BBGE Help Needed

[Misticwalker]

I am a fairly new DM, this is roughly my 5th game i've DM'ed. Ive been playing tabletop for a few years now so i have a good base knowledge and grasp and i do alot of research and looking around for ideas and tips.

I am currently working on a pirate themed campaign. I am using Freeport (http://greenronin.com/freeport/)as my setting even using the pirates guide to Freeport as a "town history" book for the players to use. (edit, update) As a quick guideline, Freeport is similar to Tortuga from Pirates of the Caribbean, not many rules, the town guard really don't give much care the only thing that's even noticeably "illegal" is demon worship and summoning in city limits (end edit)

However i need help on working with the BBEG. I have decided the next major conflict to freeport after all the troubles it has had would be a religious radical that decided the town and pirates as a whole need to be purged to cleanse the land.

I set the BBEG as a 3.5 druid/cleric (water/lightning domains) crossclass named Mira.

What i have so far:

Hatred for pirates, her home was raided and parents killed
Druid and Cleric radical to purge the heresy that is pirates
Highly Intelligent, uses whits and secrecy to get her goals accomplished.
Would rather pay someone to do her work than directly dirty her hands, however is completely capable and willing to if need be.
End Goal: Rid the world of pirates


I am also wanting her to level with the group the group is currently low level, but in a way that they know who she is but don't suspect her unless they dig really deep into the story. Potentially even becoming a false ally to them.

I feel like i have a strong base for her but i feel that i am lacking in depth, background, and plotting that make a true good BBEG. Any tips, advice or suggestions?

[Craft (Cheese)]

There's one option that immediately jumps out to me: She chooses to deal with Freeport by crippling its economy by sending out giant krakens to sink the ships coming into the city. She can do this while they're far out at sea, where there are unlikely to be any witnesses or survivors. So as far as anyone knows, all the ships that have been sailing to freeport have been mysteriously disappearing.

Ideally, the players shouldn't discover the reason for these disappearances until they're coming back to Freeport on their own ship... Depending on how high-level the PCs are and what resources they have available to them in town, keeping it a secret without using a cheap trick like making all divinations on the subject mysteriously fail may be a challenge.

[Jergmo]

Take a look through the thread that's going called Collateral Damage Man. People have been posting ideas to give characters tornadoes and hurricanes as SLA's. It gets extreme, but it provides groundwork for getting it. The best way to wipe out a pirate town, or a pirate fleet, is to unleash a magical hurricane on them.

[The Ravensong]

