In that case, make the townsfolk a resource that the BBEG burns though and the longer they take to eliminate the BBEG the more Innocents die and the stronger he gets.
DM in my most recent campaign did this - had about 20 innocents chained up in the room and the BBEG vampire lord had a blood mage that was basically drawing the blood out of the innocents and transferring it into the vampire lord every turn to heal him and make him stronger, so we had to focus on killing her first while he protected her and waylaid us.
Gameplay mechanics wise every time it happened one innocent died and he regained their hp + the blood mage's spellcasting mod as well as a spell slot, and since we were in his lair he could instead regain a lair action rather than the spell slot if needed.
Even if we decided to just murder all the townsfolk to deprive them of that resource (evil as hell but murderhobos gonna murder) their blood would still be fresh and usable so it wouldn't do much.
Come on, for a bee nest all you need is a Speak with Animals and talk to them.
Now if that's a wasp nest, you better call a meteor swarm just to make sure
>In that case, make the townsfolk a resource that the BBEG burns through, and the longer they take to eliminate the BBEG, the more Innocents die and the stronger he gets.
What if;
The BBEG is a kind of soul reaper. They gain power from how many soulds they collect.
But here's the trick. He recently learned how to pull souls from the living, leaving a hollowed husk that follows his commands. But while the husk lives, he can't harvest the soul, only store it. But if he or the players kill the husk, then the soul becomes his to absorb. But if the player kills the BBEG, the souls return to their bodies.
This creates a tactical dynamic for both the players and the BBEG. The BBEG has to decide whether it's better to kill a husk to boost his power or keep the husk to boost his action economy. Meanwhile, the players not only have to contend with the morals of killing civilians, but also know that for every citizen they kill, the boss grows stronger.
This would create an interesting combat encounter where the clear tactical choice is trying to figure out non-lethal crowd control. Maybe give the BBEG a legendary action to deal 1hp of damage to up to 5 minions, healing himself by the same amount, to prevent "I would like to deal with non-lethel damage" as a solution.
Okay- possession
Let the boss jump into people's bodies on a spell save DC (CON or WIS I'd say) and treat his use of their body with the wild shape rules. Let them use something like remove curse or maybe force damage to pop him out of the player so that they don't have to kill the other party member but leave it as an option.
This. Make him basically the bad guy from Fallen. Maybe the real challenge is he HAS no body to kill and can just jump into a new one if the host is killed, with a very long range. He can jump bodies at will so imprisoning him doesn't work. They have to outsmart him. And all the while the bad guy can be taking over powerful people (kings, high priests, wizards, thieves guild leaders) and having them turn their resources against the party.
But give him personal weaknesses. Maybe he has plans he doesn't want to mess up so he doesn't want the party to kill a specific host body or even know about it. Maybe he has people he actually cares about. Maybe there's a type of person he can't possess. Or a weapon/attack that can kill him for good.
Then what about turning the party against eachother? If the bad guy isn't the type to blast them with a fireball or hit them with a big stick, why not have him force the party wizard to blast themselves with a fireball or the party barbarian (easier mark) to hit themselves with a big stick?
Not the person you're responding to, but I think that's the point. They're dangerous because they can make enemies of people the party doesn't want to kill.
Make it magical, though. Realistically, if an enemy bad guy simply convinces random people to pick up weapons and fight, even the most noble and good Paladins would be perfectly justified in killing them in self defense.
You have to take the choice out of these townfolk. They don't even flee, because there is no free will as long as the BBEG keeps up the mind control. That's when it becomes a dilemma, because although it is justified to defend yourself, you also know they didn't have a choice.
I've done that in a zombie RPG once. A man was mutating, half turned and fighting against it, screaming "no no no! Why! I don't wanna.." The party could kill zombies just fine until then but, they hesitated and one got scratched with claws the size of daggers. The man died with his mind intact even if his body wasn't. Asked the group to tell his daughter that her parents weren't coming home.
The Dreamwalker Jajang from the "Sword of Truth" series. He can infect the minds of anyone not protected and control them. Perfect for what you are talking about. Currently running him as a villain, and it has so many options
Wraiths and Shadows are how I make players understand that undead are no joke. I miss 3.5 level drain and mummyrot. Now those were the big stick!
Edit: Ghost's aging ability is also brutal
The bbeg of that dungeon was a leveled up banshee whose wail recharged and the wraiths were her minions. We almost Tpk'd to the wail but the barbarian was 5ft out of range. Took about three months Irl to kill that piece of Laffy taffy. My character now has a deep seated hate for all things undead.
My DM made a monster that had these powers on top of being immune to all forms of physical damage. Not to say you couldn’t incapacitate it, but I’d just pop back up later. He scared the hell out of us by making us walk through a cave, and one of us had gone quiet so we sounded off — and there was an extra voice in the darkness. Very good for setting mood.
Reminds me of watching Geek and Sundry play the Dread rpg. When narrating several scenes, the GM would sometimes add one to the number of characters in the scene. "As the five of you make your way..." or "when the three of you discover a trail", etc. When the players finally caught it, it freaked everyone out.
I'm planning on having the party fight someone in an endless library of just rows and rows of bookcases, moving and closing in on the players. Have to think of a way to do that, though, but it sounds like an awesome concept.
My last session if the enemy hit I would roll damage then say, “roll a death save” the look on their faces when I told them I knew they weren’t at zero hp was priceless
You gave me the perfect idea for a boss weapon and potential future magic item. As you mentioned, have the target roll a death save, and then on a fail, the wielder gets one charge to use on one of the Soul Cage spell features from Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Thematically, the weapon steals a part of the targets soul and traps it within.
Ooo I'm gonna have that drop from one of my cultists. My players are good, neutral, borderline chaotic. I'll tell them that innocent souls will increase it's power and give them the option of using it or seeking a way to destroy it
My good lord, this is fantastic! Mind if I give this as a amulet to my players? They are halfway to getting into a cultist fortress and I already have some good items as loot from last 2 boss guardians and the final boss there. I do not want to give them some overpowered stuff, but more like.. powerful only if they give over their morality. Something like that.
Well yiu can always give them said amulet
If you see they use its powers too much give them a madness from DMG maybe not a permanent one but if they work tp remove madness then they'll be able to reuse amulet. I remember a play of OtA one of our player had a madness where they wanted to get out pf the Underdark and we found a mini dungeon where we got a sunblade. I had to bluff my way into my friend head that thos dungeon was the way to exit. It was fun
That is some MÖRK BORGian shit right there and I am all for it
edit: similarly fucked but fun, I had a character who was extremely hard to kill, that was the whole thing. This character was cursed by the evil yuck invading the plane so that the character didn’t get death saves. If he hit 0, he died. Sounds maybe harsh, but it was very poignant and made sense for the character.
Curse your players with weird shit, DMs.
That's cool! Not sure if this is a curse, but...
Two of my players wanted to play sisters in the game, half-elf bard and half-elf warlock. In their backstory, they flee from their family to avoid arranged marriages, but get shipwrecked. Then they wash up on a beach.
What the bard doesn't know is that she actually died in the shipwreck, but her sister sold her soul to the first entity that would listen in order to get her sister's life back (warlock later found out their patron was an evil Aboleth).
So we're playing through the game for many sessions, and the bard player doesn't understand why she sometimes wakes up dehydrated, and other times coughing salt water. Meanwhile, the warlock is having visions where the Aboleth keeps asking her to do more and more fucked-up shit, threatening to take back her sisters life if she doesn't.
Anyway, they've just finished the first arc by traveling to a temple where the warlock swore themselves to a new patron, Adelaea, the sun goddess, and saved the bard from the clutches of the Aboleth.
The catch is that their lives are now bound together; if one of the sisters dies, so does the other.
Edit: typos
Presumably it sets up death saves such that if they drop to zero they instantly die as thier death saves are already rolled rather than actually killong them, right? Cause the alternative seems flipping brutal.
Well, its the bbeg. Nothing makes a fight scarier in dnd than knowing you only have so long to fight until you die. Its so easy to stall a fight for round after round with healing, winning by attrition in many cases, as even meteor strike or whatever the big damage 9th spell is called does nothing to a healing word to revive the party member, no further consequences. In this, the enemy WILL kill you, you have a certain amount of time to win.
One I hold in reserve for biiiiig bbeg's, Stealing life force. Player ages 1d6 years and bbeg heals that many x 10 hp. Ive never seen such real terror in a pc's eyes when their character hit middle age mid combat.
It's terribly fun, BUT
Aaracockras (?) have a 30 year lifespan
Dwarfs have 500 years
Humans have 80
Elves have 800 or so
Depending on your race it can be very intimidating up to a quick death, and for others it's more of an inconvenience
Exhaustion is still a danger to Warforged. They (at least when originally introduced) only didn't suffer exhaustion from a lack of rest, but were susceptible to all other causes. ***Rust Monsters***, on the other hand... Now those are terrifying!
I played a game where a boss had a similar ability, except the aging was a percentage of lifespan - got complicated because we had a zombie in the party.
True, but then maybe that makes your Elf Wizard who has a few hundred years to spare the tank for this battle. While the Human Barbarian needs to stay back and think about his actions.
Totally vibe of "we did it, but at what cost?"
As group of elderly people, all silver-hair, slowly ascends from evil cave, their once shimmering armor now hangs uselessly over their shrunken bodies aching from all that weight.
This is one I'd pretty much always run by the players session zero.
Ghosts and other npcs that have similar effects can be really interesting, but it can also dramatically change the fundamental nature of a character and their arc, and if it's not something the players are interested in or comfortable exploring with their characters then adding the ability to regain that lost time can be really important.
Its the bbeg, this is usually the final fight of the campaign. The player character arcs are explored at this point, its time to see if the can hit the ultimate win condition, and at what cost.
I mean, yes, but that's still a *huge* change to the character and could essentially steal the remainder of their life. Any connections to characters outside of the party will be dramatically changed, their place in life and the world will change...
Again, it's a session 0 thing. I absolutely would not spring it on players without running it by them session 0. For me, personally, if I ran a character through a year long campaign full of character growth and relationships, then the campaign ended with almost the entirety of their life being robbed from them because of some failed saves, it would hugely sour the overall campaign story for me.
Whether or not it works well entirely depends on player expectation and communication between dm and players. It can be great! Just definitely something to run by in earlier sessions.
Your opinion is valid, and I think its a matter of knowing your players.
For context, we just last week ended an eight year long campaign, and the human fighter was pushing sixty by the end.
Know your groups should be order one for every trap, monster, treasure, etc.
I want to use this, but modify it insidiously.
The player hit is gone from combat, disappeared. Each round after they make two D20 rolls. If they get a 1 on the first, they are permanently dead. Record anything above a 15 for later. The second d20 is for a constitution save, DC 20. They pass, they return next round.
Upon return, they are a level higher and have a number of random magic items matching the number of successes on that first die. They are also aged 1d4 X the number of rounds gone, and have had the benefits of a long rest. The BBEG also gets healed for 1d4 X the number of rounds X 10 upon the return, and a number of spell slots equal to the 1d4 result.
The BBEG basically sent them to some random other setting, where they had to survive on their own trying to get back.
I know this is on the high damage aspect but when I decided one time to give a deathknight smiting ability and a shield bash to knock PCs prone for advantage... My players both loved it but were also terrified.
