So I've got a BBEG for the first arc of my campaign planned out, but I'm worried it's gonna be too hard. I've struggled in the past with creating encounters that are difficult enough for them since it's a big party of 7 players (lv6 currently), but I want to stay wary of over-correcting.
For the base stats I'm using the Warlord (http://chisaipete.github.io/bestiary/creatures/warlord), CR12. They're also weilding Blackrazor from White Plume Mountain, and (willing to drop this if I need to, but it fits with the plot) is in control of a Sphere of Annihilation.
All that I'm sure they can take and it might still be a pretty easy difficult encounter for them, might still underwhelm. It's this last part I'm worried about.
The boss has some minor time-manipulating abilities that allow him to, as part of his multiattack, split into two and essentially take both attacks at once, independently, even attacking seperate targets. They kind of appear as afterimages that don't resolve back into one until the end of the turn order, meaning they can also be targeted independently. At the end of the turn order, when they do resolve, the boss can choose which one to resolve into and which one fades away, essentially letting him pick the one that took the least damage.
Now the ideal way to combat this mechanic is to evenly divide damage among the two, but there's no guarantee the players will figure that out...
Seven level 8 characters vs. one CR 12 monster maths out to be an easy encounter. The add-ons might make it a slightly better fight, but I still expect your players will come out on top without too much of an issue unless something goes radically tragic for them.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
Seven level 8 characters vs. one CR 12 monster maths out to be an easy encounter. The add-ons might make it a slightly better fight, but I still expect your players will come out on top without too much of an issue unless something goes radically tragic for them.
Ok, my main concern is with Blackrazor's haste ability giving him 20AC, significantly raising damage output (especially if I allow that he can move the Sphere with a bonus action), and the time manipulation functionally doubles his HP. Given the new stuff he's probably a bit higher than CR12.
I'm in agreement with Mongoose here, this seems like a pretty cut and dry fight for the players. If I were in your place I'd add some Lair and/or Legendary Actions to the fight. I would also implement some terrain difficulties for the boss to use and can become a hindrance for the players. One of my favorite things to do is to create a damage threshold that will prompt a change in the fight's dynamic.
Example: After losing 40% of his health the Boss changes his tactics and rather than staying close and beating on the party with the sword and after images, he takes a new approach. He finds a vantage point where he can attack at range from relative safety while using his after image to attack in close quarters.
Legendary Action: (6) if there is an after image present it can remain until the next initiative 20 and acts as a Mirror Image, however it has resistance to all damage types. HP is equal to half the remaining HP of the Boss. The Boss may still use the standard after image attack while this effect is applied.
I think you're over-thinking the encounter - you cannot predict the flow of combat ahead of time to be able to factor in items, weapons, and off-book abilities. They might have the "sword of Player smiting", right up until round #1, where a Player-Character uses Telekinesis to yank it out of their hands and throw it over the cliff.
I suspect that what you're attempting to do by adding items and abilities, is to make the battle cool, and memorable - not just "one bad guy, in a stone room, now trade blows".
As far as opponents are concerned, just design a straight up encounter according to any number of online calculators ( I like Kobold Fight Club ). That allows you to add the appropriate level of challenge.
If you want to make your fight memorable, you can do a sorts of things outside adding "bad guy abilities". I have a list of items that I might consider in setting up a challenging, epic, and memorable combat encounter that I posted in this threadhere.
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For the reasons indicated above, I would strongly suggest giving your boss some minions, especially since it fits with the warlord's MO. Encounters with multiple enemies are almost always more interesting. You should also consider giving your boss Legendary Resistance or Legendary Actions to balance out the action economy disadvantage.
At the same time, this boss is going to be higher than CR 12 due to the adjustments you've made. You should check out the CR table in the DMG and determine how the increased AC, damage, and damage mitigation (from the splitting ability) might affect CR.
Also, I disagree with the idea that you shouldn't think about the flow of combat as you plan the encounter. The PCs are 6th level, so I suspect you know their tactics by now. It's entirely fair to consider how they're most likely to approach this fight, and mocking up the battle will give you a better idea of how difficult it actually is. If the boss knows about these heroes or their abilities, it's not unreasonable that they might make some slight adjustments to their tactics with this in mind. Either way, you should try to subvert your party's expectations about this encounter, to encourage them to think outside the box; this is a boss fight, so don't set up a scenario that lets them engage in the same way they always do.
