How hard do you guys think a BBEG should be? Should they always knock someone unconscious? Should they be short fights but deadly or long and based on attrition?
What are some creative ways to make an otherwise easy encounter difficult, that way a high level party could deal with bandits. On the flip-side what are some creative ways to make a low-level party fight higher-tier enemies?
Also what are good general rules about BBEG's difficulty? or whats fair to give to the BBEG?
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You can do whatever you want with the BBEG quite frankly. It depends what is your objective in a fight but think that I always keep in mind and excite my players:
-Action economy...action economy is frankly one of the biggest issues of the BBEG fighting 4 or 5 people, so usually I surround the BBEG with minions, so they don't all spend their actions trying to take him down first. Optional: you can use mythic stuffs to give your bbeg a much needed Oomph if you are doing single bbeg fight.
-Climatic battle setting: Maybe there is a battle in the background between two armies, maybe you are fighting on top of a tower collapsing, maybe the last battle is on the moon etc...
-Good motivation or secondary objective during the battle can also be a good thing. Maybe the BBEG is using the king as a hostage or he is holding the codex of creation in his hands and our heroes must find a way to remove it from his hands before even taking him down etc...
That's of course assuming that the BBEG is even a threat combat wise.
Also something that I often do, I take inspiration from video games:
this one is still one of my favorite boss battles of all time:
Kratos vs Poseidon
Also give thought as to the terrain - a climactic fight I was running this weekend was changed from a cake-walk to a dire struggle by the BBEG retreating into tunnels that the PC's could only fit down one-at-a-time. This meant only one or two PCs could be engaged at any given time.
I've found the best BBEG fights are the ones the party fear it could lose all the way until the enemy goes down. That doesn't mean that party members have to go into negatives, but that they should be worried about losing. Longer fights tend to be better at this than shorter ones, and as I usually run for large parties of 6-7 players, I always flesh out the encounter with cohorts - minions are too weak, they have to pose a credible threat to the party to draw fire from the BBEG.
Things to beware of are:
* Over-deadly encounters - if it's save-or-die repeatedly then a simple run of bad luck can lead to a TPK. If the enemy has a weapon that will kill any PC on a full attack, then either let them use tactics like Great Cleave or don't do it.
* Making weaker or specialised PCs feel useless - don't set the encounter such that some PCs will be ineffective no matter what they do. Giving a BBEG huge spell resistance might sound great, but if the party spell-casters don't have any spells that don't run into spell resistance, you just shut them down for the whole encounter.
* Glaring weaknesses - if the BBEG has a weakness that the party hit on, then your encounter might be over in one round. One party I run for does catastrophic damage, so a single enemy with 250hp was going to last all of one round if they won initiative. I had to add in foes to divert their attention.
* Don't penalise the party for being clever, though. If they do work out good tactics, let them use them - there's always next time. Likewise, if the party are foolish or have weaknesses that can be exploited, exploit them. No hero is invulnerable.
On the flip-side what are some creative ways to make a low-level party fight higher-tier enemies?
Putting weaknesses on the BBEG is one good way. Blind/nearsighted-ness, befuddled (acts as if under confusion spell), sensitive ears (loud sounds impart penalties), missing limbs/wings.
I don't know the adventure as written, but I believe Dragon's Demand had a good example of this.
I was on the player side and didn't see what the actual CR was, nor what changes our GM may have made overall, but the end fight didn't seem as though a party of our level could have taken on that BBEG without some limiting factors.
How hard do you guys think a BBEG should be? [...] Should they be short fights but deadly or long and based on attrition?
Surely the party gets some voice in that.
That's actually one of my pet peeves. When the GM decides that a BBEG should be a long, drawn-out, battle of attrition, it almost invariably means that the GM is going to squash any attempts by the party to do anything creative, or indeed, effective.
"I use my scroll of dominate monster on him!" "Uh,....." <rolls some dice behind the screen> "it makes its save." "Don't you want to know what the DC was?" "Uh..." <thinks fast> "... no, no, I don't. Because he rolled, um, a 20. Which autosaves, right?"
In general, I find that single BBEG encounters are poor for exactly the reason I gave above. They also get buried in the action econommy. They're also cliche'd and boring. Save the single baddie for the pre-boss "dragon" and make the boss interesting and memorable.
Minions are good, terrain is good, and tactics are fantastic. You can make a bunch of kobolds into a challenge if the kobolds know what they're doing and work together.
A BBEG should just always have a sufficient band of minions. If the fight starts going bad for the BBEG, he can abandon the minions and try to regroup.
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The best advice I got for trying to make a awesome boss BBEG fight was: don't. Solo bosses just don't work well in D&D because in order to make a foe threatening in the face of PC action economy then they will needed to be horrendously broken, which will mean they are either invincible or one shot killers. If you really want a climactic fight, I recommend either using minions or an enemy that really is suited to face multiple people at once like a Dragon
At this point, I rarely make BBEGs combat encounters at all; by the time the players carve their way though the BBEG's organization and decimated his plans, he really should be no individual match to them. I actually make it a role playing opportunity instead. It gives the players a chance to say their peace/gloat/whatever and then they can control how it all ends, instead of the BBEG committing suicide by adventurer as normal.
