Five Homebrew Abilities For Boss Monsters in D&D 5e 

Tying Sacrificial Pawn to Legendary Resistance makes the official mechanic so much less frustrating and much, much more interesting! Great video and ideas as always

I love how absolutely surprised Kelly looks at 7:26 - 7:34 when Monty is talking about eating a burger then the fries,.

One other idea for "Sacrificial Pawn": If the big bad is some cult leader, bent on resurrection via sacrifice; if the party kills the big bad, but leaves any of their "most trusted minions" alive, the minions could sacrifice themselves to transfer their life essence back into the big bad (simple math: 4 minions at start, each can restore 25 percent of the big bad should they get offed before their pawns). Edit: WOW, this exploded! I'm glad you all like the idea. Thank you.

The first one reminds me a lot of Soulslike games Since they have a set rest point, the game chooses how big of a path you must complete before facing the boss As a new player, that walk in Bloodborne to the Cleric Beast definitely roughed me up a couple times

Also, my favorite use of Shield Generator was by Mark "Sherlock" Hulmes in the first High Rollers campaign. There was a guy playing a piano, and he was cursed and couldn't stop playing. And as he played, a hulking creature made of corpses attacked the party. As the party hit the creature, zombies fell off and attacked the party. IIRC, the party had to smash the piano or kill the guy, something along those lines. It was a great mixture of combat and roleplay, as the party had to figure out the "gimmick" of the fight, while avoiding a huge hulking shambling creature made of corpses that kept creating more mobs to fight.

A great example of a puzzle fight is in the first campaign of Critical Role, where they are fighting an Androsphynx and he is using attacks (defensively), lair actions, and legendary actions to make it lethal while they solve the riddle, which is his name, so he'll help them. SUPER cool and thematic. Like one of the better dungeons I had ever seen.

The “Look out Sir” (sacrificial pawn) should be something players see at lower then the BBEG ideally when they hit higher ranked commanders so they see this coming. And yeah I love the final form trope. It is even better with hyper powerful baddies that clearly are bored because they “under estimate the PC”. And you can put that up twice with the other benefit being you can get an idea is how much you can really push the PCs and have less chance of a wipe wile making it really dramatic. And the puzzle idea has a slight variation- use the players as the solving the issue. Elements of their back story being the puzzle solutions - a trinket they have just fits like a key (let them know) on the portal. Have a skill monkey that always is at the back of battles - let them roll those skills and let the team support them instead. Those moments of you are the answer or you always had the solution really fun stuff.

10:30 i made a flind boss monster with “carnivorous resistance” where it can, 3 times per day, eat a smaller gnoll that’s within 10 feet of it in order to succeed on a saving throw. glad to see someone else had the same idea!

I love a phase change in a fight, and some of these examples sound like a lot of fun, I can't wait to put the inspiration to work. One thing I want to recommend, is something I saw a long time ago on the Angry GM blog (want to make sure I give credit), that literally changed how I've run boss fights many years now. He called it something like, 2 snakes in 1. Basically - you pack multiple monsters into the same monster, each with its own initiative, but you call it all the same monster. The example was just duplicating the same monster, but I like to mix monsters usually. For example, I had a boss fight where the party came across this T-Rex, but in the world a lot of animals had the ability to absorb ambient magic, etc... So I wanted to give it some cool magical properties. So I picked another monster with some more fun powers (can't recall what it was, but let's just say the Spirit Naga, because it's the same CR which makes it easier). So I put my T-Rex on the map, give it 2 turns in initiative, 1 for the T-Rex, one for the Spirit-Naga-Rex. We'll say the T-Rex was first. On its first initiative turn, I use the T-Rex to attack, with its stat block. Players attack, I subtract the damage. Next initiative is up, it's the Spirit-Naga-Rex's turn. I'll have it cast lightning bolt, because it discharges some of the stored magical energy as an attack. Players go, initiative comes around, and we start again next round. Once they've done 75 damage to the creature (the HP of the Spirit Naga), I remove its turn from the initiative. Its magic is spent and it's weakened (I decided ahead of time the Spirit Naga would be the first phase to die, as losing its magic ability mid-fight made more sense than forgetting how to claw and bite). Now it only has 1 turn, loses the Spirit-Naga-Rex powers, and is just a normal T-Rex. Battle continues, and I subtract HP from the T-Rex until it dies. It works easiest when you just replicate the same monsters, like 2 T-Rexs packed into one. There's a little more to it balancing it when combining different monsters, since they have different stats, so I generally pick the primary monster, use those as the attributes maybe make some adjustments, and work from there, but balancing D&D fights is way more art & on the go adjustments than science, IMO, so I don't find it as a huge issue. The alternative way to go, is enraging monsters, where you clear one bar of hit points, then once it's dead, instead of removing it, you give it a second turn, and players have to now clear another bar of hit points, while the monster has 2 turns in initiative. It really creates a lot of surprise and tension. For me, this has drastically changed how boss fights work. You can essentially build an encounter with 2 or even 3 monsters, which is better for D&D's action economy, by packing them all into "the same monsters" that has multiple turns in the initiative, resulting in the fun dramatic single boss fight, while mechanically balancing things better.. For spell saves & powers that relate to a creature's next turn, I do count each turn in initiative as a new turn, so if a player cast Hold Monster on my T-Rex, and the T-Rex initiative fails the save, its next turn in initiative, the Spirit-Naga-Rex would also be paralyzed, but would also get to make a saving throw at the end of its turn, freeing the whole creature from the effect. Anyway, just wanted to share that recommendation in case it might be helpful to anyone else.

