Art Of The Boss Battle

Comment by DevP:
I'm not sure where this will go; until this evolves (or is written) into a full article, perhaps we'll just collect advices?

Comment by Russell:
Seems reasonable to just leave it here, for now.

A Good Defense is a Mighty Offense

by DevP

I was playing my WWII Superspys game a few months back, and I was giving the players their first Nemesis battle. To make things easy, I had some pretty low traits and only 1 Chi on the boss's side. To make things balance, I figured that this boss - a wily Austrialian with a steel boomerang and a whip - would be playing defense.

Wow. Wow. Starting off with a 1d/5d split to Offense & Defense, but later doing a 2d/4d and eventually a 3d/3d split, it took the players an excruciatingly long time to win out. Defense is potent stuff in the hands of a Nemesis and a sturdy GM.

Taking a Cue from Video Games

by DevP

Some friends were talking about MegaMan (in the context of a Mega Man LARP) and describing some rather annoying characteristics from bosses, namely that they worked in ornery but predictable patterns (jump, slide, duck, super-bomb, run, repeat). This is a beloved aspect of classic platform gaming.

I realized that this could be a creative tool for Wushu GMs. Although the dice-building narrations should be very dynamic, the GMs could pre-define their boss with a pattern to how they plan on splitting their dice pools. (ex: Victor von Snerk will divide offense and defense as: 4d/2d, 4d/2d, 6d/0d, 1d/5d, repeat). This should really just be a guide, not a rule (and probably disregarded for the truly awesome Nemeses), but I'll bet many players would get a kick out of trying to work around the boss's pattern.