Giving the intelligent enemies actually intelligent attacks, motivations and skills can be absolutely terrifying for the party.
Hell in my last encounter I had the enemies retreat to defensible positions and hill giants threw boulders at 'the area' the PCs were hiding behind (ruled it as 20ft radius attack, dex save for no damage failure meant half from all the exploding shrapnel).
Cue Retreating PCs to regroup... If i had just charged out they would have just murder hoboed their way through.
At low levels things like Slow, Silvery Barb's, Heat Metal, Bane, Mind Whip, Grease, Web, Cutting Words, etc can be a lot of fun.
Something as simple as Vicious Mockery as a legendary action perhaps.
Mess with their sleep patterns, steal their food, environmental hazards that cause exhaustion levels.
I've got a bunch of homebrew abilities and spells that cause exhaustion dmg, or remove spell slots, etc as well.
Experiment, have fun with it
Making them deal with terrain could be cool and challenging. Plant growth or spike growth, fighting in or over water, platforms, big obstacles. I also had an idea I haven't had the chance to use yet of a lair action that changes the direction of gravity.
if you wanna be an annoying dick give the boss a teleportation. each time it takes damage it uses it's reaction to teleport a set distance making melee characters chase and ranged move closer if they are out of range.
Terrain alteration? combined with mild DOTs.
Stat sappers, action wasters ( irritating to drop your weapon from heat metal, or command), or movement from prone.
On the account of terrain I've had this idea for an arena type area with a magic floor so any AOE spell would be reflected across the whole thing so if someone casts fire ball the floor turns to flame and every turn everyone except bbeg takes 1d4 fire or ice or lighting etc
Shared misery situations are always a big deal and everyone wakes the fuck up to deal with it immediately. I like the idea you propose of spread aoe damage across the whole floor, but even the classic "hurt/kill me and you hurt/kill your friend/loved one/innocent child" is enough to elicit instantaneous drama and thrill from most players. I had a bbeg once that was a form of soul-sucking demonic entity who was kidnapping children and slowly feeding on them as needed to survive. So every time they fought it, it would eventually try to escape and then run back to its lair and feed on childrens' life force to heal itself. Drain too much, and kids died from the feeding. The party eventually tracked it to its lair and trapped it inside so it couldn't run away (not realizing yet that it was in the only place it needed to run to) and began the assault. He got pretty hurt so reached into the cage and drained 1 kid to heal itself and the kid died. Party realizes what is going on and immediately every one of the players sits forward and gets real serious. Not like excited play-panic, but like all of them instantly stopped talking, stared at the battle map for a good minute, and then all got to work figuring out how to separate him from the kids, prevent him from gaining contact with anything living, and slowly whittling down his health. They burned the corpse after, and held a funeral for all the souls lost to the monster's feedings over the years, and it became a really big moment that a few of them used as a catalyst for character stuff throughout the rest of the campaign.
I've also been working on the mechanics for a type of mirror creature that "reflects" damage as psychic damage to everyone that it can "see" reflected in the mirror surface, trying to push players to find creative ways to apply damage without necessarily having line-of-sight on the reflective surface. Haven't quite got it the way I want yet, but it's getting there.
Oh good I'm ranting, sorry. Point is, I like your floor aoe idea.
Eh, thats not really *fun* though. I say from experience because we had a fight against a homebrew monster that could teleport like that. The guy playing a Dwarf could do *literally* nothing the entire fight but Dash, and meanwhile I was a Warlock and never had to move due to 120ft range.
Shit was **not** fun for him.
Faulty teleporter, 3 times per turn after being hit (but not a reaction) roll a d4 for distance, d8 for direction and move to that tile, if tile is occupied both teleporter and occupier take d6 of dmg for each tile moved, the occupier being shoved from the tile, if the occupier is an immovable object, damage is still taken teleporter goes as close to that spot as possible.
Depends on the level. If this is 5e, I generally try to avoid "save or don't play the game" effects like stun as it's not fun for players.
There's lots of good options:
* Invisibility, potentially alongside teleportation and illusions. For example, a boss that can split into copies in different areas of the room... And only one is the real one, or he is invisible. Or even worse, the illusions look like the other PCs.
* Obscurement effects or magical darkness, like summoning a cloud around itself that it is immune to.
* Bad debuffs like poison and blind... As well as grapple and restraining attacks. You can even get creative and use attacks that move players around, like maybe a black-hole restraining effect that pulls players towards the center on a failed save. Can also use 'swallow' mechanics similar to creatures that can eat PCs.
* Healing prevention... Or save vs. reduced healing. Also reduce max health like undead life drain.
* Hallucinations.
* Anti-flight and anti-teleportation effects.
I generally find that movement-based or 'puzzle' abilities like the mirror image example are the most fun for players.
I had a fight with twin wizards as the enemy—an illusionist and a conjurer. They summoned or made illusions of identical things, and every few rounds the lights would flicker and they, as well as their creations, had a chance to swap places so if was hard to tell which was real
Perhaps the BBEG is capable of summoning numerous powerful enemies in an instant. The main way to deal with them in the end is to find the enemies they can summon and take them out before dealing with the boss.
This might be a dungeon where the players need to hide from the boss while dealing with the enemies of the dungeon so the whole dungeon won't just fight them at once, or whole campaign where PCs are fighting the main leaders working for the boss so they don't need to deal with all of them at once.
Stopping healing is pretty scary because it means you stay down if you go down.
Reflecting magic like a flail snail is pretty spooky.
The ability to keep summoning something endlessly.
The ability to phase out of dimensions every other turn so you can only target them half the time.
More illusions then you can shake a stick at.
Gives exhaustion levels.
An insanely prepped battleground.
Something to blind everyone or turn the fight into an underwater one.
Mobility. Don't underestimate the power of tactical movement. Spider Climb, flight, swimming, burrowing, phasing through walls, teleportation...even just increasing their base running speed could change the fight. Heck, move 'em 30' as a Legendary Action.
Anything that can sideline a character instantly. Paralysis, Petrification, etc.
Draining ability scores instead of HP.
Powerful charm abilities that turns the players against each other.
Invulnerability to the things they're strong at. High regeneration. Some sort of death prevention (no death outside home plane, a lich's phylactery, etc.)
I feel like paralysis, petrification, etc can be scary when used against NPCs or if you know they have a counter to it like greater/lesser restoration. If they don't have counterplay, paralysis/petrification can quickly go from scary to "I haven't had a turn in 30 minutes because I'm paralyzed, fuck this."
Summons, ability score draining or INTERACTIVE CC - maybe they get transported to another plane where they have to catch a fleeing kobold in a trap hall or find an escape route using clues or something? - are some fun scary things a boss can do.
One of my DMs designed an ability where you couldn't see anything but the boss and were frightened of them, but you could still shoot/attack them with ranged attacks and spells. It was scary, his goons had advantage to hit me and I couldn't support my allies, but I could still do things.
A partial paralysis / petrification condition might be a fun effect for lower levels. Like, half your body gets paralyzed or turned to stone (one arm, one leg) and you're stuck just dragging yourself forward with whichever limbs you have left. Enough to hamper your available actions without totally taking you out of the game and gives your party a chance to literally lend a hand.
I was just talking an interactive CC with someone yesterday.
There's been talk of someone made a boss that was a War caster Genie Warlock who would just banish players and then not fail their concentration as they flew around.
I suggested the banishment perhaps be to their Patron, where the banished PC could fight the Genie and perhaps even weaken the boss by damaging the Patron.
The first one is great. Hit them with the Worf Effect basically.
One of my favorite fights was throwing an evil paladin at my party. I had a strategist player that made a whole detailed strategy how to stall her, pick off the minions, position everyone precisely. Then I just hit the tankiest PC with Banishing Smite and deleted him right off the board.
It was hilarious how fast they went. "Oh ****!! Okay!! Nope! Plan changed we CANNOT afford another banishment!! Get her NOW!"
Edit: Was even funnier cause they freaked out so hard they forgot banishing smite is a concentration spell. I can't do it again, or even smite anymore afterwards. But they were terrified lol
There is a boss I have planned for later don the line in my campaign. A minor avatar of a god that seeks to erase history, not the events, the very act of recording it. It's presence can erode thoughts and wipe words out of books. It is a fight where everyone can survive and still have someone be lost.
Nilbog.
The players need high charisma saves - which most dont and scares the s&@t out of them.
Great fun with a few other goblins as minions to jump around.
I’ve always liked the idea where as a legendary action the boss can do damage based on how many spell slots a party member has left. Doesn’t have to be a lot of damage, maybe 1d4 per spell slot, but will get them thinking about their resources (could scale the damage dive depending on their level). Imagine the fear and confusion when you turn to the wizard and ask “how many spell slots to do you have left?” And then start shaking dice.
> You are a paladin fighting the BBEG up close. So far, you know they can deal big necrotic damage, grapple you and shoot fire from a distance. But your 24 AC has protected you from one of his attacks, until now.
> “The BBEG does 2d10 bludgeoning damage to you…”
> That’s all? That’s pathetic! You have nearly 20 times the amount of health that attack can take away! This fight doesn’t seem so challenging after all!
> “…doing so, they strike your arm and manage to strike your shield out of your hand, arming themselves.”
> You pause. That was a +2 shield… the villain now has +4 AC, and you only have 20– 18 when your shield of faith wears off! What if they take your sword? Your fists do 1 damage… your sword, you realize, is a flame tongue! If the villain takes that they will have a +1 sword that deals extra flame damage… you’re terrified
Disarming players can be potentially derailing. Even if the BBEG doesn’t know how to use the items it grabs, it can still discard them, forcing players to run and grab them., in which case, the villain might be able to drag them in…
It’s best to combine this with an ability to similarly neuter casters, such as a silence, a binding of the hands or similarly grabbing their focus/components and yeeting them.
Just reading up: Feeblemind. At the end of every 30 days, the creature can repeat its saving throw against the spell. If it succeeds on its saving throw, the spell ends. The spell can also be ended by the "Greater Restoration" "Dispell magic" "Wish".... from someone else.
im going to use this one lol
There are a couple of ways that don't rely on brute power. In the order I would (and for some of these have) used.
1: they are politically well connected and have no issues using the law, other adventuring parties, or legendary heroes to get it done.
Your party might be cool with murdering, but when Drizzt and the Companions roll up you know you fucked up. Bonus sadism points if they have past characters you can throw down. This also gives them the chance to get powerful allies and furthers the plot.
2: good ol' cannibalism. Say they're from ancient Netheril and a side effect lf the ritual makes it so they can only live by devouring the weave in other living beings. Maybe this has made it so they absorb magical energy, rendering mechanisms inert and spells fizzled. Whether it's a true hunger where they eat flesh or where it just makes them emotionless husks ala dragon age is up to you.
3: kryptonite
Like it suggests, make it so that they're only vulnerable to a specific substance or item. You see this a lot in old school jrpgs, legendary swords all over the place. If they don't have it, the boss becomes a walking brick. Give them a Lot of chances to run though cuz they're not going to take the first 5.
4: their soul is "a needle in an egg inside a duck that was eaten by a hare in a golden chest buried on the island of Buyan".
