This video is sponsored by the Curse of the Usurper Kickstarter by Tomb Guardians. check it out here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/tombguardians/curse-of-the-usurper-rpg-5e-0?ref=9zjbyj
there are way too many comments here but i hope you see this one: i have a house rule that i use at my tables. Whenever you make an attack, you declare the targeted area on the body (e.g neck/wing/knee/arm). If you then go on to get a crit, you hit the targeted area. that can inflict debuffs such as save or stunned for a round (neck), save or half movement (leg) and so on. This has worked really well with both experienced and new players alike, as it gives a reason to the typical “but why can’t i aim for the neck”. I would really love to get in touch with you guys but I am not on the discord server so this is my only way of contacting you. I love watching your content, keep up the great work with your advice for players and guides for gms.
I have a question. When an epic monster decides to use its turn to end an effect on it can advantage or disadvantage be applied to it? Can silvery barbs be used on that roll?
@@jonathanphone6419 Epic Resistance isn’t an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw - it’s just a straight d20 roll. As such, it can’t be affected by Silvery Barbs, and features which would give disadvantage on an ability check or saving throw don’t apply to it. Our design goal with Epic Resistance is to minimize as much as possible ways to manipulate the dice roll involved.
An easy dial for HP issues is to have it heal itself as one of its legendary actions. The DM can choose this action when they need a few more HP to stay in the fight or disgard it if the HP dial was just right.
Even better if this is healing with prerequisits. "With legendary action, Necrotreant drains energy from the river of blood under its roots" so move it from blood river, block river with stone or just try to cut off roots.
hp cheating really works here. you can keep track of roughly how much damage has been dealt and how much hp the boss is roughly gonna have and just add or remove in practice to guarantee a climactic finisher
There's a good reason it's not Dungeons and Goblins. It's Dungeons and MF'ing Dragons. An epic boss is crucial to emphasize the significance of the situation, and this was really good stuff. Thanks gents 🙏
@@paximilian4037but it's still generic as a monster. it could have incredible character work, but your gonna remember the dragons fights regardless of rp
@@paximilian4037 so you just didn't understand that I said you can roleplay it as an interesting monster but a dragon is by default memorable from just being a dragon
I was first thinking of just giving the monster legendary actions based of the number of player characters present in the fight! Ex. 2 player characters = 2 legendary actions or 5 player characters = 5 legendary actions! But I like this Epic Actions too!
Epic Boss Battles Discussion Traditional boss battles are climactic and memorable.However, issues can arise:Unbalanced action economy. Challenges with legendary resistances. Epic bosses should respond to the party's every move for dynamic gameplay. Proposed "Epic Actions": Boss responds after every player action, offering a dynamic back-and-forth battle. Proposed System for Epic Bosses Epic bosses don't take regular turns but move and use interactions. Boss takes "Epic Actions" after every player's turn. Three categories for epic actions: Repeatable actions. Once-per-round actions. Rare, high-effort actions. Epic Resistance Addressing incapacitation effects like stun or control. Boss spends one epic action to resist an effect with a 50% success rate (roll 11 or higher on a D20). System encourages players to stack effects on the boss.
This is amazing, I'm new to being a DM and our first combat was much closer to LARP'ing with dnd mechanics than typical, and this whole videos like a how to guide on this concept!
Now I want a PDF with the Bosses of Drakkenheim designed in this way. Btw last week I started my first Drakkenheim campaign as a DM and my players seem to be hooked.
Ran these rules in a one shot last night, with a reflavored Stone Giant acting as the Champ from slay the spire, it went excellently! The party loved it, and enjoyed the back and forth of how spells being cast affected the boss.
@@AnaseSkyrider I’m drafting up a time eater fight that incapacitates a player after their twelfth clock tick, based on actions like movement, actions, and bonus actions. I think it’s gonna be great.
This was EXACTLY what I needed looking for inspiration for how to give my players a final battle they’ll never forget - definitely going to try out the Epic Action idea with my Chronomancer BBEG flavored as them messing with the flow of time itself!
One of the big lessons I’ve learned from studying game theory and decision theory is that there is an ocean of difference between things you can interact with and things you can act upon. Most 5e bosses are things you can act upon, but this is closer to something you can interact with. I personally would like to see something like a cross between that reaction to being crit where the monster takes active action as a result of the player’s behavior and a feature like when trolls lose their regeneration when they take fire damage so it’s something the players can actively choose to engage with rather than having it be random chance from a crit. Having the monster change the way that it interacts with the players based on the player’s decisions is a very interesting mechanic. I also like the idea of stacking multiple control effects on a single monster to hold it down. I have the image in my head of an all wizard party casting control effects on a powerful elemental that’s towering over them, keeping it contained until they can either assert direct control over it or banish it back from whence it came.
The reason I like this so much is it really sells the strength of the legendary monster in a believable way. A dragon standing up to four heroes at once, in and of itself, sings praise to the sheer jaw-dropping power the dragon commands. Will absolutely be using this in an upcoming finale, thank you so much!
This is great! I handle Legendary resistances in a similar way "Flee, Mortals!" does. A legendary resistance costs the creature something. Minions, hp, effects it has on enemies, etc. It works pretty well!
I really like this concept😊 I have been contemplating having a backwards dungeon where you start the a big boss battle soon after they enter. By doing this they will have used most of their resources, but will then need to proceed without (or very limited) short rests. Then you put monsters that get progressively weaker until they get to the end. By that time they should end up having a combat that would have been really easy, but will actually be rather difficult. 😆
To make my samurai and ninja villains feel more thematic. I gave them 3 legendary reactions instead of legendary actions, and it's been sooo good and fun.
I love this idea! I've experimented with boss battles before, and I have done ways to augment the damage to have it feel more dangerous. My next table I am wanting to test this out
The "epic action" instead of regular turn is brilliant! It makes the fight MUCH more dynamic, and the difficulty scales with party size. The middleground for the legendary resistance / players cheesing the boss is also much appreciated. DM: The dragon takes a deep breath..... Player: Oh no! The breath weapon! That sounds fun and exciting.
This sounds amazing honestly. The solution to the problem of action economy? Just equalize it between players and the legendary boss. It seems to make it feel like this one foe is fighting against all the players at the same time, which is exactly what you'd want to go for if you create one single big foe. I just today though about legendary resistances, and though about a system, where a legendary monster can simply end a spell-condition at the beginning of their turn, ensuring, that the monste doesn't get completely blasted, but the players still get something out of the spell. But I think I like your idea better. The problem with mine is, that unlucky initiative can still make it weird. Scenarios would come up, where the monster comes immediately after the wizard, and so the wizards spell is basically worthless, or the monster comes late in initiative and the entire party can make use of the debilitating effect. With your idea there is less of a risk of a spell being really, really bad for the monster, while it can still be effective.
Perfect timing guys. I have a marathon one shot of 1st edition White Plume Mountain coming up on Saturday. This will make the boss battle so fun. Great vid!
Legendary monsters are easily one of the best things about 5e, they really go a long way into making epic encounters in a way that most other systems really can't match (looking at YOU, PF2). And building them on your own is even more fun! :D
Insanely complicated boss monsters with homebrew mechanics aren't necessary if you simply vary the terrain. I DM for between 6 and 8 PCs at level 12 that easily made mincemeat of a CR23 Kraken on an open sea. But a CR20 Pit Fiend in a lava pit with only one long, narrow, booby-trapped entrance had them cursing their very existence. Unfriendly terrain shuts down the Rogue's ability to hide, a bend in the corridor shuts down the Gunslinger's Elven Accuracy, consistent environmental damage prevents most proximity-based spells from being effective, etc. It required teamwork - the Druid had to turn into a Fire Elemental to provide an opening even though she couldn't damage the Fiend, the Barbarian had to sacrifice himself to discourage the Fiend lobbing Fireballs with impunity, the Cleric had to throw Protection from Energy on the Paladin to let him survive long enough to do real damage.
While that's true, it means players are in fact more fighting the terrain that the creature. That doesn't quite adress the design flaw of action economy being so skewed that no monster is actually monstruous as soon as six random adventurers show up. When some simply should. However, adding your approach on top of properly designed epic monsters, now that's going to make things interesting!
This is so cool! Okay so in regards to Monty's point at 20:20, that makes me think of boss enemies that are almost reverse-Voltrons in that different parts/ components of them have certain thresholds for damage/ abilities used against them (e.g. Dragon wings/ Claws/ mouth/ tail/ etc) and different initiatives along with a reaction to 'do their thing' at the end of a PC's turn, such that the PCs are incentivized to trap/ bind/ break each element in turn to take them out of commission. For example, I'm picturing a Dragon with one arm Grappled, one arm through a Banishment portal, two wings under an effect like 'Hold Monster', and the Barbarian swinging on the Tail, screaming their head off, similar to a Thanos-Infinity-War situation, to incapacitate the BBEG in a team way, instead of a singular effect debilitating it.
Great video. In a campaign a few years ago I had a epic final campaign battle against an evil God of magic and I used an action order similar to what you suggest. I didn't use initiative, the BBEG just got an action after every PC action, so I just said "who wants to go first?" This actually unnerved the players. IN my case I didn't get into deep mechanics as you have, since this was a creture of chaos magic, so his action were more like reaction. There was a random table with some effects being the last action the PC took is undone, or the BBEG gets a magical effect. Anyway the one action for each PC is a great idea for epic battles
Love this concept! An odd idea that popped into my head about the idea of having a boss locked down with multiple control effects: What if the boss rolling a Nat 20 on its Epic Resistance roll made it break out of all stuns etc at once? I feel like that could lead to some interesting tide-turning moments, almost cinematic in when the boss monster breaks loose.
Just what I needed! My players are creeping up on Lv12, and I'm having trouble giving them a challenge that doesn't last forever. I'm really excited to try this!
