empowering their minions. 7 level 20 characters with good team comp many lengendary weapons and good optimization, is this too much, just right, or am I being too soft?

D&D bosses are pretty lame, mechanically at the very least, and always have been. To spice things up you could totally modify them in the following way

Google: theangrygm: return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e

Side Note: The CR system that 5e gives you doesn't account for player ingenuity, so I wouldn't treat it as a rule, so much as a guideline when building encounters.

[Contrast]

4 lvl 20 adventurers would be able to fight your CR 20 demon lord 6 times in a day before starting to run low on ressources, in principle. Without any magic items.

^This.

Even adding in the CR20 and CR22, thats still only a hard encounter for 7 level 20 PCs. The DMG says you should expect them to be able to fight 6-8 medium to hard encounters a day. For clarity a deadly encounter isn't one expected to TPK the party but one which 'could be lethal for one or more players' (emphasis mine).

The CR system is never super reliable at the best of times and even more wonky at the extremes (which I'm pretty confident a party of 7 level 20 PCs counts as) but it does sound like you're softballing it a bit OP.

[carrdrivesyou]

Let me guess, they were supra-optimized 3.5 characters with all sourcebooks allowed?

More or less. I was trying to stretch my wings as a DM at the time. Learn to handle higher level stuff as it were. Most encounters they had by that level were designed to TPK them. anything less was a walk in the park for them. :smallsmile:

[Rowan Wolf]

Not sure if it is a term, but perhaps "white room tpk" might be the idea of on paper it should kill the whole party, but in practice doesn't take into account every possible outcome.

When we played 3rd many (many...) years ago we always worked with the idea that uptown a quarter of resources might be used in any encounter, and just hoped that was not a whole party member.

[Keravath]

I don't have much experience with higher levels in 5e. However, so far, from what I have seen the best way to make it hard on a party are spells. Monster AC tends to go up and player to hit goes up with proficiency. However, spell save DCs go up and the saving throws for most characters in most areas do not.

A rogue gets dex and int with wis at level 15. Their saving throws in other areas will be pathetic. The same goes for most character classes except a monk. Wis save spells work pretty well on a number of classes. If a paladin is around then either separate him from the rest by greater than 10' or focus on him first.

Have the attackers cast spells like faerie fire (works well against most str based fighters). Another good option is to have several casters stack a few hypnotic patterns on the party. Perhaps an opponent is a bard with an instrument of the bards which gives disadvantage on saves for spells causing charm effects and requiring a material component). The party usually won't have more than one or possibly two counterspells available depending on composition.

Anyway, the most challenging opponents are ones that are intelligently played and those can always be a threat to a party. However, the problem with spells like hypnotic pattern is the fundamental unpredictability of dice. Although unlikely, it is possible for everyone to fail their saves ... and then an intelligent group of monsters can kill the party off one by one ... just as the party typically does to their opponents.

There are lots of other spells like banishment ... or if you want to go to really high levels ... then maybe several of the opponents will have foresight cast on them or greater invisibility.

For example, why are all the bad guys in the one room? If I was a bad guy designing my lair and I could trust my followers then I would have several rooms surrounding the encounter area with followers who could cast spells. They would bless my side, bane the other, cast greater invisibility and haste, perhaps throw fireballs into the room ... all the while remaining relatively safe and out of sight (since most spells require being able to see the target to cast them). Consider them artillery or fire support. Some of them would be subtle sorcerers so that their spells could not be countered.

Anyway, to the OP, there is nothing wrong with having multiple hard opponents in any fight but the hardest opponents are always the ones that are played intelligently and use their capabilities and the fact that they are usually on home ground to the greatest effectiveness.

[ErHo]

Or one Terrasque and a halfling with a Deck of Many things and Staff of Magus