How to muzzle your BBEG without him losing his scare factor?

[Maho-Tsukai]

In a rather long running campaign of mine with my new playgroup that I lead has been doing quite well. They've had lots of fun taking down all kinds of threats and have been getting pretty proud of this. However, now is the time that **** hits the fan. They get to meet for the first time one of the BBEGs in the campaign. This group is of fairly new players and this is the first truly long and epic scale campaign they have been a part of. Thus, I wanted to create a very memorable and dangerous BBEG that will put the fear of god in their hearts but yet at the same time be, eventually, deflatable. At this point, however, they are not going to be anywhere near able to stop him. He's going to be the main baddie who'll pop up much more during the canpaign...and as a result he's epic level, as I intend for him to be the final villain...

However, as of now, they are FAR from the point in the plot en they finally take this guy down and thus I want to have this encounter be like one of those fights in a shonen manga where the heroes meet the main villain prematurely and get utterly and totally curb stomped yet make it out alive. I also want to keep this character's level a mystery yet at the same time have him show off just how nasty he is. The issue? I don't want to accidentally kill the party.....they are not TOTALLY new and I sent them through easier games to get the hang of it but their still somewhat inexperienced. As a result I am afraid of accidentally going too far and want to know how I can achieve the "one-sided shonen-style curb stop" that I want to produce with this encounter without totally destroying the party.(Though a single PC dying I would not mind.)

If your wondering, the character is a Wizard/Shadowcraft Mage/Dragon Master(3rd party class, altered here to actually not suck aka given 10/10 C: progression instead of 5/10 CL progression it has due to being made for 3e when pretty much EVERY caster PrC had 5/10 CL progression.) who's not a gnome.(adaptation clause). He focuses on using illusion spells and is basically the Killer Gnome without being a Gnome. He also is VERY scary metamagic-user due to the third party and also gets some situational abilities related to dragons, none of which are relevant here except for his ability to summon a dragon...

As far as spells he knows he's epic level, though the party is not to know that. He knows pretty much any spell of the illusion school and is also fond of enchantment spells. He's not an illusion specialist, though. In fact, he's a generalist and a dragomancer(something any arcane spellcaster can be by taking ranks in speak high draconic, though it comes with benefits and drawbacks.) and as a result knows a LOT of spells. Pretty much if it is on the wizard/sorc list, there is a good chance he may know it, though he obviously favors illusion spells and is a very subtle villain(he's been in the shadows for a while now and the party for a good chunk of their journey thought he was just a rich spoiled brat(he looks like he's about 15) that they where being payed to babysit(take with them and protect) for a number of their escapades.

Oh, and the party is fairly competent and powerful despite being new and are pretty good with making good characters though they are not OP obsessed and tend to combined character concepts with effective crunch. The party is the following: a Druid, Unarmed Swordsage, Beguiler, Warlock/Cleric/Edritch Disciple, and Psion(Telepath). They are all played well and have been quite successful thus far.

So any idea how to have operate the BBEG in a way that will allow the PCs to survive this encounter but still have them curb stomped?

[Urpriest]

I'd recommend spending time annoying the players with illusions. A Shadowcraft Mage can flood the field with illusions and minions. Have them fight some illusory opponents and an illusion of the BBEG, think they won, and then have the BBEG pop up completely fine. On the off chance that they know how the Simulacrum spell works, have them have a tough fight against a Simulacrum of the BBEG.

[Maho-Tsukai]

I do oh so love the idea of Simulacrum. Very reminiscent of the Itachi and Kisame clones that where battled in Naruto which is a plus since this BBEG is partly inspired by the Uchiha and their Genjutsu proficiency.(To the point where he has a homebrew spell loosely based off of the Tsukyomi Genjutsu.) Also I'd defiantly have fun toying with them via illusions and will take great joy when they find out they've been attacking nothing but shadowy figments the whole time.

