Combat in Dungeons and Dragons can be as creative as the players and DM are willing to make it, because as long as a group can collectively imagine an encounter, it can be put in the game. However, there is a procedure for fighting enemies in Dungeons and Dragons. Specifically, combat in D&D is turn-based, with each player and enemy getting a turn per combat round. This style of combat went on to directly inspire a core genre from the early days of video game RPGs, with many exceptional turn-based games being made throughout the 80s and 90s.
There are still great turn based RPGs being made for modern consoles, and in order to make their games stand out, many developers have had to get creative over the years with their turn-based systems and enemy encounters. The bonus for any D&D DMs planning a unique encounter for their players is that they now have decades of creative turn-based bosses from video games to look to for inspiration.
This is exactly what a Reddit user and DM named brambleforest has done in designing a giant squid boss fight for their players. The Reddit user took inspiration from a boss fight from the classic SNES game Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, which sees players fighting the individual tentacles of a giant squid enemy named King Calamari, which are poking through the floor of a sunken ship. In order to clearly illustrate this high-concept fight to their players, brambleforest has made a series of figures for each arm and the head of the giant squid enemy.
The figures do a great job of explaining the positioning of the giant squid in relation to the players, but they also allow players to imagine what they cannot see below the surface, with a kind of Lovecraftian unease that has been the inspiration for many tabletop games. The Reddit user has explained that they plan on using the encounter in a sunken temple, with the giant squid being the guardian of a portal. The brilliance of the encounter is that the squid could half-emerge from the portal itself in order to fight the players.
An encounter which sees players attacking individual limbs to reduce an overall health pool is an ingenious boss concept because it contains within one enemy the same hierarchy as facing a whole group of enemies. This hierarchy will also be instinctively known to players, as the squid’s six arms will clearly act as the enemy's primary attacks, while its two larger tentacles will be more powerful. The squid's head will also likely be the toughest part and will need to be destroyed to kill the enemy outright. Creative encounters like this will also leave players remembering the boss as one extremely powerful enemy overall, and part of the appeal of Dungeons and Dragons is in defeating the game’s strongest enemies.
