Hail everyone, fellow GM, or players trespassing in this GM-only part of the forum.

I'm currently running a recovery scenario for my rank 1 kill-team. The idea is pretty simple : go there without being seen, take the xenos artefact, bring it back to the Thunder's Word.
The thing is that everything's gonna be spiced up a bit. Some heretics to kill on the way, traps, mazes... and, most of all, the fact that the "artefact" is not a weapon, or a relic. It's a prison. And I want to free the thing inside, as a final boss.

What kind of thing should I put in? I've never been good at balancing my bosses, and I don't want them to be utterly destroyed during their first mission.

Things to know : They are an assault marine, a tactical, a techmarine, and a "forthemomentnoncreatedcharacter". As I said earlier, it's their first mission, and I didn't give them any special stuff or xp. They only had their starting exp and requisition.

I don't ask for a "totally created" enemy, but only for an order of idea, maybe even an answer which would be like "Take this already enemy from this book, and nerf it a little" or " take this enemy and change his name".

Thanks by advance for your advice.

I'd say that some kind of Lovecraftian Xenos or some kind of daemon would probably do the trick. One way could be to have it that the relic is some kind of sarcophage (I know about the spelling) that holds a mummified Xenos of some kind, who could potentially be awoken by the characters of perhaps there is a daemon trapped within the corpse that takes possession of said xenos corpse? Could have it bring some horrific mutations to the fleshy form as it readies itself to fight and escape to wreak havoc with its new mortal host - thus essentially a xenos daemonhost.

Yeah, I was thinking about a Lovecraftian xenos stuff too. Actually, I already know what the thing will look like. But I understand that my question was not clear in the first place : I wanted to have some help about the stats I could give to my creature, not its form.
But thanks anyway

Balance is hard in DW, very hard- at least for me.

I'd consider one of the master level enemies in the book- the Hive Tyrant, if played without smarts and allies, is something that lower level PCs can take out with concentrated firepower. It poses a pretty significant threat still with it's massive damage dealing capabilities, but more importantly for a 'boss fight' at lower levels it has a lot of armor, toughness, and wounds. Don't go giving it all of it's friends or play it like the super smart xenos the stat block describes it as.

What type of weapons does the team use? What does a 'standard' load out look like to them? In a single 1:1 (1:4?) encounters if an assaulter is in there doing his part, the rest of the characters will have a penalty to hit- making the creature extra large (like the Hive Tyrant) might balance that -20 they'd be taking otherwise.

The trick I deal with is with averages and max damage - if their average toughness bonus is 8, and their average Armor is 9 (8-10), that means they can 'soak' 17 wounds per hit. For a boss fight, with 4 of them, I'd be looking to power the guy up so he has the potential to at least put one of them at critical. So if they can soak 17, I'd want to do 12-13 per hit beyond that so that two hits could put them just past the crit line- that means about 29 or so damage per attack- 1d10+24 sounds about right. With 4 players, I'd probably give it 3-4 attacks and try to distribute the attacks (I try not to concentrate attacks, that turns into dead PCs pretty quick until they can get their multi-parries and multi-dodges). Remember that if you add more dice rather than static damage, your min and max damage can be wildly different and can really catch you and your players off guard. Just look at the min and max damage for the lascannon to see this at work.

If it turns out you just planned poorly (which I do a lot) and didn't take into account something that you should have (like the team's lascannon), don't be afraid to fudge the beast's wounds if you need to to avoid having it killed in a single shot. At the same time (and more importantly) don't penalize your players for being lucky or smart. If it turns out they outsmart you (and players always do), let them have it, use description and detail to describe how them being awesome was the only reason this thing went down so fast, they'll high five and feel great. It is not an easy balance to strike.

The boss I had was an Ork Warboss called HumiEatah - He'd obviously engaged Grey Knights and killed them at somepoint as he had a large forge made from their force pikes, and had his lower body chopped up as well, most of his legs and lower back had been replaced by a generator and mechanical parts. He had an unnaturally large jaw made of metal with some flesh and teeth either grown over it or around the parts that had been replaced.

He forked a tech marine and killed him in the battle (or it was the 2 shots to the head from the friendly devastator that did the job) but it took them a bit of ingenuity to take down this boss.

@ Charmander :

During the requisition part of the mission briefing, they got a bulkhead shear, some kraken rounds for the tactical, and the techmarine uses a servo-harness. That's the "only" weapons they use outside of the classical weapon range of their specialities.
And their armours are mostly Maximus (3 out of 4 got a 1 on the Mark Armour Table), so they can soak up a little less than what you planned. But I'll try to keep your calculations in mind.

I think I'll use the stats of the Hive Tyrant (even if the beast will look like... i don't know why yet, but not a tyranid), as you suggested, without any allies, and as a crazed, mindless beast. Actually, this thing was put into stasis for more than one thousand year, so it's quite logical that his brain has been damaged in the process. I think I'll also take out his psychic powers. They go with the brains, imo.
So yeah, a lot of damage, something like three attacks, and most of all : a lot of wounds and resistance, to present a difficult test, but not too much, so they can take it down before having a dead friend in their team.

And yeah, I'm the kind of GM who won't hesistate to change stats in the middle of the fight, if I see that the creature is too dangerous... or too squishy. But I know the difference between "one-shot by a lucky hit" or "one-shot by an average one". One of my GM decided that I had not one-shot the last boss of his scenario, just because he didn't want me to. I had made something like 10 righteous fury on my full-auto burst (yeah, I'm kind of lucky), for a total of more than 125 damage ignoring armor (I prepared myself with the good rounds to kill tyranids). The Emperor was with me, as my brains had been in the mission preparation but the GM didn't like it. And thus, I know how frustrating it can be. I'll try to work it out well enough for my players not to know this frustration.
If my players are good, taking chances, doing epic stuff, having good ideas, I will congratulate them, and reward them. That's the way of the Deathwatch.

