For my current project, I've already planned out all the boss fights in advance before developing them. I recently started thinking that maybe the player wouldn't like my idea of a fun boss battle.

Thus leading to this thread. What are your ideas of fun and epic boss battles? Be it small touches and details or completely new twists.

In my opinion, I always like a bit of thinking involved in some fights. Not just a straight forward hack and slash but a boss that requires you to find a weakness of some sort and utilize it to an extent. Persona 3 comes to mind here for me. Even a simple or complex puzzle is welcoming and fun for me. For example, in a nutshell, one of my planned "fights" is for the player to hit all the switches while the environment is constantly changing using acquired abilities.

- Boss battles should be challenging
- Boss battles should not have you relying on luck and glitches.
- Boss battles should reward better for special achievements (such as perfect health, killing within a certain time, etc.
- Boss battles should incorporate the skills and use of at least half of the party members
- Boss battles should be possible even without a stock full of potions and 6 healing mages

Note: Every player should know when they are going to face a boss so they have an opportunity to save and prepare. Its ridiculous when bosses fall out of the sky and force you back levels.

A good boss fight, at least in my opinion, would have more than just one strategy needed to beat it. You shouldn't be restricted to specific characters unless the storyline required otherwise.

I think that a boss fight needs a boss that fights with intelligence. Using the right attacks on the right heros in order to make the battle more challenging without the need for giving the boss high HP and high stats.

I think we should all contribute an example of a good boss battle in order to create a realistic expectation and not merely discuss ideals (As happens a lot in these "What is a good X" thread.)

A good boss battle makes use of strategy and even incorporates the surroundings into it. It is hinted to and alluded to throughout the dungeon, so that the player comes in saved and prepared.

Enter the Forest dungeon. After making your way through a series of animals and small spiders it becomes apparent that the webbing on the trees is getting thicker, and the canopy less parted. Throughout the dungeon, and in the town prior, torches are available to be sold. Once you hit point A in the dungeon, you're required to use the torches to both burn the webbing and you must use them to see where you're going. If you run into a battle without a light, your miss chance is increased.

Challenge A for the dungeon has been set. Now as you progress spiders cause poison bites. Luckily anti-venom and anti-venom spells have become available for your minimum level in this dungeon. Challenge B is established. Finally you reach the final room of the dungeon. A giant web covers the floor leading into the next room.

Enter the Brood Mother of the Forest. Fire is her weakness, and anti-venom will be necessary. She has 3 targets, her main body, her upper body, and her lower body. Her main body is all you need to kill to win. Her upper body shoots webbing, and can exstinguish your torches. If you're low on torches, you want to exterminate this ASAP. It has a 25% increase damage from fire, and 1/7th of the HP of the main body.

Her lower body causes venom, so if you're low on anti-venom you want this exstinguished ASAP. It has 1/7th of the HP of the main and 25% increased fire damage.

Her main body has 75% weakness to fire, and at minimum level spamming fire spells on her to 0 MP should lower it by 2,3/5th. So if you're low level you may want to focus on top and bottom then mid, but if you're high level spamming the body to death would be smartest. Infact the highest level for the dungeon may yield a new fire spell on a character, thus easing it. There could even be a bonus for killing the entire body or never using a fire spell.

That's a pretty simple, easy example. You could play things up and make switches as targets that perform an action on death in some boss battles to make it interesting.

Yay! I love epic and clever boss fights and I think it's a great idea to give our examples.

So here's a boss from my WIP game. He's a monk with decent attack power, but his most powerful technique can kill our character in almost 2 hits at their expected level right? But in order to do that he must first use charge for one turn which allows him to use the attack for his next turn. When we see this is when a smart person should use lightning(a spell that can paralyze the enemy during their next turn) because the monk can only use his most damaging attack(Need to call it something dunno ) on the turn after he uses charge and if he's paralyzed it's a wasted turn.

If someone just spams lightning at the start of the battle they won't have any MP left for when the monk prepares his ultimate attack(Again I'm trying to think of what to call it). So if all you can do is attack normally at this time then your fate is inescapable.

So how do you think of that kind of boss battle? Just one of my more strategic ones. It's on RMVX btw.

I think it's a mistake to judge a boss fight just by itself. We need to look at it from the entire holistic approach. The reason why? Variety is the spice of life.

What I mean by this is that each battle needs to be different from one another in some way. What I mean by this is that you need to introduce a new skill to the player, and then eventually get the player to put it to use, or each time, change up the paradigm/strategy slightly. Now, I don't mean something like use fire instead of ice in this battle. That's a very superficial difference and it's meaningless. I mean more like, one boss you gotta figure out which part to hit first, one boss you gotta figure out which weapon(or element) to use, one boss you gotta figure out the pattern in which you hit him, and maybe you have a boss that combines the above together. That is, each boss needs to have their own schtick. If every boss is just a matter of going through the drills, it will get boring.

oh yeah, and you can't make it TOO punishing either. (Unless you're IWTBTG, in which case you can get away with it)

Incidently I illustrated this in a practical and easy to understand method in my previous post.

yeah, but I'm an egomaniac who likes to hear his own voice.

I think the placement of bosses in the storyline is just as important as the fight in itself. As in, if a player is emotionally motivated to win the battle, a simple boss is much more easy to forgive. Three examples (all from my game, Border Point):

Boss A: The player reaches a big room in the dungeon, where a spiritual creature blocks its' way. The boss is a main enemy with 3 assisters: one heals the main boss, one casts ailments on you, and one casts buffs on the boss. Killed assisters respawn in 10 rounds.

