DMs of Reddit, What are some of the Best Bosses You’ve Made?

hey everyone brian von va here back at it again with another set of stories this time we've got a real good one dms of reddit what are some of the best bosses you've made part one i've been dming since middle school and so i've had a [ __ ] variety of scenarios to be honest i really have always loved making fun boss fights for the players to go through even if they fail the group always has a good time fighting because it's always unique in some way so i'm wondering what boss encounters did you have the most fun using in a session vampire druid who owned a large greenhouse atrium full of murderous plants the boss fight involved a dominated cleric who used fog cloud to obscure everything that wasn't the path around the room and then pretended to be a victim the plants had tremor sense so they didn't need to see some had long roots to grab people and drag them into the fog towards other plants that ate people there was also a large flock of crows living in the upper reaches of the trees the druid would use wild shape to appear as a crow and would use her vampire abilities to detect the flock she would move with the crows and it was extremely hard to pick her out of a group and very easy for her to blend right back in she spent most of the fight casting spells from the treetops then causing all the crows to change locations so she could mix back in with them at the end of the fight she came down and turned into a fiendish dire vampire hippo why a hippo who murdered two pcs in two turns nasty beast the dominated priest was helping her but still technically an innocent since it wasn't his fault the vampire dominated him the party was good enough not to just murder him outright by setting fire to the place there were also anti-fire enchantments in case my players turned out to be not quite as good as i expected i gave the player several rounds to wander around the foggy darkness before anything happened they absolutely knew it was a trap before even entering the atrium which helped raise the tension you can add more dominated low-level casters to ensure additional fun magical effects the plan was never to have the casters attack any pcs though because then the pcs could reply with lethal force the cleric was commanded to cast the fog clouds and then pretend to be an innocent victim too afraid to do more than just cower and call weakly for help i was inspired by the angry dm's post on building single monsters who could take on an entire party making boss monsters effectively while i didn't use the actual paragon monster idea in my boss design i did use the idea of a monster changing form as the fight went on the setup would be that the boss was a mummy lord a monster usually weak to direct confrontation it would be a large cavern filled with treasure with a podium in the middle on which the mummy lord rested inside its metal sarcophagus when the party got close the sarcophagus animated mechanical arms and legs popping out wielding two oversized kopeshas and attacked the party using the stats of an iron golem once the party killed the iron golem its steel exterior blew away doing 2d6 bludgeoning damage on a failed deck save within 10 feet or something this triggered the second phase of the fight where the metal had been blown away and now there was a stone sarcophagus that had been sitting inside it this had the stats of a stone golem however it had no arms nor legs and so could an attack what it could do however was use a slow ability while this happened mummy started to rise out of the ground and head towards the party and would do so indefinitely making it a race against time to destroy the stone sarcophagus before they were mauled to death all while debuffed once the large sarcophagus had been destroyed the actual mummy lord emerged and instantly used a legendary action to drift on top of a large podium in dust form from which it could fire off spells from a safe distance while mummies continued on to assault the players once the mummy lord had fallen the mummies would simultaneously die and stop spawning and the players could get the treasure in practice once the players got to the final mummy lord phase the bard cast a single upcast fireball and instantly reduced its hp from full to 1 hp and then all it took was the barbarian to chuck his axe into its face reducing it to ash i've had a couple of fun ones one that i know my players remember was a huge summon demon with an exoskeleton skull it had reach and if it was able to hit one of them with both claws it would pick the player up skull bash them which the force would throw them 20 feet back also had fire breath and a confounding roar they were legitimately concerned of a tpk but they made it out okay it was exciting another favorite of mine was more atmospheric which oh i love that where they had been trying to gain the allegiance of the vrykul it was a warcraft-based campaign and the lich king came to take them all down chasing them up to utgard pinnacle when they got to the top the four clan leaders granted them a blessing of the titans giving each player plus 10 to all ability scores they fought the lich king split into four essences characters of four classes of a shadow knight abyssal knight shadow priest and a frost death knight that surrounded them they won at least for the time being another last one was a fight against a sorcerer king where the encounter was designed to delay the pcs as long as possible he knew he was going to die and every round he destroyed a tenth of his own capital city with meteors there were walls of force reverse gravity spells and he used the form of the dragon and whatnot the players