Boss fights should challenge your players during the whole encounter, you need to find a line between challenging the players without railroading them. Player agency is still very important.
Boss fights are fun for players as it should challenge them and give them freedom to blow up all their resources to be awesome.
You should not run them organically but prepare them and even test these.
Recommendations for bossfights
- Multiple enemies, add more monsters!
- Try to drain some character resources
- Use the environment, and let players be able to use the environment too
- Focus on story based challenges
- Don’t play a dumb boss, play tactically
- Understand the capabilities of your players characters, review the characters before preparation.
- Increase the health of your boss, don’t let it die in the first round.
Reference
E. Schea, M. (2018). Sly flourish’s return of the lazy dungeon master. Sly flourish shop
Highlights or Timestamps
Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Highlights
- Your goal for a boss fight is always to maintain a high level of challenge without robbing the characters of agency.
— ^00b529 from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master highlights
- You want to let the characters show off. However you also want to avoid having a powerful boss get killed in the first round of combat.
— ^5b0d70 from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master highlights
- This style of organic combat encounter building works well most of the time - but not for boss figths.
— ^0266a7 from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master highlights
- Use the following seven revommendations for boss fights
— ^f30ca2 from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master highlights