D&D 5E Coolest/Scairiest/Most Epic 1st Lvl Boss fight?

[Quickleaf]

I feel like 1st lvl characters in 5e are super-duper fragile, but it's hard to guage what a good "boss" challenge is on that level. Sometimes you want to just have a straight-up "boss monster" rather than a "boss encounter"

I feel like the math in the MM is woo wonky for this.

So hit me. What you got?

Running rooftop chase of a spy, having to earn line of sight for a clear shot, moments of crossed paths for brief melee but not using normal opportunity attack rules. Give the spy some kind of trip and/or push attack, to complicate the PCs' pursuit. It would *feel* like a boss fight, allow for creative ideas/solutions, but wouldn't get bogged down in tactical combat.

 

[Coroc]

Everything with high armor, moderate hp and low dpr might be good for that or very low armor, high hp and low dpr. That warrants a long combat without the risk of killing of PCs to fast.

 

[Voi_D_ragon]

My campaign's very first encounter. Ten (or twelve, I don't quite recall) skeletons in a room -7 come out of niches in the walls and 5 out of sarcophagi in the room, a few (2-4) rounds later. As the party mops up the skeletons, the central sarcophagus starts cracking, and a mummy starts to emerge. They're helped by the fact that they probably already have torches lit and that the mummy starts its combat prone, so they have a decent chance of doing really good damage on the first turn.

 

[dregntael]

The hill giant from the Giantslayer adventure by MT Black (on the DM's guild) is by far my favorite level 1 boss. I've run it multiple times for both new and experienced players and it never resulted in a TPK. The trick is to give the party plenty of time to prepare traps and gather allies, which allows them to handle far tougher enemies without dying.

 

[sirchapolin]

Search for CR1 monsters for a solo boss (Bugbear, Brown Bear, Ghoul, Specter), or a CR1/2 along with some minions (Hobgoblin leading kobolds; Gnoll leading hyenas; Lizardfolk and some lizards). Remember that numbers do matter, specially on this level, so one more bad guys than the party can mean some serious disadvantage. However, set piece battles can be pretty deadly at this level. You could fall from a goblin crit easily. Try to avoid those. This is where those lesser adventures take place like protecting a caravan, cleaning some bad guys from a tavern, surviving a short trip, facing natural enemies, beasts, and you shouldn't be LV1 for more than a session. However, it doesn't need to be like this. You can make a good setpiece, if you give the players some advantage. For instance, a villager tells them that the Hobgoblin comes to the town at sunset. The party can lay traps and ambush the hobgoblin, or, as I used in my campaign, apply a really scary boss who's trying to accomplish something, maybe with some low level minions, and the party must not fight this bad guy, but try to stop his plans, or just protect a single important person from the havoc.

(In my first session, the party was in a druid village in a forest when some goblins and orcs attacked, leaded by a young green dragon. While the dragon laid waste of the village, the party was asked to save the the tribe leader's daughter, and they faced some goblins on the way, while every turn the dragon was breathing poison and flinging druids left and right around them, not really caring. As I planned, the dragon had a goal there, and wouldn't bother with 4 little guys on the middle of the tribe, unless they were foolish enough to try to shoot at the dragon).

 

[Ymdar]

Last time when I DMed, the lvl1 characters entered into the treasure room of the dungeon where they found the hoard: lot of money, two shining short swords, a full plate armor with another short sword in its belt.
The armor was an animated armor which attacked them with its short sword instead of fists. When it was killed, its short sword and the other two short swords flew up into the air and attacked the characters as well. It was pretty epic.