Rating: The necessary "filler" boss: while it's not the worst boss ever made, it's nothing to remember. Gameplay-wise, it's fine. However, use too much of these bosses (where the player wants to defeat the boss just to progress to the next area) and the player will grow tired of them, no matter how innovative they are.

Boss B: The protagonist, jealous at the boyfriend of his love interest, and agitated by the main antagonist, causes a disaster with a magical weapon and when the boyfriend doesn't die, he attacks him directly. There are two boss battles: both take place against a single enemy that uses sword skills and has a stronger attack he must charge for one turn. The player fights this battle with only the main protagonist, armed with a weapon that puts him way above his original power (10000-some damage compared to the ~800-1000 you usually deal before).
The outcome of this battle influences the storyline and ending 4 of the 8 different plotlines entirely depend on these 2 battles.

Rating: The "storyline" boss, one case in which a player has motivation to win, if only to see different plotlines. The goal of the fight isn't progress to the next dungeon, but to help the protagonist, even if his motives are evil/selfish: the player is forced to help him to progress in the game, thus forcing a moral reconsideration. Even if the gameplay part's not very good, the storyline and motivations can carry it on their backs.

Boss C: The optional superboss of the game. The battle takes place in the replica of the dancehall of Boss B (entitled the "Sunrise Mobius arena" in the postgame). The boss is a man in his 40s, wearing a tuxedo and a rapier. He is the inventor of a feared backward-tradition and his motive to fight the party is to make the protagonists face his past actions (the reason for the arena and his clothes), with which they hurt others, no matter what. The battle begins at night and it takes 9 turns for the sun to rise. As long as there's night, the boss can't be hurt. He uses attacks that can decimate even the strongest characters, and has moves that "shatter" the sun, resetting the night counter. However, this move is predictable and he can be staggered while preparing it, thus winning time. It also takes about 200 normal attacks to wear down his HP.

Rating: This is an optional boss, so ramping up the difficulty is okay here. We have that extra gameplay element in the form of night-day shifting. As how a good boss does, it has a reason to fight (unlike the WEAPON enemies of Final Fantasy games or Red from Pokemon G/S and superbosses in general), and it also reminds you of the choices made throughout the game (especially the ones in Boss B, a key scene).

- Everyone likes different things, so coming up with "The best or Good" Boss battle is hard to do...


- But in MY game, the first boss battle you really face has a "conditional" twist.


- If you just so happen to cast a water spell on her... [ fighter 7 (Cat girl) ]

She transforms into her Beserk mode.

If you continue to cast water spells on her She gets Faster & Stronger.... and on top of even that.

If you cast a water spell on her 3-4 times... She unleashes an attack so powerful, you won't survive.

Check it out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLXT1BY-ORY

There are virtually no awesome boss battles that I can think of right now, except for Tabuu. You know, the blue guy from SSBB?
He was so difficult, that i had to quit and let Blippy play all my lives so he could win.
The reason he was awesome because his special moves are awesome, and the fact that, though evil and extraordinarily difficult, he wasn't infallible.
Oh, did I mention, he looked awesome?
Almost as awesome as Zelda. Or Jigglypuff. Or Ness.

-High HP obviously makes a battle last a while, which can either make the battle repetitive or epic, depending on how dynamic the battle is.
-When there's multiple enemies, and they use healing magic and life spells, that makes a battle difficult
-Dynamic battles are less repetitive. Things that can make a battle more dynamic are things like mute, berserk, reflect, wall change (changes elemental weakness / strength), poison, etc.. These things force you to frequently change-up which skills you use.
-When the enemy mixes-up a variety of attacks, it makes the battle less repetitive / predictable
-The harder the battle is and the more damage the enemy deals, the more you're forced to try to balance offense with healing to keep your party alive, which makes the battle dynamic. You always have to reassess the situation and shift gears when your party members are low on HP.
-If the enemy is capable of summoning other monsters to the battlefield to assist it, then the battle can be more dynamic if instead of summoning the same monster repeatedly, it summons different monsters every time with different strengths and weaknesses (preferably relatively underpowered monsters that you've already encountered and already understand the weaknesses of).
-You could have a boss (or one of its minions) that either copies the last ability you used, or acquires the abilities that you use. Therefore, it makes you think twice about which skills or attacks you should or shouldn't use since the enemy will use them back.
-It's good when there's more than one enemy on the field, so that you are forced to decide which is the best strategically to kill first.
-Kind of like Listuguj describes, a boss where your attacks alter its behavior. But instead of just water pumping it up, it'll be more like... fire attacks make it fight one way, water attacks make it fight a different way, lightning attacks make it fight a different way; all equally powerful but different behaviors (maybe different balances of physical attacks, magical attacks, status changes, healing, etc.). Kind of like a character from... I forget what game (A Blurred Line or Phylomortis maybe?) who had a different set of skills depending on which of her split personalities was manifesting.

Well I definitely have variety that's for sure. One of my favorite boss is this boy who can summon a flower plant monster to attack us and barricade himself inside. We can't attack him in any way at all when the plant is protecting him. So we have to defeat the plant first obviously, which is when the plant opens up limply allowing us to attack the boy. However the boy will use his next turn to drain our health largely then resurrect the plant, only allowing the player about 2 shots at him, which is nowhere near enough to finishing him off. Also noting that he used one turn to greatly heal himself(likely even more than you can damage him).

