Press The Beast

Behemotian Boss Battle

What comes? What rumbles the earth?—loose! stone turns to rubble, rubble to clod—all under foot is mire, each step impossible for Hell's infernal rumble. Steady, steady, steady—firmament shakes, breaks: who could believe in God in a world with the Devil?

What comes? No—that not Devil, that thing: it glows white, its UX strains credulity and yet, contained within, is function to guide man up from ignorance by a spider's thread. Yes! It is a guide to Boss Fights in RPGs: a sequel to Facilitating Fiendish Fights and YE COMPLEAT MANUAL OF UNMANNERLY FIGHTING. Yet it could be Devil if you take the knowledge herein, transform it, and loose it on your players: it will be a Devil of a good time, that is, as you thrill and excite them with the excellence of your boss fights!!

First, of course, we are assuming OSR stylings for system, mechanics, etc. It won't do to assume we are running your pet system—down boy—better to be on the same page. There have been numerous posts theorizing methods of assembling fearsome final fights or marvellous mid-bosses for dungeons. Skerples's boss fight guide and Mindstorm Press's Nested Monster HD, a means to creating a multi-stage fight, come to mind. Actually—and this may surprise you, so please hold tight to your trousers—I am a contrarian and dislike the advice in both of these posts. I've not yet actually found a guide for set-piece fights I thought sufficient for any context, let alone mine.

The issue, more or less—less or more—with the above blog posts is that they do too much where less would do more. Skerples recommends giving boss monsters four discrete moves; the Nested HD post recommends statting up bosses as multi-layered puzzle monsters with discrete attacks keyed to different sections (I.e, a Giant Crab may have a pair of 4HD claws with separate attacks). Mr. Colville has a famous boss design strategy based on pre-planned escalating actions over the course of three rounds (the assumed length of the fight). You will notice in my guide that I recommend a number of techniques from these posts, though of course I came up with these ideas completely independently by interfacing directly with the Platonic ideal of boss fights. The key to my approach is Efficiency of Imagination. It is a moral good to do with one monster trait or ability what others do with three.

WHAT IS A BOSS?

This is incredibly simple: the main factor is that a boss is a monster that is particularly hard to kill and good at killing relative to the other monsters around it. With some dramatic description this is all you need. High HD, low AC, high damage—you get the picture. Until player characters are fairly high level even a single Giant, if staged right, can be an incredibly effective fight. Then, once stronger, they can face two or three Giants. I've provided you with bosses for your entire campaign: escalating numbers of Giants! Wowza!

The problem with the exception based design described in most boss fight guides is basically ontological—why the hell does this guy have so many exceptions in rules and design? Is he God? Moreover it stretches the system in use, requiring all these exceptions which require explaining to the players.

The most I recommend, if one feels the need, is to follow Whitehack's lead and give a boss monster an additional action per round that they, or anyone on their team, can use at any time. But even this is not needed. Rather than rely on hardcoded abilities, I apply "Rulings, not rules" and think through what the monster should be able to do based on its natural capabilities. Trying to hardcode a good boss is a trap: the end result is calculating DPR and mathematizing a perfectly "curated" experience, something more akin to a rollercoaster than a real encounter with a beast beyond imagining (This is the precise risk of the Colville approach: you kill the dream of the game, and so kill a part of yourself and die bleeding).

For instance, in a boss fight inspired by Shakespeare's Tempest, my players fought a Gorgon in a theatre. Instead of coding in some kind of specific AoE attack to deal with the oncoming rush of player characters, I had the Gorgon shatter the wooden stage and attack in an area with a mass of splinters with a Save vs. Breath for those affected—this also turned that area into rough terrain that was hard to move through. This was not planned in advance; with everyone trapped up the Gorgon hoped to make better use of its petrifying breath.

Another example: the famous Chain Devil used its chains for mobility, spun them rapidly around to deflect projectiles, and more despite none of these being coded abilities; simply, these are the kinds of things it is natural for a Chain Devil to do. For boss fights the rule is this: make more generous rulings toward the boss than you would for regular weak guy monsters. If you are consistent in how you describe the boss, then this will not come across as unfair to players. If the dreaded Giant King Corpulo is shown to throw cannon balls from the top of his tower with enough force to kill sauropods miles distant, and at his castle there is a squat rack loaded with four plates each weighing a ton then they will not be surprised if his squeezing grip calls for a Save vs. Death.

The next factor for a boss is personality, not necessarily in the private character of the boss itself but in the overall impression it makes for the players. There is no rule here except imagination, just remember that simple is good. A single strong theme played up again and again (Strength, lust, greed, treachery, etc) will have more impact than a more diffuse presentation. Because a boss is likely a major feature of a floor, region, dungeon, etc, there is room to elaborate more than your standard keyed encounter.

There are too many variables for perfectly clear rules of thumb for boss monster durability and damage. As a rule, the less durable they are the more damage they need to be able to do. Minions can also be used to make up the gap of durability. Let's try giving some guidelines here, assuming a party of 4-6 members:

(Numbers are keyed to a d6 standard a la OD&D)

Assigned HD can be split between minions or bosses that work in duos, trios, etc. If cleaving exists in your game, the calculations are totally different for 1HD foes which, at high levels, can pour into boss fights in groups of 20+.

