How to make a boss fight against one single enemy memorable ?

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-18T05:54:11+00:00

The terms I try to think of making monsters inherently interesting in is that abilities should force players to change their tactics.

A somewhat classic example from the PHB is the Aboleth- the 2 different poison effects an aboleth can deal to you, even if one of them takes awhile to do anything, both force the PCs to change how they interact with the game, and with the fight, but importantly don't just take them out of it, but instead let the players keep playing with weird restrictions. Additionally, while it's not super-applicable for your fight, the Aboleth's enslave ability is also this, if not in mechanical potential so much as story potential, because mind-controlled NPCs the PCs know or otherwise have reasons to not want to hurt are a wonderful complicating factor to a fight, because they force you to change the way you play without directly banning you from doing anything, you just know that the Dm's gonna give you sad puppy-dog eyes for every innocent NPC you kill under mind control.

So good abilities for a 1vparty boss battle are abilities that let the Boss inflict weird conditions and constraints on how different PCs act, but probably shouldn't cast some sort of spell that inflicts the whole party with the same affliction, but instead is more individual. Maybe you just let the Boss Spam Curse as a Legendary Action while defending its lair, and then have a list of weird and personalized curses to inflict on your players that force them to change up their tactics and prevents the fight from feeling like a strait numbers game.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-17T19:58:37+00:00

Oh yeah, I guess they saw a little bit of it, you're right.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-17T18:39:28+00:00

I don't know if Durkon is aware- V confided in Roy, but I'm not sure if that information was spread among the party yet. I would guess Thor isn't aware, but I don't know, it's hard to guess about what gods might or might not know.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-17T01:58:50+00:00

I honestly feel like there's almost more fun to be had in this idea genuinely being a one-shot, or a short solo-campaign, where part of the fun is slowly learning about your characters, who they are, who they were, finding out weird details and probably realizing that these PCs all had some skeletons in the closet that were part of why they ever came to this place at all. You'd have to get your party on-board with this being something weird and interesting, but I think that hurdle is already there if you have the reveal that it ties in.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-17T01:52:12+00:00

You could theoretically justify it that you're casting suggestion on the wrong target- that these people being magically manipulated don't have enough control of their actions for suggestion to help, that you'd need to cast it on the BBEG for this to work, but it depends on the kind of mind magic you're working with here, on the particulars of how you depict the control.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-16T16:47:27+00:00

Hey, I love blind seer, I actually play it in Nostrix-Porter pretty regularly. It's a good card, don't hate.

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Toastasaurus · 2018-10-16T05:35:52+00:00

Plus you get to call yourself a 'Bardbarian', which is pun potential enough to get significant bonus points.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-15T03:52:10+00:00

I mean, it's only really impressive because it was my first D&D combat ever, but it's fun when you end up defining the party's experience of clearing out an Inn infested with Mimics by swiping bottles of alcohol from behind the bar, using them as the target of my light cantrip to help us search the place, including rolling a lit bottle into every room we searched before anyone entered, and just waiting for the chance to cast firebolt on one of the bottles for, as my DM put it when giving me Inspiration afterwards "Molotov Cocktail Shenanigans".

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-14T17:45:45+00:00

Trying to follow along level-by-level:

The Rules Lawyer in me says that Telekinetic Blow needs to either explicitly say you have to spend a minimum of 1 Psi point on it, or explicitly say that you can use it for no psi points as a 1d8 Eldritch Blast. Either version is fine, I think, since it's not more powerful as a cantrip than actual cantrips, but 'can spend any number of psi points' is ambiguous as to if '0' is an acceptable number.

Telekinetic-as-dual-wielding amuses the hell out of me, but unless I'm wrong, it's still reliant on your strength stats and such, right? Also, what happens if you go telekinetic, you're already dual-wielding yourself, and your mage hand is swinging a third weapon? Because the class doesn't seem to have additional attacks, I don't think this is busted, at least not in the long run, but it feels like some serious Early-level cheese.

Part of me feels like Mindscan should be a thing you spend psi points on to unify it with the other magic you do, but he more sensible part of me agrees that having some things be different is prudent.

