My players will soon fight their first boss; they are now level 3, and we have 5 players (paladin, cleric, barbarian, rogue, druid).
They will go after a winter witch queen; first they'll have to go through a forest with unnatural fog to reach her. The forest is invested with ice spiders.
I want the whole encounter with the winter witch to be some psychological horror; for example they come into her home/house/whatever... no one is to be seen, while strange things happen; skill checks/saves are needed; maybe some psychological traps, and so on. I will do this part with theatre of the mind, no dungeon crawl, to avoid breaking immersion.
The end will be offcourse the boss fight itself; where they will figure out in one of the coming sessions that she can be only defeated by true sacrifice. She will be immune to damage before they break this (solve this puzzle). Meanwhile, she'll cast some no too strong things while her minions attack. When she can be damaged, I'm thinking of letting her transform in something nasty when she reaches half HP.
So my question to you all is:
1. What does her lair look like: is it a house, a cavern, just in nature itself, something different? 2. What can happen in this lair; how can I maximize this psychological horror? What would you do? 3. What would her minions look like? She had spiders in the woods, what would work here? 4. What would you let her transform into?
The players can also, with the right checks and roleplay, convince treants to do a front assault on the lair, to distract her (this will mean that they'll face less trouble on the way over or in the lair itself; can you think of some benefits that this would provide to the players? I'm already allowing advantage on stealth checks because of all the noise at the front of the lair.
I think that it should start off as what seems like a regular house but as they get deeper they find it is actually a maze, each room getting more and more unusual. Give them twists and turns to follow. Also have parts of the house which try and split the party.
They could be slowly freezing, which is slowing them down and it seems like there is something moving around the house.
For minions I would have puppeted adventurers. They are seem to still be alive but just can't control themselves. They are covered in ice which allows them to do things.
I'd then let her transform into something they can't fully see. She grows multiple long, spindly arms but fog conceals her fully. Sometimes it parts to reveal a mouth or something but htey never get a full glance.
The Rhyme of the Frostmaiden adventure has some fantastic rules about potentially freezing to death that involve multiple checks as the environment gets colder or should they get wet. Consider incorporating some into your forest/lair. Maybe some enemies goal is to weaken the adventurers by causing them to fall into water, get covered with water, etc. You could reward them part of the way with 2 pairs of cold weather clothes that help insulate 2 adventurers... but which 2? Finally, emphasize the silence through their travel in the forest, the isolation, the complete lack of wildlife sounds. Also watch John Carpenter's The Thing for inspiration 😁
You said psychological and I COME. So first of all if you want a psychological horror boss I hope you built this boss fight up. If you haven't, well I am very much happy to put off my homework. So the first thing to do In this situation is to make the players completely aware of the fact that they are about to fight a boss. Say things like "you feel an eery chill as you enter the forest, it seems unnatural as if made by powerful magic. The ground is barren and the trees are filled with webs." Do this until you are sure they are completely freaked out. Record a sound of a scuttle and BOOST your sound up. Jumpscare them with this but don't start combat yet. Roll dice a lot even if it doesn't do anything. Then here is the kicker, I am personally helping a friend with a boss fight andddd I may have EHEM, let me just show you. Infinite Illusions: The lllusionist creates 2 illusions of himself that he can remotely control. If he already has illusions he doubles them.
Soooo, if you want to tweak that a bit and re-flavor it, haha, you are gonna have fun. Now make it so that they think they beat the boss after a decent fight with some spiders, and reveal the master plan. I hope this helped, if you need any other ideas just reply and I will help some more. DMs gotta stick together or their plans will be ruined by that one player who thinks stereotypes would be funny in-game.
how about this: So, I made a DND campaign earlier, and made the boss easy to beat. but it turned out it was a SUPERPOWERFUL WIZARD that was SUMMONING the boss. also, I homebrewed both bosses, and you could too to make it just right for the players to fight.
