ToB BBEG

[elliott20]

To round off my ToB adventure, I need an Akuma-esque character for a BBEG.

While I say Akuma-esque, I mean more in characterization such as obsession over martial arts and what not and less so in the whole "Evil-Shoto" bit, so I'm not going to sweat over how to get him to do a Gou-shinku-hadouken. (Though I will be taking visual cues from him)

He'll be a human Swordsage 20 and will be focusing in diamond mind, setting sun, and tiger claw. His weapon of choice will be unarmed strikes. Seeing as he's supposed to be the ultimate form of efficient killing, I would appreaciate some crunching help.

I'll add some more fluff text later.

[ZeroNumerous]

Might I suggest going Swordsage 15/Master of Nine 5? That way, if his last five levels are Master of Nine, he gets access to very powerful abilities from other disciplines. It works with the "Martial Arts is the r0xx0rs" concept behind the BBEG, but lets him do alot more dangerous things than pure Swordsage.

[Knight_Of_Twilight]

I made an Epic Character with TOB that was basically Master Asia. If you don't mind deveiating a bit I found going into Tiger Claw Master for the Two weaponfighting benefits. Basically, he can punch the living bejeezus out of someone with both fists. Besides, it would look awesome.

[elliott20]

oh I don't mind. I'm just looking for a bit of crunch I can throw in.

Right now, the way I see it, there are several elements I think that are crucial the build.

- a sense of pure murderous rage that comes with being so far into the "darkside" if you will. The tiger claw discipline works well with that.
- at least one wide area maneuver that is capable of dispatching large groups of people in an area quickly. (Which is why I'm tempted to put Desert Wind into the mix)

I'm also having problems with picking maneuvers. I've picked out all the high level maneuvers but I'm not liking some of them and I'm still having a hard time coming up with ways that they can work together. Also, I have some questions about the rules itself.

Can a character perform more than one strike maneuver per round? I see some of the maneuvers have an initiation of one standard action or some such. So does this mean a character that can perform multiple standard actions can do multiple strike maneuvers?

[lord_khaine]

yes most strikes are standart actions, but there isnt that many sources for additional standart actions.

for that matter, i would advice against taking the master of 9 prestige class, as a swordsage you allready have access to 6 diciplines, and it takes a awfull lot of your feats to qualify for it.

[ZeroNumerous]

If you really wanna be evil with TWF and pure Swordsage 20. Using the Swordsage Unarmed variant and the feat from Complete Warrior called Versatile Unarmed Strike, you can change your unarmed attack to do slashing or piercing damage instead of bludgeoning. Change it to slashing. Grab Girallon Windmill Flesh Rip, Dancing Mongoose, the Snap Kick feat, Time Stands Still, and a belt of Haste.

With your now slashing fists and the capstone ability of Swordsages, you can use Girallon Windmill Flesh Rip and Raging Mongoose together. Now, enter the Island of Blades stance the round before and prep with a Potion of Natural Fang for a +5/+5. Blow Girallon and Dancing Mongoose. then blow Time Stands Still. Full attack twice.

That's, assuming you're weapon finessing with a 20 DEX(or have a 20 STR)..

+22/+22/+22/+22/+22/+17/+17/+12/+12/+7/+7/.

Assuming everything 17 and above hits.. Thats 12d10+30+16d6 to a target. Next round, Adaptative Style recover puts Time Stands Still, Girallon, and Raging Mongoose back into the cycle.

Aim for the caster first, then cycle down the threat list.

Oh and LordKhaine: Mo9 is used for picking up Immortal Fortitude, Revitalizing Strike, and Strike of Righteous Fury. Then boost the BBEG's Fort saves. At that point, he just out lives the party. Literally.

[lord_khaine]

using adaptive style means you will be recive 2 full attacks from the rest of the party, and that might hurt a bit, if it doesnt just kill you.
instead i would open the battle with shadow jumping in and releasing a inferno blast to the group, to make sure everybody takes some damage and goes defensive.

still, some knowlege of the group would help, to design a opponent to challenge them without it ending in a TPK.

