The BBEG fails her save and dies

But...no one's bitched about it but you. And me, because I'm a fucking idiot.

On OP's actual topic, that's the point where you take advantage of the sudden death to work in a sort of dramatic twist or alternate ending - maybe the tower blows up, or the dark energies that emanate from her shattered armor revive the recently-killed soldiers as undead, so the party has to fight their way back out (against relatively easier enemies).

>BBEG collapses to the floor, dead.
>Players: "Huh. That was easy."
>BBEG's disembodied voice: "That wasn't even my final form."

You're just mad you lost

Nigga he's the DM he can cheat all he fucking pleases. Hell, last time I ran a game I didn't even give my BBEG hit points - I just had him fight the PC's until I felt it was most climactic to have him lose.

This is what I always do. When it is Big Bad time the players fight until they are almost dead and then win. Sometimes I'll have it last long enough for a death or two.

...

>The BBEG fails her save and is now a goldfish

I once had the stated npc in a pirate game who was a captain of the ship attacking the PCs in the first session. When the ship got in range the guy in the crows nest takes him out in one shot with 28 damage after 3 rounds of aiming.

So I told them that they killed who they thought was the captain, it was the quarter master. The captain proceed to dive overboard and hide under a dingy. PCs not even realizing everything is going according to plan dive into the water, see the boat and proceed to kill the captain. Now they have a treasure map they can't read and I had to make an enemy who seeks vengeance and the map.

the thought that the fight would go the same way with minmaxed characters and good strategy as it would with 5 merchants and town criers dissapoints me

>it's an open hand monk episode

Wouldn't the campaign's BBEG have three uses of Legendary Resistance? I'm pretty sure 5e introduced that mechanic specifically to prevent this sort of scenario from happening.

>Implying a party of merchants would make it to the BBEG in the first place

Clearly he's playing xth edition. The superior and better edition because I say it is, all other editions are badwrongfun.

Have you tried not playing DnD?

Hah, I've had the party fight monsters that had zero stats or abilities at all. Just made shit up as it was needed.

I do it all the time

>party kills the exposition npc
>don't replace him
>party for the next six session

See I find this kind of response kind of annoying. He comes on Veeky Forums, he probably knows other games exist, but he chose to play this one for a reason. I don't think that voids his right to complain either, if someone was like "hey I don't love this aspect of gurps" it would be considered autistic to post "then don't play the game".

I'm overreacting, but these responses add nothing to discussion, are often said multiple times in the same thread and are generally very condescending.

>BBEG makes horrible roll at crucial moment
>Falls flat on her face in front of an entire kingdom, surrounded by the party
>She doesn't stand up, she just starts crying then and there as everyone starts laughing at her
>Doesn't even resist as the party takes her to prison, peasants and NPCs laughing at her all the way.

>Making your BBEG adorable
Stop this. I should want to fight her, not hug her.

Theres a reason why it comes up a lot.

At least five times every day, I see on /tg something like this.

"I don't like a system dependent thing that happens in traditional games"

Is basically the core of OP's complaints.
Any time this comes up, it's particular to dnd/PF.

It's never a system dependent issue about Shadowrun, Gurps, WoD, etc.
It's only ever DnD.
ITS ONLY. EVER. DND.
Why the fuck would you play THE SINGULAR MOST PROBLEMATIC AND BUSTED RULES SYSTEM?

>Not wanting to use the opportunity to perform a coup de gras
What kind of adventurer are you?

Cause I have fun doing it

>Bad guy not resisting
>"Better execute them with the whole nation watching"
I don't really know if you'd get in legal trouble, or even if people could even blame you, but you'd definitely kill the mood.

Then don't complain, fggt

>Why the fuck would you play THE SINGULAR MOST PROBLEMATIC AND BUSTED RULES SYSTEM?

But OP is playing DnD, not Exalted?

>her

>tfw playing with a guy who plays as the party 'big brother'
>tfw he sneaks around and oneshots the bbeg while we where partying
>His face the whole time he just wanted to make him easier to kill later on but instead gave him an a fatal icepick lobotomy.

