Buffing boss monsters

[Jalapenotrellis]

Not sure where I should post this.

I've been considering increasing the difficulty of some of the boss monsters because they only have three hit points. We just played quest 5 of return of the witch Lord, and the gargoyle died in one attack because he didn't roll any black shields on six dice. I've been considering doubling their hit points, providing them with potions, allowing them to defend on black or white shields, allowing them to defend all hits on one black shield, or providing LifeLink with bosses that can summon minions. It can be fairly frustrating when a named monster with a stat block in the quest notes dies from one attack and feels anti-climatic for the players as well.

[Kurgan]

The Evil Wizard sends his servant a potion...

[Kurgan]

And of course in the above I mean magical/alchemical skills.
The Evil Wizard Deck (and Combat Card Deck) can also help you, if you happen to draw (and save) the right cards!

[iKarith]

Not sure where I should post this.

I've been considering increasing the difficulty of some of the boss monsters because they only have three hit points. We just played quest 5 of return of the witch Lord, and the gargoyle died in one attack because he didn't roll any black shields on six dice. I've been considering doubling their hit points, providing them with potions, allowing them to defend on black or white shields, allowing them to defend all hits on one black shield, or providing LifeLink with bosses that can summon minions. It can be fairly frustrating when a named monster with a stat block in the quest notes dies from one attack and feels anti-climatic for the players as well.

There's multiple schools of thought on this. I've been watching a YouTube channel called DungeonCraft, run by Dan DeFazio, "Professor DungeonMaster", and one of the first things he pointed out is that D&D, when done properly, never gets easier, nor does it get harder. You have to scale the difficulty to keep up with player advancement.

HeroQuest takes a slightly different tack: There is no "advancement" per se, only new equipment and the very real possibility that a player's character is going to die with just a few lousy dice rolls in a row. In reality, HeroQuest's board is so cramped and narrow that you always have meat shields in front, support behind, and you always make sure to have some healing on hand… This is kind of the problem D&D 5E has: You need to keep buffing the bad guys bigger and bigger because the heroes have too much stuff.

Professor Dan's games are "grimdark". He caps HP at 20. Regardless of level, you'll never have more than that. He scales enemies' HP and and all the things that do damage accordingly. If the dice are in your favor, in his game you totally CAN have the epic roll (against his epic failure) where you leap into battle and get a lucky strike where you simply decapitate your foe in a single hit! But um, that goes both ways at his table. And unlike typical D&D, he doesn't allow death saving throws. (He does play with negative HP, equal to your level. But go below that and you're just permanently dead… If you don't have another character ready, spend the next few minutes rolling one up and you'll meet up with people when it's convenient.)

It's up to you to decide if the players have gotten too powerful. If they have, either you need to contrive to take that power away somehow, or yeah, buff your monsters. Have some defend with white shields like players do. That alone will make the fights tougher. It's still possible your players will fairly often just obliterate something before them, but that goes both ways.

When we rescued Sir Ragnar, which wasn't our second quest because reasons, Kurgan had the alarm go off and every round TWO orcs poured in from the stairs. The problem for our heroes was that Ragnar's cell was in a completely different part of the map from standard (alt map) and we had absolutely excrement move rolls. There was an ARMY waiting for us by the time we got there, and they'd just keep coming until we got the fecking trai—erm, trained knight who healed to only THREE BP and still wouldn't attack out of there.

I was really annoyed for a minute there because, as I said, I didn't care if the challenge was hard, it just needed to be realistically possible and I didn't know how to make that happen yet.

We got him as close as we could and then stacked speed and vanishing dust on him to give him just enough of a roll to GTFO. A gamble, but because we had both items and spells (and sadly turn order made it most convenient to use the items), we had two shots at it. But we got him out! The reward was ours, if anyone survived to collect it… The orcs stopped pouring in, but … there was 12 orcs between us and the exit.