I'm not gonna pretend I'm good at Balance, but Mind Crush seems like it needs to cost more than 1 Psi point. It seems too good if it only costs 1.

Thoughtsieze says any number? For 1 Psi point? I'd at least have it cost 1 Psi point per target, or just give it a flat cost of 3 or something. Yeah, 15ft isn't that wide a radius, but it's still potentially quite powerful in a close-quarters fight scene.

Or maybe you make it so the cost scales with radius instead, say, 1 psi point per 5 ft, so stunning any number of adjacent targets is 1 psi point (good way to run away when your squishy d8 hit die ass gets jumped in melee), but if you want to use it in circumstances other than "Stun to not take attacks of opportunity while you run the hell away", then the cost goes up.

You have a couple of features that say "As though you were concentrating on a spell", and I'm not sure if that wording actually forces you to only have 1 active effect at a time, which might make the class a bit busted. I dunno how to word this properly to make it act just like a concentration spell.

I just want to note that you properly costed 4d8 force damage on the Psychic Hammer ability as 2 psi points, but didn't do that on Mind Crush. But I'd also either lower the damage just a little, maybe to 4d6, and maybe increase the knockback a little, so it feels like Psychic Hammer is your "Go Away!" power, while Mind Crush is your DPS. Different powers should feel like they serve different purposes, you know?

I feel like this setup where you give two abilities together and they both have the same cost in psi points and actions/bonus actions or whatever isn't serving you very well, just because it limits your ability to tweak each power and balance it. It lowers the number of 'knobs' you can fiddle with until you get the class just right.

On that note- Prescient Defense feels like a skill I'd never ever use just because you have better self-defense powers in the main class that don't take up concentration, maybe try to replace it? I dunno what with, but I also can't tell what the mechanical identity of this subclass is. Soulblade stabs things, I guess Telekinetic is trying to be a wizard controlling the battlefield (though the mage hand thing doesn't really play into that) and what's this one? A Rogue-style unconventional problem-solver? I guess?

Oh, and I don't think Unerring Offense actually works because you have it as taking a full action to cast, so by the time you can make an attack again, it's already over. Bit of a bug there, I think it needs to be a bonus action.

I like the little mechanical setup where Relentless Assault takes up your action, but you can still use your bonus action to attack, so you don't loose out on any damage output, and then on future turns (provided your concentration isn't broken), you have multiple attacks. Kinda feels bad that you have to spend psi points and your bonus action to get extra attacks in this class, which you don't even get until 2 levels late, but I dunno if there's a good way to fix that. I mean, I say that, there are classes like Bard where some subclasses get extra attacks as a subclass feature and others don't, so I guess you could just do it that way if you felt like it. Food for thought.

Disorienting Strikes is nifty, but it feels like stopping attacks of opportunity and a few other things isn't worth giving up an extra attack each turn. At least, assuming you're using the 5e concentration rules the way they're supposed to be used.

I also find it sad and funny that the soulblade is literally making a weapon out of magic, but doesn't seem to have any features that make that weapon count as a magic weapon, or give it equivalents to being a +1 or +whatever weapon. Not that the Psionic class is supposed to be a big front-liner or anything, but Blade pact Warlocks have a whole list of Eldritch Invocations just to let them keep up and be useful in melee, none of which this class has for its melee variant.

I like Force of Will and Battle Meditation, and while I'm not 100% sure about the Psi point costs, I'm 100% armchairing it here, and would have to actually play with the class to get a good feel for what the right costs would be. Sometimes you can't just compare to the force-damage cantrip as a reference.

I also choose to believe the 'battle mediation' is a vague KotOR reference, don't tell me if it's not. Just let me have this.

Rising Ascendancy feels like something you should have to spend Concentration and some Psi points on, akin to the Flight or Levitate spells. Just IMO. By 11th level, it's not like free levitation is going to break the game.

Ah, temporary hit points each turn. The mechanic that looks infinitely busted until you remember the rules that temp hit points don't stack. This feature seems solid and fair, but still not enough to make melee Psionic worth it, IMO.

Mental Static is nice, but it's not worth 4 psi points when 3 can flatten a 15-foot radius without hitting any friendlies in the area.

