So i have unique system in place, i offered the party a chance to level up off of specail bosses that they have to seek out (think secret bosses), and so far the party is really into it. but heres the problem, the list of bosses are a little broken, each one seems like it could be a TPK if handeled wrong. i want someone elses opinion on some of the more insane bosses here on whether i should nerf them or not.
1.) For levels 7 to 8, a wind elemental in the shape of a massive bird, immune to non magic attacks (enchanted weaponry counts as magic for me) can attack 3 times and can inflict exhaustion with a scream, can also fly.
2.) For levels 8 to 9, a heretical undead paladin and his ghost ship, a single oathbreaker paladin (level 9) and a ship that is also a ghost, the ship can pull peoples souls out (they can get back to there bodies with some work) and can bite for 3d6 damage, the paladin also has the ships ancor as a weapon doing 2d8 damage per attack, on top of the regular set of oathbreaker skills for that level.
3.) For level 10, a Gargantuan two headed Dragon, it can breath attack twice and can change its type freely, this means it can be all types potentailly, but other than that its a normal elder dragon.
4.) for level 12, a physical wall separating the world and the void outside, if they destoy it everyone gets sucked into the void and will have to survive out there. im calling it the ozone, and it wants to crush the world the players are in by shrinking (technically this is not a secret boss but a manditory one as i am setting up the destuction of the world, they can fight it, but i wont reccomend it. its for characters that seek to be heroes rather than survivors)
For anyone to be of use in responding we need a bit more info. How many PCs are in your party? What’s the tone of your campaign? (More serious? More light-hearted? Etc) Do your PCs want a balance between the three pillars or are they just in it for the combat and they want the combat to be as hard as possible?
Without that, I think an air elemental may be too weak unless your party is super small. It’s a CR 5 and I’d youve got a party of six they’ll wipe the floor with it unless you seriously buff it. I’m not sure just giving it a single legendary action (it sounds like that’s what you’re going for with the shriek attack) is enough of a buff. Air elementals already have a multi attack so three attacks is not a significant buff.
The paladin seems okay. I’m having a hard time picturing a ship with a bite attack. I would imagine something more like a giant lance protruding from the bowsprit and does a sword attack would be more in line with what a ship would have rather than a mouth.
For the dragon, are we talking ancient or adult dragon? Ancient, especially a two headed ancient dragon, is gong to TPK your party at level 10 unless the party is ridiculously large. (Like 8 or more players.) If you’re set on the “can change its type at will” aspect I would recommend making that its action for that turn. And/or limiting it to being able to do that twice per long rest. An adult dragon would be a challenge for an average size party of 19th level. If your party is small or could end up being a TPK. The two heads and the ability to change its type might increase the CR some and an adult is CR14. Ancient is CR21.
the wall as a bbeg is the one I’m having the hardest time with. By the DMG, the AC of stone is 17. You could magically buff that to 20+ saying it’s a magic wall. But what are the consequences for their efforts Ron break it down? You say it’s preventing civilization from getting sucked into a void so why are they even trying to break it down? It’s a wall so how is this actually a combat? Is it sentient? I just don’t see this one working as a BBEG unless your party is Vox Machina who can’t open a door to save their life.
I think cosplaywrite is right - not only can we not judge without knowing what the Party is like, you won't have any idea what the Party will be like when they get to that level, yet. Maybe someone will have changed up a Character. Maybe someone left your group, and took a Character with them. Maybe you've had someone join. Maybe someone will multi-class and now you have more casters, or less powerful casters than you had anticipated.
I think trying to pre-define the monsters at a stat level before the Party even gets near that level is pointless. You could plant rumors and legends ( not all of them accurate ) in the world about these "secret bosses", but not define them rigorously until just before the Party encounters them ( if ever ). That allows you to tune them to the Party to create the level of challenge & flavor of encounter that you intend, and you don't have to do any of the design work at all, if they never go after that "secret boss".
