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Author Archives: MssngrDeath
The Million Murloc March
Concept: All-minion combat Tested in: The Great Tower of Oldechi What it is: In D&D 4E, minions were a creature type with static damage and only one hit point. They rarely had more than two powers (a melee attack and … Continue reading
Side-Scrolling Combat
Concept: Side-scrolling combat Tested in: Delve Night and The Great Tower of Oldechi What it is: D&D’s combat map has always been top-down, since before it was even D&D. It is, after all, a tabletop game, not a wallside game. … Continue reading
Dreamblade Dice
Concept: Atypical damage dice Tested in: Delve Night What it is: The defunct miniatures game Dreamblade used six-sided dice for damage, but not the sort of dice from every other game. Normal dice have the sides 1 / 2 / … Continue reading
A Month of Healthy Disrespect
It’s November, which means I’m doing National Novel Writing Month again. Since I’ll be spending most of my writing energy on something completely different, this blog won’t have any long-form posts this month. Instead, I want to elaborate on something … Continue reading
Posted in DMing, Events, House Rules
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Making Phased Bosses
Phased bosses aren’t an everyday food. If every bandit leader and his brother has multiple forms, the whole concept loses its impact. But for key battles, the sort that accompany campaign milestones or end arcs, there’s little more satisfying than … Continue reading
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Phased Bosses
I’ve alluded to phased bosses a few times, but I haven’t gone in-depth about it. A phased combat encounter is any encounter with multiple stages as part of the same fight. These stages must be mechanically distinct; a knight who … Continue reading
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Creating Bosses: Actual Numbers
This post is the reason I’ve been avoiding writing about boss monsters for so long. While I’ve run hundreds (literally hundreds) of sessions in 3E/Pathfinder and 4E, my 5E experience is much more limited. I wasn’t sure I had the … Continue reading
Creating Bosses: Avoiding Easy Answers
Players most strongly remember two kinds of fights: the very easy and the very hard. If a fight seems difficult on paper and the players blow clean through it with good rolls, good strategy, and/or a good builds, they’ll tell … Continue reading
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Creating Bosses: Making a Concept
Stealing boss ideas is easy once you get used to it. A DM can pick up almost any game with a boss, pick almost any boss in that game, and apply it to their game for a fun encounter. But, … Continue reading
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Stealing Boss Encounters
Boss fights are hard. Most editions of D&D really aren’t designed to handle them, so there’s no simple math you can do to turn a fight into a boss. You could just apply a template to a monster or give … Continue reading