I am working on the climax of my campaign and it's going to feature Dagon and Jormungandr; the demon prince of the deep and the world serpent. Both of these are likely to be targeted by the party at some point, but they are way too big to be conventional fights.
Has anyone successfully run anything with creatures the size of a city? I am planning on there existing an as-yet-undecided weapon which can be used against Dagon, and as this climax involved Ragnarok, the norse gods will help with Jormungandr, but that leaves the party uninvolved, which sucks!
Maybe part of the quest is shrinking it down to a reasonable size. The old ritual/artifact that will turn this incomprehensiblly big creature is to something more fitting in game terms, like gargantuan or something.
Or they could have to fight parts of it. Bits of the world serpent are exposed, and the party has to go around smacking each of them. And put it on a timer or they’ll regenerate.
I would say have the party need to find something that makes them grow in size, then during the battle you can have a full on city destroying battle of titans.
I’d agree that kaiju=fun. But practically it would be a pain. The point would be that, instead of a longsword, you swing some XXXL longsword. And the correspondingly larger amount of die. (And yes, absolutely, lots of dice=fun). And I guess you then have to homebrew new spells to match the increased die the martials are doing. But then you need to boost enemy hp to match the extra damage.
So yes, lots of cool, lots of dice. But also lots of homebrew, and then, in the fight, lots and lots of math. That’s why I’m thinking you shrink the enemy. Then you don’t need any homebrew, and you use math that already does what you want instead of just hoping you got it right when you upscale everything. The crazy giant fight could be fun for a finale, but I wouldn’t want to do it more than once. Maybe twice.
There are a few strategies inspired from video games and movies
The boss is the level- Here the large monster acts as a place that they players traverse. This can be physically in their body or psychically in their mind it doesn't matter
Siege - In this version the players use cannons or similar powerful weapons to attack the creature at a distance.
Gundum - The players can pilot some similarly colossal entity to the fight the creature. They can magically increase in size, pilot a giant robot or ride dragons. It's all similair
Activate the trap.- The players work to defend, activate or set up some kind of trap or device that weakness the creature so it can be fought. It could be destroying a damn to douse the fire monster with a flood, detonating an underground tunnel net work to collapse the floor under neath or protecting the wizards as they complete a ritual.
Only part- the players could fight only part of the creature for example they may be on the top of a castle wall and come face to face with the thing. Maybe they deal with only a single limb.
To be honest, size doesn't matter much mechanically in 5e. All it means is that the creature is really large (gargantuan) and that doesn't really affect the creature's other stats. In short, size is unimportant when making big, awesome and memorable boss fights. What is important though is having mechanically unique and interesting monsters with Semako-homebrew-monster-stat-block level complexity.
I have had the titan idea myself. Something about penetrating a giant crab as it walks across the land. My idea was, you attack it from the inside out. One mission should be to destroy its hearing, another to destroy its brain stem and so on. Each part of the body is varied and full of parasites and home to a plethora of creatures.
A) traps and confronts the creature in an astral form in the astral plane or another simultaneously existing semi-material plane where the physical size of the creature can differ from its form on the prime material plane.
B) goes mind surfing in the creature's mind. They don't actually fight the creature but instead the manifestations of its mind. So it's not just a fight, but an adventure with different types of challenges and fights. All of them very much real with real consequences.
C) They go on a quest to find the creatures True Name and gain some degree of absolute power over it.
To be honest, size doesn't matter much mechanically in 5e. All it means is that the creature is really large (gargantuan) and that doesn't really affect the creature's other stats. In short, size is unimportant when making big, awesome and memorable boss fights. What is important though is having mechanically unique and interesting monsters with Semako-homebrew-monster-stat-block level complexity.
You are mostly right. Stats and abilities are more important and while the monster building guides suggest more health and damage for larger creatures you don't have to do that. There are some things size always does for example increasing reach and hence increasing the number opportunity attacks as well as increasing aoe effects but these are often situational.
