[DF] Big Solitary Boss Monsters - design theory

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Big boss monsters are almost always better served by giving them some extra company than they are more HP. More defenses/DR/magic resistance can help but it mostly just frustrates PCs.

If you really want a classic boss fight against a single creature, the first place to start is 6x HP and either area attacks that are large enough to hit most of the party, or some other way of duplicating the attack output of a group of Worthy monsters (four Extra Attacks and Long Arms works). Another thing that's pretty important is a way to prevent Resisted spells from ending the fight with a single die roll - if it's a large monster, then the scaling of FP costs based on SM helps here, but may be a bit binary.

There's a whole other thread here on Boss Monster Design that doesn't have anything to do with the adventure so I'll take this elsewhere.

So here I am!

Let's start from first principles:

Why even have a fight against a single big monster?
You can make vague guesses about human ancestors adapting to swarming mega-fauna like mammoths or something, but it's a theme that does keep popping up in literature, myth, video games, and movies - I don't think it needs a lot of justification on that level beyond "people clearly like it". I leave the deep psychological analysis to others.

Why have one in your game?
Single big, powerful monsters are intimidating - they certainly have a powerful personal presence. Fighting them is a great way to highlight how competent and brave the characters are - I wouldn't take on an ancient dragon/demonic dinosaur/enormous blob monster from beyond time and space without being hundreds of yards away and operating a siege weapon; my character is brave and strong and willing to get right in there. For a party of players that values valour and excitement, this is certainly it.
Given an open field and a chance to prepare, the characters may take the siege weapon approach as well - this gives them a chance to demonstrate how cunning and organized they are. For a party that values planning, strategy, and smarts beating brute strength, this is the chance for the ultimate revenge of the nerds. [1]

They're also dramatic. We've seen this in cinema and videogames. A gigantic monster can seem like the earth it self has risen up to destroy you - and the story becomes the classic conflict of man vs nature. A huge monster can also represent The State (or any other large organization that is feared in campaign), Technology [2] (see Godzilla), and so forth. Mine GURPS Horror for ideas, but in a non-Horror game the story is usually about the triumph of Man Vs Whatever, or at least the ongoing struggle, not the conquest of Man By Whatever.

[1] There's a whole class of boss monsters that are smart and strong - this is trouble for everyone, but the Revenge of the Nerds types usually appreciate a battle of wits as well so it's a good match for the second type. The "run in there and smash it for THOR" types will get a very rude awakening if this is the first time they've had to deal with a clever foe.

[2] In a kitchen sink game this may literally be technology, or pseudotechnological forces like alchemy, or just your average "mad wizard did it" situation.

[Bruno]

What is a boss fight?
A fight against a single opponent that is significantly more challenging than the fights with multiple small enemies which the player or players has been dealing with up to this point. Usually a large physically intimidating one, although some bosses come in small packages. The boss must be confronted head-on [1] - usually the boss is blocking a route the PCs need to take (passively with its sheer size as much as with conscious action) or has one of a McGuffin set the players need to collect and is not inclined to trade it away or give it up, or killing it is explicitly the target of their quest.

Mini-bosses or "level bosses" are much like bosses, but are a single foe that produces a roughly evenly matched threat, rather than an extremely dangerous one.

Boss fights tend to be used in games and contexts where there are a large number of relatively weak enemies in the area, making getting to the boss fight as much an issue of endurance or logistics as pure "awesome". This is for contrast, and to provide variety - players have to consider tactics and character builds other than room-clearing mook-sweeping approaches.

Incidentally, the small enemies can be completely cleared out/blocked off to prevent them from coming to the aid of the boss in the middle of the fight, or simply avoided by stealth or by exotic powers if they're not actively allied with the boss. Or killed anyways, this is DF after all.

[1] NPCs that otherwise seem boss-like but the PCs aren't required to confront violently to reach their goal aren't boss fights by definition. They may become one if the PCs take the violence route instead, but any dragon you can barter with or any demon you can run missions for is just a terriflyingly powerful NPC. Any giant radioactive dinosaur you can just run past because you're too small for it to see and don't have any particular reason to fight is more of an environmental hazard than a boss.

[Gigermann]

Don't stat the Boss—stat the weakness.

Take Smaug, for example. There's no point in assigning HP and DR or all that, because realistically, nobody will ever get the opportunity, much less be able to overcome a sizeable dragon (done properly) in melee combat, with slabs of sharpened metal (magic or otherwise). You really only need to stat the "missing scale" weak spot; how often the opportunity is presented, how hard the shot is, and how much damage it takes to affect it.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Gigermann

Don't stat the Boss—stat the weakness.

Take Smaug, for example. There's no point in assigning HP and DR or all that, because realistically, nobody will ever get the opportunity, much less be able to overcome a sizeable dragon (done properly) in melee combat, with slabs of sharpened metal (magic or otherwise). You really only need to stat the "missing scale" weak spot; how often the opportunity is presented, how hard the shot is, and how much damage it takes to affect it.

