How do you feel about Dungeons and Boss Battles.

[Klaus]

The "Big Bosses" give the PCs a sense of closure, of accomplishment. If they invade an old dwarven outpost that had been taken by an orc tribe, they'll feel much more gratified if they get to kill the (very difficult) leader! In this sense, even a 1st level party could say that actually DID something, after killing orcs for 4 hours, they can actually get to duke it out with the orc Barbarian4 and his counselor, the orc adept 3...

Plus that helps them level up (after a couple of days' rest) and prepare for the lower level of the dungeon, the sewers of the dwarven outpost that lead into the underdark (or whatever)...

So yeah, Bosses are good!

 

[hong]

The "Big Bosses" give the PCs a sense of closure, of accomplishment. If they invade an old dwarven outpost that had been taken by an orc tribe, they'll feel much more gratified if they get to kill the (very difficult) leader! In this sense, even a 1st level party could say that actually DID something, after killing orcs for 4 hours, they can actually get to duke it out with the orc Barbarian4 and his counselor, the orc adept 3...

I'll agree with this. IMO, every dungeon bashing session should have at least one encounter that has the players sh*tting their pants -- and I say this as a player. The best way to achieve this is via a climactic encounter with the local leader and his/her/its minions.

The "end-of-level boss" convention in computer and console games is there for a reason, namely, it works. It would be silly to ignore it, I reckon.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I resurrect thee!!!

I'll agree with this. IMO, every dungeon bashing session should have at least one encounter that has the players sh*tting their pants -- and I say this as a player. The best way to achieve this is via a climactic encounter with the local leader and his/her/its minions.

The "end-of-level boss" convention in computer and console games is there for a reason, namely, it works. It would be silly to ignore it, I reckon.

Yep.

 

[d20Dwarf]

That is a big problem with many Dungeons and many modules. THey are but together terribly, with no thought to why or how. Luckily, there's a book made for you: Dungeons by AEG. It goes through all elements of a dungeon. It's a good book, one I use not just for Dungeons but for basic adventure creation. It has a lot of good advice and is well thought out.

Don't forget Mike Mearls' excellent book Dungeoncraft, by FFG.

 

[jdavis]

THe older I get the more of a point I look for in dungeons, 20 years ago you'd open a door and there'd be a huge dragon behind it, without any reason for being there or means of entrance or exit, we didn't mind. Now when we game I find that our characters don't do anything or go anywhere without a reason. The old "you see a cave opening on the side of that hill" hook just doesn't cut it. If we go down into any dungeon then we are either looking for someone specific or a specific item, we don't have to open every door or search every room for traps, heck the party has left tons of stuff behind because it would just take too long to get past the trap or test or monster guarding it. We get what we are looking for and leave (as a DM it gets frustrating when the PCs leave your dungeon with out even exploring half of it.). I have gotten real good at designing dungeons that have a specific purpose and funnel the PCs towards one big encounter or that special item they need. The last item one that worked really good was actually a rescue mission for a small village, they went in and explored till they found the people they were to rescue and then tried to get out. The big boss was a clay golem (really hard to beat for 5 6th level characters), instead of fighting it they lured it away from the hostages and got them out then out ran it to the door and sealed it in, they couldn't destroy it but they sure beat it and that was much much more fun than just standing toe to toe with some big monster.

Well anyway the point to my big rambling on story is that having a reason for being there and having a group goal for a adventure add a lot to it. We go down the hole and look for treasure can be fun but week after week it gets old.

 

[s/LaSH]

The first dungeon (also the first adventure) in my campaign had (*counts*) four bosses, ranging from the easy to the tricky to the unfair to the downright impossible. (That last one was there for plot purposes, of course. Killing PCs is no fun, but torturing them horribly is just fine.)

Every adventure since has had some sort of climactic encounter. I've always had a plot for the campaign, and every adventure should forward it in some way. Hence each adventure is a mini-quest trying to find something or someone. Often the reason the specific someone they're after can't just come over for lunch is that someone big and nasty is holding onto them.

Hm. Let's see... I think I've done 1 adventure without a climactic fight/encounter. And that's a gray area - there's a whole lot of big important stuff at the end anyway, I'm just not sure if it qualifies as a boss fight.

So yes. I have boss fights. In fact, I normally have a couple of them. They won't necessarily be at the end, although that makes good narrative sense, but I'll put them in there.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Boss fights are very important to the cinematic feel of my games. For the same reason they're very important to the cinematic feel of videogames....

I find that 2-3 CR points above what the party can 'handle' usually qualifies as 'boss level.' IMHO, at least one PC should run a real chance of dying in a propper boss-level battle...and sometimes they do.

 

[Creamsteak]

OMG, someone was digging through my old threads:

The last post before Ashrem Bayle posted was 01-19-2002 08:13 AM, by Hong.

 

[The_Gneech]

It's not something I do in every dungeon, but I try to use it fairly often. Generally, the PCs in my game are going into the dungeon with a purpose (rescue person X, retrieve item Y), and so I tie the boss to that purpose, knowing they won't leave without having to deal with that problem, and I make sure the way to get to that boss isn't a straight line. Otherwise, you're wasting work on encounters that may or may not happen.

It's okay if the PC's miss the ochre jelly in the corner or the small tribe of kobolds who happen to live in the southwest quadrant of the map ... but you don't want 'em to bypass the Big Scenes!

-The Gneech

 

[Shemeska]

I personally try not to use 'dungeons' as if I ever tried it, my players would start making out of game comments about when Mayor Hagar from Final Fight would come and help them beat the level boss. *facepaw*

Only once have I used something like that, and never without an explicit RP reason for it and the PC's to be there. And it's never normal for the genre. Of course this is perhaps just what happens when you get a Call of Cthulhu fan to run a Planescape game.

It may be a dungeon, but each room may or may not have a trap or a monster. I try to throw in puzzles, random wierd stuff for the players to interact with that may or may not have conflict involved. Small side things, and building up from the beginning as it may apply in the plot, a serious creep factor that unnerves them ever so slightly and moves it all along. And unanswered questions. You can never have too many lingering and unanswered questions (even if you as a DM know the answer, let them ponder for a while).