So in the home-brew campaign I run, the intention is for the players to end up fighting and possibly killing the god of chaos and magic. i'm intending for it to be a multi stage boss fight with the god, This colorful little guy's attacks getting stronger and his physical form becoming more and more eldritch in nature as time goes on.
(Saga, god of chaos, magic and the stars for my homebrew setting)
I was thinking of making it a 3 phase fight with Saga becoming more incomprehensible as each phase is defeated but is there any ways you would recommend spicing up either the battlefield or each phase of the battle. I would like to incorporate wild magic but I am unsure how to. Any help or suggestions are welcome!.
First of all, I must state that I want to give Saga many headpats. Look at the lil guy.
Now, let's figure out how to kill him.
I definitely recommend a multi-phase battle. I have boss fights decently often in my games, and multiple phases definitely helps to spice things up. I would treat each phase as a completely separate creature, completely clearing any status effects and remainders of the earlier phase whenever a phase transition occurs. A cinematic phase transition is always amazing, and I wouldn't be afraid to basically make it into a sort of cutscene.
I also recommend enabling dynamic movement for the boss. One thing that really hurts D&D, in my opinion, is the way that battles often just turn into two people standing next to each other, smacking each other repeatedly, too afraid to do any movement for fear of triggering an opportunity/wasting actions. Things like teleportation, leaping about, shoving, pulling, really anything to either move the monster or the players around is great. I just ran a minor boss fight in a campaign of mine, where the boss, a goliath known as Calypso the Rigger-Queen, used a giant anchor as a grappling hook, swinging around the battlefield, climbing around the rigging I had placed throughout, pulling and pushing characters every which way. Afterwards, one of the players actually came up to me and told me how much they loved the way the fight was so dynamic, so I think your players will definitely enjoy something like that too.
Another thing, in the later phases, you could consider treating multiple parts of the boss as individual creatures. When the lad really goes eldritch mode, you could have big tentacle things, eyeballs, or whatever the hell you decide to add. I haven't used this technique a lot, but sort of recently I had a creature that was more or less three creatures in one: a hollowed out body, a bunch of carnivorous parasite worms that inhabited it, and an eldritch heart that all the worms were connected to. The body acted as a shield to the heart as the worms attacked from within it, until the players split open the body and killed the heart. It was weird, to say the least. If I recall correctly, one of the players commented on how cool it was as well, so it definitely works at my table at least.
Also, give the boss multiple turns! There's nothing more boring than every player going one after another, then the boss throwing off an attack, then the process repeating. I usually give the boss the option to either move or take a "lesser" action (such as a basic attack, a shove, a grapple, etc.) in between each player's turn, then reserve the boss' actual turn for some really big moves. Which brings me into another thing: special moves. Summoning monsters, doing an aoe attack, applying a status effect in addition to a basic attack. Basic stuff like that which allows you to bring a lot more flavor to the fight than "I guess he hits you." I usually give big monsters 1-3 special moves, and if they're a boss, one ultimate move. Cinematic, once-a-fight stuff. Oftentimes these ultimate attacks are devastating, but telegraphed, so the party has a chance to avoid/minimize them.
Also, don't be afraid to cheat a little if it makes the fight cooler. If there's something that you didn't add to the stat block, but the monster would reasonably be able to do it and it would just be so damned cool if it could... allow it to do it. Maybe include a price if necessary. Also, if the boss is a little too powerful during the fight, you can include some cool cinematic moment to weaken them, like armor, or a shield, or a weapon breaking.
Anyways, basic boss advice aside, let's tackle Saga. Lil fella. Lil lad.
First phase, I see as a sort of cocky, showboaty fighting style. Floating around like in the picture shown, slinging mostly ranged attacks. I'm thinking abilities involving shooting little star blasts. Crown of stars style, though of course each hit probably wouldn't be that powerful. I'm not sure of the power of your party, though, so maybe. Allow him to teleport a lot, harry the players from all sides, get out of dangerous areas. Perhaps if the players get too close he can grab them with his scarf, or... I dunno, punch them with a star. Maybe allow him some summons at this stage. I'm not sure he's the type, though.
Personally, I wouldn't include wild magic, or at least not wild magic as it is in 5e. Wild magic is a joke. Instead, I would just flavor his abilities as chaotic, fluctuating. His teleportation could be less fluid, more jerky, glitchy. Perhaps he does a variety of damage types. First phase should be relatively stable, though.
