Summary
Your players have finally reached the big leagues inDungeons & Dragons— or you just got sick of it and started your campaign at a higher level already. Either way, you’re handling a group of players so powerful that they can destroy armies, bend time, and level civilizations with ease. So, how do you fight them?
It’s time to hit them with everything you have, as the players will most likely find a solution since it’s a group against one person (and you may tune things down if you exaggerate). From powerful features, legendary actions, attacks that do more than just damage, and instant-kill spells, you have quite an arsenal to use.
We have also tackled ability options forlow-leveland mid-level bosses in the past. Don’t be afraid to stack some of these on your big bad since they’re supposed to be powerful anyway, or you’re able to even spread these weaker features on minions so they won’t be as squishy.
10Attacks That Cause Conditions
Two For One
Having a good action economy is very important for a difficult boss fight, especially if you want to make a big bad that has no minions helping out. A simple solution to this is, instead of choosing between attacking or causing a condition, just do both with the same swing.
The idea is similar to a Lich’s Paralyzing Touch. It causes damage and forces the target into a saving throw, one which results in paralysis if they fail. Depending on the condition’s DC and how intense it is, you may lower the damage for the sake of balance. Still, this is very effective, especially if the creature has Multiattack.
Consider having these attacks, or something that is either focused on damage or giving conditions to multiple people, as legendary action options.
9Apply Vulnerability
Hit Harder Than Ever
By now, your players will have a lot of hit points, so you need to step up the damage you cause. Thus, one of the conditions you could cause with the example below, or some area feature that may cause a condition on multiple targets, is a condition that applies vulnerability.
Being vulnerable to a certain damage type means the target will take twice as much damage, and you can make the target vulnerable to specific damage or to all the boss' attacks for a limited amount of time.
For instance, the Disintegrate spell causes force damage and has an average damage of 80 hit points, meaning vulnerability could raise it to 160 hit points. Just be careful because this particular spell destroys the body when it kills someone, making resurrection a lot harder.
8Dragon’s Breath Weapons
The Ultimate AoE Attack
Taking inspiration from the many dragons in D&D, you can also give your monster something similar to a breath weapon — though what the attack actually is can be stylized to fit your monster. It’s essentially a recharge ability that is a massive area of effect attack.
We mentioned this on ourmid-level boss abilitieslist, but the idea here is the usefulness of an AoE attack that isn’t a spell, so it’s immune to Counterspell or anti-magic stuff. The breath weapons are a great reference due to their area and damage, with the strongest ones (aka the ones from Tiamat) having average damage of 91 hit points in a 90ft cone area.
This area attack can also cause conditions if you want to, but then we’d suggest lowering the damage for balancing reasons.
7Legendary Resistance
Cheating, But Legal
Taking care of your monster’s defenses is also important, and few things are as powerful as Legendary Resistance, which monsters tend to have three uses per day. With this feature, whenever you fail a saving throw, you’re able to choose to succeed instead. It’s like DM fudging but as an actual feature.
This feature can save you from taking full damage of hard-hitting spells, like the aforementioned Disintegrate spell, or even avoiding nasty conditions that can be game-changers, such as saving yourself from a Hold Monster — though you should consider having your character immune to some conditions in the first place.
6Instant-Kill Attacks
Bonus Points If They Zombify The Target
No, we don’t mean an attack that takes all hit points away (that’s for later), but instead an attack that kills the target instantly if they reach zero hit points instead of having them roll death saving throws.
As a high-level group, they’ll likely have options to revive someone quickly, to the point that someone can die and still come out of the fight alive, which means it’s okay to kill them during the fight.
you’re able to even have the dead target return as an undead minion in the next turn, giving agency to reviving them. Or you can let the players cast Revivify on the zombie to bring them back — that’s not RAW (Rules As Written), but you make your rules.
5Summon Other Monsters
Because One Versus A Group Is Cheating
Though having a powerful boss who can take on a whole group is enticing, don’t be afraid of having some extra muscle prepared. you may create a feature, legendary action, or similar that lets them summon a number of monsters to help them out.
They don’t need to be particularly powerful themselves, but that alone helps things out a lot because it will highly increase the number of attacks the players will take. And you can still have strong-ish minions with access to spells or powerful features.
4Swallow
For Big Monsters
If your creature is an actual gigantic monster, like the beautiful Tarrasque, you may give them the ability to just eat people whole during the fight. The Tarrasque’s version is pretty intense, in fact, as it blinds, restrains, and causes acid damage at the start of the swallowed target’s turn.
The player can figure a way out before dying, or the monster will spit it out if it takes a certain amount of damage before its next turn, meaning that proper and quick teamwork will save the swallowed ally.
3Lair Actions
There’s No Place Like Home
If your creature has appeared multiple times throughout the story, the players will already have some notion of what they’re capable of. Thus, you can catch them by surprise during the final encounter by revealing lair actions during the combat.
you may turn another tip here or other features into lair actions that the monster can activate during the fight and make things a bit harder for your players. Use every advantage you can have during the fight.
2Free-Casting
Spells Are Just Fun
Spells are a good part of any boss' arsenal, but before we get to spell choices, you can also make weaker ones more frequent. Fireball won’t be as useful, for example, but you can give your creature the ability to cast it at will and a legendary action to cast spells for extra damage.
You can choose a few low-level spells that you can cast at will or, if you want to really be terrifying, cast anything that is a certain spell level or below free. For example, they could cast any third-level spell or lower at will.
1Spells
Time For Ninth-Level Spells
And now, for thehard-hitting spells. Sixth to ninth-level spells have some intriguing options, and if your boss' power comes from spellcasting, it’s okay to give them a couple of ninth-level spell slots.
You can still focus on more defensive options as they always come in handy, and lower-level spells like Counterspell are always a must-have, but using seventh, eighth, and ninth-level spells is crucial here.
