BOSS IDEAS, ANYONE?

Need poison attack/skill: enemy has high def, mdef, and HP.
Need mute: self-heal spamming enemy.
Need blind: High P.dmg enemy.
High atk / low def enemy + low atk / high def enemy: defeat the low def enemy first.
Defeat/mute AoE enemy healer first.
Enemy's power/stats decrease when first defeating 'energy source' enemies.
Need AoE: large amount of weak enemies.
Defend when the enemy gives a message saying it is about to use a powerful attack.
Defeat enemy ASAP before it spawns more enemies.
High def enemy + poison-casting enemy: good enemy battle formation.
Enemy transforms after x turns: must defeat ASAP.
Need def piercing attack: high def enemy.
Must defeat 'shield' enemy so other enemy is no longer immortal (can be done with multiple shields at different % HP levels).
When your party's HP is low or when you have characters dead, the enemy gets stronger. Or weaker.
If enemy X HP is below a certain %, enemy Y starts to attack (or attack stronger). Can be done visa versa.
Enemy casts powerful DEF+ spell at low HP.
Enemy party has damage dealer + buffer.
Enemy party has high DEF/HP healer in party: mute ASAP.
Immortal/100% evasive sand enemy until a water spell is cast.
Unkindly Treated Beast: You have two enemies, a beast and its trainer. The beast is a pawn in this man's scheme. He will deal damage to the beast via a whip. When the beast is below 90%, he attacks you. The more HP the beast loses, the more damage he deals. You can finish the battle without killing the beast. The trick is to keep the beast healed above 90% while killing the trainer.

Thief Battle. Kill an enemy before its turn or it'll steal an item from you and run away. Generally annoying. Do not use if the player does not have a way to kill it before it gets a turn.

Character (un)friendly battle. If you have a specific character in your party the enemy will respond positively or negatively. For example, it may concentrate attacks on a certain party member, or refuse to attack a certain party member until all others are dead, or it (or your party member) may become confused and switch sides. Generally related to the plot.

To the Death. An enemy will engage one hero. Optionally, all other heroes will become unable to act. Until one of them dies the two will have buffs/debuffs on them.

Disable X. In this battle X type spell is disabled, such as resurrection, healing, fire spells, earth spells, buffs, dispels, etc. The type of disabled spell might change mid-battle.

Zombify. If an actor dies, it will be unable to be resurrected for the battle. Instead, the enemy will resurrect the actor to fight for him. Killing the zombie actor will enable resurrection once more.

Reverse Shield. YOU are protected by a shield from a very dangerous foe. If this shield should be destroyed you will be in an extremely difficult battle. You must defeat this foe last.

Every Status Under the Sun. Two words, Malboro Breath. If you don't have an Esuna spell, this can be worse than instant death.

I wouldn't do that if I were you: Certain actions on an enemy will make them react with greater hostility.

Shapeshifter. The monster is a shapeshifter/mimic. It takes on the abilities and attributes of other enemies. During the fight it may transform more than once. It may transform every time it is damaged, or after a set amount of time. You can cycle through the enemies until you get to one you like, or it can be so random you're never sure what to do in fear of it transforming again.

No Kill Zone. A force field causes everything to be ressurected, including your actors. After X turns or alternatively if you kill the force field, ressurection is no longer enabled. Thus, you have to set yourself up to be at a strategic advantage when this happens. To make this even more dire, you could make it so the enemy can 1 to 2 shot your heroes, so when the field drops, you have to have him as close to death as possible or you're in for a beating.

Enemies with high damaging counter attacks. Focus early turns on buffing up your characters offense and defense(Can sacrifice speed if need be). Since these guys won't be as dangerous until you attack them.