We charged into battle, strategically using the dwarf's crossbow to help give the Barbarian a chance to move up and leave space for the others to advance five feet at a time. Noe one of these orcs was even remotely a threat, but there were a dozen of them between us and the door. We butchered them one after another and painted the walls with green orc blood.

Hard? Yeah, until we came up with a way for the elf and the wizard to get the prisoner out. But after that? It was just a brutal march through the gauntlet. An orc even killed the elf! But US rules say a mere healing potion or spell saves him automatically and we counted on that rule. Other than that, very cinematic and we LOVED how it played out!

Oh, and then when the Emperor sent us after Ulag … well, I sure hope he doesn't have any surviving relatives, because after we butchered what must be nearly the entire tribe of Ulag's kith and kin, we did not just slay him in a dungeon somewhere. No, we dragged him back with us in chains to the emperor for a humiliating trial where his guilt was presumed from the start, and then he was executed in a "send a messagey" sort of noodle incident kind of way best not spoken of here. We would NOT be that greenskin's favorite people right now!

Kurgan's got some buffs for players that could kinda make them a little OP. But he's also got a threat system where he draws a card any time his turn passes without a monster on the board. I mean, you open the door and … aww, there's a goblin… and then Morcar hands him a crossbow. (And so the wizard burninates the crap out of him because he's got a freakin' crossbow! But now he doesn't have that fire spell when we get to something bigger than a goblin…)

Basically, I suggest trying different stuff. The game is kinda set up so even in NA, the players are pretty well the favorite to win. If it's routinely too easy, tweak a few things to give them a challenge. Some quests are not real difficult, while others kinda are. If you're playing it anywhere near vanilla, a couple of the expansion quests are downright unfair without a LOT of preparation. But you're supposed to be able to play any quest with four fresh heroes… It's a bit of a balancing act.

[Kurgan]

One of our Inn posters (Anderas, see "Questimator") was talking about difficulty based on overall monster body points. While that isn't the sole determination of difficulty of a quest, it is a big part and that has changed my life as a GM.

Being able to see at a glance... a typical NA (EU all of them are single body point except Dark Company, ATOH and WOM) GS quest has monster BP tallies in the 20s. A quest like the Trial has in the mid 30s. For comparison, EQP/BQP has quests in the 100s (and Dark Company has in the 70s per board). The heroic party has (not counting healing of course, or any later rare artifacts that raise max BP) 25 BP between them, plus (at maximum) 12 additional BP for mercenaries (available after a certain point).

It's an interesting problem to make the quest challenging but not frustratingly so, and not so easy that it's boring. I like the puzzle aspect over simply sheer numbers (adding new monsters means increasing the time it will probably take to complete the quest as well so there's that), but once in awhile that's a cool thing too. I like working with the quests that have already been created, but when you create your own quest, you may come up with stuff that ends up not being so great as you might have thought (or gets skipped over entirely). It's good to have a backup plan in those cases.

The Evil Wizard Deck (which I've re-labeled simply "Zargon" aka threat cards) has also been a godsend. These cards give the GM some nice suggestions on how to resolve things and nudge the difficulty where possible, but it doesn't say he HAS to draw a new card or that he HAS to use them always. So if I know there's a monster I want to keep around a little longer, I can save up any good cards I draw (like where an otherwise fatal attack misses, or that lets me restore some life to a monster, or even revive him from the dead)... and yet without making it seem completely arbitrary. And sometimes the Heroes do something so cool, maybe even the evil wizard will just "forget" to undo it. If the players are able to thwart your perfectly evil plan, well, good on them! Next time, Gadget... next time...

[The Admiral]

Not sure where I should post this.

I've been considering increasing the difficulty of some of the boss monsters because they only have three hit points. We just played quest 5 of return of the witch Lord, and the gargoyle died in one attack because he didn't roll any black shields on six dice. I've been considering doubling their hit points, providing them with potions, allowing them to defend on black or white shields, allowing them to defend all hits on one black shield, or providing LifeLink with bosses that can summon minions. It can be fairly frustrating when a named monster with a stat block in the quest notes dies from one attack and feels anti-climatic for the players as well.