The plant itself is slightly easier than a regular boss. But fighting it the second time becomes a pain and a nightmare the third time. But spamming your best attacks when the plant opens up will still extend the fight more than eight rounds at the expected level. So any idea what to do there?

I didn't see it mentioned in here (A bit tl;dr) but don't forget boss music! Most of the best and most memorable bosses (Like Nergal of FE7) have awesome boss music to accentuate their mighty power!

In like, the 3rd dungeon of my game, you are required to rescue these slaves which allow you to have them attack for you by use of a skill. With each slave that you rescue, this attack that they do for you gets stronger. Once you get to the boss of the area, one of the slaves will offer to gather up more of the slaves to help you take down the slave driver once and for all. If you say no, they have a level 4 attack that does ok damage, but if you say yes, that slave will leave temporarily to round them up and they will have a level 3 attack until the turn that he returns; replacing the level 3 attack with a level 6 attack that does a lot of damage.
After the boss battle, all the slaves are freed and you can finally go back home; leaving the newly freed slaves to get back to their normal lives.

This is a great topic for me, because my upcoming game will basically make at least 20-25% of battles be bosses.

Here's a sort of rough layout for my first dungeon. I use a Chrono Trigger battle system so enemies are fought one time only. Since this is only the first dungeon, and since you only have one party member, the battles are very simple.

1st battle: 3 lava sharks at short range, using bite attacks.
2nd battle: 2 lava sharks at long range, using fire-spit attacks. They deal more damage, but you obtain an ice attack.
3rd battle: 1 lava shark and 1 laser shark. The lasers can be disabled by using a dark elemental attack.
4th battle: 1 lava shark and 2 laser sharks.
5th battle: BOSS! Giant shark with sunglasses. Has a lot of HP, which forces the player to learn how energy regeneration works, and use skills a little more wisely.
6th battle: 2 laser sharks and 1 rocket shark. The rocket shark launches itself at you and explodes when low on HP.
7th battle: 3 rocket sharks.
8th battle: 2 lava sharks, 1 laser shark, and 1 rocket shark.
9th battle: 2 acid sharks. Acid sharks lower your defense and inflict gradual damage. The defense-lowering effect stacks with itself, putting a time limit on the battle and forcing the player to concentrate on offense some, rather than purely defense.
10th battle: 1 acid shark and 2 laser sharks.
11th battle: BOSS! Agent Five, 1 acid shark, 1 lava shark. Agent 5 boosts her allies' attack power, but not her own, and can summon additional sharks if either of those two is killed before her.
12th battle: BOSS! Lord Justice, lots of sharks. Lord Justice continuously summons sharks. He constantly changes the laws, FFTA style, so that different types of attacks are rewarded or forbidden. He also increases the speed of his shark allies. After you deal enough damage to Lord Justice, he will accidentally enable the Forbidden: Sharks law, causing the entire factory to explode (and causing you to win the battle).


Points to note here:
-Normal battles introduce 0-1 new gimmicks. Usually 1.
-Bosses introduce 2 or more new gimmicks, sometimes combining several gimmicks that previously stood alone.
-Bosses aren't necessarily that much less forgiving than normal battles, but they're more complex, and they're usually longer to allow time for all the complexity to play out.
-Most of the bosses in my game will punish the player for focusing entirely on defense. I feel like too many games have no reason for the player to care about their offense in boss fights. In this dungeon, it's done via acid sharks. When the player gets multiple party members and non-crappy healing skills later in the game, I'll have a lot more options.
-Three bosses in the first dungeon, holy crap. I love bosses. If I could get rid of normal battles entirely, I would do so. Unfortunately it would make the learning curve too steep, so I will settle for this method instead. Most of my normal battles are practically bosses anyway.

An advice on how to make your boss fights more strategic and therefore interesting: Think of your CHARACTER's skills, magic etc. Then visualize the most creative ways those abilities can be used resourcefully. Once that's done, think of which bosses you can apply those ideas to in your game. Does anyone else get their ideas that way? Or is it just me?

I gave enough examples of those kinds of fights on this thread and some other ones.

That's one way to do it. But other times I will come up with the boss idea first, and then give the characters skills that make it work. Or give the boss a gimmick that has little to do with specific skills.

I think World of Warcraft bosses are a pretty good example of how to make good boss fights. Many of their ideas aren't directly copyable to RM since they are based around character movement, but you can do similar types of things.

Here are the four bosses from The Stonecore, a high level dungeon in World of Warcraft.

Corborus
Skills:
# Crystal Barrage - Targets the ground under one player and deals medium damage to all players near that area for 4 seconds. Can be avoided by moving out of the effect.
# Dampening Wave - Deals low shadow damage to all players. In addition, the next 4000 points of healing done to players will be negated. This effect stacks up to 20 times. Dispelling this effect will remove the entire stack.

Corborus alternates between two strategies.
Phase 1: Corborus is above ground and uses his two abilities listed above, as well as attacking the tank.
Phase 2: Corborus burrows underground and is not attackable. Small enemies will appear rapidly in random locations, which attack the nearest party member but are easily destroyed. Due to the penalty against healing, it is important to kill them before they have a chance to hit you very many times. Also, dust clouds appear on the ground, and if a player stands in one, Corborus will surface and kill them.

