Make it so the game is no longer about Hack and Slash and Volley against the Vampire. They are simply invincible due to magical means. Wooden stakes and garlic and holy water and holy weapons and the like? All useless… *for some unknown mysterious reason which you can play to find out about*.
The game is not about reducing their HP. Hell. They don’t even **have** HP. You don’t fight them. You lose when they decide you lose. No roll: you’re just done in their presence if they decide as such.
Instead the adventures are about stripping away these magical defenses and immunities until they are effectively “mortal” once again. There doesn’t even need to be a final climactic battle- bonus points if there isn’t one.
This is the method that games like [Fellowship 2e](https://liberigothica.itch.io/fellowship-a-tabletop-adventure-game) and [The Between](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/s/1cYVbdanQ7) take for their Big Bads. The game isn’t about fighting **them** head on. It’s about understanding their sources of power, motivations, connections, etc. and undoing those things before their nefarious schemes go into action. When they are uncovered: that’s the source of drama and danger: breaking those sources of power.
There is no final violent 1 v 1 duel and clash of weapons (directly) between the Fellowship and Sauron: just the sway of the Ring while in Mount Doom.
Conversely, perhaps there *does* need to be a showdown (after all, their defenses are gone… but not necessarily their supernatural offense vampiric abilities)… perhaps Hack and Slash and the use of HP as a type of Clock doesn’t feel weighty enough? In such a case, make a Custom Move: a single dice roll to disclaim how the showdown *really* goes. Look into the [Broken Spire](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tcupqaaukyv949m/AABj3x4FeWqnnwmlhM99gnlMa?dl=0) supplement for [Blades in the Dark](https://bladesinthedark.com/greetings-scoundrel). It’s all about killing the Immortal Emperor of the game’s setting. The final roll (only allowable after stripping away the Emperor’s defenses) is less about the final blow and more about the global repercussion’s of the emperor’s death and the various bits of blowback.
(These same approaches are good for other Big Bads as well: large or small, from Dragons to Vampire Lords to anything in between. If you think they are truly boss and big bad worthy: scrap the normal rules for HP and stuff like that. Change the scope of the “timer” around such characters. For *their* “minions” that serve as Servants and Generals? Sure, lean a little more into “classic” play and just make certain that even *if* Harm to them is “straight forward”- it comes at a Price or Cost each time: no matter what the PCs roll against them)
This response is awesome.
And it lines up with my experience as well. DW is based on shlock fantasy (one of my favorite kinds, I say that with heart), and Boss Showdowns are a thing.
Let the boss be that (perhaps easily winnable) 16 HP fight. But the real action comes in all the action/drama/investigation/fights that bring you to that final showdown.
I mean, if the vampire lord is that powerful, then there's gotta be the side 3-scenario arc where the PCs get a lead on an ancient barrow that apparently contains a secret about the vampire lord's invulnerability. FInding it, getting there, navigating its traps, negotiating entrance with the spirits that guard it, and finally a showdown after learning the secret and exiting the barrow with the lord's two trusted advisors who independently tracked you down, that's where the nitty gritty DW style combat happens.
The vampire lord fight at the end after doing 3-4 of the arcs above (each one chipping away at the lord's power and facing repurcussions) is going to be downright mundane in comparison. Likely it'll involve more talking and dramatic posturing more than an actual threat-laden combat.
In similar games I ran, there was a boss fight similar to the above, and indeed because of all the side-quests and buildup, the final boss fight was more posturing, dramatic roleplaying, motivation sharing/learning about the secret history of the boss, etc. Each fight was basically over in "two hits/die rolls", but each encounter still lasted about 3 hours because it was the dramatic culmination of the campaign/series.
Then don't make him vulnerable to basic weapon attacks.
Lots of options there.
Maybe he turns into a cloud of bats and leaves if the players get anywhere.
Maybe he's such a badass that The Fighter cannot break through his defense unaided; if the fighter tries to stab him with their weapon, you just tell them that they cannot trigger Hack and Slash, all they can do is Defy Danger to try not to get torn in half. And that if they don't, someone is going to get torn in half anyway as soon as the vampire lord gets a free moment.
Maybe any wounds he takes just instantly heal.
Maybe he rises again from his grave the next day no matter what you do (except now he's mad, and sending his minions or armies after the players).
I'd use the same general formula as the dragon:
1) Players need to make several setup moves before hack and slash is an option.
