E6 Gotham Supervillian Campaign (3.5P)

[Nizaris]

Yes, you read that right, I'm working on an E6 villains's campaign for ideally 3 players in a large, metropolitan city with a nighttime vigilante that routinely beats up criminals up and drops them off at the prison and I would like some input. I'm planning on 3.5 and Pathfinder materials, Pathfinder overruling 3.5 materials. I'm halving BAB and skill rank requirements for PrC's to add more options.

The City: Golemshead; a large city at the highest level of the settlement chart. Broken down into multiple segments with a waterfront. The majority of buildings in the main part of town are at least 4 stories tall with smaller buildings around the outskirts and docks. Good amount of wealth disparity with the wealthiest being an entrepreneur that controls a large portion of the production centers but is not the masked crusader.

The "Hero": Not going to get into his identity, the Bruce Wayne figure's a red herring. I'm thinking an Unarmed Swordsage 3 /Avenging Executioner 1 /Shadowdancer 2. Just so you know what the players are up against. All else fails "Superman" steps in and it steps up to them vs the Justice League.

The "Villains": My initial plan is to have them start as generic lvl 1 NPCs with a 10 point buy, mere henchmen. From there, they get busted, arrested, and hauled off to jail where they pick up their initial class and develop a character flaw. Once they break out, or are released they can hatch plans to build their power-base/wealth until "Batman" busts them again. In between sessions they will hatch plans and bring them up to me prior to the weekly session.

Other Rules in use
*They automatically gain the Leadership feat as group once their infamy is high enough
*Wound/Vitality health system, I like it more
*Every character has a flaw of some sort, what villain doesn't have their quirks?
*Level adjustment buy-off is allowed (max +2 race/template)

Main questions I have:
*Rough build for the villains, looking for a Poison Ivy, Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, and other archetypal villains (no Rah's Al Guhl).
*What am I forgetting? I know evil campaigns often run the risk of inter-player breakdowns and general advice.

[supermonkeyjoe]

The most important thing is making sure the villains actually have a motivation other than, "lol I'm evil" also are the villains supposed to be working together or does each one have their own gang?

[Nizaris]

Working together for the most part, The "Batman" character is far beyond their ability to beat solo and they'll find out the first time they're working for a villain that the villain could just kill them at any random moment. Beat Batman and take control of the city, is what I'm leaning towards, E6 makes it so they'll be able to usually over-power the guards after a few levels with the help of their mooks, failure just increasing their infamy and garnering them more henchmen.

[DemonRoach]

Generally I find if you start the players off with strong inter-character links they can get past potential Evil stupidity (ie. Family members, former gang incarcerated together, etc.).

Also the obvious "Chaotic evil is NOT Chaotic stupid" speech if required.

For builds, my initial guesses:
Obviously you only get a level or two of the PRestige classes when mentioned.

Two-Face - Human Barbarian 3/Factotum 3
Poison Ivy - Bard 6(Drow Poison use ACF), see appropiate handbook here. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=4854.0)
Penguin -Gnome Expert 6
Joker/Harley Quinn - Jaebrun Jesters 6(Dragon Compendium)
Clayface - Changeling Rogue 1/Full BAB class/Warshaper
Catwoman - Human Rogue 5/Thief Acrobat 1
Killer Croc - Lizardman Barbarian 6
Mr Freeze - Arctic Elf Wizard 6, Cold focused magic
Scarecrow - Human Sorcerer 6, Fear focused magic

Thats all I got for now...

[Answerer]

The city's name is "Gotham"

Also, E6 probably prevents Shneekey's Joker Bard from functioning, which is a shame.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

My thought for Ivy was a Druid with the Greenbound Summoning feat from Lost Empires of Faerun that turns the Nature's Allies she summons into plant creatures with a bunch of handy bonuses (including damage reduction, fast healing and +6 strength). You'd definitely want to get poison use in there somewhere though.

For Mr. Freeze, you could use the cold domain wizard variant from Unearthed Arcana (and the SRD) to give him some extra spells if he doesn't specialize.

Similarly, Firefly could work as a fire domain wizard or just as an evoker (or sorcorer for that matter) with a focus on fire spells. I'd also give him flight as a magic item or possibly make him a flying race like a raptoran.

Man-Bat could be a lycanthrope using a dire bat as the base animal. If you make him an afflicted lycanthrope, it's just a +2 LA so you would be able to buy it off and still fit his class levels (if I understand the rules correctly.)

Mad Hatter might work as either a bard with a focus on charm and suggestion spells or a charm domain cleric.

Ventriloquist and Scarface could be made to work somehow using the Item Familiar rules.

Getting a little more obscure, I'd love to see someone run Tweedledum and Tweedledee as dvati twins, though I'm not sure what class would work best

[Zonugal]

Off the top of my head, how about some of these?

