Press The Beast

Devil's World Heroes! Record of Boss Battles

The Big Boys, the player’s party, have had three major boss battles in Devil’s World Heroes thus far: a Sleep Dragon, the Devil Tree Zaqqum, and the dreaded Roartisserie Chicken. All three of these bosses worked very well; running combat and similar scenarios is my favourite part about playing RPGs. This post will describe what made these fights work, and explain the basic dynamics.

SLEEP DRAGON: This guy was a big ‘ol green dragon with frog-like appendages, a fan-like tail, and big yellow eyes: he could climb walls and ceilings, spew sleep breath, and then spread it around with his tail. The idea came from some art by BetterLegends that I won’t attach here. They found the monster in a cave: a small cavern dungeon I whipped up with sparse keys but relevant terrain. There were two levels with a bridge crossing over an open cavern toward the dragon’s lair, where he was worshipped by a horde of cavemen (eliminated instantly by a sleep spell): the dragon’s lair itself had fragile and uneven stalagmite, making it difficult to bridge without waking the dragon. Hidden crawl space allowed one to loop from the caveman’s room into the dragon’s nest, though the players never found this. Let’s talk about making a tough single monster. Much has been said about action economy but the case has often been overstated. This guy had a simple statline: 8HD / 5AC / d6 damage with all but his mouth, which dealt 2d6 damage. He could use up to three parts per round: mouth (For sleep, once per battle, or chompin’), claws (Swipin’) or choose between tail attack (sweep attack behind the monster) or tail fan (re-apply sleep fog). This is more than good enough: even a single attack of 2d6 would have been enough to threaten the party. At low levels dudes are dying quick, and no one wants to die. Because of that I’d caution against overdesigning or overdoing most boss monsters: a Tough Dude and a cool environment is often sufficient to make things interesting. The players had at least six, maybe more, characters present for this fight and still had a tough go of it.

The party, comprised of level 1-2 characters, won mostly via a stand up brawl: they lured it to the bridge whilst some allies hid behind to flank it and, with an inventive application of a spell, the wizard rotated the natural bridge to dump the dragon. However, because its feet were all sticky nothing happened except it was surprised: the party got a first strike. While some heavy hitters were put to sleep, they were able to grind it down in a straight battle. A thief known as “The Slipper” was crushed and got a sneak attack from under the monster whilst an ally NPC climbed upon its back and rained blows from on high. The battle was tense and fairly even but, by cycling ranks and the prioritization of waking up sleeping allies, they were able to spread the damage around enough that the dragon only managed to kill the voluptuous wizard Bouncimonia Breasty.

DEMON TREE ZAQQUM: Whilst the previous boss was quite simple, Zaqqum was very complex. It was the boss monster of the first dungeon which was inventively named the Northern Ruins but called the Blue Ruins by the players. It was meant to be fought around level 3. The party came in at about the proper strength having killed a dragon up in the northwestern mountains and swept most of the dungeon’s first floor.

Zaqqum was a major feature of the dungeon. In the centre of the three level ruins there was a huge cylindrical staircase. When awakened the tree emerged from this central column to whatever level the players were at. Though they never went that deep, the bottom of the dungeon consisted of its roots. Zaqqum could be awakened in three ways: anything that fell down the column had a chance of awakening it (Both times this was caused by firebombs in our game), touching the feelers it had scattered throughout the dungeon (This would prompt it to send its Nihilist Apples after the party—I’ll explain later), and finally every time the central stairwell was entered there was a 1-in-6 chance it’d just come and wreck the party’s day.

Stat-wise the tree split into three parts: the tree itself was 15HD / 7AC whilst its two branched arms were 6HD / 7AC / d6+2 damage. One of those arms was filled with wires and connected to a generator in a dungeon, allowing to blast electricity that dealt 3d6 damage (Save vs. Breath for half) after charging for one turn. The players heard the hum of the generator but never shut it off, doing so would’ve prevented that attack and stopped the dungeon from exploding with the death of the tree (RIP). On each round it could position its arms in one of two places: it could cover its face to absorb damage to the torso, or use them to cut off movement on the stairwell, thus locking the players into a specific quadrant of the central column. Its torso was more menacing. Each fight began with it spreading nihilist gas over a quadrant of the stairwell. Save vs. Breath or become a nihilist, forcing the character to retire unless rescued by true love’s kiss. Then it had three main combat options: Create 2d6 Nihilist Apples—1HP goobers that could explode to deal d6 damage on a failed Save vs. Breath and spread more nihilist gas (This had to be recharged) or, if a hand had grabbed someone it could eat them. This is a Save vs. Death or, uh, die. Finally, it could call vines or other plant-life in the area nearby to assist. Each turn it spent doing this whatever ambient plants were in the area could attack: I treated them as standard 1HD monsters with 9AC.