Second phase, something happens to make him serious. A grevious blow, a particularly hurtful quip, whatever. No more Mr. nice Saga. Do away with the sneaky teleportation. Some teleportation can still be used, but it's mostly so he can get the drop on people, pull some anime stuff on them. Omae wa mou shindeiru and all that jazz. Maybe you shift him from a sniper type into a melee fighter. His form begins fluctuating far more, and he forms a variety of weapons out of starstuff or his own body, which dispel as soon as he's done with them. You can also change the terrain here, to reflect his instability. You can't go wrong with some good pillars, and the pillars also provide an opportunity for him to clamber about, jump between them, keep the movement dynamic even though he's no longer flying. His form should be more bestial at this point, constantly shifting and twisting. I dunno, give him more eyes. Or teeth. Or both. Let him bite some people, that's always fun. Maybe some doc ock-style tentacle legs.
Third phase, he loses control. He's on his last legs, and he draws out everything. Perhaps he's already a dead god walking, having expended this much power, and he just doesn't care anymore. You can go one of two ways with this. The first is to make him into an environmental hazard. That's the earlier thing I mentioned, with multiple stat blocks for different parts. He becomes one with the terrain, and the players have to target several weak points to defeat him/gain access to a final weak point. All the while he's got eldritch appendages, star lasers, all that jazz firing off. The second way is to keep him mobile, but have him do away with any civilized behavior. No humanoid form anymore. If you didn't give him doc ock tentacles in phase 2, do it now. Perhaps the tentacles are his hair? That'd be fun. Anyways, here he's a roiling mass of eldritch horror draggoing himself across the battlefield at full force, smashing into people, "fricking shoot up," as the kids say. Maybe he does some teleport-y attack stuff, where he punches people through portals? I dunno. Either way, stage three should be a sort of blend of the first two, a mix of melee and magic and all around shenanigans.
Anyways, that's my two cents on the whole thing. If you're struggling to come up with stats, check out Giffyglyph's Monster Maker, I've used it a lot in the past as a baseline for boss monster stats, and in my experience it's incredibly balanced.
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"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
When fighting a god-like being, I'd suggest that the following all be true if you want to fight a god, and not just an avatar of the god:
1) The PCs cannot fight the god directly just using their standard abilities. The power of gods fuels multiple level 20 clerics plus all the smaller clerics around the world, so either the god is incredibly weakened, or the god is not really a god - it's just a different form of Tarrasque, a stat block and abilities to wage war on. I wouldn't even let them hit the god directly. A god should be able to cast Meteor Swarm every turn, and it should probably be able to make a bunch of action surges to do it multiple times, every turn...
2) There ought to be a colossal epic questline used to find, create, and ready the means to have a chance at destroying the god. The quest chain might involve:
Locate the secret weakness in ancient lore hidden in the mountain temple of an ancient red dragon
Identify the four parts of an areifact that needs to be reassembled
Go complete the four dungeons to get them
Battle through the god's minions
Summon the god into the mortal plane
Use the artefact during the battle (or multiple artefacts)
3) The final encounter should be a series of gruelling battles for level 20 characters that take on different parts of the god, or the god's most powerful minions (which are controlled by it). Treat them as separate creatures. Each defeat weakens the god. Simultaneously, I'd personally have the forces of the rest of the world in battle against the god and its minions off-stage. The PCs should never have the god's full attention - sacrifice 10,000 lives just to draw it aside.
4) After the artefact is finally brought to bear against the god, it is reduced to a weakened state in which it can be bound to a mortal form and battled physically. This would be the final encounter. Maybe the artefact splits the god into multiple weaker versions of itself.
Wild Magic: use Wild Magic for a Lair action, but create your own table. You can roll on it as many times as Saga wants. Each wild magic effect could affect the battlefield differently for the duration of a turn, so effects like:
No creature can move
All creatures are blinded
All creatures catch fire
Rolls of 1 cause a creature to be launched 100ft into the air
All creatures restore one spell slot
All weapon attacks do lightning damage
And so on. That will keep the wild magic element relevant to the fight and make everything seem chaotic and crazed
A fight i never got to run was the party essentially fighting a mountain-sized being. Fighting it conventionally, obviously impossible. But my idea was for them to invade the body, and attack different organs like the heart, lungs, liver, with parasites or whatever being regular encounters. You could shut down an organ, but after a few turns, its back up. So the idea was to take out all of the organs in a short time span to open the way to the brain. Killing the brain would kill the creature. Maybe a similar idea, where the final stage of your god could be modeled after this, with the brain being super magicked out? The liver releases toxins that make it dangerous to even approach. The lungs unleash heavy winds. The heart unleashes a bloody tidal wave with every beat. Just an idea.