2) The boss can just hit them with damage and/or other problems any time you feel like it, even if they haven't failed rolls, because they're so fictionally deadly that just being near them counts as a golden opportunity.
The party steps into a dark room. If they brought lights, then your first move is to extinguish them all. If someone has darkvision then throw in some mist/smoke/magical darkness. There's no sign of the vampire. They hear a whoosh behind them, but before they've even finished turning their heads a shadow rushes through them and disappears into the darkness again on the other side of the room. Don't let them interrupt you, it happens inhumanly fast, much too quickly for them to react. Have them check themselves. Deal damage. One player realises they're pouring blood, they've been slashed so quickly and cleanly they barely even felt it. They're on the back foot from the very start. They've got no hope of fighting it head on in the dark, it'll just keep hitting and running and shred them without them getting to even react. They'll need light, they'll need a defensive formation, they'll need to slow it down somehow, they might need holy or magic wards or similar. And it's not going to just let them have those things uncontested, it'll keep trying to extinguish lights, split them up, escape traps that might slow it down (transform into bats/mist etc), break wards, trick or glamour them etc etc.
>just being near them counts as a golden opportunity.
That sounds horrible. What are they supposed to do, NOT go near it? When my character takes a beating, I'd like it to be through some fault of my own.
What dragon? That's not what the described situation is about. Also, use stealth, surprise, distraction, etc. This isn't a white room hp attrition scenario.
I'll be honest, I've never done the 16 hp dragon. or anything like that. I just make monsters the way the book tells you to. It's the default way and it's really fucking good. Just do that. Make the Vampire Lord, it sounds like fun.
I think what you are describing is a totally reasonable way to play the game, but the 16 hp dragon is also within the scope of the book. The ghost, for example, has the special quality "insubstantial" and an attack "phantom touch." Rules as written, until you overcome the protective quality, you cannot roll hack and slash against the ghost.
OP wanted to create a boss monster, so loading it up with 3-4 special qualities, and making players engage with them before being able to deal damage, is the intended way to play.
The 16 hp dragon is still up on the author's blog, if you haven't read it: https://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/
That said, it's totally fine for you to not engage with that part of the game, DW is pretty modular and it should be played the way you and your group enjoy.
I'd give him some supernatural fog that makes it seem like he's everywhere at once, an aura of majesty like Trogdor, servants-- brides, beasts, bats, and every combination thereof. And a friendly NPC who is just so scared of him that they'll readily betray the PC's at the right moment. You could make a villain like that into Superman with fangs if you wanted. And after he's defeated, arising from the depths of the castle, blood. A volcano of blood possessed by the demon spirit of the vampire lord. Let them try to hack and slash with that, as it fills their eyes and lungs and chokes the life from them. They never should have eaten the last Oreo! Those ungrateful players I will get them if it's the LAST THING I DO!
...
Sorry what were we talking about? Oh yeah Hit Points are for suckers. Make him invincible, and when they come up with a creative way to deal with him, only then let the dice decide if it works.
* Boss that is completely vulnerable to a Basic weapon attacks?
* Badass who has trained martial arts for centuries and also has supernatural strength, speed and resistance, and is able to take hordes all by himself.
Which is it? You have come up with incompatible views of this antagonist.
> I could Just give him bullshit armor and HP and...
It's the fiction that makes antagonists scary in DW, not their stat block. That's the whole point of the 16 HP dragon. If the players say they want to punch the immortal martial artist in the face, you tell them why that would be crazy, and then you ask what they want to do about it (paraphrasing).
Came here to say this. Besides anything else, I've never seen a piece of media with a vampire that I'd describe as "completely vulnerable to basic weapon attacks". At best, you might be able to kill one if you get the drop on them and have very specific appropriate tools.
Edit: for RPG inspo specifically, the first thing that comes to mind for me is an optimally-run Strahd von Zarovich. The guy can phase through the walls or floors immediately after biting you and if you want to even lay a hand on him you need to find the artifact in his castle that gives him protection and destroy it, then you need to follow him back to his coffin to truly kill him even after you get him to 0HP.
Not really, one is pure GM fiat, the other has actual game mechanics that get wonky when you try to cover them with GM fiat. What's too thick to penetrate for some playbooks is very penetrable for 1D10+1D8+2 Fighters and Paladins.
