Make a cool new enemy

>make a cool new enemy
>have unique combat mechanics to it
>plan the reveal carefully
>dies horribly a few bad rolls later
>doesn't even get to truly attack

It hurts.

Recycle the cool mechanics into a new enemy, the player's won't know.

Literally this.

>make a cool new enemy
>have unique combat mechanics for it
>plan the reveal carefully
>kills the party in three rounds
>they didn't even stand a chance

Had to bullshit my way out of TPKing them and promise I would try to balance things better, but it was mostly random chance in my defense, they rolled terribly and the giant wheel skeleton rolled very well.

>wheel skeleton

Right from the start, it was hopeless.

You monster.

Have you tried giving it more HP?

No, no, it was a big wheel made of skeletons being ridden by a lich, and the map was a big loop racetrack with labyrinth side passages. It was going to be a cool fight, but the healer got geeked almost immediately by standing in the centre of the track and getting critical hit, and the rest panicked and tossed out any coherent plan of action.

Just yesterday my players beat a terrible boss monster with three different escalating phases and some of them didn't even get hurt. It only managed to fuck with them in the first phase and basically made his evil monologue just before being blown the fuck out. Despite growing stronger with every new form, it fell faster and faster. The last form literally managed to come out, the heavy-hitter jumped on him and decapitated it with a high-damage crit on his first turn.

>Make what you expect to be a difficult encounter, maybe even a death, or close to one
>party breezes through it, no one comes close to death
>later on they have a fight with mooks
>they nearly get tpk'd

Gotta love the power of action economy. A boss monster can have a ton of HP and attack power and it won't matter if the party gets to act 7 times per turn and the boss can only act once.

Most glaring one for me was when I had them fight a beholder. The fucker got 6 rays a turn, but they roll incredibly well on nearly every single saving throw they got by with relative ease. I even boosted its health to make it a better fight but they just fucked it up.

>Not giving your boss multiple turns a round

Does no one else do this? It's the only way boss monsters can get anything done I find

Are you suggesting the Game Master use QUANTUM POWER MECHANICS?
>GASP.mp3
This is heREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEsy!
>BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

The problem with this is that if the boss monster is fighting smart, it will spend all it's turns to focus-fire one player and that one player will feel like they died unfairly when they get attacked 5 times in a row.

Inter-weave its turns with the players, so that player (or other players who can help) has a chance to react.

Is it bad taste to adjust monster stats during the fight to make a more dramatic encounter?
Like adding or removing some HP, having it going frenetic, drinking a potion or something.

Don't ask Veeky Forums, they will REEEEEE at anything that is not set in stone. Heaven forbid you put Quantum HP or Quantum encounters in your game, you will be BLAMMED immediately for having Badwrongfun.

Every DM does this sometimes. Just keep it reasonable and don't do it for 'random sidequest-cave dwelling goblins'

Make it so it can't?
I don't know, maybe he can do a bite attack on the front but his tail attack must target someone else.
Or maybe he have an offensive action and a defensive action per turn?

Not at all, it sounds like a great way to keep your party on it's toes.

how about using status effects and debuffs? instead of focusing on one player you can have an attack that knocks a player for a turn or two, or force defensive actions

>being this much of a contrarian
When has anybody here said that? If the DM gives a good reason and not lolcosmic bullshit it's fine. My problem is with trash DMs
>It's low, but it like powers up or something

>make killing machine undead monster to throw at the party
>party "paladin" one shots this thing with an ability that crits at will

Fuck dude, I'm not even pissed this shit died in one turn, I'm sad my other players literally did nothing and waited for the paladin to charge his laser to shoot at this thing.

Have a bad feeling most of the encounters are going to be this way since paladin player's lasers are so much more strong than the rest of the party.

Make it a paladin-proof undead monster then? If there are magical golems that are immune to magic, surely there are undead horrors that are immune or resistant to paladins.

immunity and multiple phases my man, add barriers/magical item that takes the full damage instead and act as an extra life/energy tank, it need to survive at least 3 turns.

Yeah, I'm going to have to do something like that.

