What do you do about one demon?

[Harald387]

Originally Posted by Kromm

...and to the right number of PCs (you can halve 12 orcs for 6 PCs to 6 orcs for 3 PCs, but what do you do about one demon?).

This quote got me thinking about something our group brought up recently - how GURPS (and not just Dungeon Fantasy, but DF was what we were playing at the time) handles boss monsters. My experience is 'badly'; there's a line where the monster goes from 'sack of hit points getting mobbed by the group and beaten down in a slogfest' to 'unhittable killing machine that the entire group can't take', and I've never quite been able to find the middle ground. Has anyone done that sort of fight and had it go well, with the right mix of danger and triumph and some sort of back-and-forth in combat? What traits make this work?

(This is not a problem solely for GURPS - D&D 4's Solos are also notorious for falling into the 'sack of hit points slogfest' category - but I'm looking for ways to make it work in GURPS)

[Anthony]

There's two issues with boss fights in GURPS, one GURPS-specific, one not.

The GURPS-specific one is that it usually takes a very small number of successful hits to drop a foe in GURPS. This makes the outcome extremely random, particularly when the number of foes is small; even in a supposedly even fight, you're likely to wind up with a blowout by one side or the other.

The non-specific one is that an interesting fight requires there to be tactically relevant choices to be made, and there aren't that many choices to be made when you have only a single enemy. The most successful boss fight I recall running in GURPS involved a boss who happened to have a step of 2 and reach 2, against melee PCs who mostly had reach 1 weapons and step 1, and the tactically interesting part was for the PCs to figure out how to take advantage of their numeric superiority.

[Goober4473]

I haven't had a whole lot experience running boss fights in GURPS, but I've done it a lot in other systems, and what I've found is, if you want it to really be a "boss fight," and not just a powerful enemy (against which the solution may be to run away, or just hit it a lot; this sort of enemy is more a part of the simulated world than a game experience), the fight probably needs to be more than a fight.

For example, make the fight more puzzle than combat (or some balance of the two). Instead of just whaling on the boss, the players will need to figure out how to hurt it (beyond just what attacks it is weak against). They'll need to climb the thing, activate some consoles around the room in a specific pattern, get it to follow them, fight off its swarm of minions or defense drones (which it will occasionally ressurect or summon more of), defend themselves against its attacks, etc. Maybe doing so will lower its defenses, letting them attack it, or provide them with some alternate way to hurt it directly.

That way, the fight will be longer than usual, but not in a boring slug-fest sort of way, and will be more interesting and unique than your average fight, both of which lead to the feeling of "epic boss battle".

[mlangsdorf]

I'm trying to think about the big boss monsters I've ran in my DF games, and how they played out:

* Lone Peshkali: it did some damage, got mobbed, went down
* The Bloody Baron: A massively overpowered Knight/Wraith in full armor with a big sword and lots of nastiness. Smacked the PCs around until the thief stole his Wraith amulet, then he fell over immediately and the PCs shouted with glee
* Non-euclidian Elder Thing: got mobbed, got killed, got revived as a bunch of Elder Spawn that got killed and revived as a bigger bunch of elder spawnlets. So I'm not sure how much of a boss monster he was...
* The Troll: a stock regenerating troll (backed by a couple of orcs knights, actually) that got a lucky blow through a PC's defenses that demonstrated what a bad-ass it was, then flailed around getting parried until the orcs got killed, then got mobbed and beaten to death.

Those were the memorable ones; there may have been other boss monsters that I can't remember because they weren't even as memorable as these four.

I'd suggest aiming for a huge bag of HP and DR that can more or less expect to take down a PC every 5 seconds or so (PCs are tough and versatile and will get back up, so dropping a PC doesn't mean they won't come back later) and can't reasonably worn down by the PCs, plus some non-obvious puzzle aspect that makes it fall over dead fairly quickly.

So for a typical DF 250 point delving band, something with DR 10H (forcefield), 40-50 HP, perhaps some kind of Injury Tolerance, Peripheral Vision, 1 Extra Attack for each PC, and an attack that does roughly 5d cutting with a skill of 18+. And then some kind of puzzle, like pulling the gems off his throne opens corresponding holes in his force field, or destroying the pentagram (which is behind him, natch) halves his strength, or stuff like that.

[Ulzgoroth]

Back and forth seems like a popular request, but I really don't understand it. Back and forth means one side swung from a losing position to a winning one, and then back. More than once, probably. Logically, that should be unlikely unless the relative advantage is trivial, and actively encouraging it would devalue conventional tactics since pulling 'ahead' raises the expectation of being dragged back behind.

Maybe break out a multi-stage boss? They're mostly nonsensical video-game artifacts, but they do allow the tide of battle to turn repeatedly, while not creating perverse incentives since each time the boss 'makes a comeback' it indicates that the players have moved a station closer to winning.

[nuulak]

boss fights can be tricky in any system. the best thing to do with them imo is to make sure that even though the players have superior numbers is that the boss has superior something else, mobility, terrain advantage or even knowledge of what makes the players tick.

with this in mind the boss will be memorable because the players will remember the boss for what he did not how he died and keep in mind demons will play really really dirty.

[Nosforontu]

The math is going to be very important going into a boss fight when detailing him out before combat.

1: Know the average damage each party member does as well as their damage cap. Chose a D.R. level that your players can penetrate but one that requires a really good roll or special options like All out Attack Strong to get past the D.R. for the non combat characters, but only requires around average damage for a combat specialist to punch through.

2: Special Defenses mix it up between boss monsters but they are going to typically need some way to reduce the damage they take from each hit beyond that gained from D.R. alone. Advantages like Supernatural Durability, Diffuse + Fast Regeneration, even Homogenous can inflate the number of rounds needed to kill the bad guy even if he does not have a huge hit point pool.

