Tell me about your Bossfights! What went right? What went wrong?

[Flyfly]

Hello everybody!

Recently, I started a TTRPG design blog called Longing Mound (https://longingmound.wordpress.com/), to study some RPG design things. And one of the first things I want to study are Bossfights!

So, I want to hear some actual real stories from the trenches! For research.

Tell me about your bossfights! Bossfights you designed as a GM! Bossfights taken straight from published adventures! Bossfights you fought through as a Player!

What went right? What flopped hard? Anything particularly interesting to mention that is neither? Was it high concept, was it about about some earthly Math? Any specific pain points worth mentioning?

The Mound longs for all sorts of knowledge from your practice! And thank you for your time either way.

[TaiLiu]

The most memorable boss fight I've been a player for was an aerial chase between us and the boss. We were fleeing towards an ally's fortress on a giant hawk. The boss was a mechanical monstrosity that flew on iron wings. We traded ranged attacks (and a couple of melee ones) before we managed to lose her. It was a whole lot of fun.

There was a second part where tried to defend the fortress against the boss and her machine minions. That was good, too, though less fun than the chase scene.

GM-wise, this surprised me. Why was this chase so much fun? When I think of a good encounter, I think of player agency. The PCs should have lots of options. The environment should be a useful factor. The situation should make sense.

This was not the case for the chase. We had limited control over how fast the bird or the boss flew. Our ranged attacks did minimal damage. As PCs, we didn't have many options. But it was still the coolest bloody fight I've been part of.

I dunno why. Maybe my understanding of what makes a good encounter is wrong.

[Batcathat]

There's one boss fight I remember specifically because it was such an anti-climax. It was probably about 25 years ago (wow, now I feel old), playing a Swedish TTRPG called "Drakar och Demoner".

Anyhow, we entered the lair of some sort of necromancer. He was sitting on his throne and as is customary, went straight into some sort of evil rant as we entered. My character immediately threw a knife at him (aside from being a throwing knife specialist, I think I might also have had some sort of custom magic to use on them) which hit him straight in the head. I rolled well and the necromancer died instantly.

To our GM's credit, after briefly going "uuuuh...." he adapted pretty quickly, though I suspect he was at least a little annoyed with me for ruining whatever big fight he had planned. :smallwink:

[Curse]

I had a kind of boss fight when the group found the mastermind behind the plot we were going through and my character found out that it was who killed his master. So he slowly walked forward, telling the boss about enacting revenge and slowly drew his two swords. It was a great scene where my character and the boss were building tension that would lead to an epic duel.
Then one player jumped in with "uuh uuh, hit him with [attack rule]. As a fighter you automatically know how to use that. Let me show it in the rule book."
Screeching halt for all the tension. We read some rules and shortly after that it devolved into a bland dice rolling competition ... 😐

[Kurald Galain]

In my experience,

(1) I've seen some bossfights degrade into a straightforward (and lengthy) race of doing HP damage. This tends to get pretty boring. 4E solo monsters have a reputation for becoming a slog, but I find this is pretty common in 5E as well. So basically, a boss needs to have a couple of diverse abilities, particularly multi-use or recharging ones. I don't recall any stand-out boss fights against pure martials, really.

(2) To me, one-shotting a boss is part of the game, but it shouldn't happen all that often. To counteract this, bosses should have a bunch of immunities, and having them accompanied by mooks (particularly mooks that can remove conditions) also helps. But it should still sometimes work, and players will love the tale of the massive boss falling to a single casting of e.g. The Excellent Prismatic Spray, or Polymorph Into Squirrel.

(3) Action economy. Some bosses are just doomed by having only one action per round against the party's six. To counteract this, again add mooks, and bosses should probably have multiple actions per turn in whatever way the system allows (swift/minor/bonus actions, lair actions, lots of OAs, etc).

(4) Terrain. Use it. Place your boss fight on top of a tower (that people can be knocked off of), or amidst fire pits or lava, or whatever else you can think of that's interesting and unusual.

HTH!

[Lilapop]

So basically, a boss needs to have a couple of diverse abilities, particularly multi-use or recharging ones. I don't recall any stand-out boss fights against pure martials, really.

I think I'd rather turn this on its head and say that martials should have diverse abilities, regardless on which side of the screen they appear.

On boss design in particular, consider motives, boundaries and escape options. Is everybody gonna fight to the death, or is there the possibility of surrender? Tacking on to the issue of diverse abilities and mooks, a boss could teleport a few steps away (behind a new rank of mooks, or around a particularly big frontliner), until finally teleporting all the way out of the room. Bonus points if you hear a muffled "damn, forgot my scrolls" from upstairs and there's a scrollcase in the loot down here.

[Flyfly]

Thank ya'll for sharing! Love these stories, very interesting!


I rolled well and the necromancer died instantly.

Was this a normal thing for the game, or a super-duper mega rare crit thingy? It's honestly hard to imagine doing a supervillain bit in a super deadly system, haha.

[Batcathat]

Was this a normal thing for the game, or a super-duper mega rare crit thingy? It's honestly hard to imagine doing a supervillain bit in a super deadly system, haha.

Somewhere in between, I think? It's been ages since I played that system (though I think I might have the books somewhere), but if I remember correctly something like that would be pretty rare, though probably less so than in something like D&D where basically anyone powerful will have a mountain of HP. I suppose the fact that I remember it as kind of a unique anomaly suggests that it was pretty rare, at least in my group.

[Gnoman]

Had a boss fight against a super-mimic in my GURPS dungeon crawl (explicitly intended to be a GM hates you deathtrap) that went spectacularly wrong. It opened up the fight with an ability that forces everyone in the party to roll a Fright Check, something which I expected to disable maybe one PC. Then it would run around trying to grab the PCs with regenerating tentacles and devour them while the super-deadly PC fighter went around chopping off tentacles and blocking attacks. This fight was designed very carefully for this role, because I needed something that would actually challenge the fighter without overwhelming everybody else.


Fighter (who is supposed to be nearly immune to fright) critically fails his fright check, as does almost everybody else. So the fight is looking like a straight TPK until the weakest member of the party sets herself on fire and practically jumps into the thing's mouth. The fire damage overpowered the monster's regeneration and was able to take out the relatively low total health fast enough that the PC in question survived. So it turned into a bit of an epic enounter even if the fight wasn't nearly as cool as I planned it.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Had a boss fight in 2e Pathfinder. A necromancer who smooshed a bunch of bodies together into a meat-bone mech suit kind of deal. How the 3-action economy of 2e PF works, I made the boss a series of stages. Basically, while only 1 monster (with a set of 3 actions), it had 3 components. The bone arm, the meat arm and the body. The pieces had different statistics, different actions available. Technically, the body had all the actions but it **had** to donate an action to each arm minimum. Gave it an action that gave it more actions the following turn, gave the meat arm a defensive reaction and the bone arm ranged and aoe options. Gave the body necromancery spells; spells always take at least 2 actions so the PC's only started facing off against spells once the boss lost an arm.

Overall it flowed really well. It rushed into the party, got a heavy whallop in. The PC's got lucky and inflicted Stunned 1 (aka, lose 1 action), which meant it was stuck on basic attacks on each arm and thats it for one round. That bought them time to position themselves, recover from the open assault. That put the PC's on the momentum that tore through the arms quickly then the body.

[King of Nowhere]

Playing at fairly high optimization levels, ime the hardest part is to avoid the boss going down like a sack of potatoes. It does hurt the credibility of the campaign if it does; this guy is introduced as a dangerous threat, it must be a dangerous threat.
Problem is twofold; first, a high level, well optimized party has a lot of attack potential and can destroy most foes in one round. I am surprised reading how many people experience long combat, ime it rarely lasts more than a couple round.
Second, a heal spell can negate a lot of damage and nullify whole rounds. There is the risk that as long as the cleric has spells, the villain is ineffective.
Encounter design has to take all that into account.

[Flyfly]

Thank ya'll for sharing those stories!


Fighter (who is supposed to be nearly immune to fright) critically fails his fright check, as does almost everybody else. So the fight is looking like a straight TPK until the weakest member of the party sets herself on fire and practically jumps into the thing's mouth. The fire damage overpowered the monster's regeneration and was able to take out the relatively low total health fast enough that the PC in question survived. So it turned into a bit of an epic enounter even if the fight wasn't nearly as cool as I planned it.

Now that's cool! I guess any fight can be a bossfight if you start rolling low enough.

[gbaji]

(3) Action economy. Some bosses are just doomed by having only one action per round against the party's six. To counteract this, again add mooks, and bosses should probably have multiple actions per turn in whatever way the system allows (swift/minor/bonus actions, lair actions, lots of OAs, etc).

(4) Terrain. Use it. Place your boss fight on top of a tower (that people can be knocked off of), or amidst fire pits or lava, or whatever else you can think of that's interesting and unusual.

