Ok Veeky Forums, help me out here

Don't EVER do this OP. If your players figure out you do this once they will never enjoy your games again. Trust is hard to build but very easy to break, and once you break it it tends to be twice as hard to build again.

With a spirit naga you could always take up a snake motif. Have a bunch of snake pits in the part of the lair where boss battle happens, have several appropriate minions. Nagas are good spell casters and they have charm person by default, even if it's a total scumbag it can find plenty of henchmen. If you afraid of overwhelming the players, make the majority of the minions more interested in snaring the players instead of outright killing them. Nets, disable spells, anything that will make it harder to attack the boss.

As other anons have said, ignore HP and instead focus on the flow of combat. Another thing to do is give the boss 2 turns per round. You could fluff it as an action for the boss and one for its mount or say the boss is so experienced at battle they can read the flow and thus get more actions. Alternatively you can remind them you are the DM and this makes the boss more fun.

Also think about adding gimmicks to boss battles. My players loved fighting a giant armadillo that could roll into a ball and run over every player in a line. Shit like that can be very memorable for players.

AOE, reactions, spells, minions, terrain, traps... make the boss so big they need to pass additional checks to find his weakspots and reach them by climbing. Give the boss legendary resistance. Give him legendary actions. Lots and lots of HP. Give him abilities that inflict disadvantages. Give him multiattack, cleaving attacks etc etc. This short pdf might help a little.

And unless your party is like level 4 or 5, you will need to boost those stats.

You have to be a special kind of moron to be a slave to the rules and stats and for the only joy your players get from your games being their arbitrary numbers trumping another set of arbitrary numbers.

It's the easiest thing in the world to conceal, and he would only need to do it once while recording damage numbers to prepare him for future encounter design.

Use monsters of 3+ CR above APL. Do it. I don't give a shit what the book says.

That's true but only to a point. Monster Manuals and shit are only there to provide general guidelines, you don't have to use the templates given inside, especially not for memorable encounters. As a DM it's your job to muck around and customize things but stay within general rules of the game.

He'll just give the monster a fancy tattoo.
If the battle goes too fast, it'll use a bonus action to activate the magical tattoo and heal X damage.
If it doesn't go too fast, it's just a fancy tattoo.

>It literally doesn't matter what action you take or what the dice come up as, the DM has already decided that everything you do will be an utterly pointless waste of time that accomplishes nothing until he arbitrarily decides to let you start actually fighting the boss.
More than that, once you start fudging the numbers it's no longer luck or skill that decides whether your players live or die or succeed or fail. It's 100% you. Their actions are meaningless and their agency is gone. You might as well tell them to get lost and write a novel.

Nice hyperbole, moron.

Have your boss go first. Either use an item to win initiative, or launch some kind of ambush. Hit the character with the most damage per round with a 1/day ability that deals a shitload of damage. At least that character's level in d6 or d8.

theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/
theangrygm.com/elemental-boogaloo/
theangrygm.com/oh-no-more-bosses-oozes-slimes-and-a-duplicating-wizard/

Not sure your options on this guy, if you have any, but his boss fight idea works quite well.

>Legendary Actions, son

The first real "boss" fight I ran in 5e was a beholder. It went up against a group of 6 level 12 adventurers and it completely wrecked their shit. The main reason it was so fun and threatening despite going up against 6 adventurers was because it had 3 Legendary actions it could take at the end of the players turns. So instead of going Beholder>Rogue>Paladin>Sorcerer>Barbarian>Wizard>Monk, it went Beholder>Rogue>Beholder>Paladin>Beholder>Sorcerer>Barbarian>Beholder>Wizard>Monk

It could also fly, which made it really hard for the players to lock down.

Give it a second initiative pass or add some low tier minions.

> It's 100% you. Their actions are meaningless and their agency is gone.

This might suck for you to hear, but the DM is really in absolute control, 100% of the time. Everything else is just the illusion he and the game crafts to pretend otherwise. It doesn't make the PCs decisions meaningless, just like fate and destiny don't invalidate free will.

If you NEED the DM to follow rules written without any knowledge of you and your group to ultimately determine how a battle goes, you are basically demanding the DM to ignore the situation at hand in favor of hypotheticals.

i can make hyperbole too.

Look user, you don't need a dm to play. Just get a monster manual and slill challenge table and roll your dice against appropriately levelled challenges and collect xp and appropriate gear.

