Should there be a boss fight?

[J-H]

I playtest one-shots here before posting them on the DM's Guild (and it's fun). I've had feedback a couple of times on different modules that indicates that a boss fight at the end is expected. If the toughest challenge is halfway through, or if the party encounters it early and then ends the module with exploration, it seems like it's not as satisfying for some players.

-Historically, have boss fights always been a part of dungeons/D&D, or did they creep over from video games?
-From a pacing and plot perspective, how important are they, really?

[stoutstien]

I playtest one-shots here before posting them on the DM's Guild (and it's fun). I've had feedback a couple of times on different modules that indicates that a boss fight at the end is expected. If the toughest challenge is halfway through, or if the party encounters it early and then ends the module with exploration, it seems like it's not as satisfying for some players.

-Historically, have boss fights always been a part of dungeons/D&D, or did they creep over from video games?
-From a pacing and plot perspective, how important are they, really?

Yes. No. Maybe.

TTRPGs have gone through so many different phases, divergent paths, revivals, and crossed over into countless other forms of entertainment that something seemingly simple, like adventure arc resolution(s), is a muddled subject.

Modules or pre designed adventures are a whole new layer to consider in this that only makes it harder to see anything past your table. Good news is that's afar as you need to look.

If you are writing content you have to just realize you won't be able to cover the breath of styles so best bet is to just be upfront on the general goal of the content and just about trying to make everyone happy.

[KillianHawkeye]

Boss fights at (or near) the end of a dungeon are a common expectation. So if you don't have it there, be aware of the fact that you're doing something unexpected which may or may not go over well with players. It may require doing a little extra work to manage their expectations.


-From a pacing and plot perspective, how important are they, really?

But yes, the reason for boss fights has to do with basic pacing in storytelling. The boss fight is the climax of the adventure or dungeon. Afterwards, a player expects to receive their praise and rewards (the denouement).

It's not just something that exists in games. Watch any action movie and you'll see the same thing. The villain, or the villain's powerful creature/device, are typically defeated in a story's climactic scene.

Outside of games or action/adventure stories, the climax isn't always a battle. Sometimes a story's climax is a triumphant court verdict, or a declaration of love, or solving the ultimate riddle in a long series of puzzles, or defeating the enemy with the power of friendship, or just escaping to survive another day. But regardless of what form it takes, most people expect there to be a climax just before the end of the story.

[MonochromeTiger]

-Historically, have boss fights always been a part of dungeons/D&D, or did they creep over from video games?

Not sure. With that question it's worth considering that D&D started as a straightforward war game and story kind of crept in over time. Could easily be the case that Gygax and others didn't put anything special at the end and just counted clearing the entire run as what matters, or put something strong in but didn't consider it a "final challenge" or "boss fight." Could also be the case that they threw in big monsters at the end just to give a definitive end point or, given Gygax's standards on handling players, a final attempt to kill the party off.

There's probably someone you could find on social media somewhere but aside from that you're unlikely to get an accurate account of what early D&D standards actually were.


-From a pacing and plot perspective, how important are they, really?

Depends heavily on the the plot actually is. For a long running campaign you could absolutely get away with some dungeons that has no boss fight, though you usually need some plot significance to being there or reason it doesn't have a boss or it can come across as the equivalent of sticking a bunch of random encounters in a cave. For a one shot? I can potentially see it working but only if the DM and players go into it knowing it's just some fights and whatever story you choose to include or there's something else at the end that can constitute a clear end point.

Really it's a question of if what you have feels like a definitive and satisfying ending or if it just suddenly ends.

[Amnestic]

Short Answer: Yes.

Longer: It depends, but mostly yes.

With D&D being a heroic fantasy (at least these days, regardless of what it was before), tropes come attached to that. The lich at the end of the dungeon, the dragon in its lair, the ritual-not-quite interrupted as the party breaks down the door so the demon s summoned.

Generally if a one-shot has combat as the focus, I'd expect the action to rise to a climax at the end, which typically means "boss fight" or something equally dramatic. It does depend on the one-shot, obvs, and there are exceptions. If it's investigation focused than the climax would be solving the crime, rather than a boss fight (though one might still occur at the end anyway).

For longer games the rise and fall of action can be more fluid but I would feel a bit weird if the peak of danger and drama in a one-shot was at the midpoint instead of towards the tail end.

[Eldan]

Not sure. With that question it's worth considering that D&D started as a straightforward war game and story kind of crept in over time. Could easily be the case that Gygax and others didn't put anything special at the end and just counted clearing the entire run as what matters, or put something strong in but didn't consider it a "final challenge" or "boss fight." Could also be the case that they threw in big monsters at the end just to give a definitive end point or, given Gygax's standards on handling players, a final attempt to kill the party off.


From what I've seen, quite a few of the very oldest dungeons aren't particularly linear. Some are even multiple buildings or multiple caves. So there's really no final end point.

[Mastikator]

IMO it is preferred. It doesn't necessarily have to be a boss fight, or even a boss, a final big brawl against a rival team also works.

[Lord Torath]

There should certainly be a climax. Whether or not that's a Big Fight or something else is slightly less important, but a Big Fight is customary.

[JellyPooga]

Does there have to be a Boss Fight? No. Should there usually be a climax? You'd better believe it.