HTH!

These two are probably the most important (and I suppose help alleviate the first two you mentioned). I find that having the "boss" be a more reasonable (but still powerful) opponent, but supported by some combination of mooks and terrain, allows for very flexible and workable boss fights. The first 3/4ths of the fight is often about the PCs working to whittle their way through the minions, gaining position and numbers on the boss itself. Once they've got that advantage, sheer numbers should allow them to overwhelm the boss pretty quickly (a round or two typically).

Just having a big powerful boss makes the entire fight into the "final stage" of the previous process, and is not as satisfying for the players IME.

Having said that, we also implemented some ZOC/AoO and reach rules into our game, which allow very large creatures to be able to melee attack at significantly greater ranges than normal human sized folks. Which can make for boss fights involving giants and dragons quite interesting all by themselves. It's still a bit of a slog though, which is why I don't put those in very often. The PCs might literally spend the first 4-5 rounds of the combat doing nothing but defending against melee attacks, while advancing to get close enough to attack themselves, and hoping they don't take a big hit and get knocked back and have to start again. Or... if they time it correctly, they could do a mad charge, accept that someone's (possibly multiple someones) going to get totally mauled as a result, and get in close faster. Add in high knockback potential for melee damage from really large opponents though (and dragons having a number of different attacks they can use in different directions), and things get... interesting. This sort of thing also only works in a game system where melee damage is significally greater than missile damage *and* where offensive spells are unlikely to be signfiicant enough to take down anyone that big and tough. But it does allow for single "big monster" fights that are at least a bit more tactical than just "everyone whales on it until it's HPs go away".


I've also done a lot of boss fights where the boss is more about magic power than physical, and the "fight" is more about the PCs working their way through a number of layers of minions, with each fight having the bad guy using magic to buff his guys and debuff/attack the PCs with magic from a distance. By the time the PCs arrive at where the main bad guy is, they may have expended a lot of their resources just getting there, and then have to deal with the last set of (often most powerful) minions, plus the big bad himself using more direct magic in this fight.

This also does raise the issue of "why doesn't the boss guy just leave"? It's something that I think the GM has to consider to make the fight realistic and satisfying, and IMO the most important part is to set the expectations of the players ahead of time. If this is just a plot by some powerful spell caster guy, and it's being dismantled/destroyed by the party, the big bad should just leave if possible. This should be understood by the players though, that they are hurting the big bad, by stopping whatever evil thing he's got going on. So if the main bad guy gets away, they still feel they succeeded by shuting down his plans. Having the bbeg stay and fight to the death my be appreciated by the players from a "we killed the bad guy" perspective, but if they feel like it's an unearned win, it wont feel quite as good. If, on the other hand, you can provide a reason why the bbeg can't leave for some reason, then it is going to be better recieved by the players.

The way I usually do this is having the bbeg still serve some master. Maybe he's being commanded by his deity to do something, and if he abandon's it, he'll be punished/killed/condemned-to-a-fate-worse-than-death. Perhaps he made a deal with a demon/devil/whatever, and literally can't abandon what he's doing. Maybe, it's just a matter of obsession/compulsion. He's so close to completing his evil plans, and is willing to risk all to finish (and playing out the irrational behavior this may create can be fun too). I've also had a couple of big boss fights where the boss literaly was a semi/minor-divine being, defending their own power center. They literally can't leave the area, but must defend it, or lose themselves anyway. Same can be done for various forms of nature spirits/beings, tied to a physical location for their power maybe.

Or... yeah. Somtimes, the big bad guy is just waaay overconfident, and doesn't realize that the party can actually defeat him. Or even just has some patron deity/devil/whatever and assumes he'll be protected/aided. Which can lead to some fun roleplay, as the big bad raises his hands and proclaims "You cannot defeat me, I serve <whatever> and he will ensure your painful deaths!", only to have nothing happen (bwah bwah bwah...), followed by some sort of "Oh lord <whatever> why have you abandoned me?" (followed by painful death for the bbeg). Sometimes the powerful patron whatsit decides to cut their losses well before the big bad relying on them realizes it's time to do the same. It happens...

[King of Nowhere]

This also does raise the issue of "why doesn't the boss guy just leave"?

on the other hand, having the boss survive - or perhaps be resurrected, if the game has that option - allows to reuse his stats for another fight. in 3.5 it takes hours to build a high level high optimized npc, i certainly do appreciate being able to squeeze more than a single fight out of all that effort.
on the players side, if they managed to score some kills before the bad guys retreated, they got to keep their loot. high level gear is hard to replace, so it's still a major victory that will weaken the villain for a long time, even if they do come back. plus, lose a few fights and your allies will stop following you. so, two-three victories were still enough to defeat a villain forever even if he could come back.

[gbaji]

on the other hand, having the boss survive - or perhaps be resurrected, if the game has that option - allows to reuse his stats for another fight. in 3.5 it takes hours to build a high level high optimized npc, i certainly do appreciate being able to squeeze more than a single fight out of all that effort.

Honestly? Having played in a number of games where the GM did this routinely, I'm going to have to go with a firm "it depends" (yeah, cop out, I know). Having bad guys escape and come back later can be well received or just plain hated, depending a lot on how it plays out. If it makes sense narratively, and the PCs still got a significant "win" as a result of the conflict resolution, then it will usually work out fine. Where this becomes annoying to the players is when the bad guy is more or less operating directly and/or there is little difficulty for him to just continue doing what he was doing before the PCs fought him.

I just personally have some really bad memories of a GM who would repeatedly have bad guys show up, do some evil stuff, and when encountered directly, would always escape, just to continue doing the same evil stuff again. I think the GM was trying to go for a "reccuring villians" theme, but just did it wrong. The conflicts themselves never felt like anything was "won" or resolved in any way. It was always "bad guy does something evil and harms a bunch of people; you arrive right after he's just done his evil stuff and fight him; then he escapes". In a scenario crafted as "bad guy already did something evil, and you need to defeat him and prevent him from doing it again", the bad guy escaping means that the party just straight up failed. This is made even worse if the PCs have to spend significant effort and/or sacrifice to get that one shot at "taking out the bad guy", only to have him escape. It's made even worser (if that is a word) if the location the bad guy is found isn't some kind of active evil hidden base critical to his plans, but just some location he happens to be hanging out, in between doing evil, and there's nothing there of value, and nothing there he needs to continue his evil plans in the future.

So yes. I can speak from direct personal experience that there absolutely is a "wrong way" to do recurring villians. And I think the key here is that you can get away with the bad guy getting away *if* the actions of the PCs actually thwarted his plans in some significant way. If the bad guy succeeds in his plans and gets away? That's not so much fun for the players. If anything, it's the opposite, because the entire encounter is interpreted as the bad guy (GM) rubbing the PCs (players) noses in their failure. Eh... And you can even get away with that, sometimes, if the entire encounter is intended as some kind of "opening salvo" or introduction to the bad guy in the first place. But then, the escape isn't supposed to be a "we tracked him down and confronted him" so much as a "he hung around at the scene of his crime to taunt us, so now we're coming after him", which should then lead to the adventure where the party tracks down the villain to defeat him. Subsequent encounters should have some sort of "win" for the PCs though, if not actual defeat/death/capture of the bad guy.


on the players side, if they managed to score some kills before the bad guys retreated, they got to keep their loot. high level gear is hard to replace, so it's still a major victory that will weaken the villain for a long time, even if they do come back. plus, lose a few fights and your allies will stop following you. so, two-three victories were still enough to defeat a villain forever even if he could come back.

This really depends on the game setting and theme though. In some games "we destroyed enough of his support and resources, so we wont be hearing from him for a long time" is sufficient victory. In others, that may just be seen as an operational cost for the bad guy and he's still going strong.

Hence my incredibly firm "it depends" answer. :smalltongue:

[icefractal]

And the issue with "we reduced his resources" is that in some campaigns those resources aren't kept track of anywhere, not even in the GM's head, and so "reducing" them means very little. And that even when that's not the case, the players may think it is.

An example - one of the GMs in our group likes to use recurring enemies. But he thinks purely in terms of "resolving the current situation is a win" and doesn't even take the longer term into account, so fighting them feels very pointless.

Like, the most common one is a large criminal organization -
We put some of their members in jail, how many more do they have?
We destroyed one of their bases, how many others do they have?
We stopped them from stealing the parts they were trying to get, what effect does that have on their future plans?
None of these questions have answers. I don't just mean the PCs don't know, but AFAIK the GM doesn't know either. The organization will have whatever resources and goons they need for the problem of the week, and any long-term changes in their prominence (which are rare) will be driven more by plot than by anything the PCs did.

As a result ... we've started just avoiding / ignoring them. Definitely not what the GM wants, but that's the result that overuse and/or lack of impact have led to.

