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

[Jester David]

As others have said: defensive mooks and legendary resistances/actions.

Also look at video game boss fights. Often times they're multi-phase for a reason. The villain goes down but rises as an energy being or is healed via a magic item. Decoys can work for that same reason.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

While my usual advice on this sort of thing can be summed up by saying "There is no such thing as a boss fight in D&D." I think I'll actually throw in another suggestion that hasn't been mentioned yet (unless I missed it somewhere):

Ring of free action. Then not only is the enemy not subject to paralysis, but the party gets a handy trinket for overcoming the enemy.

 

[Imaculata]

While my usual advice on this sort of thing can be summed up by saying "There is no such thing as a boss fight in D&D."

Really? I'm a big fan of designing massive boss battles for my campaigns.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Really? I'm a big fan of designing massive boss battles for my campaigns.

It's a matter of what exactly you mean when you say the phrase "boss fight."

If you mean fighting the guy in charge of something, but without any kind of special expectation that this encounter will be bigger/harder/cooler than all the smaller/easier/plain encounters before hand, I believe those are possible with D&D.

But if you mean fighting a fight that is specifically designed to stand out from others in the way that video games have "normal fights" and "boss fights", that's not a thing that D&D supports - it actually undermines the idea by design because of things as simple as that the random number generators involved allow for two wide a variety of results. And that unpredictability further disrupts the play feel of trying to implement a boss fight because it means the players could, and in my experience pretty much always do, have some more entertaining and engaging encounter that is supposed to be a "normal fight" by comparison because the encounter meant to be the "boss fight" involved a smart choice, a lucky roll, and a speedy conclusion.

For example: My players and I ran through Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk some years ago. They view a battle with some demons and a wizard hiding out and using a projected image as being the most memorable, challenging, and fun encounters out of the whole adventure - it was just another room along the way, and they can hardly even remember the intended-to-be-dramatic confrontation at the actual climax of the adventure because the "boss" rolled poorly on initiative and was a mage so did not have the hit point total to survive the paladin and fighter taking their turns before her even though she had all the time to use her spells to her best advantage and potent magic items on hand too.

To reiterate and clarify: when I say "there is no such thing as a boss fight in D&D," I'm talking about setting appropriate expectations for how encounters will not go as planned - not about not putting together big bad encounters with power villains and interesting bits for the players to engage with.

 

[CapnZapp]

There really is nothing left to say than

There might well be no boss fights in D&D, but there damn well should have been.

I believe it is a disgrace the simulationists have successfully prevented real solo rules in 5th edition. They should have been present as an optional variant in the DMG, as a template perhaps.

And by "real" solo rules, I specifically mean rules that make the game work even if that means the Solo has to blatantly break every character creation rule in the book.

A true solo needs three things. D&D currently only supports two, and rather simplistically at that.

1) a Solo needs hit points. While Demons and Dragons have plenty of hit points, there is still no distinction made between Solo Dragons and non-solo Dragons. And there is no support at all for a humanoid NPC solo. (That is, there is no rule allowing a BBEG human wizard to sport the 500 hp or so he will need to function as a high-level Solo).

2) a Solo needs actions. I guess this is the part where D&D offers the best support, since there is at least one precedent for a creature being able to take an additional action after every hero's turn (even if there are as many as five heroes). I am, of course, talking about a Solo with five legendary actions per turn (Tiamat). Just change the mechanism of "Legendary Actions" from defaulting to 3, to defaulting to "one after each hero's turn" to make the mechanism scale, regardless of the number of heroes present (remember, some D&D groups play with as many as eight heroes).

3) a Solo needs saves. Legendary Saves, however, is simplistic and crude. I would much rather have a rules framework that allows each failed save to have some effect, but where a legendary creature is governed by a "three strikes and you're out" guideline. For example: one Hold Person or Banishment spell just restrains the monster, and loses it its next Legendary Action. The second (successful) Hold Person or Banishment spell visibly entraps the creature, which is incapacitated by now, but still not permanently put out of action. Magical energies means nothing has line of effect to the monster. Only a third spell takes the monster out as per the spell (allowing everyone to whale on the monster in the case of Hold Person; or making the monster disappear so the party can mop up in the case of Banishment)

TL;DR: Of course D&D should support real Solo encounters, where the Solo is neither required to be absurdly overleveled, nor required to bring along allies (making it a not-a-Solo)!

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I want to underline that boss fights may occur. But you need to make sure the bossis a boss and not caught off guard. If you expect a single non legendary enemy to have a chance when surprised you don't have the right expectation. Actually that was one of my issues in 4e. Surprising enemies wasn't rewarded well enough. I love it when an impossible fight turns out to be a cakewalk when PCs are planning right. Using the other twopillars so efficiently that their lousy combat power will suffice to overthrow the big evil.

 

[The_Gneech]

First: You might want to check out Angry DM's two-headed, two-tailed, bifurcated snake: http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/

Second: Lairs and Legendary Actions were set up for just this sort of thing!

Third: No boss worth their salt should be without an almost-as-powerful lieutenant, a lair full of traps, and a horde of minions. They should be prepared, sneaky, min-maxed, and definitely high level by comparison to his foes.

One doesn't become "boss" by accident.

-The Gneech

 

[cmad1977]

Also I would set things up so that the party isn't at full strength when they meet the boss. Unless they're slick... that is. If the party outwits me/bossman. Well.... kudos.


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[The Crimson Binome]

I believe it is a disgrace the simulationists have successfully prevented real solo rules in 5th edition. They should have been present as an optional variant in the DMG, as a template perhaps.

And by "real" solo rules, I specifically mean rules that make the game work even if that means the Solo has to blatantly break every character creation rule in the book.

Legendaries already break the rules, with their legendary actions. Believe me, the simulationist didn't win anything in the edition.

Nor is simulationism at odds with solo enemies, who are a match for a whole team. A huge demon or gargantuan dragon should be a match for a whole team of adventurers. They just didn't do the math right, in order to make it work that way.

 

[Eltab]

My Tiamat group had figured out that whenever a Wyrmspeaker showed up, the Wizard with Hold Person was going to be the key player in Round One; he was to be protected so as to get his spell off. It worked perfectly (for the PCs) twice. The melee artists then had a blast taking down enemy leaders instead of being a living shield for everybody else.