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I mean it been a lot of year of players complaining about boring 1 vs many encounters. Why are official heroic fantasy RPG publishers like Paizo not addressing this and make some money off it as well? Why is there not a Boss supplement where you get a toolkit for building epic bossfights? This is a common trope ppl who like heroic fantasy also often like the idea of super powerful being that you fight as a group.
Matt Coleville picked up the slack for 5e with his Where Evil Lives but these concept are not something new. Ppl has has been using house rules for this many years back by now, generally where boss actions scale with party size in different ways. But Publishers of RPG's does not seem that interested, this is missing from a lot of systems. Legendary actions in 5e was a step in the right direction, myself I want to have actions for the lower level monster mini bosses as well.
I will use my own house rules and merge them with some ideas from Where Evil Lives. I just wished that Paizo would create a official supplement so I can focus more on story and less on balance and patching.
Don't want to come off as a negative Nancy, I love PF2 and what Paizo has done. I would just love it even more with some boss mechanics in the game.
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I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you may be in the minority in enjoying 5e's Legendary Actions. I wouldn't get your hopes up for a "boss encounter" supplement as the encounter math tends to make level + 2 or level + 3 enemies quite the dramatic boss fights on their own.
You say it's been "a lot of year of players complaining about boring 1 vs many encounters," but is this coming from somewhere in particular? I feel like the more common complaint is that solo encounters take more tactics and strategy from groups than many are ready for, not that they're "boring" but instead difficult. What problems are you having or what are you looking for in particular? Legendary actions is a fine signpost for what you want, but I would say that you'll see plenty of pushback on that end especially if you're looking to make solo encounters more entertaining.
Legendary actions? So that's why I almost got my Butt handed to me in bg3
In all seriousness If you want a special move for a Boss
Just Design one
If you think the Boss needs more actions
Give them hasted with some sort of offswitch built in
But If that results in a tpk....Well, you have been warned
Because the general approach has been/should be don't make a boss encounter as a single enemy. Although it does still gets done.
In PF2 it's less of a problem because player characters can't really swing above their weight (level) in a way that PF1 characters could. If you are up against a CR+4 fight, even as a single enemy, it's not going to be easy. In such a scenario the difference in action economy is going to be the thing that keeps the party from a TPK. Between the underlying math and Incapacitation rules there's not a lot more that's necessary.
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I'm curious, what in specific are your issues with Paizo's current system (not intended to seem rude in anyway, just your post didn't actually say what your issues are in specific beyond "they're boring", rest is just inferred from what you said are steps in the right direction)? From the sounds of it, what you're after is just set abilities you can "staple on" to other creatures to convert them into bosses, with said abilities taking place on other creatures' turns. Honestly, I feel whilst that might be neat, there's already something in the system which can kind of take the role of that in the form of complex hazards, which whilst not attached to the creature itself is a way of making (what feels like) a solo-boss fight more dangerous without just actually buffing the creature's numbers.
That said, I've never really experienced single creature boss fights to be super boring, sure there's some creatures which it'd be just incredibly forgettable as a boss (not quite powerful enough for any level to be a "boss", but the Ogre Warrior comes to mind), there's also tons of creatures which are really interesting at any level to fight one-on-one. Just for some random examples off the top of my head: ettins, culdewen, ankou, grim reaper/lesser death (a creature which was definitely designed as a boss fight and honestly has some balance issues when you use it as fodder), akizendri (I'll admit I used Google to check how to spell that), and attic whisperers.
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Indeed. Go play Age of Ashes exactly as written and then tell us that we need harder boss fights.
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Consider that a fighter will only have about a 35% chance to hit an enemy with a CR+4, which means others will only have about a 25% chance.
Meanwhile that same enemy will have like an 85% chance to hit a PC.
The math is already stacked strongly against the PCs. And in truth, if the enemy fights intelligently to take a PC out of the fight one at time (rather than spreading damage against multiple PCs) the chance that the party loses will be very high.
What you're suggesting was useful/necessary in PF1 because PCs could hit way harder than their level would suggest. The math of NPCs, unless you custom built them, was designed for unoptimized parties. My personal experience was that my players would often have the power level of +2/3 higher than the game would expect. But it was because the game was just poorly balanced with player options.
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I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you may be in the minority in enjoying 5e's Legendary Actions.
Indeed. If I could only change one thing about 5e as a player, it's legendary actions/saves. Those are the worst.
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Hazards!
You can also pretty easily cobble together amalgam bosses. Multi-headed beasts or tentacled monsters can be mechanically represented by independent creatures in combat.
With PF2's math it's pretty easy to get creative and hit your difficulty targets.
Yeah maybe I am a minority here. But on the other hand the boss encounter book for 5e has over 12000 backers.
breithauptclan, I dint say harder. Hard is easy, any total beginner can design hard. I am talking balanced fun memorable stuff you expect from a final boss fight. Boss moves, phases, action scaling.
