How do you design your bosses?

[SOC]

What are the steps and thought processes you go through when designing these fights? Do you like to use many conditions and have a strict pattern for the player to figure out? Do you like trial and error or do you prefer to allow the player to discover during the first encounter of the boss? How do you make them challenging but fair? What strategies do you come up with? Do you like turn order conditions? How do you do your eventing? How do you develop interesting and memorable mechanics unique to each boss?

 

[Kes]

@SOC asking about which plugins people use is moving into implementation, which is not what Game Mechanics Design is about, and also prevents the discussion being engine neutral. Please edit your post to remove that sentence.
Thanks.

 

[SOC]

@SOC asking about which plugins people use is moving into implementation, which is not what Game Mechanics Design is about, and also prevents the discussion being engine neutral. Please edit your post to remove that sentence.
Thanks.

I mean it's quite in important sentence to the topic because it changes the complete dynamic of the discussion and opens for a lot more possibilities to learn from. I also don't see the Game Mechanics Design description saying "engine neutral" anywhere at all... maybe you should include it in there?

 

[Mystic_Enigma]

When I design a Boss, I first ask myself "What can I do to set them apart from the rest of the blokes i've been taking on?" With that in mind, I try to make it so that it's not just another regular battle with a bigger enemy with more HP. Sometimes i'll give them an ability that no one else has. Sometimes i'll give them a unique look. And sometimes i'll fix the battle music to something different to what you've been listening to, which will make someone say" Something tells me this isn't a normal enemy..."

The ways you can make a boss are extensive: You can have reinforcements appear after a few turns, have said enemies protect and aid the boss or exclusively harass your party. Or even make them use a power that persuades the player to re-think their plan of attack!

Even before the encounter, i'll try to subtly hint to what would be effective or what you should look out for.

 

[RetroExcellent]

I always try to give my boss a pattern, something that can eventually be discovered and exploited, but seems really dangerous for the first bit of the battle. For example the first boss in my new encounter is the first flying enemy in the game. She can fly above the battlefield and shoots magic bolts for a standard attack. They are blocked by barrels and walls, and do not track. She also has a specific move pattern, but it is long and not easily noticed. In addition she has a skill that only the player had up to this point, a super attack that can trigger after taking a certain amount of damage.

 

[Redeye]

I like to give each of my bosses some sort of gimmick that differentiates them from the rest, whether it be a very specific attack pattern, a power boost at 50% HP, or some wacky combination of features and skills that will likely throw a curveball at whatever the player has learned thus far.

When it comes to balancing my bosses, I like my games difficult. I give the player some leeway in the beginning, but towards the end I make sure to beef up the boss until they completely annihilate me, then I do some fine tuning. Usually, my boss battles are balanced around fighting all enemies in the dungeon at least once, although you can get away with skipping a fight or two since I tend to make my games revolve around the skills rather than the stats.

I haven't done this myself yet, but it's also a good idea to pitch the boss to a friend and make them fight it, then tune the boss according to their performance. It's always good to get a second opinion, even before you hire beta testers.

 

[Kes]

@SOC Game Mechanics Design is for looking at aspects of game play at a more conceptual level. Implementation questions always go in the Support forum for the engine you are using. Which plugins to use is an aspect of implementation. Therefore that particular question does not belong here. Because it is not about implementation, the discussion can be engine neutral so that everyone can benefit from the points raised. It doesn't have to be a separate stated rule, but is implicit in the understanding of this as a place to look at the conceptual level.

 

[Aoi Ninami]

This is a good question for me to be thinking about right now, as I've just finished designing my first dungeon and boss.

At the moment, I think a boss should be the "exam" at the end of the dungeon, so it should build on the techniques and strategies you've used in the regular encounters there, but it should also contribute something distinctly new, so that it doesn't feel like just a beefed-up regular encounter.