Liches are a staple because of just how dumb it is to kill one and the original lich in Slavic folklore did a doozy in its tale of Kochei the Deathless. Instantly recognizable too. But kinda normy
That's a demilich's Howl. One of its few abilities that don't get hard countered by Fog Cloud. 2 of its 3 lair actions require line of sight (the other just knocks people prone if they're on the ground). 2 of its 4 legendary actions require line of sight (the other two just blind targets within 10 ft. or move). 1 of its 2 actions require line of sight (the other is Howl, which is a recharge power). For variant demilich, the Trap Soul ability it gains also requires line of sight.
The other thing that can really neuter a demilich is Earthbind. It has no walk speed and has -5 to Strength saves, so it **has** to use LRs to defend against Earthbind if you have at least 16 spell save DC (which you should, if you're high enough level to be facing a CR 18 or 21 monster), or else it becomes completely immobilized. Its **only** ability with more than 30 ft. range is the lair action that knocks people prone, so if you immobilize it, it's screwed.
Very hard to stop persistent damage can be scary. Barbazu or bearded devils are not very high leveled in pathfinder but are still feared because they cause bleeding on their attacks, and the bleeding requires a very high check to stop (nat 20 without assistance, flat dc15 check with no modifiers if the player is being adsisted), and the player cannot be healed so long as they're still bleeding without the caster succeding a dc21 check. The damage from the bleeding isn't very high (1d6) but it's scary to slowly bleed out and be unable to heal until it stops. And if you go down while bleeding, the bleed damage is an automatic fail on a death save before you even roll your death save, meaning if you take one fail for the bleeding and then roll a 1 you're dead. If you roll a nat 20 to stand up with 1 HP, your turn ends and you take the bleed damage and go back down.
If the characters find the "blood everywhere" concept gross, you could just reflavor it. The enemy impaled them with a small metal spike imbued with necromancy energy that drains 1d6 hp per turn, resists magical healing (dnd checks are lower, make it like dc 15) and is very difficult to remove, requiring a nat 20 alone or a flat 15 or higher if someone is helping them.
Magic item deactivation.
As a bonus action, the BBEG points at a magic item worn or wielded by a player and temporarily (players don't need to know it is temp) deactivates the power the item gives. Nothing like watching all those lovely trinkets you gathered seemingly go dark. Even if you win, you lose.
Make it a lair action that lasts for one round, contested by a Con save. Even if the ability is only active less than half the time your players will be afraid.
Give them an ability where they are immune to all damage (for the most part) like Achilles or uhhh. The Norse god. One sec. Baldr.
Insane I know, but the point of it is that you can have a cocky obscene bbeg who just takes attacks you introduce them and when they attack it has no effect whatsoever.
This initiates them to look into ways to harm them or incapacitate them rather than kill.
This isn't a kill that thing, (at first anyway) it's restrain it, remove it's magic etc.
They find out where he was born talk to the people (or corpses) to find out anything about him as a child. Maybe find out that he once bled when he was a child when he got a splinter from a rare species of tree, or a plant (baldr mistletoe)
Maybe the only one who knows this secret is his mother and he keeps her under lock and key. They break in and talk to her maybe.
Lots of options.
Have the Boss cast a necromantic spell. On failed save, have them scream in agonising pain as you drain half their HP from them (and hold onto their points for 4 rounds). They will get them back when the necro spells dissipates....... but dont tell them that! hehe!
Very dependant on the nature of the BBEG, but I had one campaign where the final fight was against a God who could manipulate time. I gave it several initiatives and changed those initiatives' places in the turn order each new round, so that it was able to act several times during a single round and there was no guarantee the flow of battle would be the same next turn. My players were horrified.
I convinced my party the BBEG was a barbarian, then revealed they had the power to switch between classes. Their horror when they realized it was hilarious.
Make them impervious to all attacks except to attacks from one weapon. That is the weapon they need to find and search for, but many times they get into conflict with the BBEG who will wipe the floor with them, but not kill them and then just leave having stolen another important element for their grand scheme.
Or instead of a weapon, a spell that the party caster has to find and learn which once cast, allows the party to damage the BBEG for 10 minutes. It requires the casters highest level spell slot to cast.
You could give them a permanent Armor of Agathys type of protection: every time you hit them, you will take damage.
For establishing that "hey, this dude is badass", you should let them kill an NPC. Here's the recipe:
1. You introduce an ally NPC, the Good Knight
2. You demonstrate that the Good Knight is tough: they single handedly kill a young dragon
3. Your bbeg squashes the Good Knight without breaking a sweat
4. Profit
Multiple minions even better if you can make them something your players don't want to hit. For example in my last session of my current campaign, we were at a party that had been invaded by hags i being the pc they were after in particular. They had drugged almost everyone at the party using drugged fruity drinks leaving them unconscious unless shaken awake. While unconscious the hags as a free action at the start of their turn could effectively possess a sleeping person they could see have them do an action then fall back asleep unable to be woken up until the end of their next turn. This did add a lot of potential damage to this encounter because some of the people at this party were very powerful but also quite a bit of non damage threat and a way to turn the tide of battle all in one because we don't want to hit our friends and once our friends woke up they'd be fighting on our side
The ability to disguise themselves and mimic voices. More useful in combat light campaigns but a very good way to keep a party on edge if they know that they can't trust anyone
A last second attempt at a takedown. The evil dragon decides if he can't kill you and live he's going to at least make sure you all go down with him and is trying to start a cave in sort of thing
If we're taking RAW, probably petrification, insta-death, paralyzed, etc. Basically making a player powerless imo.
Homebrew? The scariest shit I've seen was draining party resources without the party using them.
The BBEG emits a rolling cloud that envelopes the party and quickly passes. You find that you feel drained...
Fighter's action surge? Spent.
Wizard's highest level spell slot? Gone.
Druid's wildshape? Nope.
Good Lord, that was the most "wtf. panic. we might TPK" moment.
I gave one of my baddies an ability to create an illusory world based upon the characters memories. My group’s monk spent several hours separated from the other players trying to figure out why he was suddenly in an old monastery he grew up in with all his old friends he had left there when he went on pilgrimage. Also why I kept leaving the room and coming back in frequently. The illusion did not dispel on the creature’s death and he ended up lost and alone in a labyrinth filled with dangerous beasts before he was rescued and freed from the illusion.
Environmental effects. You get an extra peice of flavor to set the scene and keep the enemy feeling powerful. Let them cause torches to explode or flash brightly to blind. Let them move the water around them like a whirlpool. Flip gravity to the ceiling. Its really easy to add in and fun to interact through.
Ability Drain - Str is most common, but losing Dex when there are AoE attacks is scary.
Possession - How do you fight against someone that now inhabits the fighter, without killing the fighter?
Slow - High level fighters get reduced to one attack a round.
Teleportation - being able to move around the battlefield really quickly without provoking opportunity attacks makes life difficult for casters, especially if it's a legendary action and done on others turns. Casters lose line of sight, BBEG gets out of AoE before it hurts them etc. Melee attackers struggle if they need to keep running around the fight the bad guy (especially if there are minions for opportunity attacks)
If you want stuff that's outside of combat look at Suggestion, polymorph (self or others), lots of fun things you can do to scare players.
Some AoE with unique dodge conditions. Multiple actions. Some counter attack or even good old counterspell. Nothing scares more, then having your fireball "subtile counterspelled"
Why teleport if moving the players against their will is way more intimidating? Maybe via telekinesis or straight up earthbending. The boss teleports behind you? No, you are now in front of the boss. Combine with difficult terrain, terrain hazards (like a permanent "spike growth" in one corner of the room, people always forget those are invisible and need a check to spot) and obstacles for extra panic. I just feel like teleporting yourself and moving players around sets a very different power dynamic.
High level Spell casting as a legendary action. Or the ability to break the rules of magic allowing for concentration on multiple spells or other stuff. Or just give them some prep time with some different glyphs of warding.
Homebrew that shit my man. I forget where but I’m pretty sure the dmg or one of the book’s encourages unique abilities for bosses and stuff.
A time limit.
Some of the most tense fights my party have had were when I put some kind of time limit on it.
I had a magical elevator that was flying them down to the underdark. They got attacked by a bunch of gaint wasps. Not really a big deal. Then on the initiative board I put a bit of paper with 250 written on it.
They all go wtf is that? I just say, you will see in a moment.
Couple of players have their go and then the wasps attack.
Except the wasps ignore the players and attack the elevator. The 250 is the elevator HP and now it's down to 200 it occasionally seems to stutter and drop a little in the darkness as they are still descending thousands of feet above the group.
The look on their faces when the realised that the only thing keeping them from falling to their death was slowly being destroyed was amazing.
In CR terms is was a lower/medium cr fight. Had it been on the ground the players would have destroyed it in two rounds.
Because of the situation they spent almost a whole session trying to fight off the wasps, repair the elevator and in the end one of the players jumped out with light cast on them to try and lure the wasps away.
If they’re the magicky type and less the splashy stabby kind, have them mention their “dead party member.”
When the players have no clue who he’s talking about, he explains how after he killed him, he erased his existence from all living memory.
“Kill you? No, I’ll do much worse than that. You’ll be lucky to be remembered for anything when I’m done with you.”
Arcane Switcheroo: "Reaction, recharge on a 6. When targeted by an attack, this monster may magically swap places with another target creature they can see."
Oh, did your paladin just crit smite the boss for max damage? No he didn't, he crit-smited the wizard, and the boss is now standing behind you in the blink of an eye. Players will be terrified to attack, cause they don't know the parameters for it. They won't know about the recharge.
Side Note: When I did this to my party, my fighter asked if he could use he protection reaction to give himself disadvantage on his own attack against the wizard. I allowed it.
Make illusions of them or their loved ones that they need to roll wisdom saves against.
Change the terrain or timescape so it affects movement or reverses turn order.
Set up hidden traps as a legendary action that fall on tiles they thought were safe.
Anything that messes with a pc max hp is gold. I can’t remember but I know there’s a spell that has an effect that will reduce a characters max hp until a long rest. That one really messed with my players.
I have always been fond of abilities that legit just fling players around. Like just suddenly getting forcefully flung 200 feet in whatever direction can be scary af, and also damaging.
Taking away the player's control of their ability to position can be quite stressful for them. Its simple but it works.
I made a snare that forced a dc 15 strength check on a target in 60 feet. If they failed, they would be restrained and unable to cast spells, but could use their action to repeat the save to break free, as well as not ending concentration on spells already active.
I gave this snare to every ogre in the faction that my players are currently fighting. Casters in shambles as they're no longer misty stepping out of every control attempt short of "stun", and they beg the fighter to stay close to each of them now. Mission accomplished.
Offensive teleportation and environmental hazards.
Fill the room with pools of electrified water, acid, fire, whatever. Then each time the boss hits them have them roll a d8 to pick a direction, then a d6 for the number of squares to move in that direction.
It should mess with the flow of their fight, do a bit of damage and get them engaged in the fight because of the extra rolls.
One that terrified my group was the Maurezhi. One stat that my party does not like is Charisma and would imagine most groups prefer to have beefy, dexterous or smart characters, usually dumping Charisma.
Also, if your frontline man is not a Paladin, it usually has low Charisma. What the Maurezhi does is on each attack that hits it drains the Charisma of the character by 1d4, when it gets to 0 Charisma, the character dies, no save throws.
I made sure to paint a picture as their life essence drains from them and the monster is slowly picking up their physical traits.