The climax of an adventure very well can be a Boss Fight, but so long as the climax is interesting or engaging (as in a mystery or intrigue plot), exciting or daring (as a Boss Fight or race for the finish might be) or otherwise engaging or satisfying for the players, it doesn't really matter.

The trope of the Evil Sorcerers Collapsing/Exploding Castle after their defeat exists to try and lend pressure and excitement to the climax without having the boss fight claiming all the spotlight. The Inevitable Exploding Device, Escape the Sinking Ship, Race to the Closing Portal and similar time constrained events to climax the story arc can also evade the necessity for the final encounter with the bad guy being something most would recognise as a Boss Fight in which the BBEG is a powerful or deadly encounter in itself.

Similarly, the Scooby Doo ending of all the pieces of a mystery falling into place doesn't require the BBEG to be a Boss Fight, so long as the reveal is satisfying in itself.

The climax is what's important, not so much the actual content.

[Batcathat]

There should certainly be a climax. Whether or not that's a Big Fight or something else is slightly less important, but a Big Fight is customary.

Yeah, this. I suspect at least one of the reasons boss fights are so popular is that it's a fairly easy way to create a satisfying climax.

[J-H]

Thank you. I hadn't thought about it from a storytelling perspective.

That may mean having a few more restrictions on party movement in some cases so that they don't reach the boss "early" and then feel disappointed.

[KorvinStarmast]

-Historically, have boss fights always been a part of dungeons/D&D Not in my experience, unless it was a dragon or a vampire. You usually wanted to get the loot and outsmart the bad guy. Didn't always work, though.

[Vahnavoi]

The idea of a final, climactic confrontation predates tabletop roleplaying games, having existed in fiction long before. In games, the idea's obviously existed at least since the idea of a elimination tournament format, where winners of previous bouts are matched against one another at the very end of a contest. And of course, many tabletop games such as Chess had pieces with special importance to gameplay.

Final bosses did not exist in earliest tabletop roleplaying games in the form we see today, but D&D and computerized dungeon crawlers taking direct inspiration from D&D were highly influential in codifying the trope. You see, D&D included many unique highly dangerous creatures found deep in dungeons - balrogs, demon princes, dragons etc.. These morphed into end-of-level or end-of-game opponents in Moria, Legend of Zelda, etc.. Once the idea was codified, it took literally zero time for it to make way back to tabletop - because many makers of early computer games were tabletop gamers and what they were trying to do on a computer was a reflection of what they were doing on the tabletop.

So that's it for history. But what about the actual question? Should there be a boss fight?

The answer is: a boss fight is unnecessary for a non-linear game. It is also unnecessary for any game that revolves around a conflict from beginning to end. The subjective feeling of necessity stems from expecting a non-linear game to follow story tropes of linear media, such as books or plays or movies or what have you. Obviously, you can take steps to make a roleplaying game that will follow such tropes, and a lot of work has been done to get fundamentally non-linear game engines to spit out sufficiently similar outcomes. But it is a contrivance. It's always possible to embrace non-linear gaming and non-linear forms of storytelling - the space for possible game scenarios without a boss fight is greater than the space of games with such fights.

[JohnHughes]

Pacing and plot intricacies make them crucial, contributing to player satisfaction. Striking the right balance, ensuring the challenge crescendos, and concluding with an engaging boss encounter enhance the overall gaming experience and resonate with player expectations.

[Catullus64]

Can't speak very well to the point about history. Regarding pacing, my answer would be that only occasionally are boss fights important. Most RPG adventures and modules don't really have a traditional plot with clearly ordered rising action, climax, and denouement, and boss fights tend to work really well for stories like that.

If you assume that there will be significant resource attrition over the course of an adventure before it is finished (a common assumption for D&D & similar titles), and the content before the boss fight has been challenging, then the player characters will often be at their weakest before such a fight, which is notionally great for drama but can just as easily result in an anticlimactic stomp.

[Satinavian]

Bossfights are way overdone.

The whole "every adventure ends in a bossfight as climax" basically cheapens everything else in the plots and also pushes everyone to prioritize combat ability ober everything else because in the end that is the only thing that matters for every single climax in every single plot.

[Kurald Galain]

-From a pacing and plot perspective, how important are they, really?

From a rules perspective they are important. That is, in a system like D&D where 90% of the rules are about combat and you're expected to have lots of combat abilities/feats/spells on your character sheet and you regularly play with a battlemap, then bossfights are pretty much mandatory.

In a more rules-light and freeform system, bossfights are really not important.

(and if you think that your favorite edition of D&D counts as rules-light, then you haven't seen an actual rules-light system :smalltongue: )

[Vahnavoi]

Combat heaviness does not necessitate boss fights. This is best observed in more realistic military games: a session might consist entirely of a combat engagement or a string of engagements, yet with no final boss in sight. Instead, such games revolve around accomplishing mission objectives, typically with multiple ways to achieve them. So even if the objective is as simple as "destroy the enemy", in context this means reducing the enemy forces to 50% or less of their combat strength, with considerable choice over which part of enemy force to engage or how.

The same sort of scenario design can be easily adapted to D&D, and indeed some early non-linear scenarios already follow such ideas, since they were inspired by more realistic wargames.