I love using phases in fights. It feels so much more cinematic. I like to change things up thematically, and with each phase the boss gets either harder to hit but doesn't hit as hard or easier to hit but hits harder. Abilities might get added/removed in keeping with the theme, or a restriction that previously existed is lifted, etc. You can end up making each phase feel very unique with just some light tweaks.

I like the area of malice idea. The campaign that I'm starting up is going to have areas of blight where the realm of the evil gods seeps into the world. I think areas around that where characters can't long rest for fear of terrible nightmares or some malady, makes perfect sense.

For Legendary Malevolence, a justification for why Rope Trick and Leommund'd Tiny Hut won't work is because the enemy boss simply has spellcasters with Dispel Magic handy, making it moot, as they van gather reinforcements, surround the hut and put the players in a very dangerous scenario.

Not my idea but I read somewhere about telegraphed AOE boss moves where the players have to get off of certain battle-map squares or take other actions to avoid them.

One variant of what was discussed at 18:45 that I like is the 3-form boss: First form is the mundane Big Bad Second form is a giant mutated superpowered monster that's a near mindless berserker, wildly throwing around insanely powerful/destructive attacks without either rhyme nor reason And the third form is far more humanoid than the second form and statistically weaker, but it's basically the Big Bad having gained some degree of control over the mutations and powers. So while they are TECHNICALLY weaker than the second form, they can apply the weakened versions of it's powers in intelligent/tactical ways (For example, Form 2 has Gravity Manipulation powers that it only uses to either slam the party into the floor / ceiling or slamming objects into them, while Form 3 has a weaker version of that power that they can use to forcibly manoeuvre the party or manipulate the arena in creative ways)

Done the final form thing. There was a spore druid the party fought who turned into a shambling mound when his hitpoints hit 0. Also, because he had the Fungal Infestation ability, it meant he got a little more mileage out of his minions than he otherwise would have. Easily one of the best boss fights I've ran.

One more for Sacrificial Pawn (probably from this channel): The dragon has like a tribe of kobolds worshipping them, all of the kobolds have the Mounted Combatant feat and are taking turns riding the dragon. The feat means that the dragon would be cosidered mount and any damage aimed at a mount gets transferred to the rider. Fun.

Been using something like "Legendary Malovelence" in my Curse of Strahd for over a year. The PCs have to be in a settlement or in one of the ancient stone circles spotted around the land to make a Long Rest without being attacked by something from the random encounter table. Been great combined with longer travel times needed to get from A to B. Players are stratigicly planning and with the need to be at locations at given times and all encounters being "Deadly" has them often strapped for resources but brave the random encounter role anyway or miss that meeting with Van Richten or be back in Valakia in time to defend the Church from the Vampire Attack.