I not saying anyone says that, I'm just asking. I'm new to this.

Good idea. Will do.

It's like, really system and setting dependent or whatever, but if you assume that a paladin channels light or whatever opposes undead things to destroy them, you have a few easy solutions.

>the holy light burns away the evil spirit, but the creature is an amalgamation of souls. It loses or gains abilities accordingly. (multiple life bars or buffers, basically)

> the creature was created by a particularly unholy process, and is resistant to light powers. Any light effect that would normally destroy or damage it only slows it. If you expect the player to be pissy about it or it's literally the only thing his character can do, include adds or obstacles that are fully vulnerable to that form of attack.

shut up fag

I do. I'm the guy from and my players still outpaced the guy with high initiative and turns.

You don't roll init for a boss monster, you just have him come between the characters.

Also, consider adding "legendary defenses" that let him no-sell an attack (like legendary saves but for everything).

I fell a bit dumb for never even considering to give the Boss more than one turn

For me, it really depends on the context. Did I screw up and give them an encounter than was too hard or too easy? I'll fudge it till it's fun because if I had done my job right initially, it would have been fun. Is either side cursed/blessed by the dice gods? I'll fudge it a little bit to mitigate the effects of crits; their lucky blow doesn't OHKO the baddy, but it does do serious damage or otherwise affect the flow of battle. Is the party roflstomping the boss/getting roflstomped by the boss due to clever/retarded planning and preparation? No fudging, they earned that victory/deserve that ass-whooping.

Ironic shitposting is still shitposting

It's awful hard to play smart when someone is actively trying to kill you. Not to say you have to always react, but if your critter is multi-turning it's probably going to want to spend one of those turns dealing with whoever just clocked it upside the head with a mace.

Also, this. Have it able to act multiple times but additional actions need to be after a party member's action. That way it feels more like a flow of combat rather than alternating piñata mode.

>No, no, it was a big wheel made of skeletons being ridden by a lich,
like some hamster wheel but made of bones?
that sounds super goofy

>did that once
>special monster mixed with a puzzle, wasn't supposed to be hard from them to beat it
>group of murderhobos
>entire party ded so fast it wasn't even funny
>improvise the shit out of that
>they all get sent into some not!limbo plane and have the adventure go on from there
>had to scrap a bunch of content
>pretend like I had that planned all along
>insinuate to them that if they didn't run at it like maniacs, maybe they wouldn't be dead right now
>over the next three sessions, give the players several seemingly useless small special items to give them a chance of beating the thing in case they just charge like regards again
>the monster comes back later on as a boss
>they learned from that shit
>instead of murderhoboing it, they did everything as I had designed it initially
And to this day they still think I'm smart, the dumb fucks.

I'm picturing something like General Grievous' wheel bike from Revenge of the Sith.

The skeletons that the wheel is made of are all laughing. You think that's goofy now?

>make a cool new enemy
>have unique combat mechanics to it
> that guy sarcastically asks where to find it in the monster manual and what CR it is

Is not always about action economy, action economy is huge but usually overvalued. The other time I faced my 4 lvl 4 party to a single roper, the roper killed one. It was really close to a TPK (3 of them had to make death saving throws). The same party before that faced a encounter which was MUCH harder by adjusted XP and action economy, 2 bugbears and 8 hobgoblins and totally obliterated them.

oh god, this

this is why I'm not playing with my group anymore

Yes. Extremely.

>make a cool new enemy
>have unique mechanics to it
>That Guy gets legitimately upset when it's not from the Monster Manual, which me memorized, meaning he doesn't know any of its stats or weaknesses

I thought they were just a myth, but earlier this year, I had a That Guy who did this. I was fucking amazed. That's what I get for recruiting players from Veeky Forums, I guess.

I've never seen anyone get pissed at a custom monster. One whose weaknesses were swapped around, yes, but custom?

>That's what I get for recruiting players from Veeky Forums, I guess.
Well there's your problem. I don't play with anyone who admits to browsing Veeky Forums. I don't care if you're on it constantly, lord knows I am, but admitting to it demonstrates a total lack of self awareness which all but guarantees an awful player.