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So in the home-brew campaign I run, the intention is for the players to end up fighting and possibly killing the god of chaos and magic.
i'm intending for it to be a multi stage boss fight with the god, This colorful little guy's attacks getting stronger and his physical form becoming more and more eldritch in nature as time goes on.
I was thinking of making it a 3 phase fight with Saga becoming more incomprehensible as each phase is defeated but is there any ways you would recommend spicing up either the battlefield or each phase of the battle. I would like to incorporate wild magic but I am unsure how to. Any help or suggestions are welcome!.
First of all, I must state that I want to give Saga many headpats. Look at the lil guy.
Now, let's figure out how to kill him.
I definitely recommend a multi-phase battle. I have boss fights decently often in my games, and multiple phases definitely helps to spice things up. I would treat each phase as a completely separate creature, completely clearing any status effects and remainders of the earlier phase whenever a phase transition occurs. A cinematic phase transition is always amazing, and I wouldn't be afraid to basically make it into a sort of cutscene.
I also recommend enabling dynamic movement for the boss. One thing that really hurts D&D, in my opinion, is the way that battles often just turn into two people standing next to each other, smacking each other repeatedly, too afraid to do any movement for fear of triggering an opportunity/wasting actions. Things like teleportation, leaping about, shoving, pulling, really anything to either move the monster or the players around is great. I just ran a minor boss fight in a campaign of mine, where the boss, a goliath known as Calypso the Rigger-Queen, used a giant anchor as a grappling hook, swinging around the battlefield, climbing around the rigging I had placed throughout, pulling and pushing characters every which way. Afterwards, one of the players actually came up to me and told me how much they loved the way the fight was so dynamic, so I think your players will definitely enjoy something like that too.
Another thing, in the later phases, you could consider treating multiple parts of the boss as individual creatures. When the lad really goes eldritch mode, you could have big tentacle things, eyeballs, or whatever the hell you decide to add. I haven't used this technique a lot, but sort of recently I had a creature that was more or less three creatures in one: a hollowed out body, a bunch of carnivorous parasite worms that inhabited it, and an eldritch heart that all the worms were connected to. The body acted as a shield to the heart as the worms attacked from within it, until the players split open the body and killed the heart. It was weird, to say the least. If I recall correctly, one of the players commented on how cool it was as well, so it definitely works at my table at least.
Also, give the boss multiple turns! There's nothing more boring than every player going one after another, then the boss throwing off an attack, then the process repeating. I usually give the boss the option to either move or take a "lesser" action (such as a basic attack, a shove, a grapple, etc.) in between each player's turn, then reserve the boss' actual turn for some really big moves. Which brings me into another thing: special moves. Summoning monsters, doing an aoe attack, applying a status effect in addition to a basic attack. Basic stuff like that which allows you to bring a lot more flavor to the fight than "I guess he hits you." I usually give big monsters 1-3 special moves, and if they're a boss, one ultimate move. Cinematic, once-a-fight stuff. Oftentimes these ultimate attacks are devastating, but telegraphed, so the party has a chance to avoid/minimize them.
Also, don't be afraid to cheat a little if it makes the fight cooler. If there's something that you didn't add to the stat block, but the monster would reasonably be able to do it and it would just be so damned cool if it could... allow it to do it. Maybe include a price if necessary. Also, if the boss is a little too powerful during the fight, you can include some cool cinematic moment to weaken them, like armor, or a shield, or a weapon breaking.
Anyways, basic boss advice aside, let's tackle Saga. Lil fella. Lil lad.
First phase, I see as a sort of cocky, showboaty fighting style. Floating around like in the picture shown, slinging mostly ranged attacks. I'm thinking abilities involving shooting little star blasts. Crown of stars style, though of course each hit probably wouldn't be that powerful. I'm not sure of the power of your party, though, so maybe. Allow him to teleport a lot, harry the players from all sides, get out of dangerous areas. Perhaps if the players get too close he can grab them with his scarf, or... I dunno, punch them with a star. Maybe allow him some summons at this stage. I'm not sure he's the type, though.