At the start of my game, Erika has only two magic abilities: fire-elemental direct damage and an ATK buff. The ATK buff was introduced in a battle with the weakest enemy, Slime Cube, which dies in two hits normally but one with the buff, so with at least two Slime Cubes, using the buff is more efficient. But in the dungeon since then, this ability isn't very useful, so the player might have been neglecting it. So I decided to go to the other extreme: the boss, Rock Golem, has 68 Defence (the strongest regular enemy so far has 22) and 100 HP. Your normal attack will do about 4 damage and the battle will last for ever. So I want the player to work out, without being explicitly told, that this is another situation where buffing ATK is very useful. You can even apply it twice, and then you can do about 16-19 damage per hit and the battle isn't too much trouble at all.

I hope that this is simple enough to figure out, but to find out whether it is or not, I'll have to get feedback from testers, as Redeye said.

 

[Milennin]

Once I've decided what I want to use as the boss sprite, I look at the graphic, see what it looks like. Then come up with a moveset that seems fitting for it. Like a big ogre would use fairly simple, but powerful attacks, while a mage boss would use more different kinds of skills. The boss's background story, certain personality traits, or even the environment in which the fight takes place, you can incorporate those aspects into the skillset as well.

I'll also usually have different phases, or certain HP thresholds when special skill patterns trigger to put more pressure on the party.

 

[Fernyfer775]

Boss design is by FAR my favorite aspect of creating a game. I try to create bosses that are fun, yet challenging, with each being different from the last.

I take a lot of inspiration from MMO games, such as world of warcraft and Final Fantasy 11/14. Most of my bosses have telegraphed attack patterns so that the player can eventually figure out what's going on. Typically, nothing a boss can do will wipe your whole team without warning. Even the big "party wipe" abilities have a visual effect to let you know you should get ready to take a ton of damage.

I have things from bosses enraging at low hp, bosses summoning adds during the fight, bosses that deal increasingly more damage the longer you take to kill them, bosses that will stack debuffs that will eventually kill your party if you don't handle them correctly, and so much more.

My latest game, Eternal Twilight, got a lot of positive feedback because of the unique bosses that I was able to come up with.

A local steamer actually did a full playthrough with boss strategy guides on my game if you want to check out some of the cool stuff I did.

Eternal Twilight: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcxA0ybgS92YpH-ufUboRtgzq2WgltEzv

 

[TheoAllen]

When designing boss, now I like to think
> What is something that the player needs to watch out?
> What will be the puzzle that the player needs to "solve"?
> How long it will be?

For the first one, it usually revolves around special moves or dangerous attack. One of my boss design is to summon minions using HP trigger. If you damaged the boss and passed through two triggers, then it may summon more minions. Something to watch out should not something impossible to handle, but more like "if I do this, it could be better". Another gimmick of one of my boss design is to unleash a special attack in their turn when a certain threshold of the damage reached a certain value. For example, if you damage them more than 200 per turn, the time they get their turn, they will unleash AoE attack.

The second one is more or less like the first one, but instead, it will be focusing on figuring the boss weakness. It can be elemental weakness or during the time when the boss is more vulnerable. However, it usually won't be something mandatory. Players can just use the strongest attack ever to breeze through, however, figuring the boss weakness may result in faster battle.

About how long, that will be based on my judgment. If I feel like the battle is getting stagnant and I began to think "Well, just die already". Then I will be reducing the time to kill the boss. But if I think something like "Well that was fast, I haven't got a chance to try this and that" then I will try to prolong the battle.

Now to answer your question.

Do you like to use many conditions and have a strict pattern for the player to figure out?

I like conditions and strict pattern. But not all conditions are required for the player to figure in order to win the battle.

Do you like trial and error or do you prefer to allow the player to discover during the first encounter of the boss?

On the early-mid game bosses, I prefer the boss to be beatable even if the player didn't figure out the whole pattern of it. But as for the more late game, I prefer them to use trial and error. Some of my game LPs (which the game itself wasn't the best example of my boss design) failed to beat the boss. But on their second try, they figured out what to do and so they did better and beat the boss.

How do you make them challenging but fair?

I'm using a warning system. If my player gets the hint like this will be using a special move because it behaves strangely, they need to watch out. If the actions are not indicated by "the warning", then I will make them non-lethal attack, except maybe when you're at low hp already.

