This of course would be for non-PFS games but what's your opinion of bosses having more than one consecutive turn? For those who have played the Shin Megami Tensei video game series, singular bosses are pretty difficult in part because of their multiple turns where they can lay waste to the party pretty easily. I was wondering how this would translate to Pathfinder rules; on the plus side, it could be a nice alternative to adding minions in order to recover the action economy disadvantage that 1 big boss encounters have. On the negative side, I really doubt most enemy abilities/mechanics would play well with such a big alteration, and the players could potentially feel pretty cheated if they weren't told ahead of time.
Thoughts?
I think it all depends on what you do with the extra turn. If the boss launches two empowered or maximized fireballs (or similarly powerful AoE spells) consecutively, I can see problems occurring. If he uses that extra turn to heal himself that might be less of a problem since the party won't just instantly splat.
I personally wouldn't do this, but if its not used to its full-potential (instant party obliteration) I think it would work okay.
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It can be done, and be a lot of fun, if done right. I done it with dragons sometimes, Using fun but not particularly "good" abilities on the extra action too keep the combat lively. Things like Awesome Blow.
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There are already a couple examples of this.
You can use hero points to get an extra action, spells or feats can give a BBEG hero points.
Alternately, a creature can be built with extra actions per turn. An example of such a creature is the Maharaja Rakshasa (Bestiary 3 p226).
You can use the Mythic Agile template to get this too. The turns aren't back to back though unless there's an extreme initiative disparity between party and foe.
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Consider the Time Walk spell from Magic: The Gathering: It does exactly that (gives the caster an extra turn, and for cheap). There is also the Time Vault (a cheap artifact that let's you skip a turn to "store" it, so you can break it out for no further cost and take an extra turn whenever you deem it most tactically advantageous), and much later on, the Time Warp spell (just like Time Walk, but much more expensive). Anyways, what these demonstrate is that getting an extra turn is a VERY powerful ability - or if you're unlucky with what you try to use it for/are capable of doing with it, not so much - but far from unbeatable. It sounds like a fine ability for the right sort of boss (and in D&D/Pathfinder, we've already got Chokers, low-level monsters who already get extra standard actions, which is the better part of an extra turn - while there's only so much they can do with it as low-level monsters without much in the way of magical powers, they are smart enough to use items/spring traps/etc, and it is a precedent).
Conclusion: I approve. Don't be afraid - and your players have no business feeling "cheated." It's a nasty surprise, good bosses often have them!
I agree as well; used correctly and sparingly, it's a fantastic way to make a "boss fight" stand out.
@IHIYC: chokers only get an extra move action, not a standard. Your point still stands, however.
I've fought enemies who have had the ability to take multiple standard actions in a round, and quite frankly, they alone are a menace to face.
The most recent one we fought was an Avatar of Urgathoa who had a Vorpal Negative Energy Scythe and the ability to both cast a spell, attack, and/or Channel Negative Energy, combined with a bunch of Reanimating Undead Bone Golems she commanded all at the same time. It's pretty brutal when you're 5th level and you're facing a level 7 Avatar of a Deity of Undeath and her Gatekeepers of the Afterlife.
Needless to say, it was an absolutely hellish combat. We actually had 2 PCs die during that fight, and that was when we were at full power, and were a 6 player party who were Evil Aligned (meaning our source of Positive Energy counteraction was quite scarce).
That being said, we weren't exactly optimized, nor were we tactically sound. If we were a Good-Aligned party who was optimized and had an extreme amount of tactics, we would've came out with no casualties, and significantly less resource loss.
My suggestion is to only do this if you feel the PCs are absolutely dominating their regular combats, and I wouldn't do this unless they were at 100%; this gives them time in the midst of combat to prepare how to counteract such a powerful foe.
I mean come on, the ability to take multiple "turns" in a round are usually pseudo-variations that are limited in their use, and that's using Mythic rules for PCs. There's a reason Time Stop is a 9th level spell, despite not being able to perform direct hostile actions on other entities in the world until the spell effect ends; it's extremely powerful stuff, and you should only fight such a fire with the same kind of fire.
Reminds me of the time when my 1e D&D party fought a DM made killer bunny. It took a turn on 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. Sure, it didn't do a lot of damage, and we killed it with one hit from a wand of lightning bolt (which we had to roll to hit with, and had missed several times before)`
Anyway, the Agile Mythinc Simple Template is a great way to do this, and it's really fun (and rather frustrating for players)
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Did this with a campaign end boss.
Tristalt wizard//cleric//fighter - had the abilities of all three classes and had three turns each round, one in which to cast a wizard spell, one in which to cast a cleric spell, and one in which to attack. The turns were staggered in initiative order.
Super challenging fight, but it was a high powered campaign and thanks to the West Marches-style player/character rotation we had going, there were about a dozen PCs for the finale.
Lots of fun.
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Mechanically? Works great.
Thematically? I don't like enemies having the ability to do things the PCs can't theoretically get in some way, so I'm very careful with things like this, and generally provide other forms of action economy enhancement instead. Quick Runner's Shirts are super cheap and give enemy melee combatants Pounce...once. Quicken Spell is a very nice option as well.
