[3.P] Need a monster for Friday

[Chronikoce]

So I am trying to find a monster with the right flavor and could use some help because I haven't had much luck yet. I can always pick something and just add abilities on but if something already exists I would rather just use that.

Party: 6 players (1 level 8, 5 level 9's) + 2 NPC/Cohort style characters (level 7).
-Witch (PF)
-Factotum (3.5)
-Paladin (PF)
-DragonFire Adept (3.5)
-Rogue (PF)
-Fighter (PF)
Cohorts
-Mageknight (Spheres of Power)
-Enchanter (actually a succubus that infiltrated party ages ago but party doesn't know that)

Location: Underground cave system. Cavern is completely dark and ceilings are high (20+ feet).
Difficulty: Significantly dangerous (party will no ahead of time that something terrible is in this cave).

--Desired Attributes
Better than Minor spellcasting ability. Either BFC or Direct Damage but nothing mind effecting. Won't fit the flavor properly.
Size: Preferably larger than medium (helps with the flavor of big scary something in the caves)
Alignment: Preferably something that is not an evil outsider/dragon otherwise the Paladin will likely steal the show from the other players.
Number: 2-3 of these monsters. (Fewer than 2 and the number of players leads to trivial encounter).

Any other advice you may have is also appreciated.

Party was transported to a village that is sealed off from the rest of the world. The only exit is through a portal. The villages never try to go through the portal because only one person who entered ever returned and he survived with severe injuries (appropriate to whatever monster I end up putting in the cave).

The Party wants to leave this village to continue with their mission and don't want to just sneak past the monster because they want to help the villagers by removing the dangerous beasts.

Going into the portal they will know that something really powerful and deadly is on the other side but they won't know there is more than one of them. They will have some hints about its abilities/strengths based on the injuries that the survivor sustained. As a result I want this to be a pretty dangerous encounter.

[Drork]

Have you considered 1 or 2 Carcass crabs (eberron campaign setting p 277)
It doesnt fit completely with your request however a huge creature with grapple will be quite a hard thing for them to beat. It is unlikely any of them can escape the grapple once it lands with out assistance. The AC can be pushed up and down based on description you give. It makes the room scary as it will be covered in corpses. It lacks magic but it is unlikely you want to waste action rounds on a cast given the economy of actions will be against you, although it does have a nice range attack via its poison spine. The way I expect such an encounter to play out is grapples land followed by a Damage race. Trust me when I say these fellows make good on their CR8. If you want to add a little more to the fight you can add in some low level swarms to complicate the encounter. The encounter is clearly something no low level adventures could handle as well. Some problems with the encounter is once its started it can be very hard to escape with out leaving someone behind. Also keep in mind the miss information a survive might have about the creature to increase or decrease the encounter challenge.

[Chronikoce]

That's quite interesting. I'll have to check their stats when I get home to my books. I'll have to drop some hints because they don't always think tactically and if one of the squishies gets grappled they are super dead.

[(Un)Inspired]

An ogre lich.

[deuxhero]

For the sake of bad puns nobody will understand add the third party Metal Clad Creature (Gold) template to the Friday monster.

[nintendoh]

Instead of a large scary monster how about a small monster or npc which uses illusions. Wasn't there a power that changes your character to literally the opponents worst nightmare? You wanted scary right... Psionics are scary

[Nibbens]

Skull Ripper (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/skull-ripper)

Scary. Level Appropriate. Takes a minimum of three turns to get into it's Insta-kill power, so with the right fluff and a nice knowledge check which reveals that it likes to pull the heads off screaming victims and attack them to itself would give pause to any party who gets caught in its claws. My own group - after having had this read to them:

Knowledge Arcana DC19: This creature is a construct and it is an extremely old one. Thousands of years have passed since it’s been created. Even though you don’t know enough about its construction process to identify what it is, exactly, you know that the stinger indicates that it carries a poison of some kind. Also, from the way the claws are situated and the construction of the pincers – it’s extremely possible that they could rip off limbs or a head from a still living body, if they get a hold on someone. Judging from the collection of skulls lining it’s body – you assume the latter.

DC24: Skull Rippers, while rare now, were created during kingdoms long forgotten to guard tombs. They have a nasty habbit of ripping of the heads of intruders, placing the severed cranium on its body for display immediately afterwards, and using it to strike fear into the hearts of those that knew its victim. This ability is a supernatural one, and the fear it strikes in its foes is magically charged.

