One shot a boss, like a boss(Serpents skull. As spoiler free as possible). Have you?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


Hello! I am the guy who died three times in a span of only a few sessions, and twice in the same session. I am notorious for rolling more 1's than statistically possible at my table. I recently switched sides of the table, and have been using dice gifted to me by the Gm. Ever since then my luck has changed. In only two sessions I have managed only three ones and like a single 20!

That may not sound like much, but it is a vaaast improvement. The ones have been on inconsequential things and the 20 was to one shot a boss.And just for the sake of information i was level 3. To keep things as spoiler free as possible, we are playing Serpents skulll and have made it to the...shall we say, goat sucker. I was the highest on initiave (A human alchemist) besides the boss. So the boss flies up sixty or so feet. Whelp, too high for a bomb but not high enough up to evade a crossbow bolt. So i take aim and roll. A natural 20. I roll to confirm and make it with a 19. The boss makes a fly check to recover and stay up and rolls a nat 1. It plumeted and took an absurd amount of damage. It took in total a few points over what it would have taken to kill. Everyone was so stunned. No one had cast a single spell or even had moved aside from myself and it. I leveled uup ontthe spot and decided to take up magical beast hunting.

It just feels so good not dying and to actually accomplish something for a change as opposed to only accomplishing dying. And I wanted to share just because of all the bad luck i have been having and it finally seems to be turning around. I was not gonna keep this character after part one, but now I think I shall.

So onto the question I have for everyone. Have you managed to one shot a boss? If so I would love to hear about it in detail!


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I had a flying monkey demon boss thing in that same adventure that didn't take too well to a slumber hex.

While I had slumber hex for a while I'd never used it. Just waited on it and use fortune hex and cackle to buff the allies.(a reroll once per turn is incredible, even better on failed saves).

His landing was followed by the group just quietly staring at my swamp born witch, having freshly killed what these monkey creatures prayed to.

"I've never eaten a God before."

In the swamp, you eat what you kill. I got quite full that adventure path. Nor would it be the last God I ate.


If you can one shot an enemy, it obviously wasn't a boss.


Not me, but another player. He was playing a half-orc paladin and we were tasked with fighting a vampire.

Half the party attempts to parlay with the vampire and get dominated. My character is a country bumpkin, so he had loaded up with garlic and is attempting to remove the effect by sprinkling holy water and garlic on the other two.

Meanwhile, the paladin steps up to the vampire and, in the most devastating critical hit I have ever seen, obliterates the vampire in a single blow. This became the paladins shtick for the rest of the campaign until she fell. Ohvac One-Shot, the Paladin.


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Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
If you can one shot an enemy, it obviously wasn't a boss.

Incorrect. I'm just bosser


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Wasn't a boss, but a player of mine in Wrath of the Righteous crit for over 800 damage. At Level 11 / MT 4.


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As a GM, I've one-shot some players before.

A Frost Giant critting with both his great-axe attacks does a lot of damage...


My party once ran into an Anti paladin we had been searching for for ages who's AC had been artificially inflated, he had randomly been granted DR and elemental resistance so hitting him and making any damage stick had been a nightmare.

I am playing a mesmerist vexing daredevil/swashbuckler and had just jumped a small canal to let the war priest have a crack at the paladin so I tried a hold person randomly not thinking it would stick (expecting it to have inflated saves as well) but it stuck and everyone at the table was very pleased xD because it was taking a f@+* of a long time to kill this guy.


Technically you two-shot the boss (falling damage being the 2) but yes it does feel awesome as hell to end the existence of something before anyone else can act. Gunslingers are notorious for this very fact (deadshot baby) and I personally can attest to that when you land a crit with a gun against a boss-like entity and it just drops it does feels so worth the 1-3 gold a shot that gun costs yo ~slaps self~ enough about that.

But yeah, for some reason most dms forget that gravity is a thing when they make their encounters take to an open sky.


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I've one shotted a couple of bosses with my Paladins. The weird nature of Smite Evil and crits can make it happen.