I recently ran a complex encounter in which the party of four was fighting against a corrupted version of a pit fiend, held within a dungeon by a powerful binding spell, which had to be undone to end the encounter. In order to banish the pit fiend back to hell they had to overwrite the three arcane sigils of the binding spell, for which I handed out physical copies for them to draw on and stopped the time. If they wanted, they could all move to one sigil and draw together as long as only one character stood on the sigil when it was finished or work seperately. When a character finished their sigil, they got trapped inside, unable to leave but they were able to cast spells etc. When all of the sigils were finished, the characters inside them would take damage, which they had to be able to survive for the magic to take hold. At the same time, the fiend had an ability that, when not enough damage was dealt to it during the last round, would send a wave of necrotic energy out, damaging anyone in the room. If the pit fiend was slain, it would trigger a mythic form which had an aura of corruption turning healing spells in its vicinity into necrotic damage if the character did not manage to beat a Charisma save. And as a finishing touch, the drawing characters had to make Sleight of Hand checks after every turn drawing to keep their spellcraft as subtle as possible because their total checks determined the damage that the characters engaged with the pit fiend had to beat for it to keep its ire drawn on them. (Like a slight of hand check of 5 would correspond to 15 damage that had to be dealt while a check of 20+ would add nothing) I told the players about the mechanics (apart from the combat capabilities of the pit fiend) during the session a week before and already handed out the sigils they had to draw, so that they could practice it and come up with strategies on how to beat the encounter. It was the most stressfull one I ever run but it was an absolute blast for everybody!

I was just thinking about how to make bosses more interesting.

I love the look on Kelly's face when Monty says "I eat the burger, then I eat the fries". Like he's saying "dude what's wrong with you!!" 😂

The sacrificial pawn really reminds me of the final battle of Star Wars KoToR, where Malak had the captured Jedi whose health he would drain to revitalize his own (although that might be more of a modified Shield Generator, idk), and 13:22 my first thought is "Witch King of Angmar on a Fell Beast", seems like books/ movies/ shows/ games can be a powerful inspiration for innovative mechanics

Glyph of warding, spells in the BBGs lair allows them to maintain multiple concentration spells...like licks hand touches pillar with spell and bam activates haste, or eyebite, or stone skin, or so many spells. Great episode love the ideas, uses minion as shield for reaction...amazing! Also time limit triggers curse players loosing 1 point of main stat every 12 hours from corruption aura.

I’ve been using “secret service” bodyguard minions like you guys mentioned as a physical representation of Legendary Resistance or a damage sponge, and they have been really funny in practice. They are a blast to RP.

I like encounters with a puzzle attached. In one of my first encounters for my then lvl 2 group I used twig blights. After chopping some wood and igniting a fire in the wilderness, my group was attacked by a giant twig blight that summoned 1D4 additional twig blights every round. The group had the options to either kill the giant one or to simply douse their fire (I didn't tell them that ofc), which would pacify the giant blight and end the fight immediately - and get a small reward for that. My group - or well, the barbarian of the group - decided to make some more firewood out of the blights. I don't make every fight into a puzzle, but when I do, I always try to give several options, one of which is to simply bull charge through.

This may be one of the best videos of this year in the TTRPG scene imo. Great job!

I had a party of four ninth level character two-round a death tyrant in its lair. They succeeded on the first few eye ray saves, stunned it, dropped it to the ground, and destroyed it extremely quickly. This would have been very useful.

I like the idea of the puzzle being used inversely. Where the PCs could be able to brute force the boss it will but it will be difficult. However if they solve puzzle during combat it will in someway make the fight easier. Perhaps remove resistances, stop lair actions, straight up half the health. Just so the PCs feel like we found a secret way to defeat the hard boss

You guys gives us so much inspiration, thats really great!

I plan on adding two of these to my current campaign. Having a Mythic Transformation for the "final" boss, and preventing Long Rests in the final dungeon. My idea for stopping Long Rests is just a simple, slow, magic draining effect. So that if a spell stays in one place for a long time (an hour), it will fizzle. This way, they can throw up a Tiny Hut to get a Short Rest, but will know that they won't have any defenses if they stay in one place for any longer.

Want to know what the puzzle should be? Look at the skills your players have invested in. That's the solution to your puzzle. My wife took a lightning cantrip for her barbarian (not ideal, but she liked it) and the puzzle was simply that the desk had to be attacked with a lightning spell to unlock the drawer. She was the only one with a lightning spell so she was very happy with her investment.

SPOILERS FOR CALL OF THE NETHERDEEP - - - - - - - The final boss of Call of the Netherdeep does a good job of mixing some of your ideas. He's a phase boss that also implements puzzle elements. He starts off monstorous and becomes more human as the encounter goes on, but he's also able to draw power from three shrines in different ways. The PCs can disable these shrines, and also try to talk down the boss and redeem him. It makes the encounter highly memorable, and I'm really looking forward to the day I get to run it for my players.

