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

ccs said:

So the next week comes & one of the players decides to open with essentially a hail mary, hard casting a Trap The Soul on the villain as they entered the room (provided they survived the entry - they knew the villain was well prepped & had the initiative on them).
ALOT of damage/effects were suffered upon entry, but the party did survive.... The spell was cast, bypassing SR.
All I have to do is roll a 2+ to save. And I have a re-roll.

So of course I roll a 1.
And then a second 1 for the re-roll!

Everyone sat there in silence for a moment. Nearly two years of play had pretty much just ended in snake-eyes.

Of course the rest of the fight, even though a mop-up action at this point, was still a really tough battle. The Witch Queens minions weren't about to just concede....
But really the campaign ended with that botched save.

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And that's probably the moment the players will remember most about the end of the campaign - not the tough fight they still needed to complete. Tough fights are a dime a dozen - campaigns are full of them and they often bleed together in memory. But a weird event like that one? They'll remember that one.

ccs said:

That would be our Sunday night PF campaign that wrapped up back in Nov.

I ran Reign of Winter from Jan.8th '17 - Nov.11th of '18.
All 6 books, lvs.1-17, many modifications/twists/turns/etc based upon the characters & RP. Nearly two years of great stuff. To date it's the only PF AP that we've ever actually finished.
We almost wrapped it up on the 4th, but it was getting late & everyone had Monday morning to look forward to.... So rather than start THE final fight & then have to pause it, we chose to call it for the night & finish the campaign the next week. Everyone expected this to be a fairly lengthy encounter. And I was well prepared.
So the next week comes & one of the players decides to open with essentially a hail mary, hard casting a Trap The Soul on the villain as they entered the room (provided they survived the entry - they knew the villain was well prepped & had the initiative on them).
ALOT of damage/effects were suffered upon entry, but the party did survive.... The spell was cast, bypassing SR.
All I have to do is roll a 2+ to save. And I have a re-roll.

So of course I roll a 1.
And then a second 1 for the re-roll!

Everyone sat there in silence for a moment. Nearly two years of play had pretty much just ended in snake-eyes.

Of course the rest of the fight, even though a mop-up action at this point, was still a really tough battle. The Witch Queens minions weren't about to just concede....
But really the campaign ended with that botched save.

Click to expand...

It might not be the way such a battle is "supposed" to go, but the players will remember it forever.

If only it were possible for the DM to engineer something like that to happen on purpose...

In my case, the party decided to approach the BBEG in a public place an- unbeknownst to me- essentially mug him. They choreographed it well.

The Paladin approached the Necromancer-King, drew her sword, and knelt on one leg in front of him, head down, hands on hilt & downpointed blade. When he saw this, he walked up...

...and she came up swinging. Not only did she win initiative, the NK’s guard were caught flat footed and had to wait out a round of surprise.

Her dice were so red-hot, she nearly aced him on her own: a pair of nat20s and a 19 forced him to make a save vs. massive damage.

The party pounced: one of the other warriors joined the Paladin in a game of volleybrawl, while the spellcasters, etc. nuked the bodyguards. Except the Druid, who hung back casting some long, drawn out spell... Still, half of the bodyguards were down before they drew a weapon.

From initiative to attack to damage rolls, it was completely one sided. The BBEG lasted 3 rounds, after which the Druid’s spell went off, transforming the party members into ravens, who dissapeared into the NK’s pet flock. A suspicious mind would have asked to inspect the dice...except most of the players were borrowing mine.

My plans for the evening were undone in 15 minutes of game play.

Yep. In one of the chapters of the "Shackled City" adventure path, one of the chapters has the PCs accompanied by a friendly NPC who, in a totally unexpected twist, turns out to be a traitor. Cue the big battle...

Except that the party Paladin won initiative, attacked with his Greataxe and full Power Attack, scored a critical hit, and promptly beheaded the BBEG.

As [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION] says, it was an event that they talked about for years after. Good times.

(My advice, for what it's worth, is to let something like that stand. As noted, it's something they'll talk about for years, and the DM can always get another bad guy. The only slight doubt I'd have would be if that BBEG was in fact the final encounter of the entire campaign, which risks anti-climax. Not that the alternative is any better - 'cheating' the players out of a fairly-earned victory isn't a great idea either.)

