Videogamey bosses

[Resileaf]

Greetings playgrounders,

Another boring day at work, another thread. Today, I'd like to ask what people's opinions are on disregarding the rules of normal play during boss fights to make them more similar to things you might see in a videogame.

To give context, in my first Pathfinder campaign (which took place in the Warcraft setting), the final boss was a lich that served demon lords and was specialized in summoning. Rather than make a generic fight against a spellcaster (the kind of fight that ends in a round or two), I turned the fight into what I would call a dungeon or raid boss in World of Warcraft. I gave it a huge boost in HP (2000 total), I divided the fight into three phases, each phase making it stronger and changing the terrain, gave it standard contractual boss immunities (no one-shotting or stun-locking this boss) and gave it custom spells and abilities that he used randomly at each turn (generally AoE spells that hit in specific patterns), as well as normal attacks that could be used at the same time.

My players received that battle extremely well, thought it was incredible and creative, so for this specific game, it was a complete success and I've reused the concept of videogame bosses in future campaigns.
But what about you guys? Does the concept of ignoring the rules and doing something so unusual appeal to you? Does it go against the spirit of the game in that it prevents a team from using non-damage spells to win an encounter? Is it too videogamey at all? Would you try it?

[Deophaun]

This is exactly what I like about 4e, because it encourages that kind of monster design.

3.P is more tricky, as the game is structured so that PCs are monsters, meaning whatever the monsters can do, the PCs should be able to do as well. On the most basic level, it means that if you have the villain cast a spell or you introduce a custom monster, the party can learn to cast that spell or shapechange into that monster; the things that you've just thrown at them to challenge them now become part of their toolbox. And if you don't let them do that, then you're running against the expectations of the system. Which is where I decide to run a 4e game instead.

[DeTess]

In certain types of games (those running 'combat as sport'), I'd certainly enjoy such an encounter, provided its immunities where well-telegraphed. It really depends on the kind of game though. Such a boss would have no place in a high-lethality black trenchcoat-style shadowrun game, for example.

I'd imagine designing a boss like this also takes a lot of work to get right.

[Resileaf]

In certain types of games (those running 'combat as sport'), I'd certainly enjoy such an encounter, provided its immunities where well-telegraphed. It really depends on the kind of game though. Such a boss would have no place in a high-lethality black trenchcoat-style shadowrun game, for example.

I'd imagine designing a boss like this also takes a lot of work to get right.

Yes and no. Amusingly, I had to make the stats in a hurry because nobody had told me we'd be having a session the day it happened. However, I had been thinking about it for a long while, so I very much knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.
I knew what my players could do as damage, I knew what they could survive, I knew their healing capabilities and resistences. I also knew that for this boss, all of their spells, class abilities and other daily powers would be recharged at the beginning.

In the end, a single player died, on the final round of the battle, which is incredibly fitting and made for an awesome finale.

[Psyren]

This is exactly what I like about 4e, because it encourages that kind of monster design.

3.P is more tricky, as the game is structured so that PCs are monsters, meaning whatever the monsters can do, the PCs should be able to do as well. On the most basic level, it means that if you have the villain cast a spell or you introduce a custom monster, the party can learn to cast that spell or shapechange into that monster; the things that you've just thrown at them to challenge them now become part of their toolbox. And if you don't let them do that, then you're running against the expectations of the system. Which is where I decide to run a 4e game instead.

For the most part this is true, but there are plenty of ways to give bosses abilities that players can't access. Templates are the main one, but you can also hand your boss a (non-transferable) artifact, give them epic/mythic powers in an otherwise non-mythic campaign, or even custom feats with prereqs that the PCs can't hope to meet (like being High Priest or otherwise Chosen by the Bigger Bad evil deity that's masterminding the campaign's conflict.)

Hell, even in OotS, Xykon is throwing around custom spells and magic items. Is it unfair, absolutely, and it should be.

[Cespenar]

I don't like to do too many "videogamey" stuff unless there can be a good in-game explanation for the move.