You could probably even program a computer to do it.

>fate and destiny don't invalidate free will

This is what religious retards actually believe.

>pure materialism doesn't invalidate free will
See, I can make sweeping generalizations too.
Besides, isn't it a theme in a bajillion stories that the main characters just flip the bird to fate and do whatever they want anyways?

This desu senpai

Have you even attempted to understand that argument? It's actually pretty logical, despite the initial apparent contradiction.

What do your players normally do? Strategically, I mean. See, your issue seems to be the same as Rita Repulsa's: throwing something big and heavy at the heroes isn't working, so now what? Well I'll tell you. You DON'T simply throw something bigger and heavier. You outsmart them.

If all they do is spank and tank, you've got plenty of options. For example: a boss who has no reason to fight fair, if at all. A level 3 commoner can still be a threat if all he does is run away, leading the players into traps and encounters. Or, perhaps take a leaf out of Tomb of Horrors: a boss that is completely out of their league, but doesn't fight unless fought. Again, you've got plenty of options here, and they are by no means all "out-of-combat" related.

If they make heavy use of magic, throw a magic resistant thing up. Let's say they have a mage and cleric. The former disables anything with a brain, while the latter destroyes most anything without. Well, what about something that is simply BETTER at casting? Something like a beholder? Multiple beholders? On the other hand, what about something that makes heavy use of counterspells?

Use your brainmeats. Think: "What do my players do? What would force them to use a different tactic?"

Yeah the standard plot is that free will overcomes fate, which just reinforces the idea that you can't have both. If fate isn't guaranteed, it isn't fate.

Free will is a moot point for several reasons. The first is that it's hard to agree on what it is even, because people come with preconceptions of fate and preordained events, while others postulate a completely coincidental existence and thus free will. Both of these are wrong, as while there is no fate and no predetermination in the sense of a grand design, there is no free will, beyond the illusion that one can do as they wish, as atoms behave in probabilitistic ways, and so do molecules, cells (including neurons), and organisms. Nothing is fated, but everything is a culmination of previous events and an individual's experience and environment.

Tl;dr free will is a retarded concept in this day and age.

>This is my favorite debate topic.

No, it's not. You're just giving yourself an illusion of agency because you feel bad about a meaningless existence. Try and enjoy life for life, not for some kind of meaning.

Their actions are also meaningless if the combat is too easy, because they are going to win even if they choose their actions poorly. I agree that a GM shouldn't make a habit of fudging even for bosses. If he doesn't know how to balance an encounter though, it's fine to do if he can take the fudged combat as an opportunity to learn what scale his math needs to be on.

Sorry, but your euphoria is you just being dumb. Go and read a little before you tip at us more.

Fate not applying at a crucial moment doesn't mean fate has no bearing on the plot.
If there are going to be nine warriors that save the world, maybe they'll be a bunch of podunk farmers, maybe they'll be the greatest knights of all time. Besides, most of the happenings of fate in video games occur right at the beginning of the game, to kick off the plot.
>Nothing is fated, but everything is a culmination of previous events and an individual's experience and environment.
>Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual.
From a certain point of view...

I'm gonna jump ship on this conversation before the boat really begins to tilt.

I'm glad you find meaning in what is essentially a logical fallacy. This has been shown to make people happier. I hope you are happy, user. But you are also wrong. And incapable of an argument.

It's sad, because a three-second google search is all you'd need to stop being so dumb.

3 rounds is the expected duration of a battle in 5e.

You're using legendary/lair actions and minions, right?

And all you need is to stop believing in whatever skydaddy makes you sleep easier at night. Neither of us will do it, so why bother.

This isn't even about religion, it's just you being an idiot too lazy to google, with you eschewing actual knowledge because you'd rather stick with being ignorant and satisfied with your faith in fedora to provide you with euphoria.

You're the worst kind of atheist.

How about a compromise? The boss has quantum number of hit points between its minimum and maximum. For example, a spirit naga has 10d10 + 20 hit points, so that's an average of 75 and a maximum of 120. If somehow a PC downed before 75 damage is dealt to the spirit naga, the naga has 75 hit points. If the boss takes 120 damage before any PC is downed, then that's how many hit points the naga has.