[King of Nowhere]

If it makes sense narratively

And the issue with "we reduced his resources" is that in some campaigns those resources aren't kept track of anywhere, not even in the GM's head, and so "reducing" them means very little. And that even when that's not the case, the players may think it is.
Ok, I have to give some more context for that to make sense then.

my campaigns are a bit uncommon. rarely the villain is a single individual. villains are most often large organizations. tipically nations or religions. those organizations will have their champions - i tipically take the time and effort to stat a level 18-20 group as the most powerful people that are loial to that organization and will fight for it, that will serve as boss fight for the late game. while those powerful champions are leaders, removing them does not destroy a state or a religion - destroying those completely would require a large scale genocide, which is not what we want to roleplay.
the party will not be alone in those endeavors. they also will have the backing of nations, religions, paladin orders, whatever. getting alliances is important. sometimes the party can unite so many people against the villains, that I just declare them winners by overwhelming strength without any need for actual fighting. but most often, it is assumed that the armies of both sides will be roughly balanced, and the party will need to tip the scales with their own fights against the strongest enemy champions.
and if the party wins a couple of decisive fights here, it really wins the war. it means the party can go anywhere, destroy any kind of strategic objective, and nobody on the opposite side can stop them. even if those nations have armies of enhanced golems with cannons strapped on their shoulders, a high level party teleporting around, sowing mayem, that cannot be stopped, will make all the difference. even if the villains can be resurrected (soul binding is banned by common agreement, in a "if you do that to us, we'll do that to you, and nobody wants that" way; capturing alive as a way to prevent an enemy from returning is effective, though obviously more difficult), if they have proven times and again that they could not stand against the party even with their best equipment, and now they don't even have it anymore, they are effectively neutralized.
at this point, the nation/religion will generally try to negotiate a surrender. or, other leaders in it will try to oust the main villains who are leading their country to defeat. most of the ruling class will be willing to jump on the bandwagon in exchange for retaining their privileges. those high level combatants who are more loial to their pockets than to ideals will leave the sinking ship. leadership is transferred to somebody less fanatic/megalomaniac and more friendly towards the party and their cause, and that nation/religion will be effectively done as an opponent for the rest of the campaign. and in both campaigns, some former villain that was thus defeated ended up allied with the party against some greater evil.

i do keep a fairly accurate tally of how much high level people each major power has available, but the most important thing is that it makes sense narratively. my campaign world is more organized than the average, with large nations and powerful religions capable of mustering huge resources. it really makes no sense to kill the high cleric and call it a day, not when his second and third can both cast true resurrection, and there are a few scrolls stashed away in case all three are killed simultaneously. but you can break their power and make them submit.

now, all of this is very specific to my campaign world. but the general point that it's not necessarily bad if the villain escapes stands. sure, there are many ways to do it wrong, it can lead to railroading if the players have no agency to effectively tackle the villain. but it can also be done right.

[gbaji]

And the issue with "we reduced his resources" is that in some campaigns those resources aren't kept track of anywhere, not even in the GM's head, and so "reducing" them means very little. And that even when that's not the case, the players may think it is.

An example - one of the GMs in our group likes to use recurring enemies. But he thinks purely in terms of "resolving the current situation is a win" and doesn't even take the longer term into account, so fighting them feels very pointless.

Like, the most common one is a large criminal organization -
We put some of their members in jail, how many more do they have?
We destroyed one of their bases, how many others do they have?
We stopped them from stealing the parts they were trying to get, what effect does that have on their future plans?
None of these questions have answers. I don't just mean the PCs don't know, but AFAIK the GM doesn't know either. The organization will have whatever resources and goons they need for the problem of the week, and any long-term changes in their prominence (which are rare) will be driven more by plot than by anything the PCs did.

As a result ... we've started just avoiding / ignoring them. Definitely not what the GM wants, but that's the result that overuse and/or lack of impact have led to.

Yup. I often write about how you should not write your RPG adventures like they are films or TV shows. And this is absolutely true when it comes to specific character actions and decisions and other "scripted" concepts. But this is one notable exception. You do want to have "story arcs" or film style conflict resolutions in your RPG adventures. There should, at some point, come a "notable win" where the main bad guy, and the main evil plot, and everything significantly associated with it, is defeated/destroyed/whatever. Build up to this, certainly. But it's 10x more satisfying for the players if you include these kinds of resolutions instead of just subjecting them to endless whack-a-mole style gaming.

This can be really subtle in terms of what the players will regard as a "win" versus what they wont, and it's something you kinda have to feel out as you go, and can certainly vary significantly depending on the setting and theme of the game, but it will make a difference if you put in the effort to allow it to happen. I say "allow it" because it's a real GM temptation, having spent the time building a villian and/or a threat, to want to keep it around, so you can use it again. And yeah, one can argue that all RPGs are an exercise in whack-a-mole anyway (the GM will always make more bad guys, and more threats to overcome, right?). But it does actually give the players a ton of satisfaction to defeate *that* bad guy, or end *that* threat, once and for all. Yup. Even if they know, in the back of their minds, that you will certainly come up with something new/different to throw at them in the next scenario.

You can certainly have some evil organization(s) lying in the background, pulling the strings. But there's a huge difference between each adventure just being stopping the current Umbrella Corp activity, versus building up a pattern of that activity over time, having the players figure out the specifics of their current plan, and then destroying the source/center of that plan, and killing the person/people specifically running it (and in this case, destroying their latest icky research, dna samples, test subjects, etc). You can (and arguably should) think in terms of story arcs for those kinds of settings, and make it very clear that when one is completed, it's a significant win, and ends a specific significant threat.

And yeah. You absolutely have to be willing to give up your precious villains from time to time. Let them die. As stated above; you can always make new ones. But new means different, and players appreciate that as well IME. And sometimes (a lot of the time), in the process of writing a new villian, you come up with new/different ways to run that villian, and new specific methods, abilities, threats, personalities, etc that go along with it. Which will keep the game fresh. I've run some very very long running game settings and campaigns, and it very much makes a differnce if each adventure is more than just "same villians with a new paint job".

You can certainly have recurring villians, but you either need to have them actually be killed or otherwise rendered "not an active villian" via some means, eventually. And yeah, the film series trope of transforming them into frenemies actually can work here (sometimes). This could be shifting politics, where someone who was once an enemy, is now an ally (but may become an enemy again in the future). It could be a bad guy merc, who sometimes works for evil folks, but will sometimes share critical information with the party if he thinks the evil plan is just too evil or something (guys got some morals maybe?). It could even be someone who has an honest change of heart somewhere along the way (it could happen!). It's doable. But IME, trying to keep a single super evil bad guy around, adventure after adventure, will eventually become tedious to the players (and may even become tedious to the GM as well).

[King of Nowhere]

And yeah, the film series trope of transforming them into frenemies actually can work here (sometimes).

this works mostly in settings where you have multiple bad guys at the same time, who are actual people with evil, but reasonable, agendas.
sure, this evil warlord would love to conquer your land, subjugate your people into his empire. but if a portal unleashed an invasion of demons, he would fight against them. or he could be persuaded to fight against some other evil warlord, because they covet the same land. this is a villain that can be bargained with, reasoned, intimidated. in a setting with several such villains, enterprising players will most likely pull a few of them to their own side, at least temporarily.
an infestation of wights or an invasion of demons, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.

[Jay R]

It wasn't a boss fight, but it was certainly one of the most memorable and satisfying fights I've ever taken part in.

I was once in a party who faced a large shapechanger. When we first saw it, it was hiding in the shape of ... a gazebo. I suspect that was enable it to ambush us, but it failed spectacularly – we attacked the gazebo on sight.

We killed it, and learned what the creature was. But we have never, then or since, referred to it as anything other than a gazebo.

gazebo.]

----

This one really qualifies as a boss fight, despite the fact that we cruised right through it.

At a D&D convention in 1976 or so in Houston, our party of five sixth level characters defeated a 134 HD monster. (Original D&D, of course.) Not, that is not a typo; the hydra had one hundred thirty four heads.

Why was there a 134 HD monster in a tournament dungeon? To kill anybody too stupid to run away from it, we were told later.

So we opened a door, saw a 134-headed hydra in a 10x20 room, and shut the door.

At that time, each head of a hydra had 6 hit points, and you needed to kill them all. But they were all in a 10x20 foot room, the exact size of a web spell. Two minutes of planning later:

Player 1: I open the door.
Player 2: I cast web in the room.
Player 3: I throw in a flask of oil.
Player 4: I throw in a flask of oil.
Player 5: I throw in a lit torch.
Player 1: I close the door.

1d6 points of damage to each head. Repeat. 1d6 more to each head, killing them all.