For example, in a 3.5 game, I made a boss hold out his Barbarian Rage until he was at half HP. Mechanically a "nerf", but thematically, it makes sense.

[Telonius]

The "end boss" of the Shackled City campaign is a bit like that. He switches back and forth between two forms, and the players have to get both forms down to zero HP to beat him.

[Resileaf]

For the most part this is true, but there are plenty of ways to give bosses abilities that players can't access. Templates are the main one, but you can also hand your boss a (non-transferable) artifact, give them epic/mythic powers in an otherwise non-mythic campaign, or even custom feats with prereqs that the PCs can't hope to meet (like being High Priest or otherwise Chosen by the Bigger Bad evil deity that's masterminding the campaign's conflict.)

Hell, even in OotS, Xykon is throwing around custom spells and magic items. Is it unfair, absolutely, and it should be.

To build on that, the lich's empowered spells all came from its demon masters, and demonic magic in the Warcraft setting is inherently corruptive and its mere use would bump a character towards the evil lane. So for one, the power wouldn't be possible to copy, and if they were, the characters would have to betray their alignment to use them (and some of them were paladins, so no way for that to work).

[JeenLeen]

My players received that battle extremely well, thought it was incredible and creative, so for this specific game, it was a complete success and I've reused the concept of videogame bosses in future campaigns.
But what about you guys? Does the concept of ignoring the rules and doing something so unusual appeal to you? Does it go against the spirit of the game in that it prevents a team from using non-damage spells to win an encounter? Is it too videogamey at all? Would you try it?

I think it's cool as long as your players are cool with it. Either they trust you enough as a DM to know something odd has a good reason behind it AND/OR they know in advance some things are not going by the rules. The latter especially in a game that's very crunchy, like D&D.
Ideally, both trust and player explicit okayness.

I tried a boss like this one in a Pathfinder game. It was a Worm That Walks summoner, with the archetype that wears its eidolon. Phase 1 was to be it in its eidolon, Phase 2 without when it's true form was revealed.
Sadly (?), one of the PCs had a shirt that gave it 2 full actions and was a really good rogue. Won initiative and full attacked well enough to blow past all the Phase I HP. It was still cool, if not what I intended.

In another game, where I wasn't DM, homebrew, roughly modeled on nWoD. The final boss had a summoning spell that let it summon (essentially) super-zombies. We could have either focused on the zombies first or the boss first, so it gave a nice tactical choice. Take out the minions so less damage per round, or take out the boss so the heavy-hitter is gone faster. I think it worked very well. (There would have also been a timer until backup arrived, but we had a Silence spell take out the way of alerting the backup anything was happening. The DM was nice enough to award our creative thinking.)

EDIT: I think D&D 5e is supposed to do this well with the extra actions some bosses get. I haven't played any game that got that far yet. Really, some way so that action economy doesn't make the fight too easy.

I also recall a Mage game finale, where we first had to break through the boss's shield before we could hurt him directly. We had a choice of 2-3 types of shield to try to dissolve, so it also involved some neat tactical choices. (E.g., we could try to undo his Life Shield to do Life damage, but then we'd need to drop our Life shields. Or do we try to unweave his far stronger Kinetic Energy Shield so we can just stab him?)

[kraitmarais]

I don’t really think that’s “videogamey,” it’s how bosses are supposed to be experienced if the encounter is well-designed. You don’t need to artificially inflate their hit points, you just make victory harder to achieve until certain challenges are overcome.

[RazorChain]

It works well in a videogamey systems I guess or superhero games.

I personally hate it.

[Mordaedil]

It's worth noting that most video games took their boss designs from D&D in the first place, so adopting it back is kind of a strange concept. Especially something like a raid dungeon, where the players are almost expected to die or go in force of 20 people to take down one monster. I don't even know how you'd work that into a table encounter with fewer people.

[Blacky the Blackball]

If that's what your players enjoy, then go for it.

Personally, I dislike the whole concept of the "boss fight" and find it too cliched and videogamey even without special mechanics. I prefer to end adventures and campaigns in other ways if possible.

[HighWater]

I'm going to join the "If your group enjoys it, go nuts, but it's not for me"-crowd.

