My DM struggles with boss fights due to a trope called Conservation of Ninjutsu. The fewer enemies there are, the more cool those enemies are. My DM can't be giving the dragon some kobold minions because the need for the minions downplays the dragon's strengh. In 5e, this is a trap because it's the encounters with more enemies that are tougher. Action economy is king, and a few extra off-turn attacks often doesn't save a solo boss from a one-sided massacre. I think I have come up with a way around this, however, that lets the DM have their cake and eat it, too. And that is to take a difficult encounter against multiple monsters and fold the monsters into one.
I ran a Level 20 one-shot that tried out the new One D&D playtest material. There aren't any new monster rules, yet, so I decided to shoot over their daily XP budget since level 20 characters get epic boons now. I ran Hoondarrh, a dragon from the Forgotten Realms, giving the statistics of an ancient red dragon with some major adjustments in the form of the Legendary Initiative trait. The idea was first to have Hoondarrh roll twice for initative, get two turns, and ignore one of the turns if his hit points got too low. But that means the fight just gets easier half-way through. So I made it the other way around: he only gets the extra turn if he has few enough hit points. Basically the party is fighting two ancient red dragons, but the order of events is backwards now. This trait is a big, intimidating wall of text, but once you understand that the players are basically just fighting two monsters disguised as one, it's easier to wrap your head around.
Legendary Initiative. This trait, similarly to legendary actions and lair actions, cannot be replicated by creatures that take on Hoondarrh's form. Hoondarrh has twice the hit point maximum and hit dice of a CR-correct ancient red dragon. (I ended up not changing his hit points. It turns out dragons are so overpowered that cutting their hit points in half leaves them with the correct challenge rating.) If Hoondarrh has half of his hit points (273) or fewer for the first time in a combat, or if he starts combat with that many hit points, he is possessed by Skadaurak (an archnemesis from an older edition - as I understand it, anyway - who now intends to keep his killer alive so that he does not appear weak by comparison; Skadaurak is just a lore reason for getting an extra turn and can be replaced with any reason) and gains an additional turn for the rest of the combat. His regular turn is called Turn A; his additional turn is called Turn B. Turn B is added to the initiative order immediately after the turn of the creature currently taking its turn. (Getting the new turn ASAP is necessary to make up for getting it so late into the fight). If Hoondarrh starts combat with half of his hit points or fewer, Hoondarrh instead rolls initiative twice: once for Turn A and once for Turn B. Hoondarrh can only act on Turn B if he has no more than half of his hit points.
Hoondarrh regains all expended uses of Legendary Resistance and Innate Spellcasting (yes, I gave him spells, but none that affect his CR) upon gaining Turn B. While Hoondarrh has half of his hit points or fewer, he can concentrate on up to two spells at once, and only the first of the two spells ends if his concentration is broken.
Hoondarrh can also take an additional reaction, and he has an additional charge for his Fire Breath. The additional reaction and Fire Breath charge can only be recovered at the start of Turn B, while the regular ones and his legendary actions can only be recovered at the start of Turn A. Hoondarrh's legendary actions are enhanced while he has Turn B. Whenever he spends legendary actions on a legendary action option, he immediately uses that legendary action option again, costing 0 legendary actions. (I should have included a reminder in the legendary actions section to double each legendary action. I forgot to double his Wing Attack when he used it during the session.
Fighting Hoondarrh is like fighting two ancient red dragons at the same time, except that instead of the party fighting two dragons for the first half of the battle and one for the second half, the party fights one dragon for the first half and two dragons for the second half. Award a party 124,000 XP for defeating Hoondarrh.
I made other changes to Hoondarrh as needed, like letting him enter Phase 2 immediately to use Legendary Resistance while no uses remain. But that is the gist of Legendary Initiative. The DM runs multiple monsters and basically pretends it's a single epic boss monster. Feel free to add this trait to your own monsters, making whatever tweaks you deem necessary.
My DM struggles with boss fights due to a trope called Conservation of Ninjutsu. The fewer enemies there are, the more cool those enemies are. My DM can't be giving the dragon some kobold minions because the need for the minions downplays the dragon's strengh. In 5e, this is a trap because it's the encounters with more enemies that are tougher. Action economy is king, and a few extra off-turn attacks often doesn't save a solo boss from a one-sided massacre.
