Holy smoldering overkill!

[Mixt]

A certain guy i know tends to make his BBEG's horribly overpowered when he get's to DM.

The players go through the rest of the campaign with no casualties, and then when the final battle comes around suddenly, BLAM! Death by final boss.

Let's take an example.
Some partial statistics for one of his BBEG's

Size Category: Collosal+++
About 4500 Hit Points.
DR 120/-
Fast Healing 20
Immunity to all non-epic spells.
Immunities to: Sleep, Paralyzis, Critical hits, Death effects, Ability Damage, Ability Drain, Energy Drain, Poison, Disease, Mind Affecting, Involuntary teleportation and planeshifting, involuntary polymorphing, petrification, Blindness, Fear, and Acid Damage.
Fire and Electricity resistance 30.
Dominate monster as an at-will SLA
Mind Rape as an 3/day SLA
A poison aura that requires a Fortitude save every round you spend in it, every failed save does 1d4 constitution damage and increase the DC for the next save by 2.
Blind Sight out to 800 ft.
A Breath weapon that deals 36d6 Fire Damage.
Don't get me started on the Swallow Whole and the massive damage that things stomach does.

Try throwing that thing at a non-epic party and see what happens.
Especially when they come in unprepared.
After having fought through an army of Dominated and Mind-Raped dragons, hydras, and an assortment of other nasties.
Sure, it's the final boss, but still, this is insane.

Does anybody else ever run into things like this?

And that's not even close to the worst he's done.
BBEG's...cannot be beaten...eating my face...the horror...

[TheRiov]

I find people who throw this kind of crud at players usually are doing it because

a) they can't find a way to make a lesser villain a true threat --either because the players are exceedingly creative or the GM isn't creative enough with lesser powers

b) They're new/inept

c) They want to provide no chance of the players surviving--which in their mind means they 'lost' as the gm. So many GM's regard it as Me vs. Players where the GM has a stacked deck.

[Mixt]

I have to go with option A in this case.

Though to be fair, that particular one still went down in the end.
Turns out that for all it's power it was actually quite stupid, kept running into traps and natural hazards in it's attempts to catch the fleeing PC's.

Got a bloody mountain collapsed on top of it because it was to busy trying to eat everyone to pay attention to the environment (Lost like half of it's hit points just from that)
Or when it fell into a volcano, fire resistance 30 helps a lot, but total submersion in magically enchanted lava still hurts even with that.
Or when the floor could not handle it's weight and collapsed, starting a rockslide and sending it tumbling into a ravine (More like Grand Canyon if you ask me) with dozens of several tons heavy boulders falling after it.

Trying to fight it directly was definitely not an option however, it was all run the hell away and trick it into killing itself.
And we ended up losing everyone except the Ranger.

9 times out of 10 the final boss ends up killing everyone, this was one of the few cases where we were tricky enough to come out on top (But as i mentioned, we still lost everyone except the Ranger to the damned thing)

Good at balancing BBEG's, this DM is not.

[Traab]

Ill be honest, I kinda like the idea of BBEG you cant beat in a straight up fight. Having to use your spells imaginatively to cause the final boss to die seems like its a much more interesting way to run a fight. The caveat to this is there has to be a clue or three that lets you KNOW you arent supposed to charge in swords swinging in order to fight it.

[Morph Bark]

Hmmm, getting fire and poison immunity is easy enough... dealing cold damage to deal it damage (but not through spells)... get Darkstalker to get around that blindsight... an item that gives immunity to mind-affecting stuff...

Easy enough if you know about it. Plus, you managed to wade through seas of dragons and hydras and such? Sounds like you're pretty well-constructed as a party then.

[Mixt]

Except we didn't know about it.
We came into the things lair to do recon in order to find out what we are dealing with, only to be detected and end up running for our lives, unable to shake it off.

The only prior information we had on it was that it could Dominate other creatures and that it was not of this world, that's about all we knew of it beforehand.
Bloody extraplanar abominations.
And Bloody scrying not working, forcing us to do recon manually, it's like the whole lair was enveloped in an anti-scrying field.

And we weren't exactly in good shape after getting mauled by monsters for rougly half an hour in-game time prior to that.

We thought we could fight through it's minions, check what the hell this thing was and then get out and come back later, instead it ends up chasing us across half the country without giving us a chance to rest.
We could probably have thought that out better.

Also, let's take a look at the way it was introduced.

