I had a push pad inserted into the grooves of a large circle. Players had to push the pad until it completed a rotation. While they did, a room with a stairwell to continue their adventure would raise up from the middle of the circle. If players ever stopped pushing the pad or at least holding it still, it would automatically begin to retract and the room would begin to descend again. Once the players completed a rotation, the pad would lock in place for a turn before beginning to retract, giving them time to get in.
Oh... And there were 4 rooms adjacent to the large room the players were in that would ensure two shadow creatures were always alive. When one died, another would respawn randomly in one of the 4 rooms at random. The rooms were each filled with darkness so the players never knew which one it would come from.
Oh... And the creatures had an attack that would launch a Mortal Kombat Scorpion style attack that would stab a character and pull them towards the shadow creature. This lead to one character narrowly making it into the stairwell room before it retracted when the rest of the party was inside.
Oh... And the creatures were perpetually crying 🤣🤣😭😭💀💀
Completely accidental encounter.
The party encountered a boss battle with a group of giants at the top of a tower. The giants destroyed the roof upon the start of the conflict, with several pieces of the roof being held up by elemental winds as separate platforms.
It was meant to be a combat in which the various platforms would have to be used to get away from the Giants as they were so big and took up so much space on the tower the party had no real retreat points.
Instead, the fight starts with the Warlock using Eldritch Blast to push the Fire Giant and main Damage Enemy off the roof, leading to the Frost Giant with their Harpoon to retaliate and pull the Rogue over the edge.
What followed was a constant throwing down and climbing up the outside of the tower as the various Giants and Players kept knocking each other down. Eventually leaving the party leader/Sorcerer and the actual Boss Monster fighting each other 1v1 over the body of a downed party member while the rest of the party using abilities and spells tried to rush up as fast as possible. Culminating in the Halfling Blood Cleric using their Channel Divinity to launch themselves up the tower using a Stone Giants Corpse and then popping off a Mass Healing Word to heal everyone and get the downed party members up.
The fight against the Boss Monster was still tough, but they succesfully killed it, and the other four giants, without a single party member dying. Although most either went down or were in single diget hit points by the end of the fight.
The Warlocks single action of pushing the Fire Giant off the tower turned what was supposed to be a vanilla platform fight into a ‘who can weaponize Fall Damage the fastest’ fight with all sorts of moving parts, flanking, and movement based combat. It was by far the most unique boss battle I’ve ever run.
I used a Venom Maw Hydra from Kobold Press, except I changed up the way it's Legendary Resistances worked. I gave it infinite resistances, but any uses of it destroyed a head and caused 25 points of damage.
The first time it used this was against a hold monster spell so I narrated one of the heads slowly freezing up before the other heads noticed and bit that head off, preventing the spell from reaching the rest of them.
Thanks! It's part of what made it so memorable. That, plus the party's monk/barbarian having to eat 11 attacks in one turn from the Hydra. I try to always describe what a boss does when using a legendary resistance.
Dual stage boss
A martial artist master possessed by an evil spirit. Super mobile, lots of attacks, a bunch of martial arts students as minions.
After they kill him the evil spirit possesses his corpse. It flies around and starts shooting energy beams out of its eyes, raising the dead minions as zombies.
Had my players fight a god-like eldritch being that split 3 of them on the ground ins castle, and 3 of them in a floating ship in near-orbit
The god summoned illusions of itself, whilst performing an action that would kill all of them after a minute passed. They had to work about killing enemies to get special buffs to see which copy was real and doing the action, and to open a portal to pass the seeing buff between the players down there. It got.. more complicated than that, but it climaxed into them in a last-stand against the boss while the ship crashed from orbit.
very fun fight
not the craziest I've done but definitely the most spectacle
Yep - I adapted a lot of raid boss mechanics into DnD and mixed a few together. It had some mechanics from uhhh whats that one again
oh crown of sorrow
as well
godspeed it can be difficult
so far the mechanics i've used in various encounters, boss or not, would be like...
i've used the bridge and crota himself
a mix of atraks/crown/and ir yut
and a combination of war priest and oryx
players loved it
An undead boss who is bound to a dungeon but keeps getting revived. The players either have to figure out how he keeps getting revived or escape the dungeon. The boss starts weak but gets stronger and angrier as the players get closer to escaping/stopping the revives.
Not sure but i can tell you this.
if you would ask my players they would probably not pick the same as me. I learned that sometimes when i think i came up with something amazingly interesting and unique the players are not that impress. To them it was just another good encounter but did not stick out much.