Action economy is overrated. Encounters with more monsters are more dangerous at the same xp budget because at typical monster tuning a group of 4 monsters has 40% more hit points and damage output than a solo monster with the same xp value.
My DM struggles with boss fights due to a trope called Conservation of Ninjutsu. The fewer enemies there are, the more cool those enemies are. My DM can't be giving the dragon some kobold minions because the need for the minions downplays the dragon's strengh. In 5e, this is a trap because it's the encounters with more enemies that are tougher. Action economy is king, and a few extra off-turn attacks often doesn't save a solo boss from a one-sided massacre.
Action economy is overrated. Encounters with more monsters are more dangerous at the same xp budget because at typical monster tuning a group of 4 monsters has 40% more hit points and damage output than a solo monster with the same xp value.
Well, regardless, more monsters is more dangerous. This trait is really just a way to present players with a battle against multiple monsters without it suffering from Conservation of Ninjutsu.
The Mythic trait accomplishes much the same function, only it does so on the HP side instead of the Damage side. Take a look at the Red Greatwyrm, or any Mythic Monsterfor that matter. While I tend to agree that [more monsters]=[more opportunities to produce damage], a single monster with more opportunities and more hp will likely have the same effect. I've used a similar tactic to yours with dragon's, in giving them an additional Lair Action list at Initiative 10. That list is mostly comprised of health regen, breath recharge or movement. Of course, a DM could provide those actions regardless of location (not in lair).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
The Mythic trait accomplishes much the same function, only it does so on the HP side instead of the Damage side. Take a look at the Red Greatwyrm, or any Mythic Monsterfor that matter. While I tend to agree that [more monsters]=[more opportunities to produce damage], a single monster with more opportunities and more hp will likely have the same effect. I've used a similar tactic to yours with dragon's, in giving them an additional Lair Action list at Initiative 10. That list is mostly comprised of health regen, breath recharge or movement. Of course, a DM could provide those actions regardless of location (not in lair).
Mythic monsters aren't quite the same thing, I think. Assuming the power word kill cheese and the chill touch cheese don't work, a mythic monster is more like two monsters fought one after the other, so they're both solo, and the second monster is usually just as difficult as the first in terms of CR. The trait I wrote is more like fighting two monsters at once. The DPR doubles and the boss gets a lot more maneuverability in Phase 2.
Jut let your big monster act multiple times during an initiative round. Level the action economy playing field and you resolve most of the issues.
That's what this is. You can more or less slap this trait on any existing monster to make it effectively two monsters. When determining encounter difficulty, treat it like two monsters.
Jut let your big monster act multiple times during an initiative round. Level the action economy playing field and you resolve most of the issues.
I've done this too, and it's worked out fairly well. I'd add a few comments, though:
I'd recommend explaining to the players what you're doing, though. My own players had some objections to this, until we took a brief pause to talk about it. I told them, "5e doesn't accommodate single-enemy boss fights very well, so I'm using a variant of Lair Actions, just not tied to an actual lair, instead of multiattack, legendary actions, and legendary resistance. They were okay with it when thinking about the situation that way, and I think it's really just about making sure the players still understand how the mechanics of the game work when the DM starts changing thing like this.
Also, my group plays a very story-focused game that's light on combat. It doesn't always have multiple encounters per day, which messes with encounter balance, and my players understand that. So, they are just fine with me changing up the rules a bit, to keep things interesting and dramatic, while still giving them the style of game they want. But that means this kind of adjustment may not be appropriate for other types of campaigns.
And finally, I haven't tried it with more than 2 initiative counts, so I can't speak to how well it works if you do that. One thing I'd be worried about, is how often in a round the boss would get to re-roll a saving throw. In practice, that might push your players toward single-save all-or-nothing spells, which creates complications of its own.
Jut let your big monster act multiple times during an initiative round. Level the action economy playing field and you resolve most of the issues.
I played in a level 20 one-shot wherein the monster didn't have legendary actions, he instead took three turns per round - he went at the top, middle, and toward the bottom of the initiative order. When we depleted half his HP, his turn order shook up, providing us with new challenges in fight rhythm. It was one of the most enjoyable combats I've ever been in. Having regularly spaced, predictable turns felt like the fight was tough but fair, and allowed us to get into a groove that befitted our status as planar heroes.