Update: played this encounter last night and had solo playtested it before. During the playtest I did everything as is, CR12 warlord with an additional +2 to hit/damage from Blackrazor and the sphere of annihilating movement on a bonus action, and the time paradox attack (and then later Haste from Blackrazor as well). He wiped the floor with them in the test, they got him to around half health before he tpk'd them. So I mixed and matched some of y'all's advice.
I divided the fight into phases, in the first phase it was just him as the base CR12 warlord with about a dozen basic guard minions. The players dealt with them quickly, mostly one-shot, while the main boss was locked into a Hunger of Hadar and took a few turns to get out. I spawned some guard reinforcements to keep them all busy and also give some of the story npc's something to "do." Meanwhile two of the party got the idea to open the castle portcullis so that was a few rounds of athletics checks for 2 of them. By then the big bad was at half health and the only guards left were fighting the npc's up on the wall of the courtyard they were in, leaving the boss to the players. That's when I had him start using his time manipulation ability, essentially doubling his remaining health since he can choose which copy of himself took less damage to continue the fight with each turn, they had fun figuring that out. One of the players actually beat the bad guy for control of the So a so that was nifty and mostly out of the fight.
Players were beat up, one went down only to recover on they're next turn with a nat20 death save, some close calls all around, fight ends with his time manipulation ability ended from them killing one of him while the other, critically wounded, escapes to go do more bad guy stuff. Didn't end up using Haste, didn't need it, would've made it drag.
So I think, as much as I tried to plan for it to not make it too easy, I ended up BS'ing this fight a lot more than I usually do, and it ended up way more fun (But maybe still not as hard as it could be). I'll take that, most of my players are still first-timers and I suppose if they wanted Dark Souls they'd be playing Dark Souls.
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So I've got a BBEG for the first arc of my campaign planned out, but I'm worried it's gonna be too hard. I've struggled in the past with creating encounters that are difficult enough for them since it's a big party of 7 players (lv6 currently), but I want to stay wary of over-correcting.
For the base stats I'm using the Warlord (http://chisaipete.github.io/bestiary/creatures/warlord), CR12. They're also weilding Blackrazor from White Plume Mountain, and (willing to drop this if I need to, but it fits with the plot) is in control of a Sphere of Annihilation.
All that I'm sure they can take and it might still be a pretty easy difficult encounter for them, might still underwhelm. It's this last part I'm worried about.
The boss has some minor time-manipulating abilities that allow him to, as part of his multiattack, split into two and essentially take both attacks at once, independently, even attacking seperate targets. They kind of appear as afterimages that don't resolve back into one until the end of the turn order, meaning they can also be targeted independently. At the end of the turn order, when they do resolve, the boss can choose which one to resolve into and which one fades away, essentially letting him pick the one that took the least damage.
Now the ideal way to combat this mechanic is to evenly divide damage among the two, but there's no guarantee the players will figure that out...
What do you think? Did I just kill my players?
Seven level 8 characters vs. one CR 12 monster maths out to be an easy encounter. The add-ons might make it a slightly better fight, but I still expect your players will come out on top without too much of an issue unless something goes radically tragic for them.
Ok, my main concern is with Blackrazor's haste ability giving him 20AC, significantly raising damage output (especially if I allow that he can move the Sphere with a bonus action), and the time manipulation functionally doubles his HP. Given the new stuff he's probably a bit higher than CR12.
I'm in agreement with Mongoose here, this seems like a pretty cut and dry fight for the players. If I were in your place I'd add some Lair and/or Legendary Actions to the fight. I would also implement some terrain difficulties for the boss to use and can become a hindrance for the players. One of my favorite things to do is to create a damage threshold that will prompt a change in the fight's dynamic.
Example:
After losing 40% of his health the Boss changes his tactics and rather than staying close and beating on the party with the sword and after images, he takes a new approach. He finds a vantage point where he can attack at range from relative safety while using his after image to attack in close quarters.