The Joker: Vecna-Blooded Human Bard 5/Chameleon 1
Harley Quinn: Human Wizard 1/Rogue 3
Two-Face: Half-Orc Archivist 3/Church Inquisitor 2/Barbarian 1
Penguin: Middle-Aged Glacier Dwarf Rogue 1/Warlock 3/Artificer 1/Merchant Prince 1
The Riddler: Intellectual-Prodigy Human Artificer 3/Rogue 1/Combat Trapsmith 2
Mr. Freeze: Necropolitan Human Wizard 1/Archivist 3/Mystic Theurge 2
Catwoman: Human Rogue 5/Thief Acrobat 1
Ra's al Ghul: Vampire Human Human Paragon 1/Archivist 1/Human Paragon 2/Warblade 2
Bane: Lolth-Touched Human Swashbuckler 3/Barbarian 1/Archivist1/Warblade 1
Clayface: Half-Clay Golem Changeling Sneak Attack--Hit & Run--Zhen. Fighter 4/Warshaper 2
Killer Croc: Were-Crocodile Human Barbarian 3
Dr. Strange: Old-Aged Human Telepath 6
Poison Ivy: Volodni Avenging Druid 6
MadHatter: Gnome Beguiler 6
Scarecrow: Human Wizard 5/Rogue 1
Deadshot: Human Rogue 1/Urban Ranger 1/Sneak Attack--Hit & Run Fighter 1/Urban Ranger 2/Assassin 1
Solomon Grundy: Death Knight Human Dungeoncrasher Fighter 6
Deathstroke: Lolth-Touched Human Ranger 1/Warblade 4/Assassin 1

[Nizaris]

Zonugal; wouldn't Rah's be a lich, the phylactery a pool of goo.

Lord Il Palazzo; A +2 has buy offs at levels 6 and 9 so one could be bought off if you finagle the math.

There's a optional rule with LA races that change the point buy values as follows LA (+0, 32) (+1, 25) (+2, 18) (+3, 10) (+4, 0). Since they continue to gain feats and XP should I just have a bank that they can drop XP into to buy off their LA (no stat adjustment) equal to the normal amount, sound like a good idea?

[Zonugal]

Zonugal; wouldn't Rah's be a lich, the phylactery a pool of goo.

You can't be a lich in E6 though...

[Nizaris]

You can if you're an NPC and not a player character. Players can't achieve Lichdom nor can they be a CR5 manticore, doesn't mean they don't exist for the players to talk to and to be frank I wasn't planning on bringing the League of Shadow in anyways, already have a large enough Rogue's Gallery as supporting characters as is, the important one for the players is Batman.

I was also thinking of expanding it up one level to E7 since it makes interactions with LA2 races easier for the buy-off since 6 is when the first buy-off occurs and one extra level makes the Bats more fun. The only possible issue is 4th level spells come into play, are there ones that make life much harder? I know Locate Creature is 4th, as are Phantasmal Killer, Scrying, and Lesser Geas, all pretty much the spells that start making life more difficult. I could just ban them or make them harder to use but opinions would be nice.

I was thinking of making the city more akin to Ebberon with a low-magic, high abundance to make it a little more pliable for super-villainery.

[Zonugal]

You can if you're an NPC and not a player character. Players can't achieve Lichdom nor can they be a CR5 manticore, doesn't mean they don't exist for the players to talk to and to be frank I wasn't planning on bringing the League of Shadow in anyways, already have a large enough Rogue's Gallery as supporting characters as is, the important one for the players is Batman.

As the DM you can do anything, just stating the RaW of the situation. Plus I always liked the idea of the League of Shadows being run my a Vampire who rules over a whole, wide group of vampiric ninjas. It really raises the stakes for an E6 Batman and really adds the intense fear/pressure of whenever he has to face off against Ra's.

But I'd agree, Ra's is a bit "above & beyond" of the other villains in the Rogue's Gallery so good choice on not having him there.


I was also thinking of expanding it up one level to E7 since it makes interactions with LA2 races easier for the buy-off since 6 is when the first buy-off occurs and one extra level makes the Bats more fun. The only possible issue is 4th level spells come into play, are there ones that make life much harder? I know Locate Creature is 4th, as are Phantasmal Killer, Scrying, and Lesser Geas, all pretty much the spells that start making life more difficult. I could just ban them or make them harder to use but opinions would be nice.

4th level spells really do change a lot. Reincarnate, Polymorph, Lesser Planar Ally, Divine Power, Animate Dead and more really push magic into a powerful domain. The other thing to consider is it removes the dedicated reward for a full-martial character in the form of +6 BaB (and thus the second attack).


I was thinking of making the city more akin to Ebberon with a low-magic, high abundance to make it a little more pliable for super-villainery.

Solid idea.

[Answerer]

You can't be a lich in E6 though...
This is actually an interesting claim.

To be a Lich, you need to be able to cast spells (trivial), you need Craft Wondrous Item (again, trivial), and lastly, you need Caster Level 11th (decidedly not trivial). A 6th-level spellcaster has CL 6 by default; we'd need +5 CL in forms that would apply to crafting.

Artificers get +2 CL for the purposes of Crafting, but then the "cast spells" requirement becomes tricky. You might be able to UMD that though.

Assuming that's so, can we find +3 CL that are general enough to work for crafting the phylactery?

[Nizaris]

This is actually an interesting claim.

To be a Lich, you need to be able to cast spells (trivial), you need Craft Wondrous Item (again, trivial), and lastly, you need Caster Level 11th (decidedly not trivial). A 6th-level spellcaster has CL 6 by default; we'd need +5 CL in forms that would apply to crafting.

Artificers get +2 CL for the purposes of Crafting, but then the "cast spells" requirement becomes tricky. You might be able to UMD that though.

Assuming that's so, can we find +3 CL that are general enough to work for crafting the phylactery?

Since Pathfinder feats are being allowed there's always the Master craftsman feat which lets you use your Craft or Profession ranks in place of Caster level so there's your +3