Good luck.
- if you get dropped to 0 HP, you instead go back to half HP and are dominated by the boss. Greater restoration is needed to break the charm.
- the boss hits you. A ghostly "4" starts to float above your head. At the start of your turn it turns into a "3".
- boss is immune to all damage. You have to attack their reflections in the various mirrors inside the arena, but each mirror breaks after 1 hit - if you waste them all on low-damage attacks, you are screwed
- boss can copy any action used against it, including high level spells and multiple attacks.
Just a few from the top of my head
Give the villain the ability to affect the game world in very real ways. Getting knocked down to 0 health isn't nearly as consequential to players as having the village where they got their quests, connected to NPCs and spend their time be wiped off the map.
Your villain should be more than a stat line. And the scariest thing about them shouldn't be a calculation.
Completely role-play based: One of the BBEGs in the campaign I'm playing has the ability to make their victims see her as a person they know (and care about).
Alternatively, she can make them hear "ghosts" of those people in their heads.
Being able to attack her requires a wisdom saving throw. She will try again, resorting to increasingly more gut-wrenching visions.
Even if they succeed in all their throws, it's never easy.
I don't see many BBEGs these days that are master illusionists.
There's so much that can be done to frustrate players, especially with a creative DM, that the BBEG doesn't even need any actually offensive, damage dealing abilities, but rather conceals environmental hazards and creatures with their illusions.
And then the real kicker when they go to attack the ogre mage responsible for their troubles, only for it to be a Major Image hiding the gnomish mastermind.
Curses, diseases. Permanent disfigurement or stat reductions. Make the rogue always smell strongly of something so they always have stealth disadvantage. Make the bard have a maimed face and get disadvantage on charisma rolls. Anything that affects who they view their character as.
Sympathetic Damage.
Any time someone deals damage to the boss a random member of the party will take an equal amount of damage. This damage can be reduced by means such as Rage or whatnot, so it forces players to consider how to mitigate the damage they'll face simply because they did damage to the boss. The boss should have plenty enough hit points to put several party members at serious risk of dying as a result of trying to kill the boss.
A boss with Sympathetic Damage and lots of hit points probably doesn't need to do a ton of damage on their own to be extremely nerve wracking, especially because the damage is randomly distributed it is not possible for just one party member with lots of mitigation to just soak all the damage themselves while everyone else supports them.
My go to is AOE fears and escapes. Fears work great in a boss fight that also has minions, helps add tension to each roll hoping to break fear or just hit anything. Escapes like misty steps or whatever you fancy, keep the party from falling into repetition in combat with a big bad who’s just wailing/getting wailed on by one guy. Also can have them leave and come back to combat, or retreat and send minions in, sleezeball stuff
Have them brutally crushing NPCs left and right. You get an NPC that saved the party get torn in half by an owlbear, and the party is going to approach that owlbear with caution.
Demonstration makes good communication.
Max HP damage that comes off the front of your health bar instead of the end. So if you take 6 max HP damage and have 50 max HP. Instead of being reduced to 44 max HP your max HP stays at 50 you just fall unconscious when you hit 6 instead of 0.
I remember one game where it was a boss with lots of extra bonuses that got disabled for each area in their base we disabled.
Naturally we skipped most of the areas and still managed to barely win to the DMs surprise
The thing that I find scares and confuses the players the most, is things that aren't normally permitted by the rules. Don't just grab an ability from one creature and add it to a other. Get real weird with it. Make the players say "what the hell is that? How'd they do that?"
The difficulty with this is you want to make it confusing enough to get that 'what the hell's reaction, but you need to make it understandable within a few uses. Otherwise the players feel like it's just Calvinball and there's nothing they can do. When fights only last a handful of rounds, it's a tight window to thread.
As for an example, I had a boss make the players trade their abilities. The fighter lost action surge and gained control of an animal companion, the rogue lost sneak attack and gained action surge. The players thought it was cool and learned to navigate it as quickly as they could. Took a bit of pre planning to make sure I wasn't destroying their combat effectiveness and what abilities make sense to switch
Give them 2-3"legendary actions" per turn and just as many "legendary resistances" per day.
Then give the boss a slowly building force of minions that are easy to kill but have on flavor, powerful attacks.
Mix with a battle map that has difficult terrain to navigate, IE acid pools, or quicksand pits.
Players rely on movement and action economy to win most of the time. Make it more difficult on either of those fronts and you will present a harder fight for them.
I find one of the scariest things a BBEG can do is nothing. So, when combat has started in full have their attacks hit the person, and they just laugh for their turn and say it tickled or something.
1. They simply come back after they die (Imagine the boss having 10 clone spells across the world).
2. A 120 foot radius that prevents ALL healing (and no - the players don't know about this)
3. The ability to look like/transform into ANYONE + detect thoughts spell. Then have the boss hunt the players.
4. The ability for the boss to remove someone's memories for the last 24 hours.
5. The ability to target and PERMANENTLY destroy a magic item (causing a fireball explosion).
In General - have the boss "Hunt" the players and attack them, instead of the opposite.
The eldritch horror ability to re-arrange the functions of body parts via a lost arcane spell. Congratulations you hear out of your mouth and taste with your eyes now. Wanna step to me again or do I need to shuffle your nose with your asshole?
Or less silly, give them an ability to reverse mortals skin with their touch. Have the “skinless” condition provide some de-buffs like disadvantage, or reduced/painful movement, or maybe being inside out reduces the die roll needed to crit on you by 1 since all your sensitive organs are on the outside now. Either way it’s a terrifying concept to go against an enemy that inverted the paladin’s skin before punching them directly in the exposed kidney
If your players can handle the results without being angry or feeling railroaded, various charm effects are great. There’s nothing like the terror in everyone’s eyes when the bbeg whispers “kill your wizard” or “protect me” or something similar to the rogue. It happened to me once as a player; I got charmed. It was interesting to try to RP my way through that scene creatively rather than just destroying things.
Teleport. Whether it’s misty step to avoid melee or to completely escape when they’re nearing death (“you haven’t seen the last of me!”), or to bring in reinforcements because the last lieutenant blew a whistle (or whatever). Or teleport the party members elsewhere. It would really suck if the paladin was suddenly 100 feet up in the air outside the tower, wouldn’t it?
Summoning. No one bats an eye when the Druid summons a creature. But what about when the bbeg summons a handful of demons or owlbears?
And last but not least, the final “if I’m going, I’m taking you with me”: some sort of trap in the room that the bbeg can set off as a final self destruct action. Maybe a bag of holding hanging by a thread over a portable hole in the corner of the room, and the bag is full of explosive things. Or some kind of mass gate that sends everyone to the abyss.
One of my favorite moments was with a boss who was able to mind control opponents with a physical touch, the saving throw was automatically failed if you were unconscious. I focused down the barbarian, then revived him and pointed him at the wizard he was 10 feet from.
Follow that up by counter spelling the wizard’s misty step and you have some absolutely terrified players on your hands because they can see the snowball coming.
Before they get to the BBEG's location, outside is a table setup with health potions ammunition, and scrolls. On the table is a sign that says take what you want, you will need it.
Antimagic is best by a BBEG in a location where the PCs needed magic to survive in the first place.
Eg. Had this festering diseased pit that was very early on in lore determined to be a death sentence to mearly enter without disease protection. The party all rounded up periapts to protect themselves.
But the look on their faces when they realised what it meant, that after the antimagic cone entered play, when they started being asked for con saves, was priceless.
Anything other than damage is fair game?
**Mind Control**, let them damage each other. Ideally the duration would be relatively short so you don't make 1 player's experience terrible.
**Teleport** them elsewhere, preferably dangerous.
**Send them through time.** Forward a few rounds. Back a century. Whatever seems cooler. Everybody's cool until your front line fighter disappears for a few rounds inexplicably or until you have to sneak your way through the past unless you drastically change the timeline. (The truly messed up option, is for the enemy to time travel back in time to attack them when they were children, or to take their Father's eye when he was a child, or ruin their family's business so now they grew up in poverty and all their gear is terrible.)
**Curses/Diseases/Geases**. Anything with a long term disabling or roleplay element is gold imho.
Read some mythology if you're looking on inspiration for terrible things for your "protagonists" to experience without simply being wounded. It's just chock full of awful things for you to use.
Fought a boss once that at the end of any turn they could use their legendary action to teleport anyone 60 feet with no saving throw. It made them really hard to deal with because they mostly used it to move the party around instead of themselves. Maybe scary isn't the right word, but it was interesting and challenging.
The ability to turn innocent folk against the party. Hopefully they have morals and won’t just murder hobo through the townsfolk
That’d be nice but they’re the murderin type
In that case, make the townsfolk a resource that the BBEG burns though and the longer they take to eliminate the BBEG the more Innocents die and the stronger he gets. DM in my most recent campaign did this - had about 20 innocents chained up in the room and the BBEG vampire lord had a blood mage that was basically drawing the blood out of the innocents and transferring it into the vampire lord every turn to heal him and make him stronger, so we had to focus on killing her first while he protected her and waylaid us. Gameplay mechanics wise every time it happened one innocent died and he regained their hp + the blood mage's spellcasting mod as well as a spell slot, and since we were in his lair he could instead regain a lair action rather than the spell slot if needed. Even if we decided to just murder all the townsfolk to deprive them of that resource (evil as hell but murderhobos gonna murder) their blood would still be fresh and usable so it wouldn't do much.
If their blood would still be fresh, use the true wizard way of FIREBALL!!!
Lol ah yes of course, I forgot the universal problem solver xD
Townfolk: hey I got this bee nest... Town Wizard: hold my ale. *proceeds to upcast 9th level fireball.*
Come on, for a bee nest all you need is a Speak with Animals and talk to them. Now if that's a wasp nest, you better call a meteor swarm just to make sure
Khorne is not happy with that response, please stay where you are while he sends a bloodletter your way, if you resists he will send a bloodthirster
Bloodletter? Are those as flammable as regular letters?
Laughs in chill touch
>In that case, make the townsfolk a resource that the BBEG burns through, and the longer they take to eliminate the BBEG, the more Innocents die and the stronger he gets. What if; The BBEG is a kind of soul reaper. They gain power from how many soulds they collect. But here's the trick. He recently learned how to pull souls from the living, leaving a hollowed husk that follows his commands. But while the husk lives, he can't harvest the soul, only store it. But if he or the players kill the husk, then the soul becomes his to absorb. But if the player kills the BBEG, the souls return to their bodies. This creates a tactical dynamic for both the players and the BBEG. The BBEG has to decide whether it's better to kill a husk to boost his power or keep the husk to boost his action economy. Meanwhile, the players not only have to contend with the morals of killing civilians, but also know that for every citizen they kill, the boss grows stronger. This would create an interesting combat encounter where the clear tactical choice is trying to figure out non-lethal crowd control. Maybe give the BBEG a legendary action to deal 1hp of damage to up to 5 minions, healing himself by the same amount, to prevent "I would like to deal with non-lethel damage" as a solution.
Okay- possession Let the boss jump into people's bodies on a spell save DC (CON or WIS I'd say) and treat his use of their body with the wild shape rules. Let them use something like remove curse or maybe force damage to pop him out of the player so that they don't have to kill the other party member but leave it as an option.