DM: You see teeth, big, sharp, the size of ancient redwood trees, then you see the head, and only the head for nothing else could possibly fit within your field of vision, you find yourselves wondering just what in the nine hells it is you are looking at.
Party: ...That can't be good.
DM: You hear a voice echoing in your head, saying "WHAT'S THIS? ANOTHER MEAL, COME HERE LITTLE MORSELS!" Also, make a Will Save against being Dominated.
Ranger: Damn, it knows we are here.
Wizard: RUN YOU FOOLS! (I see what you did there buddy)
BBEG: "HUNGRY! MY MINIONS GONE, HAVE TO GET FOOD MYSELF!"

And so the final boss battle turned into a chase sequence.
We didn't consider the possibility of us being unable to escape in case we were found out, and that almost got the whole party killed.
I suppose that might have contributed to the high death count.

In hindsight, it may have been a good idea to capture one of the dragons or something and get information from there.

[randomhero00]

Shrug, my group has gone up against a couple of badies like that. But that was low 20s/epic. And we're all optimizers.

edit: hehe, and won I meant to say. But ya that's stupid crazy for a non-epic party.

[NichG]

I'd say thats pretty rough but for a very optimized party it'd be a reasonable challenge in a straight up fight. For a less optimized party, it's hopefully a puzzle encounter where there are things you can do to explore and exploit its weaknesses (in this case, it wasn't very smart). A BBEG should be more than just another straight up fight, honestly, but the game system really does encourage going in guns blazing and trying to alpha strike things to death.

I've been in games where we've fought things with 60 AC and 24 attacks a round at level 12 that each have a Fort save versus negative levels, and come out mostly ahead (we didn't kill it, but we kept it busy until stuff could happen in the background). I've also been in games where our Lv10 party was massacred by a single Elder Black Pudding, except for the kobold monk who realized he could spring attack kite it to oblivion.

[Anteros]

Well, you admit that you went in woefully unprepared...and yet you still won. Doesn't seem that impossible to me.

[Douglas]

Meh, I bet Team Solars could kill it and they're not even level 20.:smalltongue:

[Quietus]

Only 4500 HP? That's pretty tame.

[Fiery Diamond]

Depends highly on how optimized the players are. In any game I've ever played in or run, this would massacre a party of level 20 characters. But for some groups, all they need is to get the charging barbarian close enough and prevent it from getting hit for one round. Or something like that, I've never been able to grasp the concepts behind high-op play. I play gestalt games at an optimization level that makes the power pale in comparison to single-classed non-gestalt high-op stuff that's around here.

[super dark33]

My DM sent us at level 7 a phonix thing he made, we needed to survive for 10rounds so anouter phonix thing would kill him.
we didnt even get to fight a monster with a CR higher then 9 without help, so i think it doesnt count.

[Ravens_cry]

My DM sent us at level 7 a phonix thing he made, we needed to survive for 10rounds so anouter phonix thing would kill him.
we didnt even get to fight a monster with a CR higher then 9 without help, so i think it doesnt count.
oh dear:smalleek:
Oh you poor, poor thing.

[Mixt]

I did say that that wasn't even close to his worst.
And it was also one out of only three that we have managed to win against.

The worst thing he's ever pulled can only be described as a sentient plane.
Imagine if all the infinite layers of the Abyss combined into one, gained sentience, and went on a omnicidal rampage across the multiverse, in the process absorbing everything it destroyed into itself to gain even more power.

It's like some horrible black hole made out of pure evil.

Now imagine trying to fight that.
TMK (Total Multiverse Kill)

There was just no way to fight that thing, once it was born it could not be stopped.

[NichG]

I did say that that wasn't even close to his worst.
And it was also one out of only three that we have managed to win against.

The worst thing he's ever pulled can only be described as a sentient plane.
Imagine if all the infinite layers of the Abyss combined into one, gained sentience, and went on a omnicidal rampage across the multiverse, in the process absorbing everything it destroyed into itself to gain even more power.

It's like some horrible black hole made out of pure evil.

Now imagine trying to fight that.
TMK (Total Multiverse Kill)


That doesn't sound like its a BBEG. That sounds like environment. How would I fight that? Find something of ultimate good and let it ingest it, and hope it gets horrible cosmic indigestion and, er, 'emits' all the planes it has eaten so far. Or even better, get inside it somehow and treat as a dungeon. Or maybe just sit inside it and cast Geas on it to have a subservient universe at your beck and call (no save, and since its 'as lesser geas' it must obey your instructions). Its probably immune to mind affecting though. Maybe it's a good use for the destructive aspect of the Genesis spell?

