making D&D boss fights EPIC 

Thats sound so gooood thank you I'm stealing that ! ( lowering AC and raising AC is cool I never thought of that ) for my inspiration I'm going to steal Wakfu MMORPG boss battle , that's what recommend cause its a turn by turn rpg

Using phases is excellent advice. The best video game boss battles require an initial set of tactics, then change at key moments, forcing you to change tactics, as the boss reveals a different type of attack or as the environment/lair becomes more hostile or treacherous. Lair actions are common, and having to interact with objects in the lair to shift things in your favor is also a great way to keep players on their toes. And this works for low-level bosses as well as the big bad.

came here to make this comment!

The boss has been following their progress and watched what abilities most commonly wiped parties of enemies.

Lair actions and wave after wave of different kinds of minions will help... Plus have them solve a puzzle before the BBEG’s force shield generator goes down. Think of the complex bosses in video games.

You can also make environmental hazards. One boss fight I was a player for had a conveyor belt that moved 15ft per round over a garbage incinerator. If it pulls you over the edge, that's immediate, permanent death. Debris continues to fall throughout the battle. It created a unique challenge where a significant amount of effort had to go into positioning.

@@jayspeidell That sounds a little like Toy Story 3.

Sorry in advance for the word vomit. If you just want the spark notes: make side objectives that must be accomplished or else the boss is very difficult-to-near-impossible to kill, have the boss set up shop in terrain hazards that they're immune to but that players aren't, mess around with what spaces the players can safely occupy, and create places that are more advantageous to players but also far more dangerous to occupy. Just ran a fight of 17th levels vs a "psuedo-tarrasque", sort of a mix between a tarrasque and a previous character. Few things I learned from that: Run your boss in stages. Mine had two health pools of 330. Here was a kicker: when it hit the second health pool, the terrain suddenly gave way to a lava chasm, with the party standing scattered on rocks. The "tarrasque" switched attack styles, doing aggressive amounts of damage with its regular attacks while losing the bite and swallow attack that was such a huge pain in stage one. Additionally, it dove into the lava, smashed the rocks the party was standing on, and generally used its fire immunity, swim speed, burrow speed, and earth glide to sometimes negate the party's ability to attack. Add in a mechanic that, if they don't deal with, makes the boss freakishly hard until its dealt with, like RC Schmidt said. In my case, on the tarrasque's turn, 7 illusions of a character that the tarrasque absolutely hated appeared, and shot harmless illusory bullets. However, if any remained by its next turn, it got resistance to all damage. That turned its health from 660 to 1440 while these illusions weren't dealt with, which 17th level players DEFINITELY cannot dish out. Whats worse, come phase 2, the illusions spawned at different altitudes and locations all throughout the chasm, forcing some members to spend abilities, speed, spells, and other things just getting to the illusions, let alone taking them out. It took them a few rounds to many to figure that mechanic out, so they chose to flee, but for the first time in a while, they felt really challenged, and quickly restrategized to go back and win. Other idea mechanics like this might include: an accessory creature to the boss that provides an insane amount of healing, shielding, rage bonuses, or some other really powerful boon, but only while its alive; glowing sigils that appear all over the room that someone has to touch and whisper a secret word or a dispel magic or something, or else they explode all the party for about 10d10 damage (that's a setback trap for 17th level, btw); the villain merges into or passes through terrain, making it untargetable until the party reaches it again (maybe by teleporting or smashing holes it walls, whatevs), while it regens, buffs itself, gets more turns to recover its "roll a 5 or 6" ability; the boss is holding a magical artifact in its hand that makes it immune to death or damage or something while the boss holds it, and they teleport it back to their hand at the start of their turn; etc... Also, make the boss clever by ambient features that the villain is immune to that the party isn't, eg., the Lich is immune to poison, so it drops a giant poisonous cloud that spreads throughout the chamber, blinding and incapacitating characters that breath it in (maybe don't include a save DC, so instead the issue becomes finding a way to pass through this cloud without touching it, like leaping over it or teleporting or something), giant pits of lava that fire immune creatures have zero problem with diving into and waiting to recharge powers, a giant gravity well that pulls players away from the spellcasting boss, the progenitor vampire built its lair inside a cavern that lacks breathable air, etc... You can even make these ambient effects as simple as messing with where the players "stand". Break the ground, tilt it heavily, blow them in directions, create cyclones in the air that spike flyers to the dirt below unless they stay in the eyes of the storms, make fear effects that cause players to start running and climbing down cliffs, etc... Literally, just messing with where characters can safely stand messes with them. Branching off this topic, put stuff at different places that requires them to choose what they tackle because they've got to move to get there. In one of Luke's videos, he talked about a beholder fight at different levels with different tubes to get places. You can also split the boss from the probably necessary side objective, or make the optimal point to exacerbate a boss's weaknesses be far more dangerous than other spaces, ie, you wanna hit that chink in the dragon's stomach? You gotta stand on the rock flying through the fire tornado to hit that.

