How to Make Epic Boss Fights in D&D | Part 1

What should I do if I basically NEED to make a boss solo, or can’t think of a reason a boss would have minions?

Your content is top tier, my dude.

Giving a solo boss dual initiative can also help keep them relevant but yeah friends still works better

All good ideas, good job

Dude, I’m about to run Curse of Strahd, I’m scared of going Nuclear on the party with Strahd. I plan on playing him like my life depends on it. Including the old grapple-throw off tower.

“They’re going to go “Super Nova”…”

Well said, sir.

One of my suggestions regarding full resources… a boss doesn’t need to just die when a pre-determined number is reached. Just because a rogue gets a huge sneak attack crit, a paladin crits a 2h weapon with a huge smite, hold person eat … they don’t need to die when they reach xyz hp.

Good stuff. But this isn't a video game. Any good DM should be fudging stats and abilities on the fly as they gauge the PC's risk and tension level. If you're surprised by a PC's attack\action then wonderful.. big bad just got some DR or he unveils some concealed nasty device. Oh, that crossbow can also repeat or is arcane. Or damn.. he can cast spells too! Looks like big bad just became a dark cleric.

I have a boss fight that goes down in a giant forge & the goal is to delay the boss to allow the Forge Master to make the weapon to kill it.

Question I want to use Vecna the arch lich and he gain this power to open up rifts to another dimension summoning forth Oozes and Monstrosity how could I do that

Used Green Hag, along with some imps.

Players all focus on the green hag, ignoring the imps, "cause she needs to go down fast".
Imps proceed on poisoning and killing almost everyone lol

I’ve been foreshadowing my BBEG (The Queen, Lvl 3 hexblade warlock lvl 17 bladsinger wizard) since session 3. At level 7 the party used their 1 wish to write the Wish spell into her spellbook, then she wiped their memories to make them think it was done willingly. They cleared up their minds a couple sessions later and re replayed that time with her and they managed to kill here and get one of her clones out of the way. Now they have a few months until the next clone is ready to come up with a plan to kill/stop her

if the room is an gladiator arena of honorable battle, how should I add hazards?

I like the idea of a boss who is really weak, but his minions are strong and pretty much endless. Like the king who is barely capable of holding a sword, but he has many powerful knights at his beck and call. If you kill the king? Nobody is paying those guards anymore, they have no reason to keep fighting. So the goal is to kill the "boss" before the minions overwhelm the party. Another idea that comes to mind is a weak, mind controlling creature that as soon as it's killed, the binding is broken and it's puppets are free again, and hopefully not hostile.

take a page from dark souls book and give some of your bosses multiple stages. I have a wizard who's been bugging my party for like ever. and he is actualy a werewolf. the fight is designed so that when the party manages to kill him in his wizard stage he then changes to his werewolf form to fight them for his second stage (I made my own werewolf statblock btw). the moment of changing stages is always fun in our campaign. the players get a moment where the fight stops as the boss takes center stage and utters someinsult or challenge before he reengages them with new abilities and features. also almost every time this multiple stage thing has happened the party has been rewarded with a magic item or a level up (milestone). This is a nice way to get them excited for winning the fight.

My bosses just have magically enough hitpoints until it feels like the party earned it or did something super cool.

So.... Where's the link to the adventures you wrote and published on DriveThruRPG? It's not in the description like you said in the vide. :'( I love your videos, by the way! :D

Just realized how easy my players been having it right now, thanks their next fight is gonna be real fun

I am a fan of two or three stage boss fights. They can start the fight with full resources and blow it all on the first phase... But now they have nothing to throw at that Drow Druid that just turned into a black dragon, and even less when he comes back as an undead black dragon due to the necromancer that was working with him placing a sigil to undead the dragon at the cost of his life. While doing this you are having creature teleport in every 2 or 3 rounds to keep the pressure on.

A fight like that will push your players to the brink and be so cathartic when they finish it for good.