One thing I'd be worried about, is how often in a round the boss would get to re-roll a saving throw. In practice, that might push your players toward single-save all-or-nothing spells, which creates complications of its own.
Oof, yeah. Stuff like stunning strike and psychic Lance might break this kind of boss. Alright, maybe this trait needs some more work.
And finally, I haven't tried it with more than 2 initiative counts, so I can't speak to how well it works if you do that. One thing I'd be worried about, is how often in a round the boss would get to re-roll a saving throw. In practice, that might push your players toward single-save all-or-nothing spells, which creates complications of its own.
Just give the boss the ability to remove ongoing effects at the end of each of its turns, even if the effect does not normally permit doing so.
In general I think status effect removal (with a modest action cost) is a preferable mechanic to legendary resistance anyway, because it means landing a hold monster or something has a useful effect but is not just trivializing the encounter, whereas legendary resistance means your spell just does nothing at all... which feels bad.
On the base idea: the main reason to give bosses more actions is to make the fight feel more dynamic and fun, not to actually make them more dangerous. You can accomplish more dangerous by just cranking up hit points and damage -- "all attacks do double damage when hp below half" is a perfectly fine trait.
In general I think status effect removal (with a modest action cost) is a preferable mechanic to legendary resistance anyway, because it means landing a hold monster or something has a useful effect but is not just trivializing the encounter, whereas legendary resistance means your spell just does nothing at all... which feels bad.
I like this.
I'm actually trying to set up an interesting boss fight for a party that can potentially cheese the whole thing with Stunning Strike. I hate the idea of nerfing a player's abilities, but the current alternative is Legendary Resistance, and that just turns the encounter into another battle of attrition: whoever runs out of points first, loses. And that's not totally a bad thing, but D&D has so much of that already, I feel like a good boss fight should be a little more than "the same thing, just with bigger numbers."
I think I'm going to try, "this creature can skip one of its turns to remove a status effect currently affecting it." That's something it would use against the really devastating effects, but wouldn't just throw around all the time. If it feels too OP I'll add a usage limit to it, and if it's not enough it could always be "skip an action" instead of a whole turn.
In general I think status effect removal (with a modest action cost) is a preferable mechanic to legendary resistance anyway, because it means landing a hold monster or something has a useful effect but is not just trivializing the encounter, whereas legendary resistance means your spell just does nothing at all... which feels bad.
I like this.
I'm actually trying to set up an interesting boss fight for a party that can potentially cheese the whole thing with Stunning Strike. I hate the idea of nerfing a player's abilities, but the current alternative is Legendary Resistance, and that just turns the encounter into another battle of attrition: whoever runs out of points first, loses. And that's not totally a bad thing, but D&D has so much of that already, I feel like a good boss fight should be a little more than "the same thing, just with bigger numbers."
I think I'm going to try, "this creature can skip one of its turns to remove a status effect currently affecting it." That's something it would use against the really devastating effects, but wouldn't just throw around all the time. If it feels too OP I'll add a usage limit to it, and if it's not enough it could always be "skip an action" instead of a whole turn.
I hear Stunning Strike is actually not very good. It already requires two favorable rolls in a row, each of which depends on a separate Ability Score. As the monk levels up, the ability gets worse and worse as the DC can't keep up with the enemies the party faces. But Stunning Strike remains viable against single boss monsters as it can potentially remove multiple Legendary Resistances per turn, which enables battle strategies other than "Group up and hit it till it dies." And that... probably says something about the quality of Legendary Resistance as a game mechanic. It's still a step up from most JRPGs I've played (where the boss is simply immune to any effect the developers didn't want the players using), but imposing a temporary hinderance on the boss in exchange for removing some nasty conditions is probably a better idea.
That hinderance should probably not be an action cost, though. I mean, suppose the creature is incapacitated. Paying actions the boss would have lost anyway isn't really a sacrifice. The hold monster spell just ends faster than usual. According to the CR rules, a CR 11 creature effectively has 30 extra hit points for each Legendary Resistance. So maybe we can take a boss that has 3 Legendary Resistances, give him 90 actual hit points, but have him lose 30 every time he uses Legendary Resistance.