What strategies do you come up?

Not sure how to answer this though.

Do you like turn order conditions?

I like turn order condition. It will be determining "rate of fire". A more dangerous action will be based on turn condition instead of a chance to proc per turn. And maybe even chance to proc per x turns.

How do you do your eventing?

I don't, I use scripting

How do you develop interesting and memorable mechanics unique to each boss?

For "interesting" part, I already mentioned above. As for memorable, I'm unable to claim anything yet because I think my game bosses are still not quite memorable yet. However, I'm trying to make each boss has a different pattern to defeat. Maybe, you need to do this first for a certain boss. Maybe you need another thing to do for another boss.

 

[M.I.A.]

Honestly, I build my bosses pretty organically.

The first thought is "Where does this boss fit in story wise?"
Then: "What has the player already encountered in terms of enemies and challenges?"
Then: "What PRIMARY skill set will the player need to succeed?"
- Such as: Do they have to bust defense before they do damage?
- Is this an endurance fight? Do they have to survive a certain amount of turns and plan their attack accordingly?
- What kind of strategy do I want the player to figure out?
- Does this boss have minions they summon?

So on and so forth. Once I've settled on HOW the boss should be taken on, THAT is when I assign skills, attacks, and defenses, etc.

I you place your boss as a part of the over all story and keep the player in mind, you can't go too wrong.
Hope you find this helpful!
-MIA

 

[D.L. Yomegami]

How I'd go about it is design the final boss first, before any of the other bosses. Decide what its skills, strategies, gimmick, etc. are. Then, after an initial round of testing, I'd basically "split" the final boss's concept and give each part to all the other bosses in the game (though likely the final boss would have something only it has).

Usually, all of this would happen after I've decided on the basic story, what the final boss is even going to be, and how the other bosses in the game relate to it if there's any relation at all. That way I'd know just how many bosses the game would have, where'd they'd likely be, and so on.

Then, once all the bosses are designed, I repeat the process of "splitting" their concept (possibly sans their gimmick) to the normal enemies. The idea being that by designing down like this, the player will learn everything they need to know about the normal bosses from the normal enemies, and everything they need to know about the final boss from the normal bosses. Thus, in theory, the bosses will feel like natural culminations of everything the player's learned and feel that much greater as a result.

Past that point...well, I'd like to give each boss a "gimmick," something that'd make the fight a little more interesting than the standard mooks. An example I find particularly inspiring are the new Eight Dragons from the GBA version of Final Fantasy VI. Each Dragon has a gimmick that sets it apart from the other seven. For example, the Ice Dragon splits itself into four, the Red Dragon is invincible and the player has to endure its attacks until it dies from exhaustion, and the Yellow Dragon absorbs magic and has to be dealt with physically.

All that being said, I was actually considering starting my own thread on this very topic. There's quite a few good videos about boss design on Youtube; I particularly like this one. However, a lot of them seem to focus on bosses from action games (that particular video talks about Furi a lot, for example); I imagine applying this to a turn-based boss would take some adjustment. So I'll likely be watching this thread closely to see how other people go about it; I've already gotten a good idea from what's been posted so far.

 

[BreakerZero]

How I'd go about it is design the final boss first, before any of the other bosses. Decide what its skills, strategies, gimmick, etc. are. Then, after an initial round of testing, I'd basically "split" the final boss's concept and give each part to all the other bosses in the game (though likely the final boss would have something only it has).

Usually, all of this would happen after I've decided on the basic story, what the final boss is even going to be, and how the other bosses in the game relate to it if there's any relation at all. That way I'd know just how many bosses the game would have, where'd they'd likely be, and so on.

Then, once all the bosses are designed, I repeat the process of "splitting" their concept (possibly sans their gimmick) to the normal enemies. The idea being that by designing down like this, the player will learn everything they need to know about the normal bosses from the normal enemies, and everything they need to know about the final boss from the normal bosses. Thus, in theory, the bosses will feel like natural culminations of everything the player's learned and feel that much greater as a result.

