“Mid-boss” is debatable, but we certainly faced off with a deadly enemy this session, and we ended with a huge cliffhanger…! The session was mostly dedicated to this combat encounter, so let’s get into talking about it!

What’s SBotLL again?

SBotLL is the campaign I play in. There are two parties—one on the Surface and one in the Underdark. I’m on the good-aligned Surface squad, with my elf bard Finnith, the tiefling ranger Allora, and the dragonborn rogue Nala.

Recap

The party is currently on a mission to infiltrate the Orosta building, a government building controlled by the Coven of Eternal Light*. The goal is to find out as much information about the guard detail and layout of the building, but it’s a large complex.

Fortunately, the party covered a good deal of the building while avoiding notice. At the end of the last session, a couple of guards noticed us, but we were able to deal with them without any noise (through the silence spell).

During this session…

The party is completing their survey of the final floor of the main building. After this, they plan to head up into the three towers that are connected to the back of the Orosta building.

One hallway ends in a set of double doors, so Finnith slowly opens them to see what is inside. The room is set up like a forum, with a raised platform, a podium, and many chairs stacked against the wall for storage.

Also, there’s an elf leaning against the podium.

So, Finnith closes the door—it didn’t seem like the elf had spotted the party. They begin to sneak out of the hallway, but most of the group rolled really bad stealth checks. Broken flower vase, tripping over each other, it was a mess.

The elf opens the double doors and addresses us. She is Elisabet Amastacia, a leader in the Coven of Eternal Light. She’s not wielding any weapons or wearing any armor, though.

Elisabet Amastacia tells the party that if they leave Finnith (who they believe is a “dark sorcerer”), she’ll allow the rest of them to leave peacefully.

No one is really sure what to do—they don’t want to leave Finnith behind and don’t exactly trust that Elisabet will keep her word. But, it’s difficult to discuss options with her right there in the same room. Finnith wants to ask if he should start using dimension door to help them escape—he’s got enough spell slots left to get everyone—so he turns to Nala and begins asking in Draconic.

This, apparently, seems a bit too sketch for Elisabet. Before anyone can react, she uses some sort of mystical force to punch Finnith out of the room, through the door, and back out into the hallway—it’s initiative!

Most of the session is this combat encounter. The enemy can do a large amount of damage to one character at a time, so the party scrambles to knock her unconscious, but then Finnith is knocked down and making death saves. Allora, Nala, and Verge (our friendly NPC tiefling monk) successfully get the enemy to zero hit points…

But something strange happens, and she gets back up.

After that, Nala is knocked unconscious, and the enemy escapes with Finnith’s body. The party quickly recovers and gives chase, but Elisabet gets away somehow.

The building is surely on high alert now. The rest of the party decide to make haste back to the Moon’s Eye** base to coordinate a rescue attempt.

And that’s where we stopped!

Making a single enemy a threat

It can be difficult to make a combat encounter engaging when the enemies are outnumbered. At the same time, a single boss encounter (like in a video game) is a fun idea. Here, I think it worked out well—the enemy was very challenging to face. She was highly mobile, had a high AC, and had a few tricks up her sleeve that allowed her to dodge attacks that would otherwise hit and get up after she had been knocked to 0 HP.

At the same time, she didn’t completely destroy the party. Even when two of the PCs had been knocked unconscious, she had different goals than “kill everyone.” By running away and taking one of the characters with her, this enemy created a lot of drama. The remaining characters had to decide whether to give chase now or come back later after devising a plan. This situation on top of the existing tension of a stealth mission created some difficult decision points!

Player absence & NPCs

One of our players was missing for this session. Our DM normally runs any PCs who have missing players during the session. However, our party also has an NPC with us who participates in combat.

When we rolled initiative, we decided that the present players would run the NPC and the PC, so our DM could focus on running the enemy. This was pretty fun and easy to do—we had already seen these characters fight, so it didn’t take too long for us to figure out what to do on our turns. I think it was fun for us to be in control of all the agents on our side of the fight, while the DM handled the other side.

Cliffhanger!

Not necessary, but always good to keep people engaged and excited for next session tho particularly deadly if you don’t meet often or consistently

I don’t think cliffhangers are strictly necessary to end a session well. If you don’t meet often or consistently, you might even want to avoid them as a Dungeon Master.

But, they can be great ways to engage your players. Cliffhangers keep people on their toes as they discuss what happened after the session. As players, we’re definitely excited to pick up again next time!

*Coven of Eternal Light: An enemy organization of elves who claim to fight against the darkness. They believe that tieflings and those who associate with them are dangerous, which causes numerous issues for tieflings living in the area. Coven members use a strange power called the “eternal light.”

**Moon’s Eye: A secretive organization that opposes the Coven of Eternal Light and the Sidus Council. They’ve helped the party throughout the campaign, sometimes discretely and sometimes directly. The party is currently coordinating with them to fight the Coven.