I’ve usually had pretty decent BBEG battles. For the most part. If I had a DMing weakness (other than not having an encyclopedic knowledge of all the spells), then it would be dialing in the difficulty of my boss fights. It’s like waiting for an avocado to ripen: not yet…almost there…just about…really close…too late, it’s already going bad. For me, it’s too easy, too easy, too easy, too easy, TPK.
But recently, I felt I got it just right for once. I had a couple lieutenants, several varieties of minions, a couple waves of them, and a plan of attack for the two spellcasters. It even helped that the players were really only able to do a short rest…but upon opening the door to where the BBEG was, one of the bad guy spellcasters had readied a fireball that pretty much undid all the hit die the party had just used in that short rest.
This looked like it was going to make for an epic fight.
Then the party wizard cast Wall of Fire right across the room, right on top of a bunch of minions–all of whom died immediately–and cutting the remaining minions off from the BBEGs who were all in the back of the room due to being spellcasters that were too far away from the party wizard to use counterspell. Because I didn’t at this time call for a break, the party just mowed down all the remaining minions, preemptively took out a wave that was meant to pincer them in, and then it was time to end the session.
The next session, the BBEG used Dispel Magic on that Wall of Fire so that one of the lieutenants could use another readied fireball, which, while effective, didn’t significantly increase the length of the battle. The other lieutenant, a Drow Shadowblade that I’d nerfed significantly so that he wouldn’t TPK the fireball-ed party, started doing his thing. (I’ll describe the cool tactic for Shadowblades below. Keith Amman’s stuff on them is for the “legacy” version–therefore outdated–and you need to see the tactics for the “current” version.)*
I’d added back a few minions for action economy. I’d already buffed the BBEG with some legendary “villain” actions (see this excellent Matt Colville video here) for the same reason and to just be a bit more badass, but, alas, not being able to attack at the same time as the original minions just made it too easy. Her “villain” actions were all based around the idea of minions still being on the board and I didn’t rejigger them in the intervening week. Her spell list sucked, too, and I should have swapped out some of her spells to ones that were more useful in combat. The other spellcaster was immediately picked out by the party which, not being threatened by minions, concentrated their attacks on him and took him out almost immediately. The BBEG for the moment, had no means of escape and surrendered.
I struggled during that week in between to fix the scenario. How much should I add to the BBEG part of the BBEG fight that wouldn’t be punishing the players for their ingenuity with that Wall of Fire??? But I tried, and sometimes that’s all you can do.
But that’s not the mistake I’m talking about. The mistake was NOT CALLING FOR A BREAK the moment that Wall of Fire went up. During the intervening week I realized that there was a strategy the big bads would have used to stay in the fight but that my brain, scattered at the use of that spell, couldn’t figure out right in that moment. Had I called for a 10-minute break, letting us all get food and drink and use the bathroom…AND LET ME CALM DOWN AND RETHINK THE STRATEGY, I could have given all of us at our virtual table a much better time with this battle.
Here’s what it should have looked like: The room had a 40′ ceiling. The Wall of Fire was on the first 20′ and the dangerous bit of heat only went up another 10′. This left the remaining 10′ up at the ceiling clear.** The spellcaster lieutenant had Fly as one of his spells and several spell slots at the level and could have cast it on himself and the BBEG, who could have now flown through that 10′ space and brought the threat level back up to what was intended. The third big bad, the shadowblade, could have used his shadow step to get past the wall at the ceiling within his line of site, then used Levitate to keep from falling uncontrollably to the ground.
It took me only a couple minutes to have that all planned out and I think it’s reasonable that the big bads would have thought of it in less than 6 seconds. But I couldn’t think of it in that moment of surprise and by the time I would have relaxed into thinking about it, I was now concentrating on making the minion battle the best it could be. (It actually was pretty fun.)
Moral of the story: When something happens in a BBEG battle that completely ruins how dramatic the battle will be, call for a break and really suss out if there is something else the big bads would do to raise the stakes again. Don’t be afraid of the excitement of the battle being let out a little. And don’t be worried that it’ll punish the players for their ingenuity or good rolls or whatever. The increased excitement that the BBEGs were able to recover (like the DM) will keep everyone having a good time and not being let down when the party finally wins out.
There are probably other times when calling for a break would be a good idea. Share whatever you can think of down in the comments!
* Now, to talk about the version of the Drow Shadowblade in Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse (MMotM):
The original version came from Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes and several major differences to the one in MMotM version. The most important difference is that the current version has something called “Devil’s Sight.” This allows them to see in magical darkness in addition to their regular darkvision. The second difference is that they have an additional attack with their sword, although for less potential damage per hit.
Now to the cool part. Shadow Step works like Misty Step except that the shadowblade has to start in or step into dim light or darkness and appear in a place of dim light or darkness. If he’s able to attack someone nearby, he gets advantage on the first attack.
However, if they cast Darkness on themselves, They’re already in darkness. And they can still see due to Devil’s Sight. So they can teleport right behind a target and, since that target can no longer see, the shadowblade gets advantage on ALL THREE attacks. Then they can either teleport away, not prompting opportunity attacks because they can’t be seen, or can stand around letting their attacker roll at disadvantage. And having +9 to hit, it’s reasonable that they would hit with all three attacks on some rounds against most opponents.
With that strategy and the amount of damage they can do with that shadowblade of theirs (an average of 27 per hit x 3 attacks = 81!!!) you can see why I nerfed him somewhat for hp and damage and attack rolls. He still took a PC unconscious and caused serious hurt on another.
**I hope my player doesn’t read this for a while but, had he thought of it, he should have cast the wall 10′ up in the air, effectively blocking the entire floor to ceiling, although that would have allowed both parties to still see each other.