I need help with ideas for new D&D bosses

I like it.

A guy wracked with negative levels and constitution damage to where he has negative maximum hitpoints, and possesses a skill that nullifies any attack that does more damage than he has max HP.

Golem with a demon face on its back. The golem isn't much of a threat, but is super resistant to damage. The demon face does a lot of damage by spewing fire all over the place and biting people, but is fleshy and vulnerable. Every time the players hit it (or every couple of rounds, your pick), it turns around and switches which side is active.

How about anti-adventurers?

Assuming your group is good or neutral aligned (Or willing to follow through on a quest they get at least), it could be cool to have a group of Adventurers who decided to cash in and build a fortress, then ended up going the warcastle route and used it to set up raiding parties and a generally competent bandit hive.

If your players like tragic stories tweak it to be a corruption story, if they like black and white stories then make it clear they always had a bad side and that this was their end goal from day one, if they like complicated stories you can make factions in the bandits and the Adventurer leaders, if they want a basic bitch dungeon crawl then you can leave the whole backdrop as just that, a backdrop.

Boss is a normal guy who has three pets: a dire rust monster, a dire aurumvorax, and a dire llama.

Basically, his pets start eating all your PCs shit, weapons, money, and clothes. Most sadistic boss ever.

I posted about the current antagonist before. I'll post it again.

Strangely long and slender musket with a stylized fiend's face at the end of the barrel. When in dim light the reflections on the fiend's mouth looks as if it is gnashing its teeth. They know it is named Yuhmis Alrraed meaning Whispering Thunder. The item has int 14, wisdom 13, and charisma 16, is Neutral Evil, empathy, blindsense, ability to move 10ft per round (which it uses to force itself into the gunslinger's hands while he sleeps), and can cast magic aura on itself at will. It is a +3 Lucky Distance Seeking Musket. Once per day you can make it fire a much more dangerous round. Acts if you are vital shotting, but does the damage to everything in a 10 foot area and triple to objects.

The spirit is a malignant desert spirit tricked into a clay urn. The urn was full of dates, figs, and peaches, and left to ferment in honey. The spirit greedily tasted the fruit, gorging itself on the mixture. However in its greed it did not notice the trap, becoming ensnared in the sticky honey. A plug was put upon the urn, sealing it inside. Try as it might it could not break the clay, the surface having been reinforced by the one who had left it there, a traveling monk, come from the south at the behest of the sultan to rid the desert of this viscous spirit. For the rest of its days the spirit was stuck upon the sultan's pedestal, a example and warning. Its cries were enjoyed as the sultan, and then his son, and his son's son, taunted him. Much later one of the sultan's ancestors, in his fear, sought turning the spirit into a weapon, and succeeded, and in the hands of the artisan the spirit took control, hunting the sultan's family. It rid itself of the sultan's line, but was not satisfied, it now seeks the dreadful monk, to cut away the family tree at its roots. It is attempting to use the gunslinger to further his search for them (the party killed the previous user)

The rifle is one half the villain. The other is the monk himself.

The monk is the key. It's been 600 years since the spirit was captured, and 150 since it became a rifle. I have planned for the monk himself to actual be alive, a strange ancient one arms mountain hermit, and his descendants to be alive, albeit scattered. A few of them, what would constitute the main family, are aware of the monk's presence. The monk only descends from the mountain in "times of great need", as he says, however these times range widely. Often he is not there in moments of what would be considered national peril, but there in smaller more personal conflicts. He soothes pain, exorcises spirits, heals the sick, and smites the wicked.

For reference the party is level 7. Waraqat Qadima, the monk's official title Meaning Aged Paper is a level 16 Unchained Monk who reached enlightenment. A wicked man, left to die by his enemies, lain upon a mountain stream bleeding. He drank from the water, cradling his body. For three days he lay there, drinking of the tepid water. On the third day he did not drink, and he was enlightened. The monk lives a simple an righteous life from that day onward.

A giant Matryoshka doll golem.

most viking mother fucker you can imagine. Frost giant, give him barbarian features and give him long boats of smaller goliaths to battle for him.

One always fun thing to do is draw up your own roughly equal party and pit them against your PCs.

A head accountant and litigation lawyer for the biggest financial firm in the moderately sized town or small city that the PC's happen to be strolling into. They are a moderately talented enchanter with a specialization in runes and words of power, and have used their contracts, correspondence, and even billboard variety advertisements as mediums to put little spells of control and subtle influences on those that read them or look at them in repetition; locals are affected, but those simply passing through never even need to make a save until they've been there several days, or they've dealt directly with the BBEG.

