Tuesday Terror #36- Boss Monster II December 22, 2010

I’m back with some free time to make a new Boss Monster design courtesy of  Angry DM. If you have read previous tuesday terror’s then you probably figured  out that I like dragons. I like dragons a lot. My campaign has been building up to this moment and now I get to unveil Io to my players. Yes, Io the god of dragons which was split into bahamut and tiamat. Unfortunately he is being manipulated by the villain. Now they get to run into him and this is the fight. One thing I am assuming is that Io is huge. Not big like normal dragons but huge like city spanning wings.

If you don’t know the boss monster is a Solo split into 3 stages. Think video game boss. After you have done something the boss changes and has a new attack pattern but in 4e terms.

Setup: The PC’s are dropped off via airship and they confront the villain. Villain escapes and dragon comes out of ground to fight.

Stage 1: Io comes up from underground halfway leaving his bottom half under the ground. Io has weak spots on his feet

when they bleed small dragon’s spawn from his scales and attack. This is the most basic part of the fight. Io has a breath weapon that he can use.  The two feet should be too far away from each other for a player too move from one to the other in one turn. The idea is to split the party’s focus.

*Edit*: I forgot to add the minions 🙂 I woke up today and thought there’s something…Oh crap. So here you are

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Stage 2: When both claws have been hit point ridden Io’s feet shake and fall to the ground allowing the party to climb up them. Also just after this, distracting Io is the aforementioned airship. Instead of a monster stat block for this stage I went with a skill challenge. It is a level 29 skill challenge complexity 3 with 2 sections of 4 successes to succeed. The first section is scaling the arms and shoulders which are steaming hot and  sharp while Io is trying to shake them off(or at least shifting his weight whichever you prefer.Did I mention he was big). The second section is scaling the head.  Io spits out a full sized dragon crackling with heat, lightning and thunder energy. This section is about avoiding the dragons attack passes while climbing the neck Io. Use your own creativity and knowledge of your players to specifically make this more interesting to them. Each failure is 50 damage to the one who failed but is never fatal. If the whole challenge is failed then the spit dragon picks them up and throws them on Io’s back right where is wants them and gets a free round of actions before initiative is rolled with combat advantage against the party. Once on the head before they can do much damage the Spit dragon lands on the head to do battle with the PC’s lead to…

Stage 3: This guy has a fly by attack and I specifically let him be affected by movement because that keeps the focus on keeping the dragon from flying. Don’t forget about the aura or tail strike when using him! After he is defeated Io Roars and takes to flight ramming his head into the PC’s airship reuniting them with the ship just as it tumbles to earth. Of course you can end it anyway you want to. Again thanks to Angry for the template and inspiration.

Looking for another Boss Monster Check out C’thoon !