In this case I think we are talking about a monster so large it wouldn't fit on a battle map in which case you often lose elements like positioningif you run on a battle map. It may be possible to run it theater of the mind without issues because space is a little bit more fluid then.
Not quite the same thing, but you might want to check out the finale of the second Critical Role campaign. The final boss might give you some ideas as how to represent an opponent with gargantuan reach.
I do agree with others that treating the creature as more a dungeon or battle map than something you're putting on the battle map is probably the way you. You could kill it Fantastic Voyage style (old sci-fi where a crew was micronized in a submarine to deal with a VIP's brain tumor or blood clot), where the PCs have to destroy the being's heart or mind, of course the being is populated with various powerful guardians inside it that are basically it's immune system. Ooo! Maybe there's some sort of prophecy hinting it's only weakness is itself, so they have to get inside the being, and like harvest weapons out of its ribcage or something.
When you bring in a titanic monster, you need to think beyond "This will be an encounter that my players fight as a normal combat."
There is no way that a warrior with a sword can do anything of use against the creature directly in a stand-up fight. Even a ranked up fireball isn't going to scratch it. So what you need to think about instead is this:
How do you kill a titanic creature?
Options:
Destroy it from the inside
Use an artifact against it
Use some ancient magic to bind it between magical towers
Fight its mind on a dream plane
Alter its form to be smaller and killable
Something else
If you're a FLYING SNAKE stop reading and don't read the spoiler here. This is what I'm planning for my own campaign, where the PCs are fighting a living city (imagine my horror when I found out that Critical Role was doing something similar long after my campaign started :-/ ):
The evil city is banished from the world and buried in a demi-plane. From levels 1 to 13 the PCs have been striving to prevent the city from returning to the world. They will defeat the enemies trying to do so around level 14 and are nearing the end of that arc.
But banishing the city back to its demi-plane is only a temporary solution. To finally destroy it they need to enter its demi-plane and destroy it there - but to do that they first need to put an artifact back together, acquiring pieces of it and conducting rituals. This will lead them to various other planes from levels 14-18. At level 18 they'll be able to enter the demi-plane and fight their way through the city itself, which will take them all the way to level 20. At level 20 they'll be able to take on the malevolent presence at the city's heart, where they'll deploy the artifact to finalise victory and end the threat forever.
Of course, they might come up with something else themselves, and find another way to do it, but this is my loose way for them to achieve the impossible.
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I am working on the climax of my campaign and it's going to feature Dagon and Jormungandr; the demon prince of the deep and the world serpent. Both of these are likely to be targeted by the party at some point, but they are way too big to be conventional fights.
Has anyone successfully run anything with creatures the size of a city? I am planning on there existing an as-yet-undecided weapon which can be used against Dagon, and as this climax involved Ragnarok, the norse gods will help with Jormungandr, but that leaves the party uninvolved, which sucks!
Any ideas and experiences welcomed!
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Maybe part of the quest is shrinking it down to a reasonable size. The old ritual/artifact that will turn this incomprehensiblly big creature is to something more fitting in game terms, like gargantuan or something.
Or they could have to fight parts of it. Bits of the world serpent are exposed, and the party has to go around smacking each of them. And put it on a timer or they’ll regenerate.
This is a kaiju fight. You fight kaiju with kaiju. So the question could be... How do the PCs tame/change into/summon their own kaiju?
I would say have the party need to find something that makes them grow in size, then during the battle you can have a full on city destroying battle of titans.
I’d agree that kaiju=fun. But practically it would be a pain. The point would be that, instead of a longsword, you swing some XXXL longsword. And the correspondingly larger amount of die. (And yes, absolutely, lots of dice=fun). And I guess you then have to homebrew new spells to match the increased die the martials are doing. But then you need to boost enemy hp to match the extra damage.
So yes, lots of cool, lots of dice. But also lots of homebrew, and then, in the fight, lots and lots of math.
