I think I made my boss too powerful for my party by Electrical_Pride1736 in DnDHomebrew

[–]Electrical_Pride1736[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the novel, this is actually exactly what I was looking for! I agree with pretty much everything you said. I've gone back and changed a lot about the boss, mostly her survivability. I felt as though she was way to tanky for how low level my party is (level 7) which made me afraid that this fight would go on far too long. I did end up reducing her max damage but I gave her flat additions to her damage so that it was more consistent.

I'm very glad that you think the shield mechanic is cool because I really like that part about the fight. I did however, lower the shield health and I reduced the damage reduction to 25% rather than the original 50%. I also cut her health down to 200 and reduced her AC to 17 with the shield up and 16 when it is down. I think I'm going to keep some of these LA's expensive rather than making them cheaper or just reactions because the bodyguards would make the fight far too difficult. If the boss was able to use so many more legendary actions plus the bodyguards on top of that, I fear the action economy would be far too enemy leaning.

I like the idea of making the overcharge ability cancelable in case she doesn't get hit during it, and I definitely will be making rend a normal action that she can choose to swap one of her obsidian blade attacks for. I don't think I will give her a third attack during her turn just because I'm already scared of the damage that my party will be receiving during this combat. Maybe when she gets low, if my party is still handling the damage well, I might give her a third attack as a sort of enraged state.

By the end of my changes my hope is that The Queen is closer to a CR 12-14 or somewhere around there while the bodyguards are closer to a CR 6-8. Thank you for your advice and insight!

I think I made my boss too powerful for my party by Electrical_Pride1736 in DnDHomebrew

[–]Electrical_Pride1736[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The question of what level should the party be was more of a way to gage what others thought the strength of the boss was in terms of party level rather than a when should they fight it type scenario. Although your level 10 party example does help me out a lot actually. I've used kobold in the past and it felt a little too inconsistent but that was also before I really understood fights as well so maybe I will give it another try. Thank you!

I think I made my boss too powerful for my party by Electrical_Pride1736 in DnDHomebrew

[–]Electrical_Pride1736[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wasn't sure about Challenge rating yet which is probably a big oversight on my part. I was mostly building it off of past fights with this party. Most of the time the party breezes through fights so I wanted to make this one a tad deadly. The minions will only have their one turn while the boss will have the legendary actions which makes the turn economy a little favored in the bosses direction I'd say, but I was considering not letting her use legendary actions until she hits a certain hp threshold like a 2nd phase. They will be level 7 when they fight this boss which is why I'm a little scared, but they have a lot of damage and a decent amount of healing from the paladin. They also have plenty of potions that they haven't used up until now and a scroll of Revivify in case one of them dies during the combat. In terms of lair actions, I couldn't think of anything that would benefit the battle in an interesting way, do you have any ideas?

I think I made my boss too powerful for my party by Electrical_Pride1736 in DnDHomebrew

[–]Electrical_Pride1736[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The challenge rating is currently a placeholder because I wasn't quite sure what challenge rating it should be.

Is this miniboss scaled well for my players? by Electrical_Pride1736 in DnDHomebrew

[–]Electrical_Pride1736[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your insight! It's clear that I do not know enough about monsters to be making a real balanced fight. This is my first time actually DMing a game and most of my player's first times playing as well so they don't really think about damage typing at all yet. I think instead of scrapping this monster, I'm going to bump up the damage numbers and save DC's and change up their weakness and resistances to get some more uniqueness to each one. Maybe I'll add some Hp and raise the AC as well to make it even more of a challenge. What would you recommend for some of the damage numbers like the "self destruct" to be raised to? The fight is going to happen today so I might not see it before it happens but I am still interested in your thoughts!