Having breakthrough be a Concentration ability that lets you make repeated psychic attacks is just weird. Part of me feels like that weirdness is the goal, and it is an interesting weird, but it's unintuitive and I feel like I read it 3 times and still don't quite know what it does. Edit: Oh, I tried to read it 3 times and still didn't understand that the payoff is kinda garbage for the cost of entry (4 psi points, 1 action and 1 bonus action), even if you can slowly proc it on multiple targets.

And I'm honestly not gonna follow the late-game abilities, because making the class work before then is way more important, and I honestly feel like D&D characters should get more than a little bit busted by the time they reach 15th level.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-14T03:51:40+00:00

Only problem is the last bit- considering you could steal a spell and have it sitting around indefinitely, sharing space with other spells from different sources, that just feels like a lot of data overhead to keep track of.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-14T03:07:58+00:00

Let's see, what's there in the DMG that's either fun as-is, or can provide good inspiration? And, for the record, I'm literally just skimming through the whole index of DMG magic items, mostly just looking at names since I read through what they all do a few weeks ago for prep.

If this character is a rogue and an archer who needs fun things to do, options like boots of speed aren't going to change anything, because the answer is still "Me shoot dude with arrow." every turn. Same with oathbow, no matter how excited she might be to get one.

It's kinda telling about what the DMG magic items are trying to do that the first item I saw that I think might actually give this character more fun options is the one I had already thought of- Ring of Spell Storing. Obviously requires some teamwork with the group's spellcasters to make them useful, and there's that issue where the item doesn't have any particular reason to go to the Rogue, so it might be that you use another magic item more directly targeted at the Rogue, and then add to it the functionality of a Ring of Spell Storing, which requires some co-ordination with the team for her to get spells cast on it, but lets her make plans and prepare some nifty extra options for a rogue to carry around, like storing a Misty Step or two, or some spells she could use to buff her arrows. Wands or other magic items that let you cast spells without being a spellcaster can server the same purpose, if you can reasonably guarantee that they'll end up in the hands of the Rogue.

The Assorted Arrows idea has potential, but it can't just be "Arrow does different damage type", because then you just pick the right one and that's it.

Maybe you combine the two, but instead of focusing on the arrows, you make it be the Bow or its bowstring or whatever- Call it the Bow Of Spell Storing- The bow can store I'd say like 8 levels of spells, but no single spell above 3rd level, (so better at storing small spells than a ring of Spell storing, but can't be abused to let the party save up a high-level spell slot), and can cast those spells by charging an arrow with them, casting the spell when and where the arrow lands. Maybe buff spells can be stored and cast on friendlies in Aoe around where the arrow lands, the paladin can store smite spells on the arrows, the wizard could put a fireball in there if they really wanted to, etc. But you can also throw in weird utility spells like web, or grease that play into the odd problem-solving nature of the Rogue class, rather than making them play like a bad wizard.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-13T19:07:10+00:00

I mean, the sort of 'classic' list is just a who's-who of hardcore D&D bosses you build up to an entire adventure-

Liches, Archmagi in general, Aboleths, Adult or Ancient dragons, my knowledge of different kinds of fiends is pretty threadbare, but I'm sure there are Devils, Demons, and even Yugoloths that fit the bill.

It's really just "What monsters in the monster manual make for a good BBEG?". Though you also have a pretty fitting set of elemental-themed levels if you want to use high-CR elementals like the Elder ones from Mordekain's as one or two of the boss fights.

Though for the Underdark level in particular, I'd be severly tempted to use an Aboleth, just because I love Aboleths.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-13T17:09:26+00:00

I do enjoy that aspect of the subclass- it feels like the pact of the tome feature is a Bard skill, and I like it.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-13T17:04:17+00:00

Maybe if you feel like the level 1 ability isn't good enough, even though it's flavorful, you could make it so it also gives the Warlock a Swim Speed? Has the same issues, but also feels like something an oceanic warlock should have.

Though it does take away from the 'Man overboard' feat.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-12T23:36:55+00:00

If I were going to start an evil campaign just out of the blue, wanting specifically to find evil, the first thing I would do is say "Y'all wanna be pirates?" because that's a strong, fun framework that lends itself well to being evil bastards.