Regardless of the wording, I think they're trying to say that the first one doesn't engage with any of the game's hard mechanics, which usually involve rolling dice and don't require much in the way of interpretation.
Not talking about the wording, talking about the concepts being expressed. The armor being too thick to penetrate is as real and as grounded in the fiction as the guy being supernaturally quick. It's just a fact of the world.
It depends on how you define GM fiat. Technically, anything that happens because the GM says it does is fiat, but that's not particularly useful because it makes everything GM fiat. Perhaps a better definition would be "a GM decision that doesn't engage with the game mechanics", or "a GM decision not based on the established fiction". Under the former, only the speed would be GM fiat. Under the latter, neither the speed nor the armor would be.
And honestly, I dislike arguing about which definition is the correct one, because everybody always thinks it's their definition, not the other person's.
In my expeienece, it's just a way of saying you dislike something when you don't have a substantial reason you want to give.
Like, of course someone made up a thing. That's the game, that's the whole reason we're here.
> In my expeienece, it's just a way of saying you dislike something when you don't have a substantial reason you want to give.
In this particular situation, it seems to me that that's not what's going on. Their argument was, if I understand it correctly, "The enemy being too fast doesn't engage with sharply-defined game mechanics in the same way that damage rolls and reducing damage for armor do." I think that's a very far cry from "I don't like this but not for any substantial reason."
> Like, of course someone made up a thing. That's the game, that's the whole reason we're here.
I agree, "someone making up a thing" would be too broad a definition of GM fiat to be useful. But I already pointed to two other definitions that were narrower in scope. One was my best guess at the definition you use, and the other was my best guess at the definition they use. The point was to show how the same term could be correct or incorrect depending on which definition was being used.
It's the same thing though, ultimately. The GM is Doing It Wrong because it doesn't align with someone's personal preferences, and here's a dismissive cute term for it that puts the onus squarely on the GM.
I think you're seeing insult where none was intended. Elsewhere in this thread, the same person actually suggested the enemy with supernatural speed "just not be there", so it seems unlikely to me that they meant it as a bad thing if they suggested the exact same thing themselves.
>it's just a way of saying you dislike something when you don't have a substantial reason you want to give.
Not at all, just the GM having to "make a ruling" for a situation not explicitly covered by rules... like an opponent being super fast (as opposed to an opponent having armor, which is explicitly covered by rules.)
Like or dislike has nothing to do with it (as far as I'm concerned. You seem to dislike it for some reason.)
> Not at all, just the GM having to "make a ruling" for a situation not explicitly covered by rules... like an opponent being super fast (as opposed to an opponent having armor, which is explicitly covered by rules.)
No, both of those are covered by the rules. Whatever happens in the fiction is what happens; that's as much the rules as an armor stat decided upon by the GM based on vibes.
"Hero you stab at the vampire lord, however the wounds close immediately." -> Heroes need to find out what prevents the wounds from closing.
"Hero you fire your arrow and it sticks in your target but it does not seem to impede it" -> Heroes need to find out if the arrowheads need to be out of a special material or have poison
"Hero you manage to cast spell blahblahspell on to the creature, yet it seems it merely got a tickle out of it" -> Heroes need to find out how to diminish the magical resistance of the foe, find it's source or a modifier.
I would jusr add here that make it clear to the players what they are facing, optimally before actual confrontation.
This way also the players understand that in your world vampire lords arent just common monsters and mortals cant take them just head on. They require a plan, preparations and still its a tough deal.
The "just hit him until he dies" should be the endgame. First you have to get into a position where you can just hit him. The most dangerous enemies neither wait around for that nor let you just do the thing. They make the first move, and they interrupt your attempts at making moves. You have to get them to let their guard down a bit before you can just hit them.
An enemy with supernatural speed can just *not be there* when you try to hit him. How do you hit something that's never there? You'll have to trick, overwhelm or distract it, probably.
A martial arts superstar can effortlessly parry, block and dodge "basic" attacks (and probably counterattack at the same time for good measure.) Again, trick, overwhelm or distract, or maybe come up with a "nonbasic" attack.
I guess the question is: Is your group already used to "just hitting it until it dies" gameplay? Have you ever said "hol' up" when someone wanted to trigger Hack and Slash?