Another simple boss-less paradigm for a combat-heavy game is the one with no terminal victory condition: for each enemy defeated, a new one will appear, with reinforcements. On and on it goes until the player characters eventually and inevitably get overwhelmed.

[gatorized]

Why is the most powerful foe sitting at a specific location and waiting for the players to accumulate power and resources before facing them?

[Atranen]

Combat heaviness does not necessitate boss fights. This is best observed in more realistic military games: a session might consist entirely of a combat engagement or a string of engagements, yet with no final boss in sight. Instead, such games revolve around accomplishing mission objectives, typically with multiple ways to achieve them. So even if the objective is as simple as "destroy the enemy", in context this means reducing the enemy forces to 50% or less of their combat strength, with considerable choice over which part of enemy force to engage or how.

The same sort of scenario design can be easily adapted to D&D, and indeed some early non-linear scenarios already follow such ideas, since they were inspired by more realistic wargames.

Another simple boss-less paradigm for a combat-heavy game is the one with no terminal victory condition: for each enemy defeated, a new one will appear, with reinforcements. On and on it goes until the player characters eventually and inevitably get overwhelmed.

A good post, and good advice.

I see boss fights all the time, because I run AL mods and those often end in boss fights. But I don't care for them in principle, and I think games would be well served by having different objectives.

The trick is to align it with player expectations. In AL, the expectation is "we are going to go through the dungeon and kill everything". That plot works better with a boss.

But change around your plot more, add different objectives, add some time pressure, make it a desperate rescue, or a heist, or an infiltration, or a mystery, or really anything beyond 'kill all enemies', and the boss fight is no longer needed.

[KorvinStarmast]

Why is the most powerful foe sitting at a specific location and waiting for the players to accumulate power and resources before facing them? This is an important question for a DM / GM to ask themselves before figuring out the layers that the PCs may need to penetrate to frustrate whatever it is that the BBEG is doing that they are trying to stop.

Boss have minions, otherwise they aren't actually a boss. Their minions are supposed to handle most of the light work.

[Reversefigure4]

Why is the most powerful foe sitting at a specific location and waiting for the players to accumulate power and resources before facing them?

Generally, because the boss has better things to do. Tactically speaking, he should probably wait at the front door, or move there immediately at every disturbance. But presumably the boss has something better to be doing than doing his minion's work. If he spends all day helping his sentries answer every alarm, he doesn't get his planning done / praying to his deity / seducing his wenches / studying the arcane. If the boss has a character, he has something to do.

It's like asking in the real world why people don't "work harder". Almost everyone can spend more time earning more money - the tactically optimal move - but few do because they'd prefer to enjoy their lives more.

[Sapphire Guard]

Why is the most powerful foe sitting at a specific location and waiting for the players to accumulate power and resources before facing them?

Are they accumulating resources, or expending them? Could go either way.

[Satinavian]

Why is the most powerful foe sitting at a specific location and waiting for the players to accumulate power and resources before facing them?

a) Because before the PCs accumulate power and resources, the boss has no reason to be aware of them any more than all the other nobodies
b) Becaue in most systems that are not D&D, PCs don't get ridiculously more powerful in a short time.
c) Because the specific location is where the boss is most comfortable/most powerful or has important things to do.

Now what generally does not make sense is that the boss keeps doing nothing while the PCs attack all his underlings one by one. An attack or even an alarm should trigger an appropriate reaction that includes securing all vulnerable personal/locations and mounting a proper response force or, if that is not feasible anymore, collecting everyone at the most defensible location.

[PhoenixPhyre]

a) Because before the PCs accumulate power and resources, the boss has no reason to be aware of them any more than all the other nobodies
b) Becaue in most systems that are not D&D, PCs don't get ridiculously more powerful in a short time.
c) Because the specific location is where the boss is most comfortable/most powerful or has important things to do.

Now what generally does not make sense is that the boss keeps doing nothing while the PCs attack all his underlings one by one. An attack or even an alarm should trigger an appropriate reaction that includes securing all vulnerable personal/locations and mounting a proper response force or, if that is not feasible anymore, collecting everyone at the most defensible location.
Not all bosses are “organized” types, in a military-esque fashion. Some are, of course, and for those, you’re right.

But the spirit of a volcano doesn’t really have minions. The various elemental and fey spirits that bedevil the party aren’t really part of some organization. They’re just there. They’re also inexhaustible, so attrition isn’t a useful tool.

In other cases, the real “boss” is something sealed away, with no influence outside its cage…but it may get out soon. Or there are a series of factions around the sealed evil, each with a mini boss. These might get turned on each other, or bypassed. Or whatever. Some may be fighting to free the evil, meaning that it’s a race to stop that ritual, so the “boss” (the cult leader) can’t really come squash the party, and can’t really redistribute his forces all that freely.

Lots of options. All have advantages and disadvantages.

[gatorized]

I don't think you understood what my question was pointing at - the objection isn't that the evil guy isn't interacting with the players, but rather that he's sitting in one place indefinitely.

Your characters should have lives and behave like real people.