As levels climb, the party acquires so many spells, magic items, dumbass stupid fuck abilities, etc, that the threat the boss must present grows substantially. Likewise, the abilities of the boss or the location you fight in will change the calculations.

BOSS FEATURES & TERRAIN

Right: a Giant or two dumb Ogre brothers make a great boss fight. A tough, big guy. Pepper in some minions (2d6 never fails, but try 2d20 for real excitement) and you've got a stew. Yet the people crave novelty; a beast like me is interested in tactical variety. Once a creature has sufficient strength, how do we juice it up and make it really memorable?

The best boss monsters have one or two things, that's it. Restrain thyself! The Dragon, the Medusa: such classic foes have perfect powers because they are easily explicable and can be played around in meaningful ways. Monster features can be made more interesting paired with terrain, for fights in fixed locations, and weaknesses, a great way to make scary monsters manageable. This is why I emphasize "simple simple" so strongly: you do not need four abilities, nested hit die, or escalating legendary actions when the boss fight exists plugged into the larger dungeon context, with everything that entails. There is already so much going on for the players. Below are some example monster features, with some ideas for how they can interact with terrain or weaknesses:

Look there are so many of these I can keep going forever. Teleporting, armour destruction, earthquakes, elemental control, plant control, seduction powers, ooze body (slippin under doors n shit): each has its considerations.

For features, remember that you can come up with literally anything, as long as you don't have too many clogging one creature. Put Ghost Uncle in your next game: he is ethereal and can "get your nose" anywhere on your body, because that was his favourite game with his nephew in life. He'll take your arm, your leg, your ears, etc, and then donate them to Skeletons who need a body more than you do. Make a 2d6 table to see what part he grabs, with more essential pieces a rarer result (genitals at 2 and torso at 12). That's the boss fight.

CONSIDERATIONS FOR STATIC BOSSES

In a dungeon game a boss can serve multiple roles. There may not be a set "end goal" in a dungeon, so the boss needs to serve some other function. Common functions include:

The main difference between the first two is the movement of the boss. With set-piece fights we have a greater ability to think through the interaction between the space and the boss than with standard monster encounters.

Static set-piece bosses can be used to guard significant treasure hoards, magic items, or an important shortcut through a dungeon. It is likely the party has some rumour or notion of the boss's presence; otherwise, it may be foreshadowed within a dungeon: Orcs in the Mines of Moira scrawl engravings of the great spider, Shelop, that lives in the level below. A classic example is Beowulf's dragon: because it flies around like a douchebag Beowulf has good reason to go fight it within its lair.

The advantage of the static monster is terrain. The addition of verticality and cover is often enough to make the boss arena a little more dynamic than your standard fight. This on its own is often enough. Yet, as described above, things become more interesting when the boss is tied to the terrain. Here are two examples from my own game:

Because players will usually know a static boss is coming, it is fair to pump the difficulty and the reward up more than for other boss types. Likewise, it is fair to have a boss that is concerned with guarding its location and won't give chase to the players; in these cases, don't run the boss like an idiot. Even a stupid Evil Statue will take captives, or lay traps, or use ambushes.

CONSIDERATIONS FOR WANDERING BOSSES

Wandering bosses do not necessarily show up in any particular terrain. The question here is how flexibly they may navigate the present dungeon environment. Take the classic Giant, or a similar monster: being so big, players will be able to run away by crawling through holes or going through person-sized doors. The Ghost Queen described earlier is just the opposite, and can hound the players wherever. It is also possible to present paths that the boss monster is especially good at following—maybe it is a big Evil Ape, and so can brachiate through vines with ease.

By having some logic to where the boss will or won't go the players can work around this. Victory will come from setting ambushes, or otherwise tricking the monster. This interplay with the dungeon is highly rewarding for players. Given the presence of the whole dungeon environment as a potential battleground it is often best to make the wandering monster less powerful than you would a static beast.

Broadly speaking, you get two types of monsters in this role which I will call hunters and stalkers. Hunters do lots of damage but are, typically, vulnerable if caught in an ambush. They will kill one or two player characters and then retreat. Stalkers, instead, are tough but slow. The party can lead them around the dungeon, but always have to worry about the stalker slowly coming behind. Both types are most fun when combined with random encounters.

I've enjoyed using Arnold's UNDERCLOCK to represent a predatory boss monster hunting the party.

CONSIDERATIONS FOR FLOOR/REGION-INTEGRATED BOSSES

It is also possible to integrate bosses with dungeon floors or hexcrawl regions. I've only done this once so in this area I am also a mere neophyte. The way I did it was by plopping an Evil Tree with like 30HD in the bottom of a dungeon, and having its roots connect to various rooms while its vines served as random encounters. The monster's roots plugged into a generator that let it use a powerful lightning bolt attack; if the party shuts the generator off they lose light in the dungeon but disable the boss's attack. Very cool!

The important thing here is to have the integration of the boss and the area interactable; I think interactability is basically over-rated, but with those sort of thing—where the dungeon becomes the fight—the sky is the limit, and some forethought as to how the players can interface with this location-monster will pay dividends in play.

I'd like to try out a few more monsters of this type, as it is quite neat. Write your own blog post about it if you give it a whirl.

CLOSING REMARKS

My sincerest and most humblest hope is that thou reader will have the confidence to put a Giant next to a big pillar and say "sick boss fight."

Thanks for reading!