Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 tehsquirrely Sep 08, 2014 21:16:02	I just started a new game the other day and I have an idea for a campaign that pits the players against a gallery of villains that I want to all be unique boss encounters and not just simple straight up fights. Has anyone run any boss fights they've liked in 5th yet and what did you do for them? I realize there are no rules for creating monsters at the moment, but I feel like by the time they fight their first villain the MM should definitely be out.
#2 Varden_Khol Sep 10, 2014 22:08:56	I'd take a look at the Lair Actions given to dragons and other legendary monsters. Big bad encounters should really show off the environment. Have lava burst out of those fissures and scorch anyone nearby. Have those graves erupt with skeletal hands that pin the adventurers in place. Make that fungus pop spores at anyone who walks over it. If your boss-guy is closely tied to their lair it gives them a sense of superiority.   The next thing I would consider is movement. Give the players reasons not to stand and deliver. This ties again to a lot of the environmental effects but you can also make your villains very mobile. Even a heavily armoured enemy could be given a rush attack that will break them away from the party's front line troops. If you can make the player's use their full set of actions every round then that's more choices and risks for them to take.   Video games are a great source for inspiration if you're going down that cinematic route. You could build stages into each fight. Maybe after a certain amount of damage the villain teleports/flies to a hard to reach balcony and summons a bunch of grunts. Sure the rogue could climb up after him, but he'll be leaving the rest of the party to their fight on the ground. One villain might switch weapons halfway while another moves from cool and calm defensive spells to panicked offensive ones.   I've only run my player's through a couple of 5e session so far and aren't quite up to the villain stage yet either. But this is all stuff that I've used in previous campaigns to good effect.   I'd be keen to hear more about how this campaign shapes up. It gives me a bit of a Monster Hunter / Shadow of the Colossus feel.
#3 RPGBG Sep 11, 2014 2:58:01	A trick that I have used in 4E is to have each part of the boss be a different "monster". I don't really remember all of it, but in an Eberron campaign there was a fight with a prototype of a warforged titan, that was quite memorable.   It had four parts, acting on their own initiative count. A head (cortex), legs, left arm and right arm. It also had a body that was easiest to hit, but a hit to the body was treated as a hit to random other part, rather than the body having HP and being effected by status effects on it's own. Each part had standard and minor action only. The head was hardest to hit and had damage reduction, but each damage done to the head was stunning it for a round and each critical hit to the head was a random other body part as well. As a standard it had a reachargable [6] breath attack and a rechargable [5, 6] ability to overcharge another part - that was causing it d6 lightning damage, removing a status effect from it and causing it to deal additional d6 lightning damage and daze on hit. As minor it was able to cause another part to reroll initiative, mark a player and give the part advantage (it wasn't called like this in 4e but was the same) against said player for 1 turn. The legs also had some damage reguction and a critical hit in the legs was immobilizing them for a round. Taking the legs to 1/2 hp was immobilizing them as well. They had rechargeable [6] charge attack, a close range trample or normal movement as a chose for it's standard action, together with a minor action kick + push attack. The trample was quite damaging so players had great incentive to end their turns away from it as much as possible. The right arm had a rechargable [5, 6] "get over here" type of harpoon attack (unable to target enemies behind cover) as standard and slam as a minor. The left arm had a rechargable [5, 6] heavy damaging attack as standard, a slam + grab as a minor with automatic squeeze as a minor on a grabbed opponent. Reducing one of the parts (other than the head) to 0 hp was causing the head to overheat (taking automatic damage each turn, but recharging it's breath attack on [1, 2, 6]) and a repair bot minions to appear starting to move towards the damaged part to try and repair it if not dealt with. There was also some environmental effect like colums to hide behind from harpoons and charges, holes on the ground from the heavy attacks of the left arm, a lifting crane that they were able to use to grab the titan. In the end the titan was left with destroyed legs and right arm and with the two still conscious player trying to finish it off (or just wait for the auto damage to do it for them) from outside breath range. Then two repair bots appeared and they both missed them with the AoO one of the bots provoked (not that hard, since both players were with ranged focus) and with their attacks on the next turn, so one of the payers ran in front of the bots into breath reange to provoke it and have the bots destroyed by it. All in all it was very memorable encounter, but it is a bitch to balance propertly, so it is good to leave the player an option to just run away if things go south.