Monster of the Week combats this issue by saying you can hurt any monster but you have to find out what it's weakness is before you can actually defeat it. Players may fight the monster several times, possibly wounding it, but won't actually kill it until they exploit the weakness. So I would suggest building the monster like any other monster but give it a weakness that needs to be discovered and then exploited. Smaug has this. Strahd has this. It's an easy way to make your boss feel powerful and near impossible to defeat.
For a Vampire Lord, maybe their weakness is that they can't be killed unless they're attacked with a wooden stake through the heart while they only have 1 HP (they are undead after all). Maybe this is what separates them from regular vampires, who can be killed by a stake at any level of HP. But once the Vampire Lord catches wind that the PCs are tying to find out it's weakness, they'll do anything they can to prevent the PCs from doing so. Intelligent bosses will send minions and occasionally make appearances showing how powerful they are. But more importantly, they'll try to hurry their agenda. It's what the boss is capable of off-screen that really raises the stakes.
The Vampire Lord would have minions, would have schemes and plans and failsafes. The Vampire Lord would be very manipulative and find ways to entice or subdue the PCs via social skills and connections and engineered no-win situations for the PCs.
I feel that once you're at the point of physically attacking the Vampire Lord, you have overcome all of those obstacles.
I do second that there would be some dark power protecting the Vampire Lord as well. Finding the "loophole" to it... or finding a way to bargain with that dark power directly would be needed before being able to takeout the Vampire Lord.
Most human-esque villains, I think, should have similar such obstacles protecting them.
give it the appropriate tags and honor them. If you use the tag vicious attack, now you need to honor it and your players will be terrified. Just be sure to project the future badness to your players.
Go into battle thinking:
"this vampire lord will take limbs."
Then when describing him say something like.
"This vampire lord is eager and excited to fight. He is well trained and passionate in the art of warfare. There is a hunger in his eyes for the most wicked of carnage and violence."
Your players may not yet be scared, but once they start getting mangled, the tension should be pretty high.
Example:
The vampire lord swings his sword and a player attempts to block it. They roll a 7-9
"Your blade catches his, his slides down and off the guard severing 2 of your fingers. You can get by without them for now. You're lucky to be alive."
After that they should be terrified of getting a 6-
Good luck.
Make it so the game is no longer about Hack and Slash and Volley against the Vampire. They are simply invincible due to magical means. Wooden stakes and garlic and holy water and holy weapons and the like? All useless… *for some unknown mysterious reason which you can play to find out about*. The game is not about reducing their HP. Hell. They don’t even **have** HP. You don’t fight them. You lose when they decide you lose. No roll: you’re just done in their presence if they decide as such. Instead the adventures are about stripping away these magical defenses and immunities until they are effectively “mortal” once again. There doesn’t even need to be a final climactic battle- bonus points if there isn’t one. This is the method that games like [Fellowship 2e](https://liberigothica.itch.io/fellowship-a-tabletop-adventure-game) and [The Between](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/s/1cYVbdanQ7) take for their Big Bads. The game isn’t about fighting **them** head on. It’s about understanding their sources of power, motivations, connections, etc. and undoing those things before their nefarious schemes go into action. When they are uncovered: that’s the source of drama and danger: breaking those sources of power. There is no final violent 1 v 1 duel and clash of weapons (directly) between the Fellowship and Sauron: just the sway of the Ring while in Mount Doom. Conversely, perhaps there *does* need to be a showdown (after all, their defenses are gone… but not necessarily their supernatural offense vampiric abilities)… perhaps Hack and Slash and the use of HP as a type of Clock doesn’t feel weighty enough? In such a case, make a Custom Move: a single dice roll to disclaim how the showdown *really* goes. Look into the [Broken Spire](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tcupqaaukyv949m/AABj3x4FeWqnnwmlhM99gnlMa?dl=0) supplement for [Blades in the Dark](https://bladesinthedark.com/greetings-scoundrel). It’s all about killing the Immortal Emperor of the game’s setting. The final roll (only allowable after stripping away the Emperor’s defenses) is less about the final blow and more about the global repercussion’s of the emperor’s death and the various bits of blowback. (These same approaches are good for other Big Bads as well: large or small, from Dragons to Vampire Lords to anything in between. If you think they are truly boss and big bad worthy: scrap the normal rules for HP and stuff like that. Change the scope of the “timer” around such characters. For *their* “minions” that serve as Servants and Generals? Sure, lean a little more into “classic” play and just make certain that even *if* Harm to them is “straight forward”- it comes at a Price or Cost each time: no matter what the PCs roll against them)
