Castle Paradox

[Minnek]

I've looked into this area, and I understand that intelligent boss battles make the game fun, and I grasp the concept, but could anyone give me some examples of what exactly is being looked for? Rather than just give examples (like saying Calbrena from FF4), give an explanation instead? I'd really appreciate this, and I'm sure there are other people who would too.
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[Uncommon]

Well, an example I know of, is in FF8 (oddly enough). At the end of disc 1, when you're fighting Edea, she uses WAll or something on herself every time you use Dispel. It was really pointless to try, but it took up all of her time, thus distracting her from killing you. That was rather intelligent to me.

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

Hyne (FF3) - Changes his elemental weakness once every two or three rounds of combat. (how it could be done) - the real enemy has a 'untargetable by heros bitset' on, and is invisable. The Hyne clones have so much hp, and when hit by the appropriate element, spawn an enemy that does a set amount of damage to the hidden 'boss' enemy. Once the Hyne clone takes so much damage, it spawns a new version with a different weakness. Repeat two or three times with different elements to keep the player guessing!

Chaos (FF1) - He used Cure 4. It sucked. (How it's done) Once Chaos reaches the point where enemies use the 'only when weak' attacks, his ONLY attack is a fully restorative one, which takes a long time to cast, say 1 minute total. This would force the players to continue to attack throughout the battle, hoping they do enough damage to him and ignoring restoration to kill him before he recovers fully. A similar situation could be used for a battle with a boss like Odin, who gives you exactly one minute before he launches an unavoidable attack that instantly kills the entire party [spread all, hp at 0% max, etc]

Eternal Darkness (FFH) - The final boss has friends! Indeed, the only reason most parties are able to defeat most bosses is the simple fact that they outnumber them, can heal, remove status effects, etc., and the boss cannot. The boss is largely limited to 5 attacks, leaving out a LOT of other possibilities. One part does all the HP restoration, status removing, etc. Another minion inflicts various status effects on the party, like Poison, blind, etc, and should probably even be the part that dispels the party's defenses. The third minion should throw on the protection spells, Shell, Safe, etc. Lastly, you may elect to add extra attackers to the mix to make things more difficult. This leaves the boss to concentrate on doing whatever it is they'd like to do, rather than having to heal, inflict status attacks, etc. I think the Master CPU in FF4 was similar.

[Uncommon]

Wow, Fen, those sound like oodles of fun!

[jabbercat]

the devine beast at the end of jade cocoon 1 , changed his element to match your one elemet.and every time it changed elemet it restored it hit points to full.
Very nasty
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[Minnek]

Eh, I've thought of a few that could be done using Fen's first example, such as the Magus battle in CT (this one would take some thinking) as well as the number 079 (I think that's the one) battle in FF6, at the top of the Fanatic's Tower. (I believe this is accurate...if not, then I'm remembering incorrectly. Let me know if I am )

If you think about some things otherwise, you could have a boss that in its "program" has a set of chained attacks. (Aeth brought this one on when talking about his FF6 Hardtype, and the second tier of the final boss. Good job, Aeth - keep up the good work ) For instance, you could have a boss that healed every 5 turns, or used a series of attacks with sufficient delay in between, with the final attack being lethal if you aren't prepared, and as such, either after dying the first time, or surviving through it, the player'll know to recognize the chain of attacks, and heal (or whatever preparations are neccessary.)

You could have a boss that faked counter attacks, simply by using the spawn on element hit, combined with a new enemy with 999 speed and an attack that kills itself but does the neccessary counter-attack.

I'm thinking of these randomly while staring at the carpet (what a lovely shade of blue ) so hopefully they'll be helpful. Let me know if any of my information is incorrect, I'd be happy to correct it via edit. As always, I leave you as your loyal village idiot, servant of Setu Firestorm, the chief minstrel.
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[Uncommon]

That counter attack system should work. Good work, Minnek.
Now, if only we could set the frequency of how often the boss spawns 'cos, the way it is now, he's gonna counter every single time you use that element...

[Shadowiii]

The boss on the top of Kefka's tower in FF6. Hardest boss in the game (the first time you fight him). Basically he switches elemental weaknesses everytime you smack him with magic. Then when he dies he casts Ultima. How do you beat him? Well, first you can cast berserk on someone and have him beat the crap outta him. Or you can rasp/osmose all his MP away. Or, my favorite way, grab some wall rings, cast life 3 on everyone (unless you have 6000+ HP for the Ultima) and watch as he kills himself! HA HA HA.

Erm, yeah. That boss was very annoying.
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But enough talk, have at you!

