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I am curious to know how others handle it. It being the big final battle, the climatic battle of heroes vs bad guy. the DM has spent weeks, or months, working on this campaign, and this bad guy/thing is tweaked just right, just enough to make things very difficult for the PCs to over come, with plenty of magic and mundane items, terrain favorable to the npc, and just enough minor npc's for cannon fodder. but then, at game time, one PC comes up, gets a lightning bolt to the face, then proceeds to make his attack roll. on his first attack swing, he rolls a natural 20. he then confirms his crit, and ends up doing so much damage that the NPC is literally turned into goo.
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how do you handle that?
Fudge him to 0 HP so he can have his final words?
More Hit Points. Foozle should always have more HP than a PC can dish out in damage in a single turn.
I've seen a failed saving throw make for an angry DM, too. :-)
I am curious to know how others handle it. It being the big final battle, the climatic battle of heroes vs bad guy. the DM has spent weeks, or months, working on this campaign, and this bad guy/thing is tweaked just right, just enough to make things very difficult for the PCs to over come, with plenty of magic and mundane items, terrain favorable to the npc, and just enough minor npc's for cannon fodder. but then, at game time, one PC comes up, gets a lightning bolt to the face, then proceeds to make his attack roll. on his first attack swing, he rolls a natural 20. he then confirms his crit, and ends up doing so much damage that the NPC is literally turned into goo.
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how do you handle that?
well if I had spend that much time creating the villan I would have build him with more hit points than the avarage crit of the melee guys, If one crit kills him 2 or 3 regular hits would have killed him just as much
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I am curious to know how others handle it. It being the big final battle, the climatic battle of heroes vs bad guy. the DM has spent weeks, or months, working on this campaign, and this bad guy/thing is tweaked just right, just enough to make things very difficult for the PCs to over come, with plenty of magic and mundane items, terrain favorable to the npc, and just enough minor npc's for cannon fodder. but then, at game time, one PC comes up, gets a lightning bolt to the face, then proceeds to make his attack roll. on his first attack swing, he rolls a natural 20. he then confirms his crit, and ends up doing so much damage that the NPC is literally turned into goo.
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how do you handle that?
Firstly, I rue my poor BBEG design. No supervillain worth his salt should go down to one critical hit.
Secondly, I use my description to turn it into a crowning moment of awesome for the PC: "You charge toward your foe, and take a surging lightning bolt hammering into your chest with barely a wobble, so focused are you on this terrible foe. As your sword arm raises, images of all the terrible suffering he has created flash through your mind and your righteous indignation drives on your sword arm with incresible force. You are almost willing the destruction of this terrible enemy of virtue!
Finally, your blade powers through his magical protections and wickedly curved armour. All come to nought in the face of your skill and fury. As your flashing blade sinks deep into the enemy's flesh he grants you one disbelieving, incredulous look before sinking to the floor, defeated. Dead."
Take the game in a slightly new dirrection. Instead of running the encounter as a hard fought battle against an overwhelming opponent, turn it into a fleeing action by the enemy. I may add a level or 2 to a leutenant on the fly to keep it more interesting, if the combat seems like it is not going to be fun. But I would let the players have a grand time figuring out which of the many fleeing opponents are worth chasing. One one of the enemies may even work to get a piece of the body for a reincarnate or resurection, so the villian can come back.
I'd move on. If i am not willing to allow the swing of the dice to dictate some of the terms of the game, then I shouldn't be running a game that uses them. There are diceless games out there, but in this game, there is chance involved. And if one crit takes out your carefully planned big bad, then something is very wrong somewhere.
Did the player enjoyed it?
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Don't worry about. Let the PC have his glorious victory and move on. As for the heavily tweaked bad guy, keep him and use him for something else. It's not like the PCs knew the full extent of his powers, so they won't know the difference. Also if he died in one shot you are either at a fairly low level, or he wasn't "tweaked out." BBEGs should be able to take a scythe critical especially if magically prepared.
On another note I remember a time playing Rolemaster a demon from beyond the pale showed up that we were supposed to run from, but I (decidedly the weakest character in the party) took a pot shot and killed it. If you are familiar with Rolemaster that was an open end on the hit and a double open end on the superlarge creature critical. Totally changed the course of the adventure.
Sorry for reminiscing, but it goes to show that events like this in game are great and memorable. Don't look for ways to take them away.
it happens. I had an undead npc who had time to buff and could see the Pc approaching. the idea was he would have 2 rounds left on his shield spell which put his ac up from really hard to hit to impossibly hard. after 2 rounds the short duration buff would be gone at which poi t I expected him to die shortly.