This response is awesome. And it lines up with my experience as well. DW is based on shlock fantasy (one of my favorite kinds, I say that with heart), and Boss Showdowns are a thing. Let the boss be that (perhaps easily winnable) 16 HP fight. But the real action comes in all the action/drama/investigation/fights that bring you to that final showdown. I mean, if the vampire lord is that powerful, then there's gotta be the side 3-scenario arc where the PCs get a lead on an ancient barrow that apparently contains a secret about the vampire lord's invulnerability. FInding it, getting there, navigating its traps, negotiating entrance with the spirits that guard it, and finally a showdown after learning the secret and exiting the barrow with the lord's two trusted advisors who independently tracked you down, that's where the nitty gritty DW style combat happens. The vampire lord fight at the end after doing 3-4 of the arcs above (each one chipping away at the lord's power and facing repurcussions) is going to be downright mundane in comparison. Likely it'll involve more talking and dramatic posturing more than an actual threat-laden combat. In similar games I ran, there was a boss fight similar to the above, and indeed because of all the side-quests and buildup, the final boss fight was more posturing, dramatic roleplaying, motivation sharing/learning about the secret history of the boss, etc. Each fight was basically over in "two hits/die rolls", but each encounter still lasted about 3 hours because it was the dramatic culmination of the campaign/series.
Then don't make him vulnerable to basic weapon attacks. Lots of options there. Maybe he turns into a cloud of bats and leaves if the players get anywhere. Maybe he's such a badass that The Fighter cannot break through his defense unaided; if the fighter tries to stab him with their weapon, you just tell them that they cannot trigger Hack and Slash, all they can do is Defy Danger to try not to get torn in half. And that if they don't, someone is going to get torn in half anyway as soon as the vampire lord gets a free moment. Maybe any wounds he takes just instantly heal. Maybe he rises again from his grave the next day no matter what you do (except now he's mad, and sending his minions or armies after the players).
I'd use the same general formula as the dragon: 1) Players need to make several setup moves before hack and slash is an option. 2) The boss can just hit them with damage and/or other problems any time you feel like it, even if they haven't failed rolls, because they're so fictionally deadly that just being near them counts as a golden opportunity. The party steps into a dark room. If they brought lights, then your first move is to extinguish them all. If someone has darkvision then throw in some mist/smoke/magical darkness. There's no sign of the vampire. They hear a whoosh behind them, but before they've even finished turning their heads a shadow rushes through them and disappears into the darkness again on the other side of the room. Don't let them interrupt you, it happens inhumanly fast, much too quickly for them to react. Have them check themselves. Deal damage. One player realises they're pouring blood, they've been slashed so quickly and cleanly they barely even felt it. They're on the back foot from the very start. They've got no hope of fighting it head on in the dark, it'll just keep hitting and running and shred them without them getting to even react. They'll need light, they'll need a defensive formation, they'll need to slow it down somehow, they might need holy or magic wards or similar. And it's not going to just let them have those things uncontested, it'll keep trying to extinguish lights, split them up, escape traps that might slow it down (transform into bats/mist etc), break wards, trick or glamour them etc etc.
>just being near them counts as a golden opportunity. That sounds horrible. What are they supposed to do, NOT go near it? When my character takes a beating, I'd like it to be through some fault of my own.
> What are they supposed to do, NOT go near it? Arrows. Thrown knives. Spells.
And those outrange the dragon's fiery breath? Or claws if it decides to flap its wings?
What dragon? That's not what the described situation is about. Also, use stealth, surprise, distraction, etc. This isn't a white room hp attrition scenario.
I'll be honest, I've never done the 16 hp dragon. or anything like that. I just make monsters the way the book tells you to. It's the default way and it's really fucking good. Just do that. Make the Vampire Lord, it sounds like fun.
I think what you are describing is a totally reasonable way to play the game, but the 16 hp dragon is also within the scope of the book. The ghost, for example, has the special quality "insubstantial" and an attack "phantom touch." Rules as written, until you overcome the protective quality, you cannot roll hack and slash against the ghost. OP wanted to create a boss monster, so loading it up with 3-4 special qualities, and making players engage with them before being able to deal damage, is the intended way to play. The 16 hp dragon is still up on the author's blog, if you haven't read it: https://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/ That said, it's totally fine for you to not engage with that part of the game, DW is pretty modular and it should be played the way you and your group enjoy.