Something that helps add drama to boss fights I run is the fact that they don’t follow the same rules as PCs. Sometimes they have multiple reactions to use, or can cast multiple spells per round, can concentrate on multiple spells, etc. One thing they all share is that they don’t roll for initiative. When they’re in their lair, they always go on initiative 18.

The first one is the classic Ravenloft mist (glad you mention it for castle Ravenloft; it was essentially by default in 1 and 2e AD&D, I guess they removed it for 5e). The second one is the classic Warhammer “Look out Sir”( a good idea to implement for every single villain in DnD)

so many awesome ideas in here and with helpful advice and examples. i especially like how you implemented these ideas in your Drakkenheim games, so we can see how the concepts worked

"Has your group trounced your BBEG?" The look on Kelly's face... "Yes. I have. Thank you for giving me that experience."

I had a fight that, once the boss only had 100hp, it activated an anti-magic field that increased its HP/S. The source was a blue gem at the top of 1 of 4 15ft pillars, but each pillar had a blue gem. The gems were immune to ranged attacks, so they had to be climbed up to and smashed. I fucked up and made it so that they could still kill the boss and accidentally made it a damage sponge instead of an interesting fight

For a great boss phase example. The final encounter in Critical Role C2 is about as good as it gets.

One of my DMs has a mechanic for his higher level bosses that we've dubbed the "Raid Wipe." When the boss gets low on health (around 1/4 to 1/3) it will become immune to all damage and being charging for a number of rounds. The players have to make it fail a certain number of saves or contested checks, or it unleashes the attack and kills everyone (any Legindary Resistances it has left are unusable while it's charging). If the party succeeds, then the boss is stunned and becomes vulnerable to all damage for a round, mostly to allow the party to pile on damage to finish it off.

For bosses, similar to the multiple stat-block approach, you can also just treat them as having multiple bundles of HP, rather than just a single one. So, rather than having 150 HP, they might have 3x 50 HP bundles and damage doesn't bleed across from one bundle to the next. Boss has got 105 HP left and just took 45 HP damage, nope - that's just 5 HP damage as it takes out the first 50 HP bundle and doesn't touch the next. This penalises the heavy hitters like Paladins' Smite, Rogues' Sneak Attack, or the occasional Critical Hit. You can even have a "special event" triggered, like some sort of AoE attack, or extra minions appear, when a HP bundle is eliminated.

15:42 CALL OF THE NETHERDEEP TOO! SPOILERS! Alyxian has three forms you have to go through to get to the end of the module. They don’t ALL have to be killed outright iirc which is why it was so interesting to me that they included it.

I once ran a Zelda campaign in Pathfinder and I did a Boss Phase style enemy. If you recall the Darknut enemies (in Twilight Princess and Wind Waker) they were massive defensive walls. However, as players pick off weak areas of their armour with magic and well-placed called shots, the armour slowly gets dismantled. For this example, I made them constructs with tons of defensive resistances. When their stat block had about 1/2 HP, the remaining armour drops as they turned into these rogue-like entities that fully commit to offensive attacks and quick maneuvers. Their stat blocks completely changed from being very defensive to being extremely offensive nova damage dealers. If players faced multiple Darknut foes, they had to think before striking them. Since the enemies were "Zelda Themed", they really worked!

Pulp Cthulhu, an add-on for 7th ED Call of Cthulhu, has a feature similar to Sacrificial Pawn called "Look Out, Master!". Bad guy can spend all his Luck points to have a minion or just someone within range take the hit for him. Granted it's a one-time thing until he regains Luck Points, but it can be a great way to give a boss time to escape.

If you're doing a battle in where you know the party can't just use a spell to instantly control or remove the boss from the fight, there is a very simple way to prolong a fight and it's from a small anecdote I heard a few years ago that goes something like this: I was at a game store one day and noticed a D&D game in the corner. I walked over and watched them play. The party was fighting a dragon and what I thought was odd was that the DM was not tracking the dragon's HP. After the game, I went over to the DM and decided to ask him about it. "Hey, what was that dragon's HP?" I inquired. "The dragon? Oh, I dunno. I didn't give him any." was his reply. I was confused. "Well, then how do you know when the dragon dies?" The DM smirked. "When it stops being fun." It sounds very basic, but the DM is the one who sets the scene and can alter things in subtle ways to give the party as much enjoyment as possible. After all, everyone is there to have fun... so give it to them! Fudge the boss' HP so that he can tank the Paladin going nova. Give him something he can take as a legendary action that lets him heal some of the damage back. Let him have that simulacrum to die in his place when you don't want the BBEG to die yet. So long as you make it fun for the players, who cares how it happened?