I really like this type of Boss design. When you mentioned the Idea to give the players the option to clip the dragons wings to prevent it from flying, I thought about how you could implement things like that: Add damage thresholds to the limbs of a really big Monster and have them break when the Monster takes enough damage that was targeted at that limb. Here is an example for a dragon(1000HP): -Wings(150HP): when broken the dragon can’t fly and can’t use attacks that involve the wings. -Tail(150HP): when broken the dragon can’t perform any tail attacks. -Legs/Feat(250HP each): when 1 is broken the dragons movement speed is halved and when both are broken its speed is 0. -Head: can’t get broken, but attacks against the head crit on a 19 or 20. I think this can create a really cool dynamic for the fight because this naturally gives the fight different stages: “The dragon flies around raining down its breath from high above. The party clips the wings with an onslaught of ranged attacks. After the dragon has been grounded the barbarian and the paladin start cutting down its ankles with their powerful greatsword attacks… A smite enhanced attack finally breaks the second leg and the dragon falls to the floor. With the head in reach the rouge rushes in to deal sneak attack damage and thrusts their rapier into the eye of the dragon delivering the fatal blow.“ And this also gives the party a better grasp of the damage. Instead of the Monster simply becoming bloody it endures serious, fight impacting injuries. Also maybe some crowd control or debuff effects can effect limbs independently. So they are not shutting down the Monster completely, but still bring a decent amount of value. If you read this far tell me what you think about this idea. ❤
oh, you kept me waiting at the beginning for your classic introduction part! i was thinking :oh no what happened?" and then it happened!!! so satisfying :)
Damn this is great. I’ve been wondering how to replace legendary resistance, and was thinking something like breaking a guard. With this, you could do lair actions on the boss’ turn to help the villain shape each round. This is a great idea, thanks for sharing!
One thing i like my bosses to have is both spell effects and martial attacks. But giving up all the attacks to cast a spell also feels bad. What i ended up doing essentially got added in the OneD&D playtest for high level Eldritch Knights: replace 2 attacks with a spell. What i had designed for an earth bender monk (akin to Avatar the Last Airbender) miniboss was that they get 3 attacks per turn, like a level 5+ monk has 2 attacks with their action and 1 bonus action attack. I also wanted the miniboss to be able to cast catapult, but doing so would mean no bonus action attack. I decided to allow the bonus action attack anyway. So, the earth bender coule launch a rock with catapult and still make an unarmed strike, or make 3 unarmed strikes. It feels quite versatile and can react to what would be more effective in a fight Similarly, im planning on allowing it to cast fog cloud for 2 attacks, kicking up a cloud of dust
I recently ran a colossal adamantine construct boss fight. It had a total ~840 hit points split among 4 parts which acted on different initiatives. Each part had 2-3 actions it could use. Head and Torso's special actions recharged on another part being broken and torso taking 60 damage since last use. It was fun.
This made my brain explode with ideas 💡!!!!!!!! Omg, so there should be a single use big epic action that only recharges at bloody, great way to swing the difficulty back in check! Omg i hope my group likes this! Sharing NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I really like the idea of reactionary boss battles where the boss changes in response to something the players did. Thus even if you replay the same creature in a different game, the battle will be completely different. One way I thought about how this could be achieved is with different phases of an epic fight. It can be hard to balance this out so as not to cheapen the experience for the players, but introducing the idea of a reactionary battle I feel this can be overcome. At it's core there are 2 phases- a main phase and an end phase. During the main phase there are 2 or more requirements that need to be met before the boss can enter the end stage. It should be said, the boss cannot die during this phase. One requirement would be the number of hit points the boss needs to take before it can enter the end phase and another requirement is the number of rounds of combat that need to go by. There may also boss-specific requirements that need to be fulfilled as well to "find their weakness" making them vulnerable to a final blow. These extra requirements provide narrative implications as well because now the players need to learn something about the boss before they will go down. Lets use the Tarrasque for example. In 5e all you need is an aarakocra archer to take down the Tarrasque. But with this system, the Tarrasque has a 3rd requirement of taking 100 points of acid damage, have its reflective carapace broken by a 5th level spell or higher, or any number of game design requirements. Or maybe we can use Strahd von Zarovich for example and say you need to destroy his Heart of Sorrow before he can even enter his end phase during battle, or damage him with some macguffin. The mechanical and role play possibilities are endless here. The other thing you can do during the main phase is debilitate the boss by taking away epic actions. Here is where you could target a specific body part or take away a special weapon thus hindering the boss's actions for the rest of the fight. As examples, you could target the dragon's wing to remove their additional movement granted them by an epic action that gives them that added fly speed. Or cut a eye stalk off a beholder completely removing that ability for the rest of the battle. It should be noted that these targeted shots would not necessarily affect the total hit points the creature takes during the main phase for the sake of overcoming the hit points needed to enter the end phase and they would have a different AC (probably higher) than the total AC of the boss. Once the main phase is done, the boss can enter some sort of end phase. Here the boss can either get stronger or weaker depending on what happened during the main phase. And if the players dealt so much damage during the main phase, the end phase could be quite quick--even 1 round. On the flip side, the end phase could be a time the boss has godly power with unique epic actions, but is also mortal (like the avatar state for all you Aang fans out there). The end phase also has a hit point requirement, but it can be increased or reduced based upon the amount of damage that was taken during the main phase and the boss dies once is reaches 0. As you can see, main stage requirements and epic action debilitation requirements can make for extremely varied boss fights and provide replayability and interesting dynamic battles for boss monsters. A group of battle hobos could the pound through the main stage and end stage hit points of a creature whereas tactical wizards could tear down all the boss's defenses rendering them impotent. Makes for a fun puzzle to figure out during battle and dynamic play for both player character and game master. Sorry about the long post and if any of this is confusing. Its kind of just some flight of ideas I had during your video and wanted to put them somewhere. Great vid! As a side note, I like the idea of epic resistance but think it would do better as an ability. And instead of just making it a 50:50 roll, just let the boss chose one affect and allow them to re-roll any saving throw to end that effect as an epic action. Thus it still rewards players for choosing spells that should be effective against it without completely destroying the boss's action economy.
I've also been adding in something called Showdowns - A character rolls an attack or spell attack against the boss's attack or spell attack. On success, the boss loses a legendary move or something else epic happens. On a fail, the boss gains an advantage in the fight or something really bad happens to the player character. This has led to some really intense 1V1 rolls, player characters using their turns to buff a certain party member or struggling to climb back after a failed Showdown. It also helps with the action economy by forcing player characters to use their turns to either buff other members or use their action to Showdown or use their turns recovering after a failed one.
I love the idea that Epic monsters have attacks that fit in the rules but aren't like other attacks. Things like having a Tail attack be 2-3 targets in the 15ft reach instead of the 1 target/saving throw it always shows up as, or a telegraphed ability that provides a telegraphing detriment in the moment and becomes devastating on a later turn. The trick I find though is that it needs to be able to be powerful enough to swat away things that they would fell legendary creatures, like a select resistance/immunity/interference with divine magic, the ability to break through constructs of magical force, critical hits unleashing a retaliating save of gushing blood, or being able to completely toss aside a small army worth of grapples in a single turn. Teamwork to stack debuffs is _fine_ and all, but for something "Epic" it should be powerful enough that those sorts of things are only detrimental if all stacked together. You have to find the balance where it doesn't feel like your only option is a DPS race, while stacking debuffs doesn't completely invalidate the encounter. For instance, our table has opted to, in the face of many "war crimes," (read: Insect Plague + Wall of Force) decree that Wall of Force is visible like Tiny Hut is, and due to it being visible allows a DEX save similar to Wall of Stone to allow a trapped target to escape. Legendary Resistance doesn't matter if the party can cast Insect Plague for 200d10 damage across ten minutes of 100 successful saves, Legendary Action move (half) speed through difficult terrain won't get them out of the 20ft radius before they get trapped in a Wall of Force in a sphere/dome shape, and it happening to the last 5 encounters of Hard+ difficulty makes the Martials _and_ myself (the DM) very sad and really makes me think that 5e and it's Concentration requirements did not have its monsters designed with parties of multiple casters in mind. We're also adopting the playtest change to Counterspell, which prompts a CON save to complete the spell (thereby working with LR), and it doesn't expend the spell slot if countered. That way it doesn't feel like the end of the world if the CON Cleric's big level 7 Banishment is told "work for it," it doesn't provide such a big advantage that it feels necessary to always have Counterspell to counter-counter, the bosses with CON scores might actually be able to cast their spells, and it doesn't feel mandatory for caster BBEGs to always have Counterspell prepared so that they can cast more than cantrips during their fight.
I’m glad that this feels more like a development video rather than a finished product. It’s cool to see that you guys are still in the middle of the process, and are giving us a window into it.
Dear Dungeon Dudes! I would like to thank you SO MUCH for this Epic system! Yesterday I ran the “Rats’ Nest” Tavern for my Dungeons of Drakkenheim campaign. Enter the big momma rat as boss. (Reskinned Rift Swine from the Kobold Press: Tome of Beasts book). There were 5 players each lvl3 in the party (arcane hand monk, exorcist apothecary, inquisitive rogue, echo knight fighter and delirium soul sorcerer). They were really strong for their level, and an ordinary fight would be a breeze for them. However, the Epic Rules I implemented for the first time SHINED. The battle was tense, it was close, and the players all said they were on the edge of their seats, never knowing what would happen each turn instead of relaxing and waiting for their move. It was frankly great. So thank you again and keep doing amazing work!
I've been toying with both Epic Actions (sorta) and Epic Resistances on my own for a bit, and didn't even know you guys were working on it! lol My version of EA is being tested on rival/enemy teams. The players and enemies roll initiative as normal BUT 1) the team that got the highest roll acts first; 2) the highest roller acts first; and 3) the highest opponent goes immediately after. So it's basically the 2 sides trading blows. ER is basically a 1:1 for what I was working on, so that's cool.
thanks for sharing your ideas for making big solo boss monsters more enjoyable for the table as a whole! My current DM struggles hard with understanding that just using a higher CR monster doesn't improve the quality of the combat and it's just as un-fun as the boss monster spending the entire encounter incapacitated.
