D&D 5E Creating Boss monsters

[overgeeked]

What I've found that makes things better is to use a variant of the Blog of Holding math to beef up monsters a bit and take a lot of inspiration from 4E on monster building, stat blocks, and attacks. Matt's action-oriented monsters is a good video, too. The way I do it is this. Monster hp = (CR + 1) x 5 x n, where n equals the number of characters in the party. The monster should deal an average amount of damage equal to 1/3 of its hit points. So a 1st-level monster vs a party of 6 1st-level adventurers would have 60 hp and deal an average of 20 damage per round (not per hit). And a 10th-level monster vs a party of 8 10th-level adventurers would have about 440 hp and deal an average of 146 damage per round (not per hit). You're free to divide that up however you want. Obviously doing that all in one hit is a monumentally terrible idea. So give it n attacks per round or n - 1. Give it bonus actions and reactions equal to 1/2 n. Give them cool attacks that are bonus actions, reactions, auras, etc. Let them attack whenever you want. Legendary or no. And adjust all that from there. If you have new players they might not handle that fight. If you have experienced players they might find that to be a cakewalk.

 

[Casimir Liber]

Ah. Three words without capitalization or punctuation did lack a touch in nuance.
But I kid.
I use tactics. It's not a matter of tactics. It's math. My current group is typically 6 players. That's six characters worth of attacks, hit points and resources to bring to battle. I'm the DM. I can of course set up any scenario I wish in terms of terrain, positioning, or the like. My goal isn't to win. My goal is in fact to lose after providing an enjoyable challenge. If I wanted to win, I can. Easily. It's not the case of "I don't know how to beat my players." The issue is I want fights to be enjoyable. Not a cakewalk but not a frustration fest either. I have thrown monsters six levels higher than the party average at my party and it still can get dropped after 3 rounds, which means, best case, it goes 3 times. Unless I can use Legendary rules effectively because they allow the boss to go on PC turns in a combat round.

Well, items like some sort of Haste potion, summoning allies, high AC, the list goes on. I agree with you about trying to make a tought but beatable opponent.

 

[Laurefindel]

Well, items like some sort of Haste potion, summoning allies, high AC, the list goes on. I agree with you about trying to make a tought but beatable opponent.

However, many of these options cost the baddie an action to activate, and actions economy is where boss monsters lose.

summoning allies effectively gives the baddie more attacks, but since the PCs will find a way to focus fire on the summoner anyway, it doesn’t increase it’s longevity much. And oftentimes, when I use a “boss monster“ it’s partially because I don’t want to be tracking a bunch of underlings. Also, if I know that the boss would need a bunch of allies to provide a challenge, I would plan them in the encounter in the first place.

spells can help, assuming that the baddie is a spellcaster. ”Martial” bosses could have magical stuff that emulate spells, but it partially defeats the point of having a martial boss. It also assumes that the baddie can use magic items. And all that magical gear will likely end up in the players hands ultimately, so I’ve got to carefully weight what I introduce without resorting to cheap shenanigans to deny them extra loot that was only there to up the challenge.

the list goes on but not all are effective solutions, or ultimately become variants of “be smarter”. Guides that tell me how to achieve being smarter with my monsters are great, but they are most helpful when you have the leisure/time/willingness to carefully prepare your encounter.

uping the hp and the AC works, but the baddie still loses the action race big time.

for a fast and furious fix I sometimes “stack” two monsters on top of each other, or merge them together. The ogre bandit captain is effectively an ogre and a bandit captain side-by-side in the same 10’ square, for example. When the bandit captain dies, you still have the ogre to fight...

otherwise, I give a special reaction option, legendary resistance 1/day, and 1-point legendary actions to bosses to boost their action economy in a jiffy, mostly inspired from character classes abilities for familiarity (this monk-y monster can catch arrows, auto-succeed on a save once, and make an unarmed strike attack at the end of a player’s turn).

im curious about this “not so legendary action“ doc. Seems like something I could use…

[edit] ok, so that doc codifies something I was doing with better wordage, clear guidelines, and more versatility. * grab *

 

[Shardstone]

Working on a project now that generates boss monsters!

The one thing I've been experimenting a LOT with is dropping Legendary Actions and instead just giving a solo monster special turns where special things happen, kind of like Colville's stuff. For example, another turn on initiative 20 where the monster moves and attacks, or a turn on 15 where it casts a spell. I've even played with giving a boss monster multiple turns in a round, which has led to some pretty interesting ideas too.

So far, I think this is the way to go! It's made combats with solo-monsters very challenging and pretty riveting and terrifying.