So, I may be boned....

[Hawkflight]

Hey everyone. So, I'm going to be playing in an IRL D&D game starting on Tuesday. And ... it's a weird one. It's actually two games, the good guys and the bad guys. Unfortunately ... the good guys have five players, while the bad guys (us) only have two, including myself.

So, I need help making sure my character is fully optimized so my team stands a chance.

http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=585477

The idea is she gets a lot of attacks, and uses them to trip foes and punch them for massive damage. She should be able to manage an AC of 31/23/29 with psionic powers, and she has a couple tricks like Control Body and Form of Doom.

I'm mostly worried about my ability to hit foes with high AC, and survive things like Fireball, Scorching Ray, and Save-or-Die effects. And for the record, I used Tashalatora to take from the Chaos Monk instead of the regular one, which is why I have so many attacks.

Oh, and for the record, my singular ally is a Monk/Ninja. For what it's worth. I'm really hoping he has Unbalancing Strike or something good, but....

[Madfellow]

Have you talked to the GM about this? Maybe he can move someone from the hero team to the villain team and/or give the villains an NPC to help balance things out.

Also, how is this heroes vs villains thing going to work out? Are the 2 teams going to fight directly against each other, or will it be more of a "OK, the other team did this last session, so you guys have to adjust your evil plan to account for their actions. Go." Because if it sounds like a direct fight between players, that just sounds like a recipe for sadness.

[Jormengand]

There's a stupid trick whereby you can take Irresistible Phantasmal Killer and then drag it all the way back down to a third-level spell. You can also create a rogue capable of dealing infinite damage...

What I would do, cheese aside, is force the Good Guys to go to a specific location and get both Bad Guys to trap the hell out of it with every single trap-like spell/power or actual trap that they can get their hands on, and then rest for eight hours while the Good Guys are making their way there. Wake up in time to cast/manifest your combat spells/powers on the weakened Good Guys.

To be honest, I wouldn't recommend those classes, certainly.

[Coidzor]

There's one thing I expect from a good villain that I'm not seeing here in your nefarious duo.

Minions. Leadership. Control and Power.

It sounds like you're a Fezzik and Inigo without a Vizzini or a Wesley.

My general understanding is that if you've got a disadvantage in number of entities on your side and you're villainous, then what you want are things like Thrallherd and controller-builds which can make up for a lack of melee ability via calling outsiders, animating the dead, diplomancying existing baddies in the wild, outright dominating or mindraping formidable creatures, or building up a cadre of loyal followers. Or just utilize a lot of battlefield control.

Can you do something like dip thrallherd? I'm not that familiar with the options that Ardents have, especially if they've already picked mantles which lack mindlink.

[Kyberwulf]

Poisons. Use a lot of them, often.

[Studoku]

Thrallherd is great for dealing with pesky heroes. Just make sure they know that you're mind controlling these poor defenceless people and watch them argue over whether it's ethical to kill them.

[Randomguy]

I really think you need to be a caster. Tap into all sorts of overpowered tricks, like Planar Binding to make deals with devils, to even the odds against the good guys. You could take Leadership and get a build similar to the Ardent as a Cohort and use her as a bodyguard.

[Scow2]

Druid and Thrallherd are probably your best bets. It allows you to be powerful - perhaps full-party-challengingly powerful, without being broken cheese.

[Hawkflight]

Thanks for the advice. I've asked for more info about the game, but for now I would rather like to stick to something I can do with Tashalatora shenanigans.

[Arcane_Snowman]

Speaking of Tashalatora, has your DM some house rules which favor you?
Cause I'm looking at the feat right now and it has a feat which you don't have and ranks of 5 in two skills as prerequisites, which makes it rather difficult to take at level 1.

[Lord Vampyre]

Being a great villain isn't about the numbers or your statistics. It's about tactics. You need to have the DM on your side for this one, since he has to be able to keep numerous things from the "good" guys.

There are two tactics that I would recommend.

The first is deception. Lots and lots of deception. Have the DM give you and your companion a ring of nondectability or something similar. The point is: You can't have your deception ruined by the ever so over used Detect Evil (How I hate Paladins!). Have the DM inform the others that he decided to just run one game, then when he introduces your characters to the group they don't use metagame knowledge that you are the bad guys.

The other is shadowing. For this your characters need ways of keeping the other team from hearing or seeing you. As you shadow the other group, you need a spell that projects an area of silence. This way you can single the other group out one by one as they stand guard. If you are attempting to get a McGuffin, let them fight their way there and then steal it from them in their weakened state.

Now a variation between the two can work as well.

