Hey guys, back here looking for help with something that I couldn't find on my own!
I'm designing a boss fight where the boss has an exertion ability; the more "warmed up" he is in combat, the more dangerous he becomes. I was thinking I would express this as a step up to his damage die or a +1 to hit with each consecutive round.
I could just apply that to a pre-existing boss sheet pretty easily, but first I wanted to check and see if there were any existing monster sheets with an ability/function similar to this.
So, monsters that are designed to get worse as the fight goes on! Share 'em here.
To take it very literally - pick a big fiery monster like a demon or devil and have fire elementals appear out of their flames each round.
Variant of the same - anti-paladin type whose sword is haunted with the spirits of all the people he has murdered. Each round another wraith or similar incorporeal undead pops out of the sword and is forced to attack his opponents.
Here's an idea. A fat giant zombie, its flesh rotting off its bones as it fights. It starts off slow and cumbersome, the rotting flesh providing some extra protection early on. As more and more flesh falls off, it gets faster, but the flesh is no longer protecting him as much. You could even have the flesh animate as oozes to attack the party, or be cause difficult terrain or some other hazard.
It could work out as it starts off with +10 natural AC, but every round it drops by 1, but it gains 5ft on its movement speed and a +1 to hit. It'd help the fight last longer early on, while steadily making it a bit more dangerous.
This is more of a plot twist than a gradual build-up, but the Advanced Bestiary has a number of templates for having an outsider possessing or otherwise bonded to a creature. While melded, the base creature gets a number of benefits, depending on how powerful the outsider is. The outsider can manifest outside its host, but that host loses the template while it does so.
I had a boss fight in my last campaign that involved a high girallon cleric with a version of the demon-possessed template that I modified to use with a baregara. As soon as the party finished off the boss girallon (CR 11 vs. six 8th-level PCs), they had to deal with the CR 12 fiend that emerged from the corpse. It was a real nailbiter for them, and great fun!
A warpriest. Every round is another swift cast buff spell.
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Each lich is supposed to have a unique method of making the transition.
Imagine one who must literally die in combat, the flesh and blood and life being 'killed' off as they transcend the mortal and become deathless and eternal. (This works for all sorts of undead, not just liches. One that returns *immediately* as a ghost is an option, for example, as their 'hate lives on forever, even as their flesh falls to the ground.')
Following that vein, a vampire lord could become stronger the more blood is shed during combat (and uses a weapon or attack with a bleed property), a mummy could be bolstered by foes afflicted with disease or curse, with each new PC or ally creature afflicted giving it another stackable buff (making this a terrible foe for parties with a ton of summons and / or animal companions, since the more enemies on the board to be afflicted, the potentially tougher the big boss), a ghoulish / flesheater could feed as it fights, gaining extra strength and hit points as it tears away flesh and life-energy them from the PCs, etc.
Other options could vary with the PCs. A special sort of weapon-bearing iron golem might ape the properties of a weapon striking it, becoming more dangerous after the party Fighter type hits it with his optimized Murderlizer +5, or a doppleganger-like big boss use some form of 'mirror moves' to mimic the feats and styles of the PC hitting it.
Ideally, there will be means by which the PCs can deal with or mitigate the power ups. If, say, it's a fiery demon, then perhaps killing the imps spawning around every round will reduce the amount of fast healing it's getting from them and the amount of incidental fire damage that everyone else in the room is taking. If you ignore the imps, you die faster and it heals faster, which adds up quickly, particularly if they spawn at a geometric rate or something equally scary...
Here's an idea. A fat giant zombie, its flesh rotting off its bones as it fights. It starts off slow and cumbersome, the rotting flesh providing some extra protection early on. As more and more flesh falls off, it gets faster, but the flesh is no longer protecting him as much. You could even have the flesh animate as oozes to attack the party, or be cause difficult terrain or some other hazard.
It could work out as it starts off with +10 natural AC, but every round it drops by 1, but it gains 5ft on its movement speed and a +1 to hit. It'd help the fight last longer early on, while steadily making it a bit more dangerous.
Love this. Isn't exactly what I need for this dungeon, but I'm absolutely going to look into a putting a version of this somewhere in the campaign.
Following that vein, a vampire lord could become stronger the more blood is shed during combat (and uses a weapon or attack with a bleed property), a mummy could be bolstered by foes afflicted with disease or curse, with each new PC or ally creature afflicted giving it another stackable buff (making this a terrible foe for parties with a ton of summons and / or animal companions, since the more enemies on the board to be afflicted, the potentially tougher the big boss), a ghoulish / flesheater could feed as it fights, gaining extra strength and hit points as it tears away flesh and life-energy them from the PCs, etc.
Other options could vary with the PCs. A special sort of weapon-bearing iron golem might ape the properties of a weapon striking it, becoming more dangerous after the party Fighter type hits it with his optimized Murderlizer +5, or a doppleganger-like big boss use some form of 'mirror moves' to mimic the feats and styles of the PC hitting it.
Particularly fond of that vampire idea. I also have another boss later in this campaign that'll be working off of that mirror idea; she's a superpowerful prismatic dragon that can reflect her scales to change into a different kind of dragon each round. So I can just have fun negating everyone's elemental damage.
Thanks for all the cool ideas, everyone!
I think I'm going to take the Nabasu Demon sheet and modify his Consume Life ability so it procs once a round. To "balance" that out (emphasis on the quotes), I'll be removing his Death-Stealing Gaze ability.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/demon/nabasu/
That should be just the sort of crazy I'm looking for.
I know im a smidge late to the party but The Lopper from Haunting in Harrowstone operates like that vampire idea
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Following that vein, a vampire lord could become stronger the more blood is shed during combat (and uses a weapon or attack with a bleed property),Particularly fond of that vampire idea.
A vampire warrior type with a reach weapon of wounding (bonus points if they are also a giant with natural reach) using Whirlwind Attack, or some similar way of making everyone on the board bleed (and therefore increasing their fast healing by 1 / person hit / round, in addition to perhaps gaining barbarian-like Rage bonuses whenever anyone in 30 ft. is bleeding) would be one way to create such an encounter.
From a purely 'evil GM' standpoint, making them a giant also means that at least some of their loot (armor and weapons) will be useless for the PCs except as sell-bait. :)
"Anyone want this +1 huge keen ranseur of wounding? No?"
Rather than add a +1 per round, perhaps there is the threat of smaller minions constnatly being introduced that need to be dealt with. Even something small - but in large number can become quite deadly as they start setting up flanking for the more dangerous creatures with all that entails.
There was an encounter in a certain old 3.5 module that involved a vampire. I had to adjust it slightly for the higher level of the players. Rather than modify the vampire, I just gave it a cast of minions comprised of animated objects - in this case walking, dancing swords that kept emerging and joining the fight. This gave the players a sense of urgency in dealing with the vampire as quickly as possible so they could get away from the seemingly unending supply of animated swords coming their way.
Maybe not what you're looking for, but this sounds a lot like the Elemental Overload ability for a Kineticist; the more Burn they take (which causes nonlethal damage to themselves), the higher bonuses they get to attack and damage rolls, as well as gaining Size bonuses to their Physical Ability scores, and gaining a scaling % chance to ignore Sneak Attacks and Crits.