A lot of the answers I see seems to have the same mindset, I'm not talking about just a tougher mob that is hard to kill.
take look at the big bads in this for instance: https://files.mcdmproductions.com/Evil/WhereEvilLives-Preview.pdf
And for the rest of the house ruling tips, I know a lot of house rules for this, believe me, used them for many years. I've been collecting boss mechanics from many different RPG's and editions.
But Pathfinder is a very math balanced game, would be nice to have some official mechanism to use instead of house rules all the time. Trying out a new boss mechanic might be risky untested. I rather have official support, but sure if I'm am in a minority that's what I will continue to do :)
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The boss mechanism in PF2 is that a |your level+4| enemy will crit you with almost every hit and you'll fail or crit fail against almost all their spells/abilities, and so very quickly you'll have people dropping down like flies if you don't fight smart.
It's a much better mechanic than Legendary/Lair actions meant to compensate for the action economy advantage of PCs.
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The boss mechanism in PF2 is that a |your level+4| enemy will crit you with almost every hit and you'll fail or crit fail against almost all their spells/abilities, and so very quickly you'll have people dropping down like flies if you don't fight smart.
It's a much better mechanic than Legendary/Lair actions meant to compensate for the action economy advantage of PCs.
And if you don't like that brutal version, you can give a lower level boss which activates special abilities during other people's turns that you can counterplay (Hazards) or has an intelligent shadow/multiple heads/a huge body with multiple points to attack that give them more actions (multiple enemies).
The difficulty math handles these things well.
You say it's been "a lot of year of players complaining about boring 1 vs many encounters," but is this coming from somewhere in particular?
No, just genrally. From years and years of forums and reddit posts and trinkering with different systems.
What problems are you having or what are you looking for in particular? Legendary actions is a fine signpost for what you want, but I would say that you'll see plenty of pushback on that end especially if you're looking to make solo encounters more entertaining.
Except for legendary resistance what is bad with thematic cool legendary actions? That make the moster fell epic instead of big stack of AC and HP. Action economy of single big bads are their greatest flaw. It 4-5 players vs 1. You could solve that with superhigh AC and high damage but that is not only boring design but also very very swingy. As ppl often complain about in PF2 when encountering a +3 single creature. It is just not a good game design.
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I saw the preview and it's leaning heavily into Villain actions and the like, which is very much a 5e thing. That said, it seems what you're looking for is abilities that are, in and of themselves, interesting. So I'll go back to Tactical Drongo here:
In all seriousness If you want a special move for a Boss
Just Design one
The math and action economy make it pretty hard to design an ability that makes an opponent too powerful - even moreso if you have tried your hand at designing abilities. As was mentioned upthread, higher level enemies already lend themselves to "boss encounters" well, but if you're looking for more, toss in something extra.
Take the aforementioned "boring" Ogre Warrior. Hoo boy, this guy is just a sack of hit points and damage. As a "boss-level" threat, he isn't exciting. He would be a heck of a difficult encounter for a first level party (and one I don't think I'd throw at a group that wasn't a bite more familiar with the system). If I wanted to give him a little extra, why not an ability to add a little fear factor to him? Something like...
Chained Hook (two-action) (manipulate) The ogre warrior makes a Strike with their ogre hook against a target within 20 feet. On a success, the hook grabs the target and the ogre warrior makes an Athletics check against the target's Fortitude DC to pull them to an adjacent square.
All of this formatting is odd and strange, but give me a pass on this one - it's a quickie idea.
Likewise, a lot of what the preview seems to have is stuff that PF2 already does and does well. Interestingly designed encounters, hazards that compliment the encounter space, even abilities that shine on their own. I have to say that "PF2 encounters are not interesting" isn't something I've heard levied too often at the system.
Are you certain you're not saying that you'd just like to see some sort of separate category for "boss encounters" sort of thing? Developers have said many times that one of their design goals was keeping those brackets of trivial encounters and severe encounters (as well as the +10 /-10 crit system) so that there's something of a sliding scale of what constitutes a "boss" and a "minion" without needing to make special rules (much as 5e has with legendary actions or 4e did with... well, actual minions).
Yeah, if you want more action going on during the battle, then have more things doing actions. Traps and Hazards, victims to rescue, moving terrain, things like that. What you are wanting is more action, and that isn't caused by boss creature design. That is created by design of the entire encounter.
When you propose that Legendary Actions are the 'right' way of fixing the problem, that leads people to thinking that you want the one lone boss enemy to be more difficult.
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Except for legendary resistance what is bad with thematic cool legendary actions? That make the moster fell epic instead of big stack of AC and HP. Action economy of single big bads are their greatest flaw. It 4-5 players vs 1. You could solve that with superhigh AC and high damage but that is not only boring design but also very very swingy. As ppl often complain about in PF2 when encountering a +3 single creature. It is just not a good game design.
Wait, okay, I am curious - have you encountered this in PF2? PF1, sure, you out action-economy'ed the solo opponent, but that is very much not the case in PF2. Was there a module or AP that you played that gave you this sense? I have literally never encountered that feeling.
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The math and action economy make it pretty hard to design an ability that makes an opponent too powerful - even moreso if you have tried your hand at designing abilities. As was mentioned upthread, higher level enemies already lend themselves to "boss encounters" well, but if you're looking for more, toss in something extra.
