How do I design exciting, fun boss fights for my players?

Question

So I've DM'd three separate games, of which one that I'm largely happy with. However, one consistent problem I run into is designing fun, exciting, and interesting boss fights. I've run into two major problems.

The Blitz

The boss fights are over too quickly. Generally this boils down to a problem of the players winning initiative overwhelmingly, and bum rushing the boss. This is an older problem, and one I've been able to largely solve, but I've run into it once or twice since my first mistake with it. I've added minions, generally my boss enemies have Improved Initiative. Still, it happens when I underestimate my party's damage-per-round.

The Slog

This problem is more commonly occurring. Fights turn into slogs. The boss doesn't get hit (usually from either a high AC, a lot of HP, or some other defensive mechanic like miss chance or some such). This is even worse than the Blitz, because instead of saying "that was easy," it boils down to "that was boring and a waste of my time." This can also happen from status effects like Fear, Hold Person, and other similar Save-or-Suck effects. But I don't know how to make a boss intimidating (and ergo, exciting), without using the strong Save-or-Suck effects.

For example, just recently I had my gaming group fight an evil cleric, in which I planned using minions, but thanks to unforeseen circumstance, the minions were quickly eliminated by the party's cleric. I planned on using them to harass the players while the cleric boosted the minions, so he had a lot of status effects. Unfortunately, when those minions were eliminated too quickly with Channel Energy, and the strategy was shot. He had a Deeper Darkness spell as a last resort, but it ended up bringing the fight to even more of a slog.

So my question here is twofold:

What specifically am I doing wrong, and what can I do to fix it?

Answer 1

The biggest key to creating interesting boss fights (in my experience) is to introduce an element of surprise or guess work. Fights are boring if they're just constant dice rolls back and forth where everything goes as expected. But you can make mechanics which keep the players guessing and on their toes, which force them to constantly be thinking about what's going on or what to do next.

For example, in the culmination to one of my campaigns, I had the final boss have a "shifting immunity". Each round, I would roll on a table to see what type of energy or effect he was immune to that round, and each immunity had an associated color. So each round, the boss would change colors and have different things it was vulnerable to.

This forced the players to be paying attention and didn't allow them to just sit back and spam the same moves over and over. ("What? That fireball worked last time...") It also made it interesting for them, because, in addition to being a shifting immunity, it would grant a different power to the boss.

That's the basic premise. If you want a fight to be long, keep it interesting with different mechanics. This can be something like I've described above, or a "phased" fight (i.e., the boss has several different stages or modes), or something like a very specific effect he/she/it is vulnerable to for a killing blow. It forces you to get creative, but there's no way around that; if you just rely on what's in the source books, well... the players have read those just like you have.

Answer 2

Take a hint from the big computer rpg boss fights - even if you don't play them, you could find inspiration on youtube videos of them.

First - a commonly used concept in boss fights there is 'stages' where you make a memorable fight longer but not repetitive by splitting it in sub-fights with different styles, i.e., after 'defeating' the initial phase HP, some allies arrive, or the fight gets substantially different location/environment effects, or the boss' abilities or the fight goal changes.

Second - never have a 'plain' environment for a memorable boss fight; to prevent the fight from being 'roll the same attacks until your total hp-dealt is 1000' ensure that there is both a possibility for mobility in the area, and a neccessity for mobility - due to nature of boss attacks or environmental damage effects.

Third - don't have a "deal X damage" as the only (or primary) goal of the combat, try to include a simultaneous goal that must be met during the fight. For example - PCs should prevent repeatedly spawning minions from reaching a lever that damages party/kills hostages/heals boss; or require a PC to carry some McGuffin to a spot which the boss is defending and activate it.