-----

This one was not D&D, or even a fantasy game. And it’s a full session, not a single fight. In fact, there was very little actual combat. But in a 17th century musketeer game with no magic, six player characters stopped an invading army of 2,000 soldiers and camp followers. That qualifies as a boss fight, even if we did it with espionage, rumor, sabotage, and ruining their food.

In a previous adventure, in the late fall, we had captured some bills of lading that implied an army would come up through Lorraine to invade France. So we knew about it months in advance, and had the bills of lading to provide their food.

The bills of lading implied an army of roughly 2,000 soldiers and camp followers and 500 horses, led by the General Don Miguel _____, whose last name is a moot point, as shown below. All winter, we had horses staked out to attract two wolf packs. We started where the wolf packs were, and each night, staked out a horse closer to where the army would be, in the forest between Luneville and Drouville. We wanted numerous wolves used to feeding on horseflesh to greet the Spanish army.

The first delivery was at St. Die. We arranged that the food would arrive two days early, to allow spoilage. Then there was a heavy rain that delayed the troops. We had (very mildly) spiked the wine with bad water. Also, we had baked 20 pistoles (silver coins) into the bread. We spread a rumor in town that the rich soldiers have been throwing coins to the peasants. Vivienne and Jean Louis (PCs) began to join the army as camp followers, Vivienne concentrating her attentions on the officers. Jean Louis started to become a common face, performing, spreading rumors, asking questions. "What's this I hear about a missing paywagon?"

The next day was Baccarat. 20 more pistoles and 2 Louis d'Or (gold coins) were baked in the bread. The wine was slightly more spiked. Deliveries of the food arrived mid-morning the next day, further delaying the troops. Vivienne had two officers fighting a duel over her. We spread more rumors about the paywagon, and inspired some bad blood between officers. (Jean Louis gathered a crowd of soldiers at the dueling field, by juggling in front of them, and then walking (while juggling) over to the private duel.) We started a fire in town after the troops left. Some cavalry units left early, and so were not fed.

On the third day, near their planned stop at the town of Luneville, we burned a bridge and planted stakes under the water. The cavalry units (who had left early) tried to cross first, and one horse was lamed. So they waited for the rest of the army to arrive to build the bridge. More unrest, more rumors, more bad food. We incited some guttersnipes to throw rocks across the river at them. In the camp, Jean Louis made of point of saying he didn’t believe all these wild tales about a missing paywagon. He asked people what they’d heard, and wondered who was spreading all these tales (thereby getting people to spread all these tales).

The bridge was finished mid-morning the next day, so late the next night, a bedraggled, tired, dispirited army arrived at Drouville. We set up a road block along their easiest path, so the army was forced to detour through the wolf forest. We spread rumors in Drouville that the army had been torching villages behind them. The food was strongly poisoned, and the rye bread was tainted with ergot. The army was not going to be in shape to deal with the situation.

Vivienne lured Don Miguel to her room at an inn, and murdered him in his sleep. We spread poisoned oats out in the woods. Then we torched the town, stampeding the Spaniards’ horses. We started several fires on the upwind side of town. While cutting horses loose, Jean Louis was spotted by a sentry. He yelled, "Release the horses — don't let them burn!" The sentry jumped in quickly to help Jean Louis save the horses. The Spanish lost supplies, horses, and lots of time trying to round up the horses that survived the night. Note that spooked horses aren't too bright, and that they were downwind of the flames. Many horses were lost (or eaten). Jean Louis slipped into the General's headquarters. He fought and killed two sentries, leaving them in a pose indicating that they had slain each other. He then made off with the general's orders, dispatches, and 70 escudo (4,200 livre!).

In nearby towns the next day we spread rumors that the army was berserk, looting and burning. We spread rumors in the army that the general was seen running off with a courtesan. Henri went north and bought their next shipment of food (with their money), which we dumped in the river. The army split up, some becoming bandits until captured by the Duke of Lorraine; some continuing on, ravaging the countryside as they went.

After spreading a few more rumors in Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, and telling the duke of Lorraine about the soldiers turned bandits, we returned to Paris, where we delivered the orders and dispatches to Richelieu.

[King of Nowhere]

At a D&D convention in 1976 or so in Houston, our party of five sixth level characters defeated a 134 HD monster. (Original D&D, of course.) Not, that is not a typo; the hydra had one hundred thirty four heads.

Why was there a 134 HD monster in a tournament dungeon? To kill anybody too stupid to run away from it, we were told later.

So we opened a door, saw a 134-headed hydra in a 10x20 room, and shut the door.

At that time, each head of a hydra had 6 hit points, and you needed to kill them all. But they were all in a 10x20 foot room, the exact size of a web spell. Two minutes of planning later:

Player 1: I open the door.
Player 2: I cast web in the room.
Player 3: I throw in a flask of oil.
Player 4: I throw in a flask of oil.
Player 5: I throw in a lit torch.
Player 1: I close the door.

1d6 points of damage to each head. Repeat. 1d6 more to each head, killing them all.



so it was basically a 134 hd monster who took 134x damage from AoE. seems like incompetent design. but then, it was 1976, nobody was really experienced back then

[Talakeal]

Not technically, a boss fight as it was at the beginning of the dungeon rather than the end. An ancient fey creature had been assigned to guard the dungeon, less to protect what was inside than to prevent adventurers from wandering in and being turned into powerful undead by the white dragon necromancer who was the dungeons actual boss. The creature was an advanced frost giant were-polar bear, and was a tough solo encounter for the entire party even if not a true boss. It gave a speech cribbed from Warcraft III about not being here to protect the dungeon from the PCs, but to protect them from it, and it blocked their path, glaive in hand.
Brian's character Lucia, who was basically a paladin optimized for melee, walked up to it, saluted, and drew her sword. She proceeds to win initiative and full attack the guardian. Every single attack not only hits, but crits. She then proceeds to roll maximum or near maximum damage for every single damage dice. The giant werebear is killed outright. What was meant to be an intimidating guardian and a tough solo encounter for the entire party gets taken down in a single actions.

I am running the classic AD&D Dragonlance adventure path remixed for 3E. As a twist ending, I decide to add a big final boss. After an epic battle against the BBEG Ariakas and his minions, and then defeating the Death Knight Lord Soth when he comes to claim Kitiara's soul, the game should be over. But I added an extra touch. The cleric lord Verminard, who has faked his own death at the end of act 1 and been traveling with the party in disguise ever sense, sacrifice's himself to open the gateway to the Abyss and summon Takhisis, transforming into her avatar. The party quails before fighting a goddess, but Fizban the wizard, who is also a god in mortal form, tells them to have no fear, for she is mortal.
I used the official stats for 3E Tiamat from the (Manual of the planes iirc?), basically a fusion of every great wyrm chromatic dragon and a hydra, in addition to a grab bag of divine powers. Its a tough fight, but then the party wizard starts spamming Enervate spells on her. She isn't immune to energy drain, and after a few rounds of this, the penalties start stacking really high, and soon she is needing nat 20s to do anything. The party starts wailing on her as a big 5 headed punching bad, and it isn't long before I am playing the classic Final Fantasy Victory Fanfare music to mark the end of the campaign.
Well, I actually had one more fight. Fewmaster Toede, a recurring minor villain who kept surviving through pure luck despite his incompetence, proclaimed himself the new Dark Lord as he was the highest ranking villain still alive. The fight was more or less a joke, as the party was able to blow off steam finally putting an end to the guy who had been annoying them since level one.
But, a few days later, I am looking over Tiamat's statblock, and I notice something I had missed before, she is immune to all spells of fourth level or lower! The party's tactic shouldn't have worked at all! Waaah wah!


The final battle of the seven year campaign that ran from 2006-2013 and to this day I consider my magnum opus. The villain was Eris, an ancient epic dragon sorceress who have, for millions of years, been allowing civilizations to develop only to then bring about their fall, both for fun and to pillage all of their treasures. The party had finally cornered her in her lair in the Negative Energy plane. But she had prepared for this battle.
She had resurrected many of the party's previous villains and set them to guard Merlin's Rainbow, an artifact which the party would need to defeat her. Bob's sorceress Silanthous, decided they couldn't beat them all, shielded the party, and then overloaded Merlin's Rainbow, destroying the artifact, but also incinerating the bad guys guarding it with an explosion roughly on par with a nucelar blast.
But now they were facing Eris without the benefit of Merlin's Rainbow.
The dragon had done two things to prepare for this battle. She had a contingent resurrection spell upon herself, and she had performed a painful magical ritual that scarred her soul and imbued her fire breath with cold iron, for several members of the party were playing nymphs and had a weakness to it.
The battle itself was ferocious, although I don't remember any particular moments from it. They killed the dragon once, only to find her resurrected, starting the fight over again while they were running on fumes.
The dragon is badly wounded, but she breathes iron imbued fire upon the party, and manages to kill or incapacitate everyone, except for Lucia, who is at precisely 0 HP. She can take one action, she smites the dragon with the last of her power, and it is just enough. As Lucia collapses, Eris dies for the final time. (Although she did backup her memories in a bottle at the plateau of Leng, and she created a tulpa to drink them and carry on her legacy centuries in the future.)
It felt so amazing to have balanced the encounter so tightly, and the dice to cooperate so well. The fight was literally as close as can be, but the players won in the end. A perfect ending to an amazing campaign, and I didn't have to fudge it at all!

