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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuzzlewump" data-source="post: 4775833" data-attributes="member: 63214">Solo Encounters as Multiple CreaturesMaybe some solo fights can instead be 5 separate creatures that are bound together: like legs, head, and tail of a dragon all having separate stats. It would give you milestones in the fight, as taking down legs or a tail would be tangible achievement, which solo encounters in general lack. As you're bashing away at 500 hit points, the only dent you put into it is the "bloodied" title. Certainly details would have to be worked out, such as the issue of going straight for the head for the kill. One answer is to increase, substantially, the defenses of the head while the dragon's other parts are active, as they will act as defense. This could be trite and "videogamey," (Take down the ____ to reveal his weak point!) which are not really problems at my table. Another view is that the head can be targeted normally without any defense increase and "killing" it just means the dragon cannot bite or use his breath weapon anymore. From a narrative point of view, once it seems his head is in critical danger, he then uses his other parts in defense (thus attacks directed at the head after it is "killed" are randomly assigned to whatever the dragon puts in the way.) Another way is to not allow targeting of parts, and simply take down parts in a random order as his total HP ticks down. From a narrative point of view, the attack that brings his HP down far enough to kill one of his parts means that the dragon used his (roll a 1d4, or whatever, and for this example we rolled...) tail as a last defense measure, which can be seen as putting it between a sword and his neck, and the dragon loses use of the tail. The players feel the climax of achieving an important milestone, but they still have the rest of the dragon to deal with (4 more creatures, from the point of view of the dungeon master.) Another detail is what creatures to use? Would the legs be equivalent to appropriate level brutes, and the tail to a lurker? The head, a controller? The body, a soldier? Should each act on every round, or should turns be halved and damage be doubled for certain parts?One final issue that I just thought of is that at some points fights with multiple enemies have very clear turning points that seem irreversible. Solo fights on the other hand, retain their difficulty throughout, thus having the potential of being dangerous throughout the encounter, assuming the players thought they were dangerous to begin with. The dragon, after losing some parts can try to run away (as some adventures dictate once the dragons reach a certain point,) or perhaps go berserk and increase the damage of his remaining parts. These options equate to a "fight or flight" mechanism, which makes sense for anyone who has felt an adrenaline rush (most everyone, I think.)I'd love to hear any thoughts. Or, feel free to direct me to a post that has posited the same things.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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