Kill enemies at same time, they enrage (get stronger) if they are by themself.
Monsters surrounding boss give him different buffs.
Boss has phases where he is weak to magic, then weak to melee.
Enemy has attack that must charge up, so buff defense or magical defence right then to prevent dying.
At 25% the enemy will fully heal after a period of time (save skills for 25%)
Boss drops party to 1 HP, and then follows up with a weak AoE attack, so heal up party quick

In council raid bosses, there are 4 bosses with a shared healthpool. One randomly becomes active, and has certain abilities, and periodically loses energy. At 50%, he throws up a shield and it's generally not a good idea to attack the shielded council member. At that point, another one becomes active and starts attacking as well. Again, at 50% he throws up a shield, but the other council member then becomes inactive.

enemy takes control of a party member - party member must be defeated
enemy takes control of a party member - wears off after some time, or when enemy takes enough damage

enemy dies only if his mana reaches 0

after death, a bigger enemy splits in multiple smaller ones

Variable defenses: once you hit the enemy with something, they develop a resistance against this method of attack and you have to find another opening afterwards. They can eventually forget a previous method too.

Enemy that hides underground or in a shell. Poison him just before he becomes unattackable. This will damage him from the inside since you can't attack him outside.

Elemental barrier shifter with misleading colors casts barrier's elemental spell before switching barriers. Absorbs any other elements. Cast slow while you still know his weakness.

Monk that needs one turn to use focus power for energy blast. Stun him or use sleep before he does. Preferably stun

Enemy uses elemental fields to power up an element (affects actors too).
Enemy attacks become more powerful over time (must end battle quickly).
Disable healing ability.
Disable special skills, or items.
Reflecting Forcefield: damage inflicted to the target is inflicted back to the attacker.
Reflecting Heals: heals cast on one or all party members are also granted to the enemy

Counter attack stance
Heckran(Chrono Trigger)
Mist Dragon(FF4)
Whelk(FF6)
Scorpion Guard(FF7)
You have to pay attention to the boss' stance and cease damage dealing if he enters a "counter stance", or else face painful retaliation. The punishment may vary in size, but insisting on attacking will surely kill you sooner or later. Best used early on to make the player get used to how the game deals with turns. Do NOT implement this in a turn or wait based system unless all characters have a "defend" or "wait" command.

Barrier change
Mellusion/Merugene(FF5)
Magus(Chrono Trigger)
This one is used best right after the players get access all kinds of elemental magic(Spekkio's training), or right after obtaining a Scan spell. A skill like FF6's Debilitator which gives an enemy a new weakness can provide an interesting twist as well. The barrier change is almost always visible, but the player may not necessarily be informed what element the new barrier is.

Countdown
Magus, Black Tyrano (Chrono Trigger)
MomBomb (FF4)
Once every few turns, the boss starts counting down - once he reaches zero, he unleashes a very powerful attack, and goes back to his usual routine. If the party is caught unprepared, it's dead. The variations of this strategy include a way to interrupt the impeding doom (especially if it's nearly guaranteed to kill you), and lowering the enemy's resistance/defense for the time of countdown. ("Magus risks casting a spell")

Multiple part boss
Dragon Tank, Guardian, Giga Gaia, Zeal, Mother Brain, Lavos, etc. (Chrono Trigger)
Whelk, Kefka(FF6)
Schizo, Bizzaro Sephiroth, etc.(FF7)
Crapload more examples everywhere
This can be played many different ways, but usually involves defeating the other parts in a sequence. The parts may also be a catalyst to the Countdown and Counter Stance strategies, making these turn off temporarily until the parts are revived (or not). An annoying move is making the parts weak/strong towards different things. Attacking some parts may be harmful, they're not meant to be attacked and die along with everything else. Some parts may revive others.

Speed-run
Garuda, Zande, Dark Cloud (FF3)
Bahamut, Odin (FF4)
Some late game bosses in Xenogears
This boss has ridiculous firepower or maybe even a one hit kill ever few turns, but also very low health or some sort of weakness, or perhaps means to partially avoid his attacks. (Jump) You're supposed to use every turn you get to deal as much damage as you can - healing yourself is probably a waste of turns if you're going to die anyway. Kill it before it kills you.

Endurance
Atma Weapon (FF6)
Aps (FF7)
Dark Cecil (FF4)
You may or may not be supposed to beat the boss - but sooner or later, it kills itself if you last long enough. (Atma dies when it runs out of MP, Aps damages himself with his Tsunami, Dark Cecil only dies if you don't attack it for several rounds in a row)

One-hit exploit
Phantom Train(FF6)
Jinn (FF3) //provided you saved a SouthWind
This one can be hard as hell - but guess what? It has a weakness that makes it die in one turn, sparing you the inhumane battle. This is generally to be avoided, as even when the game gives you a hint about the weakness it still feels stupid and cheap, but there are situations where it might be a good idea.