Answer 3

The environment can matter as much as the opponent. Players love coming up with wild tactics that, in defiance of all logic, probability, and especially common sense, still somehow work. You can cater to this by adding details to the environment for them to exploit. Some possibilities include:

• Large objects on the ground. Players can use these for cover, climb on top of them to get to higher ground, or even pick them up and throw them if they're strong enough. Boulders are the classic outdoor example, but curch pews can also work in a pinch.
• Large objects hanging from the ceiling. Chandeliers are God's gift to GMs. You can hide in them, you can swing from them, you can drop them on enemies or to create patches of difficult terrain, you can drop them when people are hiding in them, you can pick up fallen ones and use them as big blunt instruments... the possibilities are almost endless.
• Multi-tier battlefields. If your boss is a very large creature, being able to fight it on multiple levels allows for interesting tactics to emerge. Balconies and multi-story rooms work well for this indoors, while bridges and trees do the job outside.
• Local flora and fauna. If you have druids and rangers in the party (or on the boss's side), let them have a field day with the nature around them. Even indoors, you might be surprised what a resourceful character can do with a potted plant.
• Curtains. The less said of big curtains, the better; I'll let your imagination (and those of your players) fill in the details. Big flexible sheet-like objects may actually have a million and one different uses in combat, and rest assured, the players will think of some that you didn't.

If players don't take to exploiting the environment immediately, you can drive them in that direction by having the boss start to do it: just minor things at first. The players should catch on quickly that they can do this too. If they're really not picking up on the subtle stuff, drop a chandelier on them (actually, it's probably better to have the boss mess up and drop the wrong one the first time, because falling chandeliers hurt).

There's one other aspect to environmental exploitation that you need to be warned about: some of these things are going to require some on-the-spot rulings. This is deliberate. Part of the point is to make it feel like things have gotten so crazy, the rules can't even handle it anymore. This is technically metagaming, but it makes the fight feel more intense, and that's really what RPG combat is all about: taking little figurines, moving them around on a bunch of squares, and making it feel like this is the most awesome thing ever.

Answer 4

All the advice above about multi stage fights is excellent - however the two things I want to add is give yourself flexibility and give multiple potential objectives.

You cannot know in advance how well the players are going to strategize, how well they are going to roll etc.

So have environmental effects that seem random, having bad guy reinforcements coming into the room that they have to deal with, etc. Effects though where you can control them as need be for dramatic effect.

For example maybe a massive fireball sweeps through the room always proceeded by a clicking sound the round before. The first time the players hear the clicking, see/feel the fireball - Ouchie (you should probably have one go before they really engage so they are aware it can happen). After that if they hear the click they will move! Now though you control the click. Roll for it each round in secret...but ignore the roll and just say that they hear the click if you think its going to make the fight more interesting.

Note that the fireball has a warning here - the players get to do something about it. It's only the timing you are tweaking. That's important as random effects you can do nothing about are just annoying. That's why the changing immunity tied to colour is also good - it gives players something to think about/respond to...not just another source of lost hp based on a dice roll.

Another example is constantly spawning bad guys. In the example of your evil cleric fight don't start with all the zombies/etc in the room. Have multiple entrances in the room, have a few minions at the start and then have one come in through an entrance each round.

Now you have something you can tweak. Will the fight improve if one zombie comes in through door 2 - or if I have 2 zombies and 2 skeletons (1 through each door). The players can respond to this "archers cover the doors, shoot anything coming through", "Wizard, summon a wall to block that door", "dwarf, see if you can cave that tunnel in", etc, etc.

The flip side to this though is to reward players for using their initiative (not the game mechanic initiative, the other one). If they come up with any good plan to block one of the doors let them go for it. Make them work for it a bit but let them do it. For example:

Dwarf: Knowledge (Engineering) can I bring that tunnel down? (rolls a pass at suitable DC)

DM: The tunnel is supported by wooden pillars, a few strong axe blows would bring one down although the person doing it would need to be careful not to get trapped.

Now they have something to do. Get the barbarian in there swinging his axe. Give the pillars 30 hp, ac 10. When the pillar collapses they do an acrobatics check (or reflex save) to get out or take some damage from the falling rocks, etc.

