Bosses with Steadfast or Epic Resilience

[Steve]

Hello!

Let's talk about this: Bosses need to fail on a 1. If the argument is "Well...PCs have Steadfast Determination or Epic Resilience, so why not Bosses...," well, maybe REMOVE those Feats for PCs as well?!?

Since we already know that Bosses have inflated Saves, and the argument has been if you LOWER the resistance of mobs Players will no longer need to Powerbuild, doesn't taking off SD and ER follow this thought-path?

I just went to the Crystal Frost Keep. The Frost Keep King has Saves of 32. My toon can apply DCs of 30. So the main attack method is moot, because as I found out from the Combat Log, the Frost Keep King has Epic Resilience and though finally rolled a 1, it didn't matter.

While DnD may have Steadfast Determination as a canon Feat, I wonder if it really is something for this Server. And even if it is something the Staff would never consider removing, at least PLEASE consider how and why Bosses should also get this Immunity to DC fails AND have such inflated saves FAR ABOVE what are saves that come from the Monster Manual.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Snarfy]

Bosses need to fail on a 1.

You had me at this. There are no valid arguments

While I don't think there's a need to remove any feats, a blanket reduction of monster saving throws might be in order. The downside of this is that it will expedite the general grinding process, which is already frenetic as far as I can tell.

[izzul]

it is to avoid people bragging about 1 shotting bosses(hence making the dev/people who made the dungeon/boss looks unchallenging)

. LOL

[Steve]

Personally I'm fine with sky high saves so that only the most mighty mighty epic-ly focused DC casters can single shot a Boss.

But high saves PLUS no fail on a 1, is just wrong.

It takes away all chance of LUCK when trying to "go for it," but knowing both IC and OOC that your PC is not strong enough. But don't deny us Luck, man/woman...c'mon!!!

It's like this: I can imagine that the Frost Giant King has Immunity to Cold. I can imagine that the Fire Giant King has Immunity to Fire. Stuff like this means that only particular attack methods are going to win. I can imagine the Frost Giant King spams Improved Knockdown (which it already does). I can imagine that even on some days the Frost Giant King reasons that his enemies—those pesky adventurers—are going to bring fire to try to bring him down, so he employs a Immunity to Fire spell. I can imagine all sorts of tactics that a Boss would employ to keep his Status as King/Boss in place.

But the artificial NO FAIL aspect seems to me nothing but a cheap device to "make it more difficult." And like I said, if the option to have Ultimate Luck and get a Boss to roll a 1 is only possible with a trade off of PCs also losing their own Steafastness, I'm all for it.

[chad878262]

Is this a subtle ploy to get a free rcr period?

Jokes aside, players do hate losing their toys so while I'm happy to consider such a change I doubt it would be implemented with the overall view that server doesn't like taking away toys.

Of course doesn't mean pve bosses need to have it, but then I've been saying since my return is like to look in to a different way to build encounters (boss and otherwise). If that were the case it'd be ok for one enemy to have high saves and steadfast, but with some other weakness, but the idea would be to have several enemies instead of just one "boss"

[Steve]

I assume the concept here is that a single Boss also represents a retinue of toughies, but in terms of building and Server resources, one makes a single entity that is “tough as nails” versus multiple “pretty tough but each with a weakness” entities, because of said Server resource saving.

As in the vein of “1 NPC soldier represents a squad,” more or less.

I’m all for “weaker” but multiple foes, in place of an OP Boss, but...can the Server handle it?

But sky high Saves PLUS SD or Epic Resilience is just saying “we made this to annoy Power Builds,” but side effect is that variety in Building suffers and makes it less F.U.N. to try anything but power building.

[Blackman D]

back in my day i could send the balor back to the hells from wench it came from with damnation on my wis high cleric, and he only had to roll a 3 to fail!

yea... dem da dayz

[Bobthehero]

I've seen the Frost Giant King go down to a GFK ability, so there's one you can blast to death.

[Ambaryerno]

from wench

You sent him back to his mother?

(Grammar Police moment: "From whence" is BAD and people should seriously stop it. "Whence" means "from where," so no additional from is necessary)

[Rhifox]

Not a fan of bosses with these, either, unless it makes IC sense for the particular boss. The point of it is this erroneous idea that it is somehow "wrong" to be able to one-shot or otherwise severely damage or disable a boss through a saving throw. And yet, these very same bosses, among other mobs, can and will do the same to players.