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Don't do BBEG. Do BBBEG -- Big Bad BUNCHES of Evil Guys.
Action economy kills anyone who doesn't insta-gib the PCs. So don't even try to have one single titanic figure they must bring down -- have a bunch of people on a level with the PCs, or slightly below. Have an Evil Opposite Party. Have a bunch of buffed minions running around. Have two guardian shield golems with the wizard. Definitely have terrain and environment help the enemy instead of the PCs (bad weather against archers, a lot of pillars and chasms against a rage-charge-pounce-lance monster, some kind of LOS or anti-magic barriers against casters, whatever.) Have five or six DIFFERENT bad guys hanging around doing things.
Don't do BBEG. Do BBBEG -- Big Bad BUNCHES of Evil Guys.
Action economy kills anyone who doesn't insta-gib the PCs. So don't even try to have one single titanic figure they must bring down -- have a bunch of people on a level with the PCs, or slightly below. Have an Evil Opposite Party. Have a bunch of buffed minions running around. Have two guardian shield golems with the wizard. Definitely have terrain and environment help the enemy instead of the PCs (bad weather against archers, a lot of pillars and chasms against a rage-charge-pounce-lance monster, some kind of LOS or anti-magic barriers against casters, whatever.) Have five or six DIFFERENT bad guys hanging around doing things.
Something else that I find fun is an infinite number of lesser minions. And I mean literally "infinite." As in, 1d6 lesser spotted demons pour out of the gates to hell every turn until the party manages to shut the gates down, either by ganking the BBEG while the demons are chewing on them, or by doing the appropriate thing (pouring a fifth of vodka over the statue of Tsar Nicolas IV). 2d3 giant wasps appear every round until the party manages to burn the wasps' nests, while the BBEG is casting spells at them.
It gives the fighter-types something to do, since they can indulge their carnage fantasies for as long or as litle as they'd like, while letting the other members of the party (like the rogue) do something useful in trying to figure out what needs to be done.
It always depends on the encounter, I like the idea of a single extremely powerful enemy who can challenge the party but I understand why it isn't easy to setup. in a dragons case it wouldn't make sense (usually) to give it buddies. Especially when a dragon should easily hold its own against 4 adventurers.
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It always depends on the encounter, I like the idea of a single extremely powerful enemy who can challenge the party but I understand why it isn't easy to setup. in a dragons case it wouldn't make sense (usually) to give it buddies. Especially when a dragon should easily hold its own against 4 adventurers.
Dragons are an edge case to the rules because they are tailor made to take on the party and not slaughter them/get slaughtered and provide a hard battle. I can't really think of anything else, either monster or class-wise, that can do that as well.
The real concern is that what you think is a "hard, but fair" boss battle on paper might simply not work out that way. Often it falls into the "party ROFLstomped it" category cause action economy is king. So, for the next boss, you tweak it up a bit. Then it gets stomped again so you ramp up again. Finally, the party has an off night or you found some magic combo and you accidentally One-Shot the entire party. I've seen it before... hell, I've done it before.
Of course tweaking difficulty to your party isn't only a BBEG problem. You could just as easily be throwing random party configurations at your party and end up with a party killer.
How hard do you guys think a BBEG should be? Should they always knock someone unconscious? Should they be short fights but deadly or long and based on attrition?
What are some creative ways to make an otherwise easy encounter difficult, that way a high level party could deal with bandits. On the flip-side what are some creative ways to make a low-level party fight higher-tier enemies?
Also what are good general rules about BBEG's difficulty? or whats fair to give to the BBEG?
As a basic rule Epic encounters which are categorized as CR APL+3 can serve as BBEG encounters so long as you use the proper enemy types that play to the party's weaknesses—or strengths depending on how you look at it.— However, if you don't want to make extremely smart encounters that cannot be approached in the "do everything we are gods at until it dies" manner of play then your probably looking at CR APL+4 for major event finales such as the end of an important chapter and CR APL+5 encounters for campaign finales.
This all said those CR +4 encounters should be few and far between and a CR +5 encounter only happening once unless you really know how to build encounters to challenge but not kill your party.
In Pathfinder, unlike something such as Shadowrun, character health scales with level to create a feeling of advancement of starting as essentially a pack of kits and kittens and growing into Beowulfs, Lokis, Gandalfs and Jesuses by the end. Having low level PCs take on incredibly high CR enemies simply does not work due to the 1-shot potential.
If you want you can have them advance as NPCs for the first level, gaining NPC gold equal to a level 3 NPC whose CR equals that of a level 1 PC, and then upon them reaching level 2 having them retrain one of their levels into their chosen class until they have all heroic class levels at which point they've probably saved a small town and are given treasures and gold equal to the starting WBL of a level 3 character.
Cheers.
How hard do you guys think a BBEG should be? [...] Should they be short fights but deadly or long and based on attrition?Surely the party gets some voice in that.
