Is anyone good with creating bosses?

[I_Iz_Sarah]

I'm making a small RPG, and i'd like to create bosses that will cast abilities. Although I have no idea where too start.
Do I just give the boss the ability, and make the boss used by a computer?

Please help!

 

[operator]

Explain what you want the boss to do, then come back for help.

 

[Destroyer25]

If you create a neutral hostile unit and give it spells its going to use them.

 

[ALiEN95]

i would just suggest you to make creeps controlled by player coz that in not really made jet,but it would be hard to balance it,did you learn triggering and so .....?


y,give him ability and you can make him a bit smarter with triggers,it depends if you make it with player or not,with player you dont need to do issue orders with triggers....

 

[Creative.S]

Do lots of fancy triggers around the boss' hp for instance. If its hp is under 50%, add an additional ability to it. A last stand or something. Make it summon minions at a certain %, and make the boss drain its minions hp if they're not killed in time or something. Playing around with triggers around one unit to make it stronger and more challenging is always fun. x)

 

[Longvie]

One thing you should focus when making a boss is to make players use strategy to kill it, not just attack+click. If you want examples of this, check out Obsidian Depths (by Rising_Dusk). Most of the bosses need strategy and planning to kill them, and take a long time.
Also, if you are going to do something like this, please give information of how to kill it before it spawns, since it's very hard to do it when you don't know what to do against a boss. For example, if the boss is in a cave, put a npc outside that warns players about the boss' strengths and weakness.

 

[FlowerofSpeech]

If you play "Impossible Bosses" on bnet, you can see some very well constructed, WOW-like bosses - which require every player to be on their toes.

That said, making a boss isn't easy and if this is a single-player campaign you can afford to give a boss Neutral Hostile status and add abilities when it reaches % health (like others have suggested), however, abilities like blink and windwalk need good triggering/scripting otherwise the AI won't use them correctly.

Actually, the Neutral Hostile AI can be fairly stupid with some spells, so I believe you should order it to cast things (or create dummy units and have them do it) under specific conditions (the attacking player's hero gets below 20% hp? The boss should cast stormbolt on him).

Don't give the boss too much health, unless you want to see players whacking away at it for hours - make the boss smart and force its attacker to stop attacking it for a time. Alternate the experience by making him spawn creeps to distract or overwhelm the player. Wanderer's of Sorceria's Book 5-6 have fairly good bosses, as an example.