Seems that this would be very strongly recommended, if not exactly a must-have, for a final AP boss if said boss is going to be singular. But I haven't heard of most final AP bosses having this.
@Deadmanwalking: Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but aren't the bestiaries simply brimming with enemies "having the ability to do things the PCs can't theoretically get in some way"? I mean, having more than one turn per round doesn't seem that much different from scores of other unique monster abilities out there, many of which are usable at will, that are fine for an enemy to have but would disrupt the game severely if put in the hands of a PC.
I do agree though that mechanically this seems very fine and unproblematic. I would echo others that replied before me that you probably shouldn't have a multiple-turn villain just go all out nova with its most powerful attacks straight away. It's also probably a very good idea to have the different initiatives for the multiple turns be quite far apart, so that the second turn's initiative is rolled at a -5 or -10 penalty, and an even bigger penalty if they have a third turn per round.
It is often better to have multiple enemies, but to answer the question it depends on the boss and how many extra turns he gets.
Make sure that the players know that either Mythic or Hero Points rules are being used by very special NPCs so they're not taken completely by surprise.
Boss fights can be anticlimactic. The party gets (X) actions to their one. Unless their actions are particularly powerful, they will lose. Giving them more actions is a way to make them challenging without increasing the power of any one action.
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I do this on occasion. Last weekend my players faced a White Dragon in her lair, she was mythic so could spend mythic points for extra actions and I gave her lair actions similar to 5e (crumbling floor, walls of ice, falling icicles), to keep the players on their toes.
Easily one of the most memorable encounters I ever ran and the players really loved the variety of her attacks between trample, gust of air attacks, walls to separate the party, and barely avoiding plummeting into an icy chasm.
Here's the thing: GMs can not cheat, if you are using your unlimited power responsibly to provide memorable and fun encounters for the players, then that's the important thing.
Some players though, they are simulationist, they want to access to the cool toys the bad guys get. I can understand that impulse, but it's ultimately detrimental to the tactical puzzle game. Because, no matter how smart you are as a GM, ultimately you are trying to outwit at least 4 clever, creative players who have bent their will toward destroying your encounters. The least they could do is understand on the metagame level, some toys are for the GM only to help that disparity of both collective intelligence, and action economy.
Its a good tool for an every once and a while encounter, but not something to use a whole lot.
I always thought it would be fun to give an Ettin 2 initiative scores and 1 attack on each score.
Acceptable and even encouraging in my opinion, AS LONG AS it ain't a technically playable humanoid with class levels. For primarily simulationist reasons, of course.
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@Deadmanwalking: Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but aren't the bestiaries simply brimming with enemies "having the ability to do things the PCs can't theoretically get in some way"? I mean, having more than one turn per round doesn't seem that much different from scores of other unique monster abilities out there, many of which are usable at will, that are fine for an enemy to have but would disrupt the game severely if put in the hands of a PC.
If they're fighting a unique monster, sure. IME, most main villains are either creatures who shouldn't have abilities that are that big a departure from the norm, or NPCs with class levels.
So...it's a situational thing. I did say 'generally'.
I too will chime in to recommend the Mythic Agile template which gives the monster two turns at separate points in initiative. Having the monster take two turns in a row (or maybe even 3-4 with surprise?) and kill a PC before the PC even gets to act seems less fun to me.
I'm not sure if there's any Mythic ability which gives a monster two pools of hit points, but you might want to consider that too since PCs are often optimized for causing lots of damage quickly. I guess you could even do something weird like have the monster automatically rise as an undead version of itself right after it is killed (basically two monsters in the place of one)
Other similar ideas could include a monstrous "brain" or slug-like gut parasite which emerges from a slain monster and starts flying/crawling/swimming around blasting the party with magic or psionic powers or maybe trying to infect them and make them the next BBEG.
A difference of experience, I suppose. Our campaigns tend to feature a lot of unique or modified monsters, especially the BBEGs. It's mostly because all of us players know the bestiaries by heart (we're all monster nerds), so it's a way that we can keep being surprised by encounters both in and out of character.
I personally think of initiative as very abstract. It's only a measure of your reactions and, well, initiative, in my book. So a creature with two turns per round would just be unusually quick and adept at exploiting timing and so forth. It wouldn't, in our group anyway, feel like some super-weird unique crazy ability. Mechanically speaking it is, of course, but roleplaying-wise it strikes me as quite inconspicuous compared to things like crazy supernatural abilities and what not.
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Take an ancient black dragon (CR 16). Double your number of ancient black dragons (CR 18). Make a special rule that these two dragons occupy the same squares.
Now you've got a CR 18 single monster who gets two act twice each round. HP damage goes on one of them, after a while one dragon dies and it can only act once each round. Same with spells etc.
Sure, there'll be problems to figure out beyond this simple rule, but I think it doesn’t have to be much harder than that.
I'm not generally a fan of (humanoid) bosses that have strange abilities just because they're bosses. I find it telling that the OP instantly jumped to video games as an example, because that's where I jump as well. Specifically, badly designed video games with unimaginative writers.