Going to shamelessly quote myself and also self-promote a project I'm working on. As a good example, I'm converting Savage Tide from Paizo's 3.5 days and have been redesigning some encounters to fit into PF2 encounter philosophy and keep them interesting. So this is a boggard that the group will encounter around level 4 along with his rust monster pet and a number of boggard scouts.
He's a little bit of a "basic boggard" with just a few mote abilities that make him stand out thematically as well as make him a terrifying bruiser on the battlefield.
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The boss mechanism in PF2 is that a |your level+4| enemy will crit you with almost every hit and you'll fail or crit fail against almost all their spells/abilities, and so very quickly you'll have people dropping down like flies if you don't fight smart.
It's a much better mechanic than Legendary/Lair actions meant to compensate for the action economy advantage of PCs.
Generally speaking, I'll take action economy compensation over RNG any day. Especially when a solo pf2e enemy is pretty simple to crush with slows/stuns and other anti-action economy angles on top of what any halfway decent party can do with de/buff stacking.
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The boss mechanism in PF2 is that a |your level+4| enemy will crit you with almost every hit and you'll fail or crit fail against almost all their spells/abilities, and so very quickly you'll have people dropping down like flies if you don't fight smart.
It's a much better mechanic than Legendary/Lair actions meant to compensate for the action economy advantage of PCs.
No its really not, that solution is both extremely swingy and very forgettable. Its not even a mechanic at all, you r just buffing all the numbers until they almost break.
Are you going to remember the Troll that threw your fighter 20 yards into a mountain wall. Then when we crit it, it sprayed acid for blood all over your party. Then it dove down into the swamp and just bust out under our healer. But then you all pulled thru in the end.
or your version
Remember the boss that hit so hard all the time.... like all the bosses. Yeah and he was also hard to hit and saved again a lot of stuff... yeah like all the bosses. I'm i really glad we stacked all modifiers correctly so we had a chance.
Look legendary actions might not be the answer it might be 3 limited super-thematic boss moves it can to as a action or reaction to something happening.
It could be spawn minions, it could be a aoe reaction to being at 50% hp it could be extra actions. I'm just saying just pumping numbers up does not make for a good bossfight.
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Also, there is a difference in the bestiary between 'soldier' type enemies and 'boss' type enemies. Regardless of level.
For example, a Sabosan is a soldier type enemy. It has basic attacks, single target attacks, and no reactions. Since it is a level 5 enemy, it would still wipe the floor with a level 1 party - but that doesn't change the fact that it is a soldier, not a boss.
A Grauladon is a boss type enemy. It does still have basic attacks. But it also has at least one attack that can hit multiple targets in the party. It also has a nice reaction that triggers pretty much every round. A level 1 party is going to have an interesting time taking it down even though it is only one level higher than they are. The small level difference means that the math won't make the fight annoyingly hard. But the special actions and abilities that the creature has makes it so that the enemy doesn't just stand there doing nothing during everyone else's turn while chipping away at only one party member during its own.
In all seriousness If you want a special move for a BossJust Design one
Were do you see me asking for a move?
I don't want a move, I can design a move.
I asking for a supplement that focus on cool epic boss fights, it would be neat and handy. But all the answers I get is trying to FIX a problem I don't have or have expressed :D
Why would you buy a book with magic items, cant you design them yourself? Well probably but.... its nice if I can just buy it from the official source.
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Then I will say that I wouldn't really hold out hope for that. It's something that's already handled in the system.
What I don't understand is why people are so invested in the "big boss fight" to begin with? And I know I'm going to take flak for this, but I do think there's a real value in goons - as long as they're carefully chosen so that they can blunt PC momentum (Attack of Opportunity, slow and other debuffs are key here). You just can't let the PCs short-circuit it by murderizing the main boss and totally ignoring the goons. Give the goons (good aligned) champion reactions! Give them ways to take the boss's damage! And for goodness' sake don't let them get walled off and kept out of the fight.
variety is the spice of life, ofc you want minions in many fights. But there is little support for not having them and sometimes its just fun to fight godzilla. But NOT if just going to have a super high AC and HP :)
Then I will say that I wouldn't really hold out hope for that. It's something that's already handled in the system.
Then I think we just disagree on what a single vs many boss fight should feel or be like. Thanks for the input.
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Then I will say that I wouldn't really hold out hope for that. It's something that's already handled in the system.
Indeed. Specifically, here in the Design Abilities section of Building Creatures rules.
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There are many monsters in PF2 that are designed with a lot of cool abilities. Just grab one of an appropriate level.
What kind of abilities do you want your boss to have? Mobility, lots of attacks, spells, defensive abilities? The bestiary is a big shop for what you're looking for.
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People, even professional writers, are pretty bad at writing good encounters and 'boss' encounters are no exception. It's not really their fault though, because they need to keep things simple enough for mass consumption, word count, etc.