Another thing to consider is that no-selling save-or-suck effects isn't the only thing Legendary Resistance can do. Some saving throws are made to halve/avoid damage, and if a dragon gets caught in the area of a meteor swarm, you'd better believe he's gonna use it to halve that 140 damage.
That hinderance should probably not be an action cost, though. I mean, suppose the creature is incapacitated. Paying actions the boss would have lost anyway isn't really a sacrifice.
It's not supposed to be a sacrifice. It's supposed to make an effect appropriately powered. In general, a CC effect is net useful if it removes a higher percentage of enemy actions than it costs to apply. A spell like hold monster costs one action to apply, so for a party of 4 it's net neutral if it removes an average of 25% of enemy actions. Since it might fail, and there is a resource cost to applying it, a successful application vs a boss should on average cost the boss half a round.
For standard 5e legendary monsters, a fair way of doing this is one of the following:
Legendary Recovery (1): at the start of its turn, the monster may remove any number of effects from itself. If it does so, it does not recover legendary actions.
Legendary Recovery (2): if the monster does not choose to take an action on its turn (because it cannot, chooses not to, or has its action compelled by some external effect) it may remove any number of effects from itself at the end of its turn.
Theoretically a monster with the same damage and hit points as a group of monsters should have the same impact with the exception of the variation between single target v.s aoe abilities, damage lost from over killing enemies and status effects. Mechanics like legendary resistance and mythic traits should alleviate some of the disadvantages that solo enemies have to make it fairly even.
You address the weaknesses of solo monsters. There are allot of options like:
Capping the duration of disabling effects
Allowing more rerolls
allowing a certain amount of auto successes
capping the damage they can take per turn
Adding phases
temporary invulnerability phases
You can use any combo of them to make an interesting boss and its probably a good idea to try a few different ones to keep them fresh.
My DM struggles with boss fights due to a trope called Conservation of Ninjutsu. The fewer enemies there are, the more cool those enemies are. My DM can't be giving the dragon some kobold minions because the need for the minions downplays the dragon's strengh. In 5e, this is a trap because it's the encounters with more enemies that are tougher. Action economy is king, and a few extra off-turn attacks often doesn't save a solo boss from a one-sided massacre. I think I have come up with a way around this, however, that lets the DM have their cake and eat it, too. And that is to take a difficult encounter against multiple monsters and fold the monsters into one.
I ran a Level 20 one-shot that tried out the new One D&D playtest material. There aren't any new monster rules, yet, so I decided to shoot over their daily XP budget since level 20 characters get epic boons now. I ran Hoondarrh, a dragon from the Forgotten Realms, giving the statistics of an ancient red dragon with some major adjustments in the form of the Legendary Initiative trait. The idea was first to have Hoondarrh roll twice for initative, get two turns, and ignore one of the turns if his hit points got too low. But that means the fight just gets easier half-way through. So I made it the other way around: he only gets the extra turn if he has few enough hit points. Basically the party is fighting two ancient red dragons, but the order of events is backwards now. This trait is a big, intimidating wall of text, but once you understand that the players are basically just fighting two monsters disguised as one, it's easier to wrap your head around.
Legendary Initiative. This trait, similarly to legendary actions and lair actions, cannot be replicated by creatures that take on Hoondarrh's form. Hoondarrh has twice the hit point maximum and hit dice of a CR-correct ancient red dragon. (I ended up not changing his hit points. It turns out dragons are so overpowered that cutting their hit points in half leaves them with the correct challenge rating.) If Hoondarrh has half of his hit points (273) or fewer for the first time in a combat, or if he starts combat with that many hit points, he is possessed by Skadaurak (an archnemesis from an older edition - as I understand it, anyway - who now intends to keep his killer alive so that he does not appear weak by comparison; Skadaurak is just a lore reason for getting an extra turn and can be replaced with any reason) and gains an additional turn for the rest of the combat. His regular turn is called Turn A; his additional turn is called Turn B. Turn B is added to the initiative order immediately after the turn of the creature currently taking its turn. (Getting the new turn ASAP is necessary to make up for getting it so late into the fight). If Hoondarrh starts combat with half of his hit points or fewer, Hoondarrh instead rolls initiative twice: once for Turn A and once for Turn B. Hoondarrh can only act on Turn B if he has no more than half of his hit points.