In my current campaign, the first floor of the dungeon is the territory of a tribe of kobolds. Early on, they capture the party in a trap, but the party is able to negotiate a ceasefire with the kobolds, as well as safe passage through their territory for a share of all treasure they find within it.
The "boss" of the first level is a three headed hydra. The kobolds worship it as a god, and for the most party it ignores them as they are too small to be worth chasing. They feed it, and bring it treasure, and as a result it is guarding their best treasure, and has also grown too large to easily leave its lair.
The players clear the first floor, but find that a clan of dwarves is moving up from the underground and trying to take over the dungeon, pushing out the other inhabitants, including the kobolds. The kobolds come to the players with talks about forming an alliance against them but the players, whose pride is still hurting from being captured by and having to split treasure with the kobolds say no, and give them a pep talk about how they can't depend on other people and need to learn to defend their own lands.
So, the kobolds put their heads together about how to defeat the dwarves. They decide that the only thing they can do utilize the hydra. So, they go into its lair and equip it with several magical talismans that are in its hoard, widen the entrance to its lair (and several other passages leading to the dwarves territory) and then stop feeding it. So now a wild three headed hydra, boosted by magic items, is wandering the first floor.
The players encounter it, and decide to fight it. This doesn't go well for them, it trips the melee characters and pins them down so they can't escape. The party can't really hurt it, especially with one of the magic items boosting its saving throws. The tank offers to hold it off while the others make a break for it, but the party decides to go down fighting, and they manage to get it to about half HP before they all die. My first TPK in I don't know how many years.
So they roll new characters and get to exploring the lower floors of the dungeon, but there are periodic hydra attacks as they pass through the first floor, and it hurts their morale both in and out of character. After their first beating, they really work the threat of the monster up in their minds.
Eventually, I am able to persuade them to give it another try. This time, they set up an ambush for it, setting booby traps and luring it into a tunnel which is to small for it to turn around in, so they can surround it and freely engage in hit and run tactics. They get pretty lucky on dice rolls, and actually manage to kill it without taking too much damage, finally getting revenge for their first party, even if the combat was a little underwhelming.


The final boss of a monastery that has been buried in the Earth for a century, its monks trapped inside and slowly going insane from isolation, plague, and lack of sunlight. A fey trickster posing as a returned saint has taken over the monastery. She is guarded by a pair of elephant headed temple guardians, basically D&D Maelaphants, and lounges on a throne made of desecrated alters and religious statuary. The party tries talking to her, but she is too alien in thought for them to take any meaning from her riddles, and they get frustrated and decide to just kill her. She panics and puts up a mesh of ice to protect her while she works her magic, and her pachyderm guards charge in. Bob thinks quickly, and casts shatter on her ice barrier. Reading the spell descriptions, I can't fault his logic, he shatter her protections without any rolls and a much lower level spell. In the following round, Brian unloads into her with his custom made street-sweeper (he is playing a tinker gunslinger. A street-sweeper is slang for a short term automatic shotgun) rolls amazingly well, and just perforates her, killing her in a single turn. Bob then blinds both of her guards, who flub their saving throws. So now we have two blind melee brutes with no magical support, and I call the fight. I was very disappointed, but I feel like the PCs needed a win as overall the campaign had been kicking their butts.

[JusticeZero]

From my current campaign, a weekly Pathfinder 1, Epic 6 game. The core party includes a swashbuckler, archer, melee rogue, werecat (soulknife), and an alchemist. The setting is a bit of an exotic.

These are what I refer to as trials, distinct from a boss fight. A boss fight is a fight against an elite enemy, a high CR fight, but in the end just a fight. They tend to go sideways because players can be surprisingly good at delivering the mail in the form of lots of damage; in a trial encounter, which generally takes much or all of the session, there are various mechanics to deal with, and the goal isn't just to deliver lots of damage to a walking HP pool. There's moving parts.

An adventuress turned city guard captain had seen both members of her polycule and her child die and decided to ascend to godhood, termed a "Regent" in the setting, to Fix Everything.

Important to this setting, Regents are inherently tied to a region that they don't share with others, Always Evil, and have a domain. Hers was to be "Family".

By having people slaughtered in her name in her area, and by destroying the Altar to the Hags in the city and cutting the Hags ties to the region, she had already formed a demiplane and her own numen (local term for a demon/angel). The next step was to sacrifice herself to get to her plane and take over.

The party had Mythic 1 online there, because they had been forced to wade through an absolutely absurd number of CR 1/8 conscripts who were magically bound to die and be sacrificed if they tried to surrender or retreat in the previous session. As a result, everybody in the party was both sickened by her BS and dangerously close to ascending to godhood themselves, a constant threat for anyone who traumatizes and kills people in a place not overseen by a Regent.

She had been a control tank. She had reach. Her numen were floating masks surrounded by floating disembodied claws, and also had reach and feats to dominate with attacks of opportunity messing with people's movements.

When they arrived in the building that had been converted to a temple, two acolytes barred the way. Six townsfolk were tied to fixtures along the walls. The Jade Lady herself was in the middle of the room in front of the altar.

Her goal was to sacrifice at least three townsfolk or party members. Or acolytes, really, but the party shredded the acolytes first, so it didn't matter.(Arbitrary number really, tweak as needed.) Each townie had 5 hp.. basically a one hit kill. That could be done by going over to them and stabbing them, or else once a round she could remotely suck one dry of life, healing up to 40hp, but only if she had taken at least 30 hp. She had, IIRC, 100 HP. That ended up being a decent number because of the spike damage the party DPS could put out, but if I had to run it again, I would make the heals bigger.

Townsfolk could be removed from the sacrificial equipment by a party member adjacent.

Once she had sacrificed someone, two of her numen appeared and joined in. They were replaced as more people died,if they were eliminated. Her goal then was to go to the altar at the back of the room, on difficult terrain, climb onto the center post, and die. Everything in the room would immediately try to kill her, and as soon as she hits 0hp on that square, she ascends.

The party never found out what would happen next, because as soon as they got the last townsperson free, they all made their all out DPS check and brought her down 15' away from the altar with non-lethal damage.

They then carried her to the beach and used her as a blood sacrifice to consecrate a new altar to the Drowned Lady, ocean Regent of Weather and Wrath, who two party members follow because they appreciate that she protects women and children even though her responses to rampant abuse tends to involve concepts like "minimum safe distance", "extreme prejudice", and "collateral damage".

Worked well because they had side goals to achieve during the fight; if they'd just burned the Jade Lady down with a DPS check when they arrived... They would have achieved her goals, all the innocents would have died. The Jade Lady was pulled away from the altar by having to sacrifice her townsfolk directly before the party could save them. Her reach and martial feats, duplicated in her numen, made moving around a problem... Lots of people getting tripped with attacks of opportunity from moving through Oh So Much threatened space. And they had to move around a lot to accomplish their rescues, so "burning up the enemy's reactions" was an important mechanic.
Other notable boss fight from the same campaign.
The North side of the river is controlled by the Grey-Green, regent of decay and ruler of armies of fungal minions. The entire soil cover is a network of communication for fungi and those infected by them.
But these three people, spies rotted throughout with fungus and bearing critical intelligence, are on the South side of the river, in Hag lands. There's a stump here, and if you do a certain ritual, which takes a few rounds to do, a fungal bridge forms across the river to allow passage.

They have a stash of control type spells, on their spell list and in consumables like scrolls. Wind Wall is one of them. They have fogs, entangles, the works.
The party is 200' away through forest that messes with line of sight in places.

All you have to do is get to them and kill them before they can escape.

Technically, they failed this one, because they were just a little too late to stop the bridge summoning, and one of the spies made it across with its last seven HP. But they had fun, and got a few good scrolls and potions out of it.
There is a teenage girl they rescued (in a more traditional boss fight encounter), who is Cursed. She irritated the Hags somehow, and got a horribly twisted monkey paw wish granted as a result, since that's kind of the Hags' thing.
The party doesn't know the particulars and they don't really matter, honestly.

Any time she tries to talk or call out, behemoths tend to appear and try to rescue her and take her away. She doesn't actually want this to happen, but... Accidents happen, and large Behemoths (stat block: Dire Hippopotamus) tend to put a strain on the town's defenses.
So while the party was dealing with returning an overdue favor to the Drowned Lady, the town palisade got wrecked, and the archer's ward, a young television style mergirl studying to be an assassin and undercover investigator for the Drowned Lady, grabbed the Cursed girl and dragged her out of town trying to gets her to the better defended fortress orphanage of Lady's Rock. There's a historic reason the orphanage is highly fortified, but it's not relevant to the tale.