did pretty well but alas many innocents died three three ten four ten huh i love this one because at the end of each round i played a meteor sound effect i think i played this one i don't have it so enjoy my own version of it i had a big bad evil guy named emily that was a half demon child that the players accidentally released onto the world they didn't fight her till the very end but she was one of those bosses that would always be a step ahead of the players at the newest location they were at causing trouble and when the players arrived she'd vanished leaving behind her newest abomination they had no idea what she was doing or what was happening they just kept stumbling upon her so my players would always be like oh no not her again and fix whatever mess she made they never questioned why she'd appear in a location just went on with whatever quest they picked up and just knew her as a nuisance they were just janitors to my big bad evil guy who was trying to plunge the world into darkness and release more demons into the world they figured out too late and had to clean that up as well it was fun but also lackluster cause they didn't just try to investigate and figure things out i based one of my bosses off of parallax and dc comics it's an entity that can't be physically harmed and would possess players i as the dm would then take control of the character and fight the players the catch is that attacking the possessed player would take away their hp the possessed player would then be in their mental plane they'd have to fight the entity as a way to free themselves the entity would then be expelled and possess another player if the players aren't careful they could kill the pc who's currently possessed my most memorable was a regular vampire from 5 e m m what made the fight memorable was that the party decided to announce their presence to the entire dungeon and fight them all at once after having half the party use up their resources the boss shows up and lures them into the boss room it is at this point that the party decides to split up why are you splitting the party having the two members who just arrived and had all their spell slots searched the dungeon for the vampire's coffin while the three who were exhausted fight the boss in a room that they can't interact anything on the opposite side unless they could dispel magic teleport or not cast a reflection vampire could move freely because of this this leads to the cleric to teleport the half dead monk next to the vampire where he has easily killed 1v1 after all this the second cleric and wizard finally come back and kill the vampire with little resistance all in all it was a series of mistakes in what should have been the easiest boss fight ever not a boss but a reoccurring enemy my first year dm'ing i was running pathfinder yes and i had a large group and it was high school so a few of my players had strict parents so attendance was pretty oh whoever can come this time what i used to do was write a little choose your own adventure style solo adventure in google forms for the player who was absent to catch up especially if they had been gone several sessions or the party had traveled some distance since they last played cool idea enter mcknuckles the cobol that's so cool the sorcerer had the draconic chromatic black bloodline and this annoying cobalt noble twerp was being rich and snobby about having robbed her ancestor dragon herald at some tavern the quickest way to make the pc's care is to take their stuff but mcknuckles was something else even after they got harold's stuff back mcknuckles kept showing up because he was the hair to the kobold nation which was subtly taking over the main nation by replacing government officials with their own spies the non-kobolds among them identifiable by a scaly patch pathfinder kobolds are dragon like not mammalian 10 out of 10. he never really did anything except be there but he was hated by the first sorcerer but soon the rest of the party as well he'd show up be irritating and then yeet away kind of like darth vader in that first lego star wars level they had opportunities to kill him multiple times but showed mercy not wanting to kill an unarmed opponent etc and some other stuff happened too but anyway i got my players to not only detest but to fear kobolds literally a combat rating of 1 4th opponent worth 25 xp each for the entire campaign that lasted until like 9th or 10th level they lost by the way obligatory setting backstory my players wanted a post-apocalyptic setting to play this new campaign in so i fast forwarded the world a little over 75 000 years from when i was working to an event i had written about in the margin of one of the pages in my setting bible and got to work some of my other posts in r dm academy go into interesting details so i won't bore you here in this setting it is the surface elves that are considered evil to the tribes i enjoy using ambiguity and moral relativism and they are intrinsically connected to these large plant organisms called shimmer trees the longer these elves called alvi are away from their shimmer tree their physical forms begin to fade from existence and it requires either being disconnected by force and being exiled or returning to its influence to halt this process their armor is part environmental suit and part force multiplier allowing them to survive in the harsh environments that the pcs take for granted and also be much more deadly their armor also has a connection to the trees similar in design to the alvey if this armor is not siphoned of its power at regular intervals by the shimmer tree to keep it in check it will continue to grow in size and power enter the alvey