[J-H]

I assume most people do that. However, the boss often is in a specific location and is known to be there, and stays there for reasons. For example:

1. Greedious the Red Dragon is usually in his lair. Why? He's strongest there, he has minions to run errands, and he likes his bed of gold. The party might occasionally see him flying about, but it's hard to force an encounter on a dragon a half-mile up in the sky. They'll probably fight him in his lair.
2. Dracula isn't leading his armies from the front line. He's back at his castle giving orders via crystal balls and magic, sitting on his throne. Sure, maybe the party will reach him, but until then, he's running three different armies remotely while his castle continues to pump out magic. He's busy.
3. Huitzopchtli isn't manifested on the prime material plane...yet. His avatar is confined to a statue atop his high temple. If the party wants to beat it, they need to go there. He's definitely still sending out hunting parties, and the temple is in the middle of a city with a hundred thousand citizens and over 5,000 soldiers. High level enemies are hard to pin down, but if they come to him... look, they're right there and he is the altar they are sacrificing themselves on.
4. How many people have fought Orcus or Asmodeus outside of their home planes/castles/whatever?

This is where knowing the character of the BBEG and their plans help. Most BBEGs are spellcasters or chessmasters, or are arrogant and maybe lazy, and have minions to go attack the party for them.

From a meta-game perspective, it's also usually bad to have the Ancient Dragon come strafe the 7th level party at the end of an adventuring day when they are out of spells, at half hitpoints, and bedding down for a long rest. The players have to have a reasonable chance of success.

[TaiLiu]

But yes, the reason for boss fights has to do with basic pacing in storytelling. The boss fight is the climax of the adventure or dungeon. Afterwards, a player expects to receive their praise and rewards (the denouement).

It's not just something that exists in games. Watch any action movie and you'll see the same thing. The villain, or the villain's powerful creature/device, are typically defeated in a story's climactic scene.

Outside of games or action/adventure stories, the climax isn't always a battle. Sometimes a story's climax is a triumphant court verdict, or a declaration of love, or solving the ultimate riddle in a long series of puzzles, or defeating the enemy with the power of friendship, or just escaping to survive another day. But regardless of what form it takes, most people expect there to be a climax just before the end of the story.

Does there have to be a Boss Fight? No. Should there usually be a climax? You'd better believe it.
Yeah, I think this is right. TTRPGs are more similar to video games, movies, and books than board games and the like. So modules without a climax tend to feel dissatisfying.


From what I've seen, quite a few of the very oldest dungeons aren't particularly linear. Some are even multiple buildings or multiple caves. So there's really no final end point.
I think even older non-linear dungeons tend to have climaxes. It's just that the climax is successfully escaping with the treasure or the like.


I don't think you understood what my question was pointing at - the objection isn't that the evil guy isn't interacting with the players, but rather that he's sitting in one place indefinitely.

Your characters should have lives and behave like real people.
I think your original point begged the question a bit. The most powerful foe isn't sitting at a specific location and waiting for the players to accumulate power and resources before facing them.

I agree that practically all modules fail to take time into consideration, though. The boss is here, doing a ritual or whatever, regardless of the time it took the PCs to get there. Events seem to trigger, video-game-like, instead of happening organically with time.

[Kardwill]

I don't think you understood what my question was pointing at - the objection isn't that the evil guy isn't interacting with the players, but rather that he's sitting in one place indefinitely.

Your characters should have lives and behave like real people.

You can have characters with lives, and still have a bossfight/climax near the end of the game. The adventure doesn't have to be a static dungeon-like or openworld map stucture with Evil Prime sitting on his throne.

The classic "investigate the badguys' conspiracy, find out who is the real alpha badguy, and then assault their hideout/spoil their great ritual" of Cthulhu/police games is built around that climax ending structure, for example. If you're chasing the antagonists, the game will typically end when you catch up with them and have the big, anticipated confrontation.

Note that even in a dungeon, it's possible to have a static boss : The chained ancient evil, or the high priestlord/mad scientist working on his big ritual/Perversion of Science (!!!)

But yeah, I'll agree that "why is that character here at that specific moment?" is a good question to ask yourself when you setup the bossfight. In most games, a "character" villain that actually looks like he's doing stuff (even if, from a Doylist POV, he was just there to trigger the final fight with the PCs) is better than a cardboard cutout.

[Kardwill]

a) Because before the PCs accumulate power and resources, the boss has no reason to be aware of them any more than all the other nobodies
b) Becaue in most systems that are not D&D, PCs don't get ridiculously more powerful in a short time.
c) Because the specific location is where the boss is most comfortable/most powerful or has important things to do.

d) Because the boss doesn't exist before the bossfight (Summoning and Abomination of Science FTW!)
e) Because the boss can't move (asleep, prisonner...)
f) Because the boss needs the PCs to somehow change the status-quo (to free him, or to foil "bigger threats")
g) Because the boss is bored silly and actually welcomes an opportunity to "play" (Hello, Mr Strahd)
h) Because he didn't notice them (or they were "not worth his time")

Arrogance is a very useful trait in cult leaders, criminal overlords and evil demigod types ^^

[Satinavian]

I don't think you understood what my question was pointing at - the objection isn't that the evil guy isn't interacting with the players, but rather that he's sitting in one place indefinitely.

Your characters should have lives and behave like real people.
Isn't really a contradiction as long as the "one place" is "its lair" or "her laboratory" or "the control center". Even utterly believable people/beings often are in one place regularly and for a lot of time or have daily routines that involve such places.

