Run! That Boss Is Covered In Slog!
A Guess On Why WotC Has More Boss Monsters Who Rely On Stun And Counterspell
Imagine you have been playing an adventure for months. Your wizard Wally has reached level 10. After some fun quests and some frustrating ones, you and your allies have finally figured out who the campaign's villain is. The party rushes into the villain's lair, bamboozles some of the guards, and it's time for one final fight against the villain and their minions. Everything's going great. You roll a 20 and win initiative. Time to unleash synaptic static!
DM: The boss counterspells.
Wally: OK, I counterspell back so I can try to cast my spell.
DM: You can't. The boss has a unique reaction to counterspell. It's not a spell, so you can't counter back.
Wally: Grr. At least the boss has to roll to succeed, right?
DM: Nope. She automatically counters a spell of 5th level or lower.
Wally: I'm level 10. All my spells are 5th level are lower.
DM: One last thing. You’re poisoned until the end of your next turn too.
Then the DM announces at 19 in initiative it’s one of the minions turns.
Dana the Druid: I have 19 passive Perception. I don't see any minions on the map. Was he that well hidden?
DM: He was invisible. Suddenly a 11-foot-tall bipedal elephant emerges and blows poison from his trunk. It's a small room so yeah, he can get you all in this 60 foot cone. Everyone roll a Constitution saving throw!
Dana: I got a 15.
Wally: 12.
Brenda the Barbarian: I rolled a 1!
Carlos the Cleric: 18!
Fuji the Fighter: Well I'm proficient in the save so that gets me to a 16.
DM grabs a bunch of dice and does some math: Let's see, that going to be 39 poison damage. Brenda, you lose all your weapon and skill proficiencies. You can repeat the CON save at the end of your turn to get them back.
Dana: Good thing I was going to cast polymorph to turn this hidden beast into a cute little bunny!
DM: While you're under the effects of this weird elephant's trunk poison, you can't cast spells. Can't even speak!
Wally: But I'm a wizard! Casting spells is all I do!
DM: Sorry, but until you pass this save at the end of your turn, you can't cast spells.
Wally: So I lose one turn no matter what?
Dana: Let's see. You've only got 13 Constitutions so that means a 15 or higher on the die...only a 30 percent chance to save.
This may seem like a wild or shocking scenario. It may seem like I'm telling one of my horror stories from my awful early tables. Those DMs were incredibly controlling and vengeful if a character got too powerful to be controlled, but they ever pulled a stunt where the boss' counterspell couldn't be counterspelled back by DM fiat. They might have cast a very high level counterspell we'd be unlikely to counterspell or cast greater invisibility first, but it was never pure DM fiat.
One of these DMs was vindictive with a mind flayer's Mind Blast when it won initiative, targeting players he didn't like, but that was a DC 15 save and we made sure targeting us would preserve the rest of the party.
No, this horror story is what happens if I run the boss fight that wraps up most of WotC's Planescape adventure Turn of Fortune's Wheel exactly as written. All I did was fudge initiative to have Wally the Wizard so first, then the more powerful invisible minion (a maelephant) go before the boss herself. The boss is just supposed to use her unstoppable counterspell with unlimited range once per round, use a DC 18 lair action at the end of the round which could restrain a creature or try to cast confusion on everyone (25% chance of getting either effect).
Oh, and the boss is also supposed to cast "defensive" spells. Does that mean DC 18 banishment? DC 18 suggestion? Invisibility? At least she's not supposed to use her action for force a Dexterity save, incapacitating a target until the end of the target's next turn along with dealing 45 force damage on a failed saving throw. The boss could use this every round, but she's not supposed to use it at all.
To top it all off, the other minion in this fight makes two melee attacks at +7 to hit. If both hit then the target is grappled and must make a DC 15 Intelligence save or be stunned until the grapple ends. Every monster can incapacitate a PC indefinitely!
Stasis Slog Boss Fights
Over the last few years, many of WotC's high level boss fights have fallen into the same predictable rhythm. It’s common enough that I’m going to give it a name: the stasis slog boss fight. These are fights where there is one monster or a few monsters. They’re outnumbered. The party’s action economy is going to be a problem. To combat this, the monsters get a combination of actions, reactions, and features like Legendary Resistance to negate player actions. This helps the overwhelmed villains survive, but makes combat a slog where players don’t get to make much headway each round.