It's not about religion, certainly. It's about faith. A different thing, less inane, but fundamentally you are still arguing a logical fallacy, which is that it's possible to influence the flow of events when the end is predetermined. And even assuming you can do so, the predestination makes it meaningless. You can no more refute this than you can refute cogito ergo sum. You're looking for meaning in existence itself by believing in fate, and looking for your own agency by believing in free will. You should find a way to live to live, not live because life supposedly has meaning.

Just give the boss higher stats. From the sounds of it, the big issue is that your boss can't hit for shit. Give the boss a bonus to hit and see how that turn out. More health would also work. Just don't do what and suggest. It sounds nice but you also have to worry about players getting upset that their super awesome move didn't do shit all to the boss.

You're not even ready for PHIL101 with that babble.

Give the boss a bunch of archers who are scattered around (not fireball bait) decently far away, and relatively deadly.

Make the boss big and impressive and tough but not actually that dangerous.

Arguably one of the finest compliments a person can hope to receive.

Lets say a 1,000 years ago some madman accidentally babbled out every single thing you would choose to do in your entire life.

Does this invalidate your free will?

Lets say an alien studied humanity from its very first day, and with 100% accuracy had a computer that took in every factor of every person and then printed out a list of your every action for your entire lifetime- would that deny you free will?

I'm not even a fan of that other user's approach but even I can tell you overextended. Who gives a fuck what philosophers believed about free will in the past? If they knew what we now know there wouldn't have been room for most of their beliefs.

Now, if you want to argue for free will from Bell's theorem, we might all be able to have an actual discussion.

Wow this thread went pic related fast.

Is it a copout to say that the fates exist, but they gave up, only filling in the really important stuff and letting mortals find their own way there?

Well no, because you can still be freely choosing the actions, even if those choices were the outcomes of initial conditions playing out.

If those conditions were different, then you would have chosen differently.

Are you doing solo bosses or bosses with some minions?

If you are doing the former try the latter.

>propose an impossible scenario
>make wide sweeping generalizations based on an impossible scenario
>I'm a philosopher gusy

Those don't invalidate free will because they don't describe "fate" or "destiny", they're simply predictions operating (at the very least) under the assumption that the subject of the prediction won't be made aware of the prediction and choose to deliberately not fulfill it just to be contrary.

That's assuming we're actually talking about concrete predictions, and not Nostradamus bullshit where he just fired a bunch of vague flowery language at a wall which could be interpreted after the fact to have referenced actual events.

What does a 100% accurate prediction even look like, for any kind of a complex interaction?

It's something that occurs in fiction a lot, but it's also always revealed to be because "the prophecy was read wrong the whole time" or because fate is and always was complete bullshit.

One way to do it is this:
- The boss is invulnerable because of three local magic effects. All of them needs to be disabled before the boss can be damaged.
- Disabling an effect is a minor skill challenge (eg. succeed on 3 skill checks/attacks), provided that the action used to disable the effect makes sense. For example, if the effect is tied to a mummy's canopic jar, you could probably smash it. If the effect is tied to a magic fog cloud, you could disperse it with wind-related spells, but not attacks.
- While the PCs scurry about trying to disable the effects, the boss is free to engage them.

Another way, which is better for larger monsters:
- Make a custom monster with way too high defensive CR (eg. buttloads of HP) but damage comparable to a hard encounter of the PCs' level, spread out across multiple attacks/legendary actions.
- The monster turns any terrain it enters into its lair for the purpose of lair actions.

Never used a spirit naga in one of my campaigns before but if your looking for something to really challenge a party use an intelligent being. Someone who watches the players over the course of the campaign, learns their strengths and weakness, make long term plans. That and be loosy goosey about the health it has, you're the gm after all. Pic unrelated.

Legendary Actions, bruh. Use some. The players will shit themselves if they've never run into them before, and the boss is suddenly launching lightning-fast counterattacks in between their turns.

More AP. Even Steel Golems and Animate Tanks will find themselves worn down rapidly if they're unsupported.

>under the assumption that the subject of the prediction won't be made aware of the prediction and choose to deliberately not fulfill it just to be contrary.

Well if the predictions are correct, and don't say the subject discover this, then they won't.

I think you missed the point of "makes a list of very action for your entire lifetime"

This. Or make the boss have multiple turns instead. Numbers are god in 5e.

This. Better action economy.

If your boss is smacking one dude per turn, he's not gonna do anyserious damage.

Make boss act several times per turn and use AoE attacks. Give him counterattacks. Make boss battle a puzzle (boss switching between several forms is a good way to start tht)

And.

