[3.5] Need evil Ideas - Final Boss (not Character, just Ideas)

[Xalos]

I'm currently working on a boss for my campaign, for the players to face near the end of the game....
Quadstalt, must have ranger and cleric in the 4 classes
Level 35-40 probably....
The main goal of this character is to hopefully nearly (or maybe suceed) in a TPK... my party has multiple Optimizers in it (not 100% hardcore optimizers, but enough to give me trouble)
I'm not looking for someone to create it, I'm just looking for evil geniuses to give me some ideas to think over....

[g3taso]

I'm currently working on a boss for my campaign, for the players to face near the end of the game....
Quadstalt, must have ranger and cleric in the 4 classes
Level 35-40 probably....
The main goal of this character is to hopefully nearly (or maybe suceed) in a TPK... my party has multiple Optimizers in it (not 100% hardcore optimizers, but enough to give me trouble)
I'm not looking for someone to create it, I'm just looking for evil geniuses to give me some ideas to think over....

I like Ranger 13, Rogue 9 and Cleric 9. Specifically, I see this high-CHA character being dead, or more specifically an undead like a Dread Spectre (template) from Pathfinder. He resides in a small forest, and over time has assembled a coterie of half a dozen dread spectres he made, and they in turn have enslaved other spectres and the odd dread spectre that they have created. Then they absorbed a village over one night. Retreating into the forest, his old ranger lodge has been further improved with a couple of living wizard and cleric minions, animating critters and slowly fortifying his lair while maintaining secrecy. Truly, most trails leading to his manse have been allowed to fall into ruin to slowly disappear. Information about him in sketchy, but the few tales that have surfaced don't point out he is an undead, but rather that he commands undead. When the PCs arrive, they will not be prepared. Keep a few hundred frogs and such turned into undead to foil character attempts to command/turn undead, and concentrate on overwhelming attacks from underneath, while traveling through dense undergrowth and such at night. Be sure to follow the lights the characters use, since the spectres won't be needing them. With a reasonably thought out guard roster of a pair of spectres each with commands to fly silently and report while the other continues to watch, and you could probably kill off a couple before you even reach his manse.

[Swaoeaeieu]

well with 4 times 40 levels... you have plenty of room for evil. But to give everyone in the party a challenge, you need this bad guy to be good at more then one area. So some casting and some melee too, maybe even psionics.

Ilithid are deliciously evil looking and eat brains, pretty BBEG imo.
somewhere you can give him full warblade or other ToB classes to give mundane but awsome powers.

i think the question is more of how evil you want him to be. and then find Red Fel (i think that's him) he just gets evil.

[Xalos]

I should probably clairify: I have race and story worked out, I just need ideas for combat, items, feats, spec powers, and the other 2 classes....

[Swaoeaeieu]

but quadstalt with 40 levels gives you a lot more room then just 4 classes. unless you want to go epic levels in 4. but idd say go crazy with the prestiges available

[Mr Adventurer]

You need to think about the action economy, or those other the classes are dead weight. What class will best help him manipulate his available actions? Wizard? Psion? It'll be one of those.

Then make him a Druid so he's a T-Rex the whole time.

[Segev]

I once again suggest opening up Libris Mortis and looking at the Mother Cyst feat and the line of Necrotic spells it enables. You are particularly interested in necrotic tumor and necrotic scrying.


You may also wish to consider magic jar used to make the fight a series of fights, with a number of necrotic tumor-controlled foes, many of which are useful hosts for the BBEG's spellcasting spirit to possess and wreak havoc. As the PCs kill the BBEG-apparent, a new minion arises as a new one. The fight always has the strongest threat in it no matter which order they take down the minions. They can't take him out without finding the magic jar, though they could threaten him if they found his real, comatose body.

[Ferronach]

I'm not looking for someone to create it, I'm just looking for evil geniuses Red Fel to give me some ideas to think over....

I fixed that for you :P

I would recommend throwing in something that will give the guy a crapton of CC. Something to help him fight off a number of adventurers at once without needing his minions to survive.

Having the ability to turn party members upon one another or stop party members frees up his action economy so that he won’t die because he does not get a chance to do anything.

Self-buffing would also be high on my list of priorities here because he should not have to rely on weak little minions to make him stronger.

Maybe you want to look at PrCs in addition to base classes as this will allow you to potentially use one PrC to cover two goals.

A large part of keeping this guy in the fight will be tactics. He should try to split the party, distract certain members and use terrain to his advantage. If he can split the group up with a few well-placed and timed force walls, he should be able to take out one or two party members fairly easily, meaning less people wailing on him all at once. Surprise will be a great asset as will things like invisibility (I know it is easily negated but this will waste at least one person’s action for a round). Have an illusion of him monologue while he springs his trap on the party.

[SkipSandwich]

If this character is supposed to threaten an entire party of characters meant to go up against CR 35-40, I would strongly suggest you invest in as much psionics as you can, between Temporal Acceleration, Astral Construct, Fission and being able to augment Psionic Dominate to affect multiple creatures per casting while still raising the DC, you get a LOT of action economy from a single character, and that's not even going into Share Power Body Control with a Psicrystal to gain 2 sets of actions per turn, 1 physical and 1 mental.