Past that point...well, I'd like to give each boss a "gimmick," something that'd make the fight a little more interesting than the standard mooks. An example I find particularly inspiring are the new Eight Dragons from the GBA version of Final Fantasy VI. Each Dragon has a gimmick that sets it apart from the other seven. For example, the Ice Dragon splits itself into four, the Red Dragon is invincible and the player has to endure its attacks until it dies from exhaustion, and the Yellow Dragon absorbs magic and has to be dealt with physically.

All that being said, I was actually considering starting my own thread on this very topic. There's quite a few good videos about boss design on Youtube; I particularly like this one. However, a lot of them seem to focus on bosses from action games (that particular video talks about Furi a lot, for example); I imagine applying this to a turn-based boss would take some adjustment. So I'll likely be watching this thread closely to see how other people go about it; I've already gotten a good idea from what's been posted so far.

These are some good points I would raise myself. Of course there are others, like a boss-specific or quest-specific surprise (maybe something that doesn't show up until an extended story unlocks after the main quest) or perhaps a trick off bosses past, if not necessarily by decision so much as it is by tradition. For instance, you may decide on a reference for which you're interested in doing your own implementation - with one of the first bosses in the extended story of my project having something called "shoopwave". (For the unaware, that means an immediate KO upon whomever is unfortunate to be stuck in its path.) Or you could go whole hog and pop a more traditional trap in a late-game boss - my all-time favourite being the classic chill wave that totally zaps your buffs. And another idea that's useful even during the early objectives can involve even the most typical of circumstance, like when you inevitably come face-to-claw against the biggest scorpion you've ever seen. That kind of situation would then make you decide if it's even worth dealing with the inevitable venom infusion, or simply focusing your mana conversions on protecting your overall health (basically a question of nerf states vs. life management, HP drainage vs. avoiding a knockout etc.).

 

[Soryuju]

While not a universal factor in good boss design, I think that having a boss summon adds during a fight is potentially one of the easier ways to create dynamic and engaging boss battles. Including adds in a fight can open up quite a bit of creative design space and introduce natural variations in the pacing and rhythm of boss battles.

Just to make sure I’m on the same page as everyone, I don’t just mean a couple of random enemies which appear alongside the boss and which the player can quickly dispatch on the first turn. I favor two variations:

1) A single semi-powerful add which appears alongside the boss. It might attack the player, support the boss with buffs/heals, set up a skill combo, etc., but the time before and after the player kills it are distinct phases in the boss fight. Maybe the boss fight is particularly difficult while it’s alive, and killing it creates a natural break in the tension of the encounter. As a reward for enduring, the player can then recover and build momentum toward a decisive victory. Or maybe in a different scenario, the minion isn’t quite so difficult, but the boss’s behavior changes when it dies. The player now has to adapt on the fly, and tension can continue to rise instead. If the player happens to lose, next time they may even need to consider whether leaving the add alive is actually more suitable for their strategy.

2) The boss summons one or more fairly weak adds at regular intervals throughout the battle. Whether it’s on certain turn counts, at specific HP thresholds, or other conditions, these enemies will frequently appear to disrupt the player’s patterns and force them to play aggressively. The player needs to decide how best to split their attention between the main enemy and the smaller nuisances, and if they fail to react quickly and decisively, the boss may get a chance to overwhelm them. The disposable nature of these adds also introduces some interesting possibilities - maybe if the player hasn’t killed each one after X turns, they self-destruct and hurt the party, or they sacrifice themselves to buff the boss. However, it’s important to space the respawns out properly so the player doesn’t feel like killing them is futile. The choice to invest in clearing the adds should be rewarded somehow, since the player is likely sacrificing damage against the boss in order to do so.

You could also combine the types above to make a moderately powerful add who revives periodically throughout the fight, forcing the player to switch gears quickly if they want to stay on top.

What are some of the specific advantages of having the above types of adds in a boss fight?