Just remember: Being EVIL is not about being more powerful, its about being more clever. GOOD has a certain set of rules they have to follow to stay good, but EVIL can pretend to play by the same set of rules and then break those rules as soon as they have the other side looking the other way.

[Hawkflight]

Have you talked to the GM about this? Maybe he can move someone from the hero team to the villain team and/or give the villains an NPC to help balance things out.

Also, how is this heroes vs villains thing going to work out? Are the 2 teams going to fight directly against each other, or will it be more of a "OK, the other team did this last session, so you guys have to adjust your evil plan to account for their actions. Go." Because if it sounds like a direct fight between players, that just sounds like a recipe for sadness.

Okay, so, it's not quite as bad as I thought. The two (possibly three) of us are level 9, but the good guys are level 6. We do have a network of spies all around the world. We are technically immortal, but I think it's just to old age and not, y'know, stabby things. We're bound to a pair of giant rocks (insert Kaiba reference here), and the good guys are trying to perform a ritual at them to kill us. They are guarded by elementals that are hostile to both parties. And both games are run separately.


There's a stupid trick whereby you can take Irresistible Phantasmal Killer and then drag it all the way back down to a third-level spell. You can also create a rogue capable of dealing infinite damage...

What I would do, cheese aside, is force the Good Guys to go to a specific location and get both Bad Guys to trap the hell out of it with every single trap-like spell/power or actual trap that they can get their hands on, and then rest for eight hours while the Good Guys are making their way there. Wake up in time to cast/manifest your combat spells/powers on the weakened Good Guys.

To be honest, I wouldn't recommend those classes, certainly.


I really think you need to be a caster. Tap into all sorts of overpowered tricks, like Planar Binding to make deals with devils, to even the odds against the good guys. You could take Leadership and get a build similar to the Ardent as a Cohort and use her as a bodyguard.

I'd rather stick with something at least conceptually similar to what I've got, working with the Tashalatora feat. Though I am fine with swapping classes to something else psionic, or taking a PrC.


There's one thing I expect from a good villain that I'm not seeing here in your nefarious duo.

Minions. Leadership. Control and Power.

It sounds like you're a Fezzik and Inigo without a Vizzini or a Wesley.

My general understanding is that if you've got a disadvantage in number of entities on your side and you're villainous, then what you want are things like Thrallherd and controller-builds which can make up for a lack of melee ability via calling outsiders, animating the dead, diplomancying existing baddies in the wild, outright dominating or mindraping formidable creatures, or building up a cadre of loyal followers. Or just utilize a lot of battlefield control.

Can you do something like dip thrallherd? I'm not that familiar with the options that Ardents have, especially if they've already picked mantles which lack mindlink.


Thrallherd is great for dealing with pesky heroes. Just make sure they know that you're mind controlling these poor defenceless people and watch them argue over whether it's ethical to kill them.


Druid and Thrallherd are probably your best bets. It allows you to be powerful - perhaps full-party-challengingly powerful, without being broken cheese.

I would rather not go with Thrallherd, for personal reasons. I have a ... strong distaste for mind control. Even my Control Body spell isn't mind control, it's actually forcing their body to do something.


Speaking of Tashalatora, has your DM some house rules which favor you?
Cause I'm looking at the feat right now and it has a feat which you don't have and ranks of 5 in two skills as prerequisites, which makes it rather difficult to take at level 1.

I have the skills, and the prereq feat was houseruled out.


Being a great villain isn't about the numbers or your statistics. It's about tactics. You need to have the DM on your side for this one, since he has to be able to keep numerous things from the "good" guys.

There are two tactics that I would recommend.

The first is deception. Lots and lots of deception. Have the DM give you and your companion a ring of nondectability or something similar. The point is: You can't have your deception ruined by the ever so over used Detect Evil (How I hate Paladins!). Have the DM inform the others that he decided to just run one game, then when he introduces your characters to the group they don't use metagame knowledge that you are the bad guys.

The other is shadowing. For this your characters need ways of keeping the other team from hearing or seeing you. As you shadow the other group, you need a spell that projects an area of silence. This way you can single the other group out one by one as they stand guard. If you are attempting to get a McGuffin, let them fight their way there and then steal it from them in their weakened state.

Now a variation between the two can work as well.

Just remember: Being EVIL is not about being more powerful, its about being more clever. GOOD has a certain set of rules they have to follow to stay good, but EVIL can pretend to play by the same set of rules and then break those rules as soon as they have the other side looking the other way.

I don't think either of these are likely, because the two games are run at different times, separately. So I'm not sure that would work.