I find it very annoying when videogames grant immunities and other "nobody can do this"-abilities to boss entities pure and simple because they have the "Boss" modifier... So having this "alternate mechanics"-mechanic back-ported to the tabletop is not really for me!

Now if an opponent has special qualities because they are, say, a DRAGON and that's specific to that type, I'm cool with that... But a dragon doesn't have to be a boss. :smallwink:

[Nifft]

Greetings playgrounders,

Another boring day at work, another thread. Today, I'd like to ask what people's opinions are on disregarding the rules of normal play during boss fights to make them more similar to things you might see in a videogame.

To give context, in my first Pathfinder campaign (which took place in the Warcraft setting), the final boss was a lich that served demon lords and was specialized in summoning. Rather than make a generic fight against a spellcaster (the kind of fight that ends in a round or two), I turned the fight into what I would call a dungeon or raid boss in World of Warcraft. I gave it a huge boost in HP (2000 total), I divided the fight into three phases, each phase making it stronger and changing the terrain, gave it standard contractual boss immunities (no one-shotting or stun-locking this boss) and gave it custom spells and abilities that he used randomly at each turn (generally AoE spells that hit in specific patterns), as well as normal attacks that could be used at the same time.

My players received that battle extremely well, thought it was incredible and creative, so for this specific game, it was a complete success and I've reused the concept of videogame bosses in future campaigns.
But what about you guys? Does the concept of ignoring the rules and doing something so unusual appeal to you? Does it go against the spirit of the game in that it prevents a team from using non-damage spells to win an encounter? Is it too videogamey at all? Would you try it?
1 - You're the DM. You're not ignoring the rules, you're writing them.

2 - The flow of battle you describe sounds great, though I would probably use different techniques. You inflate base HP; I'd give the lich a customized False Life spell which grants a huge batch of temporary HP, and customized Clone + Magic Jar and Astral Projection effects -- they'd be fighting through a small army of false bodies, rather than dealing 2k HP to one body.

3 - The terrain changes sound great. In addition to changing the terrain of one encounter area, consider having an encounter span several different areas -- either a running battle, or a chase, or combat on a moving platform.

4 - Preset area attack patterns are sensible in video games where you're allowed to re-play a scenario several times, so you can learn the pattern and how to avoid it. I probably wouldn't use that for a table-top fight, not unless the effect area were telegraphed somehow -- and if it's telegraphed, then there's no need for the preset pattern. Just telegraph the attacks onto the terrain, either randomly or maliciously.


Overall it sounds like you took a tool from one media and applied it to another, and it was successful. That's awesome. I think you could probably get the same (or better) effect by modifying a few specifics, but there's no urgent need to make changes if what you're doing continues to work.

Do be careful of trigger words like "video game" on the forums.

[Maelynn]

4 - Preset area attack patterns are sensible in video games where you're allowed to re-play a scenario several times, so you can learn the pattern and how to avoid it. I probably wouldn't use that for a table-top fight, not unless the effect area were telegraphed somehow -- and if it's telegraphed, then there's no need for the preset pattern. Just telegraph the attacks onto the terrain, either randomly or maliciously.

This. A repeating AoE pattern is so incredibly boring in a one-off fight. Your players have things like saving throws, skills that allow them to make evasive maneuvers, healing options that don't have to be dedicated to keep the tank alive, etc. Keeping them on their toes makes it so much more interesting than "oh, he lifts his arm - one step to the right, boys!".

That said, I really do like the idea of having a fight in several phases - much more interesting than one long fight where everybody does roughly the same. It makes a fight so much more dynamic if the party has to change tactics a few times, because the boss has moved to another type of terrain or he started doing an attack that requires different responses.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm going to join the "If your group enjoys it, go nuts, but it's not for me"-crowd.

I find it very annoying when videogames grant immunities and other "nobody can do this"-abilities to boss entities pure and simple because they have the "Boss" modifier... So having this "alternate mechanics"-mechanic back-ported to the tabletop is not really for me!

