More interesting encounters. I saw someone off-handedly mention the first one yesterday and the rest are stolen from some videya games. These are ideas for more mechanically interesting fights, that should adapt to most systems easily. I like making boss battles that force the player to think in ways other than heal-attack-heal-attack, so add any of your ideas for a interesting fight.
>The "Hit me where it heals" A huge flaming demon/fire elemental called Soulrender and his human sidekick, Darren. Darren enchants/imbues the party with fire spell-blade magic, making their attacks heal his boss. When on low health, Darren will use a highly damaging fire spell, killing himself and healing his boss. >Enchant the party with X damage, X heals the boss.
Landon Ortiz
>The "You have 7 turns" The boss casts something along the lines of "Marked for Death" on party members, setting a counter on them. This counter ticks down by one at the start of that PC's turn, and they die instantly when it hits zero (HP to 1 also works). Any kind of healing is half as effective (rounded up) but increases the counter by 1 (pushing back death by one turn). Once the boss is killed, the counter is removed. Narrate this as the PC's finding it harder to breathe/think as the counter ticks down, and once it gets low have them feel the fear of death. The boss doesn't reapply the timer as long as one of the PC's currently has it on them. Adjust numbers and mechanics to your chosen system. >The boss places a counter on the PCs that goes down by one at the end of their turns. When this hits 0, they die.
>The "No, you are the zombie" The boss sometimes heals the PC instead of doing damage. It also buffs the party with reverse healing, and then uses healing magic on them. It also might do the same to itself, and then use Harm/damage on itself. >The boss inflicts the party with a reverse healing buff, and then uses healing magic on them.
Connor Peterson
>The "Flaming honesty" A plant/dryad/treant boss that attacks the party. A knowledge check will note that it is weak to fire. A better knowledge check will note this will cause it to burst into flames and attack twice as fast and hard. A scent of eucalyptus follows it around. When on fire, it releases clouds of burning leaves, and its attacks gain fire elemental damage. Once fire is used, it becomes weak to water, and takes damage every turn from the burning. >The boss is clearly weak to something, but use it causes the boss to become stronger.
>The "Rules Lawyer" The boss will declare certain actions banned at the start of its turn (fire attacks, healing, physical strikes), and using these will cause the boss to use a deadly counter attack. The boss also adapts to the party's preferred tactics. >This is too short for one.
Parker Campbell
>The "Nobody hurts them but me!" The boss is backed up by mooks, but when these die, it gains buffs/attack/speed. Killing them will make crowd control easier, but the boss becomes harder to handle. Leaving them alive will let them use more variety of attacks. >Killing the boss's mooks makes them harder to kill.
>The "Money-shot" A mutant mimic that deals bonus damage to the PC's wallet when it hits them. After doing this, it fires the coins back that the PC's, dealing damage determined by their desirability. Basically a mimic with a ranged attack, like a Gatling gun. Taming it and using it as a machine gun is not completely out of the question. If the party takes too long to kill it, it will run away, taking their money with it (It might also show up much later in the campaign, with identifying marks from the last fight). When it dies, it explodes into coins (of small value), equal to the amount it stole, with interest. >A monster that deals money damage, but is nice enough to return it.
Blake Torres
>The "Difficult to destroy humanoid" The boss is a high level melee fighter, that becomes immune to the last strike it received. These immunities go away when it dies. So being hit with a fireball makes it immune to magical fire for the rest of the fight, a mace to the head makes it highly resistance to blunt trauma. The PC's will have to make sure the fight doesn't go on too long… Adaptations decay at the rate of 1/per hour, and start from the oldest. The boss would be best off as a Terminator / Implacable Man character that stalks the party. If they party lives in fear of this guy, you're playing them right. >A boss that becomes immune to the last attack, forcing the party to get the hell out of there.
>The "Rip-off" When hit by an attack, the boss becomes capable of using it. Hitting it with a fireball will let it cast fireball. Careful not to let the fight go on for too long. It is possible that all of the bosses' other attacks are stolen too. >The boss can use any attack used on it.
David Hall
...and that's all I've got. What are some interesting boss fights you've sprung on your players?
