Turn based bosses.

Hey guys another question I was thinking of last night while designing my game.

How on earth do you create a boss battle in a turn based strategy game? (like XCOM for context)

It seems one of those questions that when I search around not many people have a good answer for, most games just have bosses with massive amounts of health that just take a long time to kill, not exactly challenging just time consuming. Others (like XCOM) don't really have a boss per say just a really hard, long gauntlet like level you have to go through at the very end. So the challenge becomes that need to keep moving and stay alive rather than beat one big foe.

Are these the only options or am I totally missing something here? How could you make a boss battle in a turn based game challenging without making it just a "bullet sponge" I'd like to get away from the idea of it being just a big guy who does a lot of damage.

 

Final Fantasy Tactics A/A2 had bosses that were highly specialized in an area of combat (magic, physical, ranged, etc) but also had limited counters for the usual class weak areas making them a pain to deal with if you aren't familiar with the game mechanics. As an example using the game universe, a mage that has all the spells learned for Black Magic, a few from White/Sage/Alchemist or another supporting magic, a magic support passive like Turbo MP, and a reactive like Magic Counter/MP Shield or MP Gain (can't remember the exact ability name but it gives that character the same amount of MP spent on all magic abilities that hit). Granted certain combos of abilities in that game made it broken as hell but it was fun building up to that point and being the all powerful "1-2 hit kill everything not a boss" team.

Edit
A2s version of boss levels were having half the team cast AoE Haste and the other half AoE attack/defense up so half my team could be dead before I get to move more than one or two characters...

 

That's my impression of nearly all "boss" fights, turn-based or otherwise.

But generally speaking, whether the game is turn-based or not is almost irrelevant. (To a certain extent you could look at it this way: all games are turn-based, it's just some of them start a new turn every frame...) You have to review the game mechanics available to you, and you magnify certain features to make the "boss" significantly more challenging, or add new features (player capabilities, boss capabilities, or both) specific to the fight that still make sense within the larger context of the game.

Regarding the end-game battles that don't have one big boss, those might be easier to keep interesting because it's probably easier to design multiple tactical options for the player to explore, learn and exploit -- different paths, different points that give some advantage, controlling access to valuable drops, or other such mechanics. A boss battle could leverage those things too (e.g. focus more on the design of the room or area or level, whatever applies) but it's probably not as simple since the player ultimately has to focus on "the boss".

 

A boss fight should offer a challenge that forces players to use the skills they have gained throughout your game.

So what's your games challenge? Is placement and position important? Are there elemental effects?

Knowing what challenge you want the player to overcome is a good place to start when making a boss. Maybe you can only do effective damage when you've got your party in the right position. Maybe the boss can change what types of attacks he's weak against during the fight.

Find out what you want to test the player on, then design your boss to fulfill that need

 

If a boss isn't asking the question "does the player understand how to use X mechanic/system/meta?", it's probably a crappy boss. There still has to be a combat system that has some complexity, otherwise the only mastery the player can demonstrate is that they can raise their DPS (see just about every JRPG).

 

Bosses themselves are only part of the boss fight. You also have the circumstances under which the fight happens (story event starts the whole party paralyzed!) and you have the level design of the arena where the fight takes place. (Fighting in a cave where large/noisy attacks cause rocks to fall on a random party member.)

You are right in converting boss HP to time to kill- The value in that is in what you do with that extra time. (The arena slowly fills with poison gas, making the fight harder as time goes on.)

Leverage whatever kind of system density you have to make a more interesting encounter with a boss. (if all poison gas is explosive, any fire-based attack just got a lot more interesting to use.)

 

Pretty easy, just have n turns before devastating ability which you have to LOS, or n turns of AOE damage you have to outrange, or a passive damage over time, there's so many turnbased mechanics you can do they are endless. TBH surprised you have to ask.

Take any action game boss, and change from realtime to turn based time. They're the same, except time is consumed differently. Mechanically, they don't need to change much.

