I'm running a game of 5e and i've noticed that boss battles tend to be... Anti-climactic...
Anti-climactic in that the method to beating them is very straightforward and requires no creative thinking. And in my opinion, bosses are the most important things in a dungeon! Yeah the multi-attack action helps, and so does lair actions. But it's not quite enough to make a boss memorable or particularly difficult.
And I was thinking that a good way to avoid the compacted blood orgy that is a bossfight would be to take a legend of zelda-ish type of approach. Like maybe the boss is very resistant to normal damage or can't be accessed by normal means, which would force the players to think outside the box in order to attack a weak point on the boss.
But i'm not entirely sure about the idea or what flaws it may have.
So tell me about bosses that left you feeling like a god of war or things that gms have done with bosses that made the fight exceptionally difficult and entertaining
>>48222023
I'd argue that labeling certain encounters "Boss Monsters" is actually an example of trap mentality, a common mistake brought on by exposure to videogames and their cross-pollination into tabletop RPGs. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but by trying to replicate the affects of an action videogame (namely combat based on things like positioning and timing and reflexes) isn't really going to work in D&D systems of ANY edition. Even treating dungeons as big caves who's sole purpose is to hold treasure and be filled with monsters with a boss at the end for adventurer's to kill is a form of falling into this trap mentality; you're basically bringing your game into direct competition and inviting direct comparison with videogames for the exact same type of action and stimulation.
This isn't a BAD thing necessarily and often the group will be satisfied with it, but the fact of the matter is you are going to have a hard time in many cases competing with high-quality vidya in the exact same areas for the simple reasons that human beings are hugely sight-favoring creatures and a videogame has PICTURES while your game of D&D does not. There will therefore always be a different level of stimulation simply because the players who do both will be using different parts of their brain.
What you need to do is not pidgeonhole everything like that; you're basically building a box around yourself and intentionally limiting your options to something the system you are currently running only does "okay" at best because fundamentally all the system is is rolling for attack and damage until one party falls down first.
Don't try and replicate your feelings when you went into the Shadow Temple and cut and puzzled your way through and fought Bongo Bongo; ultimately what that was a series of hallways and rooms that literally served no function at all but to get the player from Point A (the entrance) and Point B (the boss) while placing various obstacles between.
http://goblinpunch blog spot com/2014/06/boss-mechanics-from-world-of-warcraft.html
Obligatory
>>48222117
Continued;
Most videogames with dungeons are like this; none of the rooms serve no purpose except to connect places from Point A to Point B, and the "features" of each room are really just an endless series of lethal gameshow-like obstacle courses that serve pretty much no purpose beyond causing PC's problems.
Monsters are simply a mildly more active form of obstacle, one that attacks instead of is triggered. The boss is simply the largest obstacle in the largest room, but ultimately is identical to a pit trap in terms of function and use in the thing.
In a videogame this works really well because the simple asset of it being a visual medium means watching all these things happen with your eyes instead of imagining it, which is pretty entertaining for most people.
In D&D by trying to do the same thing you're basically asking them to get the same experience but with more work on their part; sure you can get some players to do it, but you're going to run into the problem where "identical but YOU do all the heavy lifting!" is just inherently not as appealing or as memorable to a lot of players. They'll always be subconsciously comparing it to those things that did the same thing but with less work on their part.
They'll certainly enjoy it (most of them anyway) but a lot are just going to compare it to something else that's already been done because it kinda HAS already been done. The dungeons will all blend together and not really stick out as being particularly memorable or anything.
>>48222175
Hopefully Helpful:
Don't treat the dungeon like a gameshow obstacle course filled with monsters and the boss as the "final" obstacle if you must use dungeons. Instead treat each room as a form of story, the ongoing story of the dungeon itself and it's reason for existence.
Why was it built? Each room is going to have a purpose, a function beyond "attempting to kill the PC's". Figure out what each room does. If it's trapped, ask yourself what KIND of trap the room would have or even what the hell a trap would be doing there in the first place.
Monsters should similarly not be there to just be there; they GOT there somehow and you should be figuring out why. In many cases you should be figuring out how they're even surviving in the first place since a lot actually DO need shit like food and water and in many classic gamey-style dungeons there's little to none of that to be found.
>>48222240
On The "Dungeon Boss":
I'm just going to start with something you probably aren't going to want to hear; you're not going to compete with Zelda, God of War, or Bloodborne using D&D systems. Doesn't matter how hard you try, the system doesn't really have much in the way of existing rules for that kind of stuff.
The trick is you don't NEED to do that to make boss fight type things interesting.
A videogame boss is fundamentally limited by the rules of the game he is in; it's programmed to ALWAYS act a certain specific way in response to certain specific stimuli and situations, and will always act that way 100% of the time because the boss is trapped doing that. If the boss is capable of blowing up the walls, then it will at some point if you trigger the macro in-game. If it's not, then it could literally shit nuclear explosions and those walls will stand up to them like an ant farted on them or something because the game doesn't allow it to be that flexible.