If I were adapting this fight for RMXP, I would:
- Make Crystal Barrage avoidable by defending instead of moving
- Make Corborus surfacing be unavoidable, but only deal 80% of your max HP, so you can live through it if you're at full health. The dust cloud will still be visible, letting the player know which party member needs to be at full health.

Slabhide
Skills:
# Sand Blast - Deals medium damage to all players in front of Slabhide within 15 yards.
# Eruption - Deals a small amount of damage to players within melee range. In addition, a pool of lava forms in a random location, resulting in:
# Lava Pool - Deals damage quickly to anyone standing in the fire. Disappears after 10 sec.
# Collapse ceiling - Flies into the air, causing stalactites to drop from the ceiling; if one lands on you, you die. A shadow will appear on the ground where each stalagtite is going to fall.
# Crystal Storm - Deals massive damage to all enemies in line of sight every half second for 6 sec.

Strategy:
The stalactites are not a major threat. However, you have to hide behind one when he starts casting Crystal Storm to survive it, otherwise you will die after 2-3 hits of it. And you have to make sure there's not a lava pool behind the one nearest you, though standing in a lava pool is not as bad as being hit by Crystal Storm.

If I were adapting this fight for RMXP, I would:
- Make Sand Blast simply target two random party members.
- Make Eruption deal damage only to characters who performed a physical attack that round.
- Lava pools would be replaced by summoned lava elementals, which would only attack the lowest HP party member. They would self-destruct after a few turns.
- Stalactites would also be summoned enemies, but would not deal damage. Slabhide would deal earth damage to all party members when he summoned them, but after that they would just sit there.
- When Slabhide starts using Crystal Storm, the player would have to attack and destroy a stalactite. Doing so would create a resonant sound that shatters his crystal storm but strengthens any lava elementals that are alive.

I got tired of typing these out. Here are links to summaries of the other two bosses, Ozruk and High Priestess Azil.

I would agree that BOSS fights should be less about the bosses themselves, more about the PC characters:

What are their strengths? - Allow them to shine ...
What are their weaknesses? - Make a valid attempt to exploit them...

That being said, here's one bess boss fight. Boss tied down, only attacks from range. At 50%HP, he enrages and breaks from his shackles. Switches to deadly melee and goes for the PC who dealt the most damage.

Not sure if this counts as 'fun and epic', but it's something I've played with in the past.

Set up the boss with multiple possible 'branches' to what they can do. Have these branches be triggered by variables or switches set by how the heroes acted in battle. (Either just in that dungeon, or throughout the game, depending on scope of Boss.) Essentially, the player is 'teaching' the boss in question how they fight, at least in general terms - which means the boss should, if set up wisely, be able to counter the strategies the player has been using up until that point. If the player spammed magic, have the boss ready with shell and silence effects; if they didn't heal until nearly dead, have the boss lead them on with chipping damage, then strike powerful blows at low hp. If the player used items (healing or battle items) a great deal, have the boss knock them away.

The catch to this, and the reason I enjoy trying to set them up, is that such a tuned boss can be made at least 'easier', if not 'easy', by swapping out to another set of tactics. It forces the players to think about what strategies they have available to them based on skills, equipment or items, etc.

I think, as mentioned before, a wide variety of bosses is always fun and exciting.
Some of my favorite fights were from Final Fantasy.
Primarily battles you don't really "fight": Holy Dragon (the zombie version), Gogo, and Magic Master.

The holy dragon had a LOT of health, so much that even a well leveled and geared party would take a long time killing it. His trick was that every time he cast Holy, he lost a chunk of health. I think if you hit it, it would steal life back, but its been a while. Basically, you had to have 2 heals in party and keep at least one of them alive until the dragon killed himself.

Gogo was the most frustrating boss I'd ever faced. You're in a sunken tower, so there is a breath timer. By the time you fight through all the monsters, make it through the maze, and try to manage treasure hoarding, the timer is half over. The battle starts, and there's Gogo... doing nothing... like he's trying to waste your time. You cast holy, he casts holy and kills that character! You resurrect the fallen character, he casts
flare, gigaflare, Odin Count 5, firaga, tornado, Odin Count 4, Odin, summon Bahahmut, death 5, meteor, Ultima ... my party never made it farther than that.
Very long painful story short, he wanted you to mimic him like a mime. Yes, he's doing nothing, but that's what you had to copy. Just leave the game alone for 2 minutes.

Finally, we have the Magic Master. He has extremely high magic resistance (or maybe absorption) and puts up a melee barrier. He also casts the most powerful spells in the game. How do you kill something you cant damage? Well, he relies on MP heavily, lets try to get that to 0. MP draining spells hit a little less than I would normally damage, but that's alright his spells are expensive. Eventually his MP hit 0, and he yelled something about not having enough power to go on then died.

Personally I like sometimes having to think of a way to kill the boss without beating them with the biggest shiniest sword or burning them with the most expensive spells.