Now the fight isn't about "smack the cleric at the far end of the room". It's about sealing the doors (or fighting off the growing swarm of minions) to reach him.

Suddenly the environmental effect has also become secondary objectives. You don't need to block the doors but by doing so you gain an advantage in the fight if the fight continues. So do we rush the bad guy and have the undead swarm our back lines or do we stop the influx first?

Which brings me on to secondary objectives.

Charging one target and destroying them is fine. Sometimes you should just do that. More often though you want multiple objectives, give players something to decide.

Whether it's something like the door example to gain an advantage in the fight. (For example, fighting a dragon with goblin minions. Maybe the goblins are firing siege ballista at the players. Capture those and turn them on the dragon!

There is the example of the doors above.

Maybe the Lich just finished his new phylactory and one of he minions is taking it out of the room.

Maybe all the captured villagers have been stuck on an island in the middle of a burning lava flow and the lava is rising. (Note again you control the rate of lava rising in order to keep it dramatically interesting and to provide a buffer against extreme dice rolling while at the same time leaving it possible both for the PCs to fail and for them to succeed).

One of the best things about secondary objectives as well is that the PCs do not need to succeed. If the big boss itself is too hard then you risk a TPK. That rising lava though, it should be possible to rescue the villagers but make the PCs work for it. If they don't really try wipe those suckers out and have the adventurers explain to the grieving family how they were too busy fighting the evil hobgoblin king to save their husbands/wives/children/etc.

Answer 5

Some good answers and pointers here.

I learned something from one of the YouTube reviews of Star Wars - that famous 70 minute review of the 4th Star Wars movie where the guy tears everything apart that Lucas failed at.

Here's the thing - combats themselves are inherently boring if they last more than 5 seconds. Many of the strategies here rely on MMORPG type dynamics where they make the boss fight a separate game in and of itself. Fine - but many of these "hah, now only water can hurt me" sort of shifting dynamics destroy the suspension of disbelief that all RPG's are hoping to achieve.

The biggest thing about when combats are used successfully in a story - is when important aspects of the narrative evolve. That is why villains monologue right before the fight in many media forms - or even during a fight - important details about the story are revealed during the combat.

Remember - the role of the combat is resolution of conflict within the story. If there is just death and the end - it is rather a dull resolution regardless of how complex it is to achieve it.

Some thoughts that have been coalescing for a while...

Answer 6

Minions

In my experience as a DM, the most memorable fights are almost never the ones with a single "boss" enemy. You've noticed some of the problems with those fights. Either the party wins initiative and can zerg the boss down (or Save or Die it successfully), or the boss has 50 AC and 500 HP and the fight feels like it never ends. Making a single boss monster threatening to the players has similar problems. It needs to hit so hard that if it can't kill players in 1 or 2 turns of attacks, it's no real threat to them at all (and personally, I think instadeath attacks by NPCs aren't that fun for players).

IMO, the combat system just doesn't work terribly well when it's 4+ vs 1.

The more memorable fights are always the ones with more numbers on the NPC side. Give the boss some henchmen. Or, give him a lot of weak minions. Give the party something to worry about besides one guy, and the fights get a lot more interesting.

When it's 4v4, tactical decisions like who you're going to attack matter more as a player. How do you position yourself to protect your weaker members from being ganged up on? Do you try to rush an enemy and bring them down before they can react?

You will have to scale the "boss" down somewhat to do this. If you give him a few powerful allies, you can't also make him a super god monster that can take on the entire party alone. But that's fine. You can create really heroic moments where one PC fights the boss alone (against difficult odds) while the others are dealing with the henchmen and clearing space. Maybe that PC wins, but more likely he is holding off the boss until his allies can finish the henchmen and come help. Who is doing what is a tactical decision and a chance for the players to really shine in a way other than "I attack the only enemy on the board."