If Arglebargle the Soul-eater is supposed to be an evil cleric, you should be able to stat him up as an actual evil cleric and still make him interesting and challenging
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I've done it before, though I usually restrict the extra turns in some way, and I also usually restrict what enemies can do it.
For example, a "boss" that's a demigod or quasigod might get an extra action at initiative -10 to cast a single domain spell every turn.
Or it might get an extra action to use a monster power.
Or both.
(Example: to end my Carrion Crown campaign, the party had to face the awakened vampire warlord Malyas, master of Ustalav's Castle Kronquist. Default Malyas is a L17 vampire antipaladin. My Malyas was a L20 antipaladin/Marshal 10 (with full divine source), with some of his path abilities being taken from (or upgrades of) of stuff from the mythic vampire template. And then I gave him a number of custom abilities. (My upgraded Malyas was Tar-Baphon's sworn brother, rather than "merely" his top vampire general =P) And so at initiative +10, he could use one of his custom vampire abilities (like an upgraded dominate that could violently shatter anti-mind control magical protections), at normal initiative could take his full turn, and then at initiative -10 could fire off one of his 72 domain spells. And he had allies on top of that. He was kind of a big deal.*
And that's may be a good guiding line - only do it for creatures who are supposed to be a big deal.
The agile mythic template is also a pretty simple way to do this - or making an enemy a true mythic and just giving it dual initiative as one of its abilities - but it's not always thematically appropriate, and giving a monster extra full rounds can make it way, way deadlier. I try to err on the side of coolness/dickery over burst damage.
* My PCs (actually consisting of 5 PCs and like 6 NPC allies - huge party) ultimately dealt with Malyas on their rematch by mazing him, and then using a wish to go into the maze spell after him so that they could fight him without his reinforcements.) Honestly, the wish spell for maze Thunderdome remains one of my favorite uses of wish I've seen in my games.
Alternatively, there could be some sort of mechanism to prevent the boss from targeting the same enemy more than once with multiple actions.
For example, maybe you have a dragon-like monster that can attack physically and use its breath weapon at the same time -- but the physical attacks cannot be done against targets in the area of the breath weapon.
Random thoughts:
* As lareman, I think it's important the boss can't do two consecutive full rounds. Given the randomness of PCs' and its initiative rolls, maybe just say 'it can act again two PCs later'.
* Restricting additional actions to support (heal, buff, debuff etc.) might be key to balance here.
* A monk of the four winds 12 can spend 6 ki to gain +2 standard actions. That's +6 CR on a monster, no matter the role.
* If you duplicate the boss, both creatures have twice the actions overall, of course. I wonder why I never saw two evil twins as boss, so far (maybe I missed something). It's just +2 CR, after all.
Dual Initiative (Ex): The monster gets two turns each round, one on its initiative count and another on its initiative count – 20. For example, if the monster's initiative is 23, for its first turn it could make a full attack (and take a 5 foot step) at initiative 23, and for its second turn at initiative 3 it could take a move action and cast a spell. This allows the monster to perform two actions per round that normally take an entire round, such as using a summon monster spell. For the purposes of spells and effects that have a duration of a round or longer or trigger at the beginning of the creature's round or the start of its turn such as saving throws against ongoing effects or taking bleed damage), only the monster's first turn each round counts toward such durations.
Is this the Mythic thing people have been discussing, or is that something different?
Yep, that's it.
Yep. I've used it as a DM and it made the boss much tougher for the PCs
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In my experience from running WotR, Dual Initiative usually works out pretty badly for the party. The reason is that they usually give Mythic Monsters with Dual Initiative a pretty high init bonus to begin with, which not only gives the monster two turns per round, but usually gives them two turns in a row, once at the end of the round and then immediately at the beginning. That can be pretty devastating, assuming they live that long.
As GM, before running such an encounter I would carefully compare the monster's base init with the average of the party and come up with a base value somewhere in the middle of the pack so that its two turns are diluted by player actions.
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From a vibe perspective, I don't think I'd give it to humanoid bosses, but perhaps to monstrous ones, though they'd have to be rebuilt from the ground up as foes, and I don't think I'd put in the work.
I could see a dragon getting 3 rounds each turn.
1. Claws & bite etc. OR breath weapon if up
2. AOE tail swing
3. Spellcasting
A hydra would also be a much more interesting foe if they got a separate turn for each head, so chopping them off would not only reduce its attacks, but reduce its tactical options.
Really - I'm not sure it'd work well in Pathfinder with the circular initiative system for the reasons darrenan points out. It would work better with a different sort of initiative system.
I think it's a great idea for the boss fights that are supposed to be high-impact. Dual Initiative (and mythic enemies in general, really) is extremely appropriate for the really big bads.
A second form works out well, too, as the chain encounter can be difficult for a party to handle (like 3.0's Ashardalon, for instance. Nothing like defeating one of the most powerful red dragons only to - surprise! - have to deal with death throes followed up immediately by fighting the advanced balor Ashardalon imprisoned to use as an alternate heart.)