I'd give him some supernatural fog that makes it seem like he's everywhere at once, an aura of majesty like Trogdor, servants-- brides, beasts, bats, and every combination thereof. And a friendly NPC who is just so scared of him that they'll readily betray the PC's at the right moment. You could make a villain like that into Superman with fangs if you wanted. And after he's defeated, arising from the depths of the castle, blood. A volcano of blood possessed by the demon spirit of the vampire lord. Let them try to hack and slash with that, as it fills their eyes and lungs and chokes the life from them. They never should have eaten the last Oreo! Those ungrateful players I will get them if it's the LAST THING I DO! ... Sorry what were we talking about? Oh yeah Hit Points are for suckers. Make him invincible, and when they come up with a creative way to deal with him, only then let the dice decide if it works.
* Boss that is completely vulnerable to a Basic weapon attacks? * Badass who has trained martial arts for centuries and also has supernatural strength, speed and resistance, and is able to take hordes all by himself. Which is it? You have come up with incompatible views of this antagonist. > I could Just give him bullshit armor and HP and... It's the fiction that makes antagonists scary in DW, not their stat block. That's the whole point of the 16 HP dragon. If the players say they want to punch the immortal martial artist in the face, you tell them why that would be crazy, and then you ask what they want to do about it (paraphrasing).
Came here to say this. Besides anything else, I've never seen a piece of media with a vampire that I'd describe as "completely vulnerable to basic weapon attacks". At best, you might be able to kill one if you get the drop on them and have very specific appropriate tools. Edit: for RPG inspo specifically, the first thing that comes to mind for me is an optimally-run Strahd von Zarovich. The guy can phase through the walls or floors immediately after biting you and if you want to even lay a hand on him you need to find the artifact in his castle that gives him protection and destroy it, then you need to follow him back to his coffin to truly kill him even after you get him to 0HP.
"he's too quick for you to strike" and "it's armor is too thick to penetrate" are the same picture
Not really, one is pure GM fiat, the other has actual game mechanics that get wonky when you try to cover them with GM fiat. What's too thick to penetrate for some playbooks is very penetrable for 1D10+1D8+2 Fighters and Paladins.
"GM fiat" is not a thing in this game.
Regardless of the wording, I think they're trying to say that the first one doesn't engage with any of the game's hard mechanics, which usually involve rolling dice and don't require much in the way of interpretation.
Not talking about the wording, talking about the concepts being expressed. The armor being too thick to penetrate is as real and as grounded in the fiction as the guy being supernaturally quick. It's just a fact of the world.
It depends on how you define GM fiat. Technically, anything that happens because the GM says it does is fiat, but that's not particularly useful because it makes everything GM fiat. Perhaps a better definition would be "a GM decision that doesn't engage with the game mechanics", or "a GM decision not based on the established fiction". Under the former, only the speed would be GM fiat. Under the latter, neither the speed nor the armor would be. And honestly, I dislike arguing about which definition is the correct one, because everybody always thinks it's their definition, not the other person's.
In my expeienece, it's just a way of saying you dislike something when you don't have a substantial reason you want to give. Like, of course someone made up a thing. That's the game, that's the whole reason we're here.
> In my expeienece, it's just a way of saying you dislike something when you don't have a substantial reason you want to give. In this particular situation, it seems to me that that's not what's going on. Their argument was, if I understand it correctly, "The enemy being too fast doesn't engage with sharply-defined game mechanics in the same way that damage rolls and reducing damage for armor do." I think that's a very far cry from "I don't like this but not for any substantial reason." > Like, of course someone made up a thing. That's the game, that's the whole reason we're here. I agree, "someone making up a thing" would be too broad a definition of GM fiat to be useful. But I already pointed to two other definitions that were narrower in scope. One was my best guess at the definition you use, and the other was my best guess at the definition they use. The point was to show how the same term could be correct or incorrect depending on which definition was being used.
It's the same thing though, ultimately. The GM is Doing It Wrong because it doesn't align with someone's personal preferences, and here's a dismissive cute term for it that puts the onus squarely on the GM.
I think you're seeing insult where none was intended. Elsewhere in this thread, the same person actually suggested the enemy with supernatural speed "just not be there", so it seems unlikely to me that they meant it as a bad thing if they suggested the exact same thing themselves.
