D&D 5E Crowd Control and an Anti-Climactic Boss Fight

[WarpedAcorn]

After 2 years of playing the campaign, the players finally reach the big bad guy that they have been working to square off against. Tensions are high, stakes are high, and initiative is being rolled. Yay, the players go first. Hold Person on the big bad aaaaaaaaaaaaand he failed. Massive attacks and the fight is over. The big bad guy ended up being as threatening as indigestion. *cue Price Is Right losing horn* =/


I don't want to be cheesy and just throw on random defenses or claim immunity. The only legit ways around having an epic finale trivialized is having Counterspell be a thing, and by having enough weak enemies between the players and the BBG.


Any other thoughts on this?

 

[Mecheon]

Don't have an epic final battle against a single opponent. Have many competent opponents. Force your party to change targets

If there is a single opponent then it is not going to be an epic final battle. It is going to be a slaughter because its five against one.

 

[The_Hanged_Man]

This is exactly what legendary actions and saves are for. I've found a single opponent works fine with these in place.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I'd congratulate the players. I know my players would be pumping their fists and high fiving each other and reveling in their sheer badassery. I'm sure you had a vision of how dire and back and forth this fight was going to be, everyone on the edge of their seats until the last dice roll. Then the players, and the dice decided differently. Such is gaming.

 

[kbrakke]

In addition to always having multiple enemies, legendary resistances were literally designed for this thing. I find a mix of legendary actions, friends, legendary resistances, and random thematic abilities I make up work in making boss fights deserving of that name.

 

[Imaculata]

Good of you to allow it to play out as it did, without fudging or robbing the players of their victory.

But bad design. Always make sure your big bad has back up. Always make sure the terrain complicates matters. And always take into account the spell selection of your players.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

Single enemy encounters can work. The single enemy just has to be absurdly more powerful than the party. For instance our party got into a fight with the green dragon in Lost Mines of Phandelvar. It was a tense fight since it's breath weapon could blow all of us out of the water and half of us couldn't even hurt the thing while it was in the sky. This method is extremely risky and you can easily TPK the party, but it can also be very memorable.

 

[WarpedAcorn]

Good of you to allow it to play out as it did, without fudging or robbing the players of their victory.

But bad design. Always make sure your big bad has back up. Always make sure the terrain complicates matters. And always take into account the spell selection of your players.

Just to put it out there, the example above was an example and not something that happened at the table...yet. Trying to prevent a bad design for when it does come up. ~_^


Good call to The_Hanged_Man and kbrakke on the Legendary Resistances and such. I need to look more into those and see what I can use.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Sometimes that sort of thing happens. I’ll agree that while you want a focal, single big bad, there are only so many monsters (by the book) that can stand against the whole group hammering on them at once.

As others have said, provide back up for your big bads and look at those enemies with legendary and lair actions. Also, doing things like giving them extra HP and, where appropriate, magic items to use against the party can help shift the odds.

At the same time, sometimes it’s okay for the PCs to triumph magnificently. As long as they didn't steamroll the entire campaign, in which case that would seriously bum me out.

 

[Warrior Poet]

Following on what Flexor the Mighty wrote above, I would encourage you to recognize that sometimes that is how the dice/game go, and that's o.k., too. Other times, there will be a single encounter that proves very challenging and which the players/characters struggle every step of the way and make it through by the skin of their teeth or even lose.

Speaking as a player, there have been many times when our GM thought we were steamrolling the fight and yet, debriefing with other players afterwards, we felt it was up-for-grabs the whole time, and never a sure thing, and wondered if we would make it through to the end.

And sometimes it is a steamroll, too. Another way to look at it: Think of all those terrible monsters that strike fear into the hearts of creatures across the land. There is nothing that says that those terrible creatures can't find fear in party of adventurers that demonstrate themselves to be skilled, competent, challenging, and resourceful. In my current game, the ogres of a particular region have come to tell stories about our party's fighter, because she has defeated so many of them, so devastatingly. The fighter is named Abby, but among the ogres, she's the Steel Death.

Abby has become the boogeywoman the ogres warn their children about.

And we still have nights where we wonder if we're going to make it through a fight.

Still learning,

Robert