Man like a week ago the only thing I knew about DnD was the name, I assumed it was some nerd game. But my God the way you guys talk about it and explain it so passionately actually makes me so excited to learn more. I wish I could have experienced this years ago and had some friends without a stigma for TTRPGs, (Christian background so you can see where I’m coming from) it makes me sad and happy at the same time that I just discovered how awesome this community is. Thank you guys.

One thing to remember with stats is that only Fighters add their Strength to attack and damage. The d8 for Fighters in Basic most likely comes from the supplements. Judging by my perusal of S&W, you can tell how close Basic is to OD&D. From my understanding, it was intended for new players to stay will the Holmes set and then move onto OD&D.

Puzzle boss is my favourite, but my players tend to take challenges head on so our last session ended like this: - One player was rolling death saving throws (Survived due to luck) - One player had 6hp left and a parasite stuck to his body and hurting him whenever he attempted to attack the boss (They're gonna be getting rid of the parasite next session) - Another player was paralysed - The final player had firebolts and a dream They were lucky their enemy had 27 hp left and didn't want to risk revealing that getting it to 0 hp wouldn't kill it, and decided to teleport out of that situation.

In my Drakkenheim, I added extra minions to certain boss fights that could heal the boss. For example, in the Black Ivory Inn, there was a Gibbering Mouther 'chorus' with the Protean Abomination. The abomination could use a legendary action to absorb a live or dead mouther and heal itself but the mouther's current HP+10, or on other rounds, it could spend 2 legendary actions to spawn 1d2 more mouthers. I had to increase it like that because that was the last outer city scenario they takled, and they were too powerful for the regular setup. More encounters should have variable options to tune it for different levels.

Tip for anyone planning on using the 'Shield Generator' for their bosses, don't make the thing protecting them small enough to fit into a Bag of Holding or Portable Hole. I had a Necromancer that was drawing power from a Lich''s Phylactery to protect themselves, and one of my players grabbed the phylactery mid-combat and hid it in a Bag of Holding. The combat was over pretty soon after that

One of my proudest creations and ideas i've used for a 'boss' encounter was a fight my party had at around lvl 11. It was a fight against these 2 powerful shadow creatures that could only be touched or harmed while in complete darkness. In bright light they were completely invisible and intangible, in dim light you could see them but only radiant damage could harm them but they became solid enough to fight properly in full darkness. So it forced the players to effectively limit their own fighting capabilities in order to combat the boss, by spending time to extinguish all the light sources in the room and then having to fight the enemies in the dark. I'm a big fan of just taking existing enemies and giving them new abilities or immunities or power gimmicks to make unique encounters out of them.

Talking about change in scenery, I had a Wild Magic Sorcerer BBEG who had a special wild magic surge table. It would immediately cast a spell that had a spell casting time of greater than 1-action, at no cost to the sorcerer, but also sometimes it would benefit the party as well. One of those spells cast was Mirage arcane, turning the ruins in the feywild they were in into a freezing hilltop. The sorcerer then cast gift of alacrity on its next surge, which since combat had already started, was useless, but still, it was a cool way to add powerful random effects.

Didn't the Rat Prince use the sacrificial pawn technique? Yes, yes, yes?

These sound a lot of fun. I'd love to play with some if these! My suggestion is to steal mechanics from mmo dungeons/raids. Surprisingly simple but excellent!

I did the memory game with elementals too. Lol Mine was a little bit different in they had to reveal them all to unlock the door, but the catch was when they matched them it would spawn in 1,2,3,4,5, and 6 elementals if that type. In ascending order. After they saw what was going on they decided to try to get light and dark elements 3rd and 4th. Thinking they didn't want those to be the last 2. Good decision since those were by far stronger than the basic earth, fire, water, air elementals.

Gotta rock the glyph of warding! If the big bad can cast spells or pay someone else to do it for them, then not only is every surface a potential trap for the party, it’s also a potential buff for the baddies.

I like some of these, especially the environment preventing a long rest. I could see the party having nightmares the first night preventing getting spells back. Elves are making willpower checks each hour to meditate. Give the players a taste the first time other then just saying they can’t. Or the player on watch spots things moving, then is either raising the alarm every hour, or risk an ambush

For Descent into Avernus, we had to fight off Bel to prevent him from killing Zariel while undergoing her redemption. Our group brought his original statlock down to 0, and then my DM initiated what he called his "Mythic Phase" & boy that was painful! Of course Bel is an archdevil so it had to hurt!