phytorun she was an alvey who had been disconnected from her shimmer tree for several thousand years and was attempting to use her armor as a power source to connect a portal to an ancient portal network that had a transit node nearest her shimmer tree she was dying slowly but surely and wanted desperately to return to her people the boss was constructed to be a druid slash ranger with a somewhat slow flying speed and a bow that fired arrows which on a crit would do additional psychic damage she had a reduced spell list and tangles to a day erupting earth fairy fire fog cloud cost of wind moon beam plant growth thunder wave one a day her main claim to fame was due to her reaction ability called shattered presence as a reaction the alve phytorun is able to intentionally diminish their form to instantaneously evade all incoming damage at the cost of possibly losing their corporeal form roll a d100 if the number on the die is greater than the fighter runs remaining hp the fighter run instantly dies if not the fighter run takes two d12 damage regenerates on five or a six the other rule for this boss was that at fifty percent she would go into a phase two raid boss style encounter and disconnect her armor from the portal letting this modified helmed horror enter the battlefield it had the ability to heal the phytomancer and if within 10 feet could move to intercept incoming ranged attacks taking the damage instead fight results the fighter run was hidden before the pcs entered the room after hearing their approach causing the rogue stealthing in to be surprised for the initial round she began by focusing on the alvey exile in the party after referring to the pc as a traitor the story beats are important her spells worked as battlefield controllers making movement more difficult for the pcs a player crit for 44 damage at one point and her shattered presence completely negated that damage minus what she takes for rebuilding herself i've only rarely seen someone look thrilled and crestfallen at the same time but he still talks about this event a few months later after losing about 80 hp she activated her armor got some oh shits for that move which made me happy the damned helmed horror could barely hit anything due to terrible rolls on my part oh well more of the pity at around 18 hp she tried a desperate gamble to negate another crit that would have ended her and failed i thought it was an interesting way to end the fight and the players seemed to enjoy it in my opinion this fight was awesome it challenged the players in a direction they didn't expect and caused them to rethink strategies on the fly i don't intentionally build enemies or bosses that prey upon their weaknesses yet but this one was good enough that it caused some concern towards the end hey there ladies and gentlemen brian von va here welcoming back all of our fans and friends as well as giving a big warm welcome to new listeners too if you liked today's video please give us a thumbs up and use your bonus action to subscribe if you haven't already and ring that little ding along ding dong bell as it'll notify you whenever we go live or upload for even more ripper fun you can always head over to our new discord specifically designed with d d and tt rpgs in mind as well as following ripper on twitter links in the description below if you want to submit a story we encourage you to head on over to r mr ripper and leave a story and either a new thread or an existing one or if you really want to you can write a big fat one-off if you want you can also leave it in the comments too as long as it pertains to the video in question alternatively if you want to use your help action you can head on over to my youtube and twitter brian von va where i post all sorts of voice acting goodies and stream games weekly i also have a discord with some dnd stuff in it but it's not nearly as in-depth as mr ripper's new one links in the description with business talk out of the way and september roaring through i wanted to wish everyone a lovely month i know times are still tough and many of you aren't going to or just starting school at this point or university college whatever so i hope that we here at mr ripper can bring a bit of laughs smiles tears or gasps as some of the stories we're narrating as well as the positivity at the end i just want to warm your heart a little bit so you can take a little bit of a siesta i mean really everyone needs a bit of a break and a breather these days so i'm glad that we can help by giving you that so from me to you keep being as safe as you possibly can be and always remember to take a break from time to time so you can rejuvenate your soul and be more productive happier and feel better overall remember you can't succeed or help anyone else in the world if you don't give yourself some self-care days or some tlc honestly it's as simple as taking 10 minutes away from social media unplugging for a little bit and just taking a breath you're worth it i certainly believe so i wouldn't say it every single time i mean that so be safe be happy and we will see you next time bye for now

Channel: MrRipper

Views: 77,275

Keywords: DnDStories, DnD, DungeonsAndDragons, dnd stories, dungeons and dragons, ask reddit, dungeons & dragons, askreddit top posts, reddit stories, dnd, dnd 5e, dnd stories reddit, dungeon master, dnd campaigns, dm tips 5e, dungeons and dragons online, best of reddit, dungeons and dragons cartoon, dungeons & dragons florida edition, gm tips, role playing game, askreddit funny, d&d beyond, reddit funny, critical role, dungeon master tips, role playing

Id: ezE9H9WrgNk

Length: 18min 25sec (1105 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020