The title basically says it all. Do you have any suggestions on how I could make this battle epic? Any general ideas from how her stat block could have cool features are all very welcome.
What I do really want to know is any way I can make the battlemap epic. The fight is going to have two phases including one phase of the hag in a very young female body and then she will drop this facade and show her true ugly hag self. When this second phase begins, I would want to turn one cool battlemap into another cool battlemap. I make physical maps and have much crafting and 3d printing things at my disposal.
What im kinda looking for is like the following. My last boss battle of this scale took place in the tomb of a mummy lord in the peak of a pyramid. The first stage was a relatively normal tomb battlemap. But when the second phase started, the top of the pyramid exploded and all the chunks of debris were being held up in the sky with magic. The battlemap turned into a bunch of floating islands that the party fought on.
Im looking for something of that scale but for some reason I have lost all creativity. So im desperately asking for some cool suggestions, however elaborate.
Alright well, I don’t know what lore you might already have for this Bheur hag, but I love hags and must contribute at least some ideas.
1: From beneath the ice at the first stage of the fight, something is trembling, causing little tremors throughout the mountain the fight takes place on (or wherever else it takes place) Second stage, the frozen, skeletal corpse of some sort of Dragon Greatwyrm erupts from the mountain, animated by the hag’s magic, causing an avalanche and mass destruction.The party and the hag were on the dragon’s skull before it emerged, so they will be Carried up with it as it rears its massive head and goes on a violent rampage, attempting to end the adventurers lives using lair actions that are basically it moving and shifting its body and clawing and that sort of stuff. Once the hag is killed or flees, the skeleton collapses and falls apart, its massive bones scattering throughout the mountain, the skeleton of course being literally like, half its size.
2: the Bheur hag creates a sinkhole into the mountain’s cavern system, a beautiful cave full of multicolored ice that reflects light and is filled with ancient magic. It is actually superficially similar to an identical cavern in the feywild, and so the two locations merge together and become a fey crossing. Any step you take in the cavern could potentially switch you back and forth from either dimension, particularly if a reflected beam of light hits you, where you then mysteriously disappear in the flash of light to the other, identical side. The Bheur hag knows which places reflect light the best and so can use those as basically portals only it knows about. I suggest giving it the spells light and darkness a few times a day to be able to control this. The caves itself are labyrinthine and I suggest having a few minions come from the ice, past victims of the hag coming to its aid magically and attacking the players. Maybe it has a pet young Rhemoraz.
those are my ideas with some mechanical ideas as well, just if you wanted those.
What level is the party? Is there anyone in the campaign that you can have the Hag actively kidnapping/kidnapped, that they can be doing experiments on? Make it a time crunch or give them choices between attacking the hag or trying to save a beloved NPC.
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Yeah It's kind of important to know the level of characters we are dealing with but there is certainly some stuff I can suggest.
Perhaps though you could do something along these lines:
for phase 1:
you could have it set atop a glacier of some kind with slippery ground covered in ice and a harsh cold wind which sweeps across the top of it
For example:
you could have it so that any character who moves more than 20ft on their turn must succeed on a DC 15 dexterity saving throw or fall prone
perhaps part way through, a thick blizzard sweeps through dealing 1d4 cold damage to every creature in the area on a failed con save or maybe giving them levels of exhaustion (it really depends how much you want the environment to have an affect on the mechanics of combat or if you just want it to be a cool scene)
Then perhaps once the characters trigger phase 2 (whenever you decide for that to occur) the hag dives into an icy cold river which leads to near the bottom of the glacier if the characters follow her then they definitely can't complain about taking some cold damage or levels of exhaustion especially if you describe how bone-numbingly cold the water looks. Then they arrive down below and have to pursue the hag across thin bridges made of ice (slowing them down) until the hag smiles and reveals that she secretly cast mislead? maybe she is at the top of the glacier still and then triggers the glacier to begin to collapse and the characters have to fight of ice elementals (probably some adjusted water elemental stat blocks would do the trick) whilst they try to escape from the collapsing glacier. Those thin bridges that they managed to cross before might have water rushing over them making it even more slippy and therefore tougher to escape. Maybe the ice elementals have a way of slowing the characters down by freezing their sweat or blood together? You could have the whole encounter from there on a timer and give the characters a scene where they are fighting off the hags minions or even her herself if you decide to go that route whilst also trying to escape the collapsing glacier. This would certainly give you an opportunity to have some cool looking scenery.
The options are really limitless. If that's not what you are going for then perhaps you could have an ancient guardian of the caves animate and form a 3 way battle?
But yeah overall it really depends on the level of characters we are dealing with as to how potent and awe-inspiring we can make the scenario because if we make this scene with some incredible cinematic features then what happens for the BBEG of the campaign.
I hope these ideas are somewhat useful to you and good luck in the encounter
Hm. I did a fight against a hag, once. As I recall, it went rather beautifully, but I don't know if it's the style you want, or if you can build it in 3d.
First phase was on a high bluff overlooking the sea. She had the shades of a number of previous victims to help her out. Actually, initially she was in disguise (as a terrified young maiden) and the wraiths (they were undead of my own design, really) were pretending to attack her.
So the players worked their way through the wraiths, and she lured them to follow her up a narrow path to a wind-blown peak surrounded by standing stones. In the middle, an ancient, gnarly oak tree, from which hung (ocean) lizard folk sacrifices (as in, the lizardmen had sacrificed their own). This bit wouldn't be much use to you, but the hag had captured and manipulated a local lizardfolk ... kinda deity.
So then they fought the hag in her lair, and she used reanimated lizardfolk as a meat shield. Then, when she died, the 'deity' broke free ... they didn't fight him though, cause he was nice. Also, they were afraid of him.