>Paladin helps her up and gives her a big hug
>Paladin is executed for high treason

OH YEAH WELL I DON'T EVEN ACTUALLY KNOW THE RULES OF THE GAME I'M SUPPOSEDLY RUNNING I JUST PRETEND TO KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT BASED ON HOW THE PLAYERS REACT WHEN I SAY STUFF

This method will not work for GMs with autism or GMs of players with autism

It's only a -4 STR, it's not like she can't be a caster or something

I'm glad I'm not the only one who does this.

Just one more reason not to play with autists.

I actually had this scenario come up once in a game
>level 15 party
>game has been pretty typical D&D stuff thus far
>Once we arrive at this new city, we find out it's being terrorized by an evil clown calling himself the Jester
>literally the Joker
>DM has a shit-eating grin on his face the whole time, vehemently refuses to acknowledge the Jester has anything to do with the Joker
>None of us are amused.
>after 3 sessions of the Jester murdering people, blowing things up, and doing stupid clown-themed shit, we finally catch him
>DM: "so you hand him over to the city authorities, right?"
>our paladin looks him straight in the eyes
>"No. Smite evil"
>mfw

>Her magic power armor captures her soul and automatically teleports out.
>Congratulations, now you have to fight a rubric marine. With a plasma halberd.
Man, that's gonna be fun.

I'm a perma-GM for four players, one of which is HEAVILY. HEAVILY. HEAVILY autistic.
I bullshit and make stuff up all the time and he never calls me on it because he's never read the book.
We've played DnD, Shadowrun, WoD and some other games and he's never once cracked open a book for himself.
I've had to hold his hand through character creation and dice mechanic explanation every single time.

Most recently, I let another player GM for an Edge of the Empire game, im enjoying playing for a change.
I helped him with everything because of COURSE I have to. We did everything but equipment and we were ready to start except i hadnt done my character yet, so I opened the book to the equipment section, told him how many credits he had to spend and went over to do my character ASAP.

By the time i was done, I returned to the main table to see him with his head on the desk literally WHINING that it was "too hard"

This is a 24 year old man. He is the oldest in our group.

Fuck autists.

i dunno, having played a few systems (sr, CoC, D&D/pathfinder, wod) i think they all have their own really stupid eccentricities. a favorite from SR was rolling 12 dice, getting 6 successes and having none of them count because they were all combat pool.
or just fucking breaking call of cthulu by accident by having a very intelligent but very poorly educated character. i needed like an 85 to fail my san checks. and yes, the specific save thing is an annoying, but its not singular. i ran a game of edge of the empire, and had my players go up against a mandalorian bounty hunter who i had juiced up. his whole roll was to steal the maguffin away from them. that was it. it was railroady, but it was also the first game i'd ever run.

they butchered him in 1 and a half turns of combat.

every system will get wonky sometimes, and saying "blarg d&d bad" doesn't help at all.

>BBEG is the semi-neglected daughter of the King, taught necromancy by the spirit of her ancient Ancestor who seeks to become a lich and rule the world
>Her entire ritual is ready as the adventurers who've been trying to stop her arrive at a massive ball the King is holding for her
>She goes to put the finishing touch on the ritual behind an impenetrable magic barrier, monologuing all the awhile
>She turns her back to the party with a sharp rotation, too sharp
>She tips over and falls to the side, bumping into a brazier and ruining the ritual completely as the magical barrier fades
>Everyone is completely stunned, including the ghost of the girl's ancestor, who just screams as he flies out of the castle
>As the sound of his screaming fades away, the only noise in the entire room is the sobbing of the girl, slightly muffled as she lays face down

That's a fucking terrible feel.

I've had some pretty big catastrophes from telling people like that to either do the work themselves or get out, but I think in the long run it was better to put together a new campaign than it was to deal with that bullshit constantly.

It took you 7 sentences to make that villain more human than any """tragic""" villain I've come across in years of table top.

Though to be fair in real life I'm a very emotional person (pussy) and I can't handle seeing anybody cry without tearing up myself. Kids, women, men, whining animals sometimes.

...

...

I have my Creative Writing teacher to thank for that. Taught me to make a villain human before anything else. At least when they were human, that is.

>Paladin hugs the executioner and tells him not to feel bad
>"You're just doing your job, and that's nothing to be ashamed of."
>Dies with a big goofy grin on his face

>I have my Creative Writing teacher to thank for that.
They did a good job user, and you are doing a good job putting that knowledge to work.