Let’s look at the specific mechanics:
Counterspell. The boss can usually counterspell at least once per round, if not 3 times per round. That counterspell can't be counterspelled back by the players. If the PC's spell is of high enough level, the boss has to roll a check to counterspell.
Teleportation: The boss may be able to teleport away as a reaction in the middle of a multiattack, often to a point out of the melee combatant’s reach.
Special abilities that can take away the actions of multiple characters if they fail a saving throw. The players’ actions are often sealed until they repeat the saving throw. Monsters get to recharge these abilities, and their rate of recharge is often faster than the expected rate of PCs recovering.
Legendary Resistance, with a growth in monsters who have more than three uses per day. This is often layered on top of good saving throws and magic resistance.
In this fight, the boss has counterspell, 4 legendary resistances, and multiple ways to take away the actions of a character indefinitely with spells. (Neither suggestion or banishment allows a repeated save and those four legendary resistances help her try and maintain concentration.) The main minion, a maelaphant, can block spellcasting of anyone who fails the save and is given invisibility to set that attack up with almost no way to prevent it.
Now let's look at the last boss fight in Turn of Fortune's Wheel. The story takes a sudden turn in the last chapter, The party is level 17 and has to first fight three septon modrons.
Counterspell? No, the monster who could counterspell is paralyzed and not a factor here.
Teleportation? No.
Taking Away Character Actions? Each of these modrons makes four attacks per round and can fill a 30 foot cube next to it with lightning. On a failed DC 16 Dexterity saving throw, a creature takes 6d10 lightning damage and is stunned for 1 minute or until they repeat the save at the end of their turns. This isn't a recharge ability. It's up to 3 mass stun effects every round, along with a full set of attacks.
Legendary Resistance? No.
Dexterity is a common ability for players to invest in, but only some classes have proficiency in the save. For those who don't, they probably need a 14 or higher to save with 14 Dexterity. My cleric Shaena would have a 35 percent chance on each save. If she gets hit by two septon modrons' special attacks, she has a 12.25 percent chance not to be stunned. If she gets hit by all three stun waves, that's a 4.29 percent chance to avoid them all. These stuns come every turn!
To top it off, this fight is in a room that is 70 feet square at its widest, so each modron can cover a quarter of the room with its stun even if the party fans out. They may not get a chance, as the septon modron gets advantage on initiative to try and stun lock the party. There's also a furth septon modron who carries with paralyzed leader but either joins the fight immediately and later. No counterspells thsi time, but even more stuns.
After all this the party must fight a planar incarnate, a brute with accurate but low damage attacks, a reaction to hurt those who hurt it, and an area of effect that does decent damage for this CR plus blinds those who fail the save for a turn. There's no complete control in this wave.
In the Vecna book, several boss fights are with solo melee type bosses who mainly just make a bunch of attacks, including as Legendary actions, plus have an AoE damage ability. It's like the planar incarnate. Other boss fights are Stasis Slog Boss Fights with a controller who has mass incapacitation effects with a DC of 22 or 23, or fighting Vecna with his three counterspells or teleports per round along with 80 hit point regeneration. There's even a dungeon where the highest CR random monster can try to stun two creatures for a turn if they fail DC 16 Wisdom saving throws.
Why These Sloggy, Denial Based Fights?
Maybe whoever designs all these mass stun and counterspell monsters is just an asshole. I doubt it, but it is possible. I've run into a few organized play adventure designers who were infamous for these kids of stunts, cramming them into a 4 hour adventure. While I was writing this post I heard of someone who wrote a level 11-16 adventure where casting any spell deals 1d10 necrotic damage per spell level. Cast heal, restore 70 hit points to someone, take 33 damage yourself. At this point, a full caster is just going to be casting spells!
I think my Tomb of Annihilation DM is a perfect example of why WotC is making these types of boss fights. She wanted to run the long Tomb of the Tomb of Annihilation with more long rests and bigger fights instead of the book's extreme emphasis on attrition. It easy a wise and player-friendly decision. But we kept getting experience for those fights. ToA was the last WotC book to use XP instead of milestone leveling.
When things went badly in her personal life, she once said she wanted to kill a character and sent four vampire spellcasters plus 2 vampire warriors at our party of seven level 11 characters. We survived, largely because they kept attacking my warlock in +1 plate who had cast shadow of moil to impose disadvantage on all those attacks.]