For me, a boss battle absolutely has to make use of one of its game's gimmicks to be interesting. It also has to be a different thing each time.
Some of the commonly used types of boss battle gimmicks are:

Counter attack stance
Whelk(FF6)
Heckraan(Chrono Trigger)
Mist Dragon(FF4)
Scorpion Guard(FF7)
FF5's first boss
This one only makes sense if the game uses ATB or any other dynamic system. You have to pay attention to the boss' stance and cease damage dealing if he enters a "counter stance", or else face painful retaliation. The punishment may vary in size, but insisting on attacking will surely kill you sooner or later. Best used early on to make the player get used to how the game deals with turns. Do NOT implement this in a turn or wait based system unless all characters have a "defend" or "wait" command.

Barrier change
Hyne(FF3)
Magus(Chrono Trigger)
This one is used best right after the players get access all kinds of elemental magic(Spekkio's training), and maybe a way.of telling the enemy's weakness on the spot if he gives no hints at that. (Scholar's Scan ability)
You absolutely must ensure the players enter the battle with some means of getting around the shifting weakness, whether it's giving them the magic right before the battle (Magus) or warning them directly of the barrier change. (Hyne)

Countdown
Magus, Black Tyrano(Chrono Trigger)
Once every few turns, the boss starts counting down - once he reaches zero, he unleashes a very powerful attack, and goes back to his usual routine. If the party is caught unprepared, it's dead. The variations of this strategy include a way to interrupt the impeding doom (especially if it's nearly guaranteed to kill you), and lowering the enemy's resistance/defense for the time of countdown. ("Magus risks casting a spell")

Multiple part boss
Dragon Tank, Guardian, Giga Gaia, Zeal, Mother Brain, Lavos, etc. (Chrono Trigger)
Whelk, Kefka(FF6)
Schizo, Bizzaro Sephiroth, etc.(FF7)
Crapload more examples everywhere
This can be played many different ways, but usually involves defeating the other parts in a sequence. The parts may also be a catalyst to the Countdown and Counter Stance strategies, making these turn off temporarily until the parts are revived (or not). An annoying move is making the parts weak/strong towards different things. Attacking some parts may be harmful, they're usually not meant to be attacked and die along with everything else.

Speed-run
Garuda, Zande, Dark Cloud (FF3)
Some late game bosses in Xenogears
This boss has ridiculous firepower or maybe even a one hit kill ever few turns, but also very low health or some sort of weakness, or perhaps means to partially avoid his attacks. (Jump) You're supposed to use every turn you get to deal as much damage as you can - healing yourself, if not necessary - is probably a waste of turns if you're going to die anyway. Kill it before it kills you.

Endurance
Ultima Weapon (FF6)
Aps(FF7)
You may or may not be supposed to beat the boss - but sooner or later, it kills itself if you last long enough. (Ultima dies when it runs out of MP, Aps damages himself with his Tsunami)

One-hit exploit
Phantom Train(FF6)
Jinn (FF3) //provided you saved a SouthWind
This one can be hard as hell - but guess what? He probably has a weakness that makes him die in one turn, sparing you the inhumane battle. (such as reviving undead)

Lose/Escape/Avoid
Bahamut, Nepto, Dark Cloud (FF3)
Golem, Lavos(Chrono Trigger)
You're not supposed to win this one. It's either a way of forcing the player to think of another way around, or a plot device.

This is how I personally construct my boss battles:

Entry line:You don't have to have a giant conversation here, you can also note down things that may happen if you use ___ during the boss, such as chrono trigger's "Masamune Lower's Magus Def!" when you attack with the masamune, if it's a normal boss I usually put something in the bosses character. However, this can get somewhat annoying, but I use it only on real bosses, not just strong enemies. If that made any sense....
Give the boss a fixed first attack: It's no fun if the boss kills you on the first turn. I recently constructed a boss( AA-Gamma spec.130) which charges it's lasers during the first turn, giving the player a fair game(You just lost it, by the way ) instead of blowing them to pieces during the first turn
How will the boss act?: will he raise his stats before launching a attack? Or visa-versa? Think about the character of the boss and don't give it attacks for the sake of giving it a diverse moveset. A boss with 2 moves is predictable, but a boss with 23 moves is annoying as you don't know what to guard against. Give the boss 6 attacks at most, and make the more powerful ones require a prerequired battle event.
Once the boss dies: If you have a more "epic" game, fix the final attack(Usually on the final boss) to something that looks amazing and is sure to kill the boss(Like in KH2, You fire a beam of light through the final boss that explodes.) Make the characters talk, and make sure that the finisher is something to be remembered. Don't do this on every boss, as that will look stupid finishing off something like a giant goblin with a pillar of flame. Treat the final boss like the end of the game, forget the ending and go all out.

Also, as the above post says, use the game's gimmicks to your advantage.

Don't make 90% of your post bold. ~Rob_Riv

There are lots of long posts in this topic, so obviously I've only given it a quick skim.
So apologies if someone else has posted this idea.

Now, I always try to incorporate events on the map to my boss fights. To get to the boss you have to solve some sort of puzzle on the map to get through its defences, and then in battle I try to utilize battle events to make the player think more about how to beat it.

A boss I once made was a giant fish, it spent its time in the river so you couldn't hit it. If you used the "splash" skill it would disturb the fish, making it leap out of the water at you and getting stuck on the land where it was vulnerable to attack.

Bosses shouldn't be immune to every ailment, that kind of takes away from possible strategies as people have mentioned.

Boss battles should let you let loose. You can finally use all of your strongest skills or smartest strategies and go all out. You don't have to worry about having enough items/FP/HP left for the rest of the dungeon like you would fighting a run of the mill opponent.