[Legend]

Ill be honest, I kinda like the idea of BBEG you cant beat in a straight up fight. Having to use your spells imaginatively to cause the final boss to die seems like its a much more interesting way to run a fight. The caveat to this is there has to be a clue or three that lets you KNOW you arent supposed to charge in swords swinging in order to fight it.
Yeah, this was one feature of the Dungeon Adventure Paths that I really liked. Often the big bosses can weakened by player actions during play or the players have chances to bring in outside aid or find loot that specifically helps - all building to this fight that the PCs couldn't just walk up and win at the start of the adventure but now they've got a shot (often through smart play and non-comabt prowess).

[Gaius Marius]

I remember once the DM throwing a Geludon (CR 14) at our nice little party of 5th-level characters.

That was quite interesting. Luckily, the quest's objective wasn't to beat it, but to destroy what it was guarding. I remember being trapped by it (am the wizard), and, out of desperation, I offered to sell my soul to him.

Came the next 8 rounds me and the creature discussing the terms of the deal, providing time for my team to achieve the objective. It didn't really cared much for what it was supposed to guard.

[Traab]

Maybe it's a good use for the destructive aspect of the Genesis spell?

That sort of bad guy hits me as the type that is created to have a single weakness, but unfortunately, the DM assumes you can read his mind, and since HE is able to figure it out, (because he came up with it, but he doesnt think of THAT part) then it must be obvious to the players as well. "All you had to do was arrange these 17 mirrors in this simple polydodecahedran prism shape, then bounce three empowered lightning bolts off of the third from the left and BANG! The guy is dead! How hard is that?!"

Kind of like that arc of the Darths and Droids webcomic where pete takes over and runs them through a death trap of a dungeon that HE of course knew a simple way through. The start of the arc. (http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0333.html)

[Starshade]

I did say that that wasn't even close to his worst.
And it was also one out of only three that we have managed to win against.

The worst thing he's ever pulled can only be described as a sentient plane.
Imagine if all the infinite layers of the Abyss combined into one, gained sentience, and went on a omnicidal rampage across the multiverse, in the process absorbing everything it destroyed into itself to gain even more power.

It's like some horrible black hole made out of pure evil.

Now imagine trying to fight that.
TMK (Total Multiverse Kill)


That is comparable to Captain Jean Luc Picard and his trusted NCC-1701 D to fight a sentient entity of Kardashev scale's third level (100% usage of an galaxy, imagine an flying, dyson sphereish thing, encompassing every sun in an galaxy.) Imagine that an something as an borg ship, or similiar super entity.

What is the purpose? you could not fight anything of that scale, I'd assume the super entity is theoretically an mortal, woundable creature, though the scale of it, would mean it would be the same as killing an sentient planet by cutting it to pieces with an showel, without any special equipment, or magic/tech.


To be honest: such an thing, would not make an interesting BBEG; rather, an interesting SETTING. Imagine living on an living giantish demon, riding trough the etheric plane, where the outer planes are stuff as an swimming turtle, walking giants, demons, etc, the size of our planets, with entire worlds within their crumbling outer crusts, and on top of them. Sounds as an funny D&D setting, tho, a bad BBEG.

[Mixt]

I have a sneaking suspicion that we were supposed to prevent it from ever coming into existence in the first place, because the moment it came alive everything was pretty much over.

Round one: Creature uses Reality-shattering Big Bang on Sigil, Lady Of Pain and all of Sigil is instantly obliberated. Plane of Water is corrupted. Plane of air is snuffed out.
Round two: Infinity Beams erases the positive energy plane from existence and causes the Plane Of Fire to explode, tear through dimensional barriers, and utterly barbeque an large chunk of the Material Plane. Party hit by an infinite number of galaxy-sized disintegrate beams, TPK.
Round three: The Negative energy plane get's erased, The Nine Hells get's turned into a giant super-massive black hole, Asmodeus himself dies horribly. The laws of magic are torn up by the roots, causing all magic everywhere to go haywire. The Material Plane suffers a bad case of Big Crunch.

That's just the first 18 seconds after it was born.

But fighting the thing responsible for creating that abomination isn't exactly easy either, considering that the thing responsible is literally ingrained into the psyche of a vast majority of every sentient creature...
...
...
...Oh for the love of he didn't...:smallannoyed:
I think i figured out what he was going for with that one.

[Tavar]

Please share. Because, I still have no clue.