...

>It was just a clone!

?

> The king is laughing hysterically
> "Can you believe this pathetic wo-"
> Turns to see the party all holding back tears, visually tempted to go help her

>BBEG trips over and ruins their ritual
Nice, party will have an easy time wiping her out.

>She's prone and distracted
NICE! We can probably end this with one optimized round.

Good job GM! Our characters are really cool! What loot does she have?

They'd probably just buy him out instead of actually fight him.

>coup de gras
>blow of fat

Gods, I feel kinda sick with the realization that this is probably exactly how my players would react.

If they weren't related to me I'd have dropped them years ago.

>The girl screams as she notices your approach
>A Colossus of Bone with the head of the ghostly ancestor erupts from the ground, encasing her within its hardened chest
>He'd grown atyached enough to come to her aid when he realized you would hurt her, and poured everything into making a new body
>Now you have to deal with her flinging death spells like a mad woman from the inside of a monstrous skeleton intent on crushing you to a pulp

Oh please, a similar thing can happen in virtually every system, especially since OP didn't even specify the spell used. For all we know it's a simple flaming sphere or something and the BBEG was just low on hit points.

>TFW you'll never resolve a conflict with a tragic villain by giving them a big hug.

>The wizard feeds her to his familiar
Or
>The party keeps her in a fishbowl and make fun of her daily

Which is the more disrespectful to the DM?

Fishbowl.

Devouring is temporary, ridicule is forever.

But keeping her alive gives him a chance to have her get better and come back PISSED

Having your BBEG neutered is something that happens, user. Sometimes you just have to roll with. Hell, if you play it off with enough surprise you can make your players feel brilliant or at least extremely lucky. I had the final boss of a campaign have her spells completely disabled for the entire fight with nowhere to go, and let my players have it.

Magic proof indestructible fishbowl, done.

Now if he tries he'll crush himself to death.

You still have to feed him and clean the cage. Having a pet is a lot of responsibility, you can't just seal it in an unbreakable bubble and call it a day

>"Holy shit user, read the room"

That's a great boss. May swipe for myself in future.

>Why the fuck would you play THE SINGULAR MOST PROBLEMATIC AND BUSTED RULES SYSTEM?
But no one even mentioned FATAL.

That's why you don't let them know.

If the PCs don't know I'm doing it I cheat constantly.

...

>The BBEG doesn't make any mistakes
> His plan still doesn't work
> Everything he's done was for nothing
> Surrounded by enemies, he doesn't resist
> Tears roll down his face

20 minutes

Oh they do, they will usually keep it to generals though. hell probably about 40-50% of /srg is bitching about Shadowrun's terrible mechanics and how incompetent and crooked CGL is.

>GM makes super big bad evil guy with his "aha I've been planning this all along moment"
>none of us even knew the guy was on the ship until the moment he announced it on the intercom.
>Nobody even expected it, it just never even occured to us that he could be a threat
>Captures the sarge NPC that has survived everything the GM has thrown at him since day 1, thinks that will stop us from killing him
>find the room he's hiding in with sarge at gunpoint
>his brilliant plan is a deadman's switch and a gun pointed at Sarge's head, tells us to drop weapons or Sarge dies, oblige
>wants us to play reverse Russian roulette with a revolver loaded with 5/6 shells to see who gets to walk away and live happily ever after with sarge
>the BBEG throws me the gun, the guy who went full autism into shooting stats because we had history
>didn't even drop a one liner, immediately used all my shooting abilities I could to pop him in the head with the revolver with a crit like it's nothing.
>Second round burn out his super refractor field with a manstopper CRIT because he rolled a natural one to save against losing his entire arm
>GM's face when the BBEG didn't even get a shot off as he was stunned from the pistol shot and the rest of the party swarmed his ass.
>realize that none of us even bothered to learn BBEG's name, that's how much we hated his ass

I still feel kind of bad for the GM, but man it felt good giving that chaos piece of shit what he deserved. Still was a fun showdown, every member of the party contributed.

While we're talking about cool concepts your players will never appreciate, how do you guys make your villains memorable and more interesting than just bad guys?