That’s why I’m thinking you shrink the enemy. Then you don’t need any homebrew, and you use math that already does what you want instead of just hoping you got it right when you upscale everything.
The crazy giant fight could be fun for a finale, but I wouldn’t want to do it more than once. Maybe twice.
That’s not a monster…that’s a dungeon!
The party could move around on top of or within the titan and destroy specific “organs” or other parts of it that will cause it significant damage.
There are a few strategies inspired from video games and movies
To be honest, size doesn't matter much mechanically in 5e. All it means is that the creature is really large (gargantuan) and that doesn't really affect the creature's other stats. In short, size is unimportant when making big, awesome and memorable boss fights. What is important though is having mechanically unique and interesting monsters with Semako-homebrew-monster-stat-block level complexity.
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HERE.I have had the titan idea myself. Something about penetrating a giant crab as it walks across the land. My idea was, you attack it from the inside out. One mission should be to destroy its hearing, another to destroy its brain stem and so on. Each part of the body is varied and full of parasites and home to a plethora of creatures.
What if the party
A) traps and confronts the creature in an astral form in the astral plane or another simultaneously existing semi-material plane where the physical size of the creature can differ from its form on the prime material plane.
B) goes mind surfing in the creature's mind. They don't actually fight the creature but instead the manifestations of its mind. So it's not just a fight, but an adventure with different types of challenges and fights. All of them very much real with real consequences.
C) They go on a quest to find the creatures True Name and gain some degree of absolute power over it.
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You are mostly right. Stats and abilities are more important and while the monster building guides suggest more health and damage for larger creatures you don't have to do that. There are some things size always does for example increasing reach and hence increasing the number opportunity attacks as well as increasing aoe effects but these are often situational.
In this case I think we are talking about a monster so large it wouldn't fit on a battle map in which case you often lose elements like positioningif you run on a battle map. It may be possible to run it theater of the mind without issues because space is a little bit more fluid then.
Not quite the same thing, but you might want to check out the finale of the second Critical Role campaign. The final boss might give you some ideas as how to represent an opponent with gargantuan reach.
I do agree with others that treating the creature as more a dungeon or battle map than something you're putting on the battle map is probably the way you. You could kill it Fantastic Voyage style (old sci-fi where a crew was micronized in a submarine to deal with a VIP's brain tumor or blood clot), where the PCs have to destroy the being's heart or mind, of course the being is populated with various powerful guardians inside it that are basically it's immune system. Ooo! Maybe there's some sort of prophecy hinting it's only weakness is itself, so they have to get inside the being, and like harvest weapons out of its ribcage or something.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
When you bring in a titanic monster, you need to think beyond "This will be an encounter that my players fight as a normal combat."
There is no way that a warrior with a sword can do anything of use against the creature directly in a stand-up fight. Even a ranked up fireball isn't going to scratch it. So what you need to think about instead is this:
How do you kill a titanic creature?
Options:
If you're a FLYING SNAKE stop reading and don't read the spoiler here. This is what I'm planning for my own campaign, where the PCs are fighting a living city (imagine my horror when I found out that Critical Role was doing something similar long after my campaign started :-/ ):
The evil city is banished from the world and buried in a demi-plane. From levels 1 to 13 the PCs have been striving to prevent the city from returning to the world. They will defeat the enemies trying to do so around level 14 and are nearing the end of that arc.
But banishing the city back to its demi-plane is only a temporary solution. To finally destroy it they need to enter its demi-plane and destroy it there - but to do that they first need to put an artifact back together, acquiring pieces of it and conducting rituals. This will lead them to various other planes from levels 14-18. At level 18 they'll be able to enter the demi-plane and fight their way through the city itself, which will take them all the way to level 20. At level 20 they'll be able to take on the malevolent presence at the city's heart, where they'll deploy the artifact to finalise victory and end the threat forever.
Of course, they might come up with something else themselves, and find another way to do it, but this is my loose way for them to achieve the impossible.