Boss Fights and Huge Enemies

    What's the unifying factor between a dragon, a helicopter, and a guy in a battlemech? Well, they're all significantly larger than the player character, and harder to kill. Really, that's true of most boss fights. They're bigger than you, stronger than you, and tougher than you, which makes it immensely satisfying to take one down. But how to express this mechanically in the Identity System? And what happens when you're the one in the battlemech?

    The easiest solution is to make huge enemies damage sponges. Just give them a shitload of health and let the players chip away at it until someone ends up dead. This, though, is not only boring but fails to account for the possibility of a player character driving a tank or something. Instead, I've chosen to have huge enemies operate on a different scale, so to speak, to the players. 

    By default, a huge enemy would have an innate 4-Armor against any attacks from smaller foes. In addition, its attack would deal different levels of Harm to enemies at different scales. Using the example of a tank, let's look at how it's main cannon would work. The stats of the tank's main cannon would be something like this:

4/8 Near Far Loud Reload Explosive

     

    The first Harm number, 4, indicates the amount of damage that the cannon would do against another tank. The second, 8, is how much it would inflict against a smaller target, such as a person. 8-Harm is precisely enough to kill a player character, because generally when one is hit by a tank shell, they do not survive. A PC could survive this, provided they had enough armor, but it would leave them significantly worse for wear. But if this tank's main attack is enough to render a person a fine red mist, how the hell do you even fight it?

 

    My personal philosophy for boss fights is that they're not just fights, but puzzles. A fight should be more complicated than just "shoot the bad man until he dies." The idea is to reward players for lateral thinking and creative use of the tools already available to them. You could inflict Conditions to destroy its treads, or strip the armor. You could get the hatch open and throw a grenade inside, or fire a shot down the barrel to explode the shell in the chamber. A boss fight isn't an exercise in just strength, but also in creativity.