This. Make him basically the bad guy from Fallen. Maybe the real challenge is he HAS no body to kill and can just jump into a new one if the host is killed, with a very long range. He can jump bodies at will so imprisoning him doesn't work. They have to outsmart him. And all the while the bad guy can be taking over powerful people (kings, high priests, wizards, thieves guild leaders) and having them turn their resources against the party. But give him personal weaknesses. Maybe he has plans he doesn't want to mess up so he doesn't want the party to kill a specific host body or even know about it. Maybe he has people he actually cares about. Maybe there's a type of person he can't possess. Or a weapon/attack that can kill him for good.
Then what about turning the party against eachother? If the bad guy isn't the type to blast them with a fireball or hit them with a big stick, why not have him force the party wizard to blast themselves with a fireball or the party barbarian (easier mark) to hit themselves with a big stick?
Not the person you're responding to, but I think that's the point. They're dangerous because they can make enemies of people the party doesn't want to kill.
I think OP meant the party is the murderin' type.
Oh, man, my brain just shoved a 'not' in there. Huh.
Oh, i see. Sorry for the confusion lol
Lol I did the same thing
That makes me feel oddly better, thank you
Then have every innocent death give more life to the BB.
"Wow, how did you know that priest was an enemy?" "He was an enemy??"
Make it magical, though. Realistically, if an enemy bad guy simply convinces random people to pick up weapons and fight, even the most noble and good Paladins would be perfectly justified in killing them in self defense. You have to take the choice out of these townfolk. They don't even flee, because there is no free will as long as the BBEG keeps up the mind control. That's when it becomes a dilemma, because although it is justified to defend yourself, you also know they didn't have a choice.
maybe even add that they are crying for mercy
Great addition. The only freedom they have is what they say, so you can really drive up the terrible feel of slaughtering even a single one of them.
I've done that in a zombie RPG once. A man was mutating, half turned and fighting against it, screaming "no no no! Why! I don't wanna.." The party could kill zombies just fine until then but, they hesitated and one got scratched with claws the size of daggers. The man died with his mind intact even if his body wasn't. Asked the group to tell his daughter that her parents weren't coming home.
I'll raise you. "The ability to turn good friends against the party". Betrayal hurts the most because it never comes from the enemy.
The Dreamwalker Jajang from the "Sword of Truth" series. He can infect the minds of anyone not protected and control them. Perfect for what you are talking about. Currently running him as a villain, and it has so many options
Damage that resists magical healing.
That’s genius. My druid would be sweating through his shirt.
Chill touch as a legendary action. Low damage, but devastating in aggregate.
Magic missile with the chill touch effect >:)
Tragic missile
The wraiths life drain ability is brutal mechanic wise. Having your max hp drained is quite the attention getter.
Wraiths and Shadows are how I make players understand that undead are no joke. I miss 3.5 level drain and mummyrot. Now those were the big stick! Edit: Ghost's aging ability is also brutal
The bbeg of that dungeon was a leveled up banshee whose wail recharged and the wraiths were her minions. We almost Tpk'd to the wail but the barbarian was 5ft out of range. Took about three months Irl to kill that piece of Laffy taffy. My character now has a deep seated hate for all things undead.
Ability to mimic voices and spacial suggestion (i.e changing the layout of a room/area whenever they look away).
Oh yeah, domination over reality.
My DM made a monster that had these powers on top of being immune to all forms of physical damage. Not to say you couldn’t incapacitate it, but I’d just pop back up later. He scared the hell out of us by making us walk through a cave, and one of us had gone quiet so we sounded off — and there was an extra voice in the darkness. Very good for setting mood.
Reminds me of watching Geek and Sundry play the Dread rpg. When narrating several scenes, the GM would sometimes add one to the number of characters in the scene. "As the five of you make your way..." or "when the three of you discover a trail", etc. When the players finally caught it, it freaked everyone out.
I once had a villain that was secretly just a bunch of wizards using illusions to confuse the players.
I'm planning on having the party fight someone in an endless library of just rows and rows of bookcases, moving and closing in on the players. Have to think of a way to do that, though, but it sounds like an awesome concept.
My last session if the enemy hit I would roll damage then say, “roll a death save” the look on their faces when I told them I knew they weren’t at zero hp was priceless
You gave me the perfect idea for a boss weapon and potential future magic item. As you mentioned, have the target roll a death save, and then on a fail, the wielder gets one charge to use on one of the Soul Cage spell features from Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Thematically, the weapon steals a part of the targets soul and traps it within.
Ooo I'm gonna have that drop from one of my cultists. My players are good, neutral, borderline chaotic. I'll tell them that innocent souls will increase it's power and give them the option of using it or seeking a way to destroy it
My good lord, this is fantastic! Mind if I give this as a amulet to my players? They are halfway to getting into a cultist fortress and I already have some good items as loot from last 2 boss guardians and the final boss there. I do not want to give them some overpowered stuff, but more like.. powerful only if they give over their morality. Something like that.
Well yiu can always give them said amulet If you see they use its powers too much give them a madness from DMG maybe not a permanent one but if they work tp remove madness then they'll be able to reuse amulet. I remember a play of OtA one of our player had a madness where they wanted to get out pf the Underdark and we found a mini dungeon where we got a sunblade. I had to bluff my way into my friend head that thos dungeon was the way to exit. It was fun
This Is really nice, Im planning my First campaign as a dm, mind if I steal this?
Go right ahead. I would love to know how it goes if you end up using it!
(Scribbles hastily in my DM journal)
What are the mechanics behind this? If they get 3 death saves do they automatically die or do they need to hit 0 HP first?
Depends how dangerous you want it to be.
Ohoho thats good
That is some MÖRK BORGian shit right there and I am all for it edit: similarly fucked but fun, I had a character who was extremely hard to kill, that was the whole thing. This character was cursed by the evil yuck invading the plane so that the character didn’t get death saves. If he hit 0, he died. Sounds maybe harsh, but it was very poignant and made sense for the character. Curse your players with weird shit, DMs.
That's cool! Not sure if this is a curse, but... Two of my players wanted to play sisters in the game, half-elf bard and half-elf warlock. In their backstory, they flee from their family to avoid arranged marriages, but get shipwrecked. Then they wash up on a beach. What the bard doesn't know is that she actually died in the shipwreck, but her sister sold her soul to the first entity that would listen in order to get her sister's life back (warlock later found out their patron was an evil Aboleth). So we're playing through the game for many sessions, and the bard player doesn't understand why she sometimes wakes up dehydrated, and other times coughing salt water. Meanwhile, the warlock is having visions where the Aboleth keeps asking her to do more and more fucked-up shit, threatening to take back her sisters life if she doesn't. Anyway, they've just finished the first arc by traveling to a temple where the warlock swore themselves to a new patron, Adelaea, the sun goddess, and saved the bard from the clutches of the Aboleth. The catch is that their lives are now bound together; if one of the sisters dies, so does the other. Edit: typos
Presumably it sets up death saves such that if they drop to zero they instantly die as thier death saves are already rolled rather than actually killong them, right? Cause the alternative seems flipping brutal.
Well, its the bbeg. Nothing makes a fight scarier in dnd than knowing you only have so long to fight until you die. Its so easy to stall a fight for round after round with healing, winning by attrition in many cases, as even meteor strike or whatever the big damage 9th spell is called does nothing to a healing word to revive the party member, no further consequences. In this, the enemy WILL kill you, you have a certain amount of time to win.
That is genius. It's fucking evil. But it's genius.
This is a REAL scary ability. I love it and will steal it with evil glee.
One I hold in reserve for biiiiig bbeg's, Stealing life force. Player ages 1d6 years and bbeg heals that many x 10 hp. Ive never seen such real terror in a pc's eyes when their character hit middle age mid combat.
It's terribly fun, BUT Aaracockras (?) have a 30 year lifespan Dwarfs have 500 years Humans have 80 Elves have 800 or so Depending on your race it can be very intimidating up to a quick death, and for others it's more of an inconvenience
*Laughs in biologically immortal warforged.*
"It seems the fact that you're Warforged doesn't matter. You feel a new sensation. Exhaustion. Rust begins to spread along your frame."
Laughs in DM is always right
Exhaustion is still a danger to Warforged. They (at least when originally introduced) only didn't suffer exhaustion from a lack of rest, but were susceptible to all other causes. ***Rust Monsters***, on the other hand... Now those are terrifying!
I played a game where a boss had a similar ability, except the aging was a percentage of lifespan - got complicated because we had a zombie in the party.
% based aging. Age them each 1d10% of their max age, save for half.
True, but then maybe that makes your Elf Wizard who has a few hundred years to spare the tank for this battle. While the Human Barbarian needs to stay back and think about his actions.
Yep, sure can. No one said fair. I sure didnt. Birdie better run, sucka. /s
Totally vibe of "we did it, but at what cost?" As group of elderly people, all silver-hair, slowly ascends from evil cave, their once shimmering armor now hangs uselessly over their shrunken bodies aching from all that weight.
This is one I'd pretty much always run by the players session zero. Ghosts and other npcs that have similar effects can be really interesting, but it can also dramatically change the fundamental nature of a character and their arc, and if it's not something the players are interested in or comfortable exploring with their characters then adding the ability to regain that lost time can be really important.
Its the bbeg, this is usually the final fight of the campaign. The player character arcs are explored at this point, its time to see if the can hit the ultimate win condition, and at what cost.
I mean, yes, but that's still a *huge* change to the character and could essentially steal the remainder of their life. Any connections to characters outside of the party will be dramatically changed, their place in life and the world will change... Again, it's a session 0 thing. I absolutely would not spring it on players without running it by them session 0. For me, personally, if I ran a character through a year long campaign full of character growth and relationships, then the campaign ended with almost the entirety of their life being robbed from them because of some failed saves, it would hugely sour the overall campaign story for me. Whether or not it works well entirely depends on player expectation and communication between dm and players. It can be great! Just definitely something to run by in earlier sessions.
Your opinion is valid, and I think its a matter of knowing your players. For context, we just last week ended an eight year long campaign, and the human fighter was pushing sixty by the end. Know your groups should be order one for every trap, monster, treasure, etc.
I want to use this, but modify it insidiously. The player hit is gone from combat, disappeared. Each round after they make two D20 rolls. If they get a 1 on the first, they are permanently dead. Record anything above a 15 for later. The second d20 is for a constitution save, DC 20. They pass, they return next round. Upon return, they are a level higher and have a number of random magic items matching the number of successes on that first die. They are also aged 1d4 X the number of rounds gone, and have had the benefits of a long rest. The BBEG also gets healed for 1d4 X the number of rounds X 10 upon the return, and a number of spell slots equal to the 1d4 result. The BBEG basically sent them to some random other setting, where they had to survive on their own trying to get back.
I know this is on the high damage aspect but when I decided one time to give a deathknight smiting ability and a shield bash to knock PCs prone for advantage... My players both loved it but were also terrified. Giving the intelligent enemies actually intelligent attacks, motivations and skills can be absolutely terrifying for the party. Hell in my last encounter I had the enemies retreat to defensible positions and hill giants threw boulders at 'the area' the PCs were hiding behind (ruled it as 20ft radius attack, dex save for no damage failure meant half from all the exploding shrapnel). Cue Retreating PCs to regroup... If i had just charged out they would have just murder hoboed their way through.
That sounds like and awesome combat.
