Phased Boss Fights

GrissTheGnome · Jan 26, 2016

During the first month of the blog we posted an article about designing boss encounters with "Phased Boss Fights." Borrowing an idea from video-games (mainly World of Warcraft boss fights, and my more recent experience in Dragon Age Inquisition), in my own game (we were in high level D&D mode at the time, and making fights with bosses last longer was something I was toying around with), with rules how to apply it into D&D. I revisited the concept, which Enworld posted on a 5th edition fan round up thread as the Frozen King article. Anyway here is the original for your enjoyment.

http://forgotmydice.com/index.php/2015/11/23/phased-boss-fights/

Xeviat · Jan 29, 2016

I will definitely read up on this. I'm a huge fan of the Metroid Prime series, and I've always wanted to have big, cinematic boss fights.

Xeviat · Apr 4, 2016

Thanks for reminding me to check up on this. Okay, so you're calculating the challenge of the Phased fight as the sum of the separate phases, with no multiple creature multiplier? I'd recommend for DMs to be aware that if the total XP rises above 1/3rd of the daily XP, the fight will be a bit tougher (since there's no short rest between the phases).

All and all, it's a really simple way to handle it.

I have a fight coming up in my campaign that I'm handling kind of like a phased fight. I gave a dragon a 4E style ability while bloodied, and another ability while not bloodied, so it's tactics will change drastically at the midway point of the fight. As it's a CR 8 against a level 6 party, it should have enough HP to last a while. When it's healthy, it gets two turns and flies around a lot; when it's hurt, it deals poison damage to those near it and tries to force melee. That would be easily handled with your rules.

Your rules also allow for 4E style "solo" monsters. 5E's method of using higher CR opponents as "solos" often results in not enough HP and too much damage; bounded accuracy at least makes it so AC and Attack bonuses usually aren't too out of line. I like that.

GrissTheGnome · Apr 6, 2016

Xeviat said:
Thanks for reminding me to check up on this. Okay, so you're calculating the challenge of the Phased fight as the sum of the separate phases, with no multiple creature multiplier? I'd recommend for DMs to be aware that if the total XP rises above 1/3rd of the daily XP, the fight will be a bit tougher (since there's no short rest between the phases).

I seem to have misplaced my DMG so I can't confirm, but when I wrote this I remember the rules for multipart encounters varied widely based on the level of the party. Orlog is simply worth more XP to a lower level party, and significantly less from what I remember to a higher level one. When I calculated his CR I based it on each individual phase, which you should then modify using the multi-part encounter rules. I say that early in the rules, but I don't spell it out at the end of the article, I'll go fix that now.

4th edition was so maddening to me, because it had a lot of really good ideas. The execution of them was way off however. I like the idea of "Blooded" powers having a transformative effect on the monster, I think that is a really neat idea. I might have to steal that for an article at some point

Blue · Apr 6, 2016

One of the 4e campaigns I was in the DM used phased boss fights. I think this was the rules: http://angrydm.com/2010/08/the-dd-boss-fight-part-4/

It looks like a very similar concept.

Good news: It was a lot of fun.

There was wonkiness is how it interacted with 4e's "encounter". For instance, if you had a power that affected a foe until the end of the encounter, which was usually geared towards a big bad, it would only last for 1/3 of the encounter. If you had a power that would affect you or allies until the end of the encounter, it worked fine. So it nerfed some powers but not others.

Connected was if it had single digit HPs and characters used daily resources for a big damaging power and it wouldn't have mattered it it was just an at-will plink.

I see you have the same thing going, and even suggest stepping out to suggest to players not to have their characters do that. While that makes sense for mimicking video games, it was the single most annoying part of what was otherwise an enjoyable change-of-pace in encounter pacing.

GrissTheGnome · Apr 7, 2016

The reason I suggest that is I had way to many "boss monsters" only activate once before dying, using the rules as written. I ended up straight adding a HP bonus to things I wanted to last a little longer. Typically in the 100 to 300 range by the end of the game depending on the encounter.

So I figured a break in the combat allowing the monster to get the first hit, ramps up the difficulty a bit, as it means second and third phases they probably get to act twice. But if you don't want that, don't do it, 5th has an amazing amount of tinkering-flexibility. Which is what I love about this edition, the rules are straight forward enough it just begs for house rules and player made content.

Blue · Apr 7, 2016

I'm with you on why to do phases. Solos die much too quickly. Just saying that from the player point of view it was quite cool except for one annoyance, but it was a big annoyance.

GrissTheGnome · Apr 18, 2016

For those that like Phased Boss Fights check out my new article. While it is not completely released, it did spawn out of my thought experiments to make interesting antagonists for D&D. It's been a slow burn ever since I watched "New Nightmare" last Halloween, that all came together one car ride where we were talking about Fairy Tale articles, and the Big Bad Wolf came up.

http://forgotmydice.com/index.php/2016/04/18/fear-the-big-bad-wolf/