Now if an opponent has special qualities because they are, say, a DRAGON and that's specific to that type, I'm cool with that... But a dragon doesn't have to be a boss. :smallwink:

I'm agreeing with essentially everything here. I hated how in Persona 3 and 4 every boss had to resist the Light and Dark elements because those skills were one hit kills, even worse in P4 where you had one party member who specialised in both Light and Dark, while in P4 there were two seperate party members, one Light/Healing and the other Dark/Fire. The other one that annoys me are bosses where you have to do something in order to damage them, but then they get back up and become invulnerable (the only time I found it working was Devil May Cry 4 where bosses only had to be staggered for Buster moves, sword moves worked fine and were always your primary way of dealing damage).

But I dislike attempts to make tabletop bosses videogamey. It just feels to me like you're artificially inflating the encounter length. Throw in some extra strong bad guys to solve the action economy problems, and potentially give the option to do something to make the fight easier, but I let SoD spells that work stand (partially because I like magic to require skill checks, ideally with seperate skills for every single spells, and generally to get a SoD be a SoD and not a SoS or weak debuff requires a lot of character investment*).

* I tend not to run D&D, so the system is generally built with this assumption in mind. I also use it in my homebrew, where spells aren't seperated by level but do have different difficulties and costs.

[awa]

I do them on occasion primarily for the big bad of an adventure but also for monster that are to big for the game to handle well mechanically. Generally my players enjoy them quite a bit. One that was very well received was a pseudo lich that inhabited a number of bodies one after another each with different types of magical powers.

[bc56]

It's actually a great way to make your big fights feel epic, instead of just being against just boring large enemies. I do similar fights often for bosses. One of my favorites was against a mage possessed by an elemental spirit. The wizard fought the party for a while, then when he died, the elemental emerged and fought them as well.

[Psyren]

It's worth noting that most video games took their boss designs from D&D in the first place, so adopting it back is kind of a strange concept. Especially something like a raid dungeon, where the players are almost expected to die or go in force of 20 people to take down one monster. I don't even know how you'd work that into a table encounter with fewer people.

Easy - instead of Raids, look at Mythic+. It's a boss designed for a smaller group to take down (4-5 people) but the modifiers and affixes are what make it feel epic and deadly. In tabletop terms, those would be terrain, templates, and other unique abilities that only the boss has or that only hinder the players.

[AceOfFools]

This. A repeating AoE pattern is so incredibly boring in a one-off fight...

That's... really confusing considering "Repeating AoE pattern" describes every AoE effect that can be used more than once, from dragon breath to fireball to flame shield. Learning and adapting to those has been part of DnD since 1e, but I digress.

The key features described in the OP are all centered around making better encounters: preventing anticlimax, ensuring a length that allows for everyone to show off/get pressured, creating dynamic goals that have to be responded to and played around. Most players care far more about having a fun and exciting game than tightly stocking to the rules.

The big problems with videogamifying boss encounters are a) character builds that get arbitrarily screwed by a design with means to counter them and b) creating a feeling that your cheating because of original content.

I found a good balance with larger enemy parties (i.e. bosses with backup), which has the advantage of often being doable without special mechanical exceptions.

Sure, the boss has see invisible and tell hee hired ogre muscle what squares to target, but said ogres stI'll take full sneak attack damage from an invisible rogue. Sure, the lich and her golems are immune to mind control, but you can force the slaves to stop pumping the room full of poison gas, saving them and you.

As an added benefit, large enemy parties, especially those with defenders and glass cannons, natural have phased combat.

One trick i found particularly useful is to modulate monster entrance rate to allow for fight against a larger crowd than the PCs could fight all at once. The big bad doesn't get desperate enough to spend her scroll swift summon monster <Too high> until the fight get desperate (that scroll is stupid expensive!) It takes a few rounds for telepathitically called reinforcements too arrive, by which point the first set of meat shields are already paste.

You can even get this with inspired tactical choices:
The dragon doesn't risk closing to use her full devostating attack sequence until they can put a priority target out off commission in one routine, aboring damage to minions and from ranged attacks, while putting out less DPS herself to stay safer. Or maybe she takes off and fights more cautiously after taking a certain amount of damage.

