Hey, so I am running a campaign with six level 8 players and mind flayers for villains. I want it to end with an elder brain boss, but I noticed far too late that the CR is a whopping 14! I am not afraid of challenging my players, but I think they will be upset if I TPK them with such a powerful boss. Is there some way I can solve this? I'm not above simply nerfing the stat block, but I feel like there are more satisfying ways to go about this, like giving them some kind of special weapon, or having allies which help fight. Depending on how quickly my players work, this boss battle may commence in a few sessions! Please help!
Perhaps consider waves? So technically it’s two fights rather than one massive one?
also consider the adventure day, it’s assumed the party will fight a number of fights equal to X experience per day. So spread out it should be manageable
perhaps there’s something environmentally that could be done? Terrain manipulation to create bottlenecks? Artifacts that sever the link between the mindflayer and elder brain? This would lead to confusion and probably have you basically skipping monsters turns as if stunned. Or maybe there’s magic items, possibly Gith which specifically target psychic beings and do additional damage to burn through enemies health faster
finally if you’re really wanting a big fight, maybe have some kind of limited resource that provides the benifit of a short rest? That way some abilities will come back, warlocks get spells back and players could spend hit dice to heal
Hey, so I am running a campaign with six level 8 players and mind flayers for villains. I want it to end with an elder brain boss, but I noticed far too late that the CR is a whopping 14! I am not afraid of challenging my players, but I think they will be upset if I TPK them with such a powerful boss. Is there some way I can solve this?
By adding minions to the fight so they don't kill it too fast? CR 14 is not in general a particularly hard fight for 6x level 8, though specific details can change that (the stun on mind blast could be a problem, though the elder brain has very poor defenses).
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just play it out and if necessary you can always reduce the amount of damage it can take. Seriously though 6 lvl 8 can dish out quite a lot of punishment.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Actually, I would be tempted to change the elder brain's mind blast to last for one round, because being perma-stunned is both fairly likely (most people do not have good Int saves, and it's DC 18) and extremely unfun.
One huge thing here is alternate win/loss conditions. It's only a TPK if the villains are fighting to the death. If they're fighting to subdue and tadpole, or subdue and interrogate, or subdue and ransom, capture to use as slave labor, etc, then you have a lot more freedom to present a really challenging encounter without pulling punches and seeing how the players measure up through planning and tactical thinking.
Come up with a reason why your bad guy won't kill the entire party and you won't have a TPK. Maybe one character dies and the rest are captured-- now your players are primed to kill the baddie who killed their friend, and the party can meet the player's new character in baddie jail and can try do a jailbreak adventure.
Looking at the stat block, from the Legacy one, at least, I personally don't see much there to scare a team of 6 8th level PC's. If the PC's are half decent at playing their characters, it shouldn't really be too big a fuss and I expect, outside some heavy interference, or environmental tricks that prevent the PC's from targeting the brain, fairly quick.
A paltry 10 AC will have almost every attack on the Brain land. With only 210 HP, your Brain better make the most of every last action it gets, because 6 PC's will chew through that super fast. I personally would unleash everything I could from the Brain, to at least TRY to make it a challenging fight. Hell, 2 Rangers with Archery fighting style would be hell to this soft, relatively scrawny enemy. I could be wrong, but it looks to me like the CR is high because of so many available options. Action economy will still be on the party's side, however, with 6 of them and all the martials having double attack.
You know your group though, so maybe you're seeing something I am overlooking. The group I run for is only 4 PC's and to be honest, i would possibly consider that as an enemy for them, too. No minions to add to the challenge, just the brain though. I'd skip the lair stuff as well, as I don't enjoy having 50 options every turn to sort through lol. The party could stumble into the room it's in via some back door escape route the creature had, likely.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Looking at the stat block, from the Legacy one, at least, I personally don't see much there to scare a team of 6 8th level PC's.
If the room is in is too small to get out of the area of its mind blast, the 32 damage isn't really that big a deal, but the stun (1 minute, repeat save every turn) with a DC 18 Int save is a definite problem.
Looking at the stat block, from the Legacy one, at least, I personally don't see much there to scare a team of 6 8th level PC's.
If the room is in is too small to get out of the area of its mind blast, the 32 damage isn't really that big a deal, but the stun (1 minute, repeat save every turn) with a DC 18 Int save is a definite problem.