Instead of designing a boss fight around a single bit of combat, design it as an encounter; look at the bosses goals and personality (assuming it has one), it's morale and ESPECIALLY it's environment in question; creatures (intelligent and otherwise) in a fight don't just stand there like Diablo bosses soaking up hits in a boss arena who's sole function is to be a flat even surface that only exists to provide everyone something to stand on while they try to make each other's numbers go down until one explodes.
Are there big stone pillars in the room with the red dragon? Well why wouldn't it at some point if the fight is going sour start knocking them down and tossing them? Or better yet, grabbing them and dropping from far above? It's safer for it then risking itself against heroes who are obviously tough enough to bring it down. If you think that's unfair, you will be HUGELY surprised at how creative and inventive players get when pressed to think rather then just and wack things until they die.
>>48222023
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/vehicles/land-vehicles/tank
Throw this at them.
As someone who dabbles in vidya development, I thought I'd pitch in a short thought on the above.
I've always thought of video games as being more "direct simulation games" whereas rpg's are more "group story telling games".
"direct" is one of the keywords for a game. You can make combat more fun and interesting in a game because you are directly controlling the character and reacting to random attacks and such.
Usually with vidya, its often best to let the story spring from the gameplay. Hence, I usually come up with a fun gameplay mechanic and then invent a story around it, which is *expressed through the gameplay* first and foremost.
But since table top games are more about story telling to begin with, you might consider basing a boss on a fun story first, since that might result in more fertile ground for players to come up with their own unique ideas on how to beat the boss.
>>48222023
I'll tell of one I GMd, it was a pretty simple Huge creature with the ability to teleport as a bonus action by eating itself (from that stand in JoJos), and attacking with daggers, but mainly it started in the air and had a 50 ft. movespeed.
The party was 2nd level and had a few magical items, plus a friendly wizard that could cast Fly and Jump, and a gelatunous cube named Steve (relevant later). After a couple of rounds of blasting as it descended, the Bard gets Fly cast on him, flies up 50 ft. and uses his magical rapier which brings flying creatures down to where the wielder is.
This was intended to be the way to ground it, doing 10d6 bld damage and making it prone, but he hadn't used it so it just got brought down to 50 ft. The wizard then casts Jump on the quite tall Barbarian (Ring of Enlarge), who can reach 40 ft. up and with an athletics check jump 50% higher (houserule). She leaps up to him, manages to grapple since he rolls a 3 and piledrives him into their friendly Gelatunous Cube, lets go of the grapple and starts attacking him with a greatsword.
A couple of rounds follow with them trying to attack it without damaging the cube too much, it has 6 AC so it get roughed up but in the end the boss dissolves in the acid after feeble attempts to escape/fight back. He used his teleport twice, but didn't successfully kidnap anyone with it and in the end most of the party was undamaged, all in all an easy encounter for them. But did it matter? Nope. Cont.
>>48223826
Player stories are, at the end of the day, what matters. The scary monster you thought up doesn't even become much more memorable from having a puzzle element to it, and a lot of monsters in D&D are designed in a way that they will be more interesting than just trading blows (even at low levels there are still flying or stealthy creatures and so on). And the main factor IMO is the intelligence and dynamic actions that exist, an encounter doesn't have to be black and white, maybe they capture one of the goblins you thought they'd kill and he ends up helping them, and then killed by the boss. That's much more powerful than the boss being mechanically challenging or interesting. Aggro is another thing that can be more dynamic, let's say the ranger does a called shot on its eye and crits, taking it to 75% hp and half blinding it. It would lunge for them, ignoring anyone else, which can alter combat tactics a lot since they will now have to run away and dodge while the rest can get opportunity attacks and get a lot out of certain spells.
>>48222023
Between lair actions, legendary actions, legendary resistances, and the boosted CR "bosses" in 5e should always be memorable and difficult unless you as the DM fucked up. If your dragon is squatting in a cave and letting a party bang on it for an hour before dying that's on you. Adding gimmicks to that is not going to change your boring encounters, just make them more annoying.
You want a memorable boss? Make your players want them dead no matter what, and give their characters hard choices on the road to the boss. Then once they get to the boss even if the dice go their way and they steamroll it there are lasting and memorable consequences to their actions. The reason I6 is lauded isn't because the battle with Strahd, it's because Strahd is a great tool to fuck with the players and the setting is built for it as well.
>>48222117
>but by trying to replicate the affects of an action videogame (namely combat based on things like positioning and timing and reflexes) isn't really going to work in D&D systems of ANY edition
4e was distinctly designed around the importance of tactical positioning and heavy use of off-turn interrupts/"reflex" actions
>>48222240
Randomized dungeons full of purposeless rooms only meant to hold monsters or loot is an idea that came from D&D. Videogames, rpgs especially, are largely just an evolution of tabletops
>>48225425
This is true, though TTRPGs have the ability to go beyond that and have much more interesting and dynamic dungeons and so going back to old-school dungeon delving should only be a goal when that is explicitly what everyone wants the game to be about. Most games, players and GM will do much better with "modern" dungeons, at least I think so.
>>48222023
If they're just fighting one enemy, sure.
>>48225346
It does it pretty well.
The issue is by designing it that way it deliberately invited direct comparisons with videogames that worked the same way....only the players had to do their own math and work instead of letting the videogame handle it for them.
This didn't always pan out.