Tl;dr: Video game bosses work because they create well designed, dynamic encounters. Most players prioritize good encounter over strictly enforced rules, but you can explore options with larger cast encounters.

[Reversefigure4]

Another good line of logic behind doing this is that it prevents the characters from Alpha Striking with all their best abilities immediately in the first round. You might well still choose to do so, but the knowledge that the boss's Ultimate Form might be still yet to come will cause players to be more hesistant with their resources. The best part is that you don't even need the boss to change forms, merely the possibility that it might do so.

[Maelynn]

This. A repeating AoE pattern is so incredibly boring in a one-off fight...

That's... really confusing considering "Repeating AoE pattern" describes every AoE effect that can be used more than once, from dragon breath to fireball to flame shield.

Then we're don't share the same definition of the term.

In video games, especially the fights mentioned (boss fights in an MMO), the boss has AoE attacks that appear on a regular interval, almost always in the same spot/direction/pattern. This makes them predictable and, imho, boring as fack when they're placed in a D&D environment. It works great for a raid where you need to master the fight in order to even get the boss down, let alone 'on farm', but in a one-off fight like you encounter in D&D (as in, you fight the boss once and no more) you just can't have that level of predictability. if you do, then halfway through the fight the party will go "oh look guys, the dragon's preparing his breath attack again. He'll aim it at those 4 squares over there just like he did the last 4 times, so let's go stand here - yeah, we're good". You'd rather have the party wondering where the breath will hit, and whether their saves will be good enough to avoid it should they be in the wrong spot.

[wumpus]

If you want to draw from MMO/video game monsters into a 3.x/pathfinder game, I'd recommend looking up DDO rules. WARNING: DDO was launched in 2006 and is originally/mostly set in Eberron. Both of these lead to extreme power creep and the major raid boss of 2008 had 100k hit points (higher at higher difficulties), and it hasn't stopped creeping. But some things to help yourselves to:

Named bosses: Bosses have names over their heads (like players and NPCs) and they are color coded by status (this has nothing to do with the player's level or the bosses, just how much extra powers/resistances he's granted).

Orange boss ("named boss") immune to charm and bardic fascinate.

Red boss ("powerful named boss") everything orange names are immune to plus basically has permanent deathblock: can't be slain by finger of death, other death spells, vorpal swords, immune to negative levels (so much for Red Cloak & Xykon's favorite combo).
Immune to stun, death, paralyze, web spells, hold, or anything other "full stop" crowd control option. Slow might work.
Expect damage resistance and elemental resistances

Purple named bosses (the worst, no cutesy name. Generally the end boss of a high level raid). Everything red names are immune to plus:
Any ability damage
Ray of enfeeblement
Immune to slow (of any sort by the players)
pretty much any other debuff (not sure if sorcerer's curse counts)
typically have true sight

The overall effect of all this is to prevent a batman wizard from simply killing anything in sight with a single "save or lose" spell. While I was playing, wizards were typically favored for crowd control and trash removal, but weren't terribly helpful for the final fight against a boss (note that DDO is pretty free-form in building characters, so can't build raids around "you must have builds within 95% of perfect and gameplay must be 95% of perfect or the raid will fail", often the best raids were when things didn't go as smoothly as expected and you had to scramble to save the raid. This means that less snobish guilds were happy to drag a wizard through the final battle as long as they took out the trash early on).

Since rumor had it that the 3e wizard was balance assuming a "blasting wizard", Turbine (DDO is now run by Standing Stone) basically only let wizards to go all "Omnipotent power" against trash, and required blasting against bosses. This lead to a certain favoring of sorcerers over wizards, something that was only compounded by a spell pass in 2018 (it might shock players, but DDO was melee biased form 2006-2011. In 2011 they made a ton of changes to the way spells work and gave casters the upper hand. I stopped playing around 2013, but I've heard that melee became ascendent once again (note I was happy with my sorcerer, and only grumpy that they kept nerfing my ranger from sub-optimal down to useless).