The DC is on the high side. The GM could have it never recharge. I think most of the other things it can do are single target.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Hey, so I am running a campaign with six level 8 players and mind flayers for villains. I want it to end with an elder brain boss, but I noticed far too late that the CR is a whopping 14! I am not afraid of challenging my players, but I think they will be upset if I TPK them with such a powerful boss. Is there some way I can solve this? I'm not above simply nerfing the stat block, but I feel like there are more satisfying ways to go about this, like giving them some kind of special weapon, or having allies which help fight. Depending on how quickly my players work, this boss battle may commence in a few sessions! Please help!
Best Spells: https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2190706-applause, https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2047204-big-ol-switcheroo, https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2188701-cerwicks-copper-cables
Best Feats: https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/1512461-soapbox-revised
Best Monsters: https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/3775489-jar-jar-binks, https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/3860024-spare-ribs
Perhaps consider waves? So technically it’s two fights rather than one massive one?
also consider the adventure day, it’s assumed the party will fight a number of fights equal to X experience per day. So spread out it should be manageable
perhaps there’s something environmentally that could be done? Terrain manipulation to create bottlenecks? Artifacts that sever the link between the mindflayer and elder brain? This would lead to confusion and probably have you basically skipping monsters turns as if stunned. Or maybe there’s magic items, possibly Gith which specifically target psychic beings and do additional damage to burn through enemies health faster
finally if you’re really wanting a big fight, maybe have some kind of limited resource that provides the benifit of a short rest? That way some abilities will come back, warlocks get spells back and players could spend hit dice to heal
By adding minions to the fight so they don't kill it too fast? CR 14 is not in general a particularly hard fight for 6x level 8, though specific details can change that (the stun on mind blast could be a problem, though the elder brain has very poor defenses).
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just play it out and if necessary you can always reduce the amount of damage it can take. Seriously though 6 lvl 8 can dish out quite a lot of punishment.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Actually, I would be tempted to change the elder brain's mind blast to last for one round, because being perma-stunned is both fairly likely (most people do not have good Int saves, and it's DC 18) and extremely unfun.
One huge thing here is alternate win/loss conditions. It's only a TPK if the villains are fighting to the death. If they're fighting to subdue and tadpole, or subdue and interrogate, or subdue and ransom, capture to use as slave labor, etc, then you have a lot more freedom to present a really challenging encounter without pulling punches and seeing how the players measure up through planning and tactical thinking.
Come up with a reason why your bad guy won't kill the entire party and you won't have a TPK. Maybe one character dies and the rest are captured-- now your players are primed to kill the baddie who killed their friend, and the party can meet the player's new character in baddie jail and can try do a jailbreak adventure.
Looking at the stat block, from the Legacy one, at least, I personally don't see much there to scare a team of 6 8th level PC's. If the PC's are half decent at playing their characters, it shouldn't really be too big a fuss and I expect, outside some heavy interference, or environmental tricks that prevent the PC's from targeting the brain, fairly quick.
A paltry 10 AC will have almost every attack on the Brain land. With only 210 HP, your Brain better make the most of every last action it gets, because 6 PC's will chew through that super fast. I personally would unleash everything I could from the Brain, to at least TRY to make it a challenging fight. Hell, 2 Rangers with Archery fighting style would be hell to this soft, relatively scrawny enemy. I could be wrong, but it looks to me like the CR is high because of so many available options. Action economy will still be on the party's side, however, with 6 of them and all the martials having double attack.
You know your group though, so maybe you're seeing something I am overlooking. The group I run for is only 4 PC's and to be honest, i would possibly consider that as an enemy for them, too. No minions to add to the challenge, just the brain though. I'd skip the lair stuff as well, as I don't enjoy having 50 options every turn to sort through lol. The party could stumble into the room it's in via some back door escape route the creature had, likely.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
If the room is in is too small to get out of the area of its mind blast, the 32 damage isn't really that big a deal, but the stun (1 minute, repeat save every turn) with a DC 18 Int save is a definite problem.
The DC is on the high side. The GM could have it never recharge. I think most of the other things it can do are single target.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Unless you've used up a lot of their resources, 6 x level 8 players should annihilate it in 2-3 turns.