Post your best final boss stories.
In my very first Pathfinder game I ever ran, my own setting, I set my players off on quest heavily inspired by the Hobbit. A group of dwarfs were attempting to take back their home Oaken Deep- a dwarven hold where the roots of the trees burrowed into the mountain and those that lived there were skilled craftsmen of wood and stone -from their former slaves, a colony of demented dromites.
Anyway, in the chamber where the dwarven clans held moots the party fought the dromites' champion, the Fissure- a gargantuan-sized crysimal with a template to let it fade into the etheral plane. The fight lasted 12 rounds I believe, with the party quickly realizing they weren't equipped to kill this thing without taking a beating themselves; so they got clever. They ran, all seven of them, with the sorcerer getting just ahead of everyone to set their plan in motion. The rest distracted the Fissure long enough to lead it into a open chamber with the sorcerer. It started phasing out of the wall but once halfway through the player casted a readied spell to lock it on it's plane. Remember this was my first time working with d20 in general, plus with my own wording on the Fissure's phasing by having it only 'skim' the etheral plane, that I ruled this fully sent it back to the material plane...halfway in a wall.
To make a short story shorter, this did a butt-load of damage and lead me to giving it the staggered condition. Unable to phase, very injured, and now trapped in a small chamber the party took their time killing it- they dropped a very heavy statue of the cities founder on it. Good times.
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Was playing a suicidally brave human fighter/barbarian named Ulf Helsmasher. DM split the party for two separate final fights and I wound up fighting a summoner who had been a member of our party before he got swayed to the dark side. I had a super OP magic sword so the DM expected me to stand there and bang it out sword against eidolon. The summoner somehow had no CMD even with his eidolon so instead I just tackled him and beat him to death with my bare hands. It took forever to punch him out, but it was one of the most anti-climactic things ever. My battle cry through the whole campaign had been "NO ONE OUT GRAPPLES ULF HELMSMASHER!" (lots of little spider-like construct suicide bombers had been trying to latch on to me through the whole game, so it came up pretty often) and it held up all the way to the end.
Way back in ages past (1st edition AD&D I think) our GM ran a really plain dungeon. There was no treasure on the monsters and no magic. What ever treasure there was was what we brought with us. At the very bottom of this place was a Tarrasque. I think this monster has changed from version to version. In every case though it is nearly unkillable. We did everything we could this thing would not drop. Finally, we pulled out a scroll of Wish.
In those days, you had to be very careful with a Wish spell because a GM was a Lawyer with that spell. If you were not very specific with it he could have it come back to bite you. In essence, we had the Tarrasque wished away so that it would never come back.
Now the fun part came. The GM told us that the Tarrasque was the source of the treasure in the dungeon. All we had to do was take its hide and we could turn it in to treasure. This is what the monster manual said but we were not the ones to read that book.
You know the phrase "Killer Dungeon Master"? Well over the years that phrase has gotten mixed up. It should be "Kill the Dungeon Master". And that is exactly what we wanted to do.
Was playing a suicidally brave human fighter/barbarian named Ulf Helsmasher. DM split the party for two separate final fights and I wound up fighting a summoner who had been a member of our party before he got swayed to the dark side. I had a super OP magic sword so the DM expected me to stand there and bang it out sword against eidolon. The summoner somehow had no CMD even with his eidolon so instead I just tackled him and beat him to death with my bare hands. It took forever to punch him out, but it was one of the most anti-climactic things ever. My battle cry through the whole campaign had been "NO ONE OUT GRAPPLES ULF HELMSMASHER!" (lots of little spider-like construct suicide bombers had been trying to latch on to me through the whole game, so it came up pretty often) and it held up all the way to the end.
Ulf Helsmasher sounds so friggin' Metal, man!
party entered a cave looking for a dragon. after a dozen of smaller fights against it's kobold slaves, we entered a narrow corridor that seemed to go on forever. It was dark, so our sorceress took out her torch, and I, the dwarven cleric, took point. Call for initiative, call for reflex save, everyone fails, and the dragon has done a TPK in his surprise round...
Am I reading this right? Did your party walk down the throat of a dragon and get swallowed?
Because man, if so, that's bloody hilarious. Iffy, in my opinion, since I'd have probably ruled that you'd notice the breathing and the fact that the floor was squishier than it should of been, but still, hilarious.
Ah, not quite as amusing then. Ah well.
Dotted for interest.
In a rather epic 4th ed. campaign I ran, each of the 12 continents in the setting were controlled by a single truly awesome dragon, each of which had "class levels" (in 4th ed. classes were templates for monsters). The party is gathering things to help deal with the coming of the silence (aka entropy) from the various dragons.
One of the players was playing a member of one of the servitor races of Kathandrax, the red dragon barbarian. He had been....less than thrilled when the character turned up in the service of the blue dragon who was his greatest rival. Needless to say, the party failed their diplomacy checks and combat ensued.
one of the other players, playing a wizard/knowledge monkey, pulled out an item similar to the stones that willow used in the movie of the same name, which when thrown turn anything it hits into stone...and he critted Kathandrax (for those of you playing along at home, the effect was save ends). Thanks to one of the wizard's utility spells, I had a -10 penalty to my saves. so I kept failing. OVER AND OVER AGAIN. in a two hour combat, my dragon made it's save when it had 20 HP left, and then it was promptly critted by the first player I mentioned, for over 100 damage. I shook my fist at the wizard, told them they did a good job, and then Kathandrax's body exploded (for story reasons).
The looks on their faces when half of their characters were bleeding out from the only damage they took in that fight was priceless.