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Crowd Control and an Anti-Climactic Boss Fight
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<blockquote data-quote="AaronOfBarbaria" data-source="post: 6905254" data-attributes="member: 6701872"><p>It's a matter of what exactly you mean when you say the phrase "boss fight."</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AaronOfBarbaria, post: 6905254, member: 6701872"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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