The city council deals with the accountant regularly, and he is considered an unofficial treasury aide; all the money and taxation in town is done and handled according to the accountant's interests and needs. What those needs or interests are is up to you as the DM; they're a lich and the town secrets their phylactery, or a fey duke guarding a hidden portal to their kingdom's realm, or a mage in their own right sending letters to other cities offering services and extending influence further in a slow bid for control of the county.

This works best on a party which has some kind of forger or detect-magic-spamming mage who'll trip into the trick, but also kinda needs either some means of hiding from common mages or a setting with relatively few magicians who'd catch on. Maybe a Nystul's Magic Aura trick.

The party enters a large room with a slime between them and the far door. The slime takes up 1 space, and moves 1 space at a time. It attacks every turn it is adjacent, but misses every time. Every time the slime is hit, the number of slimes in the room doubles. If a massive number of slimes are in the room, they start to drain out if not attacked.

The door on the far side of the room is unlocked, but opens inwards and can be blocked by too many slimes. The only way to die is to literally drown in the slime.

A rat the size of a minibus. Nothing else special about it, just scaled up to level

It dies instantly due to its own crushing weight.

The local butcher in town or city; who's been kidnapping the local street urchins -- homeless bums, whores, and orphans. Even though they are urchins; so many have come up missing it's recieved attention from the higher officials in the city. They put out a reward, and bounty for finding the missing people, and kidnapper(s). It's later found out that the Butcher is actually a member of a underground origination of evil necromancer cultist. Using the Butcher shop as safe house, and smuggling out people to be used as components, and undead thralls.

Norman the Man from the future.
A sociopath/psicopath fa/tg/uy who finds himself stranded in your setting from which he knows everything thanks to avidly studying all the setting guides and companions, knowing shit no one else knows.
He uses this and that he doesn't obey much the "laws" that work in this world to take it over.

a old war general with Alzheimer's is still fighting a war that has been over for years.

thematically, or mechanically for interesting encounters?

>mechanically:
while i tend not to like his other stuff, angry gm does a good job with his boss monster series for 4e. really breaks down how to make a good boss fight.

how would playing a different system help him learn to make interesting boss fights?

A sentient disease that operates on a national/global scale and so doesn't directly interact with the party in any way other than adapting to their tactics.

The head of the IRS.

Get this.

The boss is a DRAGON.

A Lawful Evil Necromancer, who is sending the dead victims of murder, rape, theft, etc to hunt down their killers and commit horrible acts of revenge. PCs only hear about the results to begin with. Should fuck up any lawful PCs a bit.

As most monsters, curses, wizard wars etc are the result of magic, a powerful but secret political group of assassins, warriors, monks, etc, are attempting to murder every spell caster in the world and burn all books of magic, so it will eventually be forgotten, allowing ordinary folk to get on with their lives.

A sickly girl who wants everyone to be miserable.

Use a monster from another setting. I have been running a WHFRP game in Brettonia, in which a Genestealer cult is trying to take over (they crashed a few centuries ago and have been slowly infiltrating the Bretonian Court) Players think it is just chaos fuckery, but boy will they get a shock if they don't squash it quick and the Tyranid Hive Fleet homes in on the Old World.

I like this idea

Because if you change up the system and setting you can use differently styled enemies.

I would run out of ideas if I just GM'd classic D&D as well.

>Martials
>Beating mages
>In D&D
Oh, that's a good laugh.

A genie that appears before the party and presents a series of riddles to each player. If a player is unable to answer a riddle correctly, they are teleported to a room of the genie's construct in which they will be presented with a stat check correlating to a random stat other than their highest one. These checks will become increasingly difficult, and failing to meet these will result in damage and negative status effects. The party wins when any of the following conditions are met:

>each member of the party successfully answers 2 riddles
>the party collectively successfully answers 12 riddles
>each party member survives 4 stat checks
>the party collectively survives 25 stat checks

Fuck you. Seriously. That's evil as fuck. I'm using this.

So basically Thorkell the Tall?

I like this. Might steal it.

ah. i seem to play a dozen or so systems a year, consistently, but generally run d20 games.

thus far i havent run out if ideas

A lawyer.

Utilizes the town guard for defense and perpetually has you sued and indicted for your adventures by darting into enemy strongholds after you've cleared them and distributing business cards among the inhabitants.

The result being that you've run into an unfortunate string of bounty hunters determined to drag you into a very long and very real trial which will most likely take 2 whole sessions of pure dialogue to resolve.