[DigoDragon]

I would go with the "Usually Yes" answer. I've run campaigns for years and having a boss fight (even a social one if not combat) brings good closure to the story crafted over the campaign's course. Not having one often leads to players feeling let down at the end.

[GloatingSwine]

What a "boss fight" does is mesh the narrative and mechanical stakes into a single event which resolves both.

So in general you'll get more satisfying outcomes if there is one than if there isn't.

[Composer99]

I playtest one-shots here before posting them on the DM's Guild (and it's fun). I've had feedback a couple of times on different modules that indicates that a boss fight at the end is expected. If the toughest challenge is halfway through, or if the party encounters it early and then ends the module with exploration, it seems like it's not as satisfying for some players.

-Historically, have boss fights always been a part of dungeons/D&D, or did they creep over from video games?
-From a pacing and plot perspective, how important are they, really?

There can, but doesn't have to be, a boss fight.

If your players are specifically interested in there being the build-up of emotional tension (rising action) and its release (climax) as part of gameplay, then there needs to be a climax to the one-shot. It doesn't have to be a boss fight, but that's an easy climax to add, especially if the characters aren't getting a long rest in, meaning they're going to be reaching the boss fight with fewer resources than they started the adventure with (a neatly organic way to build tension).

Historically, D&D was designed with the assumption that it was, you might say, a "wargame-like" RPG. I mean, it's even called a wargame in the covers of the three original books! (These are available as PDFs on DM's Guild (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/28306/ODD-Dungeons--Dragons-Original-Edition-0e).) By way of example, the language in the books uses "campaign" in something close to the way it might be used in a miniatures wargame. If I were to use modern parlance, OD&D is more like a "rogue-like" dungeon-crawler game than modern D&D is. (I find this concept droll, since as far as I am aware, D&D is among the inspirations for Rogue, but one wouldn't call Rogue a D&D-like!)

In wargames, narrative arcs aren't really that important - that sense of narrative isn't meant to be part of the gameplay experience. That said, in OD&D the rising tension of grinding down resources and the desperate escape from the dungeon - which acts as a kind of climax - does provide a sort of emergent narrative arc, as I believe has been noted upthread.

As far as I'm aware, however, even very early on, once D&D spread out of the Wisconsin wargaming scene from which it originated, players who didn't come to the game from miniatures wargaming very quickly began playing it differently - quite possibly with narrative arcs, which means climaxes, possibly even boss fights! And in any event a more narrative style of play was dominant by about the mid-1980s (e.g. around the time the Dragonlance modules were published).

Suffice to say that boss fights and other climactic events did not need to creep over from video games.


I don't think you understood what my question was pointing at - the objection isn't that the evil guy isn't interacting with the players, but rather that he's sitting in one place indefinitely.

Your characters should have lives and behave like real people.

As a matter of fact, RPG characters have no obligation to "behave like real people". They are figments of the imagination whose only purpose is to provide an engaging and enjoyable gameplay experience. Whether that purpose is better served by the semblance of "behav like real people" or not is going to depend on whether the players you're designing for want that from their enemies. It also depends on the enemies themselves - plenty of D&D monsters are fundamentally [I]not human and don't - indeed, shouldn't! - think like humans.

It's also going to depend on the creature in question. For instance, the xenomorph in Alien would have been impoverished as a danger the more "like real people" it was; similarly, I think it's uncontroversial to suggest that the more "like real people" Star Trek's Borg became (through the Borg Queen in particular), the less effective they were as villains. Agent Smith from The Matrix is another good example of a villain who was very effective despite very clearly not behaving "like real people" in many respects.

Therefore, if you're writing for players (and it does help when writing for a specific table here) who want a satisfying narrative arc, with rising action to a climax to a (short) denouement, it's better to have the villain's behaviour work out so that they are in the right place at the right time. This is all the more true for one-shots and other short affairs.

Speaking of one-shots, that's just what the OP said they were writing. That means the adventure is going to be one, maybe two sessions long (depending on how long a session is) - in real time, anyway. Within the in-game fiction, it's quite possible that the entire thing will be what, like, half an hour of actual time adventuring? With maybe a short rest in there? Or maybe the boss fight isn't at the end of a dungeon, in which case the passage of time is even less important! (It also means, to riff off of Satinavian, that the "boss" is more likely to be in their routine places - just like "real people", who in, say, North America, spend most of their time at home or at either work or school.)

As such, (1) the player characters likely aren't "accumulat[ing] power and resources" - in fact, they're likely to not be at full strength by the time they get to the climax (which, if it's a fight, is part of the rising tension) - and (2) the boss isn't likely to have had sufficient in-game time to be aware of the threat the player characters face - and if they do, either they don't have time to react accordingly, or whatever dangers the player characters face are the extent of the boss's ability to react in the time available to them.

[Easy e]

If your players want and expect a boss fight, why wouldn't you give them one?

If they expect something else, or a different climax. Give them that instead. The adventure is about the players not the GM. Give them the ending they want.

[Unoriginal]

Thank you. I hadn't thought about it from a storytelling perspective.

That may mean having a few more restrictions on party movement in some cases so that they don't reach the boss "early" and then feel disappointed.