[The Glyphstone]

One of the people who raeg at the suggestion that the Lady of Pain is unkillable and so wrote an entire campaign so his BBEG could oneshot her?

That's my guess.

[Mixt]

Turns out this DM bases most of his BBEG's on characters and concepts from other media.

He takes a character or concept from a movie/game/show/whatever that he likes and then twists it around and adds a bunch of stuff to make it even more dangerous than the original.

And that is how nearly all of his BBEG's are generated.

I believe the example in the first post was some sort of twisted version of the Green Death from How To Train Your Dragon.
Make it bigger, extend the mind control to working on everything rather than just dragons, give it speech and a bunch of immunities and special abilities, then laugh while everything dies.

Didn't realize this until just now, but when i sit down and think about it every BBEG he throws at us seems to be a previously existing character with things tacked on to make it deadlier.
Maybe he suffers from lack of creativity?
He shall now be known as "Rip-off boy"

Now think about that, then consider that
A) This thing was created as a result of something that is present within practically all sentient life, it's rooted into the psyche and instinct of pretty much everyone.
B) It makes the universe go CRUNCH!
C) TPK by "Galaxy-sized disintegration beams"
D) It absorbs everything it destroys into itself like some sort of black hole
E) It is most likely based on something from another form of media that he is familiar with, with the usual add-ons such as sentience.

Now what is the obvious conclusion to these observations?

I'm not sure what to think about this.

[tyckspoon]

Now think about that, then consider that
A) This thing was created as a result of something that is present within practically all sentient life, it's rooted into the psyche and instinct of pretty much everyone.
B) It makes the universe go CRUNCH!
C) TPK by "Galaxy-sized disintegration beams"
D) It absorbs everything it destroys into itself like some sort of black hole
E) It is most likely based on something from another form of media that he is familiar with, with the usual add-ons such as sentience.

Now what is the obvious conclusion to these observations?

I'm not sure what to think about this.

I'd guess either one of the comic-book apocalypses allowed to actually happen instead, or maybe Gurren-Lagann's Anti-Spiral/Spiral Nemesis. The scale used in the final fight(s) could make that stuff happen pretty easily.

[satorian]

Are you thinking of Galactus?

[only1doug]

Are you thinking of Galactus?

I thought that Galactus is merely planet sized.

I'm drawing a Blank, obviously watching the wrong films.

[Mixt]

2:30 to 3:33 of this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvn9zCg4hi0)

That's the first thing i find myself thinking of.
Modified to fit the D&D setting, given a mind of it's own so that it's an actual creature instead of a force of nature, and bam, there we have it, the single most horribly overpowered monster he has ever thrown at us.

He just had to do it didn't he?

[satorian]

The Snarl? The Nothing? Either way, I don't think there is anything wrong with drawing inspiration from media for your games. Is everything Cthulu-esque off-limits? Based in Greek or Norse or Irish mythology? The issue with this guy clearly isn't that he is inspired by other media, but that he seems to enjoy relishing in his ability to make arbitrarily powerful BBEGs. That kind of crap is fine for Dicefreaks speculation or epic games, but absurd for standard lvl 1-20 campaigns.

Edit: Oh and Mixt, that video is blocked in the US.

[Erloas]

It sounds kind of like Parallax from the Green Lantern. About all I know of him is from the movie. But his energy is "fear" which is in everyone, and at the end (of the film) he becomes some world destroying super cloud of death that shoots lasers of fear energy at people. He also had at least some level of mind control, though in the film he only ever controls one person.

[Kojiro]

2:30 to 3:33 of this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvn9zCg4hi0)

Blocked here. Could you just say what it is, please?

[Thespianus]

Only 4500 HP? That's pretty tame.

Maxed out Orbs of Sound (the effect is a ball of sound, not a spell) will kill this thing easy. ;)

[Mixt]

Very well, i will quote the relevant dialogue.


Well then, take a good look at where this universe is heading.
The power of the Spiral which can only think of evolving, will eventually bring the destruction of the universe.
The power of the Spiral is that which connects life to the universe.
The growth of life and the growth of the universe are proportional.
In order for life to gain the power of the Spiral, the search for a form that could harness it's desires had begun. That is evolution.
However, in the end control over the Spiral power shall be beyond constraint and all life shall become it's own galaxy.
These gigantic galaxies will consume each other, becoming a black hole and returning the universe to the void. That is the Spiral Nemesis.

Take that as the base and do the normal modifications, such as giving it a mind of it's own.