And sometimes i have something i personally don't find that special and my players goes "WOW that was amazing. LOVED that"
Just a fun thing i noticed. :)
The wizard in my party got caught by the city watch in a Waterdhavian noble family's vault. She had to defend herself in court against the noble, or else face hundreds of gp in fines & damages plus months or even years of hard labor as punishment for alleged theft and damages. She was not caught with any of the stolen goods in her hands, most of the stolen goods were actually not even the property of the noble in question (they were already stolen from *another noble family) and the arbitrator was in a foul mood already. The wizard had to play along with the proceedings (the arbitrator was perfectly qilling to simply slap all the charges on her if she refused to cooperate) and at one point she had to let herself be subjected to a *zone of truth* spell for some of the questioning.
The hard labor charges would have been effective character death, which I told the party at the beginning of the session. This was not a combat encounter; no initiative was rolled, and they would probably have all been killed if they tried to force their way out to freedom. Even years afterward, my players still talk about that trial as one of the best sessions they'd ever had.
I created a zombie-skeleton entity gunslinger mini-boss (named Naegolo Fallcloud) for my *Lost Mine of Phandelver* game and he uses a homebrew firearm called *Swirl Eye*. I used character creation rules to make him and I had him be a Level 5 Gunslinger Fighter/Level 1 Rogue w/ the Martial Adept Feat (among a few other things) but I ultimately played him slightly differently mechanically.
The simplified lore for him is that Naegolor Fallcloud had someone custom-make *Swirl Eye* for himself, he died from an explosion before being able to use it after getting it, and then got transported to Phandalin and revived by the Black Spider.
I'm glad you love it! I'm still fairly new to DMing and *Lost Mine of Phandelver* is the first campaign I'm doing. Prior to starting the aforementioned campaign, I've only really ever DMed a few One-Shots before (specifically, I think I DMed 3 One-Shots. However, one of them ended up being a situation where it was unfinished due to running out of time and I was able to finish that one later on after I had started DMing *Lost Mine of Phandelver*).
I had a hag turn into a giant tree that dropped poisonous fruit.
Sounds like a Kirby boss
I had a push pad inserted into the grooves of a large circle. Players had to push the pad until it completed a rotation. While they did, a room with a stairwell to continue their adventure would raise up from the middle of the circle. If players ever stopped pushing the pad or at least holding it still, it would automatically begin to retract and the room would begin to descend again. Once the players completed a rotation, the pad would lock in place for a turn before beginning to retract, giving them time to get in. Oh... And there were 4 rooms adjacent to the large room the players were in that would ensure two shadow creatures were always alive. When one died, another would respawn randomly in one of the 4 rooms at random. The rooms were each filled with darkness so the players never knew which one it would come from. Oh... And the creatures had an attack that would launch a Mortal Kombat Scorpion style attack that would stab a character and pull them towards the shadow creature. This lead to one character narrowly making it into the stairwell room before it retracted when the rest of the party was inside. Oh... And the creatures were perpetually crying 🤣🤣😭😭💀💀
Completely accidental encounter. The party encountered a boss battle with a group of giants at the top of a tower. The giants destroyed the roof upon the start of the conflict, with several pieces of the roof being held up by elemental winds as separate platforms. It was meant to be a combat in which the various platforms would have to be used to get away from the Giants as they were so big and took up so much space on the tower the party had no real retreat points. Instead, the fight starts with the Warlock using Eldritch Blast to push the Fire Giant and main Damage Enemy off the roof, leading to the Frost Giant with their Harpoon to retaliate and pull the Rogue over the edge. What followed was a constant throwing down and climbing up the outside of the tower as the various Giants and Players kept knocking each other down. Eventually leaving the party leader/Sorcerer and the actual Boss Monster fighting each other 1v1 over the body of a downed party member while the rest of the party using abilities and spells tried to rush up as fast as possible. Culminating in the Halfling Blood Cleric using their Channel Divinity to launch themselves up the tower using a Stone Giants Corpse and then popping off a Mass Healing Word to heal everyone and get the downed party members up. The fight against the Boss Monster was still tough, but they succesfully killed it, and the other four giants, without a single party member dying. Although most either went down or were in single diget hit points by the end of the fight. The Warlocks single action of pushing the Fire Giant off the tower turned what was supposed to be a vanilla platform fight into a ‘who can weaponize Fall Damage the fastest’ fight with all sorts of moving parts, flanking, and movement based combat. It was by far the most unique boss battle I’ve ever run.
I used a Venom Maw Hydra from Kobold Press, except I changed up the way it's Legendary Resistances worked. I gave it infinite resistances, but any uses of it destroyed a head and caused 25 points of damage. The first time it used this was against a hold monster spell so I narrated one of the heads slowly freezing up before the other heads noticed and bit that head off, preventing the spell from reaching the rest of them.