I've always thought the Persona series handles boss battles wonderfully. They aren't a dull grind where you spend 30 minutes cutting down essentially any other enemy except bigger and with 5x the HP, they are dangerous do-or-die situations with unique gimmicks that keep you on your toes and require well thought out tactics.

Party banter is an unfortunately underused factor for making bosses interesting as well. Assuming you have well realized and well written characters, relevant back-and-forth quips can amuse players throughout the battle and even be used to give hints concerning possible weaknesses and strategies.

Here's my advice for making a final boss.

Give the boss max health. No...Not because the player is expected to deal 9 Million(?) damage, but Instead, we can set up events to a specfic % of health, like I made a boss where you only have to "Half Kill" it before a storyline event kills it automaticially.

Max health is a weak and lazy design method.
Bosses need to have a unique set of weaknesses, patterns that expand into varying strategies and other items to keep them interesting.
They should NOT have a looping attack pattern thats predictable, max stats, or status immunities.
Building off of Harry's concept, the boss could be weak to Volt based attacks and poison, but only when it's out of water. On land it's list of attacks could change to cause small tremors, fling or spit various items or fluids, or any other number of things. What makes a boss fun and interesting isn't a lazy approach, but a dynamic ai that can respond to a number of situations differently depending on what strategies the player decides to employ.

The max health is to stop the boss dying and causing a storyhole loop. I personally like to give a boss a weakness; a strength and then a not so obvious technique to defeat it.

I.e: a player learns "Shock dud" that normally does nothing, but a water based jelly monster is highly weak to it. However, on even turns it will counter attack should you try to use it.

What makes a boss battle?

- Intense Combat
- Having the boss have larger HP (generaly 4X that of a normal enemy for the time period in the game)
- Great battle music
- Great Visuals
- Making sure the user is glued to the screen until the last second.

Again making bosses nothing more than HP Tanks is a lazy design method. Of course they'll have more health than what you've been fighting at that period of time usually 4x more like Rukiri said, too much health just makes the boss look like something to slow the player down rather than an actual battle that puts the player on it's toes. Instead play around with their stats like defense or resistance so they take less damage than the average creature. In addition they can have higher resistances to a number of elements that make them harder to kill. You can just as easily create a indefinite status effect at the start of the battle that reduces damage from a number of sources and remove it when you need to.

Pretty much the laziest bosses I've seen have an insane amount of HP and deal much more damage to the party than the common creatures up to that point (usually enough to bring the parties health down to half or outright kill them with one attack). The HP A boss should have shouldn't be a static Nx number either as every battle system uses a different set of algorithms. A bosses health and parameters should be designed around the battle system of the game and not a general design.

Or the player will find a broken hole in the game to defeat bosses aka Knights of the Round ala FF7. I agree with Twilight, if you don't want your boss dying, do what other games do: give it a means of becoming temporarily immortal (100% dodge / spell immunity would be a good example). That's assuming you want a plot device in that particular boss battle.

Having bosses learn based on what you do (especially if it's a reoccurring boss) would be my way to go. If you're doing a fairly obvious tactic, it should pick up on this and create a new condition to spice up the fight. Static pattern based AI really is a boring methodology for game design and should be an obvious no no.

The best bosses I've ever had to face were in the game Demon's Souls. Each has a unique approach to it.

World 1-1: Phalanx
Giant oil blob covered in smaller oil blobs weilding spears. You have to set your weapon on fire and get in close. Problem is that the blobs will attack you when you do and you can die fairly easily.

1-2: Tower Knight
Dude is gigantic. There are archers all around so you must first dispatch those, while the tower knight is shooting magic missile things at you. Go down, attack his feet, run away as he falls, come back, waste his head.

1-3: Penetrator
Big sword, likes waving it around. Just beat the crap out of him. BUT you can do some special stuff and get an ally on your side.

1-4: False King
Can level you down. Yeah. Takes away a level. At level 70+ it takes sooo much to level. And has an AOE, and moves fast and deal a lot of damage. Ironically, the best way to reduce your damage is to take off all your armor so you can move faster.

2-1: Armored spider
Kicks the crap out of you up close, spits fire balls, slows you down with webs. Shoot from a distance, and poof! no more spider.

2-2: Flame lurker
Lots of fire. Goes nuts at low health and doesn't stop exploding in a ball of fire at you.

2-3: Dragon god.
Now this is very different. Its more of a puzzle. You have to activate two spear-launchy-thingy's basically, but you have to get to them without being set on fire or punched in the face.

There are many more, and each has its own method. use a bow here, kill this dude over here, make her depressed so she commits suicide (seriously, Maiden Astraea, look it up), and so on.

Another great game for boss fights is Shadow of the Colossus. That's all you do is face bosses. Get on this ones wings and stab-stab-stab, beat this one off a wall and stab-stab-stab, etc.

Now I do understand there is a slight barrier here. Most of us don't work with 3D. It's mostly turn-based tactics we're concerned about, so lets see if we can modify this...

DEMON SOULS

World 1-1

If we take Phalanx and convert that battle to RPG Maker, it might go something like this:

Its weakness if fire, so have a mage blast it with fire and have a special enchantment or item to light your other dudes weapons aflame. Whenever you physically attack there is a chance that you will be damaged back. To make it more difficult, you have to inflict a certain amount of damage to it to make its protecton blobs fall off. Its like adding more health to the boss, except to the player it seems more like having to kill more things before they can actually kill the boss.

SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS

The flying...thingy

There is one boss I remember in particular that was very fun. It was this giant flying creature. Now this would require some special scripting, but it could be done. The object was that you had to get on top of the bird and stab the crap out of its wings and tail in certain spots without falling off. This boss in an RPG maker game wouldn't be in a typical battle scene. It would be more like ABS style, just right there. You get on it, you stab it, you don't fall off, win.

I would say that in creating boss battles, its important not to just have it be some long drawn out health beat down. I know of some games like that, where all you do is hit the same keys over and over and over again until it dies. Hit-hit-hit-hit-heal-hit-heal-heal-hit-hit-hit....

You have to make them require some strategy, something unique beyond just doing damage.

One more thing I like is a timed boss battle. Not an annoying one where you have to grind to be able to stand a chance, but let's say for example there's a story branch affecting boss, if you defeat it in the time limit, the story branches one way, lose, and it branches another. Here's the kicker, beat it or lose within a certain limit (first 5 minutes, between the sixth and 10th minute) and a special story branch or other event occurs. What would make this more challenging would a learning boss like Queue said, would make beating him in a time limit challenging. Of course, I usually prefer action boss battles compared to turn based in battles like this.

Something people don't tend to bring up in these threads is the reward for defeating the boss. Fighting a boss and then just ending up in the same dungeon is boring. Fighting a boss and ending up with a new unlocked location, a cool item, or a snazzy cutscene - now that's interesting.

My favorite boss fight usually has favorite type of gameplay.


I like the ATB system... It is more fast pace and you have to think fast. Hesitation could kill a player in a boss fight.

Non useless skills... In Final Fantasy games I didn't understand the Death ability. It would have this count down for the amount of turns it takes to kill that monster. This ability was useless because most bosses are immune to the spell, and trash mobs are usually dead before the count down reaches zero. The ability to be able to use your entire arsenal and have some effect to the boss, whether it is good or bad, is a great fight for me.

Boss fight who have a moment of invincibility. For example someone was talking about fighting a Vampire who is invincible at night. During the day he is weak. He can still change the cycle of the day.

Resurrecting or regenerating bosses... one of my favorite fights in World of Warcraft was the Romeo and Juliette boss in Karazhan. You have to kill them around the same time as the other part of the boss.

Think of it as you are fighting an oversized Chameleon, and chameleons are known to regenerate limbs. So if you only attack his leg and you destroy it. He will regenerate it back to almost full health in a certain amount of time. So if you weaken it, you can get it to the point where you can kill the boss by destroying his limbs at the same time. Each limb may have certain abilities as long as it doesn't heal that monster. Then that would destroy the balance of the game. It adds strategy and you have to think twice before just focus firing on one area of the monster. Doing nothing but AoE attacks drains your mana very quickly. Using abilities to incapacitate different parts, while juggling your defensive abilities and attacks would make it an awesome fight. No attack spamming fest!

I have only scanned through the earlier comments so if I repeat something others say I apologize:

Most enemies in RPG can just be hacked away at and you will win and defeat them easily! but with a boss you need to have a structure, I find the best bosses are the ones that have a set number of attacks, but a really nasty counter attack...I am referencing Sactury Keeper in FFX. That was a horrid boss...but no matter what I wanted to defeat him!

Almost all the bosses I design would be fairly easy if it weren't for a special ability to them that makes them seem impossible. Which also differentiates them from mooks. These special abilities can range from having almost fatal attacks, halve your character's stats or even hardly ever able to be hit. But whatever it may be there's always a way(at LEAST one method) to go around it. They're like an obstacle that tests the player's use of the abilities they learned and separates the clever ones from mindless button mashers. Mainly I just like to make button mashers suffer .

I'd say Persona brings an interesting twist to it's boss's but I feel an actual boss: an entity that is both mysteries/omnipotent in it's own right...as usually the player has little idea what shape/form/abilities they may bring to the table as well as a set time limit placed upon said player; which I will convey in terms of a turn-based system as a median, I would honestly say that these entities are decent role-models that fit the bill (in my opinion):

In terms of actual challenge/difficulty - I tend to look towards something that requires some luck no matter what you do; something that requires you to not only be competent but also tactful and even then: it may not guarantee you a win but it will always be a struggle each encounter.

Example:

Hitoshura (DDS1) - Not only one of the most difficult bosses in RPG history, but if you take him down to around 50% hp: his pixie will immediately cast a spell (upon her turn) that recovers his health back to max. Although in terms of timing...you end up mostly trying to stall until the pixie's wasted almost all of its mp on a repeat of the same spell over and over. I would also like to add that you do have to do quite a lot of grinding in several aspects just to prepare for the "fiend", but his mechanic's work quite well in terms of an actual boss with proper merits. I could be quite vague here, but if you're curious go type his name in youtube. My words don't do him justice....the reward however is an item that is a carry-over to DDS2. So maybe a reward that's significant for sequels for a game would also be a good incentive for a player.

In terms of needing to defeat someone under some type of time-limit restriction....I'd say:

Lucifer (Devil Survivor) - It casts an AOE each turn that deals damage that stacks per turn; gradually building up to the point where you'll die if you can't defeat him before a certain turn. That's the only entity that came to mind in terms of an actual "time-limit" imposed, though it's still based on turns more-so than actual time.