[elliott20]

well, I don't intend to be throwing him against the party yet. The point of this adventure is to showcase ToB and it's potential for gameplay. So what I intend to do with him is to have him square off against another major NPC and crush him. (a crusader 12-15 that's the PCs commanding officer) The PCs will naturally be allowed to help out if they want but I doubt they'll be doing too much except minor things like flanking and such. (The party will be busy doing other things anyway)

If the players actually like this enough to want to continue then I might plan for that encounter down the road. There are currently only two players in the game but we might get more later.

one guy is going to make two ToB martial adept (I recommended a warblade and swordsage), while the other one I'm still not sure what he wants to do. (he hasn't gotten back to me on it yet, but he's aware that I'm letting him use the ToB if he wants) I personally don't really like the idea of the players each playing two characters so I'm hoping the other players come through.

The thing is though, the BBEG for now is going to basically ignore the PCs, only divert the most minuit attention to them just to get them off of his back. (And if possible, forge a vengeance storyline with one of the PCs)

[ZeroNumerous]

If you want the BBEG to just be a crazy-impossibly hard to kill, going into Master of Nine and picking up the maneuvers and stance I listed earlier is your best bet. With that and a few magic items, the BBEG would be nearly unkillable unless he let his guard down.

If you just want that "Oh **** factor", nothing scares a player more than 28 dice being thrown around. at absolute bare minimum damage, it's still enough to provoke a Massive Damage save.

[elliott20]

I like the "oh Sh*t" build you put down. I think I'll use that one seeing as the players, being at such a low level, won't be able to touch the BBEG anyway. (At least not now)

As far as characterization goes, I wanted to take some visual cues from akuma himself. I'll be keeping the giant prayer beads, the single character emblazened on the back of his gi, and the fire-like hair. The very image itself conjures a very menacing image that I like.

hey, I just had an idea. Is there anyway I can include the prayer beads into the fighting style somehow? I was thinking maybe I would just have him use the prayer beads in part of his maneuvers. (So basically, just use it as a fluff thing but still using unarmed for the purpose of counting it as a weapon)

I'm also trying to work on ways to introducing him to the players. I don't want to just spring him on the players, I want to play up his reputation a little. Seeing as a majority of the adventure will take place in barracks on a nation border, I think rumors from various veteran soldiers will do the job nicely. Rumors will include things like, "the only person who lived to tell the tale speaks of a warrior less human and more demonic. It is whispered in silence that he walks the fiery path of the devil" sort of thing.

Maybe include something about his blinding strike speed and bloodlust like might?

[Douglas]

For a really powerful build, you might want to take some parts of what I posted here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2230489#post2230489), but copying the whole thing is just overkill. Note that TWF can be done with unarmed strikes for both the main and off hand weapons.

[elliott20]

good lord Douglas, I just want to have an intimidating BBEG, not the eater of worlds equivalent of it!! 1000+ damage in one round! Wow, that's just too amazing.

[Merlin the Tuna]

TG's got a nice rundown on the Master of Nine (http://boards1.wizards.com/showpost.php?p=12600617&postcount=18) over at CharOp. With that advice in mind, if you want a mess of maneuvers, TG's multiclassed martial adept (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=683268) thread will help you out a lot, as he's already got solid (and flexible) level sequences down. The build compendium (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=683941) might help, too.

For a really powerful build, you might want to take some parts of what I posted here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2230489#post2230489), but copying the whole thing is just overkill. Note that TWF can be done with unarmed strikes for both the main and off hand weapons.You may want to make mention of questionable interpretation of Leading the Charge, as you seem to be operating on the ever-questionable "I'm my own ally" line of thought.

[dyslexicfaser]

I remember an old 2e game I played in...

The BBEG had a sort of interesting reputation: that is, no one knew anything about him, even that he was a humanoid and a 'he', because no one ever survived running into him. Platoons would just be found massacred, cut to ribbons.

So the rumors were about some less than human... thing, that prowled the battlefields. One guy thought it was a devil, another old guy told us he was sure it was some magical experiment to do with the war that went rogue... one swore blind that it was a Celestial sent to punish us for our sins.

The lack of concrete knowledge built the guy up in our minds into something undefeatable. When we finally ran into him (we figured it was the same guy as the rumors when we'd just watched him mow through 5 guys), we were damn scared of him, because we had no idea what he could do.

EDIT: For the prayer beads... that would be one strange exotic weapon.

[Ryuuk]

If you really wanna be evil with TWF and pure Swordsage 20. Using the Swordsage Unarmed variant and the feat from Complete Warrior called Versatile Unarmed Strike, you can change your unarmed attack to do slashing or piercing damage instead of bludgeoning. Change it to slashing. Grab Girallon Windmill Flesh Rip, Dancing Mongoose, the Snap Kick feat, Time Stands Still, and a belt of Haste.