- As mentioned above, adds can create variations in the rhythm of a fight and the player’s tactics. They help to prevent scenarios where the player just spams the same skills every round to wear down the HP-sponge boss in front of them. With adds in play, they need to make decisions about whether or not to kill the adds based on the threat they pose, how to distribute their attacks, how quickly they can afford to clear the adds without overextending, etc. The presence or absence of adds can turn familiar situations into unfamiliar ones and help keep players engaged throughout the entirety of a fight.

- They can introduce “fair” forms of danger to the player. Everyone complains about bosses which rely on AoE nukes to wipe the party, but if you design a boss with adds, you can effectively break that nuke into a few pieces, and you can give the player a chance to remove some or all of those pieces before they come together. Maybe the adds have painful attacks of their own or can buff the boss before its big swing. Maybe they use status ailments/debuffs to wear you down before the boss’s big hit. Maybe they try to Poison you, and the boss’s nuke specifically targets characters who are Poisoned. Maybe they can temporarily block your healing. Maybe they strip your buffs or make you weak to a certain element. There are endless possibilities, and players will have the option to either counter the danger directly or to just kill the adds before they can cause too much trouble.

-Similarly, they can help to lengthen a boss fight without just making the main boss an HP sponge. Giving the player a chance to score kills earlier in the fight will reduce potential fatigue in long battles. Assuming the adds don’t respawn too often, killing them will give the player a brief moment of relief and the sense that they are making progress.

- They keep more of the party’s skills relevant in the majority of boss battles. The classical JRPG boss is a solo juggernaut which is immune to status ailments and other effects which aren’t balanced for use on bosses. Depending on your skill design, this can render many abilities like AoE attacks, Poison skills, instant KO skills, etc. completely useless in the game’s most difficult and climactic fights. This can have notable ramifications for character/class balance. If a boss summons adds which are vulnerable to some or all of these abilities, though, they’re suddenly relevant and useful again. Maybe putting an add to sleep takes fewer resources than killing them outright, or maybe you can use that pricey AoE burst to help clear a crowd of adds before they have a chance to mess with you. Maybe the adds summoned are weak to a different element than the boss, so you’re not just spamming Fireball for the entire fight.

I could probably go on, but I think I’ve made my point. Not every boss or even every game needs to feature adds, but they’re a straightforward way to introduce lots of potential depth and variety into your boss fights. Just make sure that if your boss needs an action to manually summon its adds, it’s not possible to instantly wipe the adds and lock the boss in a permanent summoning loop until it dies. That would be kind of silly.

 

[Seirein]

Basically, I think about what kind of bosses I enjoy in other games and what kind of bosses are terrible in other games, then design what I think would be a good, fair fight.

 

[BreakerZero]

I mean it's quite in important sentence to the topic because it changes the complete dynamic of the discussion and opens for a lot more possibilities to learn from. I also don't see the Game Mechanics Design description saying "engine neutral" anywhere at all... maybe you should include it in there?

Didn't get a chance to read all the way to the top, but this is actually an unneeded observation if someone would read up. I've had things start here that evolved into actual implementation which in turn meant that it had begun to move beyond the discussion phase and by extension it didn't necessarily fit the purpose of this section by the time I got there.

Another thing I noticed: balanced expectations. If you set too easy, you make an obvious mockery of challenge. You set high, you may as well give up. And if the flow of your game is significantly adjusted to where the boss stats also need to change.... well, I'm sure you get the idea.

EDIT: Forgot to add last time but in relation to the shift in presentation flow is that significant and you wish to adjust a boss accordingly then by all means go for it. I have a scenario in my project where everyone in the crew, party etc. to that point was averaging a rank/level of nine and a pair of unanticipated spawns (the guard being a scorpion with Lord Daphnes VII being the actual boss in disguise (and yes, the real Daphnes VII is brigged as a result) were significantly unbalanced. 'Course the scorpion is expendable, but the actual 'trice (which is the class of the boss enemy) was a bit too easy on the most recent playtest I did for that particular situation.

On a side note, if journal entries are your thing (for achievement systems, trophies etc.) then considering the best tease for upcoming encounters without giving away too much can be difficult at times, and in some cases borderline edge-busting. Going back to my 'trice class for this boss, the only thing with enough punch that I could actually see myself doing literally reads "insert c**k joke" (but your experience may vary of course, particularly if you can top that one without going over the edge).