Kelly's look at eating the burger first lol, I mean, Monty is right, burger first. But the look was funny

Dungeon Dudes streaming video games when? I'd love to see some Divinity: Original Sin 2 with Monty and Kelly.

With undead minions or thralls of some kind or cutlist minions I have the boss game damage reduction based on the number of minions making the boss take considerably less damage until some of the minions get killed or the players find a creative way to break that connection.

I think stuff that takes away long rests are totally fine but it’s a different kind of challenge versus better. It’s the difference between a marathon and a sprint. The balance there is as a DM you need to make sure that each encounter can’t be a down to the wire from full health fight.

Sacrificial pawn can also be made in a way that The Minion have a Sacrifice Ability where when the boss is hit they can choose to Burst into flame or what ever to cast Shield or something similar on the Boss.. turning the Hit into a miss

Gross and surely not your guys' fault, but I got a weird-af Andrew Tate ad when I clicked this 🙃😤 Thanks RU-vid. Your expectations were ground-level and you still brought a shovel.

I still wanna run a boss battle in a minesweeper field. Every time someone steps on a new tile, it shows how many tiles around it contain a bomb (or if there is a bomb, it just explodes).

Malevolence works really well for bodaks. The nightmarish gaze is etched into the experience beforehand and give a similar check to its gaze, with a minor condition attached like a point of exhaustion, for which they now have a warning and a better understanding of how dangerous the monster ahead of them is. A creature whose mere gaze can kill should have a sufficient warning, and i think his works excellently. The Gray Philosopher is a good Puzzle Boss.

My friends & I are currently using some homebrew books to run a 5e campaign in the world of the Monster Hunter game series and my friend Taylor, who is GMing for us, has a really cool boss mechanic he uses. Big creatures in the missions have 2-3 health bars, instead of their normal health, and it effects their actions in combat. A creature may have 3 health bars, start with 3 different spaces on the turn order, and lose extra turns as the health bars are depleted or vice versa (gain more turns in each round of combat as health bars are removed). He also has a mechanic where the boss monsters can shake off status effects at the cost of some of their health.

in my opinion your level 20 one-shot with treantmonk had some pretty great examples of puzzle bosses

I've used that minion sacrifice mechanic in one of my sessions. Had an evil queen whose guards would eat the blows targeting her. Haven't used any of the others yet though. I should try those puzzle fights though.

I love the look Kelly gives when Monty says he eats his burger first, then the fries. You gotta eat the fries first! Otherwise they get cold! Good video. Most of my bosses are just level 20 characters, so I do things like "cast a cantrip," "regain a spell slot/once per short rest ability," or "regain a reaction" if they are on their own and use reactions like Shield/Counterspell/Deflect Arrows/Uncanny Dodge.

I`ll keep saying this. Your HB videos need to include a GM Binder style pdf.

When I think of a Puzzle Boss my thoughts go straight to "Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver"...one of my top 5 all time favorite games.

The methods in this video also play well into the cr system. The temptations is boss=higher cr, which can sometimes be very dangerous for the party and end up killing them when you just wanted to make the fight challenging. These are all methods that essentially string several encounters together, therefore increasing difficulty (and the narrative) so making it a fun and challenging fight without as much risk for killing characters (and leaving players out of the cool boss fight).

I’ve just taken to using 4e design (minions, roles) and MCDM’s action oriented design and it has made bbegs much hardier and combat more interesting.

I have been working on homebrewing Monster Manuevers for martial monsters. Basically battle master maneuvers specifically made for a monster with legendary actions adding a manuever each legendary action. These limited maneuvers (depending on your cr) restart at the beginning of the monster's turn. Gives the monster a sense of controlling the battlefield through sheer skill in combat.

"Legendary Malevolence" is something I have had on an OC I came up with long before I even got into DnD. He is a central character in what would be a series of novels if I ever get to writing them down. He is a lich whose signature feature is this extreme rage, which makes EVERYONE terrified of him simply because he radiates such intense hatred and anger, acting very much like your Legendary Malevolence. The valley where his lair is located is so tainted by his rage that it has become this nightmare realm that drives people insane with fear, making them easy targets.