Hoondarrh regains all expended uses of Legendary Resistance and Innate Spellcasting (yes, I gave him spells, but none that affect his CR) upon gaining Turn B. While Hoondarrh has half of his hit points or fewer, he can concentrate on up to two spells at once, and only the first of the two spells ends if his concentration is broken.
Hoondarrh can also take an additional reaction, and he has an additional charge for his Fire Breath. The additional reaction and Fire Breath charge can only be recovered at the start of Turn B, while the regular ones and his legendary actions can only be recovered at the start of Turn A. Hoondarrh's legendary actions are enhanced while he has Turn B. Whenever he spends legendary actions on a legendary action option, he immediately uses that legendary action option again, costing 0 legendary actions. (I should have included a reminder in the legendary actions section to double each legendary action. I forgot to double his Wing Attack when he used it during the session.
Fighting Hoondarrh is like fighting two ancient red dragons at the same time, except that instead of the party fighting two dragons for the first half of the battle and one for the second half, the party fights one dragon for the first half and two dragons for the second half. Award a party 124,000 XP for defeating Hoondarrh.
I made other changes to Hoondarrh as needed, like letting him enter Phase 2 immediately to use Legendary Resistance while no uses remain. But that is the gist of Legendary Initiative. The DM runs multiple monsters and basically pretends it's a single epic boss monster. Feel free to add this trait to your own monsters, making whatever tweaks you deem necessary.
Action economy is overrated. Encounters with more monsters are more dangerous at the same xp budget because at typical monster tuning a group of 4 monsters has 40% more hit points and damage output than a solo monster with the same xp value.
Well, regardless, more monsters is more dangerous. This trait is really just a way to present players with a battle against multiple monsters without it suffering from Conservation of Ninjutsu.
The Mythic trait accomplishes much the same function, only it does so on the HP side instead of the Damage side. Take a look at the Red Greatwyrm, or any Mythic Monster for that matter. While I tend to agree that [more monsters]=[more opportunities to produce damage], a single monster with more opportunities and more hp will likely have the same effect. I've used a similar tactic to yours with dragon's, in giving them an additional Lair Action list at Initiative 10. That list is mostly comprised of health regen, breath recharge or movement. Of course, a DM could provide those actions regardless of location (not in lair).
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Mythic monsters aren't quite the same thing, I think. Assuming the power word kill cheese and the chill touch cheese don't work, a mythic monster is more like two monsters fought one after the other, so they're both solo, and the second monster is usually just as difficult as the first in terms of CR. The trait I wrote is more like fighting two monsters at once. The DPR doubles and the boss gets a lot more maneuverability in Phase 2.
Just let your big monster act multiple times during an initiative round. Level the action economy playing field and you resolve most of the issues.
That's what this is. You can more or less slap this trait on any existing monster to make it effectively two monsters. When determining encounter difficulty, treat it like two monsters.
No, I meant like, don't write out a several paragraph trait. Just let your monster attack more often.
I've done this too, and it's worked out fairly well. I'd add a few comments, though:
I'd recommend explaining to the players what you're doing, though. My own players had some objections to this, until we took a brief pause to talk about it. I told them, "5e doesn't accommodate single-enemy boss fights very well, so I'm using a variant of Lair Actions, just not tied to an actual lair, instead of multiattack, legendary actions, and legendary resistance. They were okay with it when thinking about the situation that way, and I think it's really just about making sure the players still understand how the mechanics of the game work when the DM starts changing thing like this.
Also, my group plays a very story-focused game that's light on combat. It doesn't always have multiple encounters per day, which messes with encounter balance, and my players understand that. So, they are just fine with me changing up the rules a bit, to keep things interesting and dramatic, while still giving them the style of game they want. But that means this kind of adjustment may not be appropriate for other types of campaigns.
And finally, I haven't tried it with more than 2 initiative counts, so I can't speak to how well it works if you do that. One thing I'd be worried about, is how often in a round the boss would get to re-roll a saving throw. In practice, that might push your players toward single-save all-or-nothing spells, which creates complications of its own.