God dang, this is absolutely ground-breaking stuff. Reminds me of the XCOM 2 dlc bosses which basically had this mechanic and it was amazing in making them super powerful without it feeling unfair.
Thanks a lot! In short: Legendary Actions are not limited and still happen at the end of every PC's turn. A LA can cost a whole round instead of just happening ATE of every PC's turn. A LA can be a Legendary Resistance action instead: choose one effect/spell/condition THEN get a success on 1d20 DC 11 to remove it The Epic Boss still has a normal turn, but only for movement, interaction and the upkeep of spells/effects/conditions etc. Other ways to explore: Additional sets of LA when the health is at 50% or lower A special LA that triggers when it is hit by a CRIT. This system is a better and a simplified way to run Epic Bosses! Thanks again!
I really like the idea of this system encouraging the party to stack conditions on the monster. It feels very much like in Infinity War when the heroes had Thanos grappled by multiple people, charmed, disoriented, and a couple others. The entire party is working together to hold this guy down so they can beat him
I really like this idea, only thing I'd change is that the monster can spend the immediate action on getting out of the effect, I would say that it can only use the next one. Here's why: The "end effect" action has a 50-50 chance to succeed, and it occurs after a saving throw. Even if that's an extremely bad saving throw, and they have like 25% to succeed, it stil compoumds together to only 37.5% to fail both, or 62.5% to succeed either even when they're horribly equipped to handle it. The problem is that if they don't fail both, the player essentially wasted their own action, and only maybe took the same cost from the monster. That, to me, is pretty much a shut down. Delaying that option by one epic action seems like a logical solution, but I need to playtest both to be sure.
I really like this! Even after all these years, I still struggle with making boss fights feel really epic because I want that one big monster vs the players, not a bunch of minions
Coming up on the climax of my campaign, and this is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks! I'm planning to combine this with DnDShorts's Kaiju fighting system, where the monster has different vulnerable areas, each with their own HP pool, and the monster evolves new behaviors when each one is reduced to zero.
One idea i've had is "detrimental immunity" where the monster escapes from a control effect but takes some sort of backlash as a cost. For example, a restrained undead monster can rip its dead flesh free but takes damage from the resulting injury. Or a monster that serves an outer god, when subjected to a charm or other mind control effect recieves a psychic shock from their master that breaks them out, but they take psychic damage from it. These would have to be specific to both the type of monster and the control effect, so they may be a little harder to develop, but they seem like extra flavorful options that show *why* the monster breaks out of a condition instead of just ending it with no elaboration.
Dudes I love it 🤩 straight to my heart ❤️. I play with my kiddos and have implemented our own system of skill challenge combat where the boss (and other enemies) don't have a turn but their actions are dependent on weather and how well the player passes a skill challenge. I know skill challenges are usually a group effort but in combat I've reduced it to each player passing a set number of success vs failure. Other thing needed to be modified but all in all combat is more interesting, suspenseful, and far quicker.
I think this is a great idea. I'm running a game with 8 players and this will make the boss fight so much better. I only plan on changing Epic Resistance a little. Epic Resistance: If you make the boss roll a saving throw, it can choose to fail the save and just take an Epic Action, else it rolls the saving throw normally. If the boss is under the effects of a saving throw it can use Epic Resistance in place of taking an Epic Action to reroll the saving throw at disadvantage, to end the effect early.
Used these rules for the final boss of the first arc of my campaign. It was definitely much more epic and interactive than previous boss battles. Gonna continue to work with them.
There's also always the time honored secret sauce of not just making a boss a pile of HP to chip away at. Don't tell my players this, but the last mini boss battle I did, I wasn't tracking HP at all. Instead I just kept a tally. Once each of my players had landed a big hit or pulled off a cool combo ability that had the whole table dishing out high fives, I announced that the boss was looking bloodied and weakened, and the next attack that rolled above a 15 to hit dealt the killing blow. Players were none the wiser. They felt awesome, and I'm never going to tell them that the HP didn't matter.
For the HP suggestions I typically use one of three ideas to make boss stick around for a good enough length of time: Players averse to fudging look away now. Damage threshold: You should know how much damage roughly your players can dish out, make them do good hits to get in on damage. You can use traditional threshold rules, have to be over a score then it takes that damage. Or you could just use tallies, the party has to beat the threshold ten times to kill it, or maybe just to break it's threshold status, and then it can take damage normally. Obviously these ideas require experience to know how to tune, but they can be tweaked live too if you don't mind playing it by ear. Multiple Bar: Think videogames, how some bosses have heath bars you have to break through. You don't have to explain this to player, in fact I'd try to ground all mechanics in lore building. Like legendary resistances, they should get flavor of the boss resistances not just "it doesn't work" instead say "Bonbonstinkle summons the fart fates to break your concentration as you cast and the scene is filled with a shielding gas, silent and deadly" Idk something like that. But health bars, an example, the party can only do 30 damage to the lich before the lich's powers deepen, realizing these adventures are not pushovers, then the party can only deal 60 damage. The party can't do damage to it's next health bar only it's first, and it can only get a new healthbar and change it's tactics when it takes a turn. This might seem harsh, a boss to just sucks up damage and it does nothing, but just don't tell the players that part... remember as a DM you're selling them on these numbers and feats being a lich anyways. This ties health and moves directly to one another ensuring that you get to pop off the cool moves. Keep in mind you can use those last two in combination or mixed up. All of these parts can have utility. Just don't HP: This one is probably the most controversial, but just don't count the hp numbers. Have your boss do all their cool moves and play the fight as more of a cinematic. React in ways to crits and high damage, slowly being chipped away and becoming more desperate, until the fight reaches a peak and the party is also brought low. This is definitely not a move for unsure or inexperienced DMs or something you should do with a new table or with strangers. You have to be able to use your ethos and experience as a DM. This is a way to run bosses with your table of an RP focused game.
I'm actually making my own system entirely at the moment, and I have to say that I kind of like the way that I'm taking care of it. Instead of having legendary actions / resistances, the preacher that fits the right criteria has a tag. That tag is basic, epic, legendary, and divine. Dependent on which of these tags they roll initiative so many times. One for basic, 2 for epic and so on. If the party hits the creature with the equivalent of a whole person spell or some other crowd control spell it only goes to their next turn. It makes the players expend resources, it helps keep the bosses attacks down, and it still feels good.
I like these ideas a lot. For epic resistance, you could still tie it to the Creatures ability scores, but give it the flat dc they suggested. For example, a stunning strike succeeds on impact, but a creature with a particularly good Constitution score needs an 8 on the resistance roll to end it. Say the creature has a lack luster wisdom score, and needs a 15 to end a hideous laughter effect. It saves it from being the huge DCs that are possible, but is still customized to the individual creature. Maybe a good equation would be: 20 - its bonus in that stat = the resistance DC.
One way I've seen Legendary Resistances be modified that I like is that the creature in question loses access to an ability or something like points in AC in order to break the spell.
Really great idea. I have a little homebrew for legendary resistance, I had a player with access to banish, what I rule is: the monster doesn’t banish… exactly, a portal tries to pull him and let’s say, if it’s a dragon, half of its body is on the other side… so… no tail attack, or wing, or fly away. great job here Ddudes. Really originak take on a serious issue with the game sistem
I like the idea of Legendary Resistance costing something, I've seen it done well in some games. Any creature with a recharge ability is a great use-case for this, if to avoid a failed save vs hold monster the dragon spends the magic that would normally go towards using their breath weapon, that's still a great use of a spell that feels rewarding to the player without rendering the dragon useless (you'd probably have to make it recharge more often or instead of a recharge die have different abilities and uses cost different number of charges, maybe breath weapon costs 3 but legendary resistance costs 2 and they get 1 back per round).
for Legendary Resistance i really love the idea of giving the boss monster active save options, that the players could also take away, but not just for shutdowns, direct damage as well like the boss has a Shield Guardian that absorbs every shutdown effects, or if if the boss has minions it can destroy of few of them and either cancel out a shutdown or regain health
I like to make legendary resistances only be able to take effect on the boss’s turn. So they still have to make the save and if they fail, make it apparent through the narrative that they will use a resistance. For example “your banishment spell starts to take effect and the dragon’s form begins to become ethereal”
The "Breathe in" is a great mood setter. The Dragonslayer movie had excellent sound design on the breath weapon and it allowed the protagonist to respond and prepare for the breath weapon. It gives a lot of agency to the characters actions and allows you to add strategy.
Wow. I love this. As a DM, I’ll certainly be running epic boss fights this way going forward. As a player, I wonder what would happen to my Armorer when I hit an epic boss with my Thunder Gauntlets. 💥🥊
On the Actioneconomy: I personally just have them roll multiple initiatives and have them act more than once per combatround. With the resistance I give my Bossmonster a pool of Legendarypoints that it can use to boost up their saving throws. It will break out of the first ones, but if it rolls bad, it uses up more points.
Im using this for now on. I also been giving monster's muti attacks even if they dont have it to make them feel more deadly and giving them cool environmental moves and abilities to spice it up. Using this mixed on will take my combat to another level
I love these. If I were running this I would 1) make some epic action only able to be triggered in reaction to the player's action. Like if they player used a melee attack they get a grapple response vs if they cast a heal spell then they heal themselves in response. 2) I would flip a coin for the 50/50 roll.