It also includes a surprisingly well balance magic point system for D&D (WARNING: you can replenish your spell points at limited healing areas. Mana replenishment potions are expensive (although Turbine/Standing Stone has been known to sell them for "pay to win" potions)). I'd recommend two sets of poker chips (one for hit points, the other for spell points) if you wanted to use this, but expect a huge overhaul unless you want kobolds with 100+ hp and end bosses in the millions (yes, the power has indeed crept).

[Anymage]

4e did it, but 4e explicitly said that bosstype monsters were meant to count as multiple single units. 5e kinda followed the idea up with legendary creatures. The basic idea of trying to have multiple monsters worth of actions and HP in one body has precedent.

Monsters changing/upgrading forms as the battle goes on is trickier to work with, if only because without a bucketload of immunities and/or an amenable system (which most forms of D&D aren't), players will look for ways to sidestep evolution mechanics. Doable, and cool when it happens, but you'll need to tweak to make it work.

[RazorChain]

4e did it, but 4e explicitly said that bosstype monsters were meant to count as multiple single units. 5e kinda followed the idea up with legendary creatures. The basic idea of trying to have multiple monsters worth of actions and HP in one body has precedent.

Monsters changing/upgrading forms as the battle goes on is trickier to work with, if only because without a bucketload of immunities and/or an amenable system (which most forms of D&D aren't), players will look for ways to sidestep evolution mechanics. Doable, and cool when it happens, but you'll need to tweak to make it work.

For me the legendary monster in 5e is one of the worst designs ever. An example, our Ranger/Rogue snuck ahead into a cave and got ambushed by a vampire, initiative was rolled and the Ranger/Rogue got murdered because the rest of the group was moving into the cave giving the vampire extra actions.

If the rest of the group had not been present then the Ranger/Rogue would have had a fighting chance because then the vampire wouldn't have gotten any extra actions!

Just a bad gimmick overall

[Lemmy]

For me the legendary monster in 5e is one of the worst designs ever. An example, our Ranger/Rogue snuck ahead into a cave and got ambushed by a vampire, initiative was rolled and the Ranger/Rogue got murdered because the rest of the group was moving into the cave giving the vampire extra actions.

If the rest of the group had not been present then the Ranger/Rogue would have had a fighting chance because then the vampire wouldn't have gotten any extra actions!

Just a bad gimmick overall
The problem there is not the extra actions, but the complete inconsistency, at least IMO. Either the vampire should have those actions and abilities anyway, or he shouldn't have them at all. He spontaneously getting more powers because someone else is nearby is dumb (unless there's an actual in-universe reason, rather than just a poorly designed game mechanic, of course, like a haunted crypt that wakes more spirits the more living creatures go in).

[AceOfFools]

Then we're don't share the same definition of the term.

In video games, especially the fights mentioned (boss fights in an MMO), the boss has AoE attacks that appear on a regular interval, almost always in the same spot/direction/pattern. This makes them predictable and, imho, boring as fack when they're placed in a D&D environment...

"Sorcerer who casts fireball whenever the PCs group up" and "Dragon delivers powerful elemental attack in a line every d4 rounds" fit the definition you provided, so I don't think we're using different definition's at all.

You're allowed to find that boring. But if avoiding clumping together or deliberately lining up to make someone you know has a line attack move a certain way (say, away from her meat shields) actually bores you, I'm surprised you enjoy turn-based tactical combat.

DnD has had lines, cones, and spherical and cylindrical blasts as the standard patterns you could learn to plan positioning around since before I picked up the game. It may use the more obnoxiously complex patterns common among videogame bosses sparingly (e.g. meteor swarm in 3.5), but to argue it doesn't have repeayed AoE patterns PCs can learn to play around literally requires you to ignore the entire section that defines how AoEs work.

[Maelynn]

"Sorcerer who casts fireball whenever the PCs group up" and "Dragon delivers powerful elemental attack in a line every d4 rounds" fit the definition you provided, so I don't think we're using different definition's at all.

