I've talked with a few friends before and we came to the realization that a true boss fight would be neat to see in Descent. Something like only a single enemy [possibly even an oversized 'mini'] with an absurd amount of HP, maybe some phases at HP thresholds, mechanics, add spawns, basically if you've ever played WoW; a raid boss [to an extent]. Does anyone else think this would be neat or have made up their own for a custom game or something, or just had the same idea? It's also possible I'm an idiot, and you have permission to laugh me off if that's the case
True boss fight? Possibly a dumb idea.
It's not a "ridiculous" amount of health, but check out the Labyrinth of Ruin finale (I think it's "Endless Night"). Ariad has something like 60 health and additional special abilities. However, master monsters carry tokens which when discarded as an action remove 1 of those special abilities, and do 10 damage (so she can be down to 20 if you kill all the master monsters). It's as close to a boss battle as I've seen.
That being said, the vault is there- go make one!
I like your idea and used it many times, but not in any Descent game. Like giving extra HP to the final boss and some invulnerabilities.
The Quest "Dragon Hunting" in the road to legends app had a pretty cool boss fight theme to it I thought
I'm prepary a campaign with that sort of final
Yay, positive responses. I also thought about having a special deck, akin to the changeling stuff, JUST for the fight. I've played LoR once but I dont remember that encounter, neat though, I'll have to go take another look at it.
I like the idea of having a massive boss that rules everything and that it is difficult to kill, a real challenge. However, I think it may be difficult to implement in a traditional game in Descent (perhaps it could work for RtL, as many of the Unique monsters work that way).
This because in most of the games, in general, that I know where there is a big boss, it usually lacks of intelligence because it is controlled by an IA or something similar (that's why it is compensate with skills, events, characteristics, etc.). However, in a normal game, if you give the Overlord the chance to have a big amazing boss, you will then have to really balance the quest or anything for the heroes. Additionally, remember that the big boss will be controlled by a human (Overlord) and may get bored of having just one unit waiting for the other 2 (to 4) players to act and his only actions will be move-attack.
Nevertheless, if you create the Quest on the Quest Vault I will like to try it.
P.S. Perhaps looking at Dark Souls: The Board Game mechanics could help to get inspired to make the Quest. I think there was actually a post in BGG also about this, but I don’t remember exactly its name.
P.S. Perhaps looking at Dark Souls: The Board Game mechanics could help to get inspired to make the Quest. I think there was actually a post in BGG also about this, but I don’t remember exactly its name.
^This, I had the same idea when going through this thread. The Boss AI mechanic for Dark Souls: TBG is good, this can be in a form similar to the coop adventures AI deck, that will be more refined.
Theres a dark souls board game? Why did no one tell me :V I must research this thing
You can do a boss fight with trigger events, like a boss from a videogame/rpg/mmo.
Example, if the boss reach x health, spawn a specific group monster, or if the boss knockout a hero, he receive a special bonus based on the hero archtype, or make a encounter with multiple stages, like a boss being resuscitated with full health and more powerful and so on. Just do crazy things, the limit is your imagination
Theres a dark souls board game? Why did no one tell me :V I must research this thing
Yeah, it was recently announced. It is still in Kickstarter (if I'm not mistaken) and seems pretty good actually.
Here is the Demo Video:
Theres a dark souls board game? Why did no one tell me :V I must research this thing
Yeah, it was recently announced. It is still in Kickstarter (if I'm not mistaken) and seems pretty good actually.
I need this, lol. I'll still poke at Descent boss ideas though since it seems like people might enjoy seeing it.
There's a custom level for warcraft 3 called "Impossible Bosses" which is essentially a boss rush, where everyone playing picks a class and a specialization then go up against boss after boss after boss, each with its own different mechanics, spells, phases and "Enrage" effects (If you've never done WoW raiding, a boss enrage means if you take too long to kill the boss, their power spikes to a such a ludicrous degree that you all get promptly killed, and thus need to have enough damage output to win in a timely fashion rather than double up on healing effects and outlast the boss.)
Not long after FFG made the quest vault available, I started working on something similar for descent, having been inspired by wow raiding, Impossible bosses and the like. It was a lot of fun, but I eventually scrapped it because I couldn't find a way to "program" the boss so the players couldn't exploit it or the boss fight simply was too easy. Since then FFG has released Road to Legend in which they essentially solved that problem for me, so I could go back and work on it again.
It's funny, I remember kicking myself back when I was working on it, thinking "People don't play descent for this kind of experience!" and similar things. Good to be wrong sometimes!
If I understand correctly... some are worried that allowing a human intelligence (the OL player) to control a powerful final boss, would be impossible to balance in a PvP-type game like D2e?
You make the boss sufficiently "boss-like", and it's a boring curbstomp win for the OL player.
You make the boss beatable, and it's no longer epic and boss-like.
I think the key is to separate the boss fight into stages. For example, you separate the encounter in 3, where say each stage is one form of the boss. Each stage would have different objectives in order to defeat the boss, direct combat being only 1 of the possibilities.
(1) This keeps the entire encounter fresh, rather than just having the players do 1 thing repeatedly to deplete a hps counter that starts at some absurdly high value.
(2) This divides the boss into manageable chunks which is balanced and intense for both the OL and the hero players, while still keeping the boss feeling epic when taken on the whole.
Actually, the finale of the Shadow Rune campaign is basically such an epic boss fight. But maybe it is not epic enough
. One thing I really liked about the finale is that heroes can die. This forces the heroes to play very differently.
Theres a dark souls board game?
Quite shocked. By the video, gameplay doesn't sound soooo interesting to me, tough. However, the miniatures are cool.
The co-op campaigns provide a sort of boss feature and are difficult enough that my friends and I are usually hanging on by threads if we ever make it to the boss.
Theres a dark souls board game? Why did no one tell me :V I must research this thing
Unfortunately it's 32mm scale, which means only the large monsters are truly useful for me... A pity as all the man-sized minis are pretty good.