This may seem silly, but build wise why Druid/Cleric? I'm having issues wrapping my head around it both thematically and mechanically. You'd have a wealth of low level spells and burning a couple feats on Practiced Spellcaster would keep your CL up, but considering most mid to high level casters aren't going to be able to burn through all their spells in a single encounter without murdering everything anyways I'm not sure what the advantage is.
That said, both clerics and druids have access to some interesting abilities that can very sneakily strangle entire populations.
As far as a super sneaky way to strangle a port-town? One word: Zombees.
I'm not familiar with freeport, but I imagine that if it's economy is based primarily on trade that it doesn't produce the majority of food it's citizens consume. Many, many plants require insects, worms, arachnids, birds, etc to function normally and produce the fruits and vegetables we eat every day. As well as the fruits and vegetables the animals we eat need to survive. If your villain uses the facilities available to her through freeport to travel through fall and winter to the areas that export food supplies to Freeport and establishes animated swarms near all the farms. Interesting tidbit about animate dead: you can decide when you cast the spell to have the undead stay in a given area and attack any specific kind of creature that enters the area you've created it to guard. So you can animate a swarm of bees to attack only other insects that come near the farm... preventing many of the crops from pollinating.
The local populations would then have a significantly reduced crop and be unwilling to trade their goods to Freeport because they need the food for themselves... and with this happening to every town and city Freeport does trade with, Freeport will suddenly find it's food supplies very scarce... they may even end up in a situation in which they decide that forming raiding parties to steal the food their former trade partners are in dire need of is their best and only option.
Your villain can then rally Freeports trade partners together to form a united front against the threat of coastal piracy by Freeports' sick, starving, diseased hooligans; putting herself firmly in the position of championing Truth, Justice, and Order.
An important thing to remember about environmental problems is that they produce MORE problems... and if social and political problems produce anything... it's new villains. New villains who are an immediate threat to society. New villains with no connection to your true villain.
1) The prices of what foodstuffs are available will skyrocket due to supply and demand and cause various socio-economical problems throughout the city such as increased theft, murder, suicide, piracy, hoarding, prostitution. Do you know what you get when these things happen? Bastards and orphans.
2) The town guard's may begin to accept bribes of food and money to look the other way when it comes to crimes they consider "harmless enough" and feel justified in doing so because it allows them to feed their own families.
3) Do you know what you get when you're too poor to afford education or any other form of entertainment? Babies. Lots of babies. Do you know what you get when you can't feed those babies? Best case scenario is starving street urchins.
4) The merchants guilds may take political control over the city in exchange for keeping their inflated prices to a livable level
5) Low level criminals with access to food may begin to leverage their new found power and wealth in ways they couldn't before... possibly demanding protection fees to protect different areas from neighboring gangs who want to steal their food, money, weapons, property, etc
6) These same low level criminals will be in a position to facilitate the prostitution of children. "paying" the children with just enough food to keep them looking healthy while they reap the rewards. Where are they getting these children? See #1 and #3
7) Overfishing would become a very real possibility in a major metropolitan area filled with hungry sailors which would only compound the problem by throwing Freeport's ecosystem out of balance as well.
8) The poor may turn against the rich, becoming violent at the growing disparity between the two economic classes
9) The rich may hire the physically fit among the poor as bodyguards or even their own personal army to protect themselves from the other poor people
10) With people struggling to afford food the cost of staying otherwise healthy will be prohibitively high. People will likely get sick eating food that's gone foul or not intended for human consumption. When people get ill and vomit in the streets they'll only worsen the city's already terrible hygiene. Without access to proper nutrition people's immune systems will weaken and falter. Without being able to afford to eat many people will be forced into cramped group housing situations. Compromised immune systems+cramped living conditions=epidemic
11) With several citizens likely forced into prostitution (either by threat of violence or lack of any other option for food and shelter) venereal diseases are very likely to spread through the entire population, through the poor who are forced into it by circumstance, and through those wealthy enough to have money left over after feeding themselves for companionship
12) People are just going to leave. Freeport is going to turn into a downright terrible place to live, and people with the means to leave are going to do just that. They'll go home, they'll move further inland, they'll move to another continent entirely. And when this happens, businesses will collapse when workers refuse to live in their conditions, people will lose their jobs when their employer packs up shop and move to a more profitable town... which gives Freeport the very real possibility of being in a situation where the only people with money who choose to live in freeport do so because they can take advantage of everyone who's lost the ability to leave
13) Freeport may eventually cease to exist. After dealing with an economic collapse, political corruption, social and moral degradation, mass exodus, sickness, venereal diseases, starvation and the figurative and literal rape of the working class... Why would anyone come to Freeport? Who would raise their children here? Who would start a business here? Who would want to do business with people who can't afford your goods? Who would send humanitarian aid to a town full of pirates, murders, rapists, and whores (some who may be all four)?

Now there's a strong possibility that some of Freeports' less dubious sailors will set sail to find and secure new trade contracts with cities that are further away than their normal trade partners. That would be an excellent opportunity to also work in Craft's suggestion of Kraken. But why not go for the gusto and keep with the zombie theme...
Zombie. Kraken. Hivenest.
As the sailors are going out to sea on new trade routes... A giant zombified kraken emerges from the depths, heralded by swarms of zombified bees, leeches, flies... literally ANYTHING you think might fit into a zombified kraken.
As a stakes raising side note if Mira decides to all out smite the citizens of freeport: Do you know what doesn't need to breath on land?
A Zombie Kraken Hivenest filled with bees.
Do you know what a level 5 Cleric is able to control through clever use of animate dead and desecrate?
A Zombie Kraken. Filling it with Zombees can come later.