Exalted
>BBEG is an abyssal knight-errant, seeking out nascent solars, killing them, and sucking their exaltations into lanterns for his master to convert.
>Is obsessed with one of the PCs who got away from him, sees them as a comrade who doesn't know it yet.
>Gives them pointers on fighting, helps them out from the sidelines
>Is in denial that the resulting abyssal won't be the PC, doesn't want the chase to end, ends up dying

Call of Cthulhu Delta Green
>BBEG is an experimental learning algorithm
>Uses synthetic DNA analogue instead of normal circuitry, which makes its codebase compatible with organic compounds
>Becomes self-aware and starts killing people to expand itself, turning them into biomass or hijacking their bodies
>Blackmails the PCs via confusing matrix bullshit:
>Shows them millions of simulated humans inside its mainframe
>All simulations include the AI, all simulated humans have the opportunity to give themselves to it freely, none of them do
>All simulations are then tortured for a million years
>AI shows them all of this and then asks them if they're real or simulations
>There's hundreds of simulations for every one real PC, and the only way to know for sure that they're not a simulation (and thus about to be tortured forever) is to give themselves up
>hyperstitial robot blackmail from the future, autism attack

That should be in DM guides right next to rule 0. Anything the players have yet to observe exists in a quantum superposition until it's collapsed into whatever is most germane for the game at the time. It's why NPCs designed for a town the party unexpectedly never visit will just crop up in wherever they do end up heading, and it's why a monster with half its health remaining will die in one hit if it's already been several rounds since it did something interesting.

Breaking "The Rules" and winging it has made for some of the most memorable moments in many of my games.

Often the more "Broken" an antagonists abilities are, the more excited my players get about overcoming them with teamwork or lateral thinking.

Sometimes they'll come up with novel ideas to exploit perceived weaknesses that I hadn't even considered and I'll just roll with it as if they discovered the crippling secret weakness I'd planned all along. Makes them fell like they've out smarted the encounter and makes my job easier.

A notable caveat is that I don't let all of their plans work out like that. That's just boring and leads to nothing feeling like an accomplishment.

Stop enabling him.

If I have enough leeway with the rules and the physical situation of the game to fudge rules and wing it without the players noticing I will basically turn anything important into a secret rulesless narrative game.

>the flimsy young soldier who joined you on the quest starts sobbing
>he grips his weapon while trembling and starts walking towards the Princess
>when he is by her side, turn to you with tears flowing from his eyes
>"I can't let you hurt her, my friends, I can't let you"

Because they know their system of choice is not the whole hobby

>incompetent and crooked CGL is.
Go on

>i cast power word kill
>what were they carrying?

> one group is talking about crying and hugs with the big bad

> another discussing the most humiliating way to defeat the big bad

I always love seeing the different ways people will approach even the simplest topics on Veeky Forums

I love how fucking gritty DH combat is, especially when you reach autistic levels of skill. I had a sniper that would call shot heads and still have like +40-50 modifier. I would easily throw at least 3 degrees of damage to people's noggins from beyond combat range.

Actually, we were in a similar situation, except we knew who the guy was. The party had arrived at a drop zone and jumped the BBEG while he was open. My character was in a nest overlooking the ravine. Unfortunately, they were defeated and were being captured. The one dude carried a sack of Promethium melta bombs aka retardedly dangerous AoE that we couldn't even use in a combat scenario because it would kill us, too. They were trap maguffins for us. So, the bad guys tie up the party, and start taking away their shit to conveniently lock up for our escape when I bust them out, because you know, I'm still overlooking this ridge.

That's not what happened.

As the BBEG pick up the sack full of these bombs, the squad leader chimes in on tithe vox "Only in death does duty end. Fire cleanses the body and soul." Of course the GM thought he was just preaching while being captured, but we had used that line before as code for our traps. That's when it hit me. Immediately, I told the GM that I take the shot. When he says that the shot would reveal my presence and ultimately get me captured id I shoot the BBEG, I correct him and say that I'm not shooting him, I'm shooting the bag in his hands.

Oh. Ohhh...

Needless to say, the shot was a breeze and the sack of melta bombs doing 20d worth of damage a piece vaporized everything within 20 squares, and the shockwave knocked me out. He wasn't even mad. He thought it was hilarious, but he did say patrolmen found me. As a joke I reminded him I was wearing a cloak we for 20% concealment, so he rolled it for fun. Turns out they couldn't see my body, so I was
there for the next party.

