Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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In Dnd I think that multiple phase bossfights are untapped potential.a Aside from Auril in Icewind Dale, there isn't any official two phase bossfights apart from mythic action bosses, which died down pretty quickly. Do any of you use them?
I've created my own before!
One example: I was doing a homebrew campaign, and their first arc had them traveling to Mordent to investigate the creepy happenings. I tweaked the Wilfred Godefroy story a bit so that he was trying to use the Apparatus to bring his dead wife back to life by siphoning souls. The final battle took place in the chamber with the Apparatus, and at a certain point in the battle, when Godefroy was almost downed, the Apparatus overloaded (through the help of a Spined Devil working for Baelzebul, but that's not important) and Godefroy absorbed the energy of the souls, becoming a large spectral monster (think something similar to the Avatar of Myrkul in BG3).
This game Godefroy enhanced abilities, Legendary Actions, and lair actions. It was a really cool battle, and my players went wild when it happened! I think doing unexpected things like that can really help keep players on their toes.
I think its rare because Multiphase bosses are difficulty spikes, and DnD classes are built on resource attrition. Those two things are really hard to balance against each other outside of a frame work that gives you infinite attempts (like video games would). Compounding this is how most tables operate in battle. If the party is front loaded on damage, the difficulty spike can topple them very easily if burn up too many resources. If you have conservative parities, they might be too easily capable of nukes in the back half, where the fight is supposed to get harder.
Theoretically the best way to execute this is to narrow options at each phase, but not shut out the ability to use tools. So for example, a single boss in phase 2 splits into multiple units, and you have multiple walls of force partitioning off clusters of them. This shuts outs the ability for nuke options (both single target and AOE) to be end-all solutions, but are still effective at addressing individual clusters. Thus go-to spells now have a much higher opportunity cost, its still harder than a standard hoard encounter (because of the walls splitting things up), and cheaper abilities have an opportunity to shine in that situation. Then Phase 3, you switch back to a single target, but only make them vulnerable from one direction at a time, shifting emphasis to mobility. Start of phase 4 you flood the area with obstacles that AoE spells and abilities can carve out safe pockets, or a safe path through, repurposing damage and heavy CC options for party safety instead of hurting foes. You can even invert that slightly with Positive/Negative nullification, so healing spells and items deal with obstacles or enemies, and while damaging energy buffs or heals things.
Think about it this way. Multi phase bosses in single player games are straight forward, because you're only having to contend with a single build and easily identified boundaries. Parties are a whole ecosystem, and thus you're tempted to counter parts of the ecosystem as if they were a single entity. The risk of that is individual players will feel singled out. and might shut down a character entirely if not tailored to the group. But repurposing things or shifting focus of common party roles enables the ecosystem to continue functioning, just shuffled and at worst sub-optimal at the job. You're basically having to build a raid boss around a theme or gimmick that the party has to understand and work around.
This is literally just the Mythic property, and yes. I've even made a few of my own.
I am very much hoping we get some good looks at this with the 'boss encounters' that are being featured in the Warcraft supplement coming in a few weeks.
Multiphase boss fights are a band-aid on "players have it too easy, & I don't run RAW" complaints, with content creators jumping on the concept to sell their podcasts & liveplays.
Here's how to solve this conundrum w/o in-game solutions:
Step 1. Have a talk w/your players above table, & come to a mutual agreement about how to proceed forward w/adjustments to work on the OPness of the party that doesn't end with 2 Tarrasques & Tyteliius as every encounter every session.
There, done.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Strong disagree with this entire line of reasoning. Balancing a multi-phase boss is little different than balancing two hard encounters back-to-back with no time for a short rest. If you are capable of that basic level of DMing, you are capable of designing a multi-stage boss.
This borders on nonsensical, ignoring some fairly obvious realities about how the game is designed and why this kind of encounter might be utilized. It really seems like this post was made to proselytize about some esoteric concept of power creep, rather than thinking of an actual response to the thread. Everyone knows that official monsters are vastly underpowered as compared to players. That is not a power creep problem - that is a basic system problem. Even a party of four of the weakest subclasses will easily be able to steamroll an "appropriate" challenge for their level. The system is designed for a lower power of play (which is fine if you like it), but even the DMG and other official content make it clear "DMs might need to punch things up if you want a more difficult game."
Moreover, it ignores a pretty obvious set of realities on why DMs like using multi-stage monsters. In addition to underpowered monsters, these kinds of encounters do a number of other useful things:
1. The game is balanced around an "adventuring day" that presumes a number of encounters. This kind of boss fight more accurately taxes players, without having to shoehorn in additional fights that might not make narrative sense.
2. This kind of fight is just fun. After all, the players think they have everything figured out.. and bam! Now they have to figure out a new set of rules governing the fight, causing them to think on their feet.
3. This is a way to make a fight feel special memorable. If most fights are one and done, then breaking out a boss that does something unique like have a second stage makes it stand out against other content, and thus be something the players will remember for some time to come.
All of those are perfectly legitimate reasons to run this kind of fight, and it is incredibly dismissive, disingenuous, and a bit insulting to insinuate DMs might run this kind of encounter merely to throw a band-aid on content.
It being a legitimate playstyle that's fun for some people has zero bearing on whether it's a design bandaid on a system designed for more people than the loud, vociferous(but valid) minority that are hardcore players.