Legendary Action:
(6) if there is an after image present it can remain until the next initiative 20 and acts as a Mirror Image, however it has resistance to all damage types. HP is equal to half the remaining HP of the Boss. The Boss may still use the standard after image attack while this effect is applied.
It already has a few legendary actions, but the terrain could be neat
*EDIT*
Double checked and my players are only level 6, whoops
A straight CR 12 opponent would be a Medium level encounter for a party.
Action economy is what gets your villain.
I think you're over-thinking the encounter - you cannot predict the flow of combat ahead of time to be able to factor in items, weapons, and off-book abilities. They might have the "sword of Player smiting", right up until round #1, where a Player-Character uses Telekinesis to yank it out of their hands and throw it over the cliff.
I suspect that what you're attempting to do by adding items and abilities, is to make the battle cool, and memorable - not just "one bad guy, in a stone room, now trade blows".
As far as opponents are concerned, just design a straight up encounter according to any number of online calculators ( I like Kobold Fight Club ). That allows you to add the appropriate level of challenge.
If you want to make your fight memorable, you can do a sorts of things outside adding "bad guy abilities". I have a list of items that I might consider in setting up a challenging, epic, and memorable combat encounter that I posted in this thread here.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I have had a lot of success with kobold fight club, and I agree with Vedexent.
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For the reasons indicated above, I would strongly suggest giving your boss some minions, especially since it fits with the warlord's MO. Encounters with multiple enemies are almost always more interesting. You should also consider giving your boss Legendary Resistance or Legendary Actions to balance out the action economy disadvantage.
At the same time, this boss is going to be higher than CR 12 due to the adjustments you've made. You should check out the CR table in the DMG and determine how the increased AC, damage, and damage mitigation (from the splitting ability) might affect CR.
Also, I disagree with the idea that you shouldn't think about the flow of combat as you plan the encounter. The PCs are 6th level, so I suspect you know their tactics by now. It's entirely fair to consider how they're most likely to approach this fight, and mocking up the battle will give you a better idea of how difficult it actually is. If the boss knows about these heroes or their abilities, it's not unreasonable that they might make some slight adjustments to their tactics with this in mind. Either way, you should try to subvert your party's expectations about this encounter, to encourage them to think outside the box; this is a boss fight, so don't set up a scenario that lets them engage in the same way they always do.
Update: played this encounter last night and had solo playtested it before. During the playtest I did everything as is, CR12 warlord with an additional +2 to hit/damage from Blackrazor and the sphere of annihilating movement on a bonus action, and the time paradox attack (and then later Haste from Blackrazor as well). He wiped the floor with them in the test, they got him to around half health before he tpk'd them. So I mixed and matched some of y'all's advice.
I divided the fight into phases, in the first phase it was just him as the base CR12 warlord with about a dozen basic guard minions. The players dealt with them quickly, mostly one-shot, while the main boss was locked into a Hunger of Hadar and took a few turns to get out. I spawned some guard reinforcements to keep them all busy and also give some of the story npc's something to "do." Meanwhile two of the party got the idea to open the castle portcullis so that was a few rounds of athletics checks for 2 of them. By then the big bad was at half health and the only guards left were fighting the npc's up on the wall of the courtyard they were in, leaving the boss to the players. That's when I had him start using his time manipulation ability, essentially doubling his remaining health since he can choose which copy of himself took less damage to continue the fight with each turn, they had fun figuring that out. One of the players actually beat the bad guy for control of the So a so that was nifty and mostly out of the fight.
Players were beat up, one went down only to recover on they're next turn with a nat20 death save, some close calls all around, fight ends with his time manipulation ability ended from them killing one of him while the other, critically wounded, escapes to go do more bad guy stuff. Didn't end up using Haste, didn't need it, would've made it drag.
So I think, as much as I tried to plan for it to not make it too easy, I ended up BS'ing this fight a lot more than I usually do, and it ended up way more fun (But maybe still not as hard as it could be). I'll take that, most of my players are still first-timers and I suppose if they wanted Dark Souls they'd be playing Dark Souls.