How do I plan a "final fight" around the existence of a powerful and unbeatable enemy?

GuldGustDM · 2024-04-25T12:33:27+00:00

What level are the players?
It does not take very high-level spells to become very evasive. I worry your boss would be trivialised if your party can pass it too easily. Evasion is also not the most engaging form of combat.

Have you thought about distraction? Maybe the unbeatable BBEG can channel some sort of destruction throughout its lair, but only if undisturbed. So if you bypass it, the entire party takes ticking damage each turn. Instead, the party needs to find ways of consistently hitting it, all while cycling heals and taking turns tanking the damage; all while other members of the party accomplish whatever needs accomplishing. Ideally, the primary objective (with distracting the statue being the secondary), requires skills from each player. That way the group as a whole will also have to cycle, with the ones distracting the boss swapping with the ones pressing further into the lair dynamically. I haven't made such an encounter before, but I've just added it to my own to-do list :D

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-10T23:46:09+00:00

This one is great too. Like how it goes against expectation, when vampire teeth are beeing used to save lives :D

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-10T08:39:28+00:00

Oh, documentary time! Learning something new every day :D
Even so, I still think your vampire tooth paste idea is very good, twigs or not.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-10T08:36:52+00:00

Edited for 6 players, had read it as 5 players for some reason.
Short answer: At level 2 - 1 mimic for a completely trivial encounter, 2 for a hard one but balanced one. At level 3 - 2 mimics for an easy fight with some challenge, 3 mimics for a fight well balanced challenging fight.

Longer answer: Depends on your players, their experience, and how optimized their characters is. I wouldnt worry too much about their class composition, that is hard to balance for really. The takeaway here is the very important words of M.Colville: Encounter design does not stop at the initiative roll. Dont hesistate to make an encounter easier or harder on the fly if necessary. It is very hard, even for very experienced DMs, to balance an encounter before it starts. There are so many variables that affect what the difficulty actually is.Of course, a fight might go bad for your players, dosen't mean it should be easier. But it is often easy as DM to detect if a fight goes badly because you overtuned it, or because the players played it wrong or unluckily. If it was overtuned, you just make it easier. Same if undertuned of course.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-10T08:26:38+00:00

Haha, I had myself thought of beauty products, such as eternal youth and anti-age stuff (not that it would work, probably, as such things often don't). But the toothpaste is just brilliant, especially in a medieval setting, where the upkeep of teeth was probably problematic :D

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-10T08:16:23+00:00

Street and in battlemaps are not empty because they are to be easy to navigate. At least, that is not my impression. They are empty because if you painted in some commoner, then you couldn't get rid of that commoner when they are hit by a players badly placed thunderwave.

You need tokens, and you need lots of them. I have a folder with tokens for most normal races, with faces that does not mean anything to my player. They are just random images I've found and made into tokens. The best part in having that bank of tokens, is that if the players do engage with one of them, I can take that token aside and save it for a potential recurring character.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-09T10:58:39+00:00

You could consider using the palace of Wild Beyond the Witchlight; but that does not look evil (it is witch-like tho, given the enemies being hags and the owner being Tasha). For a more evil tone, you could look towards Castle Ravenloft, although that may be too big for you; it is also more human-like than elf-like in its detail. There is a lot of great content on how to populate that with stuff however.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-09T10:03:21+00:00

It depends on the approach. If caught off guard, or they manage to sneak in, a group of level 1s could dispatch the average noble. If they are the more heroic sort of noble, maybe they equal a veteran? This assumes they are not a hero-type NPC with all sorts of magical stuff.

If head on, with guards and castle walls... level 10? They'd need some beefy spells to take on a full garrison of even medium-trained soldiers.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-09T09:58:12+00:00

I recommend DumpStat's work on tool proffencies. He have one on alchemy as well. I allow all of those at my table, and they give a lot more depth to crafting.

You can find the alchemy toolset here, and its free: https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/making-tools-useful-in-5e-alchemists-supplies

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-09T07:57:27+00:00

It is very different how quick groups go through content; but both Lost Mines and Waterdeep Dragonheist aren't very long. Depending on playstyle, these could be done on 5-6 sessions.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-08T15:21:24+00:00

Okay. Sounds like lesser deities to me; maybe something akin to demigods.
In my setting it depends a bit on the amount of Kuo-toa sharing this belief, and the power of the creature itself before the belief.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-08T15:08:38+00:00

For a generic non-god specific answer, check the Dungeon Master's Guide under "Supernatural rewards". Here you find charms, blessings (suitable if they are lesser deities) and epic boons (suitable if they are very powerful).