(Interestingly, BG3 has a lot of well designed encounters)
An engaging encounter ought to have some mixture of the below:
- -Varying enemy types/roles (melee, ranged, manipulators, etc)
- -Varying terrain (quality, elevation, hazards, etc)
- -Alternate win/loss conditions
- -Environmental interactables
If you're only going to have a single enemy, this is a lot harder because that's the easiest way to spice up an encounter (different enemies with different abilities) so you're going to have to lean on the other 3 elements pretty hard.
tl;dr if you want to make a good 'boss' encounter, it takes more than just finding a cool singular enemy and plopping them down on the grid.
What I don't understand is why people are so invested in the "big boss fight" to begin with? And I know I'm going to take flak for this, but I do think there's a real value in goons - as long as they're carefully chosen so that they can blunt PC momentum (Attack of Opportunity, slow and other debuffs are key here). You just can't let the PCs short-circuit it by murderizing the main boss and totally ignoring the goons. Give the goons (good aligned) champion reactions! Give them ways to take the boss's damage! And for goodness' sake don't let them get walled off and kept out of the fight.
Goons + hazards + interactive terrain is the way to make interesting fights, at least in my opinion. Bosses don't need legendary actions or anything similar, IMO.
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The boss mechanism in PF2 is that a |your level+4| enemy will crit you with almost every hit and you'll fail or crit fail against almost all their spells/abilities, and so very quickly you'll have people dropping down like flies if you don't fight smart.
It's a much better mechanic than Legendary/Lair actions meant to compensate for the action economy advantage of PCs.
No its really not, that solution is both extremely swingy and very forgettable. Its not even a mechanic at all, you r just buffing all the numbers until they almost break.
Are you going to remember the Troll that threw your fighter 20 yards into a mountain wall. Then when we crit it, it sprayed acid for blood all over your party. Then it dove down into the swamp and just bust out under our healer. But then you all pulled thru in the end.
or your version
Remember the boss that hit so hard all the time.... like all the bosses. Yeah and he was also hard to hit and saved again a lot of stuff... yeah like all the bosses. I'm i really glad we stacked all modifiers correctly so we had a chance.
Look legendary actions might not be the answer it might be 3 limited super-thematic boss moves it can to as a action or reaction to something happening.
It could be spawn minions, it could be a aoe reaction to being at 50% hp it could be extra actions. I'm just saying just pumping numbers up does not make for a good bossfight.
Have you seen some PF2 monsters? Most, especially at higher levels, have multiple memorable abilities. Yesterday we fought a thing that could engulf people, and constrict them, got healed every time it constricted its victims and was generating some aura of thorns that would wound anybody moving near it.
The *danger* of that fight was due to numbers, the *variety* was due to creature design.
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Most creatures in Pathfinder 2e, especially the higher level the get, have baked in interesting mechanics or quirks in their behavior that keep them from being bags of HP. The bags of HP who only know how to hit things is a 5e issue and why legendary and lair actions are a thing, to make those boring monsters more interesting.
Giving those creatures the ability to make attacks or use their abilities outside of their turn isn't going to make fights more interesting. It just ends up breaking the fight in the DM's favor.
I will give the Tiger Uppercut and Hadoukens dragons.
I like PF2 bosses much better than 5E.
If you want lair actions or some kind of special boss action. Just make it up. PF2 is very naturalistic. You can add stuff in, use the action system, and you're good to go.
PF2 system encourages you to write the abilities in a very naturalistic way and then use the action structure to make them work. So you can do lots of cool boss stuff. Just write it up.
PF2 monster creation is very well done. Very intuitive. Very open to dreaming up all types of strange boss abilities.
And for the rest of the house ruling tips, I know a lot of house rules for this, believe me, used them for many years. I've been collecting boss mechanics from many different RPG's and editions.
But Pathfinder is a very math balanced game, would be nice to have some official mechanism to use instead of house rules all the time. Trying out a new boss mechanic might be risky untested. I rather have official support, but sure if I'm am in a minority that's what I will continue to do :)
and
I asking for a supplement that focus on cool epic boss fights, it would be neat and handy. But all the answers I get is trying to FIX a problem I don't have or have expressed :DThen I will say that I wouldn't really hold out hope for that. It's something that's already handled in the system.Indeed. Specifically, here in the Design Abilities section of Building Creatures rules.If I understand your request correctly, you are looking for a designer who will take the current Design Abilities section from the Game Mastery Guide and create unique individual mosters at different levels with backstories and mechanics. They will publish these unique monsters in a stand-alone publication that people can buy.
Since none of these monsters will ever show up in a Pathfinder AP or Adventure, 3rd-party publication is sufficient for your purposes, since they are all to be used by GMs in home games.
Does that sum it up?
I think a publication like the one Matt C is doing but for Pathfinder would have me very interested. Especially if they added something like villan actions. Rather from Paizo but whet the hell I'll take 3rd party, might be better tested ;)
I the end I want to see more types of these encounter in written stuff as well. Why would not the entire boss encounters (environment, creature, mechanics) be well designed for fun memorable fight. Single or bosses with mobs. Far to often i see a statblock and a room number. No interesting environment, no mechanics where you have to be mindful on how you move, no unique conditions where you have to do x to stop a certain effect.
