Anti-climactic BBEG battles

[Pyrex]

Yep, that's exactly what I did to my DM a few months ago.

After fighting our way through his minions we find the evil cleric, who is wielding some nasty rod made from a beholder eye that has a chance to petrify anyone struck with it.

Roll Init.

Cleric rolls middle-ish, party rolls a little better than middle ish.

Half the party spreads out and moves into position.

My sorcerer, who just reached 6th level as of this session, casts his first ever Lightning Bolt. Furthermore, he uses his Lesser Rod of Empower. Rolls just short of max damage on 7d6*.

Cleric rolls a 1 on his save.

Cleric dies.

*+1 Caster Level bonus from the 'Spellcasting Thematics' feat.

 

[Zandy]

After 4 sessions of searching and fighting, our group finally finds the lair of the BBEG. We lose a party member in the main room, but have enough healing to get the rest of us fixed up. Searching down the corridor, we discover we have NO TIME to spare, so without further buffing, we run in to stop the Balor from finishing his nasty deeds.

The balor summons help and engages the party. My fighter is low on the init chain, and in the back of the group. The dwarf has a glove of dimension door, so he grabs my fighter and DDs right behind the Balor. My init comes and I hit 4 times, 3 for crits (impr. crit and keen sword). Balor goes down. DM starts crying...

It happens...

 

[LizardWizard]

During the playtest of The Divine Alligator, the Bad Guy (CR 9, 105 hp) was wiped out by a party of three 7th-level characters enraged by their companion's untimely death in a trap. The fight involved water walking, a 50+ damage critical hit, and a lot of alchemist's fire.
It was gross.

 

[derelictjay]

I create this really BBEG, an evil samurai, with 2 levels on the PCs, buffed up from his partners a sorcerer and cleric, His initiative is +10 and of course he gets to go first, and I fumble on the first attack (fumble just means loose a round), ok no problem. Samurai again up to bat, and again fumble (thats rolling a 1 and failing a Dex check of 15). Needless to say, four rounds of doing nothing means he's dead, the sorcerer and cleric did some damage but they weren't the BBEG and were a couple of levels below the PCs. I was a bit peeved about that, but just went on with the campaign.

 

[Gothmog]

I think everybody has had a BBEG who looked like a monster on paper get his butt smooshed like a bug by the PCs before. The key thing to consider is if your players like this sort of encounter with a BBEG or find it disappointing. My group finds a BBEG that they whoop in a few rounds with minimal hurt to be boring, and they want really tough BBEGs. My solution? If they are laying the smackdown on the BBEG too easily(or any challenging encounter for that matter), I'll bump up the critter's hit points or tweak it to survive a little longer against them (ex- contingency Heal, etc). I know some of you might think this is heresy, but for me and my group it works well because they like a few tough fights not tons of equal CR ones, and they leave the session happy, not disappointed. If you do this though, DON'T tell your players at the time or for a while afterwards- that will kill the sense of accomplishment they got from it.

 

[jerichothebard]

Came down a hallway, not overly buffed, and up from a shaft came... "the Maker". The first beholder we've ever seen. Main eye closed, it wanted to use the other rays. Party spread out, rolled init. sorcerer came second. Beholder charms the fighter. sorcerer casts phantasmal killer. DM biffs the saving throw.

*poof*

Beholder falls back down the shaft.

DM just sort of sits there, stunned.

Our characters are not afraid of beholders. Didn't even bother to harvest spell/magic item components, as such a wimpy creature couldn't possibly be worth the time.

 

[Davelozzi]

It feels to me that CR is not much of a designator if things like this can happen. How would you guys fix this sort of thing?

It's true, CR is not much of a designator, especially if you have a non-standard party, as Kormydigar mentioned above. My advice is to try to ignore CR and just look at the monster's abilities vis a vis your PCs. It's especially tough if your party is large, as an encounter with creatures of CR close to their level is usually a breeze, but if you go too many CRs higher you sometimes get monsters who can take out a character with one shot. The best thing to do is make sure that the BBEG has plenty of minions and good tactics.

Here's an example from my game this week:
The session was all about a final battle with the BBEG - a devourer. Our party has eight PCs (avg. level 6). The devourer was accompanied by a bearded devil, cult priest (Clr7), 5 gravehounds (from MinisHB), 6 desecrated skeletons, 2 desecrated zombies, four bandits (Ftr4) and 3 orcs.