Every creature feels the need to preserve itself, often at any cost, this need for survival leads to greed and selfishnes, good beings supress this, but it's still there, and even for them it still rears it's ugly head from time to time, and in everybody elses case it leads to monstrous acts all for the sake of your own progress.
If these evil deeds were to release a form of energy that builds up over millions of years...well, the moment that mass of energy grows a mind and starts acting rather than remaining inert is the moment the universe meets a horrible end as it proceeds to absorb everything into itself, leaving absolutely nothing behind.
Just needs some random idiot to trigger the whole chain reaction that causes the thing to start moving around, which was bound to happen eventually given enough time.

Which means that we were fighting against the basic nature of every living thing from the start.

I think that's what the DM was going for.

[satorian]

Yeah, never heard of it. Not every nerd is the same kind of nerd. Maybe best to just tell us next time instead of expecting us to get it? You know, like a DM who expects you to read his mind to kill his puzzle monster?

[Tavar]

To be fair, he did tell us. Or, tried to. It's not his fault that the video was blocked for some and not others.

[Analytica]

I find myself thinking of End of Evangelion, myself. :smallsmile:

[Ursus the Grim]

Yeah, never heard of it. Not every nerd is the same kind of nerd. Maybe best to just tell us next time instead of expecting us to get it? You know, like a DM who expects you to read his mind to kill his puzzle monster?

I have watched Gurren Lagann a few times through and it doesn't sound like a shoe in. But here's the relevant information.

The Spiral Nemesis (スパイラル・ネメシス, Supairaru Nemeshisu?) is a theoretical event which the Anti-Spiral race are fighting to prevent. It would theoretically occur when Spiral Energy evolves beyond a certain point. As the Anti-Spiral themselves explain it, the evolution of life would lead to a loss of control of Spiral Power, which had already shown throughout the series to ignore the law of conservation of mass (IE: creating matter from nothing, from Giga Drill Breaks to the transformation of the higher levels of Gunmen), and all life forms in the universe evolving into full-sized galaxies spontaneously. The sudden imbalance of mass in the universe would lead to these mega-galaxies devouring each other, forming a black hole, and the universe returning to nothingness. This is the Spiral Nemesis, the theoretical event that the Anti-Spiral destroyed so many Spiral races to prevent from ever occurring.

From the TTGL wiki. Basically, Spiral Energy is what makes humans dominant. It represents progression over time, nearly exponential progression. The Spiral Nemesis is an event that occurs when that Spiral becomes too much for the universe to handle.

For a sense of scope, in the final battle between the two parties to prevent the advent of the Spiral Nemesis, giant robots were throwing Galaxies at each other. I mean that literally.

[NichG]

Heh, thats funny since I was just in a monstrously overpowered campaign (we never threw galaxies, but at one point we had to physically deliver a universe to someone as a wedding present) where we (at times) fought something called Spiral. Of course, in our case it was a curse that gave things neverending life with no going back - if you were injured, you never healed, etc. Basically consolidated suffering that you couldn't even die to get away from, and grew and grew with time (if you ever got any Spiral, it increased by 10% per game). But we eventually found out that it was the corrupted form of something very much like the Guren Lagann spiral. Hillarious since the DM hadn't even seen Guren Lagann at that point, and he got kinda creeped out when we showed it to him.

[noparlpf]

I don't have any useful input, but I'm glad I read this thread. I'm new at this DMing business and I'm starting my first adventure soon. I'm going to try to take the moral of this thread to heart.

[Cerlis]

-That monster is totally ridiculous

-Your DM is insane if he thought you should actually beat that traditionally

-From what you describe all your advantages where given to you by the DM. Ergo i believe you where NOT meant to beat it traditionally and where meant to beat it the way you did. Classic "This monster is unstoppable" sequence. the only problem is he shoulda found a way to show you it was all powerful before going and using TPK moves on you.

[koscum]

Immunity to all non-epic spells.



Try throwing that thing at a non-epic party and see what happens.


Wait, what?!?!?

Here's how you defeat it: Gather all your books (they don't have to be D&D related) and d4's (they're pointy) and throw them at that DM freak.





Lady Of Pain and all of Sigil is instantly obliberated.



Asmodeus himself dies horribly.

Lady of Pain who used Words of Creation (that would be an understatement, 'cause she used an effin' Speech of Creation) to fix/reshape the multiverse after Vecna f***** it up was killed? Asmodeus who decided to end the Blood War by throwing Abyss into Elementary Chaos just because he was bored was killed? Just use a sharp knife on your DM before somebody else does.