Across the official 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons adventures, there are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:plenty of excellent 'boss' battles. The Sewn Sisters in Tomb of Annihilation all have various ways 🌊to approach (and attack) the party, sometimes ending up as a bigger threat than the actual BBEG of the adventure, Acererak. Out of the Abyss sees contro𒆙l of the various demon lords handed over to the players to battle it out, before one emerges victorious, only for the DM to take control back and turn the victor on the party. But for actual boss mechanics, D&D often finds itself lacking.

Most of my time with D&D 🤪is spent on h♔omebrew adventures. Why? Well, I suppose it stems from being a gifted child, creating a psychological need within me to constantly prove my intelligence, and the narcissistic drive to make a world that is controlled to my whims. I want my party to have a good time, but less than I want them🐬 to be impressed with me for creating this fun time, projecting a godlike image into their heads of me. You see, there is a hole in my heart that- oh, sorry. Went off the deep end there. What I me🍒ant to say is that I mainly do homebrew because it's fun.

Homebrewing Boss Battles Has Its Own Challenges

Homebrew is generally easier to DM. If you made the world, you know all of its secrets, and can hint at things or change around what an NPC knows or says or thinks without worrying that it will cause script problems later on. Balancing combat to how your party plays, and making sure there are the sort of quests they'd enjoy, is also easier from scrat🐟ch than tweaking existing adventures on the fly, especially if 🅰you're not sure of the consequences of those changes.

Mainly, this homebrew is based on the foundations of existing ideas. Most of the regular combat encounters come from stat blocks readily available across 5e, and many narrative strands are inspired by existing lore or built off official artwork - I've been on team 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Orc Cowboys Are Cool since day one. I've also written previously about generously borrowing from Bigby Presents: Glory of t𝐆he Giants as an Ace up my sleeve.

But when it comes to boss battles, this is tricky. While official adventures and resources do have great boss battles, many of these are hard to airlift out of their stories. Their abilities are so linked to their specific stories built up over tens of hours of adventures and require specific set-ups, so can't be🔥 borrowed as easily. Dungeons & Dragons offers you the playground of a blank page, but when it comes to🐷 boss battles, it doesn't give you a pencil.

Boss Battles In D&D Need An Extra Twist

Of course, the best way to homebrew is to steal ideas and paste them together with macaroni and glitter. I've reflavoured Viconia DeVir's stat blocks into my own 'original' character, and have a handful of online item shops that I regularly pilfer 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:as part of my magic-heavy economy. To this end, there are plenty of televisions behind shop windows waiting for me to saiꦛl a brick through them and abscond with a boss battle too.

Because my current adventure is built on being a mix of many smaller bosses depending on which path♈ the party takes, each one has to be unique, rather than building to a climactic showdown. This has forced me to think creatively, or, at least, to creatively look at other people thinking creatively and creatively decide to use their creative thinking. A stagger meter a la Final Fantasy. Legendary and Lair Actions from existing BBEG﷽s mixed and matched. Narrative fake outs. Once you dig into it, the options are (thankfully) endless.

The official D&D adventures don't really distinguish between a boss battle and a regular battle. The final fight is usually the biggest, but in the official♔ rules that either means more of something (spell slots, HP, Legendary Actions) or some payoff you've been working towards. There's rarely an additional 'oh and a boss does this', like we might see in video games where there's a mechanical MacGuffin to♊ overcome.

That's for the best. It helps the immersion of the storytelling, and allows existing bosses to offer phenomenal power while being contained by the same rules as any ot⭕her cre𒊎ature. DMs always have the option to add a gimmick, and plenty of adventures will even offer up some version of one. But in homebrew, it's hard to just take an existing boss because they’re so intimately linked to the world they were built for. Thankfully, if you can pull it off in homebrew, the whole party will think you're super smart and you'll finally fill that void inside you.