Extra levels might make them hit too hard, but I think extra HP would be a safe way to make the fight more epic and make the player see the special powers, without the necessity of making it much riskier.

Maybe extra XP would be nice as well? AFAIK, right now their xp is basically the same as the base monster.

But yes, definitely more HP would be nice.

Yes, that would also make a lot of sense.

Are they showing up at the same DL as the base monster? I'm not certain. I think they should, personally, so that the warning message does mean you're getting a monster that is tougher than usual.

I'm surprised that the Bosses haven't been given extra HP or Levels already. I'd have thought that they'd be roughly equivilant to the final bosses from the Arena in terms of ability.

Maybe make them slightly rarer, but tougher and give out more XP?

We can't have the PC get hurt now can we, risk is what makes the game fun.

Hack-and-slash is boring. I want to think of ways to kill a dangerous monster, not hit it twice as much.

They are not and that is the real problem. The selection mechanism has a strong bias to choosing low danger level monsters.

This means that in the early game, you may see a boss monster that is appropriate to your level, like a special giant rat. But by the time you're in the midgame, you'll still be finding special giant rats. In the endgame, when you're ready to defeat the archmage, you might meet a special giant spider.

Double hitpoints will not solve the problem at all. It will make the boss monsters dangerous in the very early game and they will still be a joke in the endgame.

I guess they use the same algorithm as for normal creatures. In D:4X, you can find a giant rat next to a black unicorn. Which is fine because it gives variety to the dungeons (compare with the level scaling tedium in the current ADOM II).

But in the particular case of bosses, yes, it would probably be better to always generate them roughly equal to dungeon DL, and not lower.

I agree with Stingray. In all games I know bosses are significantly more difficult than regular enemies. ADOM pre-p9 is actually the same: Kranach, Keethrax, Orb guardians and other such bosses are harder than any single enemy on their respective dungeon levels. This should be the case with boss monsters too, or, if that goes against the idea of any particular boss, they shouldn't be generated where they could end up below average at best.

After all, bosses should be beefy on every account because they're boss monsters and because they're a "blood-chilling threat". It's kind of not bossy nor blood-chilling when something dies from 1-2 hits without even having the chance to retaliate (lv 14-22 mist elf duelist, about 40 dmg before PV on average). I've met five or so bosses, and they put up less resistance (read: none) than ogre lords, ratling duelists, annis hags, stone golems, dwarven chaos knights, and hill giant chieftains I met in the same levels. And those aren't exactly endgame stuff either.

Maybe bosses should adjust power to the players level like some other powerful creatures do.

A 50% increase in HP sounds about right.

Has anybody been killed by a boss monster? (except for the buggy poison issue)
If nobody dies, they are not tough enough.

There's a master swordsman boss monster I met on DH which was pretty tough - could very well have killed me.

I have upped the toughness of bosses even more. Somewhat more that is ;-)

I recently had a game where the very first monster was a boss monster with a special attack (confusion). Died. The best part: it was the tutorial dungeon.

I've never been threatened by one, and usually encounter several over a long game.

I'd rather they were somewhat more powerful (and definitely scaled to level).

Also it'd be really nice if they all dropped something; they rarely/ever drop anything and they're not exciting to encounter right now. It doesn't have to be fantastic or powerful, but its nice if there's a chance of something good. A random ego weapon and/or ego armour would be really nice.