I have started using a mechanic called a 'legendary entrance' Where on initiative count 20 the boss does something to change the landscape, of applies an effect to a large area. Ive had a giant stone guardian spew out landmines everywhere, a gravity mage cause an equivalent to the plant growth spell surrounding it (1/4 movement) Similar to a lair action but specifically something that demonstrates how powerful or dangerous this foe is in particular
Something I've wanted to try that I've heard other games have is let a solo creature have one turn for every turn the player characters get. This is kind of what legendary actions tries to do but not quite. It seems very interesting and I think to make the encounter interesting the boss would have to have a variety of abilities so they don't use all those extra actions to chew through each character's hit points with high damage abilities one by one.
For the epic resistance, I would go with the challenge rating. On a d20 roll, the threshold would be half the challenge rating rounded down. For example, Demogorgon has a challenge rating of 26. So, if you roll a 13 or lower, you get to win your epic resistance. On a 14 or higher, the spell condition is still effective.
My favorite rule is: any hit 5 points above AC (or any defense) has additional effects, both mechanical and narrative. Could be an aimed shot that causes disavantage, a mini-crit, or anything of the sort
Best way to build a boss: calculate the average dpr of the party and multiply that by the amount of rounds you'd like the battle to last (5-10) and that's their HP. Now take the party's total maximum hp and divide by the number of rounds and number of party members, that's the bosses average damage. From there add the most common damage type of the party and add resistances accordingly (obliviously only if it makes sense) and legondary actions that mirror what the party is doing (such as counterspell, silvery barbs, extra attack, freedom of movement, invisibility...)
I really like this idea. One way to give the party the ability to stun/incapacitate the boss without it being overpowered is to give the boss an ability that automatically emanates from them at the end of each round. I also frequently include smaller enemies in boss fights so that they can still threaten the players when the boss is down. Finally I've had fights where the boss is actually quite vulnerable but the players don't know where the boss is and the map is large
Regarding hit points scaling with number of players, this is something that Fantasy Flight do in some of their living card games. Many games have a symbol which means “per player”, so in Marvel Champions, Thanos might have 20hp per player. So fight him solo and he has 20hp, but fight him with a party of three and he has 60hp. It’s a concept that works well there and I could see it working well in D&D too. Great video 👏
Another idea is the Angry GMs concept of "Paragon Monsters" these creatures follow an analogy to the silly concept of a two-tailed two-headed bifurcated snake aka just two snakes. These monsters at a base level behave as if they were mechanically two or more monsters on the battlefield action wise. This also meant they split their total HP into separate pools as you fight it. These can have multiple effects on the creature where as you knock their separate pools to zero things would change like gaining or losing actions per round, and/or losing abilities such as means of attack or types of movement as they fought. It basically gave dnd monsters different forms or battle phases as its HP was diminished.
This is great stuff! And one of the biggest hurdles I encountered running the level 19-20 end of my campaign. Hindsight the reactionary turns and 50/50 on breaking out seems so obvious. I look forward to see a follow-up as I start to plan my next campaign!
At low level if I want a memorable boss that doesn't have legendary features I'll come up with a level appropriate encounter and combine the monsters into one enemy. So for example last month I ran a level 2 boss fight, the enemy was a magical ogre. The real encounter was a fire newt, a duregar and some low cr ogre from MoM. The ogre smoked a pipe, so the fire newt attack was him spitting pipe embers, then the other 2 offered standard attacks. He has 3 initiatives and 3 health pools. If a health pool runs out he loses that stat blocks attacks(in game he drops a weapon or his pipe got broken). The party felt like they fought a really strong monster and he remained balanced since it was just an encounter where all the enemies shared one square on the map
After watching this I decided to apply it to a boss my level 3 party was about to face. It. Was. Awesome! The panic and engagement from the players was terrific. The boss went from a sack of hit points with one solid attack to a constantly morphing threat. Multiple players told me it read the best boss battle they'd ever played. Some observations: 1. I did not give the monster an epic action after a downed player's turn. It was too much of an instakill threat and the break was a much needed reprieve for he stressed out players. 2. One of the epic actions needs to include movement or the PCs can kite the monster too easily. 3. Some of the epic actions need to be ranged. Otherwise the monster spends a bunch of actions doing nothing and it's boring. 4. Making a mythic creature, as Kelly suggested, is a great idea. My fight took place in difficult terrain and when the monster was bloodied it clawed its way up the wall and out of the difficult terrain. It was a definite "oh shit" moment for the players.
"Only Epic Actions" sounds like the rulers in XCom: War of the Chosen. Since every action draws a reaction from the rule, you have to choose your actions VERY carefully. In fact the entire game is a master class in designing boss encounters, including ganding the Chosen abilities from a random pool. Rolling the assassin with a "regenerates shields on missed attack" or combining a "weak to templars" train with a "melee immune" trait can be... interesting. I HIGHLY recommend that you check that game out or talk with someone who has.
With the resistances, you could institute a sliding scale - the first action they spend shrugging needs a 14+, second action is 11+, 3rd, and further actions are 9 or 10+. That way if you get your spell or effect through, you've got a chance to stagger them for a couple of free hits before they shrug it.
What I use for epic boss battles is have spell casting minions that are not out right negating damage from the boss but reducing damage. Of course the key is for the party to go after those minions hence once destroyed the can attack the boss at full force. It keeps the battle a decent pace and your epic boss doesn’t die as quickly.
Of course you can play with this a little like one of them gives the boss magic resistance, and the other might increase its AC and so on. You weaken the boss by taking out its minions.
Idea for EPIC resistance so it’s akin to having 3. First use DC is 5 (so likely success), but using the Epic resistance tires the boss, so the next DC is 10, and similarly the 3rd is 15 (so likely to last 4-5 turns). After that they no longer have EPIC resistance (or if you want - takes a 20 to succeed).
Brennan Lee Mulligan, for the legendary resistances, elects to actually explain legendary resistance. For example, in the unsleeping city campaign during the fight with a lich boss, he describes the lich actually using some of the pure will that’s keeping it alive to resist the attack, emphasizing that it’s a great resource the monster expended. While it’s not a perfect solution, looking at legendary resistances as resources to drain from the boss instead of get out of jail free cards drastically improves how the players look at it, or at least how my group does
If only I knew of this system when I was running my campaign based on the legend of dragoon video game...the party had come up to a virage (massive creature with an eye laser), and the way I had designed it made it so it died before it could move because the eye laser had a charge turn before it fired. With this system, it could have worked wonderfully. I might start using this for similar encounters in the future, like for another virage or one of the dragons.
Really cool video! I got actually inspired by it. I was thinking about the coin flip save for the monster. What if, instead of a plane 50/50 or any fixed probability, the monster get a +2 to its saving throw against the condition in every attempt. In this way, the player targeting a low score of the epic monster is rewarded, but the condition eventually end up in no more than 3-4 rounds. Congrats again for the video, I really like dm ideas and homebrewing!
I like the idea of Epic actions, and have a suggestion for another way to do Epic Resistance: When an Epic Creature is under an effect that resulted from a failed saving throw, as an Epic Action it can break the affect at the cost of 1/X of its hit points. Playtesting needed to determine X, could be different for different epic monsters. Initial thoughts would be 1/4 or 1/5 of its hit points. The fantasy here is seeing the dragon get hit with Hold Monster, and you see it buck and strain against magical illusory chains, until the chains suddenly snap, leaving the dragon's scales broken and blooded where they had been binding it. It gives the DM a choice for "I can't let this affect last", while making the monster resorting to break free in this way satisfying to the player because they didn't just burn a "get out of jail free" ticket, it HURT to break free that way.
One of my favorite bosses I designed had 2 reactions, had an ability that it could grapple any creatures that came within 5ft of it for any reason as a reaction, and could immediately "protagonist throw" them.
Idea for epic resistance: As an epic action, the creature can attempt to end one condition or effect that it acquired by failing a saving throw. The creature re-rolls the saving throw, but does not add its proficiency bonus if it normally would. Instead, it adds +2 for each time it has attempted to end the same effect. Example: The creature fails a saving throw against a stunning strike and becomes stunned. after the player’s turn, the creature uses an epic action to break out of being stunned. It rolls a D20 and adds its constitution modifier + 2. If this beats the original saving throw DC, the creature is no longer stunned. Otherwise, the creature can try again later with another epic action, this time adding its constitution modifier + 4, and so on. This way the creature’s ability scores still matter, but it’s less likely to instantly break out of an effect and less likely to get stuck in an effect forever than if it re-rolled the save normally. You could experiment with whether +1 or +3 per attempt would work better. You could also try having the compounding bonus carry over to other instances of the same effect, which would encourage players to change up their tactics (if the creature tries a few times to get out of a stunning strike, should it be better at breaking out of a second stunning strike?).
I like the fact that some bosses have high savings and then are good to resist those effects. Your players should learn the weakness to aim for them, having a 50/50 vs every effect take some lore back for me.
This video is sponsored by the Curse of the Usurper Kickstarter by Tomb Guardians. check it out here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/tombguardians/curse-of-the-usurper-rpg-5e-0?ref=9zjbyj
there are way too many comments here but i hope you see this one: i have a house rule that i use at my tables. Whenever you make an attack, you declare the targeted area on the body (e.g neck/wing/knee/arm). If you then go on to get a crit, you hit the targeted area. that can inflict debuffs such as save or stunned for a round (neck), save or half movement (leg) and so on. This has worked really well with both experienced and new players alike, as it gives a reason to the typical “but why can’t i aim for the neck”.
I would really love to get in touch with you guys but I am not on the discord server so this is my only way of contacting you. I love watching your content, keep up the great work with your advice for players and guides for gms.
that comment is highly incoherent but i just wanted to get all my thoughts down quickly.
I have a question. When an epic monster decides to use its turn to end an effect on it can advantage or disadvantage be applied to it? Can silvery barbs be used on that roll?
@@jonathanphone6419 Epic Resistance isn’t an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw - it’s just a straight d20 roll. As such, it can’t be affected by Silvery Barbs, and features which would give disadvantage on an ability check or saving throw don’t apply to it.
Our design goal with Epic Resistance is to
minimize as much as possible ways to manipulate the dice roll involved.