Boss phases are also a great way to allow your boss to escape! Players get to see that the boss has a phase beyond what's expected, the boss gets to live another day and strategize for the future, returning later with more knowledge about the party's makeup, strengths, and weaknesses.

I knew he was a man of culture, definitely burger first then fries

In my Drakkenheim, I ran a miniboss as 4 creatures. Each of the 'parts' had its own pool of HP and its own actions, but the PCs could target different areas to disable the attacks coming from it. It was inspired by some video game bodd battles that do similar things.

Imagine if one day they say they aren't the dungeon dudes in the intro

For the sacrificial pawn, you could add that the boss takes half damage as the minions’ presence cause a magical barrier

By the way, I made a huge, buff orc named Gromsh, who is a primal orc from an ancient age, and as he's basically a 11 foot tall ball of unfeeling muscle, I figured an ability to emphasize that would be great versus a team of 4 players who feel invincible. . Is a big boss grappling an enemy alone not good enough for the action it takes? Well I have the solution for you! On one of the 2 legendary actions he gets per turn, Gromsh can run a max of 20 feet towards an enemy of medium size or smaller and attempt to pick them up via contested grapple check. Once the enemy is grappled, then Gromsh can fucking throw them 20 feet in any direction (including into the floor). Lastly, if the opponent hits a solid object, wall, or other creature, they stop there, take 3d8 bludgeoning damage and are knocked prone along with any creature they hit (if any) ( If the grapple check fails by 7 or less, then Gromsh's movement on his next turn is reduced by 20 on his next turn. If the check is failed by 8 or more, however, then the enemy takes 2d8 bludgeoning damage from the large slap, and is moved back 5 feet)

One of my favorite ones comes from overlord. Where a vampire summons minions but instead of using them to attack they attack the minions to suck out their HP to heal. I also like the minion shield wall. Make minions with sentinel and prevent melee with your caster.

I did a boss battle where the boss had 20 minion that were mostly harmless, slow, and couldn't make attacks of opportunity. The boss could sacrifice one to use a Legendary Resistance, with no limit, he also had an ability that he could sacrifice any number of them to regain X hit points per minion sacrificed, this ability was on a Recharge 5-6. There were a few other things going on as well, but having a max of 20 Legendary Resistances was really strong, but he only ended up using one as he needed to save the minions for healing.

So cool to see Demeo as a sponsor! Bought the game recently for PS5, and now I’m even more pumped to try it out since it seems to have the stamp of approval from the Dudes!

Excellent, as always. Thank you.

Absolutely brilliant ideas, I will use all in my Out of Abyss! I'm using a two phase boss encounter with Demogorgon, second phase, near death, he splits into two monsters and go rampage havoc madness, even maybe fight between them, If the players pull this off. In tomb of annihilation, I created a stone guardian of a tomb, with all resistances possible and almost impossible to kill, only after the players make a blood sacrifice on the altar (bleeding for many rounds, until reach an amount of HP) the stone golem became a flesh golem and lose all resistances. It's a like a fight that you have to kite the monster away from the characters that are bleeding in the altar and win some time until the guardian is deadly, killable.

Love the content, love the homebrew stuff, love you guys!

If they're haunting your nightmares...are elves affected? What happens if you take a bunch of downers to help you pass out? It feels like mechanics are defining reality instead of the other way 'round.

About the long rest mechanic you proposed. Something i tend to do is to just change up a bit how a long rest works depending on the enviorment. For example, a long rest in a town does work as it would normally, but a long rest in the wilderness deep within enemy territory is more stressful, so it only restores half your hit die and you have to expend them to regain hit points at all. If the area is heavily suffused with eldritch or wild magic, then spell slot recovery may also be more difficult, typically restoring one or two spell slots less for each leveled spell slot you have (for example; if you have four 1st level spell slots, you may only regain 3 of them or less on a long rest in such a territory). It makes the party a lot more wary about choosing their battles and looking for alternative solutions to encounters as well, since they cant just blast their way through every encounter and regain everything as easily.

SPOILERS FOR CALL OF THE NETHERDEEP: The final boss against the Apotheon is a three-phase fight as well!

@7:27 LOL, Kelly's face when Monty says he eats the burger and then the fries is fantastic 🤣

I actually used that "sacrificial pawn" idea with a psychotic drow bbeg lieutenant my players were fighting. One of them had a charge ability and the lieutenant picked up the KoaToa next to her and used him as a meat shield. It was so hilarious

Legendary malevolenc......??was gonna laugh in rope trick.....now crying in my own lil hidden dimension...

