My PCs are about to get into a situation where they might have to fight a mini-boss style combat with no armor or weapons. I want to give the PCs a chance and so I am trying to think of some kind of alternate win condition they might make use of.
I'm tempted to do something like the videogame style "you see three obvious glowing weak spots on the boss" but that seems super lame to me.
I have also considered allowing them to find some improvised weapons, thick tree branches, baseball sized stones, things like that. I'm not sure that's going to do the trick though as far as them being able to overcome the encounter using them.
The encounter is taking place underground in a more or less standard stone dungeon room. One main, slow moving enemy, and a few little adds to support the main baddie.
What might be a fun and satisfying alt-win condition for the fight?
I'm always a fan of "position the enemy to stand under the big crusher and drop the crusher on him to win" fight. A death pit is another option too. The trick is to maneuver the enemy into the position and then trigger the crusher/open the pit/push them into the pit/push them under the crusher to win.
The PCs might only have to survive for a certain amount of time to win. After that help comes, or the boss realizes that he left the oven on, or was just testing them, or some other excuse for the fight to end without death.
There are a few potential issues that may occur with this type of scenario. Note, this is not saying you shouldn't do it but just issues to be aware of.
1) Be wary of any approaches leading to the fight that rob the players of agency over their characters. This is often the most contentious issue. Automatic "losses" (PCs captured, robbed, etc. with no way to prevent it) can cause anger and hurt feelings. It's usually better to have the "boss" crash a fancy social event or some other situation where the PCs are "encouraged" to leave their adventuring equipment at home ("Formal attire, you know. This is a party, not a military review."); you may allow a few small or concealed items.
2) Some characters and/or classes will be less affected by the lack of equipment; or even hardly affected at all. Monks (or other unarmed combat specialists), shifters, spellcasters, etc. can often be almost effective (or even be able use magic to replace the missing equipment at a moment's notice).
3) You should adjust the CR of the enemies to account for the fact that the PCs are not at full capability (treat them as APL -1, APL -2, or even APL -3, depending on their level and how reliant they are on equipment).
4) You should provide an opportunity for the PCs to regain their missing equipment; either immediately after the "boss" fight or shortly after.
If the boss was designed to go up against the characters when they have full gear, but you take away the gear it will be a slaughter. If on the other hand you designed this boss to fight the characters without gear it should be fine.
A couple of things you need to be careful of.
The first is AoO. If the players are going to be provoking AoO from the boss for attacking unarmed that is going to dramatically alter the action economy. If the boss has combat reflexes, it will be really bad. If on the other hand if no one is taking AoO for just attacking things will run normally.
The second is HP and AC. If the players normally rely on their weapons for damage their chance to hit and the damage their chance to hit and the damage they deal will be greatly reduced. Some classes will be more affected by this than others. A fighter that has a lot of weapon specific feats will be severely hampered, but a ranger fighting a favored enemy, or a paladin fighting evil will do much better. Depending on the situation you may need to reduce the AC and HP of the boss or the fight will take forever.
Third is the players defenses. Without things like rings of resistance and other protective gear the players defenses are likely to be much lower. What normally would be an appropriate attack from the boss may become overwhelming.
Finally, how hampered will the spell casters of the party be? The casters that rely on gear to cast will be greatly reduced, but those that do not need gear will probably be ok. If you have a fighter, cleric and wizard facing off against a devil they are probably screwed. On the other hand, if your party is a paladin, oracle, and sorcerer they will have a much better chance.
We really do not have any details on either the boss or the party. That makes giving all but the most general advice useless. As I said before a GM can easily design a “Boss” to fit this or any other situation. If the OP were to give more details on the planed encounter it would be helpful.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Enjoy running monk games for the next 10 years lol
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My suggestion, without knowing more about the boss and party, is to design a more interesting dungeon room. Let me explain what I mean by that. Make a room with a lot of traps, cliffs, ledges etc. Probably drop the minions from the combat so that players actually have a reasonable chance of success.
The players need to make checks to get around the room and they're going to toss stones or use long sticks to set off traps around the room and slowly wear the enemy down until they either are killed or are so annoyed with the party they leave. I'm assuming the slow boss isn't a caster, but if they have ranged attack give plenty of low walls for the PCs to hide behind. And give plenty of alternate terrain paths for PCs to climb or jump across to get to the various traps. And as the boss chases them, the PCs set them off. If the boss can catch one of them he's likely to kill them in one round. The party will have to stay mobile and move around the room and get the boss to basically kill himself.