Pc paladin at lvl 5 rolls a 20 pn smite evil, confirms a crit at 30 ac does 65 damage insta gibs the undead BBEG.
so at this point an npc was on orders to betray the party and that fight starts, the Paladin crits him rolls near max damage, npc drops shortly.
I just congratulated him he's now done something he can honestly talk about as cool unti
he manages to top it which will be some time.
Firstly, I rue my poor BBEG design. No supervillain worth his salt should go down to one critical hit.
Secondly, I use my description to turn it into a crowning moment of awesome for the PC: "You charge toward your foe, and take a surging lightning bolt hammering into your chest with barely a wobble, so focused are you on this terrible foe. As your sword arm raises, images of all the terrible suffering he has created flash through your mind and your righteous indignation drives on your sword arm with incresible force. You are almost willing the destruction of this terrible enemy of virtue!
Finally, your blade powers through his magical protections and wickedly curved armour. All come to nought in the face of your skill and fury. As your flashing blade sinks deep into the enemy's flesh he grants you one disbelieving, incredulous look before sinking to the floor, defeated. Dead."
Bravo, sir! That's most likely how I'd play it, as well!
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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I am curious to know how others handle it. It being the big final battle, the climatic battle of heroes vs bad guy. the DM has spent weeks, or months, working on this campaign, and this bad guy/thing is tweaked just right, just enough to make things very difficult for the PCs to over come, with plenty of magic and mundane items, terrain favorable to the npc, and just enough minor npc's for cannon fodder. but then, at game time, one PC comes up, gets a lightning bolt to the face, then proceeds to make his attack roll. on his first attack swing, he rolls a natural 20. he then confirms his crit, and ends up doing so much damage that the NPC is literally turned into goo.
.
.
.
how do you handle that?
Nearly this exact thing happened to me just about a week ago, except it was three consecutive crits on a full attack with a bow, by the first character to act. Deadly Aim + x3 crit from an 11th level ranger against his favored enemy = something like 160 damage. Yeah that bad guy was toast. To me it was no big deal - the player got to feel awesome. If everyone is having fun I don't see the problem, sometimes the PCs get lucky/the bad guys get unlucky, just like sometimes it goes the other way.
(and yes, triple crit is unlikely but not impossible - the ranger had Improved Crit so it was ~1/1000 chance of happening. Rare, but not crazy rare)
I'd have given the NPC enough HP to survive the critical and make one more grand action. After that, he's on his own. I don't have a problem fudging dice for a story, but you've got to keep it to a minimum.
That's just the way the dice roll sometimes. That's also why I enjoy running Adventure Paths or other modules, spent a little to much time on a few bosses myself that got the crit hammer.
@GeraintElberion: Nice wordsmithing.
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There is something wrong with your final confrontation from the beginning if your BBEG threw a bolt to your PC and was in range for a melee hit. If it was a ranged attack, same thing. At a level where the BBEG is able to throw thunderbolts, he should have been wind wall-ed to make the archers focus on pawns or trying to find a strategy using environment.
Then after, if the only thing the DM would complain about is how, after a long fight and a lot of suffering, the BBEG needed only one hit to be killed after trying a last-chance spell in a dramatic fashion, I'd say just thumbs up your player and continue with the story.
BBEG aren't made of adamantium, especially if they are spellcasters. A level 8 barbarian with a keen greataxe could probably kill easily a level 10 wizard in one critical hit.
...congratulate the player and move on with the game?
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Don't take away a player's moment of triumph. Maybe have the BBEG monologue his dying words about all the terrible things you had planned for the party so they realize just how great that critical hit was.
We still talk fondly of a game we played that when we finally got to the BBEG, my wife baleful polymorphed him into a duck because of a natural 1 on the saving throw. May not exactly be the epic battle written in legends but it was a complete and utter humiliation of the BBEG that it far surpassed just kicking his butt.
The only reason I would see fit to change it is if the players felt that it was not enjoyable.
Yeah...Phantasmal Killer on a giant enraged owlbear BBEG made me rage a little. Luckily most of the party almost died when they fell in a pit of green slime shortly afterwards. Thats luck for you.
I wouldn't play with a GM that I knew would change the encounter just because a player got lucky or played intelligently.
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This is usually a result of not scaling up an encounter to take into account higher than normal point buy or numbers, or forgetting the NPC's CR is not as high as a PC's would be at that level.
Or just a good damage build and a high crit weapon. It should be an epic description as he destroys the NPC in a single massive blow.