I laugth so hard! My "the good, wise man, who helps the party"-guy also named Paxton

Thumps up just for the intro 🤣

Judging by your shirt, its clear which of the opening characters you filmed last. I feel so good about discovering that for no reason. I'm easily amused.

is it not sometimes funnier when the party just wtfpwn the boss youve carefully created?

Unfortunately the last point you brought up about boss battles is the one I came looking for an answer to

It's impossible or nearly impossible at low levels to beef up a boss

I'm writing a beautiful playground dungeon for a bunch of first timers and I really want things to look nice but this CR things got me over a hurdle

You can't really cut one into too many pieces, judicious use of cr zero monsters can be helpful but you can only throw out so many bets before it starts feeling cliche

My boss fight was against a modified bone devil for a lvl 3 party so 110 hp and ac of 16 so they can actually hit him.
First gimmick is that at the entrance of the dungeon they had a clue saying : Where there is light There is Darkness.
And in the boss room six pillar with one torch on each. Magical torch that cast Darkness on the room and since the boss has devil vision he can see but the party can't and they can only see the torches. Quite stressfull for them when they where grouped together and suddenly one of them got grab and dragged into the Darkness. They resolved the issue quickly by destroying the torches. Then begin to fight the Bone devil called Bony MacBoneface. Every time he lost 1/4 of his hp the boss got on a plateform and awoke randomly one or two in his last phase of his four minions in the room, 1 assassin skeleton, 1 skeleton mage, 1 skeleton knight and 1 skeleton champion with 2 scimitar.
The first time they tried the boss they got steamrolled because they decided to just damage burst his ass without breaking the torch so they got the four skeleton and the boss at the same time whilst in complete darkness.... the assassin destroyed them with his poisoned rapier and his sneak attack. Sooo the second time (it was their first dungeon and first character so got to be forgiving) they used their smooth brain and steamrolled the boss getting a skeleton at a time, destroying the torch and the rogue placed traps in front of each skeleton tomb. They were extremly happy so i think i managed it pretty well. Tell me what you think about it

I think a good thing to steal from a lot of Video Games here is phases. One of my favorite bosses that I designed was Deadham, a giant pig demon. He wasn't that interesting stat wise, all he really had that was threatening was a sweeping attack, but the thing which kept the momentum of the fight going was that I was altering how he played and looked.

When they reduced him to half HP, I had his skin and skeleton leap off of him and try to keep the players away. Then, when he was reduced to 10% of his HP, I had his skin fall off, hurting players attempting to climb onto him and attack him. Though it was a small detail, it really helped the players feel accomplished, and kept them from feeling they were fighting was basically just a giant chunk of hit points.

One thing I've started doing for boss fights (works every time) .... Don't determine the Boss' HP until the second or third round. I will describe damage and numbers for the first few rounds, but it's all a rouse. My main goal in rounds 1,2 and 3 is to see how much damage the party is doing on average. If they're doing 50 to 70 damage a round, then I can determine how many more rounds I want the boss to last, and then I assign an HP for them to reach. I do this for Three reasons - One: I want the party to feel like they're earning it. Two: I love giving out magic items and letting a party feel powerful. So, I already know just about anything I throw at them they're going to demolish. And Three: Doing this allows me to use just about any CR boss at just about any party level. Example: An Adult White dragon is a great boss fight, but it's CR 13 with only 200 HP. I've seen parties of 7th level dish out 200 HP worth of damage in three rounds! So, just nerf the dragon's damage a little and see how much damage the party is giving it for a couple rounds, and then decide on how long you want it to survive. They're doing 40 damage a round? Ok, three more rounds, that's 120 HP. .... Anyway, it works for me. The goal of the game isn't math, it's fun.

I never use dungeons for final fights..it got tired of using them.
I am with you I believe in using terrain. The punch line it depends on how the characters look when they rich 6th level.
For example let's say a ranger, fighter, mage assassin and healer.
I would use one of the characters background in this to surprise the players...the terrain I would pick...a thunder storm, lighting touches down, strike trees and the ground.
This forces the players to think, panic ect

I fought a 36 hp sentient pumpkin in a party city... dont ask

My biggest tip for a boss battle, make sure there is an RP element to it. So it's more than just math. Yes do all these fun things but my favourite thing I ever did was overwhelm the players with an easy kill switch. The players could auto win by breaking a dam. But that would destroy the town they've spent the last 10 sit downs interacting with. Even without them realizing the boss was gonna be hard after the first round, they were already freaking out over the obvious auto win switch.