Personally, I wouldn't include wild magic, or at least not wild magic as it is in 5e. Wild magic is a joke. Instead, I would just flavor his abilities as chaotic, fluctuating. His teleportation could be less fluid, more jerky, glitchy. Perhaps he does a variety of damage types. First phase should be relatively stable, though.
Second phase, something happens to make him serious. A grevious blow, a particularly hurtful quip, whatever. No more Mr. nice Saga. Do away with the sneaky teleportation. Some teleportation can still be used, but it's mostly so he can get the drop on people, pull some anime stuff on them. Omae wa mou shindeiru and all that jazz. Maybe you shift him from a sniper type into a melee fighter. His form begins fluctuating far more, and he forms a variety of weapons out of starstuff or his own body, which dispel as soon as he's done with them. You can also change the terrain here, to reflect his instability. You can't go wrong with some good pillars, and the pillars also provide an opportunity for him to clamber about, jump between them, keep the movement dynamic even though he's no longer flying. His form should be more bestial at this point, constantly shifting and twisting. I dunno, give him more eyes. Or teeth. Or both. Let him bite some people, that's always fun. Maybe some doc ock-style tentacle legs.
Third phase, he loses control. He's on his last legs, and he draws out everything. Perhaps he's already a dead god walking, having expended this much power, and he just doesn't care anymore. You can go one of two ways with this. The first is to make him into an environmental hazard. That's the earlier thing I mentioned, with multiple stat blocks for different parts. He becomes one with the terrain, and the players have to target several weak points to defeat him/gain access to a final weak point. All the while he's got eldritch appendages, star lasers, all that jazz firing off. The second way is to keep him mobile, but have him do away with any civilized behavior. No humanoid form anymore. If you didn't give him doc ock tentacles in phase 2, do it now. Perhaps the tentacles are his hair? That'd be fun. Anyways, here he's a roiling mass of eldritch horror draggoing himself across the battlefield at full force, smashing into people, "fricking shoot up," as the kids say. Maybe he does some teleport-y attack stuff, where he punches people through portals? I dunno. Either way, stage three should be a sort of blend of the first two, a mix of melee and magic and all around shenanigans.
Anyways, that's my two cents on the whole thing. If you're struggling to come up with stats, check out Giffyglyph's Monster Maker, I've used it a lot in the past as a baseline for boss monster stats, and in my experience it's incredibly balanced.
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
When fighting a god-like being, I'd suggest that the following all be true if you want to fight a god, and not just an avatar of the god:
1) The PCs cannot fight the god directly just using their standard abilities. The power of gods fuels multiple level 20 clerics plus all the smaller clerics around the world, so either the god is incredibly weakened, or the god is not really a god - it's just a different form of Tarrasque, a stat block and abilities to wage war on. I wouldn't even let them hit the god directly. A god should be able to cast Meteor Swarm every turn, and it should probably be able to make a bunch of action surges to do it multiple times, every turn...
2) There ought to be a colossal epic questline used to find, create, and ready the means to have a chance at destroying the god. The quest chain might involve:
3) The final encounter should be a series of gruelling battles for level 20 characters that take on different parts of the god, or the god's most powerful minions (which are controlled by it). Treat them as separate creatures. Each defeat weakens the god. Simultaneously, I'd personally have the forces of the rest of the world in battle against the god and its minions off-stage. The PCs should never have the god's full attention - sacrifice 10,000 lives just to draw it aside.
4) After the artefact is finally brought to bear against the god, it is reduced to a weakened state in which it can be bound to a mortal form and battled physically. This would be the final encounter. Maybe the artefact splits the god into multiple weaker versions of itself.
Wild Magic: use Wild Magic for a Lair action, but create your own table. You can roll on it as many times as Saga wants. Each wild magic effect could affect the battlefield differently for the duration of a turn, so effects like:
And so on. That will keep the wild magic element relevant to the fight and make everything seem chaotic and crazed
A fight i never got to run was the party essentially fighting a mountain-sized being. Fighting it conventionally, obviously impossible. But my idea was for them to invade the body, and attack different organs like the heart, lungs, liver, with parasites or whatever being regular encounters. You could shut down an organ, but after a few turns, its back up. So the idea was to take out all of the organs in a short time span to open the way to the brain. Killing the brain would kill the creature. Maybe a similar idea, where the final stage of your god could be modeled after this, with the brain being super magicked out? The liver releases toxins that make it dangerous to even approach. The lungs unleash heavy winds. The heart unleashes a bloody tidal wave with every beat. Just an idea.