For example perhaps the boss spawns additional creatures when it's health is reduced by 25% each time, or after 10 turns each time. Replace additional creature with ability x if you wish.

Try playing world of warcraft. That game is very mechanics based. Bosses are bullet sponges at easy difficulty but become rather complicated at higher difficulties. The reason it's relevant is because that game is largely driven by mechanics rather than damage at the higher difficulties. You can't just pump damage into them.

Here's a guide for one such boss: http://www.wowhead.com/odyn-trial-of-valor-raid-strategy-guide to give you an idea of mechanics. This particular boss is easily translated into a turnbased format. It probably was turnbased at the design phase

 

There were certainly enemies in XCOM: Enemy Unknown that I considered bosses, at least the first time I encountered them, like the Cyberdisc. Sure, they have more health, but with proper tactics it only takes a turn or two to kill them. The added health they have really just makes it so that they can be more aggressive, rather than make them take a really long time to kill.

I've actually found that these "bullet sponge" bosses are a much bigger issue in action games rather than in turn based games. I definitely had that problem with Borderlands and Destiny. I haven't really had this problem in the turn based games that I play (Fire Emblem, Age of Wonders).

 

Speaking of WOW:
http://xelnath.com/learning-from-my-past/
@Xelnath's blog has some great articles

 

Thanks for thinking of me, @Martin_H.

Jessie:

Feel free to reach out to me on twitter (@Xelnath) if you need something specific. In general, turn based battles are about Unavoidable damage (Unit will run up and apply effect X to you) and Avoidable mechanics.

The simplest one is the Trebuchet that marks the ground with a marker for one turn, then launches a missile onto that square the next. A simple warning with a simple action: MOVE.

The next layer is the Demon that curses a target, causing it to take some harm after a set number of rounds. (Tonberry) These effects have to be dispelled by the target. ITEM or SPELL.

The final common layer is the unit that begins channelling a powerful damage effect and needs to be INTERRUPT or SLAIN to prevent the mechanic from going off. These situations are all about using a specific tool to counter the situation or enduring the pain and focusing down a dangerous target. FOCUS.

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Beyond this, everything else is a variation of that. AoEs that deal less damage in some square than in others are just a Non-binary version of the first mechanic. Unavoidable damage is just meant to attrition your team and require healing or items to overcome it.

I could go on for hours, but if you use this simple framework to start, you'll find yourself in a good place.

TL;DR - If your player can't do something about it, its Unavoidable and requires a healer or helper unit. If it's avoidable, its about which tool you use to stop it: MOVE, SELF-CURE, OFFENSIVE-INTERRUPT.

Hope this helps

 

That sounds like a generic turn-based battle formula (not in a bad way) -- what changes to make it a boss fight? Just an over-the-top raid-style mix or sequence of requirements that everybody has to plan for in advance?

 

@MV10 - nail your basics first. The delusion of the novice is that complexity makes for a better game experience.

A boss can be as simple as a DPS check (deal X damage in Y time or die), as mechanically complex as requiring a specific memorized dance to survive, or simply a unique and over the top visual experience.

Usually some hybrid of these three.

 

Find the video for the dark souls board game & watch how they do the turn based boss fights. Basically the boss has a deck of cards that dictate what it does & the boss plays through those & players can learn the order of moves for that boss that time. If the health reaches a certain point new cards are added to the boss deck & it is reshuffled, so now the player has new moves to contend with plus everything is in a new order.

You could do something similar by having a collection of set actions that the boss plays out. You could even replicate having a deck by limiting how many of each action is in the 'deck' & keeping track of wha ones af used so that the weighting on the chance of the others being selected next can be adjusted each turn.

 

Very much so thank you! I have already started planning out a few bosses based around the concepts you have talked about here, it seems obvious now you have written it out I guess I was just having the worlds biggest mind blank at the time.

 

Don't sweat it. The difference between a beginner and a pro is just that a pro has made more mistakes