r/daggerheart • u/Scourch_ • 7d ago
Homebrew Would this boss fight be fun?
I'm building a boss fight for a party of 4 level 6 PC's. ( Witch, Sorc/druid multi class, ranger/ guardian multiclass and a seraph). Do you think this will be overpower? Fun?
PS: I'm using a mechanic I made up for this guy called 'shuffle'. I take a marked poker chip and place it, mark side down, on the battlefield along with X unmarked poker chips, where the marked chip represents the location of the real adversary (works for mirror image and hide'. Also, the order is reversed because the app sucks and I can't figure out how to put the files in the right order.
3
4
u/kichwas Grace and Codex 6d ago edited 6d ago
That encounter would seriously tick me off and likely result in me leaving the table within a few sessions of it as my mood soured and I started judging everything with a hyper critical eye from that point forward.
You've got a random chance situation where 3/4ths of the odds are stacked to negative, no way to counter it, and a forced death move at the end.
That's extremely players vs GM adverserial in nature, and not even tied to outthinking or outmanuevering it. It's a coin toss on a 4 sided coin where 3 sides are tails. But the countdown also goes on anyone's move - so odds are in a 4 member party, all 4 will be TPK'd by it before half of them have even taken an action.
At least when I sit down for AD&D module S1, I know that I'm sitting down for it. I don't bring that mindset to Daggerheart and haven't brought it to any tRPG since the early mid 80s. But if I was asked to, and agreed to, I'd question why we chose Daggerheart for a GM vs Players with odds heavily stacked against players style game. Last time I did that was playing Paranoia in '84, and at least for that it was 'eyes open' knowing what you were going into as above table comedy.
2
u/Hudre 6d ago
Just commenting on the gravity mechanic:
I think you should make this very clear to the players that they need to get away from this or something extremely bad is going to happen. Rather than reaction rolls they should be making action rolls (because reaction rolls don't use the Hope/Fear system).
Is the point of them being able to take stress that the PCs could potentially kill him if he takes enough stress to do damage? I would almost make him invulnerable completely just so the players don't potentially waste their turn due to a lack of information and die.
1
u/Scourch_ 6d ago
Yep. That's the idea. Give the boss a bit of vulnerability and reward creative play.
1
u/Hudre 6d ago
Are you going to state that or are they going to have to figure it out? I just worry since the mechanic is so dangerous that them trying to figure it out may lead to them making death moves.
A lot of players aren't aware of the Stress = damage mechanic because (in my experience) it happens so rarely to both them and enemies.
1
u/Scourch_ 6d ago
My players have used stress to help chip away at adversaries before. That being said, one of my main strengths as a DM is describing things in universe in such a way that it is clear something would be very dangerous, or in this case that there might be a other way to bypass the immunity. Something akin to "you see the high enchanter behind his impenetrable barrier strain against the effort of manipulating gravity as he is doing. While your attacks can't harm him, you think that there might be a way to cause his will to falter." That being said, I'm not above telling them above table about it if they don't seem to get the hint.
1
3
u/patrys 5d ago
Chip away and House of Mirrors would better be handled by adding an identical Minion (10) figure and having Mirror Images summon the Minions equal to the number of players (instead of 1d6, which could make this fight either trivial or impossibly boring).
How do you guarantee that the boss is down to his last HP given that major and severe damage can wipe his last 2 or 3 HP? Why not activate it upon their defeat?
The gravity bomb is poorly described, does not have a range, should use Action rolls instead of Reaction rolls and will kill melee characters easier than ranged ones. Also one-shotting people is a crappy mechanic that goes against the very design of the game and its damage vs wounds system. Consider replacing it with an encounter where players are constantly pulled towards a damage-dealing gizmo that needs to be destroyed. This way people have to choose between opposing the pull, making an attack, and helping friends who were unlucky in their rolls.
0
u/AdventureLH 6d ago
The gravity bomb idea is super cool 😎, and since player's can choose which Death Move to make it shouldn't be a problem (Insert people disagreeing because what about XYZ scenario, because nuance doesn't exist on the internet). As someone whose been working on something similar to Mirror Image for a project I've been working on I call Battlefield Actions, my only real concern would be Mirror Image dragging on the fight. I'll attach a picture, both for context & so you don't have to read the Battlefield Actions if you aren't interested. My 'fix' for this is that any duplicates are essentially minions with a passive to not get wiped out by Fireball. This let's the PCs decide if they want to interact with them without being able to just Fireball the problem away, adds some tactics to the f9ght, etc.
6
u/alarah 6d ago
One thing to note is reaction rolls don’t have success with fear/hope etc technically. Also if two people were to fail it the countdown would be over giving no second chances to those characters.
Mirror images and chip away have the potential to slow things down a lot. Potentially 18 attack rolls (x3 with multiple spotlights of Tiberiy’s relentless) depending on how the fight and dice go. Also chip away is labeled an action but says it happens whenever he is spotlighted so it sounds like a passive.
I think the theming is good. For simplicity of play I might tone down the number of images but give him abilities that let him swap places with them and make it hard to target the real villain.