[Arilou]

That's not my point. My point is most boss type monsters do not normally have any resistance to cut, stab, or smash damage. The boss idea is not bad, I just find it highly unfair that two out of three forms are immune to magic

I think the idea is that the monster be immune to all forms of melee damage for two forms as well. So, if that's the case, I don't see how it's unfair - Blackbeard only mentioned immunity to magic with the second form, but I would assume the point of it flying into the air is that it is no longer able to be attacked by melee players as well.

Anyway, we had been getting better at adding more melee resist monsters and you certainly would've seen the trend more often as new monsters were introduced.

Like I said, I would not consider fighting a boss and resisting everyone else if I could die instantly with no reward. Take death ray out of the equation. I still would not do it. In the time it would take to kill the boss monster I could have gotten plenty of other experience elsewhere. It would be very boring and unrewarding is my point. If I was so worried about death penalties, I would just hang back in the room before the boss room. That isn't as big of an issue.

Maybe the point isn't for experience in the here and now though, maybe the point is to get an item that will help you get more experience in the long run and make you stronger in activities (such as pking). In cases where the reward does not interest you, see below.

Both mage and melee classes can now fight the boss equally rather than the mage's cheering the meleer's on from the sidelines like they usually are.

This is why I gave Morgos 4 forms. Three are class specific, but the fourth is a free for all. When I created him people were pleasantly surprised that mages had an equal opportunity to beat his final form and walk away with the prize. We can certainly have monsters as you suggest alongside multi-form monsters. But when multi-form monsters are used, I find that doing the above works out quite nicely.

As far as the rewards are concerned, throw in some mage rewards as well to encourage them to participate. The only mages I could see helping out with something like this is maybe Zevran, who otherwise would be sitting in MAH.

My concept when introducing multi-player bosses to the game was that if we had a bunch of these that drop varying prizes, people of different classes would all have such a monster (or monsters) that they want to kill for their class based prize. However, since they needed different people to beat them and not all those people would want the prize, they'd be forced to make deals with people to return the favor in helping them get a prize they want.

Of course, Morgos drops something that is pretty useful to all classes and even if you don't want it, you can sell it for a hefty chunk of change. But I created him to be the hardest challenge in all the game. Not only is he meant to be insanely difficult, but he's meant to be at the very end of the biggest, baddest group dungeon there ever was (yes, I know that there were no group dungeons at the time). And yet he only drops one uber prize so even to make sure everyone in your group who wants the prize, gets the prize, you'd have to make a deal to go back through all that over and over again. Likewise, I don't see why you can't make friends with people to help them with their lesser challenges so they will help you with yours.

Also, keep in mind that there's more to a dungeon than its boss. Even though a particular boss may not have something you want or reward you with enough experience to be "worth your time," who's to say that you can't find something rewarding earlier in the dungeon and get good experience doing it (one of my proposals for group dungeons was higher experience rates)? However, if you want to have a chance at all that, you need a group and who's going to want you in their group if you bail before the boss?