Camden Lee
Seen in some way in almost every video game with even a hint of non-realism, I still like the idea of a boss that splits into smaller, weaker versions of its self upon taking a certain amount of damage, then trying to reform its self.
Cameron Hughes
Although all angels remember Lovecraftian abominations, Leliel was the creepiest one I can remember.
Initially, that monstrosity appears to be a floating sphere with a warped black and white color pattern. BUT THEN, they discover its real body is actually what appears to be a shadow on the ground. The manifestation of Leliel's body in our dimension is 680 meters wide but only 3 nanometers thick. The floating sphere is just the "shadow" it casts in our dimension. Those who step on the "shadow" are sucked down into a vacuum-like limbo/ pocket dimension connected to another universe, from which THERE'S NO ESCAPE. EVER.
Liam Brooks
>Protect the goblin: BBEG hurls a level 2 goblin at the party, and warns party that the death of said goblin will release a horrible curse, putting half the party at random in a catatonic, vegetative state . The goblin is bound to the party, and regardless of distance away from party when that goblin dies, the curse is set in motion.
The boss fight isn't necessarily a fight, it's trying to keep this fucker from dying. Can lead to good roleplaying, and funny moments as the party tries to integrate the goblin into the party.
Dylan Gutierrez
>Steam golem.
Iron golem with two trapped elementals inside; fire and water. Killing the robot releases two insane and tormented elementals who attack everything indiscriminately.
If someone in the party has knowledge nature, arcana, artifice or similar, they can figure out the power source and send one or both elementals back to their plane.
Chase Nguyen
Boss fights I've used in my current game:
BOSS 1:
Turn 1: Fire elemental appears Turn 2: Fire elemental winks out, Water elemental appears Turn 3: Fire Elemental reappears where it disappeared, both attack Turn 4: both disappear, giving the party a turn to prepare and heal Turn 5: starts over.
The party was way underleveled, of course the key was getting them to appear in the same space to deal massive damage to each other.
Silly optional boss: Gelatinous Hypercube: A 4d gelatinous cube that "grows" to fill the room like the Snake video game. Destroying 3 adjacent sections in 1 turn splits the snake in half but each half only grows half as fast. Destroying more than 1 section of a half-snake causes it to split into independent cubes.
Boss 3: A super-powered golem 8 CR too high for the party is trying to destroy a magic mirror array. Party members had to pass wishes through the array to buff the ghost trying to solve the array or temporarily disrupt the golem or buff the device. "Death wishes" pulse outward, canceling poorly logicked player wishes and doing necrotic damage.
Boss 4: Evil Spider Dwarf Its legs are deaaad dwaaarves and it has a spin attack and spits poison. Spooooopy.
Boss 4:
Jace Lewis
Essentially a humongous sphere of annihilation.
Brandon Jenkins
Boss 5, even: Hunter of time: A bull with a clock head that uses his reaction to steal initiative from attackers. When you hit zero you lose your turn, when he hits 20 he explodes in paradox dealing massive force damage then reforms. He had a slowing gaze attack (that hasted himself) and you could avoid it by looking away, but then he got sneak attack. It also warped space; whenever it dashed or disengaged it could push a PC around. It also had cyclical resistance against elements: it had only one weak point that changed when struck.
Boss 6: Just a fucking ton of ogres.
Jayden Jones
Boss whenever it finds them: Basically Orthos/Ultros from Final Fantasy 6 except he's an aquatic beholder-octopus hybrid.
Boss 7: A blood wizard who has the cursed blood of baphomet, giving him the form of a minotaur. Probably lots of stacking debuffs that can be dispelled at a progressively higher cost, HP theft, and the ability to enter the labyrinth of a living creature's circulatory system and control it from within. Haven't designed it yet.
Camden Evans
Some yet-unused bosses from my Fallout campaign... although "attack heal attack" doesn't really work in this system anyway.
>The Firebomber Takes place in a set of relatively narrow metal corridors, overall shaped like a cross inside a box. The boss has an incendiary grenade launcher that, besides hitting hard enough to kill or mortally wound most people, also coats a 15' area around the impact site with greek fire. The fire persists for about three rounds; there are chemical fire extinguishers mounted on the walls, but they are plainly visible from the center of the room. Essentially, the PCs can't attack from the same angle twice and live.