[Me]

Uncommon: Set the spawned monster to attack itself wioth an attack that spawns yet another monster, which in turn kills the first spawned monster after a short delay, then itself. The first monster, meanwhile, has a percentage chance of chaining to the counter attack instantly, but if he doesn't, the second monster kills it. The first monster would need to be spawned in the first slot, and the second's attack would be set to target the first target. Both, of course, are untargetable by heros.
Another idea I've got is to have a special "boss death" animation through spawning. Simply have the boss, on death, spawn a new enemy that kills itself instantly, but has a different picture, like a palette swap of the boss. Also, if extra spawning is added in here along with attack chaining, you can feasibly make an emeny drop several items as opposed to one.
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UP DOWN UP DOWN LEFT LEFT RIGHT RIGHT A B START

[Aethereal]

I have a few "smart bosses" planned:

Galathier, the Sky Dragon - Starts off pretty normal until his scales start coming to life (Skydragon Scales), and as long as they are out, Galathier is protected by their abilities, and so you have to kill the scales in order to continue your assault. The problem? The scales respond to any magic cast upon it with a very powerful spell called Aeromantic.

Paxathus, Great Red Dragon - Not as "smart" as the rest, but he still has some interesting features. He has 10,000 HP and every time you clean off 2000 of it, he will spread his wings and begin a countdown. As long as his wings are spread, he responds to any attack with a very very powerful spell, and after the countdown, he blasts everyone with "Searing Breath", then the pattern repeats until he has 4000 HP left, which is when he can start using the breath attack at will.

Unnamed Boss (Optional Boss) - This guy is like the equivalent of Emerald or Ruby, I guess, only he doesn't require quite as much preparation. Anyway, he can use a mist spell that drops everyone's accuracy by 75% and a holy attack that does damage to EVERYONE (including himself, but he is holy-elemental so he gets healed) and resets stats to normal. He responds to any elemental ability (There are eight magic types, but "time" is non-elemental) with a very, very strong group attack of the same element. Finally, once he has 3000 HP left, he casts a spell that drops everyone's MP to 0 and keeps it that way (by having an invisible enemy in the back constantly casting that spell), resets everyone's stats to normal, and then starts using an ability that kills off two people and never misses, every single round. Basically, to get rid of him, you -- hey, why am I telling you that?

Final Fantasy VI Hardtype, Kefka - I'm referring to all four parts of the final battle. I made all of them extremely difficult and selected their attacks carefully. I think it would be best if I made a text file of their attack patterns and linked it, because this will be long.

Kefka Battle Scripts
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[Uncommon]

Me, I guess that would work...

Regarding the "boss death" thing, I had that idea, too. Almost implemented it into Magnus 17, but the fade out of the first enemy just ruins the whole effect.

Aeth, that Magisteral stuff is amazing, how are you doing it?

[madhatter]

Or, you could have the traditonal "I'm going to reincarnate into somethings bigger and better when I die/am near death because I feel like it." boss. Of course, it's overused, so maybe you could do something with elements there. You could try making it so the player is mostly prepared for the first boss. Just before the first boss reincarnates, he does a powerful attack, lowering everyone's HP and/or MP greatly. He then reincarnates into something with an element the player is completely not prepared for.

[Komera]

yeah, that was my fave way of handling the fanatic's tower boss. the only minor problem is that it takes a while. but i should mention... you don't need to berserk someone in the party if you decide to tote umaro along with you.

anyway... as for my smart boss suggestion... it is a variation of one fenrir's already mentioned (specifically the eternal darkness one), though i didn't get it from him. this is a battle planned for Wingedmene Part One's 7th background painted boss (Nyara is the first, ERTHE is the second...) which means you guys won't see it until the 90% version.

basically, because of the background, it'll look like one boss, although there are really five enemies on the screen. one enemy is set to untargetable, and spawns a nearly identical targetable enemy when alone then dies. both of these enemies (untargetable and targetable versions) have identical stats, attacks, etc... the other four enemies (which must be beaten in order to get the targetable enemy to spawn) do the nicely annoying things like cure, attack, status adjusting magic.

btw, here's an idea i haven't seen anyone try yet... i thought of this for the 4th background painted boss, but can't currently accomplish it because 'rise' is not one of the attack animations...

if you have an enemy slot left over (obviously best in a boss battle), use an empty graphic, make it untargetable, and die when alone. either make the enemy slow, or make it's attacks have long delays. have it target itself, the attack should do no damage. all that will happen is the attack animation, which you can make to look like blinking eyes, running cats, moving clouds, whatever. i wanted to do rising bubbles... but oh well...
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LJ.Art

SD - Ten creatures remaining.

[Aethereal]

Uncommon, doing all that is nothing more than studying and learning how to effectively use the following things:

Elemental Bitsets
Spawning
Attack Properties
Untargetable Invisible Enemies

For the record, although this boss really isn't "intelligent", I do have a mechanical-armor boss that can change out its arms to gain different attacks every few rounds, and no, it does NOT change them out in a set pattern (it has four sets of arms, representing three elementals and physical).
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[Uncommon]

That's crazy-awesome. Come to think of it, I do understand it a bit, but it sounds like it would take quite a bit of work/bug-smashing. Well, all gameplay would, really...