[supermonkeyjoe]

The best way to make the PCs fear an enemy is to have him (seemingly) break the rules. Simulacrum usually takes 12 hours to cast, have him do it as an immediate action somehow, then if you want to be very cliched, he leaves the simulacrum to clear up the worms that aren't worthy of his attention.

[Cyrion]

Also, keep in mind that your villain doesn't have to be static.

If I'm going to have a recurring villain like this, I usually start them out at a slightly to moderately higher level than the players but have him level more slowly, so that when the final fight comes, the players have caught up with and can beat him. This also provides the opportunity for his abilities to change as time goes by, which will keep the players on their toes.

If he's only a few levels higher than the party, he'll be able to do a fair amount of damage, but the party will probably be able to drive him off. In this case you'll derive his scary factor from what he does, not how badly he curbstomps the party. A villain I ran once simply pushed a hostage off a balcony with a rope tied around her neck to create a diversion and cover his escape. The party became more scared of his ruthlessness than his actual fighting abilities.

[gomipile]

If the BBEG has a reason to keep the PCs alive to further his long term plans, then he'll use some lethal damage and a lot of nonlethal crowd control and/or actual nonlethal damage, I would think. Whelm-line spells from PHBII metamagicked out the yin-yang and machine-gunned ath the party should do nicely.

Easier and possibly more flavorful is something like a nonlethal substitution applied to a Shadowcraft illusion mimicking Apocalypse from the Sky. Everyone within 200+miles takes 10d6 nonlethal sonic damage, bam. There's nothing like overkill to provide a distraction.

Edit: sorry, it has to be energy. Everyone within 200+miles takes 10d6 nonlethal {electricity, or fire, or cold, or acid} damage, splortch.

[Maho-Tsukai]

I do understand what your saying about using RP as appose to crunch to bring fear to the PCs but they character can't work at anything less then epic fluff-wise due to the TRUE nature of what he is. He's thousands uppon thousands of years old, and not because he's a deity or undead being. Rather he was an epic mage so powerful that he decided godhood was too beneath him and sought to become something stronger they a diety. His means of doing this was by using magic to make his own personal reality an illusion and thus give him the ability to trancend reality and be so powerful that he could basicly do ANYTHING he wanted...he'd be even worse then pun-pun and have no limits. Too bad his wisdom score is a massive 8, as if it where higher he'd realize the foolish mistake he made.

As a result of his experiment he had suceeded in making his own reality an illusion, himself included. As a result he did not trancend reality as he wanted. He tranceded reality to the point where he can't interact with it at all beyond using vairous avatars, all of whom are only psudo-real but real enough to be treated as real crunch-wise. They've already encountered and defeated several avatars(previous big villains) though they don't know any of them where all avatars of the same being.

This is the encounter where they find out partly who they have been fighting, when the BBEG revials the avatar which is moddled after himself, an evil epic-level illusionist mage. They won't know he's epic and won't know his whole backstory, but they must know he's insainly powerful as the curb stomp is the doorway to the next plot hook that will lead them into epic levels. Yes, you can get disgusted at somebody's evil actions but if their only slightly stronger then you it's not going to cause you to try and become uber-godly powerful to defeat them. It's going to make you want to defeat them, yes, but your not going to need to do much growing in order to beat them, just a few levels.

Ultimatly the final battle will be against the mage himself reborn with an a big fat divine rank and totally draconic apperence to simulate the fact he's sitting somewhere above godhood but below fully trancending reality, though thats a long way off. For now they will believe that this avatar is the true form of the enemy, and in a way it is as it's ment to be an exact copy of him pre-illusion-i-fication.

Also, it's just more my narrtive style to go the curb stomp route. I tend to run my campaigns with a very heavy anime influence(including NPC's physcial apperences including crazy anime hair ect...) and am not big on gritty/grimdark and seirous games. I tend to favor plots that are more "shonen-esc" and feel more like something you'd watch on satruday mornings as a kid in the 80s-90s then something you'd read in a big thick fantasy novel. So your idea is good for a game with a more realistic tone but I prefer my games to feel like Dragon Ball Z and Gurren Lagann....but thats just my own personal tastes and style and if I ever decide to run a less "shonen anime" type of game your idea would work perfectly fine there.