In my experience the most important thing is to add at least one element which makes the fight unique. If you put a party against a monster and just go hit point for hit point it always feels very mundane. Try to spice it up with tactics, make the monster or BBEG interact with the enviornemnt, maybe they get desperate, maybe they try to run? Also if you create an atmosphere around the villain and give a sense of stakes it always makes it more meaningful

I don't mean to be mean, if this could be considered mean, i dunno, but your talking is interesting. i don't know how to put it in any other wawy or how to explain it any better, but the way you talk is just, interesting.
I know this is random, but i couldn't get this out of my head for the life of me, so i felt i needed to at least comment it to get it out of my mind. so thank you for letting me?
OH! and most importantly, thank you for the videos, i'm taking great inspiration from your videos, to be a better player and i hope, at some point, a good DM.
That's all, thank you again.

Me and my friends made a simpler version of d and d and I made a boss fight set in a volcano and it destroyed everyone course of its broken move and its effects.

Well I have an idea of boss fight which is pretty neat . Shortly you fight insane elder druid . He uses unknown spell and woods are becoming jungles where he hides . He can just get behind you and choke with a staff if you won't see him before . He also uses his abilities to turn into animals so he could ambush you or hide .
So players should be really careful with this boss or he will just choke you from behind . The only weak point is you can hear him , if he suddenly make a loud noise this place will be marked , you can also track him down , and he looks much more older than other animals if he turned into one .

my party fought some dudes in a warehouse once and it had a balcony that lead into an office, so the barbarian just kept throwing people off everytime they got close. great use of terrain. very fun combat

To go along with the "play to win" point, remember your bosses are against the PC's. Get into the mind of your boss, these adventurers have been mucking up your crim syndecat for months and now they're coming after you. Also do not be afraid to kill your PC's, it shouldn't be your goal as the DM, but it is your bosses goal. If a PC goes down, and then gets right back up, a boss might make sure the next time they finish the job, as well as who healed them. You're bosses aren't ignorant to the magic of the world. If a boss is smart and calculating, then yes they'd go after the healers first. If they're a big meaty tank, they'll go after the biggest person there.

I'm glad I watched this, because the boss I had planned broke every single rule you gave.

did a christmas 1 shot and of the bosses we made my favorite was frosty the snowman. (5 lvl 10 players)
one of his actions he could also do as a legendary action was to throw his hat to a nearby snowman. this basically works as a teleport but it also leaves the old body animated basically allowing him to create minions near the players and teleport away.

this led to a battle where our melee tanks were keeping animated snowmen handled while the casters chased frosty around as by leaving the animated snowmen people didnt want to take opportunity attacks to run and ignoring them would leave to an action economy nightmare long term.
the battle field was a expanse covered in various size snowmen so there was always a limit to how many he could make within a certain range as he needed a snowman to teleport to.

the snowman also healed 5ish hp every step they made giving frosty a bit more tankyness as he maneuvered the battlefield adding a dash action as a legendary action again to help keep some distance from the party throwing snowballs and ice magic.

he had other cool abilities and spells based around the song and stuff as well but yea boss fights really need some unique mechanics. be it lair actions, unique boss abilities or more. if your players only decision to make each turn is how much damage or healing do i want to do then there isnt any real gameplay just dice. in my example players had to worry about positioning where frosty would go next what to focus who to be where.

From my experience the funnest fights for players have been ones where the field does something be it traps timed events lair actions whatever. combine that wil stuff that utility would be more important. if a player uses a wall of stone style ability to block the door to prevent any more minions coming in thats way more interesting than just using another ranged spell attack. the problem you always need to think about though is 80% of players if they see a boss and minions no matter what happens they will just wail on the boss unless forced not to. no ones learned from world of warcraft that someone needs to take out the ads its all focus until we die hoping to take out the highest damage dealer. so keep that in mind and dont get too creative to were a player thinks the only out is the fastest win possible make sure the alternative ideas feel worth doing.