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yeah, mostly i was just asking for opinions on how it would work and if i would need to nerf some stuff based on vague information alone. in hindsight that isnt very fair, so i will use more context.
the party is nebulous, at any point the party of 4 may or may not change number or classes to fit a new playstyle, as we arent playing with revives, and hectic work schedules can cause someone to quit unexpectadly. at the moment we have 4 players at levels 7 to 8 and rising fast due to the strong combat focus of the party. the current party make up is a cleric, a ranger, a warlock, and a cyborg (homebrew class, kinda like a monk).
the air elemtal is quite large, although i seriously doubt the party will seek it out as they just encountered the current BBEG nearby and he stole something important to the plot. i had it set up as the center to a weather machine and it was slowly killing the villagers nearby with cold winds. of course its not a normal air elemental, that would be silly for a encounter meant to grant a hard level to everyone, just assume eveything on here has some suped up stats as i havent really wrote them up yet.
the ship is something that the local church dont like, you can imagine why. it was built to be something that requires the party to swarm it (the paladin mostly) while the ship seperates the party. and the ship has a face on the front, thats how it bites ya.
the dragon was a joke we all made and i promised the party they could fight it, or the equally dangerous immortal grey dragon (these bosses are optional, stupid strong, and can be visited later if the party wants, the level is just the earliest the party can fight them) im gonna trust the party to not be idiots when we actually get near it, but likely i will lower the ac a bit so that they can etch out a win.
and the last, most stupid, boss idea. this i think requires some context on the story and setting to actually understand. the world is just bunch of floating islands that the party must use airships to travel from land to land. there is a ceiling and walls to limit travel out side a certain point, and it looms over the party oppresivly. that wall is magical in nature and holds the shattered world together, but it is shrinking. eventually the party will relise this (10 to 12 sessions from now unless the physicaly go study the wall in detail) and need to find a way to deal with this. the plot of the campaign surrounds a strange puzzle cube that the warlocks patron said will "set them free" in ominous tones so i think they will get the idea, but this is for if they fail and decide they should just go and fight the wall itself.
also for further context, they killed a undead moth with 300 hp, 18 ac, and legendary moves, and anti magic in 2 turns flat, while level 6, so thats a thing. they basically got really lucky and used some sound strategy that worked in their favors.
Again, I really don't think anyone - including you - can evaluate how these stack up to the Party until pretty close to the time that the Party actually goes after them - at which point you'll likely have to "tune" the encounter to the level/make up of the Party to make it challenging and interesting for the Players and Characters at hand.
Trying to give us more information won't help, because the relevant information needed to gauge how these encounters fit your Party doesn't exist yet. Best any of us could do is give you a rough idea how a generic Party ( that "idealized" 4 characters whose names I can't remember ) of that level might do, but that might have very little relevance to your Party, whose makeup you can't predict yourself right now.
If you're looking for feedback on whether these are interesting and thematically appropriate encounters for your campaign - I don't know your Party ( and whether they'd find it interesting ), the style of game you're running, or how these encounters fit into your world & campaign story ( or even if they do so, or if you are just plopping in a "random cool s#$^ I came up with" - in which case there's no point in trying to evaluate how they fit in thematically, because they don't ). Right now they sound pretty random, and I'm really not fond of random encounters which have no rationale in the larger game world - but a) that might just be because you haven't described their context to us, yet, and b) that's only my personal taste. You and your Players might love it ( no way for me to tell from over here ), in which case, run with it.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I think the encounters sound interesting. As the others have said, lacking info makes it difficult to estimate, but I'd say there's plenty of food for fun theorycrafting.
For the sake of simplicity, I'll stay away from damage numbers; for that, much like has already been said, just tune the encounter based on the party when they reach that point. Very easy to do.
The wind elemental could run rampant depending on how you manage the exhaustion mechanic. If it can scream every round, then depending on whether there's a save to avoid the exhaustion then it'll create a really intense pressure to kill it fast. No need to nerf, just manage the fight carefully for the suspense you're trying to achieve.
Could also add a mechanic that lets them reverse the effect; e.g. the creature's wake leaves a "refreshing breeze" that reduces exhaustion. Might be fun, might not.
For the ghost ship, what happens when their souls are taken? Are they "killed" and then transported to a soul-dungeon of sorts to escape or do they get to keep fighting and have to kill the ship to get them back?
Two-headed dragon sounds fun and challenging; the two breath attacks could be devastating if people don't save or approach the fight wrong. Having the dragon shift types isn't really a problem so long as the CRs are all lined up with the party; it's just different flavors of damage and a swap of detrimental effects on the breath.
Might want to build the encounter as two creatures instead of one, and they just share a single HP pool. I've done that before, and it can work really well. Alternately you can follow the same template for multi-headed monsters in the books (e.g. ettin, hydra, Tiamat).
Hope this helps!
