BOSS FIGHTS

I've got love/hate relationship with d&d boss fights. Exciting, chance to challenge players' tactics and introduce some batshit enemies. However, they are constrained in area, stressful to run, stressful for players, and occasionally disappointing. Challenge in high level dungeons and dragons, I find, is generally around players mitigating and managing a complex environment. But sometimes a difficult and thrilling stand-up fight is necessary -- brute force being a tactic the opponent brings to bear. And I love boss fights.

Here are some boss fights they've beat so far:

LORD OF CHANGE, a random encounter boss fight in Thrice Cursed Prison of Dendric Vast. Giant vulture man with mutating staff. High hit points, high damage, always accompanied by cultists. Randomly causes changes in environment, swaps players, stuff like that. Big weakness: Not very smart, underestimates opponents. I don't even remember how they beat him but it took a couple tries, and then they had his soul trapped in their soul-trapping mace for a long time. His name was President Ose, and he wasn't very helpful after death.

ANTIPALADINS OF URIZEN: three powerful antipaladins with overlapping, mutually reinforcing auras. High AC, high damage, but the auras don't affect the caster. Players beat this one by tricking the antipaladins and killing them one by one.

CARNIFEX PALLID GROSS: final boss of Thrice Cursed Prison of Dendric Vast. A disgusting old man in a floating cage in middle of giant 50' cubic room, guarded by t-rex head, a reanimated saint of Urizen, called Saint Lorgo. Pallid Gross' high level cleric powers are blocked by his enchanted cage, but every round his demon lord grants him new mutations (acid spit, long barbed tongue, chest mouth), and eventually busts out of his cage with super strength. Meanwhile Saint Lorgo can create multicolored replicas of himself to fly around and eat opponents' emotions. Furthermore, during battle, all surfaces of cube are fair game to walk on due to altered gravity, but each surface has a different hazard. Players beat this one with tried and true tactic, camp in doorway and shoot arrows and spells.

AGELESS PRIEST OF THE TEMPLE OF A NAMELESS GOD: In belltower of temple of the nameless god, an ageless priest keeps a funeral pyre lit. Big, extremely strong melee guy, every round his dead god does weird effect, like turn him invisible. This did not communicate well. My players are like, "why did the moon go into eclipse every round?" Because I thought it would be awesome. Afterwards, also asked, "what would have happened if we had put out the fire? I told them: the priest would have gone insane and jumped off the tower, auto-win.

OROSTRANTHIAN WAR MECHA: first boss of Shattered Labyrinths of Illith Varn. Room one, enemiy one. Strengths: extremely high AC, high hitpoints, high melee damage, legendary actions and my special favorite, seeking laser gun which remembers targets and can shoot them from around corners up to 300 feet away, targeting everyone in a line (this meant to beat tactic of "camp in doorway and shoot arrows"). Other strengths: Every 100 hit-points of damage, vents an incendiary cloud to deal 10d8 damage.  Weakness: Critical hits on this guy pull up a chunk of his armor revealing crude flesh, attacking flesh does critical hits. And no way to self-dispel effects that originate from outside of 5e. They beat this guy by using KEENING VAMPIRE LUNGE, an artifact from our old game, to give him a -21 to attack for two rounds. Nonetheless, it took them a solid three tries. I could only justify this boss by making him fully optional, but inconvenient to keep alive. Their total joy on finally beating him made it totally worth it, plus he had a lot of really good loot.

GENERAL VEXX: First of Illith Varn's four generals. An archer with lots of attacks, and each round a powerful AOE to throw at the players. Strengths: faster than the players, with longer range. I wanted this guy to be a complex running fight. Weakness: grapple. They caught him and held him with grapple pretty quick. I still think 5e's grapple and skills proficiency mechanic is bad for exactly this reason: small to large size bosses lose a ton of mobility unless you give them a conscious anti-grapple mechanic, or a grapple score incommensurate to what you would expect. Legitimate technique, disappointing outcome. Won't be making that mistake twice.

OROSTRANTHIAN WAR GOLEMS: Seven jolly stone men, each with a different power. Strengths: Numbers, speed, unpredictability, and frankly insane powers. Weakness: sequence breaking. Players beat these guys by using their brains and finding a well-hidden secret door to completely bypass them. Mad respect.

SLAAD TRIARCHY: Final boss of the tower of slime. Strengths: no way out! Purposely did dungeon master bullshit to counteract their tendency to teleport out of sticky situations, in this case "The plane of slime is too close at hand! your teleport isn't working." When they opened obvious boss door, I said, "Are you sure you're ready to open this door?"and made tidal wave of slime come behind them, trapping them. So that was fun. Other strengths: speed, area of effect spells. Each one had a different theme, like one was meant to be an upclose fighter, one had area of effect slime spells, one had debuffs, I think. Weaknesses: medium range hit-points, medium armor. In the background they had a tortured unicorn casting buffs on them. This fight rocked, but I forgot to give them loot? An anticathartic outcome made sense for the tower of slime, I guess.