An easy dial for HP issues is to have it heal itself as one of its legendary actions. The DM can choose this action when they need a few more HP to stay in the fight or disgard it if the HP dial was just right.
Even better if this is healing with prerequisits. "With legendary action, Necrotreant drains energy from the river of blood under its roots" so move it from blood river, block river with stone or just try to cut off roots.
@@user-wr8sr9fe4mlike hitting a troll with fire, it gives the players a goal other than just hit the boss
Love this!! @@user-wr8sr9fe4m
Stuff like this is why I must remember to always check the comments.
hp cheating really works here. you can keep track of roughly how much damage has been dealt and how much hp the boss is roughly gonna have and just add or remove in practice to guarantee a climactic finisher
This is such an incredible concept that it should actually end up in the new version of DND.
There's a good reason it's not Dungeons and Goblins. It's Dungeons and MF'ing Dragons. An epic boss is crucial to emphasize the significance of the situation, and this was really good stuff. Thanks gents 🙏
A goblin boss can be done well, too.
Every encounter just add 20 more goblins lol
@@paximilian4037but it's still generic as a monster. it could have incredible character work, but your gonna remember the dragons fights regardless of rp
@@fatgumthegoatA monster is only as generic as you let it be.
@@paximilian4037 so you just didn't understand that I said you can roleplay it as an interesting monster but a dragon is by default memorable from just being a dragon
I like Epic Actions - good idea, solid implementation. Well done.
I was first thinking of just giving the monster legendary actions based of the number of player characters present in the fight!
Ex. 2 player characters = 2 legendary actions or 5 player characters = 5 legendary actions!
But I like this Epic Actions too!
This feels like night and day MUCH better for a righteous boss battle! Putting this into a shareable document would be dope as hell. ❤️
Epic Boss Battles Discussion
Traditional boss battles are climactic and memorable.However, issues can arise:Unbalanced action economy.
Challenges with legendary resistances.
Epic bosses should respond to the party's every move for dynamic gameplay.
Proposed "Epic Actions":
Boss responds after every player action, offering a dynamic back-and-forth battle.
Proposed System for Epic Bosses
Epic bosses don't take regular turns but move and use interactions.
Boss takes "Epic Actions" after every player's turn.
Three categories for epic actions:
Repeatable actions.
Once-per-round actions.
Rare, high-effort actions.
Epic Resistance
Addressing incapacitation effects like stun or control.
Boss spends one epic action to resist an effect with a 50% success rate (roll 11 or higher on a D20).
System encourages players to stack effects on the boss.
@@thatguy846 thanks, friend! You’re doing the dungeon Lord’s work!
This is amazing, I'm new to being a DM and our first combat was much closer to LARP'ing with dnd mechanics than typical, and this whole videos like a how to guide on this concept!
Now I want a PDF with the Bosses of Drakkenheim designed in this way.
Btw last week I started my first Drakkenheim campaign as a DM and my players seem to be hooked.
Ran these rules in a one shot last night, with a reflavored Stone Giant acting as the Champ from slay the spire, it went excellently! The party loved it, and enjoyed the back and forth of how spells being cast affected the boss.
I shutter to imagine fighting Donu and Deka as a twinned epic fight.
@@AnaseSkyrider I’m drafting up a time eater fight that incapacitates a player after their twelfth clock tick, based on actions like movement, actions, and bonus actions. I think it’s gonna be great.
This was EXACTLY what I needed looking for inspiration for how to give my players a final battle they’ll never forget - definitely going to try out the Epic Action idea with my Chronomancer BBEG flavored as them messing with the flow of time itself!
that’s badass
One of the big lessons I’ve learned from studying game theory and decision theory is that there is an ocean of difference between things you can interact with and things you can act upon. Most 5e bosses are things you can act upon, but this is closer to something you can interact with.
I personally would like to see something like a cross between that reaction to being crit where the monster takes active action as a result of the player’s behavior and a feature like when trolls lose their regeneration when they take fire damage so it’s something the players can actively choose to engage with rather than having it be random chance from a crit. Having the monster change the way that it interacts with the players based on the player’s decisions is a very interesting mechanic.
I also like the idea of stacking multiple control effects on a single monster to hold it down. I have the image in my head of an all wizard party casting control effects on a powerful elemental that’s towering over them, keeping it contained until they can either assert direct control over it or banish it back from whence it came.
The reason I like this so much is it really sells the strength of the legendary monster in a believable way. A dragon standing up to four heroes at once, in and of itself, sings praise to the sheer jaw-dropping power the dragon commands.
Will absolutely be using this in an upcoming finale, thank you so much!
This is great!
I handle Legendary resistances in a similar way "Flee, Mortals!" does. A legendary resistance costs the creature something. Minions, hp, effects it has on enemies, etc. It works pretty well!
I really like this concept😊
I have been contemplating having a backwards dungeon where you start the a big boss battle soon after they enter. By doing this they will have used most of their resources, but will then need to proceed without (or very limited) short rests. Then you put monsters that get progressively weaker until they get to the end. By that time they should end up having a combat that would have been really easy, but will actually be rather difficult. 😆
To make my samurai and ninja villains feel more thematic. I gave them 3 legendary reactions instead of legendary actions, and it's been sooo good and fun.
I simply gave my Fuhrer halfling boss Marilith's Reactive feature which made him able to take reaction every turn.
I love this idea! I've experimented with boss battles before, and I have done ways to augment the damage to have it feel more dangerous. My next table I am wanting to test this out
The "epic action" instead of regular turn is brilliant! It makes the fight MUCH more dynamic, and the difficulty scales with party size.
The middleground for the legendary resistance / players cheesing the boss is also much appreciated.
DM: The dragon takes a deep breath.....
Player: Oh no! The breath weapon!
That sounds fun and exciting.
This sounds great. I love the idea of having actions/reactions to keep the boss active and make the players think during combat.
This sounds amazing honestly. The solution to the problem of action economy? Just equalize it between players and the legendary boss. It seems to make it feel like this one foe is fighting against all the players at the same time, which is exactly what you'd want to go for if you create one single big foe.
I just today though about legendary resistances, and though about a system, where a legendary monster can simply end a spell-condition at the beginning of their turn, ensuring, that the monste doesn't get completely blasted, but the players still get something out of the spell. But I think I like your idea better. The problem with mine is, that unlucky initiative can still make it weird. Scenarios would come up, where the monster comes immediately after the wizard, and so the wizards spell is basically worthless, or the monster comes late in initiative and the entire party can make use of the debilitating effect. With your idea there is less of a risk of a spell being really, really bad for the monster, while it can still be effective.
Perfect timing guys. I have a marathon one shot of 1st edition White Plume Mountain coming up on Saturday. This will make the boss battle so fun.
Great vid!
A mage epic boss definitely needs a spell-redirection epic (re)action of some sort. I want to Zuko that lightning bolt!
This as a twist on instead of counter spell for them is very interesting
Pretty neat design. It means the boss scales with party members since it gains one action per party member. It helps the scaling.
I like this concept
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I like this channel
I like Turtles 🐢
Legendary monsters are easily one of the best things about 5e, they really go a long way into making epic encounters in a way that most other systems really can't match (looking at YOU, PF2). And building them on your own is even more fun! :D
I often give my bosses lair actions and various forms. Also as the boss loses HP they get slightly stronger and get an ability.
Insanely complicated boss monsters with homebrew mechanics aren't necessary if you simply vary the terrain. I DM for between 6 and 8 PCs at level 12 that easily made mincemeat of a CR23 Kraken on an open sea. But a CR20 Pit Fiend in a lava pit with only one long, narrow, booby-trapped entrance had them cursing their very existence. Unfriendly terrain shuts down the Rogue's ability to hide, a bend in the corridor shuts down the Gunslinger's Elven Accuracy, consistent environmental damage prevents most proximity-based spells from being effective, etc. It required teamwork - the Druid had to turn into a Fire Elemental to provide an opening even though she couldn't damage the Fiend, the Barbarian had to sacrifice himself to discourage the Fiend lobbing Fireballs with impunity, the Cleric had to throw Protection from Energy on the Paladin to let him survive long enough to do real damage.
While that's true, it means players are in fact more fighting the terrain that the creature.
That doesn't quite adress the design flaw of action economy being so skewed that no monster is actually monstruous as soon as six random adventurers show up. When some simply should.
However, adding your approach on top of properly designed epic monsters, now that's going to make things interesting!
This is so cool! Okay so in regards to Monty's point at 20:20, that makes me think of boss enemies that are almost reverse-Voltrons in that different parts/ components of them have certain thresholds for damage/ abilities used against them (e.g. Dragon wings/ Claws/ mouth/ tail/ etc) and different initiatives along with a reaction to 'do their thing' at the end of a PC's turn, such that the PCs are incentivized to trap/ bind/ break each element in turn to take them out of commission. For example, I'm picturing a Dragon with one arm Grappled, one arm through a Banishment portal, two wings under an effect like 'Hold Monster', and the Barbarian swinging on the Tail, screaming their head off, similar to a Thanos-Infinity-War situation, to incapacitate the BBEG in a team way, instead of a singular effect debilitating it.
Great video. In a campaign a few years ago I had a epic final campaign battle against an evil God of magic and I used an action order similar to what you suggest. I didn't use initiative, the BBEG just got an action after every PC action, so I just said "who wants to go first?" This actually unnerved the players.
IN my case I didn't get into deep mechanics as you have, since this was a creture of chaos magic, so his action were more like reaction. There was a random table with some effects being the last action the PC took is undone, or the BBEG gets a magical effect.
Anyway the one action for each PC is a great idea for epic battles
Love this concept!
An odd idea that popped into my head about the idea of having a boss locked down with multiple control effects: What if the boss rolling a Nat 20 on its Epic Resistance roll made it break out of all stuns etc at once? I feel like that could lead to some interesting tide-turning moments, almost cinematic in when the boss monster breaks loose.
