Fighting a colossus -- from 'cool' to 'holy f***ing s*** that was AWESOME!" - how to?

[RangerWickett]

I just finished up my latest campaign, and the climax involved fighting an 80-foot tall skeletal colossus that was acting as a fantasy-style mecha suit for a demon god. Details here.

I really just winged how to run that encounter -- in particular, how a party fights a colossal creature, to make it more interesting than just standing at its feet and whacking away. So I'm curious, how would you run it? What resources, published or online, would you use to resolve such a fight? What should a colossus do? What rules should be used for it?

I remember recently playing against a huge dragon in Red Hand of Doom, and once it landed we all swarmed it . . . and just stood still for 5 rounds wailing on each other, since there was no incentive to move. That's boring. I want to come up with ideas or rules to make fights against massive foes more interesting?

I know Dragon magazine a few years ago had an article for Shadow of the Colossus (a video game that addresses this very issue), but I checked all of the issues I have, and I don't have that one, apparently. Anyone care to fill me in?

Likewise, God of War II has a rather awesome battle against the animated Colossus of Rhodes, which involves using lots of terrain to your advantage. So yeah, what can we do to make such scenes better in D&D?

 

[Aeric]

Just off the top of my head....

Make the colossus reeeeeaaaalllllyyyy slow--while it can move every round, it's movement rate isn't all that great (20'-30') and it only gets a standard (attack) every 2-4 rounds. But those attacks are almost guaranteed to hit and do a ridiculous amount of damage (50-75% of the toughest character's HP total). This will encourage characters to move around on the battlefield, zip in and out of the colossus' range, take cover, etc. Why should scouts be the only ones shooting-n-scooting?

Divide the colossus' hit points up by body part. When the feet reach 50% HP, the giant's movement is halved as well. At zero HP, he stops walking, maybe even goes down on one (or both) knees, giving the PCs a better chance to hit parts higher up. This also gives PCs an excuse to use the terrain to their advantage, by climbing trees or ruined towers, luring the colossus into a valley or river, etc., so they can get to the colossus' vital organs.

 

[Bagpuss]

It doesn't really matter what the movement rate of the Colossus is, the incentive not to move is the fact it will have reach so if you do move you get an AoO for your troubles. Still one AoO is usually better than a full attack. Of course the problem there is if it has 15ft reach you need to be moving at least 25ft to avoid it getting a full attack with a 5ft step (wonders why giants can take the same 5ft step as pixies). All that means is you need to be facing it in a wide open field. Wide open fields make for boring terrain.

Perhaps a way to make the players move around more would be to have them need to use the terrain against the Colossus, force it to follow them into areas where is squezzes or where they can trigger rock falls, or traps (like logs on that AT-ST in RotJ), lead it round a corner to where a row of cataculpts are lined up ready to fire, etc. Surely taking your inspriation from the Ewoks verses AT-ST's should appeal to you?

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I think you could define the body of the colossus as a series of action zones, as found in Mastering Iron Heroes, which would require stunts (from Iron Heroes, or fully D&D-compatible in the Book of Iron Might) to navigate and/or attack.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I think this hits on an issue with 3.5 mechanics itself. Last month I ran a game were the only movement in the short-lived combat was 5' steps.... and not many of them.

My next session should include a much more movement oriented combat scene, but it depends kinda on what the group does.

Basically it boils down to the DM ensuring that the BBG has reason and opportunity to move.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Also that iterative attacks suck. If D&D was balanced around single attack rolls each round you wouldn't see this kind of stuff happen much.

 

[Nebulous]

I think this hits on an issue with 3.5 mechanics itself. Last month I ran a game were the only movement in the short-lived combat was 5' steps.... and not many of them.

My next session should include a much more movement oriented combat scene, but it depends kinda on what the group does.

Basically it boils down to the DM ensuring that the BBG has reason and opportunity to move.

Here is a new feat (plus some designer commentary) from the Star Wars Saga edition, which i think will possibly work its way into 4th edition:

Running Attack

You can move as you attack.

Prerequisite: Dexterity 13.

Benefit: When making an attack with a melee or ranged weapon, you can move both before and after the attack, provided that your total distance moved is not greater than your speed.

Multiple feats (Shot on the Run and Spring Attack) have been condensed into a single feat that has fewer prerequisites. This change encourages a style of combat often seen in the Star Wars films, in which mobile heroes dash in, attack, and keep moving.

Likewise, a character can now dash between two large objects that can be used for cover, fire her weapon between them, and retain her cover bonus to Reflex Defense. This should encourage heroes to be more mobile and take greater advantage of cover than ever before.

Anyway, i think that this would make combat more dynamic, and would assist your action scene with the colossus, and combat with anyone actually. I agree, fighting can get real static real fast, just bashing at each other like a video game. It takes a lot of GM creativity to make that missed sword swing sound exciting.

 

[Nebulous]

Also that iterative attacks suck. If D&D was balanced around single attack rolls each round you wouldn't see this kind of stuff happen much.

That's something else they added to Star Wars Saga. I think you have to have feats now to gain multiple attacks. Again, i'm very curious as to how these rules will work out, and which ones they will playtest for the new edition of D&D, whenever it comes out.

 

[Tonguez]

Personally I'd consider a collosal creature to be terrain and then dot it with 'target locations' that need to be damaged in order to 'kill it'. This will force the PCs to move and do cool stuff so that they can reach the different locations whilst avoiding the 'hazards' on the way.

 

[Merkuri]

It doesn't really matter what the movement rate of the Colossus is, the incentive not to move is the fact it will have reach so if you do move you get an AoO for your troubles.

If you want to get a Shadow of the Colossus feel, don't have the colossus take any AoOs. Rule that he's too slow, or that the PCs are too little from his perspective to take an AoO, or have him simply choose not to take any AoOs (which is always an option, though few people won't take an AoO presented to them).

Treat it more like a gigantic encounter trap than a creature. There are safe zones (if you can find them) where the colossus can't reach, but if a PC ends up outside of a safe zone when the round ends he might be the target of a very powerful hit. These hits are more like area effects than attacks. AC does no good, but a good reflex save can get you out of the way, and it affects all PCs in a given area. Have the colossus be immortal (no hit points) unless he is struck in a certain hard-to-reach area.

For a truly memorable encounter for all PCs, find something for each PC to do in order to get the colossus into a position where his vulnerable spot is reachable. Perhaps the rogue PC (who probably has the best climbing skills) is the one who has to climb to the top of the thing's head and stab it, but in order to get there the melee PC has to keep stabbing it in the foot hard enough to get it to lean down in pain, then the mage PC has to cast certain spells to keep it from shaking the rogue off.

What each PC has to do must either be easy to figure out or they must have some way of finding out about it beforehand. Part of the fun of the video game was figuring out exactly what to do, but I can imagine this would be much harder to do in a pen-and-paper scenario, because the DM would have to describe the behaviors and looks of the colossus perfectly in order to get all of the "hints" across without actually giving anything away.