I use Herolab if I need stat blocks done. Takes me so much less time I don't mind the time spent making a villain, even if hes one shotted (this rarely occurs though).
if enemy is wizard, it was a goon with illusion that was hit and the wizard hides between his other minions or something like that.
Just keep your gameface on and act as if you would have planned everything smarter.
if you ennemy is a fighter, well then I would slap that munchkin that could one-hit a boss-fighter.
If however they have true seeing or I wouldn't have any good idea, I would congratulate the player and crack a joke about. These things happen to people who plan a lot, just reuse the NPC in another group or with the undead template later on.
well the bbeg was a rakshasa, and he had higher initative than my guy. so, since he was 40' away, he threw the lightning bolt. and, as to adding more HP to carry him over to another round, i dont see a rak having 200+ hps, since my guy did over 200 pts of dmg with that swing. and i agree, beefing the numbers so that the bbeg lasts one more round is just mean.
my dm was pretty cool about it, only insulting me and my mom, nice enough to leave my grandma out of it, but was a little lacking with flavor text.
...congratulate the player and move on with the game?
MADNESS!
I try and build my BBEG's smart and build in contingency and defenses like mirror image, but sometimes the players get lucky and the BBEG's go down. It happens, there are always more bad guys.
...i dont see a rak having 200+ hps, since my guy did over 200 pts of dmg with that swing.
Wow, 200 HP is pretty impressive damage. How does that damage break down, and what level was the character? I mean, if you're doing that kind of damage in one hit, you must be decent level, by which point a CR 10 foe is probably not the best big bad.
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This is one of those things that is going to vary by group.
This would not be fun for me as either the critting player, the DM, or one of the other players in the group. In all three cases I want the climactic final battle to be epic. The BBEG getting ended in one shot is not epic. If I critted the BBEG for all of his HP on the first shot I would want (or possibly expect) the DM to say the BBEG has some sort of fortification, displacement, giant pool of HPs, or something else to let him survive.
This is one of those things that is going to vary by group.
This would not be fun for me as either the critting player, the DM, or one of the other players in the group. In all three cases I want the climactic final battle to be epic. The BBEG getting ended in one shot is not epic. If I critted the BBEG for all of his HP on the first shot I would want (or possibly expect) the DM to say the BBEG has some sort of fortification, displacement, giant pool of HPs, or something else to let him survive.
I feel like if you are going to go with this then why bother with the dice? Would you rule the big bads AC was actually 5 points lower if the fighter missed 5 times in a row because missing over and over doesn't make for an 'epic' fight? A mid combat change to a monster in my opinion nullifies the choices and abilities of the players. At that point there is no point to good strategy or intelligent play, just go ahead and do whatever and the dm will sort things out. At which point, there is no purpose to the dice.
...i dont see a rak having 200+ hps, since my guy did over 200 pts of dmg with that swing.Wow, 200 HP is pretty impressive damage. How does that damage break down, and what level was the character? I mean, if you're doing that kind of damage in one hit, you must be decent level, by which point a CR 10 foe is probably not the best big bad.
A crit with a x4 weapon is really nasty. Of course we know no details other than there was a Rakshasa.
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Two things I do for big nasty BBEGs. First, I pick the biggest PC damage load, on a crit, and make sure he has HP equal to 50% more than that. If the PC crits twice, oh well, down'd guy.
At higher levels, I add fortification to their armor, standard. 25% at lower levels (6 to 9), 50% (10 to 15), and 75% (16+). That negates most of the crits.
If the PCs are powerful (I tend to be generous in rolling methods, so they end up with 25-35 pt buys on average), then I max the HP of most enemies, to keep things interesting. HP is actually a really really good way to adjust a fight. Adding levels makes them more dangerous overall, higher saves, bigger DCs, more spells, higher BAB, etc. Adding HP ONLY makes them more survivable vs the party.
Regeneration is also a good thing to add on for major BBEGs at higher levels. Again, makes them harder to kill without making them able to one shot the PCs.
Finally, if all else fails, and they take him down in one round, I adjust the plot accordingly. Maybe he wasn't the BBEG, he was just a high ranker with the BBEG, and they find this out going through his papers, and now they have to track down the power behind him (another arc of stories, YAY!).
Fortification is your friend. Also, for BBEGs at the end of a campaign I generally give them items or spells that make them immune to most save or die effects. Piles of HPs don't hurt either.
I was just about to suggest something like this. At mid-high levels, one big crit can end most foes a party might face. It might seem contrived for every capstone villain to have a slew of immunities... but basic common sense plus enough combat experience to reach the high-CR mark means that any enemy worth his salt will recognize the danger of insta-kills (regardless of source - SoD spells, crits, whatever) and plan accordingly.