3: Decide how many rounds you are striving for in the fight and choose the boss monsters hit points ahead of time. If you want a 5 round fight and know the average damage that your party can inflict per round is 6 points of damage then you probably want a Boss monster with 30 hit points

4: Lair advantage: Boss Monsters unless lured out will typically fight in an environment that has beneficial terrain modifiers for it. If it can see in the dark then it does not need a lights in its lair for party members to see with and might very well have a plan on how to kill the Parties light sources for example. If it has D.R. 6 it might lair in an environment that is constantly plunking out a D6 of damage each round to everyone in the area as another example putting the players on a clock to finish the fight fast and rough.

5: Poker Chips. MH uses some cinematic rules that could be easily exported over to Boss Monsters. Give each boss monster a few poker chips each scene that he is in that can be spent on buying successes on skill or active defense rolls, and turning an injury into just a flesh wound. This should help account for critical hit damage spikes from the players as well as helping protect against massive one shot attacks that pop up from time to time. Also dont consider making at least one level of luck advantage mandatory for your bosses to once again help keep them alive.

6: Multiple actions single action boss monsters are usually a very bad idea as they are at a huge disadvantage in the action economy versus players and usually have to compensate by having nearly unkillable stats and massive damage that results in a PK each round. Instead make sure that your boss monster has multiple actions (1 action for every 2-4 expected player actions per turn perhaps).

[jacobmuller]

I'm in favour of the "smack-the-forehead" to kill it boss; some tropes being: no man of woman born/ no man/ no weapon forged by man (but that wraith-amulet fits the pattern), oh, and Rip its horn off!*

StF: something mentioned during in-game conversation that suddenly clicks into place when confronted by the Boss. Or is that a deus ex machina?

*Also: he always aims for the heart, uses a clockwork music gadget, rides a rampant stallion.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Back and forth seems like a popular request, but I really don't understand it. Back and forth means one side swung from a losing position to a winning one, and then back. More than once, probably. Logically, that should be unlikely unless the relative advantage is trivial, and actively encouraging it would devalue conventional tactics since pulling 'ahead' raises the expectation of being dragged back behind.

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

I'm in favour of the "smack-the-forehead" to kill it boss; some tropes being: no man of woman born/ no man/ no weapon forged by man (but that wraith-amulet fits the pattern), oh, and Rip its horn off!*

I'd back both sentiments. My most memorable fantasy boss fights have all been ones where the PCs were repeatedly trying to deliver the "killing blow" ordained by prophecy, revealed by their skills, found etched in a burial tablet, or whatever. They spent many turns being fended off by powerful defenses while attempting this, with each turn of failure-to-kill and success-at-defense granting the boss one more chance to use some overwhelming takes-out-a-PC attack. There was no back-and-forth there, and no sack of HP. The boss was basically winning, and the PCs weren't whittling away but desperately looking for a lucky break.

One example was a mummy with an amulet that made it immortal. The mummy literally couldn't be harmed by any attack the PCs had; the only way to defeat it was to remove the amulet, wherepon even a small dog could probably bite it to destruction. However, because it couldn't be hurt, it could afford to ignore all non-grabbing, amulet-targeting attacks and save its defenses for those. And those required getting close to a mummy that emitted Deathtouch-like doom at grappling range, withering people in their boots. The day was saved when the former slave-driver PC remembered his whip, dropped his sword, and did an Indy on the amulet.

Another was a minor god that could only be defeated via a proper ritual. This had to take place in combat time, as the god fixed stares of madness and heart attack on the PCs. The PCs had to carve a hole in it and remove a symbolic talisman, and then one PC had to dive inside and win a bunch of Quick Contests of Will to drive it from the mortal realm. Just slugging the thing didn't matter, and the whole time, the PCs were at a huge disadvantage and mostly on the defensive. One PC died, and only came back because he had a favor owing with the God of Death.

[Maz]

Luckily a demon is one of the token bosses that could do anything. super tough and strong and fast, being only vulnerable to certain weapons or even person, using magic, mental or offensive and being highly skilled and possessing cinematic powers. Not to mention funky stuff like flying, possession, summoning allies and invisibility.

Really, it's only the imagination that stops you with a demon-boss. But I guess that's why you ask here, to get a little mind-juice :)
Oersonally I think it's much more problematic with mundane bosses. "the corrupted noble", "The bandit king", "the dwarf lord", "the orc warboss", and so on.

But for a demon you can do pretty much anything.

---

From experience I have only had 2 memorable boss-fights in our DF game.

1) A berserking dragon with about 80 HP and hardened scale. It could have been a slug-fest and the PC's wasn't supposed to be able to killed it. But because it was beserking and all-outing they could just make telegraphic Rapid Strikes to its eyes/head and killed it a bit too easy.
But it did have corrosive flame (destroying armour) they couldn't parry or retreating dodge (had to dodge and drop). And had the "1 atk per PC" and had Armour divisor (2) so it could hurt even the heavily armoured without outright killing the lightly armoured.

So the players felt mighty awesome about taking it down, even if they did it a bit too easy for my taste.


2) A weapon master-ninja. Thanks to stuff like really good defenses, high skill and exotic powers such as powerblow, invisibility art and so on, he could do the "run and attack" technique. He started with friends which allowed him to run and hide when they got downed. But he did manage to hold out alone against many PC's thanks to Peripheral vision and a skill around 22 and WPN master. Using FP and Rapid strike he managed to make multiple attacks as well. Cutting a leg clean of one PC. It was a bit of a doding/parrying fest, but because it wasn't simply HP the PC's actually worked together coordinating their attacks to get his defenses down.
And because of very high move, Acrobatics at 20+ and stuff like Invisibility art he managed to run away and regroup at least once.