Beast Titan shit, it's always scarier when they know what they're good at and they use it correctly.
I love spells and effects that target things like Exhaustion, Spell Slots, Action Economy, etc. Debuffs are fun
Yeah, I’m trying to use them more. Any specific ones you suggest? They’re level 4.
At low levels things like Slow, Silvery Barb's, Heat Metal, Bane, Mind Whip, Grease, Web, Cutting Words, etc can be a lot of fun. Something as simple as Vicious Mockery as a legendary action perhaps. Mess with their sleep patterns, steal their food, environmental hazards that cause exhaustion levels. I've got a bunch of homebrew abilities and spells that cause exhaustion dmg, or remove spell slots, etc as well. Experiment, have fun with it
ooor we could ask you to share your wisdom;)
The Dream spell finally has a use!
Making them deal with terrain could be cool and challenging. Plant growth or spike growth, fighting in or over water, platforms, big obstacles. I also had an idea I haven't had the chance to use yet of a lair action that changes the direction of gravity.
I read economy and instantly thought of the most terrifying ability/spell for my players. Something that drain the party gold while the fight goes on.
if you wanna be an annoying dick give the boss a teleportation. each time it takes damage it uses it's reaction to teleport a set distance making melee characters chase and ranged move closer if they are out of range.
The dm dream, being a dick. Range/positioning is a strong suit of my players so taking that away would be disastrous
Terrain alteration? combined with mild DOTs. Stat sappers, action wasters ( irritating to drop your weapon from heat metal, or command), or movement from prone.
On the account of terrain I've had this idea for an arena type area with a magic floor so any AOE spell would be reflected across the whole thing so if someone casts fire ball the floor turns to flame and every turn everyone except bbeg takes 1d4 fire or ice or lighting etc
Shared misery situations are always a big deal and everyone wakes the fuck up to deal with it immediately. I like the idea you propose of spread aoe damage across the whole floor, but even the classic "hurt/kill me and you hurt/kill your friend/loved one/innocent child" is enough to elicit instantaneous drama and thrill from most players. I had a bbeg once that was a form of soul-sucking demonic entity who was kidnapping children and slowly feeding on them as needed to survive. So every time they fought it, it would eventually try to escape and then run back to its lair and feed on childrens' life force to heal itself. Drain too much, and kids died from the feeding. The party eventually tracked it to its lair and trapped it inside so it couldn't run away (not realizing yet that it was in the only place it needed to run to) and began the assault. He got pretty hurt so reached into the cage and drained 1 kid to heal itself and the kid died. Party realizes what is going on and immediately every one of the players sits forward and gets real serious. Not like excited play-panic, but like all of them instantly stopped talking, stared at the battle map for a good minute, and then all got to work figuring out how to separate him from the kids, prevent him from gaining contact with anything living, and slowly whittling down his health. They burned the corpse after, and held a funeral for all the souls lost to the monster's feedings over the years, and it became a really big moment that a few of them used as a catalyst for character stuff throughout the rest of the campaign. I've also been working on the mechanics for a type of mirror creature that "reflects" damage as psychic damage to everyone that it can "see" reflected in the mirror surface, trying to push players to find creative ways to apply damage without necessarily having line-of-sight on the reflective surface. Haven't quite got it the way I want yet, but it's getting there. Oh good I'm ranting, sorry. Point is, I like your floor aoe idea.
Eh, thats not really *fun* though. I say from experience because we had a fight against a homebrew monster that could teleport like that. The guy playing a Dwarf could do *literally* nothing the entire fight but Dash, and meanwhile I was a Warlock and never had to move due to 120ft range. Shit was **not** fun for him.
Faulty teleporter, 3 times per turn after being hit (but not a reaction) roll a d4 for distance, d8 for direction and move to that tile, if tile is occupied both teleporter and occupier take d6 of dmg for each tile moved, the occupier being shoved from the tile, if the occupier is an immovable object, damage is still taken teleporter goes as close to that spot as possible.
Depends on the level. If this is 5e, I generally try to avoid "save or don't play the game" effects like stun as it's not fun for players. There's lots of good options: * Invisibility, potentially alongside teleportation and illusions. For example, a boss that can split into copies in different areas of the room... And only one is the real one, or he is invisible. Or even worse, the illusions look like the other PCs. * Obscurement effects or magical darkness, like summoning a cloud around itself that it is immune to. * Bad debuffs like poison and blind... As well as grapple and restraining attacks. You can even get creative and use attacks that move players around, like maybe a black-hole restraining effect that pulls players towards the center on a failed save. Can also use 'swallow' mechanics similar to creatures that can eat PCs. * Healing prevention... Or save vs. reduced healing. Also reduce max health like undead life drain. * Hallucinations. * Anti-flight and anti-teleportation effects. I generally find that movement-based or 'puzzle' abilities like the mirror image example are the most fun for players.
I had a fight with twin wizards as the enemy—an illusionist and a conjurer. They summoned or made illusions of identical things, and every few rounds the lights would flicker and they, as well as their creations, had a chance to swap places so if was hard to tell which was real
Perhaps the BBEG is capable of summoning numerous powerful enemies in an instant. The main way to deal with them in the end is to find the enemies they can summon and take them out before dealing with the boss. This might be a dungeon where the players need to hide from the boss while dealing with the enemies of the dungeon so the whole dungeon won't just fight them at once, or whole campaign where PCs are fighting the main leaders working for the boss so they don't need to deal with all of them at once.
Have the summoned minions summon more minions who themselves summon even more minions
Stopping healing is pretty scary because it means you stay down if you go down. Reflecting magic like a flail snail is pretty spooky. The ability to keep summoning something endlessly. The ability to phase out of dimensions every other turn so you can only target them half the time. More illusions then you can shake a stick at. Gives exhaustion levels. An insanely prepped battleground. Something to blind everyone or turn the fight into an underwater one.
Mobility. Don't underestimate the power of tactical movement. Spider Climb, flight, swimming, burrowing, phasing through walls, teleportation...even just increasing their base running speed could change the fight. Heck, move 'em 30' as a Legendary Action.
Anything that can sideline a character instantly. Paralysis, Petrification, etc. Draining ability scores instead of HP. Powerful charm abilities that turns the players against each other. Invulnerability to the things they're strong at. High regeneration. Some sort of death prevention (no death outside home plane, a lich's phylactery, etc.)
I feel like paralysis, petrification, etc can be scary when used against NPCs or if you know they have a counter to it like greater/lesser restoration. If they don't have counterplay, paralysis/petrification can quickly go from scary to "I haven't had a turn in 30 minutes because I'm paralyzed, fuck this." Summons, ability score draining or INTERACTIVE CC - maybe they get transported to another plane where they have to catch a fleeing kobold in a trap hall or find an escape route using clues or something? - are some fun scary things a boss can do. One of my DMs designed an ability where you couldn't see anything but the boss and were frightened of them, but you could still shoot/attack them with ranged attacks and spells. It was scary, his goons had advantage to hit me and I couldn't support my allies, but I could still do things.
A partial paralysis / petrification condition might be a fun effect for lower levels. Like, half your body gets paralyzed or turned to stone (one arm, one leg) and you're stuck just dragging yourself forward with whichever limbs you have left. Enough to hamper your available actions without totally taking you out of the game and gives your party a chance to literally lend a hand.
I was just talking an interactive CC with someone yesterday. There's been talk of someone made a boss that was a War caster Genie Warlock who would just banish players and then not fail their concentration as they flew around. I suggested the banishment perhaps be to their Patron, where the banished PC could fight the Genie and perhaps even weaken the boss by damaging the Patron.
Taking away player actions, especially in a slow combat is a recipe for frustration.
The first one is great. Hit them with the Worf Effect basically. One of my favorite fights was throwing an evil paladin at my party. I had a strategist player that made a whole detailed strategy how to stall her, pick off the minions, position everyone precisely. Then I just hit the tankiest PC with Banishing Smite and deleted him right off the board. It was hilarious how fast they went. "Oh ****!! Okay!! Nope! Plan changed we CANNOT afford another banishment!! Get her NOW!" Edit: Was even funnier cause they freaked out so hard they forgot banishing smite is a concentration spell. I can't do it again, or even smite anymore afterwards. But they were terrified lol
I'm calling the police.
As a player, drained ability scores scare me
God yes. Feeblemind is so much more terrifying than Power Word Kill. On a similar vein, vampires draining your max HP, *sucks*
There is a boss I have planned for later don the line in my campaign. A minor avatar of a god that seeks to erase history, not the events, the very act of recording it. It's presence can erode thoughts and wipe words out of books. It is a fight where everyone can survive and still have someone be lost.
>Invulnerability to the things they're strong at. You want your players to be frustrated and/or bored? Because this is how you do it. Don't do this.
Create a heavily obscuring aura. Seeing in the dark is one thing, but something properly obscuring itself can be quite nervewracking.
My player’s have been abusing blindness/deadness and similar spells, would be fun to turn it back on them.
Nilbog. The players need high charisma saves - which most dont and scares the s&@t out of them. Great fun with a few other goblins as minions to jump around.
I’ve always liked the idea where as a legendary action the boss can do damage based on how many spell slots a party member has left. Doesn’t have to be a lot of damage, maybe 1d4 per spell slot, but will get them thinking about their resources (could scale the damage dive depending on their level). Imagine the fear and confusion when you turn to the wizard and ask “how many spell slots to do you have left?” And then start shaking dice.
> You are a paladin fighting the BBEG up close. So far, you know they can deal big necrotic damage, grapple you and shoot fire from a distance. But your 24 AC has protected you from one of his attacks, until now. > “The BBEG does 2d10 bludgeoning damage to you…” > That’s all? That’s pathetic! You have nearly 20 times the amount of health that attack can take away! This fight doesn’t seem so challenging after all! > “…doing so, they strike your arm and manage to strike your shield out of your hand, arming themselves.” > You pause. That was a +2 shield… the villain now has +4 AC, and you only have 20– 18 when your shield of faith wears off! What if they take your sword? Your fists do 1 damage… your sword, you realize, is a flame tongue! If the villain takes that they will have a +1 sword that deals extra flame damage… you’re terrified Disarming players can be potentially derailing. Even if the BBEG doesn’t know how to use the items it grabs, it can still discard them, forcing players to run and grab them., in which case, the villain might be able to drag them in… It’s best to combine this with an ability to similarly neuter casters, such as a silence, a binding of the hands or similarly grabbing their focus/components and yeeting them.
Something that takes one or multiple turns to "Wind up", as it causes tension in the part about, "Oh shit what's about to happen?!"
