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

[Dessert Nomad]

I accidentally killed a BEBG in a Champions game years ago.

The setting was relatively generic non-Marvel, non-DC world with superheroes. There's an important bit to know about the rules: In the Hero rulesystem (at least at the time) you had two main types of attacks. Regular attacks did X dice of Stun (knockout, recovers quickly) damage, and averaged one point of Body damage (death, takes time to recover) per die. At superhero power levels, normal attacks just do stun damage to heroes, and will probably one-hit knockout and injure a normal person. They represent the usual beams, punches, and so on. Killing attacks did X dice of body damage that ignores normal defense and is only stopped by resistant defense, plus multiplied the Body damage by a die to determine Stun damage. They represent guns, claws, antitank rockets, highly focused beams, and the like. A regular person would have no resistant defense, and superheros tended to have some, but less than their total defense (like they might have a force field that was resistant, but would be vulnerable to guns if the field is down). Because they use a multiplier, the Stun damage was really variable, so killing attacks can also be a good way to try to incapacitate someone stronger than you.

My character was a telekinetic who had a variety of powers that he could choose from for an action (simple blast, telekinetic 'move things', killing attack, etc.). I was alone and encountered a demonic-looking guy flipping over a police car. I was pretty sure he was way out of my league, as he had been built up as someone the entire group would end up fighting, he wasn't just a regular criminal. I felt like I needed to stop him or at least try, but didn't have any chance in a standup fight. This is a perfect time to use a variable attack, so my character unleashed his killing attack on this demon, hoping to get lucky and knock him out, and not really worried about killing him because he's a giant demon so obviously isn't going to die easily. The GM agreed and thought my desperate attempt to take the guy down in spite of being outclassed was pretty heroic, and we both expected that I'd try, fail, and get knocked out, even though I got lucky and opened with either a crit or a high roll.

However, the demonic villain was actually a premade villain from a source book, and when the GM looked up his stats, he actually had no resistant defenses at all. No armor, no force field, nothing bought as 'resistant defense', he was as vulnerable to things like guns as a normal person other than having about twice the 'hit points' to soak damage. And I was using an superpowered attack that did something like 4 times as much damage as a gun, and rolled on the high end of that. So after a double take at the guy's stats, the GM narrated that I had just ripped this guy into bloody pieces in a single strike. At the time, in real life I was not going to be able to play with the group for a while, so I think his original idea was that I was going to be captured and my rescue would be a plot point for the group. Instead, my character was tied up in the court case for ripping the guy to pieces in front of cops, and we both shook our heads at the super villain who was attacking cops without being able to shrug off bullets.

 

[Draegn]

Fighting a legendary ancient two-headed purple dragon with custom attacks and features.

Use line of sight teleportation to close the distance between my character and dragon, gain both surprise and initiative, make two critical hits both decapitating blows. Fight over.

Then slip and slide on the gushing blood for several turns while the dragon rider with sword of sharpness dices up the rest of the party.

 

[Wiseblood]

Air walking mummy lord. Dispel magic into a 200 foot swan dive. All I could do is shake my head and move on.

 

[Quartz]

I've got my story of the world's least impressive lich fight over here.

It was still a memorable encounter and they did their research beforehand.

 

[Quartz]

Boss villains should tend to have the Lucky feat.

 

[Henry]

Plenty of stories... PLENTY OF STORIES.

There's even the "I am no mere Hedge Mage!" meme on the Happy Jack's RPG podcast -- a 5e boss wizard fight that ended in one round with a well-rolled fireball and a failed dex save.

For my own misadventures:

-- In a Pathfinder Jade Regent game, a villain who escaped in chapter 1 had followed them across the world to Tian Xia - showed up having several extra levels, a bunch fo party kill tactics, took me FOUR hours to re-stat this guy...
...got baleful polymorphed into a mouse in round 1. Needed a 2 to succeed the save, got a 1.

--In our Pathfinder 2 playtest game, the main boss in the first adventure, who was apparently quite the beast to a number of playtest parties, died to our group in 3 rounds, despite having an extra dire rat he wasn't supposed to have.

--In a 5e forgotten realms campaign I ran, they decided to face an invading force of drow on the surface with no prep, just charged in. TO be fair, it WAS an impressive fight, and two characters were on the ground dying by the end, but it was an overwhelming fight, literally five CLs above them, even involved a summoned Glabrezu! ...and they still dispatched enough drow to send the invasion force running.

 

[Stalker0]

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.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

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.

One year earlier than that, I was playing in that campaign, and the final boss died in a similarly expedient manner.

In this case, it was as a side-effect of the GM's many house rules. The particular house rule was a hold-over from 1E, and it may have been a house rule back then, but it's hard to convince some people to ever change. In any case, the rule was that if you failed to overcome Spell Resistance, you had to use a different spell before you got a chance to try again; using the same spell against the same target would always yield the same result.

In an earlier session, the party was granted a boon from a powerful fey, which included a list of potential short-term benefits. One of those possibilities was, IIRC, a bonus of +20 to any d20 roll.

As soon as the fight started, and we survived their initial volley, my character immediately reached over to cast Harm on the Big Bad. Using the boon on that SR check, I was able to make my Harm spell affect her, and three rounds of sustained Harm was enough to end the fight.

 

[Blue]

I tell my players - when I design encounters, I try to kill you. They aren't meant to be fair. But at the table I'm your biggest cheerleader. I want to see the characters win. It means I usually say yes to their crazier plans - though yes usually means "sure that's possible. give it a try and we'll see what the dice tell us".

I've had plenty of tough encounters go to easy. Often ignoring some of the weak points of D&D - solo encounters are easy. Encounters where they can nova everything are easy.

I'm not saying you were wrong in letting them teleport in fresh and surprise attack - you need to support player agency. Doesn't mean they don't have some defenses living in a magical world, but still, sometimes that's just how it goes. Let them be clever and get their win - they earned it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Been on the other side of blowing up a DM’s plan- again, due to dice. In fact, it was 2 times, in two different adventures ...with the same PC.

It was a Human Ftr/Cleric of Tyr in a high-level AD&D campaign. She had 2 weapons, both quite powerful: a Mace of Disruption and a Vorpal sword. She used the Vorpal sword to behead one of the two BBEGs the party faced...on round 2. This panicked his partner in evil, who then kept making baaaaad decisions as the rest of the party took him down.

The second time involved a highly improbable die rolling sequence. On an evil demiplane, the party encountered a Lich and his Death Knight attendants, and combat ensued. My Cleric drew the Mace...nat 20.

Because of the nature of the plane, there was only a 1-in-20 chance the Mace’s special powers would function. I rolled, and succeeded.

Because of his nature, there was only a small 1-in-20 chance the Mace’s special powers would affect the Lich in particular. I rolled, and succeeded. The Lich was annihilated in one shot.

I asked the DM what the odds were that her patron Tyr would notice this feat across time and space. His response: “1%.” The d100 roll came up with a 1.

I asked the DM what the odds were that her patron Tyr would personally reward her. His response: “1%.” The d100 roll came up with a 1.

Exasperated, the DM proposed a few personal rewards Tyr might bestow in her. I suggested one might be +1 level of Fighter (which would raise her Att/rd from 3/2 to 2/1). His response: “Sure, 1% chance of that happening.” The d100 roll came up with a 1. My DM groaned.

In a shaft of light, Tyr popped into the demiplane- time stopping the combat- laid his hand upon her head in blessing, then disappeared.

That extra full attack per round really came in handy.