CORVENON, SON OF VALATHEX: Green half-dragon with shriveled little wings. Statistically identical to an adult 5e dragon (black? green? I forget), with a bonus moonlight power it can shoot out of its eyes as a legendary action in lieu of a wing buffet, and its breath attack causes you to deal half damage. Other strengths: high AC, high hit points, very big. Weaknesses: emotional, bad tempered, stubborn, and arrogant. Is that a weakness? I don't know. They never beat this guy, instead walling him off with wall of force and doing their heist before the spell ended.

GENERAL MALAGON: Second of Illith Varn's four generals. Strengths: high level wizard, many allies, entrenched headquarters that he refuses to leave, highly intelligent, does not underestimate players. Weaknesses: single minded obsession, which is, finding a way to enter the realm of the gods so that he can kill a god so that he can use its blood in his golden crucible in order to forge a ring of flight in order to fly all the way to a distant star, and never see another living being again. Players have not yet bested Malagon, but may not need to, as he has sent them on another quest, this time in a direction they want to go.

THE GOLDEN DRAGON: I've mentioned him. Strengths I'm willing to reveal so far: high damage fire breath. Sneaky, and willing to travel far outside his boss room. Dragon fear makes it impossible to approach while under the influence. Difficult saving throws for all of this. Weaknesses: underestimated players on first go-round. They did their anti-dragon wall of force tactic and sneaked around him.

THE DEADBOYZ: Ah, the Deadboyz, a rival adventuring party I've been threatening them with for 2-3 years. Like the players, but perverted: more evil, more violent, more willing to ingratiate themselves with the enemy, and more willing to lie, kill, steal, and manipulate to get what they want. A dark mirror. A thief, a wizard, and a fighter (?), accompanied by the Deadboyz Battalion, 30-50 horrible mutants. Finally the players caught them by surprise on level three of the dungeon and launched a surprise attack. Strengths: higher level than the players, high hitpoints, high armor class, lots of powerful magic items, gadgets, spells, and contingency plans. Thief has very high sneak attack bonus as well as the players' legitimate but bullshit "cunning action" rogue power which lets them hide and dash as a bonus action, well see how it feels now!! wizard has 9th level spells and is for some reason accompanied by a child (a monster in disguise?), cold-themed fighter (?) has some magic (?), and an aura that strips max hit-points, as well as a magic hooded lantern that shoots a laser of fire, which my players promptly stole and are trying to use it against them, to little avail. Highly cooperative and highly trained and tuned in to each other. Sometimes I play enemies a little dumb, I figure the Deadboyz are my chance to play exactly as smart as I want to, with much of the knowledge that I, dungeon master, have about the players' class powers and fighting tactics. These guys have made it to level 18 for good reason. Weakness: I only have one brain, while my players have four and they are smarter than me, and my computer really chugs when I open all the tabs I need to run these guys effectively. Players are currently fighting them and it's shaping up to be a mess. I can't wait.

FUTURE BOSS FIGHTS:

Who could remain, in, THE SHATTERED LABYRINTHS OF ILLITH VARN?

The other two generals of Illith Varn have been named. They are Kaviel the Strange, and Ser Senedar the White. Ser Senedar is famed for his sword-fighting, and they encountered some of his knights on level one, but they know nothing of Kaviel, or why he is strange.

Ilken Wart the Laboratician runs the Bio-Recombination Lab. Every once in a while the players think about going back in there, but there's a crystal mist in there that does 1 hitpoint of damage for each 10 feet they walk, and deep inside they encountered some shadows shaped like Lords of Change which stole XP and ability scores and KOd Dirtface in one round, so they manage to talk themselves out of it every time.

The Black Pharaoh of the Grinning Pharaoh is named after one of the ancient rulers of the Psychodesert, and said to be buried inside. The two to three revenant warriors dislodged from time who guard the pyramid's entrance were awfully worried about the possibility of him coming back to life, but that doesn't seem likely, right?

General Malagon has sent them to steal a crown from a Demon of Song. Its music seems to permeating level three, and when their mantis-man, Zaxas, tried to sing his Fine Song and buff the players, he instead accidentally sang the demon's song, to no effect.

It is said that, before his death, Illith Varn built a golden tomb for himself. Nick, immediately on hearing this: "Fuck, I shoulda known he was a lich!"

Sometimes Nick says he wants to fight the Purple Dragon, Terrifex. He sleeps beneath the tower of slime in a bottomless pit in a crown the size of a stadium, which to be clear he more than fills. I say, bring it on.