Really solid advices in this video - I am already looking forward to implementing some of these into my upcoming battles. Would also say that several of these would work great for spicing up "regular" combat encounters in campaigns that do not include your standard 4 combat encounters per adventuring day-type campaigns. I usually run 1-2 combat encounters per session and so want them to have a little more oomf :D

Sacrificial pawn... could that work against Magic Missile that never misses? (There's a wizard in my game that just keeps using that spell against harder enemies). I'm running a combo campaign of LMoP and DoIP... and needed to beef up Cryovain since they beat Venonfang too easily. I added Lair Actions (stolen from older dragons) and some ice mephits (# based on how easy/hard things are)... I'm just wondering if the dragon having mephits take damage for it would work. 🤔

Charged up / indicated attacks. Think Dark Souls, boss holds up his hammer over his head, beyond his back... What will happen next turn? A mage cast a spell, and now the ground under yout feet is trembling and shaking and fiery energy radiates from its cracks... You have one turn to move away, but its now difficult terrain. Will you dash or keep attacking and hope? Also colossal enemies: fight ON them. I've seen a videoessay a few months back about how those been done well or poorly in video games. Darkest Dungeon has great crystal pillar encounters, might wanna look up some of its boss fights. Enviromental "Bosses": Tunnels that need to be collapsed or they will keep summoning reinforcements. A burning house. Anything that complicates things more than "Me stay here. Me hit good. Me kill em ded."

Hi Kelly! Hi Monty! Love the videos. Thanks for the tips. I am going to add legendary traits to my next boss, Fanatical Devotion to have the minions shift up to their speed toward my boss to become the target of an attack and Sacrificial Pawn to do the soul drain minion to auto save for my boss. Made a goblin queen Archfey with a 4 armed troll body guard and a bunch of goblin/hobgoblins, Darklings, red caps and quicklings. Thanks again!

I love making broken abilities with really heavy downsides for bosses. For example, i created a boss that when under 50 ho (has a max of 300) became basically unhittable with a 30 CA and the parry ability and the legendary action (previusoly blocked) to use time stop and a DC 16 dex save to hit It witout taking an Attack, not an opportunity Attack, just an attack. The downside Is that It takes 10 damage per turn, so, even without beeing hitted, It would stand up for less then 5 turn. Homebrewing boss it's just so funny.

Necromancer Bad Guy. Lots of zombie minions, and can summon a set amount more. Legendary resistance sacrifices a zombie. When out of Legendary resistance, can still sacrifice a zombie to drop to 1 instead of 0.

I actually had an idea to do something like legendary malevolence in my first campaign, where a powerful lv 38 wizard (I homebrewed a lv 40 cap) had a magic ball and could find out where any one person was, and read their mind. Said wizard refuses to locate the BBEG (a lich) for the party and the barbarian ended up punching the wizard. The ‘wizard’ failed the con save a broke a home brew spell called ‘forced perspective’ which is kinda like major illusion, but it can work on 5ish people (depending on spellcasting modifier) and could change ANYTHING about what they see (14 day cool-down but meh) The party then sees his skin melt off, hair reform into a crown, and the walls turn charcoal black. The landscape around the PCs also changed, and the beautiful giant trees and museums turned into devilish stalagmites and crypts, and the land became too hostile to rest well in. The party realised that the ‘wizard’ was the lich they had been searching for, and he had casted ‘forced perspective’ on the entire kingdom. They then go on this philactre hunting encounter where they go to the 5 main locations, running from the lich as they go. They break 4 and as they get to the philactre room in the 5th place, they don’t see anything. I have them roll an investigation check and perception check and 2 different PCs succeed. They discuss and realise the ruby in the lich’s cranium is the 5th philactre. The lich bursts through the ceiling, the PCs knock him down, shatter the ruby and kill him. My first campaign…

I think I'll implement Malice into my game I'm prepping. The my intent was 4 dungeons and 4 bosses that needed to be killed to gather keys to fight the BBEG (think BotW but the divine beasts are mandatory) with the party leveling up after each dungeon and boss. So, they'd start at 7, dungeon 8, boss 9, rinse repeat 11, 13, 15, BBEG's dungeon completion would put them at 16, and they'd get level 17 for beating the BBEG. Full casters could get their 9th level spells post campaign and retire as archmages or popes or whatever. I figured gaining a level and throwing them right at the boss would be a decent trade off of them not long resting right before each boss, but I like the malice idea