 

[woootbm]

I'll try to keep this "engine neutral".

You are definitely right to ask about plugins. The default tools in RMMV (haven't played around with the previous engines enough to speak to those) are absolutely not enough to make a sophisticated boss fight. They rely solely on the most basic aspects of random chance, and leave zero room for controlling things in a specific way. Both patterns and actual AI (such as being able to respond to the player's actions) are not possible.

So my suggestion is to do some research and figure out what forums are correct for asking about options, since apparently you can't do that here even though it's relevant to the topic.

 

[Wavelength]

I usually come at it from a direction that I wouldn't generally recommend to other designers (unless they already have a lot of experience building up game mechanics), because it's easy to miss the forest for the trees with this approach. Here's how I do it, though:

1) Large Concept
I usually have a place or situation in mind, so I think about what would be a cool and thematically fun boss to face in that kind of place or situation.

2) Signature Moves
From there, I think of what kind of moves would be cool to see such an enemy do. A huge slime might split itself into five smaller slimes, and it might even start consuming some of those slimes to regain HP. A robot might take a turn to charge up powerful laser beams. A mimic or illusionist might create clones, move around the screen, and challenge you to find the real one (with hints given via animations). One or two additional bread-and-butter damage moves can be nice to round out the boss' arsenal. I'll use whatever enemy behavior tools are at my disposal to make them behave reasonably - for example setting a switch when the robot charges up its laser, and making that switch a requirement for a high priority slot in the Enemy Behavior list in RPG Maker.

3) Additional Viable Strategies
Once I have a few moves in place, I'll playtest the boss myself with a group of characters that I feel would be appropriately leveled for the boss, and often what I'll find I have at this point is an interesting but wildly imbalanced or overly gimmicky battle. The focus at this point is on asking myself what kind of strategies can work against this boss, and what kind of strategies that players might reasonably want to try won't work against the boss. And I'll add extra mechanics that make those strategies more feasible. If it feels like the player doesn't have enough interesting choices to make, I'll usually throw in some kind of very visible randomness (such as the boss randomly transforming into one of three modes) or decision points (such as a set of special items you get for the fight where timing is a major consideration).

4) Flavor
The last thing I like to throw in before putting my design gloves down is some dialogue and visual eventing (via Troop Events in RPG Maker). I have the characters talk to each other (or to the boss if it's sentient), make some jokes about the moves being used, use stuff like screen shakes, screen tone changes, and even subtle music changes to enhance the atmosphere, and take a moment to explain any special mechanics I'm introducing, in as natural a way as possible.

5) Tweaks Based On Playtesting
Months later, when I've had several people playtest my game, I consider their feedback and finalize the boss' design by altering their stats if people found it too easy, too hard, too short, or too long... or changing up the mechanics (in the same way as the above paragraph) if they found the boss to be boring, confusing, or overly gimmicky. After this additional tweaking, I usually have a boss I can be proud of!

The thing I'd recommend that beginners do differently than I do is that they should start with the mechanics rather than the large concept. Think of what kind of mechanics would make a boss (any given boss) fun and unique, and think really hard about the way that players would go about beating such a boss. The more ways they have to beat it, the better. If you can only think of one or two ways, develop the mechanic further; maybe add a player-favored wrinkle in that opens up additional strategies. From there, come up with a visual/story boss design that fits the kind of mechanic you have in mind.

You are definitely right to ask about plugins. The default tools in RMMV (haven't played around with the previous engines enough to speak to those) are absolutely not enough to make a sophisticated boss fight. They rely solely on the most basic aspects of random chance, and leave zero room for controlling things in a specific way. Both patterns and actual AI (such as being able to respond to the player's actions) are not possible.

I'll agree that using a bit of code (or plugins) can be useful in creating great boss fights, but it's absolutely not necessary. With creative use of Troop Eventing, States, and Skills (which either use creative formulas or call Common Events to make interesting stuff happen), combined with smart databasing decisions like setting battlers' Evade to 0% and Hit to 100%, you can create intriguing, unique, fun boss battles in RPG Maker without ever touching a plugin or a line of code. The interface will still be clunky and basic (plugins can help improve that), but the battle itself will be awesome.