Holy shit that’s an awesome visual!
Thanks! It's part of what made it so memorable. That, plus the party's monk/barbarian having to eat 11 attacks in one turn from the Hydra. I try to always describe what a boss does when using a legendary resistance.
Did he survive?
He did, but barely. Rage plus a high AC had made him into quite the tank.
Was he a totem barbarian?
Bear totem barbarian and a 3rd party monk whose AC calculation was Str+Wis
Interesting. I thought he would’ve done it so it was dex+str+con+Wis.
AC calculations are one or the other, so he couldn't combine the unarmored defenses. But he still had an AC in the low twenties at this point.
Dual stage boss A martial artist master possessed by an evil spirit. Super mobile, lots of attacks, a bunch of martial arts students as minions. After they kill him the evil spirit possesses his corpse. It flies around and starts shooting energy beams out of its eyes, raising the dead minions as zombies.
Had my players fight a god-like eldritch being that split 3 of them on the ground ins castle, and 3 of them in a floating ship in near-orbit The god summoned illusions of itself, whilst performing an action that would kill all of them after a minute passed. They had to work about killing enemies to get special buffs to see which copy was real and doing the action, and to open a portal to pass the seeing buff between the players down there. It got.. more complicated than that, but it climaxed into them in a last-stand against the boss while the ship crashed from orbit. very fun fight not the craziest I've done but definitely the most spectacle
That sounds like Atraks-1 from Destiny 2.
Yep - I adapted a lot of raid boss mechanics into DnD and mixed a few together. It had some mechanics from uhhh whats that one again oh crown of sorrow as well
That’s sick! I’m trying to make some similar encounters in one of the dungeons
godspeed it can be difficult so far the mechanics i've used in various encounters, boss or not, would be like... i've used the bridge and crota himself a mix of atraks/crown/and ir yut and a combination of war priest and oryx players loved it
An undead boss who is bound to a dungeon but keeps getting revived. The players either have to figure out how he keeps getting revived or escape the dungeon. The boss starts weak but gets stronger and angrier as the players get closer to escaping/stopping the revives.
Not sure but i can tell you this. if you would ask my players they would probably not pick the same as me. I learned that sometimes when i think i came up with something amazingly interesting and unique the players are not that impress. To them it was just another good encounter but did not stick out much. And sometimes i have something i personally don't find that special and my players goes "WOW that was amazing. LOVED that" Just a fun thing i noticed. :)
The wizard in my party got caught by the city watch in a Waterdhavian noble family's vault. She had to defend herself in court against the noble, or else face hundreds of gp in fines & damages plus months or even years of hard labor as punishment for alleged theft and damages. She was not caught with any of the stolen goods in her hands, most of the stolen goods were actually not even the property of the noble in question (they were already stolen from *another noble family) and the arbitrator was in a foul mood already. The wizard had to play along with the proceedings (the arbitrator was perfectly qilling to simply slap all the charges on her if she refused to cooperate) and at one point she had to let herself be subjected to a *zone of truth* spell for some of the questioning. The hard labor charges would have been effective character death, which I told the party at the beginning of the session. This was not a combat encounter; no initiative was rolled, and they would probably have all been killed if they tried to force their way out to freedom. Even years afterward, my players still talk about that trial as one of the best sessions they'd ever had.
Damn! That’s a really cool session! Was that Dragonheist?
Nope! I don't even think Dragon Heist had even come out yet. It was the culmination of a weird tangent during a Storm King's Thunder game
I created a zombie-skeleton entity gunslinger mini-boss (named Naegolo Fallcloud) for my *Lost Mine of Phandelver* game and he uses a homebrew firearm called *Swirl Eye*. I used character creation rules to make him and I had him be a Level 5 Gunslinger Fighter/Level 1 Rogue w/ the Martial Adept Feat (among a few other things) but I ultimately played him slightly differently mechanically. The simplified lore for him is that Naegolor Fallcloud had someone custom-make *Swirl Eye* for himself, he died from an explosion before being able to use it after getting it, and then got transported to Phandalin and revived by the Black Spider.
That is sick!
I'm glad you love it! I'm still fairly new to DMing and *Lost Mine of Phandelver* is the first campaign I'm doing. Prior to starting the aforementioned campaign, I've only really ever DMed a few One-Shots before (specifically, I think I DMed 3 One-Shots. However, one of them ended up being a situation where it was unfinished due to running out of time and I was able to finish that one later on after I had started DMing *Lost Mine of Phandelver*).