Hi,
I ran into a situation for my last two bosses. They got blinded and rendered pretty much inoffensive...
I'm not so familiar with magic in the game and the first time caught me by surprise. To see my boss beaten by the first roll of the fight. The second one lasted a bit longer. It was more a fight of command, suggestion and fear, but inevitably, the boss had to get in the fight, and got blinded on the first round...
My players seem to enjoy it, so I don't mind too much, but it does feel a tiny anticlimactic. I know I can't fail my save everytime, but does anyone have some advice for fighting blindness? Or anything that I might encounter that would beat my bosses in one hit. Whether it's for a caster or a martial boss?
Thank you.
I think it's a good thing they're able to beat your bosses in the first roll of the fight as it shows the players can trust you. In addition to Tarik's advice I would suggest abandoning any expectations you have for an encounter and don't always look for narrative satisfaction; one should always keep in mind that what makes for a satisfying and enjoyable story does not necessarily make for a satisfying and enjoyable game experience.
Depending on the nature of the creature, if your 'boss' finds itself blinded or unable to put up a fight then try having it surrender, cower or run. Make it an role play situation that delves into the morality of the party.
The bane of all BBEG's are Save or Die spells (like Blindness/Hold Person), and the only visceral way to counter this is to have lots of other things for the PC's to worry about (whether it's extra mooks, environmental hazards, a pain-in-the-butt stealthy rogue lurking about, etc.) so they cannot all gang up on your BBEG. Any time you create a BBEG encounter, try your best to make sure that the BBEG isn't alone and has adequate back-up; solo BBEG's get crushed in action economy. And by adequate back-up, I mean spellcasters; sorcerers, clerics, alchemists, or whatever, who can cause AoE damage, Crowd Control spells, Dispel Magic, Counterspell, Remove Paralysis/Blindness, Break Enchantment, etc., and a frontliner of some kind (for additional frontline pressure against the PC's, cast Enlarge Person on this guy), like a Slayer, Brawler, Rogue, Barbarian, or Fighter.
It really does come down to who your BBEG is and where the PC's are going to fight him though. What are your BBEG's weaknesses? Is he a wizard? If so, he's going to need some frontline support and safe places to teleport/fly.
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Have him drop Deeper Darkness on the party while the lackey Cleric uses a Wand/Scroll of "Cure Blindness/Deafness."
Give your BBEG's the Blindfight feat and some sense of Blindsense to mitigate the miss chance. Seriously, blindfight is a hilariously underrated feat- three pretty substantial effects for one feat.
The Dastardly tactic of... ... Ventriliquism and Minor Image. They see some figure taunting them, until they physically interact with the image- they won't know.
Have them fight non-human BBEG's- ones that either don't have eyes or are already blind, have some Spell Resistance or high saves.
Have him drop Deeper Darkness on the party while the lackey Cleric uses a Wand/Scroll of "Cure Blindness/Deafness.".
Yeah, pretty much this. Of course, I usually deck out my BBEG with some curative items for such occasions. They don't get where they are without expecting dirty tricks to be used against them.
BBEG: Blindness! Such a low brow, dirty tactic! Ahahaha, I love it! Let's ALL FIGHT IN THE DARK! *deeper darkness*
Players: Well... Crap...
GM: ..... *chuckles*
In my last campaign, I had a similar problem with a witch PC with the slumber hex ending fights too quickly. I had to avoid using too many solo encounters if I wanted to challenge them.
Some suggestions for helping bosses cope with conditions like blindness:
* Give them the Blind-Fight feat. Two chances to avoid missing per attack, and the PCs won't get the bonus for attacking a blinded foe.
* High concentration to cast spells defensively, or supernatural abilities that avoid the need for one.
* Attacks that don't need to be targeted; for example, channel negative energy.
* A good Will save can avoid a large number of "save or suck" attacks, and give the boss a good chance of throwing off many such effects quickly.
* Minions to harry the PCs while the boss recovers. An adjacent minion threatening approaching PCs can forestall an easy coup de grace.
* If the boss isn't a caster, add some minions with spells chosen to buff the boss, and to remove imposed conditions (remove blindness/paralysis/curse, soothing word, dispel magic).
* A good escape plan (such as dimension door or teleport to a fallback position until the condition passes).
A lot of the above answers are good, but some not so much.
You shouldn't just build encounters to stop a tactic. What you should do instead is make varied encounters where a single tactic is unlikely to be successful. If one tactic is always working it is almost certain that either your encounters aren't varied enough or your overall challenge vs. the abilities of the PCs is too low.
Against a single martial focused boss, I would expect save vs. fort spell of the highest level the party could throw to have maybe a 40% chance of success. If the character had focus on that, things like spell focus etc. I could see it maybe being about 50%. If those numbers aren't accurate for your party either your challenge is too low (the CR calculator assumes a relatively poor level of character optimization) or your challenge level is right in general but not varied enough, allowing players to optimize specific tactics against you (resources spent to optimize blindness/deafness are pretty useless when faced with an undead, but if you only throw humanoids at the party, that isn't an issue).
Of course with a sample of 2, luck plays a huge point and everything could be fine, just skewed by chance.
Also, I strongly agree with avoiding single big bad. It is very tough to make them an interesting encounter, making the big bad not quite so big and bad, but with mooks is almost always preferable.
Put some potions in their pockets.
Put cure blindness/deafness on contingency if you are capable and honesty that worried about it.
Bolster saves.
Add support/mooks.
Make your party fight without resting before the BBEG fight.
There are several good ideas above that you should consider using. Additionally, it's worth mentioning that if you hide your rolls, when all else fails you can simply say "Yep, he made the save."
Is this "cheating"? Yes. Does it sometimes make the game more enjoyable? Yes. Should you do it all the time? No.
Did the BBEG prepare for the PCs? If so, then their favorite tactics may be known. What is known can be prepared for. Be sure to leave notes behind that the BBEG knew about the party.
/cevah
You guys are amazing. This is very helpful.
I'm new at dming and my players are very experimented at playing, so they also suggested some of your advices, but they are also prepared to counter a couple of them.
You guys are amazing. This is very helpful.
I'm new at dming and my players are very experimented at playing, so they also suggested some of your advices, but they are also prepared to counter a couple of them.
Skilled players/characters will always have a backup plan if their primary strategy fails to function according to plan. Your job is to make things challenging for them, and in doing that, have them use up portions of their daily resources. They should never go into a boss fight at full strength.
And, you are welcome. We are glad to help.