This is an artificial difficulty spike. Like inflated HP pools, it's thinking difficulty = how long it takes to defeat a boss. But all this does is encourage high AC/DPS builds, while discouraging builds that focus on other means of combat. It dictates to a player, "the only tools in your kit that are important are these ones." Saves are a mob's AC against a specific type of spell. Giving immunity to all saves would be like having mobs that are completely immune to physical attacks. That'd be fine for some bosses that are flavored around such, but not all.

Save-or-suck/die is part of DnD. If a boss has a reason to have Steadfast or Epic Resilience, then by all means. But it should not be the default for balancing. It is okay if players get a lucky break on a boss.

Heck. Epic Resilience doesn't even exist in pnp.

[chad878262]

I’m all for “weaker” but multiple foes, in place of an OP Boss, but...can the Server handle it?

How would it be different then certain locations in an area where half a dozen mobs might spawn with more coming before you even dispatch those 6. A couple examples would be in that area of the trollclaws with the ruined buildings or the last room at the bottom of Nashkel Mines right before you get to the Pit Fiend. If the server can handle those, it should be able to handle a similar situation with boss fights.

To be clear I am not necessarily advocating for changing all (or even some) current bosses, but when/if new areas are introduced it'd be nice to try something different. Making an encounter where you have ~4-7 enemies in the boss fight. One could be the boss and slightly stronger than the rest, but my thought is that maybe you have one enemy with ~45-50 AC and decent saves, but lowish AB and or damage (tank) which can be taking out by no save or blast spells and/or a high damage build that is able to get through the high AC (perhaps via working together with a feinter or multiple players stacking expose weakness together.) Then maybe you have a spell caster that is prebuffed with long duration spells (thus is subject to mords) and either has some blasting spells, some disabling spells or a combination thereof. Throw in a healer and maybe some kind of high damage /high attack build that has weakish defenses and hey! the bad guys get together in a band of ne'er-do-wells that would likely give any individual tons of problems and might be more difficult than most bosses of equal CR rating, but in a party of adventurers that understand tactics can be defeated by divide and conquering...taking out high priority targets quickly and making sure to put the right party member on the right enemy etc.

[zan5bar]

I am not taking any sides whether the frost giant king should have an epic resilience or not, but how about we finally get some variability to the boss fights. Instead of a frost giant king we could have a frost giant queen with rolling pin throwing blinding baking flour at the adventures, or maybe frost giant king’s purring pet kitten trying to charm the adventures with its big lovely eyes. Well not really, but some variability would be fun to see. There could be, for example, 4 different versions of the King (or any other boss) with different abilities and fighting tactics spawned randomly when the adventurers enter his lair. Or perhaps 2 or more weaker bosses with different fighting styles, as someone already suggested. Predictability really is what takes the fun out of adventuring (at least to me). This way it would also be easier to explain the sudden appearance of the new boss after the death of the previous one: "Oh, it's not the frost giant king, but his long lost heavily overweight uncle from episode 23 who all thought died by choking to his breakfast porridge, but has now returned from the death."

Oh yeah, and perhaps not all these different versions would need epic resilience or whatnot. I chose a side after all, damn.

[Thaelis]

There could be, for example, 4 different versions of the King (or any other boss) with different abilities and fighting tactics spawned randomly when the adventurers enter his lair.

I love this idea! +1

Even 2 different versions would be great, you would never know exactly what you're going up against and hence couldn't plan exactly based on the boss's strength/weaknesses.

I remember the server I used to play on one boss used to open with WotB most days, but occasionally would open with some other random weaker spells you wouldn't have expected, and it was those times your party would get wiped, because of course we had planned for WotB

As for Epic Resilience, I think it's fine for the occasional boss to have it, if makes sense for their class. But definitely not all, or even a large proportion of, bosses should have it.

[yyj]

There could be, for example, 4 different versions of the King (or any other boss) with different abilities and fighting tactics spawned randomly when the adventurers enter his lair.

I love this idea! +1

I support this as well +2

[c2k]

Regarding defenses bosses have, some of these bosses have blanket immunities on top of these inflated saves. So even if you manage to out right beat their save, you just get "Immune to X".

At this point, I think its far to remove some defenses, at least so a wizard casting a spell might do some damage and contribute to the fight. Its not like bosses don't have a ton of HP. I think its fine to keep the blanket immunities to prevent the one-shot pacifying spells, like immunity to mind spells and death spells.