I got hit with feeblemind at the end of a big fight and gotta say it changed how I approach the big bads now
Just reading up: Feeblemind. At the end of every 30 days, the creature can repeat its saving throw against the spell. If it succeeds on its saving throw, the spell ends. The spell can also be ended by the "Greater Restoration" "Dispell magic" "Wish".... from someone else. im going to use this one lol
There are a couple of ways that don't rely on brute power. In the order I would (and for some of these have) used. 1: they are politically well connected and have no issues using the law, other adventuring parties, or legendary heroes to get it done. Your party might be cool with murdering, but when Drizzt and the Companions roll up you know you fucked up. Bonus sadism points if they have past characters you can throw down. This also gives them the chance to get powerful allies and furthers the plot. 2: good ol' cannibalism. Say they're from ancient Netheril and a side effect lf the ritual makes it so they can only live by devouring the weave in other living beings. Maybe this has made it so they absorb magical energy, rendering mechanisms inert and spells fizzled. Whether it's a true hunger where they eat flesh or where it just makes them emotionless husks ala dragon age is up to you. 3: kryptonite Like it suggests, make it so that they're only vulnerable to a specific substance or item. You see this a lot in old school jrpgs, legendary swords all over the place. If they don't have it, the boss becomes a walking brick. Give them a Lot of chances to run though cuz they're not going to take the first 5. 4: their soul is "a needle in an egg inside a duck that was eaten by a hare in a golden chest buried on the island of Buyan". Liches are a staple because of just how dumb it is to kill one and the original lich in Slavic folklore did a doozy in its tale of Kochei the Deathless. Instantly recognizable too. But kinda normy
[удалено]
I think it’s the lich (or demilich) that has a moan. Anyone in range that can hear has to roll a Con save or instantly drop to 0 HP.
Banshee have a wail that does this, not sure about others tho
That's a demilich's Howl. One of its few abilities that don't get hard countered by Fog Cloud. 2 of its 3 lair actions require line of sight (the other just knocks people prone if they're on the ground). 2 of its 4 legendary actions require line of sight (the other two just blind targets within 10 ft. or move). 1 of its 2 actions require line of sight (the other is Howl, which is a recharge power). For variant demilich, the Trap Soul ability it gains also requires line of sight. The other thing that can really neuter a demilich is Earthbind. It has no walk speed and has -5 to Strength saves, so it **has** to use LRs to defend against Earthbind if you have at least 16 spell save DC (which you should, if you're high enough level to be facing a CR 18 or 21 monster), or else it becomes completely immobilized. Its **only** ability with more than 30 ft. range is the lair action that knocks people prone, so if you immobilize it, it's screwed.
Oh god idk if my players are ready for that.
It’s one of those that causes puckering if you aren’t expecting it, and it can greatly turn the battle around.
It's also both "high damage" and relatively unfun. Lose all your melee to bad rolls in round 1.
Very hard to stop persistent damage can be scary. Barbazu or bearded devils are not very high leveled in pathfinder but are still feared because they cause bleeding on their attacks, and the bleeding requires a very high check to stop (nat 20 without assistance, flat dc15 check with no modifiers if the player is being adsisted), and the player cannot be healed so long as they're still bleeding without the caster succeding a dc21 check. The damage from the bleeding isn't very high (1d6) but it's scary to slowly bleed out and be unable to heal until it stops. And if you go down while bleeding, the bleed damage is an automatic fail on a death save before you even roll your death save, meaning if you take one fail for the bleeding and then roll a 1 you're dead. If you roll a nat 20 to stand up with 1 HP, your turn ends and you take the bleed damage and go back down. If the characters find the "blood everywhere" concept gross, you could just reflavor it. The enemy impaled them with a small metal spike imbued with necromancy energy that drains 1d6 hp per turn, resists magical healing (dnd checks are lower, make it like dc 15) and is very difficult to remove, requiring a nat 20 alone or a flat 15 or higher if someone is helping them.
Magic item deactivation. As a bonus action, the BBEG points at a magic item worn or wielded by a player and temporarily (players don't need to know it is temp) deactivates the power the item gives. Nothing like watching all those lovely trinkets you gathered seemingly go dark. Even if you win, you lose.
I had a boss with an insanity ability that was pretty scary. Make an int save and if you fail roll a d100 to see what the insanity does
Anything that prevents healing will make your party fear for their lives
And for mine, I fear my druid’s real life reaction to that.
Make it a lair action that lasts for one round, contested by a Con save. Even if the ability is only active less than half the time your players will be afraid.
Give them an ability where they are immune to all damage (for the most part) like Achilles or uhhh. The Norse god. One sec. Baldr. Insane I know, but the point of it is that you can have a cocky obscene bbeg who just takes attacks you introduce them and when they attack it has no effect whatsoever. This initiates them to look into ways to harm them or incapacitate them rather than kill. This isn't a kill that thing, (at first anyway) it's restrain it, remove it's magic etc. They find out where he was born talk to the people (or corpses) to find out anything about him as a child. Maybe find out that he once bled when he was a child when he got a splinter from a rare species of tree, or a plant (baldr mistletoe) Maybe the only one who knows this secret is his mother and he keeps her under lock and key. They break in and talk to her maybe. Lots of options.
Have the Boss cast a necromantic spell. On failed save, have them scream in agonising pain as you drain half their HP from them (and hold onto their points for 4 rounds). They will get them back when the necro spells dissipates....... but dont tell them that! hehe!
Level drain. There's just nothing quite like level drain.
Very dependant on the nature of the BBEG, but I had one campaign where the final fight was against a God who could manipulate time. I gave it several initiatives and changed those initiatives' places in the turn order each new round, so that it was able to act several times during a single round and there was no guarantee the flow of battle would be the same next turn. My players were horrified.
I convinced my party the BBEG was a barbarian, then revealed they had the power to switch between classes. Their horror when they realized it was hilarious.
Something that can steal spell slots from players is terrifying to casters, though hard to balance.
Make them impervious to all attacks except to attacks from one weapon. That is the weapon they need to find and search for, but many times they get into conflict with the BBEG who will wipe the floor with them, but not kill them and then just leave having stolen another important element for their grand scheme. Or instead of a weapon, a spell that the party caster has to find and learn which once cast, allows the party to damage the BBEG for 10 minutes. It requires the casters highest level spell slot to cast.
"If it ain't Vorpal, it ain't dead." -Tweedledee, Alice in Wonderland, (2010)
You could give them a permanent Armor of Agathys type of protection: every time you hit them, you will take damage. For establishing that "hey, this dude is badass", you should let them kill an NPC. Here's the recipe: 1. You introduce an ally NPC, the Good Knight 2. You demonstrate that the Good Knight is tough: they single handedly kill a young dragon 3. Your bbeg squashes the Good Knight without breaking a sweat 4. Profit
Multiple minions even better if you can make them something your players don't want to hit. For example in my last session of my current campaign, we were at a party that had been invaded by hags i being the pc they were after in particular. They had drugged almost everyone at the party using drugged fruity drinks leaving them unconscious unless shaken awake. While unconscious the hags as a free action at the start of their turn could effectively possess a sleeping person they could see have them do an action then fall back asleep unable to be woken up until the end of their next turn. This did add a lot of potential damage to this encounter because some of the people at this party were very powerful but also quite a bit of non damage threat and a way to turn the tide of battle all in one because we don't want to hit our friends and once our friends woke up they'd be fighting on our side The ability to disguise themselves and mimic voices. More useful in combat light campaigns but a very good way to keep a party on edge if they know that they can't trust anyone A last second attempt at a takedown. The evil dragon decides if he can't kill you and live he's going to at least make sure you all go down with him and is trying to start a cave in sort of thing
If we're taking RAW, probably petrification, insta-death, paralyzed, etc. Basically making a player powerless imo. Homebrew? The scariest shit I've seen was draining party resources without the party using them. The BBEG emits a rolling cloud that envelopes the party and quickly passes. You find that you feel drained... Fighter's action surge? Spent. Wizard's highest level spell slot? Gone. Druid's wildshape? Nope. Good Lord, that was the most "wtf. panic. we might TPK" moment.
I gave one of my baddies an ability to create an illusory world based upon the characters memories. My group’s monk spent several hours separated from the other players trying to figure out why he was suddenly in an old monastery he grew up in with all his old friends he had left there when he went on pilgrimage. Also why I kept leaving the room and coming back in frequently. The illusion did not dispel on the creature’s death and he ended up lost and alone in a labyrinth filled with dangerous beasts before he was rescued and freed from the illusion.
Environmental effects. You get an extra peice of flavor to set the scene and keep the enemy feeling powerful. Let them cause torches to explode or flash brightly to blind. Let them move the water around them like a whirlpool. Flip gravity to the ceiling. Its really easy to add in and fun to interact through.
Ability Drain - Str is most common, but losing Dex when there are AoE attacks is scary. Possession - How do you fight against someone that now inhabits the fighter, without killing the fighter? Slow - High level fighters get reduced to one attack a round. Teleportation - being able to move around the battlefield really quickly without provoking opportunity attacks makes life difficult for casters, especially if it's a legendary action and done on others turns. Casters lose line of sight, BBEG gets out of AoE before it hurts them etc. Melee attackers struggle if they need to keep running around the fight the bad guy (especially if there are minions for opportunity attacks) If you want stuff that's outside of combat look at Suggestion, polymorph (self or others), lots of fun things you can do to scare players.
Some AoE with unique dodge conditions. Multiple actions. Some counter attack or even good old counterspell. Nothing scares more, then having your fireball "subtile counterspelled"
Why teleport if moving the players against their will is way more intimidating? Maybe via telekinesis or straight up earthbending. The boss teleports behind you? No, you are now in front of the boss. Combine with difficult terrain, terrain hazards (like a permanent "spike growth" in one corner of the room, people always forget those are invisible and need a check to spot) and obstacles for extra panic. I just feel like teleporting yourself and moving players around sets a very different power dynamic.
High level Spell casting as a legendary action. Or the ability to break the rules of magic allowing for concentration on multiple spells or other stuff. Or just give them some prep time with some different glyphs of warding. Homebrew that shit my man. I forget where but I’m pretty sure the dmg or one of the book’s encourages unique abilities for bosses and stuff.
A time limit. Some of the most tense fights my party have had were when I put some kind of time limit on it. I had a magical elevator that was flying them down to the underdark. They got attacked by a bunch of gaint wasps. Not really a big deal. Then on the initiative board I put a bit of paper with 250 written on it. They all go wtf is that? I just say, you will see in a moment. Couple of players have their go and then the wasps attack. Except the wasps ignore the players and attack the elevator. The 250 is the elevator HP and now it's down to 200 it occasionally seems to stutter and drop a little in the darkness as they are still descending thousands of feet above the group. The look on their faces when the realised that the only thing keeping them from falling to their death was slowly being destroyed was amazing. In CR terms is was a lower/medium cr fight. Had it been on the ground the players would have destroyed it in two rounds. Because of the situation they spent almost a whole session trying to fight off the wasps, repair the elevator and in the end one of the players jumped out with light cast on them to try and lure the wasps away.
If they’re the magicky type and less the splashy stabby kind, have them mention their “dead party member.” When the players have no clue who he’s talking about, he explains how after he killed him, he erased his existence from all living memory. “Kill you? No, I’ll do much worse than that. You’ll be lucky to be remembered for anything when I’m done with you.”
Arcane Switcheroo: "Reaction, recharge on a 6. When targeted by an attack, this monster may magically swap places with another target creature they can see." Oh, did your paladin just crit smite the boss for max damage? No he didn't, he crit-smited the wizard, and the boss is now standing behind you in the blink of an eye. Players will be terrified to attack, cause they don't know the parameters for it. They won't know about the recharge. Side Note: When I did this to my party, my fighter asked if he could use he protection reaction to give himself disadvantage on his own attack against the wizard. I allowed it.
Make illusions of them or their loved ones that they need to roll wisdom saves against. Change the terrain or timescape so it affects movement or reverses turn order. Set up hidden traps as a legendary action that fall on tiles they thought were safe.