You're allowed to find that boring. But if avoiding clumping together or deliberately lining up to make someone you know has a line attack move a certain way (say, away from her meat shields) actually bores you, I'm surprised you enjoy turn-based tactical combat.

DnD has had lines, cones, and spherical and cylindrical blasts as the standard patterns you could learn to plan positioning around since before I picked up the game. It may use the more obnoxiously complex patterns common among videogame bosses sparingly (e.g. meteor swarm in 3.5), but to argue it doesn't have repeayed AoE patterns PCs can learn to play around literally requires you to ignore the entire section that defines how AoEs work.

If the bolded bit is your conclusion of my post, then you couldn't have misunderstood me any more than you have.

Don't take this the wrong way, please, but your post sounds as if you have no idea how raid bosses in an MMO work. They generally have specific AoE mechanics that are repetitive and predictable. The boss repeatedly blasts their AoE in a set pattern, regardless of where the players stand at the moment. Your example of a 'sorcerer who casts fireball whenever the PCs group up' is something entirely different - in an MMO, the raid boss is a 'sorcerer who casts fireball in the same spot, every other round, regardless of where PCs are'.

The repetitiveness and predictability of these specific MMO boss mechanics are not suitable for the way fighting works in D&D. Whole different ball game.

[Resileaf]

If the bolded bit is your conclusion of my post, then you couldn't have misunderstood me any more than you have.

Don't take this the wrong way, please, but your post sounds as if you have no idea how raid bosses in an MMO work. They generally have specific AoE mechanics that are repetitive and predictable. The boss repeatedly blasts their AoE in a set pattern, regardless of where the players stand at the moment. Your example of a 'sorcerer who casts fireball whenever the PCs group up' is something entirely different - in an MMO, the raid boss is a 'sorcerer who casts fireball in the same spot, every other round, regardless of where PCs are'.

The repetitiveness and predictability of these specific MMO boss mechanics are not suitable for the way fighting works in D&D. Whole different ball game.

Let's be fair now, WoW rarely has such static and boring stuff anymore. Mechanics are very much more dynamic and varied than they used to be.

[Drascin]

An important part of a tank's job in pretty much every modern MMO is in fact attracting the monsters' AoE attacks away from the party, standing on the opposite side of the monster and generally trying to make sure stuff doesn't hit other people, because AoEs are in fact often targeted at characters, and the entire schtick of an MMO tank is "I'm the target, here, punch me!". The whole "boss doesn't even aim for players, specific areas just get filled with fire every x seconds" thing is more an exception, not a rule.

[Bubzors]

I love changing it up for boss fights. Having multiple phases where the tactics of the boss changes I feel leads to dynamic and interesting boss fights. I don’t do anything crazy like recreate raid boss fights, but have done things like a barrier encloses the boss and you have to destroy the glowing power crystals to get past it while fighting minions. Or have a construct creature change from a defensive to an aggressive stance as its HP wears down. A bit gamey but it mixes things up

For those who play 5E, having multiple phase boss fights can be pretty easily accomplished using the existing rule set. TheAngryGM discusses it here
http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/

Basically build the encounter as having two monsters, but roll it into one creature whose actions and tactics change as its health is depleted. You can design it using the existing rules without breaking anything. Throw in legendary and lair actions and you got a pretty cool fight.

[AceOfFools]

...The boss repeatedly blasts their AoE in a set pattern, regardless of where the players stand at the moment...

That, indeed, sounds nothing like the repeat AoE of any mmo boss I've played against or seen, baring a few "quick, stand in the telegraphed safe zone" attacks, but I'm only familiar with a very narrow selection, mostly released between 2011 and 2016.

It does sound exactly like the "steam vents that burns an area every couple of rounds" I read in (iirc) the 3.0 DMG on advice about dynamic encounter settings.

Incidentally, the one time I built an encounter around steam vents firing at fixed intervals, a huge part of that fight ended up being positioning such that melee attackers couldn't engage without getting hit by steam. I.e. an element driving a lot of tactical engagement that I would recommend using to spice up a boss encounter, especially one with manipulatible minions.