Lose/Escape/Avoid
Beatrix (FF9)
Golem, Lavos(Chrono Trigger)
Guardian (FF6)
You're not supposed to win this one. It's typically a plot device. You may be allowed to die without getting a game over, or you may have to escape to keep from getting a game over. In some cases, winning may be technically possible for a highly skilled/overlevelled player, resulting in a reward.

3-Way Battle
Many battles in FF13
Two groups of enemies that attack each-other and also attack you. Choose wisely which one to focus on first. In a game without threat, killing them at the same time is ideal. In a game with threat, you want to make sure one group doesn't attack you until the other is dead.

Escort
Protect Algus/Alma/Rafa (FF Tactics)
Golem (FF5)
Banon (FF6)
Many escort quests in countless games
An ally appears either for a single battle or a series of battles. The ally may or may not be controllable. If the ally dies, you lose.

Illusionary Copies
Poe Boss in Forest Temple (Ocarina of Time)
Son of Sun (CT)
There are multiple targets, but only one can take damage. Attacking the wrong one typically causes it to disappear, and may incite a counterattack. Every so often (sometimes after each successful hit, sometimes after a set period of time) the illusion resets and a different target becomes the real target. Area attacks are ineffective.

Corborus
Skills:
# Crystal Barrage - Targets the ground under one player and deals medium damage to all players near that area for 4 seconds. Can be avoided by moving out of the effect.
# Dampening Wave - Deals low shadow damage to all players. In addition, the next 4000 points of healing done to players will be negated. This effect stacks up to 20 times. Dispelling this effect will remove the entire stack.

Corborus alternates between two strategies.
Phase 1: Corborus is above ground and uses his two abilities listed above, as well as attacking the tank.
Phase 2: Corborus burrows underground and is not attackable. Small enemies will appear rapidly in random locations, which attack the nearest party member but are easily destroyed. Due to the penalty against healing, it is important to kill them before they have a chance to hit you very many times. Also, dust clouds appear on the ground, and if a player stands in one, Corborus will surface and kill them.

If I were adapting this fight for RMXP, I would:
- Make Crystal Barrage avoidable by defending instead of moving
- Make Corborus surfacing be unavoidable, but only deal 80% of your max HP, so you can live through it if you're at full health. The dust cloud will still be visible, letting the player know which party member needs to be at full health.

Slabhide
Skills:
# Sand Blast - Deals medium damage to all players in front of Slabhide within 15 yards.
# Eruption - Deals a small amount of damage to players within melee range. In addition, a pool of lava forms in a random location, resulting in:
# Lava Pool - Deals damage quickly to anyone standing in the fire. Disappears after 10 sec.
# Collapse ceiling - Flies into the air, causing stalactites to drop from the ceiling; if one lands on you, you die. A shadow will appear on the ground where each stalagtite is going to fall.
# Crystal Storm - Deals massive damage to all enemies in line of sight every half second for 6 sec.

Strategy:
The stalactites are not a major threat. However, you have to hide behind one when he starts casting Crystal Storm to survive it, otherwise you will die after 2-3 hits of it. And you have to make sure there's not a lava pool behind the one nearest you, though standing in a lava pool is not as bad as being hit by Crystal Storm.

If I were adapting this fight for RMXP, I would:
- Make Sand Blast simply target two random party members.
- Make Eruption deal damage only to characters who performed a physical attack that round.
- Lava pools would be replaced by summoned lava elementals, which would only attack the lowest HP party member. They would self-destruct after a few turns.
- Stalactites would also be summoned enemies, but would not deal damage. Slabhide would deal earth damage to all party members when he summoned them, but after that they would just sit there.
- When Slabhide starts using Crystal Storm, the player would have to attack and destroy a stalactite. Doing so would create a resonant sound that shatters his crystal storm but strengthens any lava elementals that are alive.