Advanced Aboleth recurring villan BBEG

[pilvento]

I have been DMng a 6 to 15 stormwrack themed campaing for the last year and a half. The players are lvl 13 already and getting close to the final chapter of the story where they confront the BBEG responsable of all the main plot wich is the aweakening of the leviatan from the elder evils book.

I used mostly of the material in elder evils but i found the main villan a litle poor so I wanted it to be more complex, inteligent, allknowing and exiting. I want him to be an advanced Aaboleth that as a beign before creation and gods wants to finaly prove their existance by destroying the plane itself aweakening the caos that the leviatan is (the leviatan is kinda like the snarl, all the caos contained in a world created by law)

So... I wanted to hear some ideas or experiences from you guys, I know this kind of monster is really popular. Have yo ever used or faced one of this in an encounter? how powerfull was it? have you ever advanced one as a monster? what did you use for such task? wich clases/templates/items? what are its tactics if forced to combat in or out of its lair? how usefull is it for him to use its real form?

[Tvtyrant]

I have been DMng a 6 to 15 stormwrack themed campaing for the last year and a half. The players are lvl 13 already and getting close to the final chapter of the story where they confront the BBEG responsable of all the main plot wich is the aweakening of the leviatan from the elder evils book.

I used mostly of the material in elder evils but i found the main villan a litle poor so I wanted it to be more complex, inteligent, allknowing and exiting. I want him to be an advanced Aaboleth that as a beign before creation and gods wants to finaly prove their existance by destroying the plane itself aweakening the caos that the leviatan is (the leviatan is kinda like the snarl, all the caos contained in a world created by law)

So... I wanted to hear some ideas or experiences from you guys, I know this kind of monster is really popular. Have yo ever used or faced one of this in an encounter? how powerfull was it? have you ever advanced one as a monster? what did you use for such task? wich clases/templates/items? what are its tactics if forced to combat in or out of its lair? how usefull is it for him to use its real form?

I have used an Aboleth as the primary villain in a campaign before. The benefit is that the Aboleth is perfect for just setting it up and claiming that all of the xanatos gambits are part of its long term plan. The problem I had is the Aboleth is really not that dangerous after level 4, and my group almost killed it from a few stray hits.

I like adding weird casting classes on top. Warlock, Shadowcaster, etc. Anything weird and hard to guess the origin of, and then just over CR the thing to hell and back.