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So i have unique system in place, i offered the party a chance to level up off of specail bosses that they have to seek out (think secret bosses), and so far the party is really into it. but heres the problem, the list of bosses are a little broken, each one seems like it could be a TPK if handeled wrong. i want someone elses opinion on some of the more insane bosses here on whether i should nerf them or not.
1.) For levels 7 to 8, a wind elemental in the shape of a massive bird, immune to non magic attacks (enchanted weaponry counts as magic for me) can attack 3 times and can inflict exhaustion with a scream, can also fly.
2.) For levels 8 to 9, a heretical undead paladin and his ghost ship, a single oathbreaker paladin (level 9) and a ship that is also a ghost, the ship can pull peoples souls out (they can get back to there bodies with some work) and can bite for 3d6 damage, the paladin also has the ships ancor as a weapon doing 2d8 damage per attack, on top of the regular set of oathbreaker skills for that level.
3.) For level 10, a Gargantuan two headed Dragon, it can breath attack twice and can change its type freely, this means it can be all types potentailly, but other than that its a normal elder dragon.
4.) for level 12, a physical wall separating the world and the void outside, if they destoy it everyone gets sucked into the void and will have to survive out there. im calling it the ozone, and it wants to crush the world the players are in by shrinking (technically this is not a secret boss but a manditory one as i am setting up the destuction of the world, they can fight it, but i wont reccomend it. its for characters that seek to be heroes rather than survivors)
For anyone to be of use in responding we need a bit more info. How many PCs are in your party? What’s the tone of your campaign? (More serious? More light-hearted? Etc) Do your PCs want a balance between the three pillars or are they just in it for the combat and they want the combat to be as hard as possible?
Without that, I think an air elemental may be too weak unless your party is super small. It’s a CR 5 and I’d youve got a party of six they’ll wipe the floor with it unless you seriously buff it. I’m not sure just giving it a single legendary action (it sounds like that’s what you’re going for with the shriek attack) is enough of a buff. Air elementals already have a multi attack so three attacks is not a significant buff.
The paladin seems okay. I’m having a hard time picturing a ship with a bite attack. I would imagine something more like a giant lance protruding from the bowsprit and does a sword attack would be more in line with what a ship would have rather than a mouth.
For the dragon, are we talking ancient or adult dragon? Ancient, especially a two headed ancient dragon, is gong to TPK your party at level 10 unless the party is ridiculously large. (Like 8 or more players.) If you’re set on the “can change its type at will” aspect I would recommend making that its action for that turn. And/or limiting it to being able to do that twice per long rest. An adult dragon would be a challenge for an average size party of 19th level. If your party is small or could end up being a TPK. The two heads and the ability to change its type might increase the CR some and an adult is CR14. Ancient is CR21.
the wall as a bbeg is the one I’m having the hardest time with. By the DMG, the AC of stone is 17. You could magically buff that to 20+ saying it’s a magic wall. But what are the consequences for their efforts Ron break it down? You say it’s preventing civilization from getting sucked into a void so why are they even trying to break it down? It’s a wall so how is this actually a combat? Is it sentient? I just don’t see this one working as a BBEG unless your party is Vox Machina who can’t open a door to save their life.
just my .02.
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I think cosplaywrite is right - not only can we not judge without knowing what the Party is like, you won't have any idea what the Party will be like when they get to that level, yet. Maybe someone will have changed up a Character. Maybe someone left your group, and took a Character with them. Maybe you've had someone join. Maybe someone will multi-class and now you have more casters, or less powerful casters than you had anticipated.
I think trying to pre-define the monsters at a stat level before the Party even gets near that level is pointless. You could plant rumors and legends ( not all of them accurate ) in the world about these "secret bosses", but not define them rigorously until just before the Party encounters them ( if ever ). That allows you to tune them to the Party to create the level of challenge & flavor of encounter that you intend, and you don't have to do any of the design work at all, if they never go after that "secret boss".