I certainly feel the Gargoyle is too weak. Especially compared to the Chaos Warrior. I give the Gargoyle an additional attack, defence, and Body Point.

[Kurgan]

Extra monsters mean fewer opportunities to draw the Evil Wizard threat cards (according to those homebrew rules), but I really like them, because it's not simply an automatic loss for the Heroes each turn which would certainly feel cheap.

As others have pointed out, simple "lucky" (or "unlucky") rolls can make all the difference. Sometimes it just doesn't "go your way." Those are the breaks! But a quest shouldn't require that the heroes are lucky and the monsters unlucky, to make it reasonable to complete. It's fine if some quests are just harder than others. Even the occasional easier quest is fine as a breather or side-break (or to let a newer player ease into a campaign already in progress). The hard quest completed, gives a sense of accomplishment (and relief!) but hopefully leaves a sense of hope (rather than dread!) for future adventures. If the heroes get too cocky and careless, a hard quest may be the wake-up call they "need," too, assuming you're playing for the challenge as opposed to just to pass the time.

The difficulty for the second half of the GS (and KK, ROTWL, etc. etc.) seems just about right for where our heroes are now, and if they survive into the later quest packs, they should do just fine. If a few bad guys happen to get some bad luck along the way, oh well.

Now if a bad guy can be buffed by giving him an extra spell or potion, that I think is acceptable in case without it he'd be a total pushover for an anti-climax, but even so, lucky throw, there you go.

I have buffed the champion heroes, but I've also added random "elite" monsters that have stronger dice, but since it's random, you might not end up facing many of them. It's a way to make the GS monsters potentially more challenging, since you'll be facing them now and into the later quest packs too.

Edit: Here's a second custom card I added to my version of the Evil Wizard deck awhile back. Basically an evil version of the "Heroic Sacrifice" combat card. Actually, these could work as Chaos Combat Cards or Skill cards as well to use with your boss guy, if you wanted it to be a random bonus or something he's guaranteed to have.

[iKarith]

The Evil Wizard Deck (which I've re-labeled simply "Zargon" aka threat cards) has also been a godsend. These cards give the GM some nice suggestions on how to resolve things and nudge the difficulty where possible, but it doesn't say he HAS to draw a new card or that he HAS to use them always. So if I know there's a monster I want to keep around a little longer, I can save up any good cards I draw (like where an otherwise fatal attack misses, or that lets me restore some life to a monster, or even revive him from the dead)... and yet without making it seem completely arbitrary. And sometimes the Heroes do something so cool, maybe even the evil wizard will just "forget" to undo it. If the players are able to thwart your perfectly evil plan, well, good on them! Next time, Gadget... next time...

In our last game, Ulag attacked the barbarian who had the combat card Parry and Reposte. I could've tanked the hit, and I certainly had the four dice of defense to probably take most of the sting out of three skulls of damage… but I decided to use this ability since I often don't use them. I rolled my attack (which the already wounded Ulag couldn't block) and yeah he was gonna be an ex-warlord.

Kurgan could have played a card to negate my combat card's effect. Not sure if that means I'd have to roll my defense or we'd call it a wash. I played my card, and he played his to block it. But he didn't because, as soon as I rolled my deathblow, I announced I was using the second combat card I was just reminded I still had as well: Disarm and Capture!

So … he decided not to stop me because the story would be more interesting if I did try to escort this prisoner out alive. There were monsters left on the board, but they wouldn't pose a real threat to four heroes who EACH had healing at the ready. But once the last of them was gone, we'd still need time to get this warlord to the exit and … every turn there's no monster on the board (we decided Ulag no longer counted), Kurgan was drawing Zargon cards.

A threat mechanic can add a lot of challenge to the game. And if a card seems like it'd be unfair or mess with the emerging story too much … you don't have to play it.