The monster was encountered twice. The first time a rival adventurer, Stillborn Flesheater, awoke it to test the party’s strength before running the fuck away. This battle was tense and thrilling: it used its arms to lock the party into an area of the dungeon with no connections to the first level. Kimimi (Havoc), a Wizard, had learned the spell True Breath as the party’s reward for defeating the Sleep Dragon; this allowed 3 frontliners to avoid becoming Nihilists from its gas. They held the monster off in the frontlines, whilst others attempted to find a way to escape. Vines from a southern room came to life and pressured the party into a dead end which they escaped with Passwall on the ceiling and a grappling hook. They climbed out, chased by creeping vines all the while, into a room filled with skeletons that nearly killed multiple party members. The Big Boys gained lots of intel: next time they would be prepared.

For round two the Big Boys went on the attack. They basically just dropped a massive satchel charge of firebombs into the pit to wreck almost all of its torso HP. In the battle they targeted the electric arm and whittled down the torso, whilst wizards with area attacks dealt with the waves of Nihilist Apples. One party member, Smokio (ags), posted up in a separate quadrant away from the arms to blast it with machine gun fire from a safe position. Gronk (CellarGelatin), the leader of the party, died to an electric blast before the party could whittle it down but, thanks to good tactics, they won the day and even managed to nab a robot (Now called GronkBot) from the dungeon before it collapsed.

In isolation a monster with a total of 27HD may seem impossible for a 2nd-3rd level party to fight, but a few things kept things reasonable. First: its AC was low enough that hits could land consistently. Secondly: because it was rooted in place the players could use their knowledge of the monster to choose the theatre of battle. Thirdly: it was weak to fire, which they used to whittle down more than its HP in one blow. This was textbook OSR play, and a highpoint for me as ref in the campaign. The interaction between Zaqqum and the dungeon as a whole is what made the fight really interesting and is something that should be considered when thinking about boss monsters. How does it actually play into the exploration and attrition loop?

ROARTISSERIE CHICKEN: This one was similar to the Sleep Dragon, though fought by a much stronger party. The Roartisserie Chicken, guardian of the Gingerbread Tower within King Corpulo’s stomach, is exactly what it sounds like—don’t ask questions. It had 8HD / 7AC and two attacks: it could shoot burning grease in an AoE that dealt 2d6 damage, Save vs. Breath for half and, on each subsequent turn, dealt 1d6 damage until the victim cleared off the burning grease, or it could swallow you through a hole where, were it a living chicken, its head should be: this was a Save vs. Death and killed its victim instantly. The last consideration is its blindness: the monster had no eyes and was attracted to destroy the loudest noise for disturbing its silence.

The arena was a large pit of chicken and beef bones, with two large mounds of mutton that could act as cover or a high point from which to climb onto the monster or perform jump attacks. The pit of bones was significant: any movement, save a successful Move Silently role from a Thief, would be noticed by the Roartisserie Chicken due to the clacking of bones.

The party dealt with this fight well once they realized it was blind: Meatface (Jenx) moved the monster by throwing bones whilst staying still. Then he made a mad dash to avoid a vent of grease. The party lured the Roartisserie chicken onto its own grease vomit and then the party robot, GronkBot, lit it up with a vent of flame. This did most of the work: the party worked it over until the chicken was cooked. While this seems straightforward, and it was, it worked well in the context of the game. This was after a veritable marathon of battle against gummy worms, chicken drumstick, hard candies, beefsteaks, and corncob archers: the party had defeated at least 30HD worth of monsters in a variety of circumstances and already lost a fighter to a jacked beefsteak warrior. They came into this fight weak and wounded. Without good tactics they could easily have lost 2-3 characters to burning oil. This is why I put it at roughly the same strength as the Sleep Dragon, which they were able to fight while fresh. A boss needs to amp up the tension and require the party to approach it differently to survive. There needs to be a real threat.

Here are some guidelines for sick boss fights:

Even for complex bosses, like Zaqqum, I try to lean toward the minimum complexity necessary to realize the encounter. When it hits the table even a simple statblock can come to life; attrition, terrain, and the broader scenario add more than enough complexity. With this in mind a single 8HD Giant with no special abilities is a perfectly good boss fight and, with the right set up, can be more interesting than the suggestions I’ve seen online about making bosses in RPGs better.

What makes a boss thrilling is the unknown variables and the space for players to exercise their own tactics and skills to win the day. A standard corridor fight, once the enemy is understood, can be controlled by skilled players and dealt with with minimum risk. Bosses involve stepping out of that safezone into the unknown and are, as a result, terrifying for players in games with real stakes even where the threat is mostly imagined. In all cases the Big Boys, with bad luck or bad tactics, could have faced a party wipe yet, each time, they came out with minimum, but still notable, losses. That’s the kind of challenge based play I’m interested in facilitating, where players are rewarded for their teamwork and daring.