DON'T JUST BLOW UP BOSS' HP/DAMAGE NUMBERS. THIS IS THE WORST WAY TO DO THAT. THAT'S THE WORST WAY TO DO EVERYTHING. THIS IS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.

>any discussion that challenges my beliefs is fedora tier

You're worse than SJWs.

Make them huge, don't be afraid to kill a character or two, and don't make mercifully dumb decisions (or if you do, roll INT for the boss before making them just to see if it gets lucky).

for example
>dragon
>wizard preparing to cast a spell
>rogue climbing up nearby tower to get a better angle on your jugular
>fighter standing right in front of your fucking face waving a sword
Mercifully dumb
>full attack fighter, letting rogue leap onto your back and wizard start casting shit at your face next turn

Cruelly intelligent
>Charge wizard, trampling fighter, leaving rogue stuck up a tower 50 feet away, and flicking the old fart across the countryside in one turn

Somewhere inbetween this. Don't be afraid to have powerful 'fuck you' moves that take a turn or two to charge. This will let wise players take cover or run and dumb ones get killed fair-n-square

Think as if you were a murderhobo with bosses' abilities.
Wide area debuffs. Are spirits afraid of poison gas? Are PCs? Can a spirit possess one of PCs or attack their mind directly?
Does dungeon take a long time to pass? Do spirits sleep? Why should your naga sit idly in the last chamber instead of attacking PCs when they are crossing the bottomless pit?
Just stop thinking of gygax-style list of rooms and start thinking of a citadel constructed to be of a maximal advantage to it's owners, not Intruders.

While 5E is a poorly made system that makes gearing fights towards a particular flow difficult, the general advice is to stop getting inspiration from CRPG boss fights, and start getting inspiration from literally any other possible source. In fiction seeing more than two poweful protagonists attacking a single opponent is uncommon, and when that happens the opponent is often next to unkillable, so they have to figure out his weakness or a way to remove him as a threat besides punching, or the protagonists are just completely outmatched and over their heads. Much more often the boss villain brings a team of underlings to fight a team of protagonists, or at least shit ton of mooks to provide distractions. The model of 4 people versus one does not even work that well in CRPGs.

>Wizard tries to set it on fire? It dives into a pool of water and starts coming up through the floor beneath them.

So, fighting on an ice sheet?

>fundamentally you are still arguing a logical fallacy,

(1)A statement can be logically fallacious yet actually true. In fact, that happens about all the time. Ad hominems are used to disqualify known snake oil salelsmen. Appeals to emotion are made in support of correct courses of action. Slippery slopes observably exist. Screaming "logical fallacy" outside of a formal debate with well-established premises (as logic is simply a way to correctly move from premises to conclusions, not some sort of unversal law) makes you sound smarter in your own eyes, but does not make you right.

>which is that it's possible to influence the flow of events when the end is predetermined.

I've started a program that involves randomly generated actions on my PCs and went to sleep. At the morning I've checked the results. Were all the random numbers produced by the program's RNG in fact predetermined at the moment I've started the program, because I can see the end results?

You seem triggered, user. You can't be euphoric if you're angry.

This

Is domination not a thing in 5e?

Either DM fiat likieOr do the smart thing like says and give the boss some lieutenants or summons. Action economy is how players fuck over singular bosses. They either need multi-attack/lair actions, or allies.

I gotta say I've never heard of this Legendary Actions idea before but I like it. It's such a simple idea I can't believe it isn't more widely used.

Build it to counter a party of generic adventurers. Don't build it to specifically counter your party, that's a jackass move, but figure out what you'd do to beat it if you were controlling a basic four-man fighter, wizard, cleric, thief party, and then create obstacles that will allow it to invalidate those tactics. Make them think outside the box.

Oh, and give it minions. Single bosses get crushed by the action economy. Legendary Actions are good but not enough.

Have 2 or 3 smaller bosses fight the players on a rushing river going between boats or something, then roll la d6 yo determine what hazard will occur on every other turn, this way both the players and the boss monsters feel under pressure when fighting each other.

This guy's advice I see that you have the same problem I did, OP, but JRPG-styled bosses (a single powerful dude vs the party) just aren't feasible in D&D, unless you fiat the boss into having a ludicrous HP pool and saves.
And if you make the enemy powerful enough that he should be able to survive against the party's focused fire for more than 5 rounds, he'll be no doubt strong enough to kill everyone by then.