I played in a level 20 one-shot wherein the monster didn't have legendary actions, he instead took three turns per round - he went at the top, middle, and toward the bottom of the initiative order. When we depleted half his HP, his turn order shook up, providing us with new challenges in fight rhythm. It was one of the most enjoyable combats I've ever been in. Having regularly spaced, predictable turns felt like the fight was tough but fair, and allowed us to get into a groove that befitted our status as planar heroes.
Oof, yeah. Stuff like stunning strike and psychic Lance might break this kind of boss. Alright, maybe this trait needs some more work.
Just give the boss the ability to remove ongoing effects at the end of each of its turns, even if the effect does not normally permit doing so.
In general I think status effect removal (with a modest action cost) is a preferable mechanic to legendary resistance anyway, because it means landing a hold monster or something has a useful effect but is not just trivializing the encounter, whereas legendary resistance means your spell just does nothing at all... which feels bad.
On the base idea: the main reason to give bosses more actions is to make the fight feel more dynamic and fun, not to actually make them more dangerous. You can accomplish more dangerous by just cranking up hit points and damage -- "all attacks do double damage when hp below half" is a perfectly fine trait.
I like this.
I'm actually trying to set up an interesting boss fight for a party that can potentially cheese the whole thing with Stunning Strike. I hate the idea of nerfing a player's abilities, but the current alternative is Legendary Resistance, and that just turns the encounter into another battle of attrition: whoever runs out of points first, loses. And that's not totally a bad thing, but D&D has so much of that already, I feel like a good boss fight should be a little more than "the same thing, just with bigger numbers."
I think I'm going to try, "this creature can skip one of its turns to remove a status effect currently affecting it." That's something it would use against the really devastating effects, but wouldn't just throw around all the time. If it feels too OP I'll add a usage limit to it, and if it's not enough it could always be "skip an action" instead of a whole turn.
I hear Stunning Strike is actually not very good. It already requires two favorable rolls in a row, each of which depends on a separate Ability Score. As the monk levels up, the ability gets worse and worse as the DC can't keep up with the enemies the party faces. But Stunning Strike remains viable against single boss monsters as it can potentially remove multiple Legendary Resistances per turn, which enables battle strategies other than "Group up and hit it till it dies." And that... probably says something about the quality of Legendary Resistance as a game mechanic. It's still a step up from most JRPGs I've played (where the boss is simply immune to any effect the developers didn't want the players using), but imposing a temporary hinderance on the boss in exchange for removing some nasty conditions is probably a better idea.
That hinderance should probably not be an action cost, though. I mean, suppose the creature is incapacitated. Paying actions the boss would have lost anyway isn't really a sacrifice. The hold monster spell just ends faster than usual. According to the CR rules, a CR 11 creature effectively has 30 extra hit points for each Legendary Resistance. So maybe we can take a boss that has 3 Legendary Resistances, give him 90 actual hit points, but have him lose 30 every time he uses Legendary Resistance.
Another thing to consider is that no-selling save-or-suck effects isn't the only thing Legendary Resistance can do. Some saving throws are made to halve/avoid damage, and if a dragon gets caught in the area of a meteor swarm, you'd better believe he's gonna use it to halve that 140 damage.
It's not supposed to be a sacrifice. It's supposed to make an effect appropriately powered. In general, a CC effect is net useful if it removes a higher percentage of enemy actions than it costs to apply. A spell like hold monster costs one action to apply, so for a party of 4 it's net neutral if it removes an average of 25% of enemy actions. Since it might fail, and there is a resource cost to applying it, a successful application vs a boss should on average cost the boss half a round.
For standard 5e legendary monsters, a fair way of doing this is one of the following:
Theoretically a monster with the same damage and hit points as a group of monsters should have the same impact with the exception of the variation between single target v.s aoe abilities, damage lost from over killing enemies and status effects. Mechanics like legendary resistance and mythic traits should alleviate some of the disadvantages that solo enemies have to make it fairly even.
You address the weaknesses of solo monsters. There are allot of options like:
You can use any combo of them to make an interesting boss and its probably a good idea to try a few different ones to keep them fresh.