I mean I would pay for a supplement that just reskins the bossfight in a certain adventure paths to a more memorable fights with neat mechanics and makes them scalable from 2 to 6 players.
If you are going to lean into trpg as a game then I think they are not doing it enough when it comes to climatic encounters. That's were we as GM's often has to pick up the slack, at least I feel so.
If ppl still don't upstand the difference between boss encounter mechanics and creature abilities I recommend this stream by Knights of Last Call...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuJ3DZeSw8M&t=12472s
long but these game design choices are not explored enough. I think there is a lot that can be done in this designspace that would improve the trpg experience and make it even more fun :)
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I think the real reason you're not going to see a "boss book" is that you're only going to sell that book to GMs, and a GM is only ever going to get a lot less mileage out of it than almost every other GM-facing book. Like how many "boss" type monsters do you fight in a given campaign? It's a small percentage of the total.
What makes the fight "epic" is often less what happens in it and more about the stakes.
Most creatures in Pathfinder 2e, especially the higher level the get, have baked in interesting mechanics or quirks in their behavior that keep them from being bags of HP.
It's a long way to higher level
Giving those creatures the ability to make attacks or use their abilities outside of their turn isn't going to make fights more interesting. It just ends up breaking the fight in the DM's favor.
No they would be balanced for it that's why I want it to be designed, the action would not be "he strikes" it would be for example:
Action 1: Mindblind. Each enemy Lord Syuul can see within
60 feet of him must make a DC 19 Wisdom saving throw.
On a failed save, a creature can’t see creatures other than
Lord Syuul for 1 minute (save ends at end of turn).
Action 2: Was I Ever Here? Lord Syuul becomes invisible,
teleports 60 feet to an unoccupied space he can see, and
can take the Hide action. At the same time, an illusory
psionic image of Lord Syuul appears in the space he left,
gesturing, speaking, and behaving as he chooses (no action
required). A creature who touches the image for the first
time on a turn or makes a melee attack against it must
succeed on a DC 19 Constitution saving throw or take
21 (6d6) psychic damage because things can pass through
it. Lord Syuul’s invisibility ends and his image disappears
at the end of his next turn.
Action 3: Mindshatter. Each enemy Lord Syuul can see
within 60 feet of him must make a DC 19 Wisdom saving
throw. On a failed save, a target takes 55 (10d10) psychic
damage and is dazed for 1 minute (save ends at end of
turn). On a successful save, a target takes half as much
damage and isn’t dazed.
now you tell me that that is not going to make the fight more interesting. The abilitets could cost villan points and he get more villan point for each player in the party (or similar). Even the damage of the abilities could scale based on that.
I think the real reason you're not going to see a "boss book" is that you're only going to sell that book to GMs, and a GM is only ever going to get a lot less mileage out of it than almost every other GM-facing book. Like how many "boss" type monsters do you fight in a given campaign? It's a small percentage of the total.
What makes the fight "epic" is often less what happens in it and more about the stakes.
you are probably right, more important to give players more toys and feats. sells better.
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Sigh. I have a great deal of experience in playing and running bosses in PF2, but I have never played Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (my non-Pathfinder games in the last decade have been World of Darkness and GURPS) nor seen Matt Colville's Where Evil Lives. This means that I can explain boss monsters but not in the words that KingDingaling is using.
Yesterday's bosses are today's peers and tomorrow's minions. That is literal. For Famgs of War I converted hobgoblin commander Eygara (CR 6 Female hobgoblin fighter 7) into a 8th-level fighter with some commander abilities borrowed from Hobgoblin General. She was merely a sub-boss, since the party was 7th level, but she had troops with her to make the encounter challenging. However, in later modules I reused her stats for generic hobgoblin lieutenants who assisted the higher-level commander of other hobgoblin forces.
What would special boss abilities act like on a creature that is lower level than the party? Because that is what the writers of the Pathfinder Bestiaries have to plan around.
IF boss actions are added to a creature only when it is in a boss role, then that would make the creature stronger and mess up the tight math of PF2. The GM could raise the level of the boss to represent its greater strength, but that would give it +1 to all its proficiencies, so it would become even stronger. The GM would essentially rebuild the general-purpose creature as a unique boss creature. Remember, I have not seen D&D 5e boss actions, so I don't know why they seem especially exciting for bosses. Are they worth the extra work in rebuilding a creature?
Ah, as I was writing, KingDingaling posted a link to a sample of Where Evil Lives. TIme to rewrite.
I think the a key paragraph in Where Evil Lives is Action-Oriented Creatures.
Action-Oriented Creatures
The solo and leader creatures presented in this book are designed to be bosses: enemies who can take on an entire party by themselves or with a handful of underlings. Rather than simply increasing the challenge rating (an approach that often leads to underwhelming encounters), this book introduces action-oriented creatures.
A powerful villain needs plenty of opportunities to act and move when it’s not their turn. Thus, each action-oriented creature has at least one special bonus action and reaction, as well as a special section with villain actions that let them dominate the battlefield.