Not everyone wants or needs to play the kind of campaign that needs a fan patch based off of a singular event in game design to make things hard enough for their tastes.
Most people want to just play the game, not squeeze every copper out of it.
Also, I've been in in games w/multiphase boss fights, and they consistently feel mechanical & artificial to the point of being immersion-breaking in the worlds they're stapled on to when overused. It takes a REALLY good DM to make them sound convincing, let alone make them out to be a natural part of a setting...especially a DM's.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I already acknowledged the legitimacy of people who like playing at lower power, so I will not respond much to your three paragraphs “defending” that style of play. Moreover, that is a distraction from this thread - multistage encounters can be used at any level of play, so your attempt to frame them as a high power tool is, obviously, wrongly placed.
I will respond to the above. I disagree that it takes a “really good DM” to pull this kind of gameplay off. At its core, all a multistage encounter requires is two things:
1. How do I balance multiple encounters without rests between? A skill that is necessary for basic mechanical competence regardless of power level of the game.
2. How do I make sure my encounters feel like they fit with the narrative I am trying to tell and not feel disjointed? That skill is necessary for basic narrative competence regardless of the power level of the game.
As long as you have those two skills and are capable of chaining them together, you can design an encounter of this sort that is both appropriate for whatever power level you are playing at and does not feel disjointed. A mediocre DM might not be able to do that, and maybe that is where your anecdotal experience is coming from. But a relatively competent DM should, without having to have crossed the threshold to a “really good DM.”
Not at all. The primary reason for multiphase boss fights is to make a long boss fight more interesting. A typical monster will have shown you its full bag of tricks by the end of round 2, maybe round 3 in exceptional cases, at which point additional rounds of combat are just 'more of same'. By giving the monster a second phase, you keep the encounter dynamic.
Now, mythic bosses in particular are designed to stretch combats out, because they really just have twice as many hit points without any increased offense, but that's kind of necessary if you want a longer fight without just killing the PCs.
As for making a multiphase boss make narrative sense, it really isn't that hard. For example, a boss I used a bit ago was a dracolich created via the power of Kyuss, and when it was reduced to zero hit points, the dragon skeleton shattered and it turned into a writhing mass of worms with a different stat block.
The last time I had one set up was with a necromancer boss fight. After he went down the first time, the party decided not to take any chances with any sudden resurrections or returns in another form, and jammed an immovable rod through his skull
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
PIPA - Planar Interception/Protection Aeormaton, warforged bodyguard and ex-wizard hunter (Warrior of the Elements monk/Cartographer artificer)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
There shouldn't. Such things belong video games, not D&D. In fact, I see the term used some monsters in video games, that don't have any phases from what I can see. So who knows if some people have a different definition of what a "phase" is? 🤷🏿♂️
While video game bosses may have transformations, and may have multiple health bars, the core thing is that their move set changes partway through the encounter. Monsters that have special abilities that are only usable when they're bloodied are technically multi-phase monsters, and you routinely have multi-phase encounters (usually that just means additional enemies that enter the fight once it has progressed a certain amount).
In D&D, you don't really need to have a specific monster writeup, though. If you want to have a bandit lord, but when defeated you discover that he was possessed by a glabrezu, which appears in his space, rising from his corpse, it's not like you need more than a statement in the adventure that it happens.
Sounds like your DM wasn't very good at describing the fights then. CoS reloaded has many multiple phase bossfights, and every single one provides a good reason on why the bosses statistics change when they drop to 0HP.
Both of my current DMs do and they have had varying success. It is great most of the time but there have been a few where we just wanted it to be over.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Basically Multiphase mechanics is a way to add varity into games, and goes back to early CRPGs.
I've been using CRPG mechanics in "D&D" since I started DMing. I started playing AD&D in the 80s, got seriously into it in the late 90s, collected all the books I could afford in the early 2ks. I also played MMOs since the 90s, and CRPGs since my 1st NES in 1991.
So yes, the idea of game mechanics was something I learned over a 20 years before I sat behind the DM screen.
My first use of video game mechanics was my first "fight" where I set the party against "Robi-hood and their people in tights" (Yes a legally distinct singing bandit and their dance troop) To pass the test the players had to use skill tests of Charisma and dexterity to convice the Bandits that they could pass. It was dumb, yes. But it was my 1st day as DM, it also hasn't changed my way of thinking about an encounter.
One of the hardest raid fights I gave a party about 5 years later was against a lich. This was Iron Heroes, and around 2012. The Lich every turn summoned 2 skeletons, and 5 Zombies. The Lich regenerated hit points equal to the hit points max of the minions the party killed. The phylactery was hidden (with an obvious marker which I pointed out before initative). It was a good fight, sadly some of the players were rather dense, and needed to burn a Divine Intervention to solve the puzzle.
I also while DMing, think about how a monster or creature responds to a fight, and the their motivations. Sometimes a monster will fight to the death, other times they will try and surrender, or runaway. I like to do this as it mixes things up and adds a more story telling feel to a generic fight. Example the party destroys a goblin villiage, I will have a few run away and others surrender, this places a morality question to the players. And yes I do track evil vs good choices and will adjust some fights based on this, also it might change who the party is fighting for in the final battles.