Colossal bossfights

>>55153826
Make it more videogamey. Seriously. Health-gating that makes it behave differently, have weak points for massive damage, let your players tackle the threat creatively instead of "tick down its health bar and also dont die"

Definitely going to have health threshhold effects, like bringing out its breath weapon much later and brief windows of openings.

>>55153826
It all depends on how they want to do it.

Speaking in broad generalities fighting something that big always comes in two parts: the trick and the kick.

The trick is whatever you're pulling to keep it from instantly eating you. Ropes, distractions, nets, whatever you've got. Half the party should be heavily involved maintaining the trick, because without it there is no kick.

The kick is your killing blow, which players should fight towards rolling saves for hazards and tests for challenges moving towards their final goal.

The trick is to make it feel tenuous. Make sure to carefully describe the balance of power and the urgency of the fight. Fray ropes. Crack stones. Bend metal restrains. Strain the trick to the breaking point to urge the kick-team onward.

What system?

>>55153932
Examples:
>Distract a giant beast with firebombs while others climb its back to pierce its eyes.
>Harry the beast with arrows, spells, and traps while somebody sneaks close enough to deliver the only poison that can kill it.
>Hold the beast down with ropes while other party members dodge its restrained blows jockeying for a spear-shot to its neck.

I'm using Symbaroum for it. One problem is that because of its scale its damage will be insanely high so I need some sort of survival mechanics for them to use as well. Probably a focus on mobility and cover aside from decoys and distractions.

>>55153932
Yeah, definitely something along those lines. The main idea behind it is to invoke that sense of scale; it's big as a small village, stuff is practically growing on it and it's pissed.

>>55154051
We'll, then its up to you to adapt to whatever they come up with. Just make sure that even if it doesnt seem like a great idea you at least partition things as described.

>>55153826
In my current campaign we came up against a massive underground dragon-worm thing. Since it was much too powerful for us to fight it essentuially started off as a piece of the environment, not even an actual combat at all, just trying to dodge falling masonry while we worked out a way to weaken it. Eventually we dropped it into a massive cave filled with stagmites on which it was impaled. It recovered, but now it was at death's door and had massive rents in its armour, bringing it down to our level challenge-wise.

>>55153826
All the damage you do takes away from its max health, but each part of the dragon also has its own smaller hp pool so they can break them. So if you hit it in the head it takes that damage to its main hp, but the head also takes that same damage from its hp. Each limb that you "break" gives the party benefits, like taking away some of its attacks, giving the party advantage on all rolls for a certain number of rounds, or getting a more valuable prize after the fight.

File: cactus_dragon_design_by_chaos_draco_dad8529.png (1MB, 1151x826px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1151x826px

>>55155932
I was thinking of trying this in my campaign too.
I've already done just straight colossal fights before so I wanted to throw my party against something different. The idea has turned into having different parts taking up space and working like a cluster of huge to gargantuan creatures that have to stay together. In this certain parts can grant cover to others/I can have limbs only attack areas within their reach. I want to make it so hitting the main body is very difficult without going through a couple of the other parts first.
Monster Hunter is some obvious inspiration too (the legs have thresholds where if enough damage is done to them the dragon will flinch or topple/enough bludgeoning to the head can daze it/tail is vulnerable to slashing damage).

>>55153932
>>55153988

This is actually a pretty neat idea.

>>55153826
To such boss fights there is a book that has a good idea how to handle them.

Thre is "Nomands of the world ocean" for mongoose traveller 1e
At one point the players fight a island sized "manta ray" which acts more like terrain than a single enemy. It has special weakpoints for extra damage and all that.