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
yeah, mostly i was just asking for opinions on how it would work and if i would need to nerf some stuff based on vague information alone. in hindsight that isnt very fair, so i will use more context.
the party is nebulous, at any point the party of 4 may or may not change number or classes to fit a new playstyle, as we arent playing with revives, and hectic work schedules can cause someone to quit unexpectadly. at the moment we have 4 players at levels 7 to 8 and rising fast due to the strong combat focus of the party. the current party make up is a cleric, a ranger, a warlock, and a cyborg (homebrew class, kinda like a monk).
the air elemtal is quite large, although i seriously doubt the party will seek it out as they just encountered the current BBEG nearby and he stole something important to the plot. i had it set up as the center to a weather machine and it was slowly killing the villagers nearby with cold winds. of course its not a normal air elemental, that would be silly for a encounter meant to grant a hard level to everyone, just assume eveything on here has some suped up stats as i havent really wrote them up yet.
the ship is something that the local church dont like, you can imagine why. it was built to be something that requires the party to swarm it (the paladin mostly) while the ship seperates the party. and the ship has a face on the front, thats how it bites ya.
the dragon was a joke we all made and i promised the party they could fight it, or the equally dangerous immortal grey dragon (these bosses are optional, stupid strong, and can be visited later if the party wants, the level is just the earliest the party can fight them) im gonna trust the party to not be idiots when we actually get near it, but likely i will lower the ac a bit so that they can etch out a win.
and the last, most stupid, boss idea. this i think requires some context on the story and setting to actually understand. the world is just bunch of floating islands that the party must use airships to travel from land to land. there is a ceiling and walls to limit travel out side a certain point, and it looms over the party oppresivly. that wall is magical in nature and holds the shattered world together, but it is shrinking. eventually the party will relise this (10 to 12 sessions from now unless the physicaly go study the wall in detail) and need to find a way to deal with this. the plot of the campaign surrounds a strange puzzle cube that the warlocks patron said will "set them free" in ominous tones so i think they will get the idea, but this is for if they fail and decide they should just go and fight the wall itself.
also for further context, they killed a undead moth with 300 hp, 18 ac, and legendary moves, and anti magic in 2 turns flat, while level 6, so thats a thing. they basically got really lucky and used some sound strategy that worked in their favors.
Again, I really don't think anyone - including you - can evaluate how these stack up to the Party until pretty close to the time that the Party actually goes after them - at which point you'll likely have to "tune" the encounter to the level/make up of the Party to make it challenging and interesting for the Players and Characters at hand.
Trying to give us more information won't help, because the relevant information needed to gauge how these encounters fit your Party doesn't exist yet. Best any of us could do is give you a rough idea how a generic Party ( that "idealized" 4 characters whose names I can't remember ) of that level might do, but that might have very little relevance to your Party, whose makeup you can't predict yourself right now.
If you're looking for feedback on whether these are interesting and thematically appropriate encounters for your campaign - I don't know your Party ( and whether they'd find it interesting ), the style of game you're running, or how these encounters fit into your world & campaign story ( or even if they do so, or if you are just plopping in a "random cool s#$^ I came up with" - in which case there's no point in trying to evaluate how they fit in thematically, because they don't ). Right now they sound pretty random, and I'm really not fond of random encounters which have no rationale in the larger game world - but a) that might just be because you haven't described their context to us, yet, and b) that's only my personal taste. You and your Players might love it ( no way for me to tell from over here ), in which case, run with it.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
yeah good point, just looking for an outside opinion, and i'd say that works good enough for me.
I think the encounters sound interesting. As the others have said, lacking info makes it difficult to estimate, but I'd say there's plenty of food for fun theorycrafting.
For the sake of simplicity, I'll stay away from damage numbers; for that, much like has already been said, just tune the encounter based on the party when they reach that point. Very easy to do.
The wind elemental could run rampant depending on how you manage the exhaustion mechanic. If it can scream every round, then depending on whether there's a save to avoid the exhaustion then it'll create a really intense pressure to kill it fast. No need to nerf, just manage the fight carefully for the suspense you're trying to achieve.
Could also add a mechanic that lets them reverse the effect; e.g. the creature's wake leaves a "refreshing breeze" that reduces exhaustion. Might be fun, might not.
For the ghost ship, what happens when their souls are taken? Are they "killed" and then transported to a soul-dungeon of sorts to escape or do they get to keep fighting and have to kill the ship to get them back?
Two-headed dragon sounds fun and challenging; the two breath attacks could be devastating if people don't save or approach the fight wrong. Having the dragon shift types isn't really a problem so long as the CRs are all lined up with the party; it's just different flavors of damage and a swap of detrimental effects on the breath.
Might want to build the encounter as two creatures instead of one, and they just share a single HP pool. I've done that before, and it can work really well. Alternately you can follow the same template for multi-headed monsters in the books (e.g. ettin, hydra, Tiamat).
Hope this helps!