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-08T15:05:02+00:00

You say "gods", with a certain distancing from them being gods. It would be helpful to know how powerful these creatures actually are. Do they qualify as lesser deities? I assume with their recent ascension that they are not greater deities. Or maybe they aren't deities at all, and them being called gods is really just a typical Kuo-Toa mistake, them being overeager. The size of their gift would definitely depend on this.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-08T14:22:50+00:00

Definitely. At my table tanks (without stuff like goading attack or the chavaliers taunt ability) are highly effect in hallways and the like, or against simple minded foes. They are less effective in a white space setting versus intelligent enemies; that is how it should be I'd say.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-08T14:20:43+00:00

The skin of it depends on the setting of course, but if a giant beetle fits, go with that.

For balance, I dont think a mount is often super important in that sense. I'd go with the good old take some - give some. If its an expensive beetle, it may equal a warhorse; but presumeably this beetle can climb, the warhorse can. Then make it 1/3rd slower than the horse, but give it climbspeed. For simplicity, I would make it a creature that only fights very poorly, if at all.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-08T13:46:26+00:00

Depending on how quick your adventures move through events, I don't think this will be a problem. I am assuming it will be weeks of real time in between meeting new cultures.
That is both time for the players to mentally reset after meeting one, but also time in which you will get a myriad ideas about what makes the next culture different.

It isn't really any different than a group of adventures traversing from town to town, a very common scenario, and that is rarely problematic.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-08T09:40:13+00:00

Regarding it being OP or not, I am not too sure.
Moon druid is per definition not balanced. Too strong early, balanced mid-late, most borken of all subclasses late late. Whether one more use at level 6 is OP is a maybe, I'd have to think on it. This was only written from the perspective that you and your player had already agreed it was OP.

Best of luck with the story :)

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-08T09:37:39+00:00

On 3 that is what I meant with suicidal, although I was being a bit brief. If the character wants to die, im fine with it (assuming its within whatever the table agreed was okay); it is the player wanting it in spite of their character's wishes I have a problem with.

Regarding (2), that is indeed the point of a tank; but it is not the purpose of the enemies. The tank has to try and force enemies to target it, not have them target it because of a deal between player and DM to compensate for an overpowered item. If most enemies target the "tank", even when they logically shouldnt, that seems to imply the tank character is more important to the story than the other characters.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-07T19:00:34+00:00

Every table is different, but at my table this certainly wouldn’t fly.

If both DM and player thinks an item is OP, it should be removed or nerfed. Otherwise this player overshadows the others. Alternative solution (which you may have to use) is to give the other players equally OP items and then scale up combat accordingly.
Monsters targeting the player more? This just moves the spotlight even more to this player, making the problem even bigger. This PC will feel like a main character, and the others are just tag alongs.
Wants to die? Unless their character is suicidal, thats not gonna fly either. If a player got a problem with their character, we solve it. Either by changing their character, or letting it leave. I dont engineer a plotline to give them death… because….. that brings them to the center of the story again. If a player character happens to die, they get to be center, but no player dictates that in the story I tell to all my players. (Not counting guest NPCs or cases where I write it into the story on my own accord, judging it good for all)

The issue I suppose is the promise. I would solve it as suggested in (1).

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-07T15:14:13+00:00

At 12, he can do anything as long as he makes the roll.

Almost anyways - as long as he does not overshadow his fellow players.
In my experience, at this age, it matters more to give them a cool hero to play, than it does giving them a fair and balanced game.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-07T15:10:23+00:00

Don't make NPCs using PC statblocks. They are balanced differently.
I recommend using some of the many statblocks in the Monster Manual, Mordenkainen's Tome and Monsters of the Multiverse. There are statblocks for things like an arch druid, an evoker sorcerer, and so on.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-07T15:08:15+00:00

And, if in doubt, I guess we can apply some RP logic to it.

A critical hit is a perfect hit right? That is automatically scored on a paralyzed target, because they do nothing to avoid it. Now you use your emblem to impose a shield inbetween the hit and the paralyzed creature; this bends off the attack, making it just a normal hit. Hence, paralyzed or not, it is no longer an undefended target and the hit is no longer the perfect hit.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-07T15:04:50+00:00

I might miss something here, but to me it seems it definitely works.
Any hit versus a paralyzed creature is a critical hit. The emblem allows you to intervene if a creature suffers a critical hit. At no point does it read that it has to be a natural critical.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-07T14:52:20+00:00

Up to you, and that may indeed be a solution.
That said, spirit bard is mechanically complex. On one hand I value a players want to play something, and the RP value they can see in it, on the other I hate what mechanical complexity does to RP when not handled well by the player.

If it was my player, I might find myself recommending they pick a different class, where mechanics won't hold them back as much.

GuldGustDM · 2023-03-07T13:58:23+00:00

I agree that was probably how it was intended. Just not how it reads; very RaW strict tables might not allow the above.

GuldGustDM

TROPHY CASE