 

[Tai_MT]

Generally, I work from the standpoint of "My Boss is a Test based on everything the player should have learned up to this point".

To that end, I've got two kinds of bosses:

1. A boss that tests you on a single mechanic that a dungeon was designed to teach you. An example I frequently bring up is my perceived "first dungeon" of my game (it's an Open World type game, so it may not necessarily be the first, but it's the first the player runs across, and a few playtests among friends have had players immediately come back to it once they meet the requirements, so it usually the first tackled by players) which exists to teach players about "Poison" in my game. It also has a secondary job of teaching the players about "usual typings" for specific sets of monsters. Namely, that bug and plant looking enemies can be easily dispatched via Fire or Ice, while other enemies have different weaknesses (so players aren't just spamming Fire or Ice through the whole dungeon). Players are taught that Poison L1 and Poison L2 can both be cured with a single "Antidote". They're also taught that there are items to nullify one version of poison, but not the other. Some enemies will hit with the stronger versions of Poison, which will do more damage and last longer, while others will hit with the weak versions and will do less damage, but wear off sooner. Players are taught to have Antidotes on hand frequently, just in case. Players are taught that being Poisoned always comes with an "attack" so that Poison is never a "happens by itself" ability. Etcetera. But, the boss (depending on which you get) can inflict both kinds of Poison on the player. At specific thresholds of HP (namely 50% lost), it uses a "full party" hit that differs based on which boss you're fighting. However, it introduces a new mechanic on its own: I call it the "Revenge Mechanic". Most every boss uses it, and a few regular enemies do as well, but essentially the way it works is that if hit with a specific element, it "reacts" to that and does something it would not normally ever do. In this case, if hit with "Fire" (the boss is a plant or a spider), it reacts by using a move that inflicts both Poison 1 and Poison 2 as well as does damage. In the case of the plant, this is "full party" attack that deals low damage. In the case of the spider, it's a "single target" attack that deals medium damage. Nearly every attack the boss monsters use will inflict Poison on the player (unless they've got the proper equipment on) and will require spending turns to use Antidotes. It is meant to reinforce the concept of Poison and how deadly it can be (it comes in at least two levels, Antidote can cure any level of them, Poison is a consequence of being hit with an attack and isn't a dedicated skill that only inflicts the state, etcetera).

2. A boss that tests you on several mechanics you are meant to have learned up to this point (these are usually area clear bosses since it's an Open World, but they're also Questline End bosses and other types. To get to them, you are guaranteed to have at least encountered the mechanics they are testing you on). I get to have more fun with these as I can chain together many different mechanics to teach the player how to use them more efficiently... or in clever ways. For example, the boss could have 4 minions with him who constantly refill his HP on each turn, which means a player might have to deal with them first. Except, they have a lot of HP and the boss has a "windup" move that hits every few turns for a lot of damage. So, focusing these enemies down means you're going to take a lot of damage as a result... and focusing the boss down himself is going to be difficult as well. But, the player had to learn about "Stun" earlier as well as different types of attacks. So, the solution could be to hit enemies with "Stun", which keeps them locked up and unable to act until they've taken any damage and they can move again, which lets the player prioritize the boss... or the player could try to "Stun" the Boss to take out the healers. Or, if they don't have stun, they might know that the Boss is a heavily armored enemy and they've been taught that these enemies are easily killed via magic... while the magic healers are easily dispatched by characters who use agility as their attacking stat.

I prefer to have my bosses be Tests that the player needs to pass in order to have them be the "benchmark" for future gameplay. If you don't learn what the boss Tests you on (or even the new things the boss will teach you), then it isn't stats that holds you back, but your own lack of information and your inability to learn. Stacking these lessons atop each other also allows me to throw more at the player. Well, more than just stats, anyway. I can add in more gimmicks as the player learns more. I like this method of designing bosses and combat.