You can easily achieve that by just turning the challenge up to super deadly - that usually makes your players fearful.

This is there you can have more opponents added if too easy, or stop if it's too difficult. Plus it helps to be very familiar with the character's abilities, and the player's playstyle.

Yes one of the most challenging things in D&D 5th edition is finding the right amount of challenge for a group. That is probably one of the most challenging things a dungeon master has to do in my opinion. There's so many variables it depends on the monsters it depends on the group it depends on the players it's kind of crazy.

@@theDMLair It ALSO depends on the dice. One of my TPK's happened during an encounter that was supposed to be a typical, fairly easy encounter. The players could NOT hit and the baddies could NOT miss!!!! (It was a random encounter that happened in the wilderness. The party could have retreated but chose not to. My rule is I'll save them from my mistakes, not from their choices or from the dice.)

@Sarah Stoeck - knocking a player to zero makes them only two melee hits from death. A bloodthirsty/tactical foe could have killed them quite easily. Sounded like a good challenge to me if you dropped two of them.

And you get to gloat when the inevitable fireball happens just to break only one of the projectors and another one just continues to work and they’ve burned a fireball over it.

Yeah I tend to make my boss fights brutal almost all the time. My players are usually survive and the experiences just better when they're challenged but when and feel like their victory was well-earned. And I get to have fun with my monsters too.

Aww that sounds awsome

Nice! Have you come up with any lair or legendary actions for the dragon?

@@dahelmang I'm thinking about adding a possible avalanche if the PCs start casting spells all willy-nilly. It will keep difficult terrain, remove the slippery terrain effect it already had, but will also give the dragon a chance to use the burrowing movement and make the PCs lose sight of it. Every PC decided to get Charm of the Storm from the Tower of Storms, thinking of using that as the trigger since it has a 100 ft. range and would hit the mountain sides. Make them think twice about steam rolling my dragon with it.

@@null_error_valuable awesome!

Yes sometimes you miscalculate as a dm but i bet it would of been better not telling you. Personally I would take the l and let you have your victory

That's awesome. I'm so happy to be able to help.:-)

Happy to help!!!

Vecna is really weak against martials. 2 level 20 human Arcane Archer Fighters have enough adpr to kill vecna in 1 turn

@@lordoftheearth1205 Having never seen an arcane archer ever played, I can't tell you anything about them. But, when I ran him there was lots of LOS blocking terrain (it was HIS throne room after all, he made it to his advantage), and after taking a SINGLE attack, he simply used his reaction to return some damage and teleport out of the players reach/LOS. Vecana's a hyper intelligent NPC. If the room isn't to his advantage, if the adds aren't to his advantage, and if he's not focus firing the biggest threats, you're playing him wrong.

@@MJ-jd7rs I was just making a point that against people with bows he can easily die because of his lack of hit points, ac, and no legendary actions

Exhaustion for dropping once is absolutely overkill, you can use the Pathfinder rule which adds 1 point to the death saving throw every time you fall (you need an 11 the second time instead of a 10, and so on), and when you reach 4 points (the next time you fall after your saving throw becomes 13), you instantly die. This is more fair than exhaustion because it doesn't give you disadvantage in a lot of stuff every time you fall, you can still keep fighting optimally, but with the fear of not falling again.

@@CharroArgentino Nah. That way is unnecessarily overcomplicated. We've used the rule for years. We never liked that PCs would be so casual about being knocked out. It should be something they try hard to avoid.

Thank you! I do once monthly skit videos now. 😁

You are very welcome!