But that was a nice battle.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
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Dear dungeon masters,
The title basically says it all. Do you have any suggestions on how I could make this battle epic? Any general ideas from how her stat block could have cool features are all very welcome.
What I do really want to know is any way I can make the battlemap epic. The fight is going to have two phases including one phase of the hag in a very young female body and then she will drop this facade and show her true ugly hag self. When this second phase begins, I would want to turn one cool battlemap into another cool battlemap. I make physical maps and have much crafting and 3d printing things at my disposal.
What im kinda looking for is like the following. My last boss battle of this scale took place in the tomb of a mummy lord in the peak of a pyramid. The first stage was a relatively normal tomb battlemap. But when the second phase started, the top of the pyramid exploded and all the chunks of debris were being held up in the sky with magic. The battlemap turned into a bunch of floating islands that the party fought on.
Mummy lord Tomb: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JI82ACZvYA_63wbUbvbPFt_xiNzb1-PT/view?usp=drive_link
Mummy lord Pyramid: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y-NKEJo5rZ3Aau24-itEOXTfcaJX4YV7/view?usp=drive_link
Im looking for something of that scale but for some reason I have lost all creativity. So im desperately asking for some cool suggestions, however elaborate.
Thank you in advance!
Alright well, I don’t know what lore you might already have for this Bheur hag, but I love hags and must contribute at least some ideas.
1: From beneath the ice at the first stage of the fight, something is trembling, causing little tremors throughout the mountain the fight takes place on (or wherever else it takes place) Second stage, the frozen, skeletal corpse of some sort of Dragon Greatwyrm erupts from the mountain, animated by the hag’s magic, causing an avalanche and mass destruction.The party and the hag were on the dragon’s skull before it emerged, so they will be Carried up with it as it rears its massive head and goes on a violent rampage, attempting to end the adventurers lives using lair actions that are basically it moving and shifting its body and clawing and that sort of stuff. Once the hag is killed or flees, the skeleton collapses and falls apart, its massive bones scattering throughout the mountain, the skeleton of course being literally like, half its size.
2: the Bheur hag creates a sinkhole into the mountain’s cavern system, a beautiful cave full of multicolored ice that reflects light and is filled with ancient magic. It is actually superficially similar to an identical cavern in the feywild, and so the two locations merge together and become a fey crossing. Any step you take in the cavern could potentially switch you back and forth from either dimension, particularly if a reflected beam of light hits you, where you then mysteriously disappear in the flash of light to the other, identical side. The Bheur hag knows which places reflect light the best and so can use those as basically portals only it knows about. I suggest giving it the spells light and darkness a few times a day to be able to control this. The caves itself are labyrinthine and I suggest having a few minions come from the ice, past victims of the hag coming to its aid magically and attacking the players. Maybe it has a pet young Rhemoraz.
those are my ideas with some mechanical ideas as well, just if you wanted those.
What level is the party? Is there anyone in the campaign that you can have the Hag actively kidnapping/kidnapped, that they can be doing experiments on? Make it a time crunch or give them choices between attacking the hag or trying to save a beloved NPC.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Yeah It's kind of important to know the level of characters we are dealing with but there is certainly some stuff I can suggest.
Perhaps though you could do something along these lines:
for phase 1:
Then perhaps once the characters trigger phase 2 (whenever you decide for that to occur) the hag dives into an icy cold river which leads to near the bottom of the glacier if the characters follow her then they definitely can't complain about taking some cold damage or levels of exhaustion especially if you describe how bone-numbingly cold the water looks. Then they arrive down below and have to pursue the hag across thin bridges made of ice (slowing them down) until the hag smiles and reveals that she secretly cast mislead? maybe she is at the top of the glacier still and then triggers the glacier to begin to collapse and the characters have to fight of ice elementals (probably some adjusted water elemental stat blocks would do the trick) whilst they try to escape from the collapsing glacier. Those thin bridges that they managed to cross before might have water rushing over them making it even more slippy and therefore tougher to escape. Maybe the ice elementals have a way of slowing the characters down by freezing their sweat or blood together? You could have the whole encounter from there on a timer and give the characters a scene where they are fighting off the hags minions or even her herself if you decide to go that route whilst also trying to escape the collapsing glacier. This would certainly give you an opportunity to have some cool looking scenery.
The options are really limitless. If that's not what you are going for then perhaps you could have an ancient guardian of the caves animate and form a 3 way battle?
But yeah overall it really depends on the level of characters we are dealing with as to how potent and awe-inspiring we can make the scenario because if we make this scene with some incredible cinematic features then what happens for the BBEG of the campaign.
I hope these ideas are somewhat useful to you and good luck in the encounter
Hm. I did a fight against a hag, once. As I recall, it went rather beautifully, but I don't know if it's the style you want, or if you can build it in 3d.
First phase was on a high bluff overlooking the sea. She had the shades of a number of previous victims to help her out. Actually, initially she was in disguise (as a terrified young maiden) and the wraiths (they were undead of my own design, really) were pretending to attack her.
So the players worked their way through the wraiths, and she lured them to follow her up a narrow path to a wind-blown peak surrounded by standing stones. In the middle, an ancient, gnarly oak tree, from which hung (ocean) lizard folk sacrifices (as in, the lizardmen had sacrificed their own). This bit wouldn't be much use to you, but the hag had captured and manipulated a local lizardfolk ... kinda deity.
So then they fought the hag in her lair, and she used reanimated lizardfolk as a meat shield. Then, when she died, the 'deity' broke free ... they didn't fight him though, cause he was nice. Also, they were afraid of him.
But that was a nice battle.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.