Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4842367" data-attributes="member: 58197">Okay, I would definitely not deflate the boss under these circumstances. I also would have the PCs fight the boss; if there is cannon fodder, it should face off against the royal guardsmen, not the PCs. My first rule of DMing is that the PCs should always be the stars of the show.Some ideas:[sblock]When the PCs break the relic, there is a rush of howling, disembodied souls preceding the emergence of the miniboss. These souls attack the royal guardsmen and suck their life out in record time. The PCs have a chance to flee. If they don't, they fight the disembodied souls and can beat them back with an extreme effort. Again, they can flee at this point. If they still stick around, the miniboss himself emerges, opens up a can of whup-ass on the PCs, and then rips their souls out of their bodies. Now their bodies lie comatose where the relic was opened and their souls are being forced to serve in the miniboss's army; they have to figure out a way to slip their bonds and get back to their bodies before those bodies die.[/sblock][sblock]The miniboss has read his Sun Tzu. He knows the PCs are coming, but isn't sure how powerful they are, and doesn't want to fight them when they set the terms. So he creates a weaker simulacrum of himself and leaves it behind, with cannon fodder, to fight the PCs and the guardsmen, while the real miniboss makes his escape under cover of invisibility. The PCs can spot him with a really good Perception check, but he moves too fast for them to catch him. If they fail the Perception check, they don't spot the real miniboss and instead duke it out with the simulacrum; they can win without too much trouble, but drop a hint that their victory was a little too easy.[/sblock][sblock]To make it a straight-up fight, abstract the royal guardsmen to an extreme degree; basically, they deal 1dX damage to the miniboss per guardsman each round, and the miniboss's attacks kill 1dY guardsmen each round. Have the miniboss concentrate on the royal guardsmen first. Thus they serve to soften him up a bit and absorb his first few rounds of attacks, weakening him for the PCs to finish off - or not, as the case may be.[/sblock]</blockquote>

Verification