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BOB
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Hello all
My players will soon fight their first boss; they are now level 3, and we have 5 players (paladin, cleric, barbarian, rogue, druid).
They will go after a winter witch queen; first they'll have to go through a forest with unnatural fog to reach her. The forest is invested with ice spiders.
I want the whole encounter with the winter witch to be some psychological horror; for example they come into her home/house/whatever... no one is to be seen, while strange things happen; skill checks/saves are needed; maybe some psychological traps, and so on.
I will do this part with theatre of the mind, no dungeon crawl, to avoid breaking immersion.
The end will be offcourse the boss fight itself; where they will figure out in one of the coming sessions that she can be only defeated by true sacrifice.
She will be immune to damage before they break this (solve this puzzle). Meanwhile, she'll cast some no too strong things while her minions attack.
When she can be damaged, I'm thinking of letting her transform in something nasty when she reaches half HP.
So my question to you all is:
1. What does her lair look like: is it a house, a cavern, just in nature itself, something different?
2. What can happen in this lair; how can I maximize this psychological horror? What would you do?
3. What would her minions look like? She had spiders in the woods, what would work here?
4. What would you let her transform into?
The players can also, with the right checks and roleplay, convince treants to do a front assault on the lair, to distract her (this will mean that they'll face less trouble on the way over or in the lair itself; can you think of some benefits that this would provide to the players? I'm already allowing advantage on stealth checks because of all the noise at the front of the lair.
I think that it should start off as what seems like a regular house but as they get deeper they find it is actually a maze, each room getting more and more unusual. Give them twists and turns to follow. Also have parts of the house which try and split the party.
They could be slowly freezing, which is slowing them down and it seems like there is something moving around the house.
For minions I would have puppeted adventurers. They are seem to still be alive but just can't control themselves. They are covered in ice which allows them to do things.
I'd then let her transform into something they can't fully see. She grows multiple long, spindly arms but fog conceals her fully. Sometimes it parts to reveal a mouth or something but htey never get a full glance.
The Rhyme of the Frostmaiden adventure has some fantastic rules about potentially freezing to death that involve multiple checks as the environment gets colder or should they get wet. Consider incorporating some into your forest/lair. Maybe some enemies goal is to weaken the adventurers by causing them to fall into water, get covered with water, etc. You could reward them part of the way with 2 pairs of cold weather clothes that help insulate 2 adventurers... but which 2? Finally, emphasize the silence through their travel in the forest, the isolation, the complete lack of wildlife sounds. Also watch John Carpenter's The Thing for inspiration 😁
You said psychological and I COME. So first of all if you want a psychological horror boss I hope you built this boss fight up. If you haven't, well I am very much happy to put off my homework. So the first thing to do In this situation is to make the players completely aware of the fact that they are about to fight a boss. Say things like "you feel an eery chill as you enter the forest, it seems unnatural as if made by powerful magic. The ground is barren and the trees are filled with webs." Do this until you are sure they are completely freaked out. Record a sound of a scuttle and BOOST your sound up. Jumpscare them with this but don't start combat yet. Roll dice a lot even if it doesn't do anything. Then here is the kicker, I am personally helping a friend with a boss fight andddd I may have EHEM, let me just show you.
Infinite Illusions: The lllusionist creates 2 illusions of himself that he can remotely control. If he already has illusions he doubles them.
Soooo, if you want to tweak that a bit and re-flavor it, haha, you are gonna have fun. Now make it so that they think they beat the boss after a decent fight with some spiders, and reveal the master plan. I hope this helped, if you need any other ideas just reply and I will help some more. DMs gotta stick together or their plans will be ruined by that one player who thinks stereotypes would be funny in-game.
how about this: So, I made a DND campaign earlier, and made the boss easy to beat. but it turned out it was a SUPERPOWERFUL WIZARD that was SUMMONING the boss. also, I homebrewed both bosses, and you could too to make it just right for the players to fight.
BOB