Actually made them all go silent - not when the battle began, but when they saw how easily it got one of them into a grapple. Of course, the PCs didn't know it took several rounds to be hit by the "behead" special attack (or the fact that it required them to be at 0 hp or worse) - but the resulting fear was perfect from a DMs standpoint. The spent many precious rounds scrambling to pull their ally out of the grapple instead of attacking it. It was beautiful!

It shouldn't be too hard to add two or three of these and/or advance them with templates for extra oomph and get the encounter in the "sweet spot" for a "hard encounter" for your party construction.

EDIT: Also, you may want to consider your party in terms of it's relative power - you have a 8 man party (and any casters with quickened spell can count as 1.5) at minimum. Making an appropriate challenge for a group of that many could be difficult if you followed the traditional CR rating system. However, you've been gaming with them for a while it seems, so you would know them better than I would.

EDIT2: Also realized you wanted spellcasting power... dang... Sorry. Forgot about that. I hit every point you needed other than the spellcasting too... double-dang! :/

[atemu1234]

An ogre lich.

Or, at lower levels, a skeletal ogre.

[Chronikoce]

I like the idea of the carcass crab and the skull ripper so far. I think they could really give my group a run for their money. I'd like to avoid humanoid/intelligent enemies. My group is actually a huge fan of roleplaying and they do like to talk/bargain/bribe/etc their way out of situations. So I would prefer to avoid the ogre just because I can definitely see the witch cutting some sort of deal with the Lich and dealing with the consequences later (as long as he can pull it off without the paladin knowing hehe).

As for relative power.... yeah I have been struggling lately. This group has been playing since level 3 and while I am an experienced DM, this is my first foray into level 8+ (most games had issues of scheduling and slowly fizzled out before then).

I can provide my groups tactics if that helps with monster identification and rough power level.

Witch: Likes Evil Eye, Bestow Curse, and then Save or Dies. As a result I can't use 1 BBEG otherwise the debuff stacking hits them super hard.

Paladin: THF, custom weapon. Decent AC, Good Saves, generally front lines with the fighter and deals out respectable damage. Damage increases a lot vs evil and evil outsiders due to PF smite being a lot stronger than 3.5 smite.

Fighter: Standard fighter, he was a new player and didn't optimize. THF who flanks with paladin. Has a custom magic item that he found which activates the Spell Body of War from Spell Compendium 1/Month. When spell ends all physical attributes plunge to 6's.

Factotum/Wizard: Only single wizard level. Also a new player. just now starting to gain focus/direction. Tactics change constantly due to factotum/wizard being able to do anything basically.

Rogue: TWF rogue. Likes to flank and deal high damage. Good at sneaking. Very amoral. Chaotic Neutral who only cares for her companions and the good of the world (in that order. Only saves the world because the world ending would hurt her companions).

DFA: Standard DFA. Massive con score, decent AC, always flying. Breath weapon routine is usually entangling breath + slow Breath to keep constant entangled and slow effects active. Brutal debuffing when combined with witch and enemies with low saves.

[Nibbens]

I like the idea of the carcass crab and the skull ripper so far. I think they could really give my group a run for their money. I'd like to avoid humanoid/intelligent enemies. My group is actually a huge fan of roleplaying and they do like to talk/bargain/bribe/etc their way out of situations. So I would prefer to avoid the ogre just because I can definitely see the witch cutting some sort of deal with the Lich and dealing with the consequences later (as long as he can pull it off without the paladin knowing hehe).

As for relative power.... yeah I have been struggling lately. This group has been playing since level 3 and while I am an experienced DM, this is my first foray into level 8+ (most games had issues of scheduling and slowly fizzled out before then).

I can provide my groups tactics if that helps with monster identification and rough power level.

Witch: Likes Evil Eye, Bestow Curse, and then Save or Dies. As a result I can't use 1 BBEG otherwise the debuff stacking hits them super hard.

Paladin: THF, custom weapon. Decent AC, Good Saves, generally front lines with the fighter and deals out respectable damage. Damage increases a lot vs evil and evil outsiders due to PF smite being a lot stronger than 3.5 smite.

Fighter: Standard fighter, he was a new player and didn't optimize. THF who flanks with paladin. Has a custom magic item that he found which activates the Spell Body of War from Spell Compendium 1/Month. When spell ends all physical attributes plunge to 6's.

