Design A Primal Battle!

[IndigoDarkwolf]

I had an idea for a primal fight with Fenrir. I tried to draw inspiration from his summons in previous Final Fantasy games (such as Elemental Decay from FF9), his association with Warp, Banish, and Stop from FF6, and Red XIII's attacks from Final Fantasy 7, since Red XIII and Fenrir seem to share some imagery and thematic elements. I was also very much impressed by the Van Darnus fight, so I have some inspiration from there, as well. I was thinking it could be a 3-stage fight, but so far I've only brainstormed 2 stages. I don't have time to flesh out the idea further just yet, but here are my thoughts so far (if I can't edit this later, I'll post a more complete version and try to take in feedback as time allows me).

I don't envision any sort of time limit on the fight, but did imagine it would take 30-40 minutes. I don't think time limits in the elemental fights were common in 1.0, I just remember hating how I felt like I had to skip the cutscene for the Van Darnus fight even though I could go back and re-watch it later. I'm sure there would be some narrative moments interspersed in the fight, possibly wedged between phases, but I'm more concerned about describing what I hope is an interesting fight here.

Since I don't remember if 1.0 had a Berserk condition, for the purposes of this fight I'm defining "Berserk" as a status ailment that forces the party member to charge the nearest enemy and perform normal attacks against them. No command actions are allowed, and the party member can't choose how to move their character. A lot of the special attacks have some way to cause Berserk, which is intended to either magnify an error that somebody made, or to temporarily shut down party members by preventing them from using their command actions without relying too heavily on vanilla Stuns.

Fenrir

The arena for the fight is a large center with three medium-sized elevated platforms radially connected at North, South-east, and South-west.

Party starts in the center, Fenrir starts on North platform. Assuming there's some sort of cutscene to play at the start of the fight, Fenrir lets the party make the first attack before starting, so party members can watch the cutscene at their leisure.

Fenrir's normal attack set:

• Step forward and bite party member. (50%)
• Swing head/body and strike party members in forward arc. (25%)
• Leap and bite party member hard, small pushback. (15%)
• Glow purple for 2 seconds, howl to deal light AoE damage and causes "Berserk" status to hit party members for 15 seconds. (10%)

Every 30 seconds of normal fighting, Fenrir begins a special attack, starting with Set 1.

Fenrir special attack set 1:

• Teleport highest enmity party member to a random platform, reset enmity, and begin attacking nearest target.

  (Intended strategy: Backup tank will be needed and needs to be positioned to acquire enmity before melee DPS gets killed.)

• Teleport self to a random spot selected from several options that are placed between the paths that lead to the elevated platforms, reset enmity, and begin attacking nearest target.

  (Intended strategy: Ranged characters will need to watch where Fenrir lands and possibly flee towards tank until tank can reacquire enmity.)

• Howl to AoE stun nearby party members for 3 seconds, do a 2 second wind up with a charging animation (it's the tell for the attack), then damage an AoE line of party members between the start position and random location. Think of Red XIII's Sled Fang limit break. Reset enmity and begin attacking nearest target.

  (Intended strategy: Ranged characters will need to watch Fenrir's tell and move out of the way to avoid hit, melee characters can't evade hit at all, adding pressure to WHM/BRD to heal.)

At 75% HP, Fenrir switches to special attack set 2:

• Teleport self to a random elevated platform, howl to stun the entire party for 3 seconds. Maintain howl stance, summon 6 ghostly wolf heads around the platform. Wolf heads immediately assume 100% enmity (or "high enough to seriously challenge a good tank's ability to draw enmity away") against the nearest 6 party members: Sort party members by distance from Fenrir, wolf head 1 hates the nearest member, wolf head 2 hates the next nearest, etc). Ghostly wolf heads float slowly towards their targets.
  • Entering melee range with a wolf head triggers AoE damage and causes "Berserk" status to hit party members for 15 seconds.
  • If a wolf head survives for 45 seconds, it explodes for weak AoE damage and causes "Berserk" status to hit party members for 15 seconds.
  • If all wolf heads survive and catch the entire party in their AoE blasts, clothy party members might die in the series of explosions.
  • After all wolf heads have exploded or been destroyed, Fenrir returns to attack set 1 for 60 seconds.

  (Intended strategy: Wolf heads need to be kited by victims and killed at range within a time allotment)

• Teleport self to center of the arena, howl to teleport each party member to random spot on the 3 elevated platforms, and show a red zone or outline around Fenrir, large enough to prevent melee attacks without preventing ranged attacks. Fenrir begins summoning ghostly wolf heads at time intervals. The wolf heads take 30 seconds to travel to a random elevated platform center, where they explode for heavy damage against an AoE range that hits a party members across a little more than 1/3 of the field, the 1/3 of the field with the elevated platform that was struck. The wolf heads can be engaged freely and should be killable before reaching the platform centers, but should be summoned at a rate just greater than the party members could keep up with. Attempting to enter the demarked area around Fenrir causes the party member to be teleported to random elevated platform. After Fenrir takes enough ranged damage, he returns to attack set 1 for 60 seconds.

  (Intended strategy: Fenrir needs to be "knocked out" of his summon stance by ranged attacks within 60-90 seconds.)
  (And see, I totally ripped off the Van Darnus fight here, except I tried to reverse the roles between ranged and melee.)

At 25% HP, Fenrir would kick it into high gear with a third attack set that should truly challenge the party with a variety of status effects, possibly including Confuse because it's always fun to not only lose your tank but to watch them attack the party members they're supposed to be protecting. Possibly upgrade Fenrir's Sled Fang analogy to a Blood Fang analogy by causing it to absorb party HP instead of just damaging it, prolonging the fight. Possibly throw in a light AoE line-based hit against the furthest party member, just to force ranged attackers off-balance, force them to move around, and discourage grouping up around "safe spots" which people will inevitably discover. Definitely continue to reset enmity on a periodic basis so the tank(s) can't slack off and the DPS has to continue paying attention to how much enmity they're acquiring.