Just what I needed! My players are creeping up on Lv12, and I'm having trouble giving them a challenge that doesn't last forever. I'm really excited to try this!
I really like this type of Boss design.
When you mentioned the Idea to give the players the option to clip the dragons wings to prevent it from flying, I thought about how you could implement things like that:
Add damage thresholds to the limbs of a really big Monster and have them break when the Monster takes enough damage that was targeted at that limb. Here is an example for a dragon(1000HP):
-Wings(150HP): when broken the dragon can’t fly and can’t use attacks that involve the wings.
-Tail(150HP): when broken the dragon can’t perform any tail attacks.
-Legs/Feat(250HP each): when 1 is broken the dragons movement speed is halved and when both are broken its speed is 0.
-Head: can’t get broken, but attacks against the head crit on a 19 or 20.
I think this can create a really cool dynamic for the fight because this naturally gives the fight different stages:
“The dragon flies around raining down its breath from high above. The party clips the wings with an onslaught of ranged attacks. After the dragon has been grounded the barbarian and the paladin start cutting down its ankles with their powerful greatsword attacks… A smite enhanced attack finally breaks the second leg and the dragon falls to the floor. With the head in reach the rouge rushes in to deal sneak attack damage and thrusts their rapier into the eye of the dragon delivering the fatal blow.“
And this also gives the party a better grasp of the damage. Instead of the Monster simply becoming bloody it endures serious, fight impacting injuries.
Also maybe some crowd control or debuff effects can effect limbs independently. So they are not shutting down the Monster completely, but still bring a decent amount of value.
If you read this far tell me what you think about this idea. ❤
oh, you kept me waiting at the beginning for your classic introduction part! i was thinking :oh no what happened?" and then it happened!!! so satisfying :)
Damn this is great. I’ve been wondering how to replace legendary resistance, and was thinking something like breaking a guard. With this, you could do lair actions on the boss’ turn to help the villain shape each round. This is a great idea, thanks for sharing!
One thing i like my bosses to have is both spell effects and martial attacks. But giving up all the attacks to cast a spell also feels bad.
What i ended up doing essentially got added in the OneD&D playtest for high level Eldritch Knights: replace 2 attacks with a spell.
What i had designed for an earth bender monk (akin to Avatar the Last Airbender) miniboss was that they get 3 attacks per turn, like a level 5+ monk has 2 attacks with their action and 1 bonus action attack. I also wanted the miniboss to be able to cast catapult, but doing so would mean no bonus action attack. I decided to allow the bonus action attack anyway. So, the earth bender coule launch a rock with catapult and still make an unarmed strike, or make 3 unarmed strikes. It feels quite versatile and can react to what would be more effective in a fight
Similarly, im planning on allowing it to cast fog cloud for 2 attacks, kicking up a cloud of dust
I recently ran a colossal adamantine construct boss fight. It had a total ~840 hit points split among 4 parts which acted on different initiatives. Each part had 2-3 actions it could use. Head and Torso's special actions recharged on another part being broken and torso taking 60 damage since last use. It was fun.
This made my brain explode with ideas 💡!!!!!!!! Omg, so there should be a single use big epic action that only recharges at bloody, great way to swing the difficulty back in check! Omg i hope my group likes this! Sharing NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I really like the idea of reactionary boss battles where the boss changes in response to something the players did. Thus even if you replay the same creature in a different game, the battle will be completely different. One way I thought about how this could be achieved is with different phases of an epic fight.
It can be hard to balance this out so as not to cheapen the experience for the players, but introducing the idea of a reactionary battle I feel this can be overcome.
At it's core there are 2 phases- a main phase and an end phase. During the main phase there are 2 or more requirements that need to be met before the boss can enter the end stage. It should be said, the boss cannot die during this phase. One requirement would be the number of hit points the boss needs to take before it can enter the end phase and another requirement is the number of rounds of combat that need to go by. There may also boss-specific requirements that need to be fulfilled as well to "find their weakness" making them vulnerable to a final blow.
These extra requirements provide narrative implications as well because now the players need to learn something about the boss before they will go down. Lets use the Tarrasque for example. In 5e all you need is an aarakocra archer to take down the Tarrasque. But with this system, the Tarrasque has a 3rd requirement of taking 100 points of acid damage, have its reflective carapace broken by a 5th level spell or higher, or any number of game design requirements. Or maybe we can use Strahd von Zarovich for example and say you need to destroy his Heart of Sorrow before he can even enter his end phase during battle, or damage him with some macguffin. The mechanical and role play possibilities are endless here.
The other thing you can do during the main phase is debilitate the boss by taking away epic actions. Here is where you could target a specific body part or take away a special weapon thus hindering the boss's actions for the rest of the fight. As examples, you could target the dragon's wing to remove their additional movement granted them by an epic action that gives them that added fly speed. Or cut a eye stalk off a beholder completely removing that ability for the rest of the battle. It should be noted that these targeted shots would not necessarily affect the total hit points the creature takes during the main phase for the sake of overcoming the hit points needed to enter the end phase and they would have a different AC (probably higher) than the total AC of the boss.
Once the main phase is done, the boss can enter some sort of end phase. Here the boss can either get stronger or weaker depending on what happened during the main phase. And if the players dealt so much damage during the main phase, the end phase could be quite quick--even 1 round. On the flip side, the end phase could be a time the boss has godly power with unique epic actions, but is also mortal (like the avatar state for all you Aang fans out there). The end phase also has a hit point requirement, but it can be increased or reduced based upon the amount of damage that was taken during the main phase and the boss dies once is reaches 0.
As you can see, main stage requirements and epic action debilitation requirements can make for extremely varied boss fights and provide replayability and interesting dynamic battles for boss monsters. A group of battle hobos could the pound through the main stage and end stage hit points of a creature whereas tactical wizards could tear down all the boss's defenses rendering them impotent. Makes for a fun puzzle to figure out during battle and dynamic play for both player character and game master.
Sorry about the long post and if any of this is confusing. Its kind of just some flight of ideas I had during your video and wanted to put them somewhere. Great vid!
As a side note, I like the idea of epic resistance but think it would do better as an ability. And instead of just making it a 50:50 roll, just let the boss chose one affect and allow them to re-roll any saving throw to end that effect as an epic action. Thus it still rewards players for choosing spells that should be effective against it without completely destroying the boss's action economy.
I've also been adding in something called Showdowns - A character rolls an attack or spell attack against the boss's attack or spell attack. On success, the boss loses a legendary move or something else epic happens. On a fail, the boss gains an advantage in the fight or something really bad happens to the player character. This has led to some really intense 1V1 rolls, player characters using their turns to buff a certain party member or struggling to climb back after a failed Showdown. It also helps with the action economy by forcing player characters to use their turns to either buff other members or use their action to Showdown or use their turns recovering after a failed one.
I love the idea that Epic monsters have attacks that fit in the rules but aren't like other attacks. Things like having a Tail attack be 2-3 targets in the 15ft reach instead of the 1 target/saving throw it always shows up as, or a telegraphed ability that provides a telegraphing detriment in the moment and becomes devastating on a later turn. The trick I find though is that it needs to be able to be powerful enough to swat away things that they would fell legendary creatures, like a select resistance/immunity/interference with divine magic, the ability to break through constructs of magical force, critical hits unleashing a retaliating save of gushing blood, or being able to completely toss aside a small army worth of grapples in a single turn. Teamwork to stack debuffs is _fine_ and all, but for something "Epic" it should be powerful enough that those sorts of things are only detrimental if all stacked together. You have to find the balance where it doesn't feel like your only option is a DPS race, while stacking debuffs doesn't completely invalidate the encounter.
For instance, our table has opted to, in the face of many "war crimes," (read: Insect Plague + Wall of Force) decree that Wall of Force is visible like Tiny Hut is, and due to it being visible allows a DEX save similar to Wall of Stone to allow a trapped target to escape. Legendary Resistance doesn't matter if the party can cast Insect Plague for 200d10 damage across ten minutes of 100 successful saves, Legendary Action move (half) speed through difficult terrain won't get them out of the 20ft radius before they get trapped in a Wall of Force in a sphere/dome shape, and it happening to the last 5 encounters of Hard+ difficulty makes the Martials _and_ myself (the DM) very sad and really makes me think that 5e and it's Concentration requirements did not have its monsters designed with parties of multiple casters in mind.
We're also adopting the playtest change to Counterspell, which prompts a CON save to complete the spell (thereby working with LR), and it doesn't expend the spell slot if countered. That way it doesn't feel like the end of the world if the CON Cleric's big level 7 Banishment is told "work for it," it doesn't provide such a big advantage that it feels necessary to always have Counterspell to counter-counter, the bosses with CON scores might actually be able to cast their spells, and it doesn't feel mandatory for caster BBEGs to always have Counterspell prepared so that they can cast more than cantrips during their fight.
I’m glad that this feels more like a development video rather than a finished product. It’s cool to see that you guys are still in the middle of the process, and are giving us a window into it.
Dear Dungeon Dudes! I would like to thank you SO MUCH for this Epic system! Yesterday I ran the “Rats’ Nest” Tavern for my Dungeons of Drakkenheim campaign. Enter the big momma rat as boss. (Reskinned Rift Swine from the Kobold Press: Tome of Beasts book). There were 5 players each lvl3 in the party (arcane hand monk, exorcist apothecary, inquisitive rogue, echo knight fighter and delirium soul sorcerer). They were really strong for their level, and an ordinary fight would be a breeze for them. However, the Epic Rules I implemented for the first time SHINED. The battle was tense, it was close, and the players all said they were on the edge of their seats, never knowing what would happen each turn instead of relaxing and waiting for their move. It was frankly great. So thank you again and keep doing amazing work!
