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General Tabletop Discussion
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Anticlimactic Boss Fights
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<blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 9001156" data-attributes="member: 20323"><p>Good question! There are so many approaches to these kinds of situations... For some groups they're great times to celebrate player inventiveness. For other groups they're a let-down in terms of suspenseful buildup. For others, there's a mix of responses along that spectrum. What's "right" really depends on where the fun is for you and your group.</p><p></p><p>I will say that the way monsters are written in 5e can limit our GM thinking about how the monster should function. For example, the beholder's eyes mostly describe their effect <em>on creatures it can see. </em>Well, there's two things baked in there....</p><p></p><p>First, you could narrate/change a beholder's eye ray to be a line/ray/cone that it can fire blind - if you feel a need to "balance" this adjustment to the official stats on the fly, you could have this unique use of its eye ray cost all of its Multiattack, or a Legendary Resistance, or a Legendary Action. However, at the narrative level it's not a stretch to allow an Eye <em>Ray </em>to not require sight, like ray spells such as <em>ray of frost & ray of enfeeblement </em>don't require sight (the language for those spells is "...toward a creature within range.") I've definitely had my beholders fire blind before.</p><p></p><p>Second, you could get creative with Telekinesis & Disintegration Rays used on objects to create barriers or hazards for the PCs, depending on the terrain, or disintegrate a new tunnel to retreat down/up into.</p><p></p><p>And those are either within the rules or barely stretching them at all, before you get to all kinds of weirdness you could pull into the fight to increase the challenge on the fly.</p><p></p><p>I've had this happen so many times, probably two or three times with slow strong melee monsters without enough maneuverability or ranged attacks to deal with PCs making good combo of artillery fire and control magic... and then I learned my lesson.</p><p></p><p>I'm most satisfied when I find interesting "yes, but" answers to the players' smart play, that absolutely lets them reap the rewards of their strategies (sometimes making for overwhelming unilateral victories), <em>but without </em>letting a rules weakness dictate a boring play loop that mismatches the narrative.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Quickleaf, post: 9001156, member: 20323"] Good question! There are so many approaches to these kinds of situations... For some groups they're great times to celebrate player inventiveness. For other groups they're a let-down in terms of suspenseful buildup. For others, there's a mix of responses along that spectrum. What's "right" really depends on where the fun is for you and your group. I will say that the way monsters are written in 5e can limit our GM thinking about how the monster should function. For example, the beholder's eyes mostly describe their effect [I]on creatures it can see. [/I]Well, there's two things baked in there.... First, you could narrate/change a beholder's eye ray to be a line/ray/cone that it can fire blind - if you feel a need to "balance" this adjustment to the official stats on the fly, you could have this unique use of its eye ray cost all of its Multiattack, or a Legendary Resistance, or a Legendary Action. However, at the narrative level it's not a stretch to allow an Eye [I]Ray [/I]to not require sight, like ray spells such as [I]ray of frost & ray of enfeeblement [/I]don't require sight (the language for those spells is "...toward a creature within range.") I've definitely had my beholders fire blind before. Second, you could get creative with Telekinesis & Disintegration Rays used on objects to create barriers or hazards for the PCs, depending on the terrain, or disintegrate a new tunnel to retreat down/up into. And those are either within the rules or barely stretching them at all, before you get to all kinds of weirdness you could pull into the fight to increase the challenge on the fly. I've had this happen so many times, probably two or three times with slow strong melee monsters without enough maneuverability or ranged attacks to deal with PCs making good combo of artillery fire and control magic... and then I learned my lesson. I'm most satisfied when I find interesting "yes, but" answers to the players' smart play, that absolutely lets them reap the rewards of their strategies (sometimes making for overwhelming unilateral victories), [I]but without [/I]letting a rules weakness dictate a boring play loop that mismatches the narrative. [/QUOTE]
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