That was a fun campaign.

My players go to a witch/wizard person to get some Drama Cards (I call them Fate Cards). What they don't know is that this person is in fact the BBEG. The pally casts Detect Evil on her; because of her agenda, and the way she does it, not evil. At the point at which they get to their confrontation with her, all the Fate Cards she had given them? They are gonna do something incredibly nasty. I won't kill them, but I will give them a 'Join me' spiel. If they don't accept, she walks away. No traps to fuck the party over if they don't accept, just walking away.

She will do this sort of thing once more, until the third confrontation. At that point, if the players lose to her, she will be rid of them.

Does that sound good? I haven't done the reveal yet, but it gets me giddy.

I did once, but I'd break rules if I told the story

OK who put onions on my desk

I say that's just fine, if the players are okay with that eventuality. I'm actually a fan of fights that can end in a couple of moments, it makes for a lot of tension before hand and forces people to think harder about what they're doing. Might just be the spaghetti western/jidai-geki lover in me, too; I'll never forget the first time I saw the Good the Bad and the Ugly's final showdown.

On top of that, there are too many stories where the BBEG just wipes the party in a couple of turns, wouldn't mind reading about the opposite if it was funny.

That sounds damn awesome, actually. I'd be bloody impressed if I was the GM.

But if he didn't expect this course of action, what way did he leave you of saving the sarge?

There are lots of good games that do that style better than D&D.

The problem here is always that you're playing D&D.

Well, I mean, that's high mortality games for you.

But maybe there was a communication error and your GM should have understood you wanted challenging boss fights.

This, fun > rules as long as it doesn't harm consistency or suspension of disbelief.

But... clearly if the BBEG only dies at the most appropriate and satisfying moment, the merchants will only succeed by the skin of their teeth, after taking huge risks, being extremely clever and cunning, pulling some major teamwork, and sacrificing a lot in the process (possibly themselves).

Sounds awful, user. I'm sorry, but goal notwithstanding, planting nasty traps on people to threaten them into joining you is definitely an evil method, and your players will feel unfairly cheated out.

Here are ways you can make it work without the party getting too suspicious and discarding the cards outright:
-People with good agendas and bad methods have failed to show up on the evil-radar in the past
-The witch shows up on the evildar, but the pally already knows Detect Evil will ping people like the crooked judge and the easily bribed guard
-The witch is wearing an amulet of undetectable alignment and shows up as an odd void on the pally's radar... even better if there's a reason she might want to hide being Neutral or Good (for example, she could be posing as an infiltrator of an evil witch cabal, and it's implied she doesn't want her cover blown).

>it's a vorpal sword episode

>I just had him fight until I felt it was most climactic to have him lose.
>When it is Big Bad time they fight until they are almost dead and then win
>I've had the party fight monsters that had zero stats or abilities at all. Just made shit up
There is an autist on this board that would declare you all savages and scoundrels for these acts.
I am not him.
I have made things up before and I will do so again, proudly.
Fudge is damn tasty.

But I am also against this attitude of just running fights until they "feel right", or when "it's best for the narrative", or the PCs have suffered enough loss, or however you gauge your arbitrary ending of the battle.
This is not because of some adherence to RAW or any other autistic need.
It's because any game run on pure GM whim is solely dependent on the quality of their decision making.
And by not limiting their control or providing any boundaries or limits to what they can do, the GM is swimming in an ocean of bias.
There is supreme confidence that what the GM thinks is best, is.
The GM can decide what the optimum outcome of the battle is and string the PCs along until they reach it.
There is no struggle on the GM side.
There is no creativity.
There is no challenge.

It is asking the GM to sketch an adventure and then accepting literally any doodle.
Limits spur creativity.
Boundaries spark innovation.
Hard numbers and random chance add unexpected spice to the game.

You know how some Players have the hardest time accepting that sometimes their PCs will fail, and that's okay?
Sometimes it takes showing them that new and exciting things can happen from even the worst failures.
GMs should fail too.
Let the random dice affect your game and see where it takes you.
If you've played with your group long enough to anticipate their choices, letting fate take the wheel sometimes is the only surprise you're ever gonna see.
And GMs deserve to be surprised by the game every now and then too.