You also need to stat the attacks.

[Gigermann]

Originally Posted by Langy

You also need to stat the attacks.

True, but only if it's remotely possible to survive and/or defend against them—and in many cases, it really should not be. No need to stat Godzilla's attacks, except to potentially Dodge them (and in GURPS, that has nothing to do with the attack itself, unless it's Deceptive).

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Gigermann

True, but only if it's remotely possible to survive and/or defend against them—and in many cases, it really should not be. No need to stat Godzilla's attacks, except to potentially Dodge them (and in GURPS, that has nothing to do with the attack itself, unless it's Deceptive).

Eh, if the boss is only has two stats:

Weakness: Hit him here and he dies
Attack: Fail to defend and you die

. . . then you've basically scripted in the only way to beat him and the only way to stop him. I think that's a bit lame. I don't mind one-weakness monsters that are otherwise invulnerable, but I think this potentially crosses the line into "Guess how I think you can beat this and you win, think of a different way to beat this and you're wrong and you lose."

Plus you've effectively said they do (Max PC HP x 6) dice of damage, cosmic (ignores DR). That's not fun IMO because there are no death checks, no amazingly low damage rolls, no "I use Super Luck and call minimum damage on him!" or the like.

I'd rather write down:

100 HP
DR 50 everywhere
Supernatural Durability
Wounded: Has a patch of missing armor, -10 to hit but no DR. Per-10 to spot.

Bite (15): 100d6 damage

than write:

Weakness: Patch of missing armor, -10 to hit, if hit there it dies, Per-10 to spot.
Bite (15): You die.

Plus if the PCs win, they know it wasn't just a pure puzzle monster, and if they lose, you can show them how unfair the fight was . . . but that you played by the same rules. The Black Reaver was a totally, extremely, ridiculously unfair monster in Rolemaster . . . but it was statted, so you knew it was conceivably possible to beat it, even if that was totally unlikely to happen.

All IME, IMO.

[DAT]

The Boss for the last DF game I ran had:
An anti invisibility dust trap at a choke point to his office (lair)
A trick stairs/sliding into a wall of spears trap
14 (2xparty siize) elite (skill 18) well armored Orc guards
1 wizard guard
A reserve of 11 (1.5xparty size) reserve Bug man guards
and he himself had:
Stealth 26
A ring of invisibility
A ring of blink/teleport
DR 5 armor
HP 14
A veryfine meteoric sword and skill 24 to use it

Within 15 seconds of the party entering his lair:
The orcs and wizard guards were dead, the bugmen were trapped beyond a collapsed tunnel, he was at -16 HP from an arrow & 2 bolts to the vitals, and he got hit with 38 points of fire damage ... Killing him.

The party was intact except that the barbarian was unconsious at -10 HP from the boss' one successful attack.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

Eh, if the boss is only has two stats:

Weakness: Hit him here and he dies
Attack: Fail to defend and you die

. . . then you've basically scripted in the only way to beat him and the only way to stop him. I think that's a bit lame. I don't mind one-weakness monsters that are otherwise invulnerable, but I think this potentially crosses the line into "Guess how I think you can beat this and you win, think of a different way to beat this and you're wrong and you lose."

The best piece of GMing advice I ever read or heard (read in this case) was to make the problem, but let the players make the solution. This is an extreme violation of that rule: if the players don't guess your super-secret Achilles's Heel, it's a TPK. Not fun.

Are boss monsters in DF 15, incidentally, or just lesser foes?

[Gigermann]

I suppose we should be certain we're talking about the same thing.

I am talking about the typical dragon-type you see in most video games (that have "bosses"). Godzilla is a good example of what I'm talking about: There's no realistic way a "normal" character can hit it with any melee weapon and hope to even penetrate the skin—in D&D or WoW, Godzilla would have stats, and you would likely be expected to do just that, regardless of how ridiculous it is (as is the case with elder dragons).

When I say "only stat the weakness," I am not saying that (a) there should be only one way (although that is the case in the Smaug example, per the book), or (b) the PCs should be left to figure it out on their own—that would be stupid, unless the weakness is painfully obvious (giant snowman vs fire, FREX).

OTOH, how would you treat the Balrog in LotR? Gandalf was clearly able to engage the thing in melee, and defeat it, with some magical aid. Really, it was just a super-capable "normal" bad guy, in a way, and doesn't really qualify as the type of boss I'm talking about.

Maybe I should be calling it a "Mega-Boss"; that might clear it up.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Gigermann

Maybe I should be calling it a "Mega-Boss"; that might clear it up.

We're talking about the same thing, and I still disagree. A "monster" with only one way to kill it, and one attack that kills things, is a puzzle. Or a deathtrap. It's not really a monster . . . and it would feel like the latter.

Smaug works in a book, but in a game . . . you have to be ready for you expecting Bard to shoot it and the PC wizard rolling a 3 on Entombment instead.

Just sayin'