Have you ever had a “boss encounter” turn into a cakewalk?

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Yes.

What happened?

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Turned out it was a decoy...

...kidding, it never happened with me as DM, but in case of a truly miserable BBEG encounter I would probably do it.

delericho said:

(My advice, for what it's worth, is to let something like that stand. As noted, it's something they'll talk about for years, and the DM can always get another bad guy. The only slight doubt I'd have would be if that BBEG was in fact the final encounter of the entire campaign, which risks anti-climax. Not that the alternative is any better - 'cheating' the players out of a fairly-earned victory isn't a great idea either.)

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It's a gamble. As a player in 3e the final combat encounter in "City of the Spider Queen" turned out to be a pushover. We DID "talk" about it for years only because every now and then someone came up and say "hey, we haven't finished CoSQ yet, have we?". It was such anti-climax that some of us honestly could not remember if it happened at all :/

I've had a fight with an evil wizard be trivialized by my players blasting him with a cannon (which was hilarious btw). But I still had a powerful minion of the wizard in reserve that had not entered the stage yet. So I made it two powerful minions instead. The fight was still a bit easier than intended, with the minions now not having the backup of the wizard. But it was enough to challenge the players a little bit. The fact that my players often talk about their glorious victory with the cannon, tells me that it was probably fine.

Another fight with an evil wizard was made a whole lot easier by them cursing the wizard with stupidity, making it impossible for him to cast any spells. This time around, the wizard had plenty of really powerful enemies supporting him, including a second boss. So it still was a pretty challenging fight. It's almost like I learn from my mistakes.

A massive naval battle was made 50% easier by the players banishing the ghost ship that was also involved. A fantastic bit of role playing on the part of the players. I cheered when they came up with this. It was still a lengthy battle, but went a bit different from what I intended.

In my latest session, the players were hired by a tribe of runaway slaves under attack by an unusually large group of "Reavers".
Think the Reavers from Firefly, only in a Dark Sun-type setting.

I had created a huge number of encounters, all based on a number of different scenarios of how events might unfold . . .


First, the Elf Druid casts pass without trace, allowing the party to get really close to the enemy camp, and then the Mul Bard casts invisibility on the rogue.
The Human Rogue slips into the reaver chief's tent, finds him sleeping, slips a length of rope around his ankle, and then comes running back outside.
The other end of the rope is attached to "Kronk" (Rhinoceros statblock reflavored as a giant beetle, also the elf druid's steed), and as soon as the tent door flaps open, the Druid gallops off on Kronk.

The result is that the poor reaver chief wakes up to find himself being dragged facedown through the sand for about 200 feet, and when he comes to a stop, before he can shout for help, the Human Fighter gallops up to him on "Tank" (the Human Fighter's steed, also a rhinoceros statblock reflavored as a giant beetle) and slices off the reaver chief's arms, legs, and head, killing him.

The Mul Bard grabs the head and everyone legs it back to base.

The next morning, the Reavers find the carcass of their chief, and without his leadership they fragment into smaller factions. All of which attack and destroy each other in a failed bid for dominance.

And thus, by killing only one person did the four heroes save a tribe of runaway slaves.


As the DM, I couldn't have been happier for the PCs. The situation could have easily gone very different (and horribly wrong), but thanks to some fantastically good rolls, they triumphed.

As a reward for a thoroughly successful mission, two days later the PCs found what was basically an abandoned yet fully functional AT-TE from Attack of the Clones.

Ralif Redhammer said:

My secret is that I’m always rooting for the PCs. Sometimes, bad luck for me and good luck for them happens. Sometimes, they come up with a really clever plan or solution that takes me completely off-guard. I honestly love it when my players out-think and surprise me.

Buuuuut…the next boss fight will be that much harder. Especially if they try to just re-use the same exact trick as last time.

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So much this. I sometimes even play it up like I'm sad when my baddies are getting pummeled, which makes the players enjoy the ass-kicking they are doling out even more. Then I make sure I ratchet it up next time around to keep them on their toes and feeling challenged.

We had a barbarian one-hit an adult red dragon once. The player rolled a 20 on the attack, then rolled 3 or 4 more 20s in a row (using different dice after the 3rd consecutive 20).

We decided that fate clearly wanted that dragon dead, and so it went.