Also, I planned on mutli-metamagic abuse as Speak High Draconic allows this guy to use metamagic feats that he dose not even possess, at VERY reduced costs though with some considerable drawbacks. As long as he can pass his speak high draconic checks(Which is not too hard seeing as it's an int-based skill and he also has a skill focus in speak high draconic.) he should be in a prime place to abuse metamagic like crazy, though. Speak high draconic is also his reason for the dragon master class, which has a capstone helps mitigate one of the worst drawbacks of that skill, the lost spell-slots.

[cd4]

This encounter assumes that the BBEG is still with the party.

The party goes to a place the BBEG hasn't been to before with a temple or similar that holds an artifact of power (exactly what and why helps the next hook). The BBEG suddenly enters the place and steals the artifact before exiting. The party will probably ask the BBEG why who will reply something along the lines of "I knew you would get me here safely undetected and I need this item for my work. I don't need you any more so I think I will show you a few of my friends." Casts Summon Monster/Illusionary monsters and Create illusion of humanoids who answered his call.

After a few rounds of fighting these illusions several of the priests rush out of the temple and move to attack the BBEG who calmly kills them all with one spell. The BBEG says something like "I need to be elsewhere, my twin can deal with you" and teleports in the "twin" (simulacrum) and teleports out leaving the party to fight the simulacrum and the remaining illusions.


The fact that the BBEG dealt with all those priests with one spell shows how powerful he is but with all the illusions that he has created he gives a tough fight to defeat the simulacrum. The party will probably start researching the artifact after the battle which they either run from after his display of power stays and fight the hard battle against the simulacrum. What the artifact is and why he wanted it will lead them to the next stage of the plot.

[gomipile]

Doing 10d6 nonlethal to everyone in a circle 400+miles across isn't enough? Do you know how disruptive that would be to an economy? He could plant eggs in every woman who was knocked out, children of the corn style, or use it to cover any number of other truly horrible acts.

Edit: not to mention that with the right feats, he can do this with any level 8 spell slot. How many level 8+ spell slots can an epic arcanist have? A weaksauce level 21 wizard with no items and an average race at 25 point buy could spam it 10 to 12 times in a row, with a casting time of one standard action each. 120d6 nonlethal could help knock up, I mean out, a lot of medium level NPCs.

All I'm getting at is that that much nonlethal damage doesn't have to be just "roleplaying." it could be a key part of his master plan, and unable to be stopped by the PCs at all, yet with no chance of killing them.

[graeylin]

BBEG has been hampered by some type of magic dampening item.. let's say a ring or collar. He can't remove it (it was placed by an even higher level BBEG), and it limits his spells per day, power level, whatever... so he works to get the party to do it for him. whatever your set up, just add this in.. eventually, the BBEG confronts the party, and using his illusion skills, or bluffing, or subtle clue dropping throghout the previous months, convinces the party the way to ensure his defeat is to remove the collar... dispel the magic, disintigrate it, shatter it, whatever...

He fights them, they think they know how to kick his butt, they corner him, and do their thing... and poof, the collar is gone after a long, drawn out battle that leaves them exhausted, and seems to leave the BBEG using the last of his spells. COllar gone, the BBEG stands up, stretches, and suddenly, is a much more powerful thing... And while he COULD kill the party, he laughs, thanks them for doing his dirty work, stuns them or whatever, and leaves them alive. Perhaps calls them "useful".. ultimate slur.

Flies off in a cloud of dust, leaving the party wanting their own revenge for being used.

[gomipile]

Oh, if you go with my Children of the Corn idea, you get bonus points if one or more of the party members are female or married.