I'd also like to state that both bosses are quite extreme but I believe they offer some idea (imho) as to what a "boss" should be: a being capable of anything at any time; having nearly the same liberties as the player in terms of determining when to out-right throttle you or impose a de-buff upon you while watching you squirm a bit, but doesn't fit into any "tamed" category where the player can analyze a step-by-step guide, then go engage it with confidence that all they have to do is follow a distinct pattern to lock-down his/her foe and win.

So do the damage still stack up on turns when he's immobilized? Like with sleep or stun?

He casts the AOE each turn no matter what you do to him, so you have to blitz him and take him down in terms of health relatively quickly or you end up losing. You can think of it as a battle of attrition that benefits the boss more than you; since all he would have to do is stall until it's turn each round.

Also keep in mind that Lucifer still attacks when his turn comes up; so you have to keep up with heals as well =p. (And reinforcements arrive once he's below a certain point to spice things up); although the reinforcements can actually get blocked off if you send someone to bait the aggro.

He can still do stuff when he's stunned??? I thought of the strategy to save stunning techniques for when his attacks get really high. But now I'm not sure if there's any better strategy than just spam your most powerful attacks from the start as early as possible. Please don't tell me that's actually the best strategy.

Eh, well you actually need around a level 80-99 party, not sure if anyone's done it below that, but it's mostly about getting as much hp as you can get so you can tank the aoe and dish out damage in return. There's a few vid's up on youtube if you type in Devil Survivor: Lucifer.

Well, there's also the aspect of spamming your most powerful attacks that other monsters are weak too. So basically, I don't see it as "spam your most powerful attacks", but that you have to actually decide what each character will do, when, and effectively in order to beat the boss before the "time limit" is up. Sending in backups also affects the players strategy and forces them to rethink, or pre-plan.

Reminds me of Luminous Arc 1 and 2. The scripted monster backups in 2 were an absolute nightmare to take account into my strategy for some bosses. But you also had to use elevation and position of attacks (front,side,back; least to most damage) to increase your damage output, because that game is unforgiving if you charge in there expecting a straight isometric battle.

1) Paula's "Pray" ability poped into my head about a week ago or two. My idea is that you aren't supposed to beat the boss, as doing so result in a game over or that the boss's unbeatable at all. You fight the boss in the normal untill the boss or your characters give you a signal. You then talk to the boss or pray for helps multiple time. I think this method is quite neat for bosses that aren't actually bad guys or one of your members are turned into an enemy. After all, giving dialogues during a battle's one of the good ways to make both battles and characters interesting.

2) Giving special rewards if you beat the boss within the requirement. It can be anything: beat it in time limit, beat it without having a key member in your team die, reduce it power to 10% without killing it, etc. (The idea is from Super Robot Taisen's mastery system.)

3) Making a boss unbeatable untill you fufil some requirements, like bashing it with a fire spell to shut down the boss's barrier before you can attack it. Make barrier change its element during the battle is also interesting as you need to figure what element you need to use to destroy it..

4) Bosses that are immure to and are weak to curtain attacking types. Work really well with in battle party swap system. Imagine FFX, where birds are weak toward Wakka's Blitzball throwing attack, while a heavy armored turtle are weak to Auron's armor-piecing katana, and wisp type enemies can't be touched if you keep spamming magic attacks.

In addition to the above information, I'd like to say that creating several different musical scores for boss battles will go a long way to keeping the player interested in continuing with the story. Furthermore, try not to have any irrelevant bosses. Even if they come completely out of nowhere, at least use them to add something to the information that the player knows or as part of a puzzle.

for me personally even when designing bosses the key is strategy. The boss has got to have some challenge to it but not overbearing. Make the player sit back for a second and think "how am i going to tackle this?"

In my game
The boss is quite annoying and does a lot of status effects for the player to take care of just
to keep the player busy.

Such as kefka

Well...a good balance of difficulty and fairness is a good idea. Giving the player the ability to utterly obliterate everything that stands in their way is boring. For instance, My Game I happen to have as a side project, the character can go and get an Item called the Brutal Sword on the first floor of the dungeon. It allows the player to pretty much take down most regular enemies on the first few floors rather easily, but soon the enemies start using more powerful attacks. The only really decent way to resist elemental attacks is through wearing a Elemental Aligned shield. The Brutal Sword is 2-Handed, taking away your ability to equip a shield. At most, having say, a 2-Handed weapon against say, an Ice Giant(Which can use Ice 4) Is absolute Suicide, while wearing the flaming shield, body armour helm and the flare amulet will make it's attacks a Joke. While this also takes alot from your agility, meaning the Quicker enemies can stun you, then disable your elemental strengths, then the Ice Giant will cast Ice 4 and kill you. It comes down to a fact of, do you equip the flaming armour and a weaker weapon to survive easier or leave it to chance and take a 2-Handed weapon and Hope that you don't get hit by Ice 4. Casting Resist would help, but you are extemely limited on MP, even at maximum levels, requiring skillful use of Skills. If you spam Flare to win a boss battle, you'll lose because you won't have any MP to heal yourself.

This is amazing. I really like what you've accomplished here. Would you mind maybe sharing with me how you did this?


Just wanted to say that I really enjoy your system. I like that you have a learning curve here to introduce players to new status effects quote:"gimmicks" in order to further delve them into game play.