There was only one occasion in which I had a single person against the party last for a unholy length in battle, and it was because said enemy was a very powerful summoner, who had 5 elite outsider minions + an ungodly amount of disposable troops she summoned by the dozens each round. We had 3 people die and get ressed and 1 permanent death that battle, it's my favorite boss encounter to date.

So, my advice is to have the boss monster either have:
a. an elite guard of sorts, the same level as the party
b. many disposable minions that act as meatshields, and if ignored cause death by a thousand papercuts (for this option, I recommend rolling only once for every 5 creatures or just having 2 out of every 5 automatically hit attacks each round, or you'll be stuck rolling too many dice)

There are other ways to do it so your players don't get tired, which include mixing up the above options, or giving a unique abilities to the boss.
For example, maybe the boss is able to clone itself, so the party of 5 fights 5 of the same creature. Or maybe the boss has bullshit strong defenses that need to get worn down before it can be damaged.
Perhaps the boss is actually chasing them through the whole dungeon, but can't be damaged until the wards providing him protection are deactivated through breaking magic gems scattered through the dungeon.
Or the boss is able to act multiple times each round. Or it needs to be killed in a specific way, or it keeps "surviving" killing blows - like the Naga simply sheds its old skin each time it appears to be killed

I don't think most battles are even intended to last more than three rounds in 5e

>Were all the random numbers produced by the program's RNG in fact predetermined at the moment I've started the program, because I can see the end results?
Not that user but yes, they are because a computer only generates pseudo-randomness using seeds. Replication of pseudo-randomness on demand is very common in certain lines of work. Also your analogy doesn't work since you failed to specify a predetermined end point.

"Boss battles" only work on setpiece-based railroads and are the sign of a shit and unimaginative GM

100% This. The time I ran a full Beholder was one of my best combats ever. They are no bullshit.

100% This. The time I ran a full Beholder was one of my best combats ever. They are no bullshit.

I used to think beholders were just some silly monster before I actually read a rulebook, whereupon they became one of my favourite monsters (especially after Volo) if no my favourite. Designing a campaign, or at last part of it, around a powerful Eye Tyrant, complete with lair design and fight against PCs would be a dream come true.

>It's all about action economy.
Yep.
>Don't have an encounter where it's a single boss vs 4-5 players.
Why not just give the boss more actions?

Why does the boss get more actions? Why don't the players?
The players will cry bullshit and walk out.

Put in environmental challenges and have the boss interact with them eg:
>Wraith in an old clocktower, players have to fight on and around turning gears
>Giant serpent under a frozen lake, comes up and puts massive holes in the ice
>Ice dragon in ice cave, combat dislodges icicles and stalactites
>bandits in a sandstorm, use guerilla tactics
>acrobatic enemy in an area with a lot of verticality
>Gravity wizard and minions, wizard shifts gravity to make players fight on walls and ceiling or knock them of their feet

This.

You have to force a situation where players waste action economy.

>Why don't the players get more actions?
Rule 0. In order to make a compelling boss fight, the DM has the liberty to do whatever the fuck he pleases. And adding actions to bosses are pretty tame on the spectrum of what he can do.

>The players will cry bullshit and walk out.
If they ragequit whenever the DM gets lenient with the rules to make a harder combat, then they weren't good players in the first place.

Forcing players to waste their turn is way more frustrating than giving a boss extra actions.

>"We're using the Legendary Actions rules for certain major encounters"
Boom, one sentence in the game listing that negates all the whining.

A good way that 4e dealt with this was giving tough creatures multiple initiative scores.

If I wanted to model a battle against a giant statue trapped in a wall, would it be fair enough to make the hands a pair of ogres/trolls and the head a static blob of HP with a dragon's breath weapon?

DMing is smoke and mirrors, right?

Yes. Everything is fine, so long as your players and yourself are having fun.

>The players will cry bullshit and walk out.
Good. Now I can find better players.
The boss gets more actions by virtue of being a boss. It is a single creature of extraordinary power that is meant to be able to pose a threat to a large number of opponents. If the players want more actions at their disposal, they should try DMing.

Cool setpiece encounters can be used well, especially with one-off environmental mechanics introduced. Don't write them off just because shitty GMs railroad sometimes.

It might make a bit more sense to make the hands function as aoe attacks, depending on just how big the statues is. If it's not that big, it probably works out.

If you care enough about CR, crunch the actual CR of the head to make it fit.