The scene was a large temple, raised altar on one end accessible only via a balcony wrapping around from the other end of the room. Party is entering in two teams of four, one from the main entrance directly opposite the altar, the other from a door on the side wall under one of the balconies. Devourer, cult priest, and devil are on the altar, but only the cult priest is visible because one corner of the altar is in total darkness. Orcs on one balcony, bandits on the other (both armed with crossbows), undead are on the floor level.

The party buffs up a bit, then coordinating through a Mindlink, both groups bust in at once from each side, the group at the main door leading with a centrally placed fireball that took out most of the zombies and skeletons and wounded some gravehounds, a couple of bandits, and the cult priest. Gravehounds rush in, orcs & bandits start shooting and soon most of the party is busy dealing with the enemies they can see. Having recently lost a party member to Hold Person, there is some focus on the cult priest and he quickly goes down. After wasting a round with an unsuccessful summons attempt, the bearded devil then starts teleporting around and slashing at the party wizard and psionicist with his glaive of wounding. Meanwhile, from the cover of the darkness, the devourer starts using his spectral hand to do long range energy drain on the wizard and psion (whichever the devil is not currently dealing with) and a couple of other characters.

Finally, several rounds in, with most of the underlings taken care of, someone throws a torch up on the altar, exposing the devourer. A Mind Blast, Freezing Sphere (cold version of Flaming Sphere), and a bolt of Searing Light take him down in a couple of rounds and then the lone survivor (an orc) surrenders.

All in all, I was fairly pleased as it was a pretty good climatic battle that took most of the session and finished up an adventure that's been going for a long time and seen two of the three party deaths in the campaign. Even so, I heard a couple of players mumble that the devourer wasn't so tough (since it only took a few rounds once they started focusing on him), though most of the party thought the battle was plenty challenging (3 PCs ended up with a negative level, and another ended up with 2).

The thing is that just about anything goes down quick when eight people are focusing on it, so that's why the diversions were necessary - the underlings, the darkness and the layout all contributed to making the battle tougher and longer, without having to use a creature that could simply kill at will.

Also, because the bad guys were holed up in the temple for a last stand, they were expecting the party, but didn't know when they were coming. The party delayed a few hours; all of the baddies buffs wore off, then the party moved in with their own buffs fresh. Had they not gone in with that advantage, things could've been tougher still.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Want to hear anticlimactic?

d20 Modern, playing Star Gate. The Heroes of SG 4 (or was it 5?) confront the renegade Gua'Uld who wants to steal the essence of one of the System Lords, Sebek. We get to him before he can change, and the usual pre-enfight talk beings.

He tells us that he has no quarrel with us, and that we may go. We say, we have to defend Earth and that he's a threat. He tells us that he has no interest in Earth because he'll carry the fight to the System Lords, and Earth won't be a battlefield. He says Earth is of no further interest to him, at least not in 500 years.

That was fair enough for us - we walked away and let him do it

(Of course, the GM wasn't prepared for this - even though the party was a little weird, maybe due to the fact that this wasn't D&D with the black-and-white sense of good and evil - and then told us that Sebek took over the other guy and Earth was invaded 3 years later. I'm not sure if he wanted to get back at us or if this was planned anyway, should we have lost the last fight)

 

[Gizzard]

MORE SUNLESS SPOILERS:
MORE SUNLESS SPOILERS:
MORE SUNLESS SPOILERS:
MORE SUNLESS SPOILERS:

It's been a while since I played this, but I thought Belak's area was covered with thick scrub, which hampers movement? (Belak can run through here using some Druid ability, but the PC's move very slowly). Anyway, if Belak lets the Fighters get within hacking range in the first round he's in a lot of trouble; he wants to have a round or two to cast Entangle. Fortunately the terrain makes this happen. (Another DM I know put Belak up in the tree, which also solves this problem).

Also, our DM added an additional minion for the final battle since we were 6x 3rd level characters and therefore above the standard power curve for the finale.

 

[kigmatzomat]

... He says Earth is of no further interest to him, at least not in 500 year.

That was fair enough for us - we walked away and let him do it

(Of course, the GM wasn't prepared for this and then told us that Sebek took over the other guy and Earth was invaded 3 years later.

See, this is what I don't get. I can't freakin' predict what'll happen in my game next year, let alone 3 years down the road. A game like SG has lots of reversals of fortune that could occur, and if the SGC suspected reprisals were likely they would begin an attempt to thwart them. This is purely a spoiler from the GM, bitter you didn't choose his path.