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

[Bawylie]

Back in 3rd edition I played a cleric who got above 11th level, so...

 

[CleverNickName]

I've got my story of the world's least impressive lich fight over here. What about the rest of you guys though? Have you ever put a load of time an effort into making a scary encounter, only to have your big bad go down like a chump? How did you deal with the crushing disappointment? (Or were you secretly rooting for the PCs all along?)

Picture it: 3.0 Edition, final battle of a months-long dungeon crawl, the party finally makes it to the lair of the ancient green dragon. Parlay goes nowhere, and combat begins.

The rogue gets initiative, and uses a spell scroll to cast disintegrate. The only way the dragon could have failed the save throw was on a nat-1.

Which is exactly what I rolled.

 

[toucanbuzz]

And those moments, those improbable natural 1s or 20s, are the one's we are still telling stories about years later. Good stuff and why I love this game.

 

[the_redbeard]

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.

And that is exactly why I always roll in front of the players.

And man, there must have been a lot of attention on that second roll.


(Well, except for things like stealth which they wouldn't know if they beat or not.)

 

[Imaculata]

And that is exactly why I always roll in front of the players.

As do I.

Especially when it is such an important roll.

 

[5ekyu]

As do I.

Especially when it is such an important roll.

Meh... I make the players make the rolls. All of them.

Uphill, both ways.



^^^
Back in the day, we had to chisel our emojis into stones with a dull stick.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

3rd edition. High level Lich cleric in the city of the glass pools. Was just dining...

My players were planning their assault on the city. Their strike team buffed up and dimension doored into a rather random building and appeared right next to the illithid. Everyone surprised the lich rolles bad initiative. When it was his turn he stood with 3 hp left. Question. Plane shift out or use the big gun to turn the fight. He tried the latter and everyone rolled gloriously on their will saves...

 

[dave2008]

I too had a lame lich fight. Had a lich with a staff of power, who had dominated a Raksasha and a mind flayer (lich loved dominating dominators).

Lich also had a staff of power. First round barbarian Rips the staff from his hand and breaks it. All the enemies die from the energy blast, but the “take half damage while raging” barb makes it through.

Hmm, I didn't think you could use retributive strike if you were not attuned to the staff. Cool idea though.

 

[Imaculata]

I'm actually thrilled when my players bat above what I expected them to. That means I can dial it up a little bit more.

As do I. I rejoice with my players when they triumph against the odds.

I do my best to challenge my players, and I definitely do not go easy on them. But when they come up with something really clever, I give their well earned victory to them. This can sometimes make an encounter a lot easier than I intended, but in the end all my villains are expendable, so I don't care when, how or that they meet their end. The villains are supposed to die, and if they do so in a way that entertains the players, I consider my mission a success.

I want my players to feel like they are the heroes. That means that they should have these epic victories... these moments where they outsmart my villains and humiliate them. If one of my villains meets a particularly humiliating end, I will often ask my players if they want to fill in the details of the scene, to add one-liners or some kind of flourish (the likes of which are usually reserved for action movies).

 

[Sadras]

Why is that combat over? As soon as they kill the tiny 'seal' hit points the rhemoraz is back in action. They'll get a round of doing a lot of damage to it, and the damage will carry over, but it's not instantly dead.

Why would they kill the seal? That would be a pretty dumb move on their part. The spell has an hour long duration....