Mastering the Boss Fight
This week we welcome back Zac Goins from A Bite of D&D.
In the weeks since the glorious, yearly debacle known as GenCon, I’ve been thinking about what makes an awesome boss fight. I guess by “boss fight” all I really mean is a fight that (a) has a purpose within the story, and (b) is meant to be of a high difficulty.
A well-orchestrated boss fight ratchets up the entire adventure, aiding the dramatic essence of what’s going on and injecting energy into the table.
I’ve condensed my thoughts on this subject into three pillars, each one of vital importance in their own right.
Know Thine Table
Hopefully this is an area that most of you have nailed down; however, anyone running sessions for strangers at your LFGS or convention will understand that this is not always the case. Whenever possible, it is paramount that you know your table. Having a good grasp of each character present and what their abilities are, will assist you greatly in creating a boss fight that becomes a memorable experience.
Ideally, you will know at least 2 things:
The Party’s Bloodlust. Do they want a monologue/dialogue opportunity upfront, followed by a 30-minute blast of a fight, or are they ready for a knock-down, drag-out 2-hour brawl? Knowing what your party’s preference goes a long way toward perfect prepping.
The Party’s Weaknesses. Every table is loud and proud about what they are capable of, but knowing their weaknesses allows you to exploit them at just the right dramatic moment. Exposing weaknesses is never a cheap shot when calculated and foreshadowed carefully. Do it right and your party will relish in the surprise tension. A great example of this would be using a creature with a fly speed if half your party has no way of reaching them.
Know Thine Enemies
It may come as no surprise to learn that an excellent tool for enhancing your boss fight is to know your monsters’ stat blocks. You might think that an aboleth is cool, fitting perfectly into your constructed story. But if all you do is a quick glance at the stat block and then dive right in, you’ll find the creature lacks a luster that its CR certainly implies.
It’s also not enough to simply know the stat block, you also will benefit from fully processing the information. This is the difference between “intelligence” and “wisdom”. One is nice, but both are always better. Understanding that the aboleth can enslave a creature is nice, but if you pull it out 3 rounds into the combat, you’ll quickly realize there’s a time and a place for everything and enslavement should have probably happened before the fight began in the first place.
The same holds true for any minions that the boss has to assist it. Find their unique abilities, and if they don’t have any maybe try and create some (see my previous article on Mutating the Monster Manual). Determine how these abilities might compliment the boss in certain ways. If you don’t like the pairing, perhaps look elsewhere and find a creature that does what you want more effectively. If your minions are humanoids, you might even get away with simply swapping out their spells or weapons to get the desired effect.
Actual monster variety matters in each fight. What’s the difference between a CR ½ Scout and a Soldier? If you can’t tell, then neither will your players. The variety doesn’t add anything. Swap out the Soldiers for a collection of Cockatrice and all of a sudden the difference is astounding. CR hasn’t changed, but your players’ tactics will.
For higher tiers of play, make sure that not all of your monsters in the fight are weak in a certain area. If all your creatures have a low Wisdom save, the party spellcasters may find the whole thing clearable in an instant with a few well placed hypnotic patterns.
The key to your beasts is variety. Variety breeds unique threats and those threats breed unique solutions. If you’ve got this done, you’re well on your way to a memorable encounter.
Know Thine Area
If any of these sections have been nearly abandoned it is this one. This third pillar of a most excellent encounter often falls by the wayside as DMs often choose to either run a gridless theatre-of-the-mind or a heavily-simplified, two-dimensional grid. Now I’m not saying those DMs are running something wrong, but within both options are warning signs that you may be missing this entire third pillar entirely.
Every battle takes place in a location. Even if your location is a gladiator pit or the formless void of space, it is still a location and a terrain. It still has elements and those elements are the precision tools that will make your adventure truly memorable.
Each creature you’ve put into the encounter can behave differently, based on the terrain and their familiarity with it. The terrain itself may behave erratically, as weather, magic, and other elements manipulate it throughout the battle. If your players have fallen into the same patterns within each combat, there’s nothing like a shift in terrain to get the creative juices flowing.
In film, scenes that require logistics, planning, and precision execution are called “set pieces” and they are the hallmark of the action genre. Without a good set piece, the film lacks the proper amount of excitement in the right moments. An excellent location, designed properly and with thought, and executed with precision amid combat can pull off the same effect.
No location is more of a set piece than your villain’s lair. It is the opinion of the author that no villain, of any caliber, should be without a lair. In 5th Edition, lairs come stocked with effects and actions. They are an opportunity to heighten a monster beyond what the manual or guide offers and increase the originality past what the stat block provides.
A good lair should (a) heighten your villain’s abilities, (b) weaken the party’s standard effectiveness, and/or (c) add themed chaos.
If 1, 2, or 3 of these modifications have been achieved, you can be confident your lair is working as intended. With an understanding of your party’s composition, a working knowledge of the enemies, and a well thought out lair, you should be good to go when it comes to introducing your boss.
But Is It Cool?
If there was a fourth pillar (there usually is), it would be “Knoweth if Cool”. It’s a lesser pillar though because if you’ve done your work on the other three, this one should be pretty simple and really just comes down to you engagingly describing things.
All I feel like going into here is that you can have the perfect setup, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to sell it as authentic. The energy and excitement you bring to the encounter is the exact portion that your players have to work with. Your own personal belief in the “coolness” of the fight is something that cannot be accurately faked.
So, make sure you believe in the thing. Paint-by-numbers never achieves mastery.
Zac co-hosts the weekly podcast A Bite of D&D as well as traveling the convention circuit running games for hundreds of people. There's no place he'd rather be than behind the DM screen. If he could be any monster, he would choose the grey ooze.
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