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Message: <blockquote data-quote="babinro" data-source="post: 5193456" data-attributes="member: 67482">My long standing campaign has managed to reach level 30 and in doing so, we are having all those fun 'named' battles.  Dagon, Graz'zt, Demogorgon and Orcus have all been fought between levels 29-30.  My next session will battle against Tiamat, who, unlike the above should prove challenging to the party (I hope).In all cases, they were push-overs.  Orcus proved the most challenging as he succeeded in using Touch of Death 3 times during the encounter.  That power aside, he never brought any party member near death.It is important to note that my whole party: Sorc, Warlock, Druid, Cleric...can function at range.  These super bosses, tend to have a lot of extremely mean close range effects to lock down targets.  My parties composition is such that they easily shut down super bosses until they are about %75 dead, at which point the battle grinds down to at-wills where these monsters start to become somewhat of a threat.  In my case, it has always been too little too late for the monster.These same fights against a melee centered party would likely prove to be extremely difficult as most bosses have strong auras combined with at will means of dazing/stunning creatures that enter into melee.  In the above party formation, the druid character was frequently locked down as he acts as the parties defender.Since it was the first time running such battles, I did not modify the bosses at all, and often only ran them with one or two normal critters as distractions with minimal terrain hindrances.  However, going forward, I'd highly recommend making some of their powers minor actions 1/round, and adding in a minor action ranged attack as well.  These two changes would add significant difficulty to such battles.  I'd also consider doubling the non-rolled damage output of all powers for solo monsters without an aura.  These battles against 'named' creatures are based a lot on luck.  Generally, a PC needs to roll a natural 11-15 to hit one of these monsters before combat advantage.  This means that there is a high chance of key powers that stun/dominate/blind will miss.  My party tends to get one of these conditions every round be it due to luck, or simply a lot of power options.  If those key powers were to miss about 1/2 the time the battle would prove to be much more difficult.</blockquote>

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