Bosses
A boss is not just a creature with more hit points: it fights in stages, throws mechanics at the party on a timer, heals itself, and eventually loses patience.
The mechanics
Nearly every boss fights its own fight. Twenty-nine of them are scripted one by one - Graktan, Gundar, Klauth, Sangrolu, the Elder Wyrm and the rest - and what each does belongs to that boss alone and to nothing else in the world. Learning one teaches you nothing about the next, which is the point of them.
The raid bosses are the exception, for now. They are the only ones that draw at random from the shared set below, so a raid fight is the same six tricks in a different order each time, told apart by a signature spell rather than by a fight of its own. That is being worked on: each raid boss is to get unique mechanics of its own in turn.
The shared set, then, is what a raid boss picks from - one at a time, never the same one twice running:
- A mini-boss, summoned to fight beside it.
- Exploding creatures, which come at you to die on you.
- Waves of spawns.
- An area of effect dropped where players are standing, or a wave of damage at those spots.
- A pulsing pillar planted on a player, which keeps hurting until it is destroyed.
- Fixed damage to everyone in range at once.
How hard any of it hits depends on the tier of the dungeon, not on the boss:
| Tier | Saving throw DC | Damage dice |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12 + 1d8 | 1 + 1d2 |
| 21+ | 18 + 1d10 | 4 + 1d4 |
| 40 | 28 + 1d8 | 8 + 1d4 |
| Raid | 35 + 1d8 | 13 + 1d6 |
The damage type is chosen at random for the mechanic - never divine or negative energy, and slashing is the only physical type that comes up.
Healing, and the clock
Bosses carry a set number of full heals - potions, or a self-cast harm if they are undead - and use them as the fight goes. What is left is countable.
A raid boss goes berserk if the fight drags. The party is warned at ten minutes and again at fifteen, and at twenty minutes it happens: +20 to attack, +53 damage on every hit, and two extra attacks a round. There is no way back from it.
A boss also reacts if it is left standing there being ignored, and resets to full if the party leaves - in an instance when the instance empties, elsewhere when the area does.
Grades
Bosses come in four grades, and the grade is what makes one harder than another of the same creature type: each grade counts as five more challenge rating, and hit points are lifted further on top of that.
World bosses
A world boss appears out in the world rather than in an instance. Its summoning is announced first, and the boss follows about five minutes later.