Actually, since this is a BBEG and you are the DM, you can always just flat out say he gets 2 or more sets of actions per round, one for spellcasting/manifesting and one for movement/attacking, which will do wonders for his survivability. Say its the result of some sort of custom Epic Spell or Power that gives him multiple full-actions per round while active, but spread over 2 or more Initiative counts. On some rounds he could spend all his actions til the last casting Delayed Blast X with them all set to detonate at the end of his final turn for the round, a switch in tactics so patently obvious that only the most oblivious/reckless players will fall victum to, but would be really awesome to describe as he charges up this uber deathball and the resulting huge explosion.

[Naez]

Well you could use one of the unused level progressions to soak a ton of LA and use a bunch of cool templates. Goliath (+1), Half-minotaur(+1), Half-Dragon(+3), Vampire (+8) springs to mind.

[Hrugner]

Tie the bad dude's life to the life of good innocent people. Things like making a Lich's phylactery a massive dam that prevents the capitol from flooding or making them the leader of a powerful evil organization that is kept in check by his leadership both should work pretty well.

Mostly, make some of his power narrative power so the party needs to address his role in the world before just up an killing him.

[Naez]

Actually another one me and my friends have thought up but never gotten around to using is a Good Lich (Probably a dry lich) king who used to be an adventurer who brought peace to the land and ruled over it for thousands of years. All the while slowly be driven mad by the endless ages and eventually he snaps falling into severe dementia. This makes him lash out violently, and order crazy things like razing his own lands, and none of his men would be willing to raise their hand against him because they've literally never thought of life without him as king. It's been that way for thousands of years. Not to mention at that point he'd be powerful enough to destroy everything in existence if he really wanted to.

What this does though is it makes the character someone who must be stopped but who is more pitiable than evil. Yes you could take your revenge for him killing your family but he doesn't even remember doing it. He's mentally ill. Is it really justice or vengeance you're after?

[Ferronach]

I forgot! at this level he should totally have access to time stop... and all of the shenanigans that it entails :P

[Theodred theOld]

I love using prismatic sphere + silent image + dimension door or other teleportation. The party then has to figure out which sphere he's actually in though trial and error and even if they do find the real sphere who would risk it? Dispel can work for one sphere at a time but eats up alot of actions, freeing up your bbeg to do, you know, whatever.

[Mr Adventurer]

I love using prismatic sphere + silent image + dimension door or other teleportation. The party then has to figure out which sphere he's actually in though trial and error and even if they do find the real sphere who would risk it? Dispel can work for one sphere at a time but eats up alot of actions, freeing up your bbeg to do, you know, whatever.

Passing near to the real sphere causes a save to avoid blindness?

[noob]

Divine metamagic + comsumptive field + 5000 chickens will make your bbeg mostly ignore damage because of his high life(and be ridiculously strong and have a cl increased by half).
in a general way abuse divine metamagic for persisting as many buffs as possible and also use contingency and its variation(I know one variation of that spell which does not says it does not works with it) and use craft contingency and that level 9 spell who automatically brings you to safety if things go awry.

[Theodred theOld]

Passing near to the real sphere causes a save to avoid blindness?
If the party has less than 8HD they have no business in this encounter

[Mr Adventurer]

If the party has less than 8HD they have no business in this encounter

Nevertheless, if that information were withheld from me I would call shenanigans, on the basis that the illusion variants cannot have that effect.

[noob]

Well the caster can also have scrolls or pearls of power if he can cast level 9 spells and so have three true prismatic spheres in addition to his illusions(and so the adventurers would still only have one chance on three to find the good one) and in addition the bbeg can teleport to another prismatic sphere once his own is broken in fact the BBEg can pretty much ruin all the ressources of the team with only a bunch of spells and have enough time for blasting the players(for example if the players are not immune to elemental damage some delayed fireball /cone of frost and so on can put a strain on their resources also there is a noteworthy spell: mass drown it makes massively people drown if they succeed their save they are still extremely weakened (they can take only one move or simple action) and else you drown them it is a druid spell of level nine).
Are the players alive and can the bbeg know it?

[elonin]

Nevertheless, if that information were withheld from me I would call shenanigans, on the basis that the illusion variants cannot have that effect.


You get to know if your character is making a save or are under a new effect. Neither of those conditions apply. Unless they have arcane sight

[Theodred theOld]

I once ran a party through 3 tough encounters on the way to some objective they were after. The third fight was meant from the start to be a TPK and the former squire of the party paladin was featured heavily as an undead blackguard. After the last PC finally fell and they were all reaching for new sheets I hit them with the good old "You wake up in the tent..." routine. I revealed that it was a shared nightmare and informed them that all spells used were still expended for the day. Needless to say they were a little miffed about that one but they still talk about that session and sometimes joke that at the finale of the campaign they'll all wake up in that tent back in the fey infested evergreen forest just south of Deldyn.