I've been toying with both Epic Actions (sorta) and Epic Resistances on my own for a bit, and didn't even know you guys were working on it! lol
My version of EA is being tested on rival/enemy teams. The players and enemies roll initiative as normal BUT 1) the team that got the highest roll acts first; 2) the highest roller acts first; and 3) the highest opponent goes immediately after. So it's basically the 2 sides trading blows.
ER is basically a 1:1 for what I was working on, so that's cool.
thanks for sharing your ideas for making big solo boss monsters more enjoyable for the table as a whole! My current DM struggles hard with understanding that just using a higher CR monster doesn't improve the quality of the combat and it's just as un-fun as the boss monster spending the entire encounter incapacitated.
God dang, this is absolutely ground-breaking stuff. Reminds me of the XCOM 2 dlc bosses which basically had this mechanic and it was amazing in making them super powerful without it feeling unfair.
Thanks a lot!
In short:
Legendary Actions are not limited and still happen at the end of every PC's turn.
A LA can cost a whole round instead of just happening ATE of every PC's turn.
A LA can be a Legendary Resistance action instead: choose one effect/spell/condition THEN get a success on 1d20 DC 11 to remove it
The Epic Boss still has a normal turn, but only for movement, interaction and the upkeep of spells/effects/conditions etc.
Other ways to explore:
Additional sets of LA when the health is at 50% or lower
A special LA that triggers when it is hit by a CRIT.
This system is a better and a simplified way to run Epic Bosses! Thanks again!
I really like the idea of this system encouraging the party to stack conditions on the monster. It feels very much like in Infinity War when the heroes had Thanos grappled by multiple people, charmed, disoriented, and a couple others. The entire party is working together to hold this guy down so they can beat him
I really like this idea, only thing I'd change is that the monster can spend the immediate action on getting out of the effect, I would say that it can only use the next one. Here's why:
The "end effect" action has a 50-50 chance to succeed, and it occurs after a saving throw. Even if that's an extremely bad saving throw, and they have like 25% to succeed, it stil compoumds together to only 37.5% to fail both, or 62.5% to succeed either even when they're horribly equipped to handle it. The problem is that if they don't fail both, the player essentially wasted their own action, and only maybe took the same cost from the monster.
That, to me, is pretty much a shut down. Delaying that option by one epic action seems like a logical solution, but I need to playtest both to be sure.
I really like this! Even after all these years, I still struggle with making boss fights feel really epic because I want that one big monster vs the players, not a bunch of minions
This is all great advice and pretty much exactly what I was planning for a custom Anchorite boss with a battle in a lightning arena.
Coming up on the climax of my campaign, and this is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!
I'm planning to combine this with DnDShorts's Kaiju fighting system, where the monster has different vulnerable areas, each with their own HP pool, and the monster evolves new behaviors when each one is reduced to zero.
One idea i've had is "detrimental immunity" where the monster escapes from a control effect but takes some sort of backlash as a cost. For example, a restrained undead monster can rip its dead flesh free but takes damage from the resulting injury. Or a monster that serves an outer god, when subjected to a charm or other mind control effect recieves a psychic shock from their master that breaks them out, but they take psychic damage from it. These would have to be specific to both the type of monster and the control effect, so they may be a little harder to develop, but they seem like extra flavorful options that show *why* the monster breaks out of a condition instead of just ending it with no elaboration.
Dudes I love it 🤩 straight to my heart ❤️. I play with my kiddos and have implemented our own system of skill challenge combat where the boss (and other enemies) don't have a turn but their actions are dependent on weather and how well the player passes a skill challenge. I know skill challenges are usually a group effort but in combat I've reduced it to each player passing a set number of success vs failure. Other thing needed to be modified but all in all combat is more interesting, suspenseful, and far quicker.
I think this is a great idea. I'm running a game with 8 players and this will make the boss fight so much better. I only plan on changing Epic Resistance a little.
Epic Resistance: If you make the boss roll a saving throw, it can choose to fail the save and just take an Epic Action, else it rolls the saving throw normally. If the boss is under the effects of a saving throw it can use Epic Resistance in place of taking an Epic Action to reroll the saving throw at disadvantage, to end the effect early.
Used these rules for the final boss of the first arc of my campaign. It was definitely much more epic and interactive than previous boss battles. Gonna continue to work with them.
There's also always the time honored secret sauce of not just making a boss a pile of HP to chip away at. Don't tell my players this, but the last mini boss battle I did, I wasn't tracking HP at all. Instead I just kept a tally. Once each of my players had landed a big hit or pulled off a cool combo ability that had the whole table dishing out high fives, I announced that the boss was looking bloodied and weakened, and the next attack that rolled above a 15 to hit dealt the killing blow.
Players were none the wiser. They felt awesome, and I'm never going to tell them that the HP didn't matter.
For the HP suggestions I typically use one of three ideas to make boss stick around for a good enough length of time: Players averse to fudging look away now.
Damage threshold: You should know how much damage roughly your players can dish out, make them do good hits to get in on damage. You can use traditional threshold rules, have to be over a score then it takes that damage. Or you could just use tallies, the party has to beat the threshold ten times to kill it, or maybe just to break it's threshold status, and then it can take damage normally. Obviously these ideas require experience to know how to tune, but they can be tweaked live too if you don't mind playing it by ear.
Multiple Bar: Think videogames, how some bosses have heath bars you have to break through. You don't have to explain this to player, in fact I'd try to ground all mechanics in lore building. Like legendary resistances, they should get flavor of the boss resistances not just "it doesn't work" instead say "Bonbonstinkle summons the fart fates to break your concentration as you cast and the scene is filled with a shielding gas, silent and deadly" Idk something like that. But health bars, an example, the party can only do 30 damage to the lich before the lich's powers deepen, realizing these adventures are not pushovers, then the party can only deal 60 damage. The party can't do damage to it's next health bar only it's first, and it can only get a new healthbar and change it's tactics when it takes a turn. This might seem harsh, a boss to just sucks up damage and it does nothing, but just don't tell the players that part... remember as a DM you're selling them on these numbers and feats being a lich anyways. This ties health and moves directly to one another ensuring that you get to pop off the cool moves.
Keep in mind you can use those last two in combination or mixed up. All of these parts can have utility.
Just don't HP: This one is probably the most controversial, but just don't count the hp numbers. Have your boss do all their cool moves and play the fight as more of a cinematic. React in ways to crits and high damage, slowly being chipped away and becoming more desperate, until the fight reaches a peak and the party is also brought low. This is definitely not a move for unsure or inexperienced DMs or something you should do with a new table or with strangers. You have to be able to use your ethos and experience as a DM. This is a way to run bosses with your table of an RP focused game.
I'm actually making my own system entirely at the moment, and I have to say that I kind of like the way that I'm taking care of it. Instead of having legendary actions / resistances, the preacher that fits the right criteria has a tag. That tag is basic, epic, legendary, and divine. Dependent on which of these tags they roll initiative so many times. One for basic, 2 for epic and so on. If the party hits the creature with the equivalent of a whole person spell or some other crowd control spell it only goes to their next turn. It makes the players expend resources, it helps keep the bosses attacks down, and it still feels good.
I like these ideas a lot. For epic resistance, you could still tie it to the Creatures ability scores, but give it the flat dc they suggested. For example, a stunning strike succeeds on impact, but a creature with a particularly good Constitution score needs an 8 on the resistance roll to end it. Say the creature has a lack luster wisdom score, and needs a 15 to end a hideous laughter effect.
It saves it from being the huge DCs that are possible, but is still customized to the individual creature.
Maybe a good equation would be: 20 - its bonus in that stat = the resistance DC.
One way I've seen Legendary Resistances be modified that I like is that the creature in question loses access to an ability or something like points in AC in order to break the spell.
Really great idea. I have a little homebrew for legendary resistance, I had a player with access to banish, what I rule is: the monster doesn’t banish… exactly, a portal tries to pull him and let’s say, if it’s a dragon, half of its body is on the other side… so… no tail attack, or wing, or fly away.
great job here Ddudes. Really originak take on a serious issue with the game sistem
I like the idea of Legendary Resistance costing something, I've seen it done well in some games. Any creature with a recharge ability is a great use-case for this, if to avoid a failed save vs hold monster the dragon spends the magic that would normally go towards using their breath weapon, that's still a great use of a spell that feels rewarding to the player without rendering the dragon useless (you'd probably have to make it recharge more often or instead of a recharge die have different abilities and uses cost different number of charges, maybe breath weapon costs 3 but legendary resistance costs 2 and they get 1 back per round).
for Legendary Resistance i really love the idea of giving the boss monster active save options, that the players could also take away, but not just for shutdowns, direct damage as well
like the boss has a Shield Guardian that absorbs every shutdown effects, or if if the boss has minions it can destroy of few of them and either cancel out a shutdown or regain health
I like to make legendary resistances only be able to take effect on the boss’s turn. So they still have to make the save and if they fail, make it apparent through the narrative that they will use a resistance. For example “your banishment spell starts to take effect and the dragon’s form begins to become ethereal”
Very intuitive and engaging solution for each turn.
This is absolutely brilliant. Definitely gonna be using this in the future. Thank you!!
The "Breathe in" is a great mood setter. The Dragonslayer movie had excellent sound design on the breath weapon and it allowed the protagonist to respond and prepare for the breath weapon. It gives a lot of agency to the characters actions and allows you to add strategy.
Wow. I love this.
As a DM, I’ll certainly be running epic boss fights this way going forward.
As a player, I wonder what would happen to my Armorer when I hit an epic boss with my Thunder Gauntlets. 💥🥊
On the Actioneconomy: I personally just have them roll multiple initiatives and have them act more than once per combatround. With the resistance I give my Bossmonster a pool of Legendarypoints that it can use to boost up their saving throws. It will break out of the first ones, but if it rolls bad, it uses up more points.