@ Rogue :

Using Grey Knights weapon and a half-mechanized creature is not the kind of thing I had in mind... but that could be useful for another scenario. Thanks for the idea.

Probably imaging your Lovecraftian with dark tendrils. Maybe it maybe somewhat of a mind flayer? It strange that as I read your post I'm thinking of Ghostbusters. Something I thought of was that after you "kill" the "hive tyrant", it "splits into" 3 "warriors". upon destruction, each warrior becomes a "Broodlord" and 2 "Genestealers". Then upon demise of each "genestealer", they all become mist. After the final "genestealer" has been vanquished... the mists gather into a "carnifex". You can refer to the stats from MoTX. How's that for a boss fight?

All in all, I think of the lovecraftian enemies as being in a state of flux, meaning that the creature is a writhing mass of "cogualated" shadows. Is that horrible enough for your final boss?

I love the idea of the splitting shadowy thing. When they're all like "We've won, in the Emperor's name!", they realize that, in fact, they're far from it... Sadistic enough. I like it.
With every hit, they creature does not bleed, but his vital fluids... evaporate, until they're even breathing it. It could even get them a little dizzy, just for the fun. Give them temporary fatigue when the boss is almost down, as the mist gets thicker.
Yeah, I will definitely settle on that, the "shadowy misty boss" with stats of a hive tyrant, then warrior, then genestealer/broodlord, and finally Carnifex.

They're gonna hate me.
Throne I love this job.

Thanks to all of you for the advice, it's gonna be awesome

DaedalRogue said:

The Grey Knight fanboy in me is somewhat incensed, when I see Grey Knights as a step above the "regular" Space Marines. The idea of an Ork, any Ork, defeating guys trained to fight Daemons that would make that Ork crap himself ala Castle Crashers scares me. How tough was your party? Every Knight = Force weapon + power weapon + psychihc powers + possible teleporter. I just don't understand. I'm not saying you can't do it, certainly, just that little voice for the spendy pewters rattling off in my head. (Remembering how in TT Grey Knights COULD NOT fight Slaanesh; they just died when the match started, thanks to Mark of Slaanesh + Sonic blaster)

A silly thought, but one you might try, you could have the Kill Team stumble upon some sort of Warp Cult. They (the cult) might have found it while searching for something to worship, maybe finding some sort of daemon-possessed artefact, and worshiping it (nothing says Xenos has to fight aliens, even if the name emplies. If you like, you could than maybe use the stats for the Skar-Thing, from the core Dark Heresy book. You might make it a bit tougher, since as is it is nothing to terrify a Super Saiyan dragon, err, Space Marine (like there's a real difference ), but a bit tougher, plus they can't win if they don't think could get it going. If they think, they can blind it, and win, but if they don't, it can slowly widdle them away, and if it is possessing someone important that was with them, then they might not just assault it. At the least, it wouldn't insta-pwn them, but until they figure out how to beat it, they CAN'T win, either. The other thought might be to find some Necron stats elsewhere on this forum (they're here, I just can't remember where), and have it be some time-lost mechanical horror, now released from it's stasis tomb. Otherwise, I don't know. I do wish you the best of luck, however.

Some notes ruleswise.

If the team works well, they will use squad modes to the fullest. Against master type creatures with a high rate of attacks the shared reactions mode works very well. My own team uses this and is rather succesful with it (sometimes it annoys me as GM. ).

Another important lesson is what happens before. Do they still have all their rerolls from their fate points. Are they wounded? etc. This will also have impact on how they apporach the final boss.

Also I thought the servo harnass is only available at higher renown levels. A beginning team does not have the renown for it?

venkelos said:

The only thing that strikes me as off there is that this was a, presumably, low rank Kill Team. But then again seeing weapons from what is considered an elite band of Marines provides some cinematic flair to get the party motivated for vengance, and to feel quite a bit of accomplishment when they finally defeat the thing.

The key point here being that while Grey Knigts (and their new codex) might be a step above standard Space Marines, the Deathwatch in this RPg is supposed to be a step above standard Space Marines as well. In addition, and more important than either of the above, the Space Marines here are the Player Characters, and Player Characters are always special.

venkelos said:

It doesn't seem that silly to me, it's an interesting twist on an encounter. It's battles with those themes that players, in my experience, tend to remember the most. Simply planting a heavy bolter or plasma cannon and letting it rip won't be remembered as well in contrast to the fight where they had to outwit, outsmart, or uncover some weakness in order to destroy the enemy.

If using the Skae-Thing in DH Core, I'd buff it pretty good. TB 10 and 37 wounds, even with it's demonic regeneration, won't stand up to a bolt fire and a chainsword or two. It was after all designed for starting Acolytes.

Hey Resgeir, glad you like the idea. Just to add if your kill team is rather low level do try to adjust the boss stats. If the player level is rather low, then your players may find it too difficult.

I generally use the tabletop stats for MC's and convert it into DW rules. Focusing mostly on WS, Wounds, Strength and Toughness. Any MC can be named something else and considered a big nasty Boss.

Some things to keep in mind for a boss fight:

1. let the players win.

2. let them perform the killing blow.

3. give the boss a tell of some sort. noise, grunt, big windup, whatever.

4. detail his appearence, big claws, whatever. That is what he attacks with.

5. Use the environment.

or do something new, make the 'final boss' and epic escape, a difficult puzzle, or a daring rescue. A boss doesnt have to be a bullet sponge.