Reaching the boss "early" is only disappointing if the GM doesn't take advantage of the situation.

Meeting the boss "too soon" is either a "oh damn" moment for the PCs, a moment to introduce the boss for later/preview for the final fight, just the climax happening early (which isn't bad by itself, it just requires switching gears) or a combo of several of those.

See Conan meeting Thulsa Doom after being captured, in the movie, or the Asylum Demon in the first Dark Souls.

[GloatingSwine]

Also if there's enough of a structure around "the boss" he didn't need to be the boss anyway.

What, you thought Emperor Gestahl was the big bad? Well here's the second half of the plot where his psychotic second in command turns out to be even worse!

[Mordar]

Not sure. With that question it's worth considering that D&D started as a straightforward war game and story kind of crept in over time. Could easily be the case that Gygax and others didn't put anything special at the end and just counted clearing the entire run as what matters, or put something strong in but didn't consider it a "final challenge" or "boss fight." Could also be the case that they threw in big monsters at the end just to give a definitive end point or, given Gygax's standards on handling players, a final attempt to kill the party off.

There's probably someone you could find on social media somewhere but aside from that you're unlikely to get an accurate account of what early D&D standards actually were..

I think there are plenty of people in this community that were around in the early 80s.

This particular one recalls a mix of both options, but if I were put on the rack and an answer demanded...I'd say something around 70% of the published material ended with a climactic encounter (almost always a fight) with the "boss". Worth noting that sometimes the end of the published material (a) was actually 4+ modules deep in the series (think you kids call these adventure paths or something like that), (b) ended with a mini-boss and clues to the next portion of the adventure arc, (c) sprinkled mini-bosses along the way, or (d) more than one of the previous.

Many of the rest were more MacGuffin or Assembly quests, where the satisfaction was the completion of the item...but even those often had mini-boss like elements.

As far as GG not including bosses, several named giants, dark elf divinities, at least one nasty demoness, and Acererak all are offended.

All of that being said, I think it is accurate that many of the first adventures were raids...bust in, get loot, get out. It was once it moved to tournament play and published modules that people started to mimic stories/movies requiring a final confrontation.

All of that plus the above being said, though, I also remember 12-year-old me with just my three hardcover AD&D books building dungeons that led to an inevitable final encounter against the baddest monster in that dungeon (even if it was only an ogre in the beginning).

- M

[gbaji]

As a general rule, you do not have to have a "boss" to fight in an adventure. There could be any of a number of objectives for the adventure, and they may not require having to fight anything we might label a "boss" to achieve. Several posters have already mentioned this.

I will say that if you do have a boss, then yeah, it should probably be at/near the end of the area/adventure that it's the boss of. The assumption being that the fight with the boss is what resolves the conflict/adventure the players are dealing with. Note, that there may certainly be "powerful bad guys" to fight in an adventure, but that doesn't make them the "boss", nor their fights "boss fights". For a boss fight, we are assuming that we're defeating the main bad guy who is running all (or most) of the other "bad things" the players have been dealing with. If this is just a random selection of opponents in an area, then we don't have to follow any sort of rules in terms of the order they are encountered.


Thank you. I hadn't thought about it from a storytelling perspective.

That may mean having a few more restrictions on party movement in some cases so that they don't reach the boss "early" and then feel disappointed.

Is this boss just sitting in a room somewhere wating to be attacked? I think the bigger thing than just changing the route to said boss, is that you need to think about what the boss may be doing in response to his minions being attacked (which should occur well before the PCs arrive where ever the actual boss is). If this "boss" is just "the most powerful creature in the dungeon", then there's no need to change the ordering. That's not a "boss fight". If this is actually a boss fight, it should be at the end, not just because you placed its room in the last place the PCs can get to, but because it's going to organize its minions and arrange for them to try to take out the PCs before they get to him, and then organized the remainder to defend his home/strong-point/whatever. He's not in the "last room" because that's where he hangs out all day long, but because the "last room", is where he's decided to set up his defenses to try to stop the PCs from taking him out. In that case, the "last room" is wherever the boss fight happens, because everything past that point is resolution/denouement.


Generally, because the boss has better things to do. Tactically speaking, he should probably wait at the front door, or move there immediately at every disturbance. But presumably the boss has something better to be doing than doing his minion's work. If he spends all day helping his sentries answer every alarm, he doesn't get his planning done / praying to his deity / seducing his wenches / studying the arcane. If the boss has a character, he has something to do.

It's like asking in the real world why people don't "work harder". Almost everyone can spend more time earning more money - the tactically optimal move - but few do because they'd prefer to enjoy their lives more.

A similar analogy is why the tier 3 experts aren't the ones answering the support lines. Sure, those experts could solve your problem in a fraction of the time the call center folks can by following a script someone else wrote for them. But 99% of the problems can be solved by the (much much less expensive) tier 1 folks, and 99% of the remaining issues can be solved by tier 2 folks, so we keep the top level folks on hand for only the very very small number of problems that actually require that level of skill and knowledge. It's not even about working harder. It's about the actual capabilities of those involved, and the opportunity cost of using those capabilities dealing with minor things that don't require them (the higher paid and more skilled people literally have "better things to do").