Using a brace weapon (Nodachi) and rolling a crit, I lethally wounded a Minotaur... as a nonlethal-built character...
I'd rather not say what level I was because it will probably immediately become less impressive, BUT I had to stabilize, in the middle of combat, a relatively boss-strength creature hat I had done enough non lethal damage to to knock unconscious twice over.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

My cavalier one-shotted THE boss in Serpent's Skull. As in, the boss of book 6. Thanks, vorpal blade!

OP probably shouldn't click this next part; Serpent's Skull spoiler to follow.

Spoiler:
It seemed cinemetically fitting, since that's how Ydersius went out the first time

(As a GM, I also one-shotted two characters with a vorpal blade in Iron Gods, in the same combat. Clearly I just shouldn't be allowed vorpal blades; I never roll that many 20s except when I've got one on hand.)


Mythic is super dumb, and on theme with that, I think I've one or two shotted every boss from level 9 onward in that campaign. we walked into the

Spoiler:
xanthir vang
fight 2 levels below what we were supposed to, BAM mythic vital strike, dead boss. I'm now dealing around 250-300 damage with 8 arrows every full attack as a lv 17 mythic 8 cleric archer, +120 mythic deadly aim, plus 16d6 if it's evil, and plus another 16d6+8 if it's a demon, for somewhere between 350-500 damage (I had changed characters because my mythic vital striker was even more broken).

Mythic is really broken.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Frogsplosion wrote:

Mythic is super dumb, and on theme with that, I think I've one or two shotted every boss from level 9 onward in that campaign. we walked into the ** spoiler omitted ** fight 2 levels below what we were supposed to, BAM mythic vital strike, dead boss. I'm now dealing around 250-300 damage with 8 arrows every full attack as a lv 17 mythic 8 cleric archer, +120 mythic deadly aim, plus 16d6 if it's evil, and plus another 16d6+8 if it's a demon, for somewhere between 350-500 damage (I had changed characters because my mythic vital striker was even more broken).

Mythic is really broken.

My group's Paladin doesn't even have Mythic Vital Strike and Mythic Power Attack was needed in my game, but that doesn't matter when you Foe Bite a x4 crit on the first attack of a Smite vs an evil outsider. Ouch.


In a level 1 game, orc barbarian, crit eh a great axe for max damage plus power attack (I think it was 26 str? So 12+12+3=27 *3 would be 81 damage? )

It's not that he would have died to it (he had 100 hp) but it qualified for massive damage and he rolled a 1.


golems fall in pits.


I wouldn't necessarily call it a boss, nor would I call it a successful kill but it was the strongest creature we'd face before we started on the next part of the module, and if the GM didn't "Ex Machina" the fight to last longer, it would've been a practical one-shot.

It was the first "big fight" in RotRL (during the festival). I was a level 1 Bolt Ace with a Masterwork Heavy Underwater Crossbow. I proceeded to shoot and critically hit the leader for maximum damage (resulted in 22 total, including Point Blank Shot benefits).

The GM realized that would've obliterated the "boss," and stated that the mount he was riding had Deflect Arrows (of which I confirmed that the one in question didn't have it), and that it used its Deflect Arrows to snatch the bolt before it hit the boss (even though Deflect Arrows, per RAW, only applies to attacks made against the creature that possesses the feat, of which I wasn't targeting the mount, but the rider).

In short, under normal circumstances, it was a one-shot. But, like most GMs who become disappointed with an encounter's "end", decided to "Ex Machina" it so that it would be more interesting than a simple "I shoot him dead." I'm not complaining. Well, maybe a little, if only because I realized that the GM basically cheated me of my glorious moment in that part of the module (since my character background is built to be an ultimate sniper of sorts), but there you have it, a one-shot to what some would consider a "boss."


Although neither were quite successful, and one ended in his death, I just had an archer character effectively devastate two battles - unfortunately the last one caused him to expire.

It's too bad, too, 'cause that guy was pretty awesome - two encounters that I expected to be almost impossible for a group of three, and he nearly solo'd-point-five both of 'em!

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