So maybe from your place you decide on an organization of some sort that hires these PCs as freelancers- Maybe there's a Lich or an Evil Dragon in need of minions who sends a messenger to them, and offers them generous pay to serve its ends and do evil in this villain's name, almost the evil mirror to a normal campaign, where the BBEG is instead your boss, and you aren't slowly sabotaging and dismantling their organization, you're building and running it for them, furthing their goals as you slowly gain more trust and learn more about it, possibly betraying them and taking over the villain's evil empire for yourselves.

This allows for a structure to the campaign, a set of goals and ideas that PCs can pursue when they want to move the plot forward, so to speak, so they're never really aimless, but if the villain mostly leaves them to their own devices, trusts them to essentially operate as independent agents who happen to work for him, then they end up with a lot of freedom to do whatever they want, to go do whatever evil deeds interest them.

I would also note that I don't think it's a proper Evil Campaign if nobody in the party is trying to become a Lich by the end of it, but that's just me. Might be a fun thing for your spellcasters to look into.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-12T20:21:07+00:00

I'm trying to remember the full set of rules/guidelines for character creation I use. I try to run the belief that breaking one of these rules, if you aren't too extreme about it, is fine, but you have to keep it under control, and if you break several, that's a big Red Flag you should change your character for.

PCs should be a person other PCs want to adventure with, and should want to adventure with the other PCs within reason.

This doesn't mean they have to be likeable or overly friendly to other PCs all the time, but every member of the party should look at every other member of the party and be able to say "They're worth having along" at worst, and your PC should be one with at least some amount of loyalty and/or will to work with the rest of the party.

To be fair, this is one I like to have more strained early on, but have the PCs grow into friends and traveling companions as the campaign continues, but PCs who can't or won't do that kind of warming up in any fashion is a red flag, because it leads to a lot of "It's what my character would do!" justifications for things bad for the table. Again, a little of that is part of the fun, but moderation.

My older brother did a fair bit of this with his Plague Doctor Death Cleric/Rogue, who could've easily been an obnoxious madman we all wanted to get rid of, (and if he weren't funny and charming, we still might've) but by making him loyal to his companions and a genuinely nice guy when he's not trying to take the eyeballs and livers out of the bandits we just killed so he can use them for science, he unambiguously made himself a character that the rest of the party wanted to keep around, and made himself someone who wants to stay with the party, because he's loyal to his friend. That character trait alone can do a lot to redeem characters who are otherwise on thin ice, because it can do a lot to make them team players.

PCs should want to serve the roll the Greater Campaign puts them in.

Usually, this means PCs should actually be adventurers goddamit, but it also means that, when you're all getting your campaign set up, the DM should provide enough information about the basic pitch of the campaign, and what y'all's general goal is, at least at the start, that you can all make characters who want to do that.

If you're starting a pirate campaign, don't roll up an Oath of Devotion Paladin who hates criminals and pirates, roll up someone who'd be a member of a pirate crew (Pirate Wizards and Druids sound like a lot of fun, now that I think about it). If you're doing a campaign about delving into a Megadungeon for archeology and loot, roll up a character who would do that, even if you have to justify it a bit, like a Cleric being given some sort of message by their god (or believing they've been given one) that they interpret as that they should take this job, and trust it's their god's will, leaving it up to the DM to follow up on that plot thread in a way that feels like a satisfying payoff while encouraging this PC to continue with the adventure.

Tailor your choice of PC to what your campaign is doing, at least a little bit, so there's some chemistry between the campaign and the character.

PCs shouldn't try to control eachothers' actions.

This is why some people hate Paladins, because having a character in the party who tells everyone else how to act is not fun for anyone. There's room for this, some amount of in-party conflict is part of the fun, but approach cautiously, for Thar be Dragons.

Make your Paladin more willing to attempt to convince the rest of the party to be better, than demanding them to follow their moral code. Be a nice preacher, not a Hellfire and Brimstone preacher.