Similarly, the door minions can handle 99% of the riff raff that shows up. The small percentage that overcome those minions, the boss sends out his more powerful lieutenants to deal with. If they fail, now the boss gets involved directly because now he knows this is a problem that requires his attention. Up to that point, the boss's minions and defenses are more or less on automatic. The boss probably wasn't even aware of the threat/problem caused by the PCs. But once they get through that point? That's when the GM has to start taking some more direct decisions about how the boss should react and deal with things. I'm a big fan of more dynamic opponents in adventures (even in dungeons). The boss should not just sit there in a final room waiting for his fate. There should be some degree of action prior to that point. That's not to say he shows up personally to deal with the problem, but should at least engage in some information gathering actions, which can in turn affect how he sets up his defenses for when the PCs do arrive at his location later on.

That sort of approach also has the benefit of making that "boss fight" less of a "most powerful fight happens to be in this room", and more of a "we're building up to something, and it's more or less tailor made to the group running in the adventure". You can justify specific magic or tactics being readied by the NPCs in this fight, and make it tougher to deal with. Which can make for a much more satisfying conflict resolution.

[VoxRationis]

A similar analogy is why the tier 3 experts aren't the ones answering the support lines. Sure, those experts could solve your problem in a fraction of the time the call center folks can by following a script someone else wrote for them. But 99% of the problems can be solved by the (much much less expensive) tier 1 folks, and 99% of the remaining issues can be solved by tier 2 folks, so we keep the top level folks on hand for only the very very small number of problems that actually require that level of skill and knowledge. It's not even about working harder. It's about the actual capabilities of those involved, and the opportunity cost of using those capabilities dealing with minor things that don't require them (the higher paid and more skilled people literally have "better things to do").

Similarly, the door minions can handle 99% of the riff raff that shows up. The small percentage that overcome those minions, the boss sends out his more powerful lieutenants to deal with. If they fail, now the boss gets involved directly because now he knows this is a problem that requires his attention. Up to that point, the boss's minions and defenses are more or less on automatic. The boss probably wasn't even aware of the threat/problem caused by the PCs.

Though this analogy works best if the PCs aren't considered to be significant opponents prior to their entering the dungeon, in the same way that a tech support center doesn't usually have longstanding specific enemies they're keeping track of. There are lots of situations where the chief enemy knows the PCs in advance and might foreseeably give their minions standing orders along the lines of "If you see these people or any of this list of magical effects/likely ruses they might use, immediately report it to me, and then we respond with top-level force, skipping any intermediary levels of engagement we might ordinarily employ." That's far from a given (certainly, it doesn't make sense as a model for my present campaign, wherein the players have been unknowns by the time of their arrival in most contexts thus far on account of possessing a ship fleeter than most common means of communication in the setting), but the stereotypical world-threatening 20th-level villain who's been the sworn enemy of the party all campaign long might well employ such precautions, and if they would logically do so, the players are likely to start feeling sort of jilted if the enemies in the final dungeon aren't suitably responsive.

[gatorized]

Isn't really a contradiction as long as the "one place" is "its lair" or "her laboratory" or "the control center". Even utterly believable people/beings often are in one place regularly and for a lot of time or have daily routines that involve such places.

I can't think of a single person or animal that spends its entire life not moving from one spot, actually. Maybe a redditor.

[Kardwill]

I can't think of a single person or animal that spends its entire life not moving from one spot, actually. Maybe a redditor.

But that's not a problem as long as they are in that place "by accident" (i.e. by GM fiat) when the PCs get to them

Of course, if the PCs are following the big bad, or waiting for a time when noone is in the inner sanctum, then sure, the boss will follow a normal routine to preserve verissimilitude (and to reward the players' planning). But usually, they get to the "bossroom" either at some random time because of the timing of the exploration, at the worst possible time because they have a time constraint ("Dr Doom is preparing his doomsday missiles and will launch them tonignt, we have to get to his lab before it happens, even if his security is at its strongest!"), or at the time of the boss' choosing if he has the initiative ("Oh no, Dr Doom's mechagorrilla is attacking the UN building!")

so, it's pretty easy for the GM to choose where the bossfight would take place, unless the PCs do something to prevent it

[gbaji]

Though this analogy works best if the PCs aren't considered to be significant opponents prior to their entering the dungeon, in the same way that a tech support center doesn't usually have longstanding specific enemies they're keeping track of. There are lots of situations where the chief enemy knows the PCs in advance and might foreseeably give their minions standing orders along the lines of "If you see these people or any of this list of magical effects/likely ruses they might use, immediately report it to me, and then we respond with top-level force, skipping any intermediary levels of engagement we might ordinarily employ." That's far from a given (certainly, it doesn't make sense as a model for my present campaign, wherein the players have been unknowns by the time of their arrival in most contexts thus far on account of possessing a ship fleeter than most common means of communication in the setting), but the stereotypical world-threatening 20th-level villain who's been the sworn enemy of the party all campaign long might well employ such precautions, and if they would logically do so, the players are likely to start feeling sort of jilted if the enemies in the final dungeon aren't suitably responsive.