These actions make the boss creatures dynamic and formidable. Whether fought as an exciting solo challenge or alongside a few easy-to-run underlings, action-oriented creatures challenge the characters with dramatic and powerful actions in combat.
Dynamic and formidable. PF2 easily makes boss monsters formidable: simply chose a higher level. Dynamic means we get to see more per turn, because unless the boss is hard to take down, it won't have many turns. My wife pointed out that a lot of fun in boss battles is seeing the personality of the boss--which I might have foreshadowed in clues--acted out in the battle. Is the boss cruel or cowardly or savage or cunning? Personality is memorable.
And we can manage a boss personality with moves and tactics rather than boss actions. In contrast, boss actions would feel more like the boss using a perk because it is available rather than making personal choices about their own tactics.
I have an example of making a boss monster at Balancing a Seventeenth-Level Medusa. A Medusa is ordinarily a 7th-level creature, and this particular medusa had not only 10 more levels but also defensive ability far beyond an ordinary medusa. I am going to need a spoiler mask for the rest of the description.
The party has tales of Elacnida because they were following the path of herself, General Azaersi, hobgoblin bodyguard Dendrak, and naga sorcerer Zanathura in stealing a major artifact from a dwarven reliquary. They did not know that Elacnida was still there. She had died in the reliquary and risen as a ghost. Yet as a ghost, she still had the power to petrify. Furthermore, she gained the power to teleport in a single turn to inside the statue of anyone she had petrified, assuming their form temporarily, which she would use for both deception and for quick escapes. And ghosts are hard to damage, so she ordinarily had time to escape unless the party hunted down and either destroyed or unpetrified each statue.
She had lots of flavor as a villain. She had a plan to harass the party before the final battle. And this was completely under PF1 rules, which I converted to PF2 rules, without any special boss mechanics necessary--though balancing the many special abilities on that medusa so difficult that I asked for advice.
A Grauladon is a boss type enemy. It does still have basic attacks. But it also has at least one attack that can hit multiple targets in the party. It also has a nice reaction that triggers pretty much every round. A level 1 party is going to have an interesting time taking it down even though it is only one level higher than they are. The small level difference means that the math won't make the fight annoyingly hard. But the special actions and abilities that the creature has makes it so that the enemy doesn't just stand there doing nothing during everyone else's turn while chipping away at only one party member during its own.
I was thinking of a gug for an example of attacking multiple targets, half because it was in the same dungeon as the medusa and half because the Hulking Brain on page 29 of the preview of Where Evil Lives looks based on the gug, which is a creature from an H.P. Lovecraft story. The gug has four claws, which ordinarily gives no additional attacks in PF2's three-action system, so it has a special ability to make four claws relevant:
Furious Claws [two-actions] The gug makes up to four claw Strikes, each against a different target. These attacks all count toward the gug’s multiple attack penalty, but the penalty doesn’t increase until after the gug makes all its attacks.That ability on a mere 10th-level gug was capable of scaring the 14th-level party when a gug managed to get into the center of a small room within reach of all the spellcaters: So in 2E, is it normal to just feel... really weak? comment #241. And it did damage the spellcasters, but the rogue and champion took it down before it the damage became worrisome. The gug seems better designed than the Hulking Brain.
What I don't understand is why people are so invested in the "big boss fight" to begin with? And I know I'm going to take flak for this, but I do think there's a real value in goons - as long as they're carefully chosen so that they can blunt PC momentum (Attack of Opportunity, slow and other debuffs are key here). You just can't let the PCs short-circuit it by murderizing the main boss and totally ignoring the goons. Give the goons (good aligned) champion reactions! Give them ways to take the boss's damage! And for goodness' sake don't let them get walled off and kept out of the fight.
My players preferred fighting armies. I did the opposite of giving boss's more actions. I grouped 1st-level Hobgoblin Soldiers into 9th-level 16-soldier Hobgoblin Formation troop units so that I did not have to put 16 individual soldiers on the battlefield with their own individual turns.
I think the appeal of the big bosses is that they are easy to foreshadow and build up tension about them. The party fights minions who work for the boss and mention their name. The party might have conducted detective work that tracked down the big boss. Doing that for a band of enemies would split the prestige between several names.
Most creatures in Pathfinder 2e, especially the higher level the get, have baked in interesting mechanics or quirks in their behavior that keep them from being bags of HP.It's a long way to higher level
For a final encounter in the 1st module of an adventure path, the party would be 3rd level, so a 6th-level final boss would be appropriate. That level could easily handle four special abilities.
PF2 prefers giving a monster only one, two, or three special abilities to make them easier for the GM to play. But we can make an exception for a unique boss.
Giving those creatures the ability to make attacks or use their abilities outside of their turn isn't going to make fights more interesting. It just ends up breaking the fight in the DM's favor.No they would be balanced for it that's why I want it to be designed, the action would not be "he strikes" it would be for example:
Action 1: Mindblind. ...
Action 2: Was I Ever Here? ...
Action 3: Mindshatter. ...
now you tell me that that is not going to make the fight more interesting. The abilitets could cost villan points and he get more villan point for each player in the party (or similar). Even the damage of the abilities could scale based on that.