You can always mix it up and throw in a barbarian warlord with Int=6 and Wis=4, who quite literally lacks any form of sense, but these kinds of things should be the exception rather than the rule. ;)
I almost did this as a DM to one of my players. An NPC was using a pickaxe (x4 crit) and rolled the natural 20 but couldn't confirm. If he had that would have been one dead PC.
But don't take away the victory if someone rolls awesome. We had a barbarian character take out a pair of twin fighters in one round with a pair of successive cleave crits with a battleaxe (x3 crit). He stepped up to the first one (words were exchanged), crit and splat. Cleave into the twin and crit and splat. It was pretty cool, even though it took out two of the DM's major opponents in one fell swoop. That player still talks about it.
how do you handle that?Firstly, I rue my poor BBEG design. No supervillain worth his salt should go down to one critical hit.
Secondly, I use my description to turn it into a crowning moment of awesome for the PC: "You charge toward your foe, and take a surging lightning bolt hammering into your chest with barely a wobble, so focused are you on this terrible foe. As your sword arm raises, images of all the terrible suffering he has created flash through your mind and your righteous indignation drives on your sword arm with incresible force. You are almost willing the destruction of this terrible enemy of virtue!
Finally, your blade powers through his magical protections and wickedly curved armour. All come to nought in the face of your skill and fury. As your flashing blade sinks deep into the enemy's flesh he grants you one disbelieving, incredulous look before sinking to the floor, defeated. Dead."
This... with one caveat: If the moment turns out to be anticlimactic instead (and by this, I mean to the players, and not the GM), then have this have been a cat's paw/patsy set up to take the fall for the "real" BBEG (and then build a better BBEG).
I honestly don't usually use a single BBEG, it's too easy to have this happen.
One thing I've always wanted to do, but haven't had a chance, is set up a BBEG caster with a couple of really nasty body guards. :)
Two ogres, built with NPC stats (either normal or elite), kitted up in full plate with armor spikes and levels of warrior or fighter. Only two magical items on each. A quiver full of +1 Frosting Flaming Corroding Shocking Shrieking arrows (50 each), and an amulet with a permanent anti-magic field on it. Both wielding a MW +10 strength Compound Long Bow, sized for them. :) The BBEG not even fighting, just watching and running away if one of his guards dies. :) I can hear the howls of outrage now. Obviously this is intended to seriously inconvenience a group of 10+ PCs who rely heavily on magic. :)
Apart from simple encounter design, I'd suggest using something like hero points. We're using our own version, which is only defensive - PC's got 1 + half cha hero points per day, spend one point to reroll a save or force an opponent to reroll an attack roll. Major villains I give a single such point, which makes sure they survive the first attack.
It's a houseruled "fudging" that works the same way for everyone, that way.
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I honestly don't usually use a single BBEG, it's too easy to have this happen.
One thing I've always wanted to do, but haven't had a chance, is set up a BBEG caster with a couple of really nasty body guards. :)
Two ogres, built with NPC stats (either normal or elite), kitted up in full plate with armor spikes and levels of warrior or fighter. Only two magical items on each. A quiver full of +1 Frosting Flaming Corroding Shocking Shrieking arrows (50 each), and an amulet with a permanent anti-magic field on it. Both wielding a MW +10 strength Compound Long Bow, sized for them. :) The BBEG not even fighting, just watching and running away if one of his guards dies. :) I can hear the howls of outrage now. Obviously this is intended to seriously inconvenience a group of 10+ PCs who rely heavily on magic. :)
Ahahah, this looks like an ugly fight for the PCs !
In my game, I helped the DM craft the final campaign fight, and I used this exact concept of BBEG caster with nasty bodyguards. We are playing this friday. I was so vile with it, I honestly don't know if the final dramatic battle in the mage tower will not end in a TPK, but I trust the DM to adapt the situation. Just look for yourself :- Fight at the end of a corridor, 20 feet wide. Wind wall on the entrance. Little reinforcements in the back to keep the archers occupied.
- Phalanx bodyguards, enlarged, bull strength and bear's endurance cast on them, with a lot of attacks of opportunities that stop their targets, and a shield to slam and bull-rush. More about it after.
- Necromancer BBEG with lots of debuffs, fear, weakening spells and ranks in Evil Ranting against an almost full melee-class-low-will party. Oh, and Dominate. Level 10 barbarian with +4 to Will will luv it, us, not too much.
