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View Full Version : A little help with a (very) little BBEG



gregunderscorem
2010-11-29, 05:36 PM
The main villain I'm designing for the upcoming campaign is a vampire halfling wizard with a permanent reduce person cast on him. He's a nasty little genius the size of a house cat :smalltongue:. I'd like to find a way to allow him to easily deliver touch attacks, including his drain abilities, and then get out safely. One thought I had was an at-will swift teleport with a range of a few feet, just enough to enter the PC's square safely and touch, but I don't quite know how to make it happen. I've trapped him on another plane which isn't coterminous with the ethereal plane, so he won't be able to travel ethereally. Any ideas?

Zeofar
2010-11-29, 05:38 PM
Abrupt Jaunt, PHBII: Lose familiar, but instead you may teleport up to 10ft as an immediate action (Int mod) times per day.

Does this work?

Toliudar
2010-11-29, 05:53 PM
Alternately, give him spring attack and a great tumble score, and style it as him bamfing (or blurring, or whatever) in and out.

Also, the idea of an un-yoda is fantastic! [goes away to scribble]

Grelna the Blue
2010-11-29, 05:59 PM
Don't know if any of the ideas below might work for you, but here you go.


If the players have already met him, this probably wouldn't work as it's a very specific concept, but when thinking about ways to allow him to deliver ranged touch attacks, I suddenly envisioned a tiny halfling vampire with exceptionally long and animated hair that allowed him to spider-walk on the ends of the tangled locks/braids/bloodstiffened ends. The hair could deliver attacks at range.

If he is a spellcaster you could either give him the Dimensional Jaunt feat out of Complete Mage and the Quicken Spell-like Ability feat, although that would only be Quickened 3x/day or you could make him the Pathfinder Conjurer specialist mage with its Dimensional Steps 8th lvl ability, although that would also need to be quickened.

If you ruled that the spell Spectral Hand allowed nonspell supernatural touch attacks as well as spells, you could have him use a wand or glove of Spectral Hand, although he wouldn't be able to use it to make slam attacks.

You could give him some item that allows him to fly and have him attack using the feat Flyby Attack.

Otherworld Odd
2010-11-29, 06:49 PM
Don't know if any of the ideas below might work for you, but here you go.


If the players have already met him, this probably wouldn't work as it's a very specific concept, but when thinking about ways to allow him to deliver ranged touch attacks, I suddenly envisioned a tiny halfling vampire with exceptionally long and animated hair that allowed him to spider-walk on the ends of the tangled locks/braids/bloodstiffened ends. The hair could deliver attacks at range.

If he is a spellcaster you could either give him the Dimensional Jaunt feat out of Complete Mage and the Quicken Spell-like Ability feat, although that would only be Quickened 3x/day or you could make him the Pathfinder Conjurer specialist mage with its Dimensional Steps 8th lvl ability, although that would also need to be quickened.

If you ruled that the spell Spectral Hand allowed nonspell supernatural touch attacks as well as spells, you could have him use a wand or glove of Spectral Hand, although he wouldn't be able to use it to make slam attacks.

You could give him some item that allows him to fly and have him attack using the feat Flyby Attack.


I just got the image of the party beating down the BBEG in a regular form and them him morphing to his super-hair-walking form for the epic next battle in true final fantasy style. O.o

JonRG
2010-11-29, 06:51 PM
If the bBEG is going to be using this tactic constantly, my vote is for Spring Attack. If you wanted it to be madness, you could also bump his move speed with class features/traits/items/buffs/etc.

Tvtyrant
2010-11-29, 07:02 PM
Not to try to tell you how to make your BBEG, but if you use Jermalaine and then make him a Warlock with the Gain Familiar feat you can have him ride a perfectly normal bat familiar in a dark environment and fire lasers (Eldritch Blast) at your party.

nedz
2010-11-29, 07:39 PM
If he is a spellcaster you could either give him the Dimensional Jaunt feat out of Complete Mage and the Quicken Spell-like Ability feat, although that would only be Quickened 3x/day or you could make him the Pathfinder Conjurer specialist mage with its Dimensional Steps 8th lvl ability, although that would also need to be quickened.