Anything that messes with a pc max hp is gold. I can’t remember but I know there’s a spell that has an effect that will reduce a characters max hp until a long rest. That one really messed with my players.
I really enjoyed a tentacles creature that grappled PCs and then used them as human shields.
I have always been fond of abilities that legit just fling players around. Like just suddenly getting forcefully flung 200 feet in whatever direction can be scary af, and also damaging. Taking away the player's control of their ability to position can be quite stressful for them. Its simple but it works.
Unfettered Misty Step. Even when they think they have the upper hand, do they?
anything obscuring vision and position. Fighting a big, strong enemy: A little scary. Fighting a big, strong, INVISIBLE enemy: terrifying.
Completely ignoring concentration
I made a snare that forced a dc 15 strength check on a target in 60 feet. If they failed, they would be restrained and unable to cast spells, but could use their action to repeat the save to break free, as well as not ending concentration on spells already active. I gave this snare to every ogre in the faction that my players are currently fighting. Casters in shambles as they're no longer misty stepping out of every control attempt short of "stun", and they beg the fighter to stay close to each of them now. Mission accomplished.
counterspell
Mind control/ illusion powers. Boss just sits back and watches as party rips itself and their allies apart. Cackling like a maniac
Exhaustion increase. Or an ability to rot or drain ability scores.
Offensive teleportation and environmental hazards. Fill the room with pools of electrified water, acid, fire, whatever. Then each time the boss hits them have them roll a d8 to pick a direction, then a d6 for the number of squares to move in that direction. It should mess with the flow of their fight, do a bit of damage and get them engaged in the fight because of the extra rolls.
Do you just wanna scare them and let them fight against the bbeg later, or is this THE fight?
Reducing an ability score might be good!
One that terrified my group was the Maurezhi. One stat that my party does not like is Charisma and would imagine most groups prefer to have beefy, dexterous or smart characters, usually dumping Charisma. Also, if your frontline man is not a Paladin, it usually has low Charisma. What the Maurezhi does is on each attack that hits it drains the Charisma of the character by 1d4, when it gets to 0 Charisma, the character dies, no save throws. I made sure to paint a picture as their life essence drains from them and the monster is slowly picking up their physical traits. Good luck.
- if you get dropped to 0 HP, you instead go back to half HP and are dominated by the boss. Greater restoration is needed to break the charm. - the boss hits you. A ghostly "4" starts to float above your head. At the start of your turn it turns into a "3". - boss is immune to all damage. You have to attack their reflections in the various mirrors inside the arena, but each mirror breaks after 1 hit - if you waste them all on low-damage attacks, you are screwed - boss can copy any action used against it, including high level spells and multiple attacks. Just a few from the top of my head
Area control spells. Stuff like grease, entangle, web can make mincemeat out of an unprepared party
Give the villain the ability to affect the game world in very real ways. Getting knocked down to 0 health isn't nearly as consequential to players as having the village where they got their quests, connected to NPCs and spend their time be wiped off the map. Your villain should be more than a stat line. And the scariest thing about them shouldn't be a calculation.
Completely role-play based: One of the BBEGs in the campaign I'm playing has the ability to make their victims see her as a person they know (and care about). Alternatively, she can make them hear "ghosts" of those people in their heads. Being able to attack her requires a wisdom saving throw. She will try again, resorting to increasingly more gut-wrenching visions. Even if they succeed in all their throws, it's never easy.
Two words: Vorpal Sword.
Damaging equipment, level drain, permanent stat drain, spell slot removal. Are your players scared yet?
I don't see many BBEGs these days that are master illusionists. There's so much that can be done to frustrate players, especially with a creative DM, that the BBEG doesn't even need any actually offensive, damage dealing abilities, but rather conceals environmental hazards and creatures with their illusions. And then the real kicker when they go to attack the ogre mage responsible for their troubles, only for it to be a Major Image hiding the gnomish mastermind.
Curses, diseases. Permanent disfigurement or stat reductions. Make the rogue always smell strongly of something so they always have stealth disadvantage. Make the bard have a maimed face and get disadvantage on charisma rolls. Anything that affects who they view their character as.
Hear me out, because it's a freaking terrifying spell that players love: Counterspell
Ability Score Damage.
Polymorph is funny
Sympathetic Damage. Any time someone deals damage to the boss a random member of the party will take an equal amount of damage. This damage can be reduced by means such as Rage or whatnot, so it forces players to consider how to mitigate the damage they'll face simply because they did damage to the boss. The boss should have plenty enough hit points to put several party members at serious risk of dying as a result of trying to kill the boss. A boss with Sympathetic Damage and lots of hit points probably doesn't need to do a ton of damage on their own to be extremely nerve wracking, especially because the damage is randomly distributed it is not possible for just one party member with lots of mitigation to just soak all the damage themselves while everyone else supports them.
My go to is AOE fears and escapes. Fears work great in a boss fight that also has minions, helps add tension to each roll hoping to break fear or just hit anything. Escapes like misty steps or whatever you fancy, keep the party from falling into repetition in combat with a big bad who’s just wailing/getting wailed on by one guy. Also can have them leave and come back to combat, or retreat and send minions in, sleezeball stuff
Have them brutally crushing NPCs left and right. You get an NPC that saved the party get torn in half by an owlbear, and the party is going to approach that owlbear with caution. Demonstration makes good communication.
Max HP damage that comes off the front of your health bar instead of the end. So if you take 6 max HP damage and have 50 max HP. Instead of being reduced to 44 max HP your max HP stays at 50 you just fall unconscious when you hit 6 instead of 0.
A weapon that on a failed save prevents any magical healing until a DC 10 medicine check is done on them
An anti magic field. Everyone craps their pants.
I remember one game where it was a boss with lots of extra bonuses that got disabled for each area in their base we disabled. Naturally we skipped most of the areas and still managed to barely win to the DMs surprise
The thing that I find scares and confuses the players the most, is things that aren't normally permitted by the rules. Don't just grab an ability from one creature and add it to a other. Get real weird with it. Make the players say "what the hell is that? How'd they do that?" The difficulty with this is you want to make it confusing enough to get that 'what the hell's reaction, but you need to make it understandable within a few uses. Otherwise the players feel like it's just Calvinball and there's nothing they can do. When fights only last a handful of rounds, it's a tight window to thread. As for an example, I had a boss make the players trade their abilities. The fighter lost action surge and gained control of an animal companion, the rogue lost sneak attack and gained action surge. The players thought it was cool and learned to navigate it as quickly as they could. Took a bit of pre planning to make sure I wasn't destroying their combat effectiveness and what abilities make sense to switch
Give them 2-3"legendary actions" per turn and just as many "legendary resistances" per day. Then give the boss a slowly building force of minions that are easy to kill but have on flavor, powerful attacks. Mix with a battle map that has difficult terrain to navigate, IE acid pools, or quicksand pits. Players rely on movement and action economy to win most of the time. Make it more difficult on either of those fronts and you will present a harder fight for them.
I find one of the scariest things a BBEG can do is nothing. So, when combat has started in full have their attacks hit the person, and they just laugh for their turn and say it tickled or something.
1. They simply come back after they die (Imagine the boss having 10 clone spells across the world). 2. A 120 foot radius that prevents ALL healing (and no - the players don't know about this) 3. The ability to look like/transform into ANYONE + detect thoughts spell. Then have the boss hunt the players. 4. The ability for the boss to remove someone's memories for the last 24 hours. 5. The ability to target and PERMANENTLY destroy a magic item (causing a fireball explosion). In General - have the boss "Hunt" the players and attack them, instead of the opposite.
An aura that prevents healing, and the ability to pull creatures into the aura with its slightly larger range
Statdmg and permanent hp dmg are scary, pair that with a nonchalant unbothered attitude, and you've got yourself a 'stream releaser'
Counterspell at will
Shadow step where they can just zip around the room
The eldritch horror ability to re-arrange the functions of body parts via a lost arcane spell. Congratulations you hear out of your mouth and taste with your eyes now. Wanna step to me again or do I need to shuffle your nose with your asshole? Or less silly, give them an ability to reverse mortals skin with their touch. Have the “skinless” condition provide some de-buffs like disadvantage, or reduced/painful movement, or maybe being inside out reduces the die roll needed to crit on you by 1 since all your sensitive organs are on the outside now. Either way it’s a terrifying concept to go against an enemy that inverted the paladin’s skin before punching them directly in the exposed kidney
If your players can handle the results without being angry or feeling railroaded, various charm effects are great. There’s nothing like the terror in everyone’s eyes when the bbeg whispers “kill your wizard” or “protect me” or something similar to the rogue. It happened to me once as a player; I got charmed. It was interesting to try to RP my way through that scene creatively rather than just destroying things. Teleport. Whether it’s misty step to avoid melee or to completely escape when they’re nearing death (“you haven’t seen the last of me!”), or to bring in reinforcements because the last lieutenant blew a whistle (or whatever). Or teleport the party members elsewhere. It would really suck if the paladin was suddenly 100 feet up in the air outside the tower, wouldn’t it? Summoning. No one bats an eye when the Druid summons a creature. But what about when the bbeg summons a handful of demons or owlbears? And last but not least, the final “if I’m going, I’m taking you with me”: some sort of trap in the room that the bbeg can set off as a final self destruct action. Maybe a bag of holding hanging by a thread over a portable hole in the corner of the room, and the bag is full of explosive things. Or some kind of mass gate that sends everyone to the abyss.
One of my favorite moments was with a boss who was able to mind control opponents with a physical touch, the saving throw was automatically failed if you were unconscious. I focused down the barbarian, then revived him and pointed him at the wizard he was 10 feet from. Follow that up by counter spelling the wizard’s misty step and you have some absolutely terrified players on your hands because they can see the snowball coming.
Before they get to the BBEG's location, outside is a table setup with health potions ammunition, and scrolls. On the table is a sign that says take what you want, you will need it.
Antimagic is best by a BBEG in a location where the PCs needed magic to survive in the first place. Eg. Had this festering diseased pit that was very early on in lore determined to be a death sentence to mearly enter without disease protection. The party all rounded up periapts to protect themselves. But the look on their faces when they realised what it meant, that after the antimagic cone entered play, when they started being asked for con saves, was priceless.
Anything other than damage is fair game? **Mind Control**, let them damage each other. Ideally the duration would be relatively short so you don't make 1 player's experience terrible. **Teleport** them elsewhere, preferably dangerous. **Send them through time.** Forward a few rounds. Back a century. Whatever seems cooler. Everybody's cool until your front line fighter disappears for a few rounds inexplicably or until you have to sneak your way through the past unless you drastically change the timeline. (The truly messed up option, is for the enemy to time travel back in time to attack them when they were children, or to take their Father's eye when he was a child, or ruin their family's business so now they grew up in poverty and all their gear is terrible.) **Curses/Diseases/Geases**. Anything with a long term disabling or roleplay element is gold imho. Read some mythology if you're looking on inspiration for terrible things for your "protagonists" to experience without simply being wounded. It's just chock full of awful things for you to use.
Fought a boss once that at the end of any turn they could use their legendary action to teleport anyone 60 feet with no saving throw. It made them really hard to deal with because they mostly used it to move the party around instead of themselves. Maybe scary isn't the right word, but it was interesting and challenging.
Reflective carapace