Answer 7

The Minion

Players encounter them, players slaughter them, players feel good about being so overly powerful (even though it was just a minion). That is their prime purpose.

The Common Enemy

While their intention is similar to the minion - to be slaughtered by the players - they actually do pose a (minor) threat for the PCs. This should usually be done by the common game mechanics, like having melee enemies with a high AC, casters with buffs (pre-cast preferably, unless no one really expected an attack) or painful spells, or those nasty rogues that sneak behind the healer of the party and try to take him out.

The general idea is that they pose a threat, brute force works, but it becomes easier if properly prepare. The abilities must come from the common rule-book, so players can "calculate" them to death ("It is a fire elemental, so we better use cold spells.") They are supposed to give the players the feeling of tactical supremacy, while their weaknesses are rather obvious.

The Lieutenants

This group of enemies consist of stronger and usually challenging enemies, that differ from the "common enemy" by a) having a name-tag, and b) having a mechanic that makes blind brute force not the preferred way of dealing with them, as the mechanic that makes them stronger is either not obvious or not easy to overcome.

The general idea is to give players a feeling of accomplishment by overcoming hidden features or discovering secrets that ultimately leads them to victory. While they can deal with those by just running into the fight, doing so will put them in serious danger, likely to cause death of at least one party member. The solution to fight these should be a form of a mini-quest, that can (and should) be taken by the players, but is not required to complete the story (because after all, players tend to fail).

Examples are enemies that posses very powerful (generic) equipment, granting them a much higher than normal set of stats, or artifacts that render them near immune to the primary form of attack executed by your players (e.g. armor of DR 5/magic at lower levels, forcing the players to find a magic weapon first, or just steal it from him). They could as well be able to cast spells, that could near instantly kill your players, forcing them to figure out how to avoid them. Or they could posses certain supernatural abilities, that makes them close to invulnerable except under certain situations (e.g. a Vampire with supernatural resistances, except at daylight).

The Boss

What sets the boss apart from his minions is that he cannot just be rushed in and killed. He has some form of ability, equipment or tactic that makes it impossible for the players to fight him, until they overcome that feature.

They are the prime goal of a quest or series of quests, and are supposed to give the player a strong feeling of accomplishment by defeating them, knowing that the task wasn't easy at all, and required a lot of thinking, planning and teamwork. The trick is to find something, that is reasonable to explain, not too obvious as a blocker, but still keeps the players from just kicking in his door and cutting his throat. The goal of the quest is then to figure out how to circumvent or by-pass that ability so players are able to actually attack him.

Examples are enemies that posses certain very powerful abilities or (unlootable, because you don't want your players to run around with it) artifacts, that render the players unable to harm him, like a permanent stone-skin ability (lower levels), an amulet of instant retreat (teleports away at will), a guaranteed ability to kill at least one player like a Finger of Death with a high DC (demonstrate this properly it so they know!).

On the other hand those bosses do not necessarily have to be dangerous in combat, they could even give up immediately if actually engaged, but then the difficulty lies in actually getting a hold on them. Examples are the famous behind-the-scenes crime-lord, where players need to first learn who he actually is and especially where he hides, a being that exists on a different plane and cannot just be found without the proper spells, or a mummy that is hidden behind walls of riddles, puzzles and traps, while it itself is only of medium combat danger.

The main difference here is the amount of steps that are necessary to take till you are actually able to engage a boss. Weather or not this is combat skill is not important, it is just the hate piling up with the all failed attempts that makes killing them feel so good.

Answer 8

What always helped me was to create a twist within the fight.

One of the best of my bosses was a Lich that could one-shot any PC, but it only resulted in transfering the PC's soul behind a mirror. There was a plot twist with two different rods allowing the transfer and the point, which they had to figure out, was to:

1. juggle NPCs and players between two rooms (there were couple other weak skeletons) and not get trapped behind the mirror,
2. kill the boss and quickly take the rod out of the portal to keep the boss' soul in the rod.