Yeah. I was assuming a stereotypical adventure where the PCs "discover" a boss along the way, and are assuming that the initial encounters are the first time either side has encountered the other in any direct way. Whether that be the PCs exploring the dungeon that the boss is ruling over, or investigating the criminal enterprise that a very different kind of boss is running. In either case, the initial opponents you will encounter will be minor members of the environment, possibly only tangentally related to the actual boss. As they get closer (whatever "closer" means here), the PCs should encounter higher rates of the boss's own minions (and more powerful ones), and face more and more directed opposition.

Obviously, if the boss knows who the PCs are at the start, then this means that the initial "discovery" phase already happened previously, and we can kinda skip right to the "Boss sends his more powerful henchmen and/or plots more serious and directly targeted traps" phase. There's actually a reason why most of my adventures that have a really powerful boss with lots of resources and power often involve a fair amount of secrecy/annonymity on the part of the PCs. While this is certainly setting and game system specific, in most cases, if the boss does actually know who the PCs are and that they are a threat to him, it's extremely hard as a GM to actually rationalize why he doesn't just wipe the PCs out. Sure, the boss could be a "big fish in a small pond" type boss, but...


But that's not a problem as long as they are in that place "by accident" (i.e. by GM fiat) when the PCs get to them

Of course, if the PCs are following the big bad, or waiting for a time when noone is in the inner sanctum, then sure, the boss will follow a normal routine to preserve verissimilitude (and to reward the players' planning). But usually, they get to the "bossroom" either at some random time because of the timing of the exploration, at the worst possible time because they have a time constraint ("Dr Doom is preparing his doomsday missiles and will launch them tonignt, we have to get to his lab before it happens, even if his security is at its strongest!"), or at the time of the boss' choosing if he has the initiative ("Oh no, Dr Doom's mechagorrilla is attacking the UN building!")

so, it's pretty easy for the GM to choose where the bossfight would take place, unless the PCs do something to prevent it

Yup. The assumption isn't that everyone is just sitting in one space, but that in the time frame that the PCs are engaging with the environment, that's where folks will be. They can certainly move around, but, as you point out, this is what happens if the PCs choose to take time and observe them, track them, etc. Which can actually open up some really fun adventure opportunities (and make the entire setting a lot more dynamic). You could absolutely come upon a chamber in the dungeon where there are goblins mining stuff. And if you attack them, then you are attacking the goblin miners. But if the party chooses to hold off on attacking, wait for their shift to end, and then follow them, then maybe they find where the goblins live. Perhaps they can follow the goblin who looks more official and in charge, and track him to his boss, learning more about the entire operation before attacking.

I firmly believe in rewarding players for taking time to gain information instead of just attacking everything they see in the order they first encounter it. And yes, a lot of this does require that the GM not just stock the dungeon/whatever with rooms and monsters. If you've spent the time thinking about why each monster might be in each room, and what they are doing there, then you can more easily play out this sort of thing. And the players will often apprecitate it. I mean, they could still just murderhobo their way through if they want, of course, but at least giving them the option to approach things differently is always a good thing. But if the GM hasn't thought about this at all, the encounters are themselves almost "stuck" just being "fight the monsters in this room, then move on" things.

[Haggo]

I can't think of a single person or animal that spends its entire life not moving from one spot, actually. Maybe a redditor.

Well here's the thing: Why do they need to be a real people?

[JusticeZero]

I'm not sure about the history, but I don't care. It's always good to end an arc with a trial.

I have to make a distinction in terminology here for what I'm about to say.

A boss fight is a singular difficult fight with an unusually big singular enemy. Those are narratively common.
Honestly, my adventure design tends to use a boss fight as the fourth encounter of the adventure day, but they regularly just willingly fail instead of take the fight because their resources are absolutely hosed by that point. I plan around it, the boss has lots of HP but low damage and not that many things that will need resources, if they actually did the fight it would mostly be a DPS check against a low DPS enemy made harder because they already blew their dailies earlier with some environmental headaches.
Lots of people use boss fights, they're often a letdown because the boss just doesn't have enough actions and the party can unload a lot of damage quickly.

A trial is one fight that's likely going to take up much of the night. The goal is never to simply drain one thing of HP. There's moving parts, multiple things that need to be done to accomplish your goals. You can't just defeat the enemy, you have to take down the shield generators before you can even get to him, and all the while there are turrets and whatnot...

My party has a Trial they're knowing they need to get back to to defeat a big, mindless stone golem... Thing... Which has AOE attacks and... Oh yeah, it's in a stone cavern and it has Regeneration 10 as long as it's touching the ground, so they're going to need to bring a really big rug and to lure the thing onto it. Big enough that they'll need more than one of them to carry and unroll it. Then they have to figure out how to trick the golem into walking onto the rug; they already know it acts in response to things very predictably, but they didn't have time to work out the rules before they noticed the regeneration (and how it works).

The actual fight isn't that hard after they deal with the mechanics, but they know they're going to have to do the mechanics, and they said "This is a problem for future us to deal with, there's another thing we have to deal with that's more time sensitive."

[Flyfly]

Should there be? I dunno!

I mean, I think stuff like that is very much context based. Each campaign, each group, in-fiction circumstances would make the answer wildly differ.

But, if I were to answer in general... sure, I would like to punch a big narratively built up baddy in the face! And I would like 'em to last long enough so it's not too anticlimactic.