However, she never went with mass stun monsters, maybe because WotC hadn't published any in 5e except mind flayers. Then again, she was distraught the one time she actually killed a PC during the campaign as a set of dice rolls went against the party wizard.
After Tomb of Annihilation, we played a follow up level 13 adventure. She struggled running these fights, often having melee opponents run into my warlock and flailing away at disadvantage or struggling to hit the paladin while the party's four spellcasters (sorcerer, wizard, cleric, bard) all stood in a back corner and snickered. She never considered having reinforcements sneak up from behind to attack those casters, eating an opportunity attack in a larger roo to run around me, or any other tactic to change things around.
She missed part of the level 13 adventure and asked me to DM it. This was my first time DMing a group above level 9. The boss I got to run didn't have a lot going on besides a legendary action to move without opportunity attacks and maybe make an attack after doing so. I knew the party's dynamic so I had this boss dance around the front line to chase casters and it completely shook them up, forcing new tactics and a greater sense of threat.
The next week our main DM was back. She gave as a CR 23 elder tempest to fight as the boss. It eas a massive air elemental. However, it was in a narrow area where the spirit couldn't run away from melee folks or be too far away to cast against. After this fight flopped, my DM threw up her hands that session, saying it was too hard to control seven of us at level 13 and we needed to start a new campaign.
High Level Boss Fights Are Hard!
Like I said, this DM wasn’t the best combat tactics DM, but she’s hardly alone in her frustration. Earlier this month I ran a level 11-16 adventure for charity where the boss is a zaratan, a massive CR 22 earth elemental with AC 21 and 307 hit points. If I ran that encounter as written, I wouldn’t have gotten a turn, so I gave the boss around 200 more hit points. Last time I ran that adventure for charity, I had the same outcome. The other two times I recall I got 1 turn because I rolled well in initiative.
I like the zaratan as an offense first monster with reasonable but not overwhelming defenses. But it’s going to die in a turn in an adventuring day of 4-5 fights and a world that’s not a low magic item world. When the boss fight is just throwing a single powerful monster with no conrol abilities in a room, it doesn’t matter what the monster can do. There’s a real risk that the party can just run it over.
My Tomb of Annihilation DM’s conclusion that “it’s too hard to control us” so she’s quitting as DM is probably a common reason why many DMs quit or reset campaigns as they get to higher levels. Yes, that DM had serious control issues, but if you look online you’ll hear plenty of horror stories about controlling DMs or from DMs who get overwhelmed by powerful PCs. It gets harder at every level.
Statis Slog As Brute Force Control
I think WotC is writing these boss monsters with the stuns and counterspells for this type of overwhelmed DM who isn’t spending much time thinking of combat strategy but is still desperate to have control over the table in combat. Instead of putting a burden on the DM, these monsters have a simple decision tree and put all the burden on the player to make those saves or else. It’s also simple for the adventure writer. They can say they are “just giving the DM options.” Early this year, I was sent an adventure that included the following note:
The encounter has a LOT of effects that fully or partially disable the characters. That is intentional but can also quickly become unfun. You are empowered to have a random effect go off to grant people a new save versus one of these effects if you judge it in the interest of fun and/or making sure players do not turn in to spectators.
I declined to DM or play that adventure. I did save it as evidence that a “we’re goign to do something unfun and it’s up to the DM to pull back” mindset exists.
It's worth noting that these monsters with a heavy emphasis on stuns fits into old school D&D’s save or suck design, but the game has gradually moved away from save or suck over the years. There was a real movement in various online discussion forums to move away from effects like stun completely, along with legendary resistance. Some like MCDM did that.1
But Maybe Those DMs Have A Point!
WotC has moved to giving high level boss type monsters more uses of legendary defense. This feature is increasingly unpopular, but the DM’s experience shows why it is important. People at the table may have incompatible fantasies of what a D&D boss fight will feel like. Imagine the following scenario:
Wendy the level 12 Warlock: Oh, all of the dragon's minions don't want us to go in? This is going to be a big fight? I cast mass suggestion on all of them.
DM: They've got +2 to their Wisdom saves. Most of them fail so yeah, we can skip this fight.
Wally the Wizard, now level 13: Aha, I won initiative in the boss fight again. I cast forcecage with bars so the dragon is trapped, but we still shoot him.
