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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 6788012" data-attributes="member: 6777454">Are you really quibbling about the term "early" to dismiss 1E D&D as not being "early" enough because there was some alpha test version that was never properly officially published and basically no one ever played, but because you read about it once somewhere you are trying to use that as a means of dismissing the argument rather than... actually thinking about it a bit?1E was early D&D. In fact, by this point? 2nd edition with "Basic" and "Advanced" could be considered early D&D. I don't care if you don't like it and it makes you feel old, the truth is the truth.And... really... are you telling me that in all the D&D games you have ever played, that the Orcs or Goblins never had a chieftain? That the Fire Giants never had a King? That the last thing you had to fight in the course of the adventure was likely an Ogre or Red Dragon or something else that was bigger than what you had fought through on your way to get there? That never, not even once in all the adventures you played, that not a single one of them ever involved a name villain or target who had done or was planning to do something and needed to be killed before that time came to a close?That no adventure that you played EVER had anything remotely like this with an encounter with a creature that was likely a bit higher level than anything previously and once you defeated it, the adventure could wrap up pretty neatly because often there would be no more challengers?Frankly, I don't believe you. I am pretty certain you are either misremembering things, decided to classify some clear cut examples in your mind as something different or that you... just never actually played the game. The moment the game started telling stories is the moment you can be certain there were climaxes with a boss fight.This concept doesn't come from video game, it doesn't come from D&D... it has been a literary device used in stories since some of the earliest stories ever told. The biggest challenge for the hero is always the last challenge, that is the big climax, that is where the threat that make all previous threats pale in comparison... You thought fighting the cyclops and medusa were hard? Well, now the Kraken is finally going to rise out of the sea with the power to destroy the whole city!Yeah, that's right! The idea of a boss fight at the end of an adventure is at least as old as ancient greek myth. But I am sure you are going to complain about my suggesting that isn't early enough for you, because True Fans(tm) like you can recite Egyptian, Babylonian, and Ethiopian myth that is even older and somehow that disproves that this is an ancient literary device.... somehow... because... well, I bet I am writing to someone who is incapable of admitting when he is wrong.Now, if you are just quibbling about the mechanics-- yes, boss fights were really crappily designed in 1st to 3rd edition. Whether you admit it or not, they did exist as a concept and the result was... bad. One of a couple things were liable to happen.1) The PCs have enough super-damaging or auto-death techniques available that the fight ends on the first turn in a rather anti-climatic manner.or2) Any creature with the ability to survive in the room with the Magic-User (or Thief's backstab) would tend to have offensive abilities that were super strong and were written in a way that DMs naturally used them all against a single target and killed that character on the first or second round.Those were still boss fights, but they were boss fights with really crappy mechanical design which utterly ruined the fun.It wasn't until 4E that this concept was really taken to task and broken down in an intelligent manner. They realized that those two negative outcomes demonstrated the need for two things.A) The creature to have considerably higher HP than most things at its tier.B) For the creature to primarily rely on multi-target and area attacks that meant all the players would be threatened by and engaging with the thing rather than utterly stomping the PCs into the ground one at a time leaving players at the table unable to do anything well before the outcome is determined because they happened to be randomly targeted or the DM disliked them or... what have you.Thus creating something that would be as challenging and engaging as fighting 4 other things you were expected to face at its tier while still being faceable on its tier rather than merely sticking in something that is a much higher level and hoping that it kind of works even though it wasn't mechanically designed for that purpose.</blockquote>

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