That's actually one of my pet peeves. When the GM decides that a BBEG should be a long, drawn-out, battle of attrition, it almost invariably means that the GM is going to squash any attempts by the party to do anything creative, or indeed, effective.
"I use my scroll of dominate monster on him!" "Uh,....." <rolls some dice behind the screen> "it makes its save." "Don't you want to know what the DC was?" "Uh..." <thinks fast> "... no, no, I don't. Because he rolled, um, a 20. Which autosaves, right?"
Dear lord, you must have played with some crappy DM's!
In general, I find that single BBEG encounters are poor for exactly the reason I gave above. They also get buried in the action econommy. They're also cliche'd and boring. Save the single baddie for the pre-boss "dragon" and make the boss interesting and memorable.
Minions are good, terrain is good, and tactics are fantastic. You can make a bunch of kobolds into a challenge if the kobolds know what they're doing and work together.
Absolutely in agreement here.
While you *can* have a memorable single-boss encounter, it's not likely to work out that way.
So I'll elaborate on how I typically do boss encounters.
I like to run F.ive B.ad B.ands in my story since there is usually four PCs. If there are more PCs I add more to the band.
Each member of this band, save the actual BBEG, has his own chapter boss encounter. Depending on how short the campaign is slated to be these might be compressed, or based on the level cap I want to stop at it might be changed to accommodate specific things.
In short: each member of the FBB is a commander of sorts who is likely attempting to achieve something slated to their talents. An evil wizard might be pressing towards some major archeological find or advancement in the dark arts. A barbarian or cavalier might be making progress on a campaign to ensure the BBEG's ultimate goal is able to carry forward unhindered—Those pesky kobolds and goblin tribes aren't going to quell themselves, and better than just massacring them is making them independent yet loyal, when they see the BBEG's banner they know to leave provisions and get out of the way.
My favorite, however, is the "everyone important is an Eldritch Knight" or some sort of super-specialist. EK's are nice because they can focus on cool things, and with a sufficiently high enough level cap on the campaign they can really feel like Bosses because of all the ways in which they can damage the party.
I never have villains who are absorbed with defense—it is pointless since it just means players get overly frustrated with not being able to hit them or not being able to deal any real damage—and instead have them use powers to acquire defense while blasting, dominating, or slashing their way through the PCs. They're also jerks so naturally they will keep the PCs alive to gloat over them if it turns out that the dice are not with the heroes of the story.
Remember, when building a boss encounter that Martials progress linearly and Casters progress quadraticly meaning that a level 17 Wizard is FAR more dangerous to a party than a level 17 Barbarian. The Eldritch Knight bosses come to a compromise as they get spells slower than their pure casting colleagues while still being able to hold their own in combat.
You don't even need everyone to be an EK, as there are plenty of prestige classes and normal classes that do the same job, the Magus, Arcane Trickster, and almost all of the Hybrid classes are formitable foes that progress in power fairly well.
So I typically play it as Campaign Enders with the BBEG should have just as many enemies as there are PCs in the fight as this allows for the villains to be not only on par with the PCs but capable of winning if the battle goes south.
CR APL+4 is the Chapter End boss encounter, its CR is equal to that of the party and features an enemy for each party member that is equal to their level. Typically this has one of the FBB to be defeated by the party and later resurrected by the BBEG.
The showdown with the BBEG is the first time the PCs have ever fought him, but this encounter is worse for the players as it is CR APL+5 instead of +4.
CR APL+5 is there is a villain for each PC, but the villain is one level higher than the PCs with PC gold. The PCs are at a disadvantage, however they have encountered each member of the FBB before and know which targets are high threat and which are more utility or support. Typically I run these with the BBEG having had the illusionist maintain an illusion or many illusions hiding them. The PCs enter the area of the final showdown and the villain often has the hubris to wait for them. An illusion of himself rises from the darkness as he addresses them. A portcullis drops behind them with a wall of force behind it barring the PCs retreat and a teleportation trap is activated, which he informs them of, preventing their escape. He makes them an offer as the room's temperature begins to rise: Join me or meet Pharasma.
Naturally they decline his offer, the illusions fade away and each member of the FBB appear. The second illusion fades right afterwards and the army of bloody burning skeletons that each member of the FBB has helped to raise if able to cast Animate Dead comes into sight and each member yells for their minions to kill the PCs.
The fluorescent, albeit ineffectual, army of darkness descends on the heroes as their masters fling death down on the heroes. This scenario moves beyond the simple "I run up and attack him" strategy and demands something more.
But, what of failure? Perhaps the PCs are captured if they are defeated, perhaps they are indoctrinated into the insanity that drives the villains and joins them at long last or perhaps they do die there. Either way it should be awesome.
Every BBEG [monolgues].
This is always a fun way to do it if the PCs are having issues with a fight. Just keep in mind that if the PCs are established as opponents to the BBEG who have repeatedly trounced his underlings he might decide to leave the gloating and monologuing until after the PCs are bound and plugged.