DM: Uhh. I guess it breathes on you when it can, but the rest of you shoot him dead.
DM (thinking): Now I'm going to have more minions of decent power try to beat them up on the way out.
Sally the Sorcerer: Four of the five minions are in a 40 foot cube? I cast slow on all of them!
That was the experience my ToA DM had for the most part, with lots of slow and often Heightened spell Metamagic to impose disadvantage on the saves starting at level 9. It's understandable why many DMs would want to stop at that point. Several players were aggressive in wanting to control the monsters as much as possible. I don't think they ever stopped to consider how this may not be fun for the DM.
I've DMed game store, convention, and charity games for the player who wants to slow or confusion as may monsters as possible. I've seen a range of players try to forcecage the dragon (that didn't actually happen in my first level 13 game store games; the wizard forcecaged a minion in a weaker fight, then waited an hour to kill the minion for the XP. That's how he was taught in his first year of D&D...) I've had plenty of players try to counterspell everything, which is why I like NPCs like the Evoker Wizard getting an AoE blast that can't be counterspelled.
One of the players in my home game, who has played for far longer than me, imagines playing a caster who can walk up to a major story boss and cast hold monster to quickly turn the tide. That's his fantasy of how playing an arcane caster should work. But it's anticlimactic for the party and takes away from the DM's fantasy of a memorable boss fight, so we use Legendary Resistance. He complains about Legendary Resistance but has yet to change his fantasy of controlling the boss turn 1, even when we tell him that he’s not going to control the boss turn 1.
A certain amount of brute force is required to keep boss fights from being overrun. I think the player who wants to use certain spells as an "I win" button is always going to have that fantasy, but they need to be told no. I think it would be better if the things they envision as I win buttons had some alternate benefit to help the party when legendary resistance is used, but the concept of resisting certain kinds of PC control abilities needs to be there.
Better Options?
How can we find some sort of a balance between monsters who look impressive on offense but get run over versus the stasis slog?
Fundamentally change counterspell. Remove the spell as it exists now. Make sure that when the DM or players want to take an action, their action does not get interrupted as a reaction. Let a monster use a reaction to get advantage on a saving throw and resist spell damage, but spells still need to happen. By a similar logic, no teleporting away in the middle of a multiattack, but let the monster resist all damage on a turn.
Orcus is a great exemplar for a hitting the party hard type of boss because he’s got a great melee attack for his CR and a good ranged attack. Most of WotC’s hit you hard bosses are melee only and it’s part of why they flop. Adding a ranged attack that is just a bit weaker than the melee attack helps so much for an attack roll based monster because finding targets gets so much easier.
If there’s an AoE effect that can take away player turns, make sure it only lasts one turn and is on a recharge. That way, it’s unlikely for a player to get stun locked. The adult or ancient sapphire dragon is a good example. Their breath weapon adds incapacitation for 1 round only. I’ve modified mind flayers and other monsters to not have indefinite stuns, but that’s more of an advanced technique.
Add some minions. Don’t have the boss fight alone.
Replace some Legendary Resistance with a succeed at a cost mechanic. Losing a certain numer of hit points to pass a save is the easiest.
Accept that if the boss is a controller type and doesn’t just take away turns via stuns, counterspell, or a bunch of legendary saves then it will be a more complex boss fight, and that’s OK. Sometimes the plan doesn’t work, and that’s OK too.
In the level 10 fight in the Spelljammer adventure, I’d make the boss the only monster with control effects. Let’s give her slow as her main controlling spell. That alone will go a long way with her high ability to maintain concentration and how hard it is to dispel slow. Since she’s already got magic resistance, let’s turn her counterspell reaction into resisting all damage on a turn. Arcane Flux, her most damaging attack, is losing the stun rider and getting a d6 penalty to all d20 tests instead, similar to synaptic static, and it’s now an INT save.
I like the maelephant in a lot of ways, but the poison rider can completely screw over many casters, so let’s just make it the poisoned condition for 1 round. Maybe it never recharges that AoE. Then replace the mind flayer like monster with an incredibly simple brute who just attacks.
There was also a movement to go away from attack rolls or saving throws completely, so players always did something. This was the main Kickstarter appeal for MCDM’s Draw Steel I felt like that movement went too far: what about the monsters? Do they always get to do something? How do players have defenses? I’ve played D&D games at high enough level where failure on the d20 was impossible and it usually took something away from the experience.