In PF2 those actions could be focus spells that require one action to cast and have the Flourish trait to prevent using them all on a single turn. The only thing missing would be the ability to use them outside of Lord Syuul's turn and only the teleport of Action 2: "Was I Ever Here?" really takes advantage of that.
you are probably right, more important to give players more toys and feats. sells better.
The plan (which they haven't been coy about) was once there was a sufficient baseline of "monsters" established to populate adventures, that they were going to do themed "bestiaries" a la Book of the Dead and Rage of the Elements that have a significant portion of player-facing content.
Since people who aren't the GM won't buy a bestiary generally, but everybody wants a book with a new class in it.
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In video games, boss creatures can have action patterns and unique abilities that the player(s) learn about within the context of the encounter, because they can rage quit when they get caught off guard and then comeback and try again against that creature. Yeah some games employ “Ironman” settings or roguelike resets, but those games are all built around trial and error to learn how to defeat an enemy.
TTRPGs don’t often give retries (although you can do that with a TPK at a critical juncture- the party wakes up. They’ve been captured. They had a vision of what could happen if they aren’t careful, etc.) So the lethality of high-threat encounters becomes a tight rope.
I really liked 4e boss mechanics at the time. It was new and interesting, and a lot of fun…it also got very immersion breaking. How are players supposed to learn in advance what special rules could apply to this encounter? Why do those rules apply? How far removed are these abilities from things players might be able to learn to do on their own?
Immersion-breaking in moderation can be fine. Inconsistency isn’t always bad, and sometimes giving villains abilities players can never replicate is necessary and fun. But it is good for a system to minimize the need for the GM to change the rules on the players. It is a pretty incredible feat of mechanical design for the exact same creature to go from queen of her domain, to eventual minion. Incapacitation effects on creatures are a very good “tell” that this is a good creature to use in this boss to mob role. It is always a shame when PCs first encounter such a creature at too low a level to feel that power difference.
Dragons are another creature that work exceptionally well as solo bosses in PF2 if you given them the right encounter environment. When 1 move action is more than 3 player move actions, don’t have the creature stand still. You will get all of your action boosting out of 1 action if the dragon doesn’t fight like a mindless slaughterer, but a cunning hunter that has survived multiple difficult fights in its unimaginably long life time. Let boss creatures actively try to learn about their adversaries too, and let the process of learning about each other be part of the developing narrative. A lot of 4e boss mechanics, and similar house rules I have seen, start from a place of trying to extend the amount of time spent on a single encounter. I find this better done with collapsing several encounters into a series of wave encounters, with pauses in “total war” rounds of an encounter broken up with strategic retreats, repositioning and calling in reinforcements, rather than going full aggro to win or die with every action. That is what makes difficult encounters frustrating and sometimes forgettable more than lack of special abilities. And sometimes the dice will kill a PC instantly or trivialize an encounter that should have been difficult.
One of the reasons I like PF2 and the lack of boss mechanics is because I like letting dice be part of the story. I want my PCs sometimes to steamroll a difficult encounter because they rolled 3 nat 20s in a single round, and to really need to consider retreating/cutting their losses/accepting defeat when it is that way with natural 1s. Spending too much time designing creatures makes it more difficult to let them go when the dice roll that way. I’d much rather role play a villain running or giving up when the PCs have a good string of luck then having arbitrary rules interject in a pivotal movement because I, the GM, feel like I’ve lost control of the story. This usually does require being prepared with larger maps, spare maps/battle maps to add in as necessary, or a system for moving off map (like theater of mind) effectively if you are running prewritten material, because it all takes up too much space to fit in all possible potentialities. I am just saying that a GM can narratively prepare their campaign and their encounters to be effective boss fights with minimal extra mechanical interventions.
Try a +3 hydra or dragon. Or try some monsters from battlezoo, there's one that can endlessly summon more minions. Certain monsters, many uncommon, do indeed have interesting abilities and action compression.
Otherwise, a BBEG type boss should be unique, meaning you should tweak an existing creature or make your own that fits your party. There's guidelines for such.
All you need do to simulate "legendary" actions is make sure your boss has a few reactions it can take and maybe give it two reactions a turn and bam, using the systems the game already has you accomplish it instead of taking on new layers and homebrew.
Great post btw I wont comment on it all but choose something that resonated with me to comment on.
My wife pointed out that a lot of fun in boss battles is seeing the personality of the boss--which I might have foreshadowed in clues--acted out in the battle. Is the boss cruel or cowardly or savage or cunning? Personality is memorable.
That's a great tip and that made me think about foreshadowing in general. Unlike a video game were the player can just die reset and try again I believe it to be important to foreshadow powerful boss abilities or encounter mechanics in the of their minions or previous situations so that the player have some sense of the mechanism even before they fight the boss. Maybe the terrain features have been used i previous fights or many minions use mind altering abilities and psychic damage like their master. Maybe a powerful move that the boss can do has been retold by a captured prisoner who say the horrors first hand. Player will feel empowered if they prepared and if they failed to do so they will feel that they were not blindsided and that they could have done better. At least I would feel that way.