- Evocator, right-hand to the BBEG. Specialist of lingering metamagic, and of the fireball spell. Deals heavy damage, PCs escape the fire, bodyguards push back in it.
- We don't start with full HPs because of the previous battlefield and there are traps between the floor of the tower and the command center.
EVIL, I SAY !
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I have done this as a player twice.
The first time was in a very powerful evil campaign and we just figured the great wyrm dragon had it coming and moved on.
The second time, in a fairly light hearted game, my DM pulled the playground classic on us. "My brother will beat you up!" The original BBEG was a cleric, and his actual brother appeared behind us in a cloud of smoke.
As it turns out, his brother could not beat us up, since our wizard, played by an optimizer that is a wonder to behold, managed to one round kill him as well. The DM just gave up after that.
I put this down to role-play rolls. There are certain points in every campaign where the crits come in thick and heavy and the end of a story arc is aleways one of them.
On the same note it is funny how quick the tabels can turn too.
In the campaign i'm running at the moment one of the characters in a fit of rage, litteraly as he is a barbarian, threw himself into an oncoming army to kill their leader. When he finaly made it to him, this is after slaughtering over 60 of his elite troops, the character critted the big bad into a mushy paist. Every sing attack was a critical threat and only one didn't conferm. Later that very round however the remaining guards surrounded him and returned the favor. After the smoke cleared he was at -197.
All that because they killed his horse.
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I feel like if you are going to go with this then why bother with the dice? Would you rule the big bads AC was actually 5 points lower if the fighter missed 5 times in a row because missing over and over doesn't make for an 'epic' fight? A mid combat change to a monster in my opinion nullifies the choices and abilities of the players. At that point there is no point to good strategy or intelligent play, just go ahead and do whatever and the dm will sort things out. At which point, there is no purpose to the dice.This is one of those things that is going to vary by group.
This would not be fun for me as either the critting player, the DM, or one of the other players in the group. In all three cases I want the climactic final battle to be epic. The BBEG getting ended in one shot is not epic. If I critted the BBEG for all of his HP on the first shot I would want (or possibly expect) the DM to say the BBEG has some sort of fortification, displacement, giant pool of HPs, or something else to let him survive.
My group is like this. And it's simple. The dice do not rule the story.
They are just tools to help the story along. When a tool isn't what you need it to be, you disregard it.In this situation there are a number of things you can do. Blatant lying isn't one of them. But since you never tell the player's what the hp of their enemy is, you're not lying if you slap on a couple more. A personal favorite tactic of mine as a DM is to describe the glory but tell them it just wasn't quite enough. If done right, this will make the pc loathe the npc. Let combat go as planned for a round or two, shooting off your big bad so the players know the force behind the past few months of their in-game lives and when it comes back around to the player who pulled out a can of whoop-a**, describe his shot as epic and end combat. Award a little extra XP if you want to make yourself feel less guilty. Most player's prefer the last combat of the campaign to be ridiculous. And it should be.
I am curious to know how others handle it. It being the big final battle, the climatic battle of heroes vs bad guy. the DM has spent weeks, or months, working on this campaign, and this bad guy/thing is tweaked just right, just enough to make things very difficult for the PCs to over come, with plenty of magic and mundane items, terrain favorable to the npc, and just enough minor npc's for cannon fodder. but then, at game time, one PC comes up, gets a lightning bolt to the face, then proceeds to make his attack roll. on his first attack swing, he rolls a natural 20. he then confirms his crit, and ends up doing so much damage that the NPC is literally turned into goo.
.
.
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how do you handle that?
I always know how much damage my players can deal out so I would always make sure that would never happen. Even with a caster's SoD spells I have enough defenses up that it is hard to make happen, miss chance, SR, and very high saves as an example, if not someone(minion) who can undo the SoD/SoS at least once.
This happened in a long ago 2e game I ran. After several sessions that built to the climactic final battle with the bad guy, my wife's character gets initiative over the BBEG and throws her axe at him. We were using the old "Good Hits, Bad Misses" critical tables, and she rolled double zeroes on the chart: Instant Death. Everyone cracked up laughing and we went out for Chinese. I mean, whattaya gonna do?
Exactly -- I'd laugh and give the player a thumbs-up.
I try to come up with a quick and reasonably megalomaniacal, BBEG dying soliloquy. Something like "NO! NO, I CAN'T DIE LIKE THIS. NOT LIKE THISSSS.....<cough>" *plop*
And then, disappointed, I put away my plans for dancing my Dance of Triumph over their TPKed character sheets that I was certain I had in the bag and plan for the next time when I will surely taste sweet victory...