When the party tracked the girls down... More accidents happened. So they had to deal with a number of overprotective hippos trying to kidnap a panicked girl and drag her into the marsh.
Party solution: Merciful arrows for non lethal damage. DPS check on the cursed girl. Everyone else? Deal with the hippos, grab the knocked out pincushion cursed girl and put her on the rowboat, because we don't have to worry about hippos in the middle of the ocean.

Again, the important thing here is that the solution isn't just "more DPS", there's various moving parts.
This one hasn't been run yet; the party encountered it, made a plan, then decided it was a problem for future them, as it's less time sensitive than what they're doing right now.

There's a cavern. At the bottom is a sealed door to the Center Of The World. People getting to the center of the world is a very bad thing, and certain Regents exist to prevent that from happening. This cavern was maintained by one such Regent, whose followers were wiped out because history blah blah imperialism blah blah. The Regent of Darkness has offered to take control of it; the Regent of the Unliving is currently watching it but really isn't equipped to maintain it properly and is happy to cede the node to the lord of Moths as a result.

Unfortunately, the dead Regent left a guardian, a massive stone.. golem... thing... guarding the portal. Without the guidance of the Regent and its followers, the guardian is down to scripted behaviors, so it's not as secure as anyone would like.

The stone guardian is durable, with a goodly bit of damage resistance, but more importantly... it has Regeneration 10 while touching bare ground. It's in a cavern. This is a problem.

The plan is to acquire a very large rug, big enough that they'll need a couple of party members to carry and unroll it, then lure it onto the rug where its regeneration and ranged attacks no longer function before shredding it. It's a big pool of HP, and it hurts in melee, but the key is to defeat it where it's not touching the ground.

[Flyfly]

<many stories>

Woah! Thank you for sharing so many! This is good stuff.

[Jay R]

Does this count as a boss fight, given that there was very little fighting? Well, 6 PCs stopped an invading army of 1,000 soldiers (and about the same in camp followers) in a game with no magic, so I assume that it counts. The game was FGU's Flashing Blades, adventuring in the time of the musketeers.

In a previous session set in the late fall, we had captured some documents from a corrupt mayor’s office. We identified the papers as bills for deliveries of supplies next spring to Savoy, Franch Comte, Luxembourg, and other places, documenting a clear line of march to the Spanish Netherlands. The bills of lading implied an army of roughly 2,000 soldiers and camp followers and 500 horses, led by the General Don Miguel ______, whose last name is a moot point, as shown below. We took the papers to Richelieu, who set the party the task of harrying the army next spring, using the bills of lading as a tool. That gave us a few months to get our plans in motion.

We identified two wolf packs in the general region, and staked out horses each night for them to eat. When the wolves started noticing them, we started moving the location towards the intended line of march. All winter, we had horses staked out to attract two wolf packs to the forest between Luneville and Drouville. We wanted numerous wolves used to feeding on horseflesh to greet the Spanish army.

The first food delivery was at St. Die. We arranged that the food would arrive two days early, to allow spoilage. Then there was a heavy rain that delayed the troops. We (very mildly) spiked the wine with bad water. We also baked 20 pistoles (silver coins) into the bread. We also spread a rumor in the town that the rich soldiers have been throwing coins to the peasants. We just wanted lots of townsfolk getting in their way.

Vivienne and Jean-Louis (two PCs) began to join the army as camp followers, Vivienne concentrating her attentions on the officers. Jean-Louis started to become a common face, performing, spreading rumors, asking questions. "What's this I hear about a missing paywagon?"

The next day was Baccarat. We baked 20 more pistoles and 2 Louis d'Or (gold coins) into the bread. The wine was slightly more spiked. Deliveries of the food arrived mid-morning the next day, further delaying the troops. Vivienne had two officers fighting a duel over her. We spread rumors about the paywagon (always in the form of asking about it, as if it was already known), while Vivienne spread bad blood between officers. (Jean Louis gathered a crowd of soldiers at the dueling field, by starting juggling act and walking there, just in time for all the common soldiers to see the officers dueling.) We started a fire in town after the troops left, and left a Spanish belt near where it started. Some cavalry units left early, and so were not fed. Jean-Louis staunchly defended the Spanish leadership, saying he could never believe the rumor that two officers had run off with the pay wagon. “By the way, does anybody know what that duel was really about?”

Near the town of Luneville, we burned a bridge and planted stakes under water. The cavalry units tried to cross first, and one horse was lamed. So they waited for the rest of the army to arrive to build the bridge. More unrest, more rumors, more bad food. We incited some guttersnipes to throw rocks across the river at them.

The bridge was finished mid-morning the next day, so late the next night, a bedraggled, tired, dispirited army arrived at Drouville. We set up a road block, to force them to detour through the wolf forest. We spread rumors in Drouville that the army had been torching villages behind them. The food was strongly poisoned, and the rye bread was tainted with ergot. There were 20 Louis D'Or baked into the bread. We figured it would all be pawed through by soldiers' dirty hands before anybody ate it. The army was not going to be in shape to deal with the situation. Jean-Louis made of point of telling people that the paywagon was due in Drouville, “… and when you see it, that will put an end to all these rumors.” There was, of course, no paywagon to see.

Vivienne lured Don Miguel (the commanding general) to her room at an inn, and murdered him in his sleep. We spread poisoned oats out in the woods for the horses to find. Then we started several fires on the upwind side of the camp. Jean-Louis went to cut all their horses loose. A sentry spotted him, and called out, “Halt! What are you doing?” Jean-Louis yelled, "Release the horses — don't let them burn!" And the sentry started helping Jean-Louis release all their horses into a forest with horse-eating wolves.

The Spaniards lost supplies, horses, and lots of time trying to round up the horses that survived the night. Note that spooked horses aren't too bright, and that they were downwind of the flames. Many horses were lost, or eaten, or poisoned by the oats we had left for them. Jean-Louis slipped into the General's headquarters. He fought and killed two sentries, leaving them in a pose indicating that they had slain each other. He then made off with the general's orders, dispatches, and 70 escudo (4200 livres!).

We spread rumors in the remnants of the army that the general was seen running off with a courtesan. In nearby towns the next day we spread rumors that the army was berserk, looting and burning. Henri (another PC) went north and bought their next shipment of food (with their money), which we dumped in the river. We then reported the existence of soldiers turned renegade to the Duke of Lorraine. After spreading a few more rumors in Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, we returned to Paris, where we delivered the orders and dispatches to Richelieu.

The army split up, some becoming bandits until captured by the Duke of Lorraine; some continuing on, ravaging the countryside as they went, until caught be the Duke’s men.

[King of Nowhere]

Cemandrion is a lich high priest of vecna who managed to dull the evilness and get his religion publicly accepted. he also has a penchant for really long term plans. in this specific case, he was planning to build up a complex apparatus under the city to suck the souls of every inhabitants, harvest the small divine spark in every soul, and ascend to godhood. but he spent centuries building up a good reputation as "the guy that does what needs to be done for the good of society", so nobody suspected of him. he even went as far as organizing a competition specifically to keep the party out of his hair, but a technical delay caused that to fail.
he struck suddenly; he started his ritual, and everyone in the city started collapsing, while dimensional travel was blocked. I was able to describe viscerally the scene, which helped a lot with the atmosphere. by following the trail of souls that were being funneled towards the ritual center, the party run to the vault. there were no defences, because the ritual would have sucked dry any minion, and even golems. the party had a dragon cohort that shielded them from the worst of the effects, but collapsed before the final fight. so they came to the central chamber for the confrontation.

the party had information on cemandrion, and knew he was a powerful cleric with a hugely inflated wisdom score, relying on disjunctions and save-or-die for offence while protected by very high defences. They were able to survive the initial DC 37 disjunction+banshee's wail by a mixture of contingency (the wizard already had a contingency set to teleport the whole party out of range in case of disjunction) and maybe counterspelling.
then... it was a bit embarassing. the druid shapechanged into a beholder and used the antimagic cone on cemandrion. cemandrion's contingency triggered, giving him one more round of action. he was prepared for antimagic fields by having a crossbow with black lotus darts - hard to resist even at high level if you lost all your magic buffs to antimagic. but druids are immune to poison. iirc he tried implosion, but he either was counterspelled, or something else stopped him. next round he was fully put in antimagic and destroied.
the ritual fizzed after having absorbed "only" 50000 souls, whose power was split among everyone in the room, giving both cemandrion and the party some cool boosts. besides basic buffs, I let every player choose what they would like as a unique power. for cemandrion himself, I decided his power would be to dispel antimagic field as a quick action.


