Balancing a boss fight for an Eloquence Bard!
Balancing a boss fight for an Eloquence Bard!
Hey,
I'm running Call of the Netherdeep for a party and have some potential final boss cheesing I need help with. Members of The Inevitable should leave now!
I have been looking at the final boss fight and it tries to have the players talk the boss down for damage/debuffs and finally surrender in different phases. These are set at increasing DC's of 15/17/19 for the 3 stages.
The tricky part is I have an Eloquence Bard in the party and at level 8 his minimum floor for a persuasion roll is 22 😬
How do I play this or alter this to make it more challenging? Obvious strategy would be to attack/silence the bard after hearing their silver tongue the first time.
I could just up the DC's but that feels like I'm diminishing the player choices and restricting other players from joining in the efforts?
Ideas/thoughts welcome!
One possible solution would be to have the boss require each player to pass a persuasion check at some time?
Individual party member bonuses for Persausion are: 0/+2/+5/+7/+12 (min roll 10, min persuasion 22 😬 ).
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The Bard player still has to say the right things in the first place to make the check at all, there is not guarantee they will do that. But if they do... LET THEM this is literally their characters big thing! Why not let them do that specific thing? It feels backwards to me to have a "Well this fight has a conversation skill option but I am not going to let the character that has conversation skills participate".
IMO the rolls are not the interesting part of this, the party figuring out how they can get bad the guy to change their mind is.
I'm just concerned it'll be too easy and a bit of a let down for a campaign ender. Lots to think about though :)
As someone who don't know your players, do they normally try to talk down the enemies they fight?
You don't have to just put the mechanic in front of them, I find it really cool that the authors included a "If they say the right things there is a chance" it gives the villains a more real feel, they are not so manically set on their goal.
The bard does, the fighter just wants to kill, the rogue keeps hitting on different npcs.
It's amusing to me anyway 🤣