Cool Idea, which you could do with Horizon Walker, but Quicken SLA for a 4th level SLA requires CL 14.

Grelna the Blue
2010-11-29, 07:49 PM
Cool Idea, which you could do with Horizon Walker, but Quicken SLA for a 4th level SLA requires CL 14.

Hm, you're right. Any villain with a CL that high isn't likely to primarily rely on physical attacks, even with the Practiced Spellcaster feat.

I'd forgotten about Horizon Walkers, though.

Swooper
2010-11-29, 08:03 PM
If the players have already met him, this probably wouldn't work as it's a very specific concept, but when thinking about ways to allow him to deliver ranged touch attacks, I suddenly envisioned a tiny halfling vampire with exceptionally long and animated hair that allowed him to spider-walk on the ends of the tangled locks/braids/bloodstiffened ends. The hair could deliver attacks at range.
For bonus points, make this the hair on his feet*! :smallbiggrin:

*I always think of halflings as hobbits, not the kender-shaped things from the D&D illustrations..

gregunderscorem
2010-11-30, 08:54 AM
Wow these are all great ideas, thanks guys! I had looked at Dimensional Jaunt, but isn't that a supernatural and not a spell-like ability? Is there a way to quicken supernaturals?

As far as Spectral Hand, it feels a bit like DM-cheating to say that it just works. Does anyone know a rule that says if the spell allows delivery of drain?

Also, hair-walker is a go. Awesome idea.

Lastly, I guess I wasn't clear but this will be a higher level encounter, I'm planning on pumping my party up to 16th or higher. I'd like to make him either a full or 3/4 caster, so I don't think I can invest on spring attack or tumble. Maybe a physical caster at this high of a level is just foolish, but I really want to tell them, "His taunts and cackles ring in your ears when suddenly he vanishes. You feel a slight weight on your shoulder. 'Hello again' he whispers... take two negative levels"

Grelna the Blue
2010-11-30, 12:12 PM
Wow these are all great ideas, thanks guys! I had looked at Dimensional Jaunt, but isn't that a supernatural and not a spell-like ability? Is there a way to quicken supernaturals?

As far as Spectral Hand, it feels a bit like DM-cheating to say that it just works. Does anyone know a rule that says if the spell allows delivery of drain?

Also, hair-walker is a go. Awesome idea.

Lastly, I guess I wasn't clear but this will be a higher level encounter, I'm planning on pumping my party up to 16th or higher. I'd like to make him either a full or 3/4 caster, so I don't think I can invest on spring attack or tumble. Maybe a physical caster at this high of a level is just foolish, but I really want to tell them, "His taunts and cackles ring in your ears when suddenly he vanishes. You feel a slight weight on your shoulder. 'Hello again' he whispers... take two negative levels"


Yes, you can quicken SLAs with the feat Quicken Spell-Like Ability (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Quicken_Spell-Like_Ability).

Honestly, I can't see why Spectral Hand wouldn't work with SLAs. The only objection I could see to allowing a vampire to use it to inflict negative levels is saying that vampires may only drain through a slam (which is totally a GM call). However, there is already a metamagic feat called Reach Spell, allowing touch spells to be used as ranged touch spells within 30', so a metamagic feat called Reach Spell-Like Ability is therefore not unreasonable (I've seen a houseruled version online (http://savage-tides-of-mystara.wikispaces.com/)).

One other thing, if you do go with the hairwalker thing, you might find it useful to allow it to give the little bugger a significant racial bonus on Grapples. I get the impression that you're playing a 3.5 campaign, and the Grapple size modifiers for being that small are terrible in 3.5. You don't want him to have to use up all his movement ability just getting out of holds. Then too, if you wanted to make the encounter seem just horrifically unfair you could use that bonus offensively as well by to allow him to make multiple grapple attacks with his hair, rather than (or in addition to) using it in a whiplike fashion.