>The Sniper A robotic sniper has a few nests set up opposite the entrance of a long-ish trench-like structure in a ruined building. There are multiple paths from the entrance to the nests, and each one has a few "blind spots"; different blind spots may or may not be visible from each of the three different nests. The PCs must carefully determine where it's safe to move forward; the sniper is wielding a 50 BMG rifle, which requires some form of power armor to not destroy whatever body part it hits. Alternatively, someone can try to issue suppressing fire or explosives to force the sniper to move, but doing so risks getting hit. The sniper is not much of a threat face-to-face.
>The Squad A band of three looters are guarding a large stash of goods taken from the ruins they're in. They have walkie-talkies to communicate with a group of three other looters who are on a higher floor and carrying something extremely valuable. They check in every few minutes; if the upstairs crew don't respond, the downstairs crew will just leave in a refurbished truck with their goods; they will also leave in the ten minutes it takes for the upstairs crew to finish looting the place and regroup. If the PCs attack downstairs before then, the looters will summon their cohorts to reinforce them/ attack the PCs from behind.
Jason Powell
>THERE'S NO ESCAPE. EVER. Say that to my face, bitch.
Jackson Smith
I'll post one from my campaign:
>Bananaphone The enemy relentlessly prank calls the party, not doing any damage, but is exceedingly annoying. The party has to endure his relentless taunting until they can find him.
Josiah Harris
Temporal Spider
A protracted boss fight against a creature that can create webs that cause weird things to happen.
You walk into a room and feel your foot hit something and then suddenly you find yourself repeating the action until you pass the spot check to stop yourself from repeating the action.
Your fighting a monster of some sort and while it's fairly low level if just seemingly can't die and always looks like it did before you struck it until you notice the glinting string that hangs off it's body.
You actually get to it, it shoots it's webbing at you, you raise your shield to block it but now find you can't move your shield. It's literally stuck at a point in space and time. On the plus side you now have a free floating shield that can function as cover.
Liam White
Always been a fan of puzzle boss fights that make you think a bit..
>Mirror Wraith The party enters a large room , with large mirrors on every wall surrounding the room. The doors seal shut and the mirrors glow briefly. The party's reflections no long follow their movement and turn to look at the party. Their reflections then step out of the mirrors(one reflection per mirror). Arcane-aware PCs will notice that during the flash, a tether shot from each mirror to a PC, connecting them to the mirror, and their reflection comes from it.
Mirror PCs have the same stats as the regular versions, but only do half damage. Any damage done by a PC to their own Mirror PC destroys it instantly, shattering to the floor like glass. If PC damages someone else's reflection, it is unaffected and half the damage is shunted to the PC it's copied from.
Once all the reflections are destroyed, a Wraith appears in one of the mirrors, and with a wave of it's hand starts respawning the mirror PCs. They will continue to respawn on death for the rest of the fight.
The wraith won't leave the mirror, and simply sits inside it letting the Mirror PCs do the work for it. Attacking the mirror destroys it, damages, the wraith, and forces it to flee into another mirror. Destroying the mirror also destroys whatever Mirror PC came out of it and prevents it from respawning. Repeating this will destroy all of the Mirror PCs for good.
With it's mirror destroyed, the wraith is forced out into the open where it'll attack the party. The Wraith is strong, but also on it's last legs, so this part of the fight is mostly a formality.
Jordan Wilson
I like nge too bucko
Joseph Perry
That seems interesting, but if none of the players step on the thread to learn what it is then they probably wouldn't be able to figure out the encounter. Keeping the rules internally consistent means that the monster that keeps resetting wouldn't likely have time to attack the adventurers.
Parker Ross
>The "Help me out, boys" The boss has lots of HP, but low AC. For each N damage he takes, a minion spawns. The party has to keep an eye on the number of minions, or be overwhelmed.
>The "Kill this one, NOW!" The boss has a bunch of minions with ranged attacks. Each round boss marks one party member. His minions all shoot on marked target; for this attack they recieve increased accuracy.
>The "I can survive that. Can you?!" Boss is an ice elemental. At the beginning of each round, temperature in wide radius around him drops by N degrees. After a few rounds the party will have problem stayng awake and will take constant damage from the frostbite.