[Craft (Cheese)]

This may seem silly, but build wise why Druid/Cleric? I'm having issues wrapping my head around it both thematically and mechanically. You'd have a wealth of low level spells and burning a couple feats on Practiced Spellcaster would keep your CL up, but considering most mid to high level casters aren't going to be able to burn through all their spells in a single encounter without murdering everything anyways I'm not sure what the advantage is.

Eh, with NPCs I generally assume the DM has the ability to just fudge the mechanical aspects of their build to make the concept work. You don't even need to go as far as homebrewing a PrC or special feats for her, you can just effectively make her gestalt.

[Misticwalker]

Eh, with NPCs I generally assume the DM has the ability to just fudge the mechanical aspects of their build to make the concept work. You don't even need to go as far as homebrewing a PrC or special feats for her, you can just effectively make her gestalt.

That's basically what i'm doing with it. The Druid/Cleric concept is merely because i needed someone who would actually want to purge a "evil" town and didn't want to use a paladin.


Thanks for the ideas so far they are great!!!

I really like the crashing the economy, currently the PCs are lower level so fighting a kraken may be out of there ability but sinking tradeships and stoping crop production would work well, keep the ideas coming.

[Shining Wrath]

I would like to point out that adherents of the Flying Spaghetti Monster will be quite upset with your BBEG.

Anyway ...

Is your BBEG willing to hurt the non-piratical denizens of Freeport to get at the pirates? That could limit the choices available.

A classic way to eliminate pirates is letters of marque - basically, hire mercenaries to chase the pirates down. Your druid sounds like she might be the type to do that.

One thing about zombies is that they are relentless and unencumbered by little details like needing to breathe. A horde of zombies launched from a ship out in the harbor with instructions to attack anchor chains and tie lines in the port could cause quite a bit of trouble, especially if the wind was blowing out.

Another thing about zombies is that they follow suicidal orders, being already dead. Can you say "fire ship"? I knew you could! A zombie will remain at the wheel long after a living creature would flee, and steer that fire ship right where you want it.

You are free to have the zombies free the ships when the wind is blowing out, then send those ships back to port as fire ships when the wind is blowing in.

[Craft (Cheese)]

That's basically what i'm doing with it. The Druid/Cleric concept is merely because i needed someone who would actually want to purge a "evil" town and didn't want to use a paladin.

A Druid can be just as obsessive and extremist about their religious ideology as a Cleric, though... or any other class for that matter. If there's something you need her to be able to do that a druid can't, it'd be easier (and less unbalancing when the PCs finally face her directly) to just fiat her the ability instead of just giving her cleric casting. However, this does raise questions about her motivations and behavior: Does she avoid hurting non-pirates in her attacks? If she does, then would she spare a pirate ship if, for example, she knew there were non-pirate hostages on it? What kinds of collateral damage is she willing to cause?


I really like the crashing the economy, currently the PCs are lower level so fighting a kraken may be out of there ability

They don't have to fight the kraken, necessarily. I was thinking more along the lines of escaping from a targeted ship and managing to somehow go unnoticed by the kraken (which usually devours any fleeing lifeboats), then getting picked up by another passing ship after a few days adrift at sea (who may or may not be hostile themselves). Or maybe crashing on an island somewhere. Maybe getting picked up by a passing ship, and then *that* ship crashes on an island somewhere!

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Multiclassing Druid and Cleric will make an extremely weak opponent, unless she's a significantly higher level than the party. Consider switching to something like Fast Movement (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#ranger) (Urban (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#rangerVariantUrbanRang er)) Ranger 1/ (Cloistered (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#clericVariantCloistere dCleric)) Cleric 5 into Abolisher from Lords of Madness, but adapted to be focused on fighting pirates instead of aberrations. Switch the Knowledge: Dungeoneering prerequisite for probably Kn: Local, and the favored enemy bonus would work against any pirates regardless of race or type. All the class features of Abolisher would just replace aberrations with pirates, and it should work fine. If you want her to have an animal companion still then Wild Cohort (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a) is an obvious choice.