TTRPGs don’t often give retries (although you can do that with a TPK at a critical juncture- the party wakes up. They’ve been captured. They had a vision of what could happen if they aren’t careful, etc.) So the lethality of high-threat encounters becomes a tight rope.
I really liked 4e boss mechanics at the time. It was new and interesting, and a lot of fun…it also got very immersion breaking. How are players supposed to learn in advance what special rules could apply to this encounter? Why do those rules apply?
Great post, good tips, I commented on this in the reply above on foreshadowing abilities and mechanics. But your are right you cant rly use the same sort of logic as in a video game it does not map well 1:1 to a trpg. But you can let them learn parts of the mechanics from previous encounters, to certain extent ofc.
How far removed are these abilities from things players might be able to learn to do on their own?
Well depend on the boss as well I guess why would they be able o replicate what a legendary Tarrasque is doing?
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Legendary Resistances may be terrible design, but legendary actions and lair actions are an excellent idea for showing more of who or what a boss monster is. Mind you, these abilities depend on certain monsters being designated as 'boss' monsters, and I've never played enough 5e to experience for myself whether these great ideas actually worked in practice.
Meanwhile, I've been paying attention to Matt Colville's action-oriented design philosophy, and I love the look. It is absolutely something I would not mind seeing more of in 2e. It's something which it feels like 2e was always made to have in mind, but is only as easy to implement as it is to remember something for every monster--and frankly not every monster should have incorporated. Even if a monster of a certain level can be used as a boss if the PCs are low enough level, those interesting and memorable abilities can become tedious to track when that same monster appears as the minions in a higher level dungeon.
Incidentally, there are absolutely several monsters which to me exhibit 'boss monster' design. First and most obvious to me for the adventure I'm running right now is the zombie lord from BotD. Aside from the ability to create minions out of combat, the zombie lord's most obvious 'boss monster' ability is an action which allows it to command its undead minions to reposition themselves.
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I guess the other flaw here is, for a boss monster to have logical cinematic actions to take in combat, these abilities are probably not common to every creature who shares the statblock with the boss--which would leave the onus of designing boss monster abilities to the writers of the individual adventures, not the bestiary, to come up with a collections of interesting boss ideas.
A more useful supplement to me feels like a "Boss Creature" template like the Elite and Weak adjustments or the simple templates for vampire/werewolf/etc. which contain collections of suggested boss mechanics that would be worth adding +1 to the difficulty (perhaps with a +1 to all stats like the aforementioned vampire/werewolf), maybe with different tiers of abilities based on the boss' level, with a list of ways the basic abilities can be reflavoured to suit a different boss' theme. Things like "for one action command your minions to do a thing" or "as a reaction to a certain kind of hit, taunt the players as a free demoralize"
I would just love it even more with some boss mechanics in the game.
I agree. It would be nice if there were some templates or options you could put on a creature that was designed to fight a party. There is a difference between a higher level thug and a boss of the same level.
I like the rules we have for adjusting creatures in PF2 with Elite and Weak Templates. But I don't want just one option.
D&D4 had defined creature roles like Leader, Controller, Striker, Skirmisher, Minion etc. I think there is some value there. I don't like creatures being forced into a template, but I'd like some templates to be avaiable to help me build creatures.
I must confess I still use the minions concept in PF2. If I'm dealing with a lot of enemies - which means lower level - I mentally convert damage to negligible, half or total, that is the little monsters have 3 states, good to go, hurt, and dead. Just to speed things up for me. The players never see this.
The way D&D5 did it was mixed. Legendary Resistance was a terrible way of saying No to casters. Much as I am not a fan of it Incapacitation, with 4 degrees of success, PF2 has a much better way to do it. At least as a caster you always have option that give you a partial effect even when you enemy makes their save so you can still have an impact.
Lair actions were a good way of doing it, and a nice thematic way of representing special preparation.
Legendary actions were also OK but a bit over the top sometimes. That is a lot of extra actions. I feel PF2 could do better by having extra reactions (not AoO) for bosses including potentially more than 1 per turn.
PF2 does its bosses by being almost totally free form. That is OK but I'd like some options as a GM. I do get tired of the BBEG just being 2-3 levels higher than the party. It has soem preditable problems like always being hard to hit, and many spell not being effective. Still at least it is not all spells.
I'll get back to this thread with some suggestions when I get some time.
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I think KingDingaling is asking a legit question. Why isn't such a book there?
I'm kinda surprised by how fell the pushback is really. Sure, PF2 can do this pretty well already. There are really interesting bossy monsters you can employ as a GM.
But there are also quite a few adventures where indeed the boss is just a high numbers monster. "Hard", sure. But was it enjoyable, cool and memorable?
If PF2 can do this, why doesn't it do great bosses consistently?
That's why I think this is a legit question. Writing good bosses is a bit of an art. But we also have art schools, we don't require artists to be born with their talents fully developed. A toolbox for GMs on how to put "boss sauce" on a monster isn't out of line.
(Obviously, the economics of why such a book doesn't exist, is a whole other question, with varying answers if you include 3PP.)