DMs! Have you ever had a “boss encounter” turn into a cakewalk? What happened?

Stalker0 said:

If I have learned one thing in my many years of DMing its this. Never put the Villain in front of the party unless you are ready for it to die

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Quoted for truth.

Never expect the players to flee from the villain, or the villain to flee from the players. If you don't want him to die, then don't have him show up. I have a villain in my current campaign who is completely absent, until the players finally meet face to face.

If you notice the fight getting too easy, you can always have the villain call forth reinforcements, or have him do something to drastically complicate the fight. For example, I had a mage destroy the hull of the ship that the players were fighting in, causing it to slowly fill with water, and thus adding a time constraint to the fight. The opposite is also true. If the boss has already been defeated, and the swatting down of his minions is getting tedious, have them flee or surrender. For example, I had a minion make a mad dash towards the gun powder room of a ship, to try to blow it up. This effectively removed one minion from the fight, but also added an explosive conclusion to the fight.

Paladin+crit+smite+feat that gives you an extra attack if you crit=2-3 round boring anticlimactic big staged battle vs a red slaad

It was the final round of a gladiator style tourney. The paladin was supposed to be outclassed in a one on one dual in the arena. The other PCs were supposed to help from the stands by whatever method they could do so to even the odds.


Turns out a low level paladin can just obliterate a monster way past the parties supposed danger level by himself.


Not a fan of how you can smite after seeing the attack roll as a GM.

Nevvur said:

Archmage neutered by the Blindness spell. It was supposed to be a capture-the-PCs scenario and he even got a surprise round, but they survived his opening gambit, landed the Blindness, and forced him to flee (Teleport) on his turn the next round.

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My empathy to your archmage! I just had a big bruiser get blinded in a Mutants & Masterminds game yesterday. I did not have teleport available, and so had to wait out the combat swinging and missing. Not a fun experience.