I told you I’d get it done.
King of the Mountain is a game we figured out as kids, and in the duel goal of tainting childhood memories and keeping things simple why not use it as a boss mechanic. Well I could lie and say that I haven't done exactly, but I'm proud of it.
King of the Mountain fights are actually pretty simple when it comes down to it. You need a few pieces: The target, The obstacle, and the mountain. Two of these are pretty obvious. It's King of the Mountain. If you have no king and no mountain you just have “of the” and that doesn't sound fun.
Where am I going with this? Well today we're going to have a case study. A specific boss encounter I've used, and why I liked it. It goes with my previous post and as such has a horror theme… cause I like horror games… boo.
Okay, here's the set up. The party is in the silent hill style hospital I described in the previous post, and the halls have sudden gone empty of even the most twisted humanoids. The main lobby has finally been unlocked, and they have access to it for the first time. They enter the lobby from an upper floor and look down. Naked patients and staff are piling on top of one another into a writhing mass of bodies. On top is a man the group hasn’t seen before, but he’s got a grin that splits his face in half and he’s staring up at the party. My players, in their infinite wisdom, try to talk to the man.
He describes to them a desire to turn the people into a throne for his god, and that his madness allowed him to weaken the hearts of the people below him until he could control them. My players also decided to simply… keep talking to him. Now, at this point we have the mountain, which btw is growing higher at a slow but steady rate, and the King. As my players continue shooting the breeze, I unleash the obstacle. I look at the first player to my left and ask them to roll a will saving throw. They fail, and they take 1 point of temporary wisdom damage.
Okay, here’s what confused me. I figured that point of wisdom damage would be enough for the players to go, “Oh shit.” And do something. Well they did. The wizard tried to buff his mental score… in a room filled with almost tangible insanity (cause that’s a great idea). He failed another saving throw and took another two points of wisdom damage. My scientist asked if she could blow up the pile, to which the entire party responded by debating taking away her bombs. And my damage dealing fired off a shot. She rolled a 19 and I told her the shot appeared to be deflected a few inches from the boss.
A quick aside here. I don’t usually like meta-gaming and try to discourage it, but my players know I don’t require insane checks to do most things. I assumed that the character would know that the shot was deflected and that a change of tactics was required. Well, here comes round two. More wisdom damage, the wizard now pulls out a gun and fires, missing, and the gunner tries again, still failing. Two more rounds of this, and my wizard looking at a negative save value, I brought out one of the most important tools of the GM’s arsenal. The “Common Sense Check” (echo echo echo). The gunner passed, and realized, “Oh wait, psychic shield that deflects projectiles. We don’t have a psychic friend that does things exactly like that oh no. .” So finally the party rushes the pile.
As the party reaches the pile, which is quite high now, the Wizard takes another point of wisdom damage. He’s low now, way below human standards, so I ask him to roll another will save, which he in turn falls. Smiling gleefully, I take his character sheet and move his token closer to the pile as he marches forward in a trance state. Oh yes, his character is jumping into the pile. Every round he gets to make another difficult will save to stop himself from joining the writhing mass, or in his case two rounds latter perform a strength check to keep from being crushed. Wizards and strength checks are hilarious. The Scientist attempts to keep the Wizard from jumping in, while the Gunning attempts to climb the pile, as she has the highest wisdom score.
Now, every once in awhile the random gods will reach down and save a player’s ass. For our scientist and wizard, it was not that day. With the scientist’s hand latched onto the wizard, she failed another will saved and decides to dive head first into the pile, injuring the wizard in the process. However, it was a glorious day for our gunner. Who rolled a natural 20 the second her hand touched the pile, and she moved up the pile like they were helping her. At this point 2/3rds of the party were being crushed, and one had two more rounds before being subject to control attempts. She proceeded to roll an 18 to climb the rest of the way up the pile, and in a glorious display crit for a close range attack. I broke out the drama, and she put the gun under the boss’ chin as she fired. The wide grin finally exploded off his face and the force of the shot sent him off the side of the pile. The boss required only one point of damage to kill, and the group had succeeded with one round of breathing room. It was the kind of finish you always want: tense and completely against the laws of probability. Which is mainly why I’m writing about it.
So, that’s more or less how to work out a King of the Mountain fight. One King, One Mountain, and one really horrible obstacle.
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