Just watched my party of 6 level 5s murk a Marid in around 3 turns, so thank you

Players Walking Into A Seemingly Empty Room: "Huh, this room seems empty.."
iPad: Starts playing boss music
Players: "Wait wha~ OH SHI~! D= "

I agree... But... Not all bossess are created equal. Some of them are supposed to be buff full of HP, do massive damage and destroy everyone with layer action power word kills. BUUUUUT, I'd like to point out that, a boss can be a very weak and rich noble that causes problems for the party for a long time, and not necessarily easy to get to, having hired mercenaries, wizards, and maybe even entire armies to fight for him, making the players disassemble his operation, convince people to betray him, buy off the mercenaries and when they finally catch up to him, he is at the mercy of the party... Groveling and begging for his life... No twist where he's an ancient red dragon or lich or Demogorgon this whole time. No boss fight necessary. It was satisfying as hell...

I hate stories where the heroes need to be handicapped in some way to make the villain a match for them.

Why not have the boss be tough enough that it'll still be a challenge if the heroes can pull out all the stops?

In the middle of designing a homebrew boss. I have been spinning out trying to work out how to make the boss fights more challenging. Cheers for the help!

Let the party meet the boss before the final boss fight. Show them how powerful he really is, kill 1 or 2 player characters, toy with them before the boss leaves them be. Could be a fair warning for them to really prepare for the final confrontation.

My only tip, make the fight dynamic. Something should change during the fight to change the approach.

Example, my players are fighting a four armed sword robot and they shoot its head off. The robot cannot see anymore, so it start to go berserk. Then the players break it, but it starts building up electricity, so the players take cover to shield themselves for when the robot explodes

One fun trick I do is surprise the players with the boss so they have to improvise with what they have and play the boss like either a very savage creature or a intelligent learning creature so that it pushes the players to make plans to take them down. For example I homebrewed a one shot and the players were on a small boat fighting my homebrew creature a cobradile, I made it so that it would watch what the players did and avoid taking damage the same way twice. Another thing that happened was that the players tried luring its head out of the water by throwing chunks of raw meat in there but then they switched it up and stuffed the meat with poisonous berries that they got eirlier in the session which really brought out that amazing feeling of outsmarting the big bad boss instead of just a simple hit till ded.

Hehehe those players were talking smack about the combat in front of the DM. Cries in DM

Another reason why boss minions are so important is because if theres only one badguy, only one player will get the satisfaction of getting the finishing blow.
It's nice to give the others a chance to feel that they really made a difference.
Sure, I didn't cut the Black Dragons head off, but I finished off that annoying as hell Naga that had been biting us in the ass throughout the battle.

There's two tools I find invaluable for good boss fights: 4E style minions, and hazards which clearly threaten an area in advance.

For anyone who hasn't played D&D 4E, minions were a type of enemy with 1 HP who did fixed damage (rolling less dice is good) and didn't take damage from missed attacks. They let your players feel awesome for being able to take out bunches of enemies, and they keep some heat off your boss.

The telegraphed hazards are a great way to ensure combat stays mobile. No one wants to stand still trading hp until the bad guy dies, that isn't fun. But perhaps you're fighting in a collapsing cavern. Tell a player the ground beneath them begins to crack and crumble, or a shadow begins to form from the boulder that's about to occupy their space. So long as they have a round to avoid the hazard, they don't feel cheated and combat remains dynamic. It also gives some great opportunities for players to push bad guys in the way, or adds tension if the bad guy uses something to restrict their mobility. One of the best moments I've had in my group was when the fighter shoved the bard out of the way of a falling boulder, getting flattened in his place (the boulder was not an instant kill, they were both just really low and they knew the boulder's initiative was coming up). Even though those two characters hated each other, that bard went on to sing songs of the fighter's heroic deeds any chance he got for the rest of the campaign.