still the cemandrion campaign. the lich priest, as a lich, obviously came back, and he had a B plan. for centuries, in secret, he's been helping his most powerful - and faithful - casters to achieve lichdom. now he had an army of liches, plus a few nations allied with him. the party had available most of the world's religions, even evil ones (who were not comfortable with a rival conquering the world). to prevent the liches from returning every time, the party had to destroy the strongholds of vecna, where the philacteries were kept safe.
this was an uncommon boss combat, because it was first a purely roleplayed fight of armies.
the vecna coalition had more arcane casters, because they put lots of emphasis on magic. the party coalition had more clerics, and they had more fighter-types. casters have the advantage there, so they proposed to have their casters cast antimagic fields to protect the army. only issue with that, my setting also has cannons - which can ruin your day even at high levels, especially if an antimagic field is making you lose all your buffs.
but the party barbarian was an orc, and he had become a messianic figure to other orcs (a result of me watching brian of nazareth before playing). he could mobilize many orc fighters. he asked if it was possible to have them carry big thick shields to protect from cannons.
I made a few calculations on the mass of a shield thick enough to stop a renaissance-era cannon, and came up with 200 kg. That's too much for most people without magic help, but orcs can reasonably carry the things. so he deployed the orcs to form a shield wall against cannons (being hit woul still kill a regular person, but level 10ish characters can easily survive that). their army started advancing, and the vecna coalition had no answer to that.
in the end there was a confrontation between the party and the leaders of the vecna coalition - cemandrion and three more level 20 lich casters. to simulate the encounter being part of a larger battle, i made a table of random effects to roll, like "an archer attacks a random character" "a random character is hit by dispel magic" "a blade barrier is used against one side". the encounter was won without too many issues by the cleric being able to spam mass heal, that would heal the party and hurt the liches.
this wasn't the final defeat of cemandrion, but it was the sign that he was no longer an adequate villain and i needed to introduce something else


a surprise final boss in the same campaign. as the party made more and more progress against the forces of vecna, they started to suffer acts of sabotage. eventually, they discovered the culprit as the very party's dragon cohort, calixarenesh. this led to a meeting with dragon elders, that led to an ambush by some of those dragon elders.
basically, the dragons used to rule the world, but they are increasingly encroached by growing humanoid power. even though dragons and humanoids had a non-interference treaty since a century prior, some dragons dreamed of returning to the ancient glory. foremost among them was skarrakatach, the oldest, strongest dragon, who made a secret society to work in that direction. his plan was to infiltrate dragon cohorts among various humanoid powers to try and foster a great humanoid war.
well, the party barbarian asked for an adult golden dragon cohort, i decided it was a bit too much, so i gave him one that was secretly a traitor. including some influence events that could have caused calixarenesh to change allegiance and side with the party, but the player, by a bit of carelesness and bad luck, failed to get the dragon's loialty.
anyway, the plan was to push humanoids to go to war with each other, and only after they weakened themseves by their infighting the dragons would be able to defeat them decisively. so skarrakatach had nothing to do with cemandrion's plan, but it was exactly the opportunity he was looking for; and he had sleeper agents on both sides ready to steer the conflict to help whoever was losing, so that the war would be as long as destructive as possible. but the party clear successes forced calixarenesh to take more and more brash actions to keep things balanced, until she was discovered. and now skarrakatach wanted to take the opportunity to remove the most powerful characters on the human side from the equation.

skarrakatach is a great wyrm gold dragon with an extra age category, enhanced stats, an optimized build, and some equipment (i houseruled that a dragon's innate magic interferes with too much equipment to justify the dragon having just enough equipment for the power level i wanted, and not more). in particular, he has an armor made with the skins of the various dragon slayers that faced him along the ages. together with skarrakatach were two more dragon elders of lesser power - still great wyrm dragons, but smaller and less optimized.
i was actually expecting the party to have to flee. skarrakatach alone has 57 AC (enough that the party had a hard time hitting), 1100 hp, can power attack enough to reliably deal 300 damage per round to somebody with AC 50 (roughly the party average), SR 35, and passes any saving throw with a 2. plus he has combat reflexes and improved trip, so with his colossal size reach he can trip anyone trying to come close to him, and he can cast an enlarge antimagic field - and without magic, he's still a dragon (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0627.html). i wasn't sure the party could defeat him alone, much less with two other major dragons.

well, the party stood and fought. for all his unmatched raw power, skarrakatach has a weakness in action economy. he can't move and full attack; nor can he cast quickened spells or quickened breath. this was intentional on my part; I didn't want his power to go too much over the top. but the players realized it was an exploitable weakness. the druid started to summon colossal critters, not to do any kind of damage but simply to act as impromptu walls. realizing it was a final fight, they also started to use liberally the single use tattoos of quickened teleport they had to move fast and avoid getting tripped by skarrakatach. Avoiding him, they focused on the two lesser dragons. One was built as a spellcaster, she had some wizard levels substituted in place of her racial HD; she was squishier, she fell first. the second dragon was pretty strong, but he also wasn't up to the party. not when the party was quickened teleporting every round to engage him in melee, while the party cleric had prepared a lot of mass healing to nullify any damage that the dragons could do.
the party was able to avoid directly facing skarrakatach until they killed the other two dragons; then they turned their attention to the boss. a miracle was used to dispel the antimagic field. the party wizard was still unable to significantly damage skarrakatach, but she could counterspel anything the dragon tried to do while the melee engaged. skarrakatach dealt a lot of damage, but the cleric and druid kept healing and quickened healing - they were, after all, prepared to fight undead.
it was a hard fight. at some point a party member died, a wish was used to bring him back (not rules legal, we genuinely misread the "undo misfortune" condition on the wish spell thinking it could just retroactively remove damage from at attack). the party burned 10k xp in spell cost, used up most of their healing and all their quickened rod charges, but they won.
that was one of the best fights I remember



cemandrion was defeated, but the party decided to spare him. with his talent for inventing magical rituals, he could be kept prisoner and forced to work for the good of all.
in the second campaign, set in the same world one century later, cemandrion is still a prisoner and the party was part of his plan for freedom. he became an ally of the party and helped them to gain power, aiming at bringing them to the closed demiplane of vecna to harvest the leftover energy from the dead god.
everyone was expecting a betrayal. it was instead revealed, cemandrion's plan was to help the party wizard become a god, then become his main cleric. after his previous defeat, he suffered from ptsd, and didn't dare to risk going for the big prize again. it was a very nice subversion. while his spellcasting was used for the greater good, cemandrion remains powerful, resourceful, dangerous, and especially unpredictable. he'll definitely have more plans if i play more campaigns in the same world.

the warring orc tribes united to form a great civilization. they are very proud, and will gladly suffer hardship in their lives to build great monuments to show off how capable they are. their greatest pride still is having stood with shields in front of artillery fire; talk to an orc for five minutes, and he'll certainly mention the fact - mostly to say "my ancestors stood with shields in front of cannons, and so I will not be pushed around". memorials of the event are everywhere.
this mindset can easily lead to a fascist ideology, something that the players had to prevent.

after the party forgave calixarenesh for her betrayal, the vast majority of dragons decided it was possible to live alongside humanoids after all. they are getting increasingly integrated in human society - and given their natural advantages, they are naturally fluctuating towards positions of power, leading to potential future conflict. overall, skarrakatach wouldn't be completely unhappy with the outcome.
as for the big dragon himself, he was dead and gone. until a new villain appeared, so dangerous that - after it appeared that the party had failed - it was decided to resurrect skarrakatach to fight the new threat. after the villain was defeated, skarrakatach was already looking for allies to plot again - but he's mostly disgraced and few dragons would listen to him, how much damage can he really do?

[Telok]

Played in one that was pretty crap. D&D 5e, about 14 to 16th level (no don't precisely recall), party was fighting a dracolich. We'd had time to prepare and spent a couple tons of gold on about 25 arrows of dragon slaying... um, the higher dc ones if there's two versions... it's been a while. We hit the dracolich's tower/lair and skipped a bunch of stuff via flying and just going straight & deep.