Factotum/Wizard: Only single wizard level. Also a new player. just now starting to gain focus/direction. Tactics change constantly due to factotum/wizard being able to do anything basically.

Rogue: TWF rogue. Likes to flank and deal high damage. Good at sneaking. Very amoral. Chaotic Neutral who only cares for her companions and the good of the world (in that order. Only saves the world because the world ending would hurt her companions).

DFA: Standard DFA. Massive con score, decent AC, always flying. Breath weapon routine is usually entangling breath + slow Breath to keep constant entangled and slow effects active. Brutal debuffing when combined with witch and enemies with low saves.

I'm just going to leave this (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nx-o8VAjhUwh3nnfzDQT-JA5eFLnN_BZJiBitGjBMDg/edit) here. I live and die by this guide now.

TL:DR - In pathfinder encounters, if you want to challenge your PCs make sure the fight is CR 4+ the APL. Secondly, you don't want to rely on one monster, you want to make sure that the Action Economy favors your side in the fight (If they have 8 things on the board each making 1 standard action per round (i.e.. attack), make sure that you have a way to get your "attack actions per round" above 8. Also, swarming the field with little things makes the players waste precious resources trying to wade through the monsters to get to your bigger baddie.

Regardless, you know your composition better than us. So if you need to "swarm the field" I'd suggest Shocker Lizards (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/shocker-lizard). - Ranged attackers, and in large groups are deadly. Use save for 1/2 damage attacks for basic attacks. lol.

So, if it were me, considering your party composition of 8 PC who make it more difficult to deal with, It'd say a CR14 encounter with 38,400 experience to work with. That's enough for 3 Advanced Skullrippers 16 shocker lizards.

Now, I know you wanted the "two or three" big baddies set up, and that's normal. But consider the Action Economy of your group - you need to bog down the battlefield, restrict mobility of the melee and threaten the ranged. And this composition does both.

The Cr that I'm calculating here is an APL of all the members (all 8 of them) which gives you a CR 8 and I'm adding +2 to their APL because they have considerably more bodies (again, 8) than the average composition (4). From here I add the standard +4 to make challenge a "hard" one.

However, there are no straight healers in your group - So you might even could cut back on the
CR to 13 maybe, if you feel that 14 would wipe them. Maybe even down to 12 if they aren't terribly optimized.

Nevertheless, that guide is the most important thing in my rant. If you've never read it before - it's a must.

[Drork]

The power of grappling huge foes does help limit your PCs actions. The issue is of cause it does limit your players ability to contribute. I do agree with the more players you have you have to have more foes just to bulk up the HP and actions you get as a DM. I like "swarms" as creatures rather than a swarm of creatures because low CR creatures are harder to make work against high CR players (not impossible but harder).

On a side note. You mentioned your games normally fizzle out at higher levels consider the next game you DM to play a epic 6-8 level adventure where player level progression stops and they get extra feats. Often the reason why such things fizzle out is the DM just is not comfortable with the abilities people get beyond this leading to campaign fatigue. It makes it a lot easier to find suitable encounters that you know how to control. You can google it up if your interested often called E6. That being said the only way to get experience DMing the levels is seeing them being played.

[Chronikoce]

Yeah I'm definitely more comfortable with stopping at 6 but I'm trying to learn to DM at higher levels so there is that.

E6 is something I'd like to do in the future though.

I think I'll have to go with 2 big bad guys and back ups to keep them busy.

I'll look into that guide later when I have free time. Thank you.

[WeaselGuy]

Well, you're underground, so, Drow would probably be thematic... If you want specifically monsters, Displacer Beasts and Hooked Horrors can be fun.

Or, when in doubt, Orcus.

[Chronikoce]

I'm just going to leave this (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nx-o8VAjhUwh3nnfzDQT-JA5eFLnN_BZJiBitGjBMDg/edit) here. I live and die by this guide now.

This guide is amazing. I'll be trying it out tonight. Thank you!

[Nibbens]

This guide is amazing. I'll be trying it out tonight. Thank you!

So how did it go? What happened?

[Chronikoce]

So how did it go? What happened?

The combat is actually tonight. They got caught up talking with some NPCs and didn't actually progress to the area with the big nasty. My group does have a tendency to get greatly delayed when trying to decide what to do and in this case they were trying to glean more information about their possible foes but half the group wasn't sure the price of the information was worth it. I'll update again tomorrow and let you guys know how they fair.