Right now I'm trying out a theory where a boss fight is more of an interactive puzzle game rather than damage reliant However, these kind of fights should be rare and really focused on storytelling.

For example, a boss that I'm working on right now has ability called "Grasp of the Past" that traps a PC in an interactive vision. At the end of the vision, they are presented with 4 different outcomes, and only by exploring the lore will they know for sure which is the right answer. Or, they can guess. :) It tells a story (10 different stories, actually) and creates atmosphere while (hopefully!) encouraging them to explore the world more.

Answer 9

One way to make a boss fight memorable is to invent a few new game mechanics for the sake of the fight. This probably needs some exotic environments or the like, but placing a fight on a sinking ship (think of the Titanic movie, waist-deep water, gradually inclining floor, etc), a speeding train (as in that Indiana Jones movie with the circus train) or outer space (http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2010/06/30/dd-in-the-elemental-chaos-part-2) gives both the DM and the party pretty variable environments, hindrances and opportunities.

Answer 10

Look at giving your boss side minions with supporting or just completely different abilities, it will force the team to think about combat, who is the priority? yes the boss hits hard but he has a healer and wizard... Poisons, nauseated, entangle the tank, blind the archer, silence the priest... Decisions decisions.

Recurring enemies is another way to make the encounters more memorable, think of it as an evil NPC realizes the fight is going bad and flees for his life swearing revenge, 2 levels later he shows back up in better gear higher level. The memory of him and what he has or has not done might make them think, "oh, THIS GUY... I'm gonna enjoy this."

The dice roll is the boring numerical side of it, it should be "fun and successful" for the tactical player, for the most part if the character is built right, but that is NEVER what anyone remembers. It's the STORY elements you remember, so if the boss is just a sack of HP, be it low or high, its boring, easy or hard, yawn, same effect. I cannot remember my biggest hit so far, but i can remember tons of silly things that happened that everyone just scraped by on and most of us could barely talk from laughter.

Adding elements that require thought and cannot be solved solved by throwing a bomb at it is when players usually come up with the most abstract solution, that somewhat usually makes sense, its great.

Answer 11

There are quite a few very good tips here. As a new Pathfinder GM (was a D&D 2nd Ed. Player a million years ago), a lot of the mechanics were new to me. Things like feats and attacks of opportunity were alien concepts. It can be a lottle baffling.

What I am finding helps is to do your prep work. There are many posts here stating this, it is super important. The more you work on your monsters and what they can do, the smoother combat will roll. Stick with creatures you know! My group made fun of me because the first part of the campaign featured gnolls. I know gnolls, I like gnolls, and their abilities are familiar. Using a creature you know helps you to consider what it will do. I see you got caught in the trap of "hey thats a neat monster, I'm going to use it," and then used it ineffectively. Go back and trade them out for the familiar. If the PCs bitch, just say the BBEG likes it "classic".

Oh, and the best tip I ever read was to preroll initiative. I make initiative spreadsheets that I keep in ziploc freezer bags with tokens and statblock cards. The PCs hit Room 3, you grab the bag for Room 3. Most of your work is already done! I can get an encounter aet up and done in less than 30 minutes this way.

Answer 12

Make it feel different

At a fundamental level all that separates a "Boss Fight" from a regular encounter is how important the enemy is to your plot. You want to find a way to make the actual combat feel different to reflect this importance. Usually this means you increase the CR of the enemy to make the fight more difficult.

Higher CR enemies usually mean either higher damage ('The Blitz'), higher defense ('The Slog') or both ('The TPK'). To make boss fights truly interesting/memorable you want to find other ways to make it different from regular encounters.

There are already a lot of great answers to this question, (I particularly like TwoThe's answer), so I won't go into heaps of detail on things already covered. But here is an overview of techniques you can use to make Boss fights unique and interesting, other than increasing difficulty.