The fight was in a huge cavern with a 40' high really big rock in the middle. Barbarian had wings, warlock & sorcerer were on flying brooms, fighter & 2 clerics were walking because they'd either used up their flight time (boots) or didn't want to use a hand to keep control of their brooms. We walk in, no stealth because plate armor and nobody throws over +8 or +9 on stealth anyways, clerics & warriors blessed, dracolich pops up from behind the rock and flies over into fear aura range. Clerics and sorc pass the save, warlock uses lucky to pass, fighter passes by accidentally rerolling bless with indomitable and getting a 4 this time, barb fails. Sorc hastes the warriors & uses a scroll to summon some fiend that flies and shoots fire bolts, spends the rest of the fight flying around throwing leveled spells that all get saved, saves & resisted, or ignored from immunities. The summons does more in its 4 rounds of life (dracolich got annoyed eventually and two-shot it) than the sorc personally does the rest of the fight, player is annoyed. Warlock throws prot. from evil on the barb and can't reach the dracolich with anything but EB spam, spends the rest of the fight getting about a 50% hit rate on 3/round blasts, player is bored bored. Fighter spends five rounds moving closer & shooting arrows, one of which hits and is saved against. Unfortunately he also has to keep trying to circle the big rock to try to get close and keep line of sight, never does get to close to melee. Fighter did climb the rock (2 rounds) after running out of arrows but still couldn't get close enough for melee. Barb saves on the 4th or 5th round, spends two rounds catching up to the dragon (winged flight equal to land speed), then melees for two rounds, spends another round or two chasing the dragon (legendary movements) and gets in a couple more attacks. The cleric players are pissed that they only ever got close enough for a single spell each that got saved & resisted.

We killed the damn thing. Well, the summons and the barb did about 2/3 or 3/4 the damage between them. Warlock and sorc did most of the rest in about even porportions. Fighter & clerics got one shot on it each to basically zero effect. Like twelve or fifteen rounds and an hour and a half of grinding boredom.

[gbaji]

Hah. Suppose I can list off some of the boss fights I've done.

My most recent adventure didn't really have one. I mean, they had to fight their way through a number of bad guy patrols looking for them, while finding/tracking some powerful being thing that has some creepy (but fun, since they're like carnies!) minions. Said being had placed a curse on the ruler of the kingdom they were in long ago. They had to get to the artifact holding the curse and break it. As it turned out in the centuries since the being had created the curse, it had established it's minions a bit more securely in the area, and really didn't need to maintain it anymore (and the descedents of the original curse target were becoming increasingly problematic, and drawing unwanted attention to the beings minions). So the "boss fight" was more about enduring a series of trials/tests to determine worthiness, with said being basically handing them the object and letting them break it (and getting some rewards for completion,and the obligitory offer to join the carny cult if they wanted). And of course, the ominous "I don't need that to maintain control over the mortals in these lands anyway...".

The previous one did have a boss fight. This was my unabashedly linear adventure I did, where the party basically stumbled into a "pirate treasure map" (cause why not?). They followed the map to a hidden vault, defeated traps and defenders, and then got a map to the next vault in the sequence (8 vaults IIRC). I did add in some interesting backstory for the main pirate guy though. He was originally a Thanatar priest (and a pirate... Arrrgh!). For those not familiar with RQ, that's a headhunter deity (and chaos aligned too, so not nice people in general). They have a spell that allows them to ritually sever the head of someone, and trap their soul in it, and force the "soul in a head" to cast spells and whatnot for them (so yeah, they're carrying around severed heads, sometimes even in duffle bags). The backstory was that he made the vaults to hide his riches, but eventually ran afoul of a powerful island nations navy and was captured, then mysteriously "died" while in custody (they got some of this from some allies who did some searches on the guy in that nations records). Well, he died by having his head removed, by his own guardian. Guardians are animated bodies they can create, which basically place a cult spirit into the body of someone else, and replace them, allowing the priest's allied spirit to pretend to be someone else (and the guardians are not really dead or alive, so more like constructs at that point). His guardian snuck in disquised as a guard, but couldn't get the pirate out, so they did the next best thing. Choped his head off (using the ritual) and took it with him/them. This maybe didn't do well for the priest/pirate's sanity, and eventually his desire to "be in charge" (despite now technically being under the control of his own minion or whatever strange divide by zero effect this has), pushed him over the limit.

The result when they got to the final vault, was the actual pirate, but it was his guardian (still hanging out, cause it's kind of a construct), but with the pirate's severed head stiched onto it's shoulder like a parrot or something (two heads are better than one!). Yeah... Crazy. And Evil. He had some cool traps set up, and some undead in the vault with him. And a cool pirate coat and rapier to fight with. Sadly, his own traps kinda delayed everyone and got them "stuck" fighting the undead, and he never actually got into combat. Ended up in a spell fight with one of the PCs, and kinda... lost. Oops. He had some neato items, but didn't actually have much in the way of spell protection, and his plan was to swing from some ropes over the battle and into the PCs, but the opportunity just never came up (wasn't a clear spot). The body did continue to fight for a bit, but the second head was basically taken out pretty early, which made it not as much of a huge problem as it could have been (body fighting, while the head is casting spells). Dunno. I think the players enjoyed it anyway. If I were to do it over, I might re-arrange the battle field slightly to make the traps they were using hinder the PCs, but allow the bad guys a bit more access. I created a narrow approach, but then blocked a bunch at the entrance, and then blocked up the approach up to where the main guy and his main fighting zombies were. Which worked really well. The PCs had to really work to get through. But it meant that the boss guy himself didn't end up being as much of a direct challenge. Ah well, he directed the minions at least. And looked darn good doing it (well, for a construct body with a semi-rotted head stuck on it's shoulder).

I did a huge quest involving solving a bunch of riddles and traveling all over the place getting key pieces, to gain access to an ancient tomb (with an evil enemy party doing the same). Worked beautifully. The end fight was a grand melee between the two "sides" (PCs and the evil party). And it worked really well. Hard to say it was a "boss fight", so much as "final fight". The leader of the evil team was certainly boss like though. She was a giant scorpion man (woman?) queen thing. Like really large. And chaos "enhanced". Scorpion people can be born normally, or converted via a "ritual of rebirth", which is a fate reserved for powerful enemies, as it creates a new scorpion person that is a version of the original that was devoured for the ritual, and retains some of the skills and abilities of the original (yeah, some of the cults in RQ are just icky). So she was an elven priest, turned into a scorpion person, and since rose in the ranks to be her own Queen. Super powerful. And she was just one of like 8 or 10 members of this team.

It was a grand fight. Actually ended when the evil team necromancer was killed and a bargain he'd made with Nyarlathotep activated, converting his entire body/soul into an avatar of said deity (it was a way for a detiy that wasn't represented in the contest to sneak himself in). The fight was pretty much winding down at that point, with just a few of the bad guys still fighting (the aformentioned scorpion queen being more or less unharmed). Since the chaos deities involved in the contest were more of the "we're fighting to tip the balance in our favor" and not of the "we want to destroy the world!" types, they agreed to concede the contest, and aided in fighting the avatar thingie. The PCs got some nice rewards for "winning". The chaos team got "stored for future use" by the Wardern of the Tomb itself (I've since had one of them "released", and may dole out others over time). All in all, it was a very good finale for a long adventure. The fight itself went to the point where the PCs were confident they were going to win out, so the sudden shift didn't feel like a victory stolen from them. And they got an even bigger badder thing to fight at the end (but with some unexpected help).

I did do a really large scale conflict between basically a super powerful lich and a minor deity (fallen greater deity, much reduced in power). Both of them were well out of the league of the PCs, but each "side" was also opposed to the other. So the long adventure consisted mostly of wandering the world, finding the various plots that each side was working on, stopping the ones that would create harm to random victims, but actually helping out the ones that were directed as a means to defeat the other. Ultimately, they assisted the lich in manipulating a semi-distant nation into forming a large contingent of light based heroes (along with modest divinely empowered army) to travel to defeat the darkness themed deity, while they assisted with the dark deity's minions to swap out an immortality potion the lich was planning to use right after he did a ritual to transfer his consciousness to a new living host (which he needed to continue his long delayed path toward apotheosis). Both sides plans worked. The darkness deity got stomped out by said divine army and empowered leaders (which was just storyboarded off in the distance, since that would be boring to do directly). The lich, they got roped into "delivering his potion" to him. But they had swapped it for a magic poison instead, which was not known to the bad guy or his powerful minions.

The final fight involved them more or less being helpless against the main bad guy (dominated), while he had them watch his "greatness" (evil monologue here). Once he took the potion/poison, he promptly died, which freed them from his control, but left them having to fight several of his very powerful (and very pissed) minions. This lead to a massive melee, and was a near thing by itself. But they prevailed and got some nice stuff. The main advantage is that they were able to ochestrate the defeat of two really really powerful bad guys in the area, which had some nice benefits. This was the "biggest" mainly because the power level of the actual bosses was much much much higher than anything they'd normally face. And yeah, they defeated them via guile and whatnot, but still counts IMO. The actual fight was super tough, but technically they never directly fought the main boss(es)

[JusticeZero]

Hello everybody!
Recently, I started a TTRPG design blog called Longing Mound, to study some RPG design things.

By the by, where is your blog to be posted?

[Flyfly]

By the by, where is your blog to be posted?

Added to the original post! This (https://longingmound.wordpress.com/2024/01/10/the-quest-for-solo-monster-begins/) is the post where I declare my quest for Solo Monsters.

And thank you for inquiring!