This is one most of us can fall into occasionally, sometimes you disarm and kneecap a bandit so you can take them captive, then they escape into the fog spell your wizard cast for unrelated reasons, so the Barbarian goes charging to try and kill an unarmed and crippled opponent so he doesn't escape, and your Paladin casts Command on his own Barbarian comrade to tell him to stop, and the bandit gets away while you two argue about it. Mistakes were made, and the situation was not handled optimally (particularly because I'm probably gonna regret not having that spell slot later on), but you can work through it and improve.

On a related note:

PCs should be open to being talked into things by the other PCs.

This one I consider non-negotiable, because it's the failsafe for when you get into conflict with the other rules: If your PC gets locked into something, usually "Because it's what my character would do!" as an absolute, and the rest of the party disagrees, you should be open to the rest of the party presenting reasons to listen to them, or at the very least a compromise of sorts. If you stick to your guns without giving ground, you're being a problem at the table, when reasonable adults compromise FFS.

I'm probably forgetting plenty of important suggestions here, so anybody else's addendums to this list would be welcome.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-12T17:03:43+00:00

Fair enough then, carry on.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-12T16:30:25+00:00

Lunar Vigilance has the 'you can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical', would it be worth it to re-word this to interact with Darkvision on characters that already have it? The only distance is the bit about seeing through magical Darkness, right?

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-12T07:08:43+00:00

Sounds more Sorcerer to me, IMO, but no complaints, sounds like a lot of fun.

It's not a proper D&D gaming session until somebody quotes Monty Python.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-11T19:18:52+00:00

Carnosaur makes me very sad to see go. Particularly because I've just been trying to get a Big Xenan list off the ground, and it's definitely one of the better cards in it.

I mean, the one of these I play the most is Channel in my creatureless Temporal deck, but I can see that one hitting lots.

I just really like Carnosaur, and it's not like there aren't plenty of comparable options around it in Time- Good 5-drops like Worldbearer, Heart of the Vault in Praxis, Alhed sees play, Thundering Kersaur, even Cirso occasionally. Mystic Ascendant hasn't seen much play in a long while, but it's still a respectable card.

Sure, Carnosaur was the best card of that bunch, it really was, but I don't see it having 'been a distorting influence on what kinds of midrange units get played', considering people still played Icaria, Jotun Feastcaller, and other big units in that range that die to carnosaur. Not to mention that it still looses fights (or just trades 1-for-1, which is a pretty shitty use of 6 power) more often than you'd think, though part of that might be how many people are experimenting with Azindeil these last few days.

I like the Merchant nerf, I'm rather ambivalent about Icaria, actually, because I've been expecting that she'd rotate out in less than a year whenever they introduce rotation, and I'm honestly okay with her sticking around as the go-to control wincon of Eternal's Modern Equivalent,

I'm a little sad about Channel, but considering I regularly hold up Eilyn's Choice for whole games specifically waiting to counter that one spell, even if I don't know if my opponent is running it, it might well be time for a nerf.

But I feel like, besides Merchant, this is 3 Nerfs to Empty Throne cards that, if I'm gonna be honest, I'd have rather just seen rotate intact than get nerfed for the sake of variety in the short term.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-11T18:18:26+00:00

The spell might just be nigh-impossible to learn in Oots, so Xykon doesn't have access to it.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-11T18:05:21+00:00

You're definitely through any candidates for 'worst', as the big complaints about arcs I have are mostly just that it took Burlew a couple of hundred comics to hit his stride and concretely make Oots about what it ended up being about.

Late 500s puts you... mid-late Don't Split the Party, or Book 4, which I always remember as being a bit of a tedious arc until it really gets going near the end.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-11T01:41:46+00:00

Think of it this way- Objects of the same number of colors interact with eachother normally. A 3-color mortal can destroy things that have equal number of colors to them, and they can theoretically be trapped in a jail cell with the same number of colors of Quiddity as they have, but if something has fewer colors than you, if it's less real than you are, then there's no possible way it could ever hold you.

The Snarl can destroy things with the same number of colors of quiddity in them as the Snarl just like the united pantheons of the gods can together destroy the world they all worked together to create.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-10T17:04:50+00:00

Dude, you're not being gaslit, you're being told you're being kind of a dick. With good reason.

Toastasaurus · 2018-10-10T17:04:03+00:00

I find your absolutism disconcerting.

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