Minions

Bosses will have creature working for them. Individually these enemies wouldn't pose much threat to the party, but they force the players to expend resources/action economy to deal with them.

Lieutenants

Stronger individuals that can stand up to the party. They will often be named NPCs or spellcasters. Maybe the players have encountered them before? Maybe they are someone the PCs thought was an ally?

Terrain

Make the environment interesting. Why have a Boss fight in a big open cave when you can have it on a cliff edge in a snowstorm? Difficult terrain, hazardous effects, darkness or outcroppings that provide cover. Bust out your evil mastermind and design terrain that suits your enemies rather than the PCs. This is their home turf after all.

Lair and Legendary Actions

Dnd already has a great mechanic for Boss fights. Lair actions trigger on specific initiative counts and can be anything from held spells to a change in the terrain. They really make it feel like the enemy was ready for you.

Legendary actions allow the Boss to take actions out of turn. Increasing damage output and improving the action economy. They also add a layer of fear to an encounter, players can't safely rely on the fact that the Boss has already had his turn.

Multi-stage Battles

There's a great article by the Angry DM on using multiple hit point pools for Bosses. It suggests giving the Boss more abilities or different tactics as their hit points are depleted. This is a great method to prevent battles feeling like a grind.

Additional Goals

Killing the bad guy doesn't need to be the only objective of a boss fight. Often there is a ritual to prevent, an innocent to save or a portal to close. Anything that forces the players to choose between killing the known evil of the bad guy or preventing the potentially worse evil of whatever that thing is.

Bonus points for the bad guy escaping should the players decide to focus on the other objective. Recurring villains are the best villains.

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Overall you want to force players to think on their feet, use all their special abilities and feel like it was a real triumph if they somehow manage to win. A Boss fight isn't just a harder version of every other fight and it shouldn't feel like it. Implement a few of the above suggestions in a various combinations and you will keep your players on their toes every boss fight.

Answer 13

Specifically, what are I doing wrong, you ask.

Well, that's an easy question.

You're playing Pathfinder

Oh, no, no, wait, this is not one of those system-hating answers, I'm talking for real here, and I could talk of any edition of D&D really.

The real problem here is that a d20 has a lot of variability and, unless your players focus a lot on buffing their to-hit or their spell DCs to insane levels or to alternative ways of dealing damage or inflicting statuses, you can finetune for as long as you want, you will always have that slogfest or too quick encounter when the rolls line up the wrong way.

So, the first thing you need to do is to accept that these things will continue happening, forever and ever. And sometimes you will instead find that the encounter is just as challenging as you need it. The variables to plan it are effectively too much.

What you can do, instead...

...is to calibrate your encounters progressively. The better thing to do would be to also keep track of all rolls, to see in which direction they moved the encounter balance. Again, this is somewhat hard to predict in a game with save or die spells, but it is still doable. I've been doing it for a while back when I used to build my own encounters and it somewhat worked. Not every time, no, but the majority of times.

I've seen a DM on the Internet (someone with a blog, I can only recall that it was a female DM) say that she just adjusted the HP of enemies on the run and added new minions to the scene if it was going too bad for the bad guys, and her players complimented her perfectly balanced encounters. If that rows your boat, it surely works. I myself would rather have an uninteresting combat than playing illusionist behing the DM screen.

Or you can play a different game that is free of these problems. (I just name it because it is a solution, but I think you want a solution for Pathfinder.)

Answer 14

I'd like to assume I'm a casual player that uses humor over horror most of the time.

but when it comes to bosses In Pathfinder occasionally add a story plot twist that acts as the lore of your opposing foe, in that if the plot twist is good enough it will leave your players with wide eyes, unless of course the boss is a "weakling" or is rather Irrelevant to the story then just fallow the advice of the others, Im sure they're answers are well worth your attention then this one. a few notable are

Tridus. Zovits. and dpatchery.

I hope that this information proves value to your Gm'ing skills my friend.

   -SinisterDesign