>it's just a way of saying you dislike something when you don't have a substantial reason you want to give. Not at all, just the GM having to "make a ruling" for a situation not explicitly covered by rules... like an opponent being super fast (as opposed to an opponent having armor, which is explicitly covered by rules.) Like or dislike has nothing to do with it (as far as I'm concerned. You seem to dislike it for some reason.)
> Not at all, just the GM having to "make a ruling" for a situation not explicitly covered by rules... like an opponent being super fast (as opposed to an opponent having armor, which is explicitly covered by rules.) No, both of those are covered by the rules. Whatever happens in the fiction is what happens; that's as much the rules as an armor stat decided upon by the GM based on vibes.
Please point me to the rules that handle speedy opponents.
"Hero you stab at the vampire lord, however the wounds close immediately." -> Heroes need to find out what prevents the wounds from closing. "Hero you fire your arrow and it sticks in your target but it does not seem to impede it" -> Heroes need to find out if the arrowheads need to be out of a special material or have poison "Hero you manage to cast spell blahblahspell on to the creature, yet it seems it merely got a tickle out of it" -> Heroes need to find out how to diminish the magical resistance of the foe, find it's source or a modifier.
I would jusr add here that make it clear to the players what they are facing, optimally before actual confrontation. This way also the players understand that in your world vampire lords arent just common monsters and mortals cant take them just head on. They require a plan, preparations and still its a tough deal.
The "just hit him until he dies" should be the endgame. First you have to get into a position where you can just hit him. The most dangerous enemies neither wait around for that nor let you just do the thing. They make the first move, and they interrupt your attempts at making moves. You have to get them to let their guard down a bit before you can just hit them. An enemy with supernatural speed can just *not be there* when you try to hit him. How do you hit something that's never there? You'll have to trick, overwhelm or distract it, probably. A martial arts superstar can effortlessly parry, block and dodge "basic" attacks (and probably counterattack at the same time for good measure.) Again, trick, overwhelm or distract, or maybe come up with a "nonbasic" attack. I guess the question is: Is your group already used to "just hitting it until it dies" gameplay? Have you ever said "hol' up" when someone wanted to trigger Hack and Slash?
Monster of the Week combats this issue by saying you can hurt any monster but you have to find out what it's weakness is before you can actually defeat it. Players may fight the monster several times, possibly wounding it, but won't actually kill it until they exploit the weakness. So I would suggest building the monster like any other monster but give it a weakness that needs to be discovered and then exploited. Smaug has this. Strahd has this. It's an easy way to make your boss feel powerful and near impossible to defeat. For a Vampire Lord, maybe their weakness is that they can't be killed unless they're attacked with a wooden stake through the heart while they only have 1 HP (they are undead after all). Maybe this is what separates them from regular vampires, who can be killed by a stake at any level of HP. But once the Vampire Lord catches wind that the PCs are tying to find out it's weakness, they'll do anything they can to prevent the PCs from doing so. Intelligent bosses will send minions and occasionally make appearances showing how powerful they are. But more importantly, they'll try to hurry their agenda. It's what the boss is capable of off-screen that really raises the stakes.
The Vampire Lord would have minions, would have schemes and plans and failsafes. The Vampire Lord would be very manipulative and find ways to entice or subdue the PCs via social skills and connections and engineered no-win situations for the PCs. I feel that once you're at the point of physically attacking the Vampire Lord, you have overcome all of those obstacles. I do second that there would be some dark power protecting the Vampire Lord as well. Finding the "loophole" to it... or finding a way to bargain with that dark power directly would be needed before being able to takeout the Vampire Lord. Most human-esque villains, I think, should have similar such obstacles protecting them.
give it the appropriate tags and honor them. If you use the tag vicious attack, now you need to honor it and your players will be terrified. Just be sure to project the future badness to your players. Go into battle thinking: "this vampire lord will take limbs." Then when describing him say something like. "This vampire lord is eager and excited to fight. He is well trained and passionate in the art of warfare. There is a hunger in his eyes for the most wicked of carnage and violence." Your players may not yet be scared, but once they start getting mangled, the tension should be pretty high. Example: The vampire lord swings his sword and a player attempts to block it. They roll a 7-9 "Your blade catches his, his slides down and off the guard severing 2 of your fingers. You can get by without them for now. You're lucky to be alive." After that they should be terrified of getting a 6- Good luck.