Im using this for now on. I also been giving monster's muti attacks even if they dont have it to make them feel more deadly and giving them cool environmental moves and abilities to spice it up. Using this mixed on will take my combat to another level
I love these. If I were running this I would 1) make some epic action only able to be triggered in reaction to the player's action. Like if they player used a melee attack they get a grapple response vs if they cast a heal spell then they heal themselves in response. 2) I would flip a coin for the 50/50 roll.
I have started using a mechanic called a 'legendary entrance'
Where on initiative count 20 the boss does something to change the landscape, of applies an effect to a large area.
Ive had a giant stone guardian spew out landmines everywhere, a gravity mage cause an equivalent to the plant growth spell surrounding it (1/4 movement)
Similar to a lair action but specifically something that demonstrates how powerful or dangerous this foe is in particular
Something I've wanted to try that I've heard other games have is let a solo creature have one turn for every turn the player characters get. This is kind of what legendary actions tries to do but not quite. It seems very interesting and I think to make the encounter interesting the boss would have to have a variety of abilities so they don't use all those extra actions to chew through each character's hit points with high damage abilities one by one.
For the epic resistance, I would go with the challenge rating. On a d20 roll, the threshold would be half the challenge rating rounded down. For example, Demogorgon has a challenge rating of 26. So, if you roll a 13 or lower, you get to win your epic resistance. On a 14 or higher, the spell condition is still effective.
My favorite rule is: any hit 5 points above AC (or any defense) has additional effects, both mechanical and narrative.
Could be an aimed shot that causes disavantage, a mini-crit, or anything of the sort
Best way to build a boss: calculate the average dpr of the party and multiply that by the amount of rounds you'd like the battle to last (5-10) and that's their HP. Now take the party's total maximum hp and divide by the number of rounds and number of party members, that's the bosses average damage. From there add the most common damage type of the party and add resistances accordingly (obliviously only if it makes sense) and legondary actions that mirror what the party is doing (such as counterspell, silvery barbs, extra attack, freedom of movement, invisibility...)
I really like this idea. One way to give the party the ability to stun/incapacitate the boss without it being overpowered is to give the boss an ability that automatically emanates from them at the end of each round. I also frequently include smaller enemies in boss fights so that they can still threaten the players when the boss is down. Finally I've had fights where the boss is actually quite vulnerable but the players don't know where the boss is and the map is large
Regarding hit points scaling with number of players, this is something that Fantasy Flight do in some of their living card games. Many games have a symbol which means “per player”, so in Marvel Champions, Thanos might have 20hp per player. So fight him solo and he has 20hp, but fight him with a party of three and he has 60hp.
It’s a concept that works well there and I could see it working well in D&D too.
Great video 👏
Another idea is the Angry GMs concept of "Paragon Monsters" these creatures follow an analogy to the silly concept of a two-tailed two-headed bifurcated snake aka just two snakes. These monsters at a base level behave as if they were mechanically two or more monsters on the battlefield action wise. This also meant they split their total HP into separate pools as you fight it. These can have multiple effects on the creature where as you knock their separate pools to zero things would change like gaining or losing actions per round, and/or losing abilities such as means of attack or types of movement as they fought. It basically gave dnd monsters different forms or battle phases as its HP was diminished.
Love this! Also I’m hyped for Sebastian crow’s 👀
This is great stuff! And one of the biggest hurdles I encountered running the level 19-20 end of my campaign. Hindsight the reactionary turns and 50/50 on breaking out seems so obvious. I look forward to see a follow-up as I start to plan my next campaign!
Monty said it, if you want a great monster book get Flee, Mortals. Probably the best DnD product I’ve ever bought.
The stacking of control effects and teamwork on boss is exactly what happens in Avengers Infinity War when Thanos is momentarily subdued on Titan!
This is Genius! I will immediately implement this into my game. Thanks.
At low level if I want a memorable boss that doesn't have legendary features I'll come up with a level appropriate encounter and combine the monsters into one enemy. So for example last month I ran a level 2 boss fight, the enemy was a magical ogre. The real encounter was a fire newt, a duregar and some low cr ogre from MoM. The ogre smoked a pipe, so the fire newt attack was him spitting pipe embers, then the other 2 offered standard attacks. He has 3 initiatives and 3 health pools. If a health pool runs out he loses that stat blocks attacks(in game he drops a weapon or his pipe got broken). The party felt like they fought a really strong monster and he remained balanced since it was just an encounter where all the enemies shared one square on the map
This sounds amazing! I wish this was an official fix for epic bosses. I’m gonna try this out with my group.
After watching this I decided to apply it to a boss my level 3 party was about to face. It. Was. Awesome!
The panic and engagement from the players was terrific. The boss went from a sack of hit points with one solid attack to a constantly morphing threat. Multiple players told me it read the best boss battle they'd ever played.
Some observations:
1. I did not give the monster an epic action after a downed player's turn. It was too much of an instakill threat and the break was a much needed reprieve for he stressed out players.
2. One of the epic actions needs to include movement or the PCs can kite the monster too easily.
3. Some of the epic actions need to be ranged. Otherwise the monster spends a bunch of actions doing nothing and it's boring.
4. Making a mythic creature, as Kelly suggested, is a great idea. My fight took place in difficult terrain and when the monster was bloodied it clawed its way up the wall and out of the difficult terrain. It was a definite "oh shit" moment for the players.
Love it, gonna use it when they go up against Orcus.
"Only Epic Actions" sounds like the rulers in XCom: War of the Chosen. Since every action draws a reaction from the rule, you have to choose your actions VERY carefully. In fact the entire game is a master class in designing boss encounters, including ganding the Chosen abilities from a random pool.
Rolling the assassin with a "regenerates shields on missed attack" or combining a "weak to templars" train with a "melee immune" trait can be... interesting. I HIGHLY recommend that you check that game out or talk with someone who has.
With the resistances, you could institute a sliding scale - the first action they spend shrugging needs a 14+, second action is 11+, 3rd, and further actions are 9 or 10+. That way if you get your spell or effect through, you've got a chance to stagger them for a couple of free hits before they shrug it.
We considered this, but we're a little worried it might be tricky to track.
What I use for epic boss battles is have spell casting minions that are not out right negating damage from the boss but reducing damage. Of course the key is for the party to go after those minions hence once destroyed the can attack the boss at full force. It keeps the battle a decent pace and your epic boss doesn’t die as quickly.
Of course you can play with this a little like one of them gives the boss magic resistance, and the other might increase its AC and so on. You weaken the boss by taking out its minions.
Idea for EPIC resistance so it’s akin to having 3. First use DC is 5 (so likely success), but using the Epic resistance tires the boss, so the next DC is 10, and similarly the 3rd is 15 (so likely to last 4-5 turns). After that they no longer have EPIC resistance (or if you want - takes a 20 to succeed).
Brennan Lee Mulligan, for the legendary resistances, elects to actually explain legendary resistance.
For example, in the unsleeping city campaign during the fight with a lich boss, he describes the lich actually using some of the pure will that’s keeping it alive to resist the attack, emphasizing that it’s a great resource the monster expended.
While it’s not a perfect solution, looking at legendary resistances as resources to drain from the boss instead of get out of jail free cards drastically improves how the players look at it, or at least how my group does
If only I knew of this system when I was running my campaign based on the legend of dragoon video game...the party had come up to a virage (massive creature with an eye laser), and the way I had designed it made it so it died before it could move because the eye laser had a charge turn before it fired. With this system, it could have worked wonderfully. I might start using this for similar encounters in the future, like for another virage or one of the dragons.
Really cool video! I got actually inspired by it. I was thinking about the coin flip save for the monster. What if, instead of a plane 50/50 or any fixed probability, the monster get a +2 to its saving throw against the condition in every attempt. In this way, the player targeting a low score of the epic monster is rewarded, but the condition eventually end up in no more than 3-4 rounds.
Congrats again for the video, I really like dm ideas and homebrewing!
This concept sounds amazing. I can wait to try it out!
I like the idea of Epic actions, and have a suggestion for another way to do Epic Resistance:
When an Epic Creature is under an effect that resulted from a failed saving throw, as an Epic Action it can break the affect at the cost of 1/X of its hit points.
Playtesting needed to determine X, could be different for different epic monsters. Initial thoughts would be 1/4 or 1/5 of its hit points.
The fantasy here is seeing the dragon get hit with Hold Monster, and you see it buck and strain against magical illusory chains, until the chains suddenly snap, leaving the dragon's scales broken and blooded where they had been binding it. It gives the DM a choice for "I can't let this affect last", while making the monster resorting to break free in this way satisfying to the player because they didn't just burn a "get out of jail free" ticket, it HURT to break free that way.
One of my favorite bosses I designed had 2 reactions, had an ability that it could grapple any creatures that came within 5ft of it for any reason as a reaction, and could immediately "protagonist throw" them.
Insightful as always. Thank you, Dudes!
Idea for epic resistance:
As an epic action, the creature can attempt to end one condition or effect that it acquired by failing a saving throw. The creature re-rolls the saving throw, but does not add its proficiency bonus if it normally would. Instead, it adds +2 for each time it has attempted to end the same effect.
Example: The creature fails a saving throw against a stunning strike and becomes stunned. after the player’s turn, the creature uses an epic action to break out of being stunned. It rolls a D20 and adds its constitution modifier + 2. If this beats the original saving throw DC, the creature is no longer stunned. Otherwise, the creature can try again later with another epic action, this time adding its constitution modifier + 4, and so on.
This way the creature’s ability scores still matter, but it’s less likely to instantly break out of an effect and less likely to get stuck in an effect forever than if it re-rolled the save normally.
You could experiment with whether +1 or +3 per attempt would work better. You could also try having the compounding bonus carry over to other instances of the same effect, which would encourage players to change up their tactics (if the creature tries a few times to get out of a stunning strike, should it be better at breaking out of a second stunning strike?).
I like the fact that some bosses have high savings and then are good to resist those effects. Your players should learn the weakness to aim for them, having a 50/50 vs every effect take some lore back for me.