With your now slashing fists and the capstone ability of Swordsages, you can use Girallon Windmill Flesh Rip and Raging Mongoose together. Now, enter the Island of Blades stance the round before and prep with a Potion of Natural Fang for a +5/+5. Blow Girallon and Dancing Mongoose. then blow Time Stands Still. Full attack twice.

That's, assuming you're weapon finessing with a 20 DEX(or have a 20 STR)..

+22/+22/+22/+22/+22/+17/+17/+12/+12/+7/+7/.

Assuming everything 17 and above hits.. Thats 12d10+30+16d6 to a target. Next round, Adaptative Style recover puts Time Stands Still, Girallon, and Raging Mongoose back into the cycle.

Aim for the caster first, then cycle down the threat list.

Shun Goku Satsu (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnxZXnF1JKc) ?

[Thrawn183]

I think an important question you need to address is, when the PC's eventually do face off against this guy, is he going to have DM granted immunities or be played just like a 20th level PC? Because if its the latter, there are some great defensive counters in Diamond Mind (and a stance that lets you take two in one round!) but you have to realize ahead of time that this limits your number of actions. If you use an immediate action to counter something that means you can't use a boost the next round etc. Now that melee'ers finally have options for the different actions (immediate, swift, standard, full round...) available to them, they have to actually start taking them into account when planning what it is they are going to do on a round per round basis.

[ZeroNumerous]

Shun Goku Satsu (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnxZXnF1JKc) ?

He said he wanted an Akuma bad-guy. I gave him an Akuma bad guy.

[Ninja Chocobo]

you can change your unarmed attack to do slashing damage
+22/+22/+22/+22/+22/+17/+17/+12/+12/+7/+7/.

Set to puree, then?

[lord_khaine]

seriously, if the BBEG is 5-8 lvs above his opponent, who is another npc dont bother make stats for them, as you would just have a battle against yourself, with your pc on the sideline, and thats something that most pc hate, so i would advice against it.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Personally, any ToB BBEG I made would be a Master of Nine or would focus on Shadowhand.

The first time the heroes encounted the BBEG he would pwn them only using counters and stances, no strikes, boosts or attack actions.

[elliott20]

seriously, if the BBEG is 5-8 lvs above his opponent, who is another npc dont bother make stats for them, as you would just have a battle against yourself, with your pc on the sideline, and thats something that most pc hate, so i would advice against it.
I've been mulling over this advice as this is actually a very real concern of mine.

I actually do plan on just playing him as a straight level 20 character, and if the PCs can figure out ways to punch through his defense and actually take him down, they are more than welcome to. I'm trying to consider a good way to handle it.

The one way I have in my mind right now is that I could always have the action between the BBEG and the commander NPC take place at the same time while the PCs are running along side and doing what ever it is they wanted to do in the fight. So, they can either participate in the fight, or they can jump ship and do something else like help out the rest of the unit evacuate or defeat the other enemy officers. that way, they watch/participate if they want, but they have other options.

I've got to spend some time reading over the master of nine PrC and it's perfect for this. I think I will put a couple levels of that into the build.

I have a side question though, is it possible for a non-swordsage to get into the PrC?

[ZeroNumerous]

I have a side question though, is it possible for a non-swordsage to get into the PrC?

Possible? Yes. It's possible that a Fighter got access to the PrC by level 10. But the problem is that it's not efficient. Swordsages exist with access to six disciplines easy. The only downside is that it eats up their five feats(six if human).

[elliott20]

Possible? Yes. It's possible that a Fighter got access to the PrC by level 10. But the problem is that it's not efficient. Swordsages exist with access to six disciplines easy. The only downside is that it eats up their five feats(six if human).

can a warblade qualify for this PrC easily too? They get access to 5 schools, so I'm guessing there is an option that allows you expend a feat to get access to another school right?

[ZeroNumerous]

No, but there is a feat that lets you pick another maneuver and add it to your list of known maneuvers. Or, if you don't have any levels in a Martial Adept class, then you'd just have that maneuver once per encounter. Either way, it's the Martial Study feat from ToB. A Warblade could qualify, if you count Martial Study as being 'access'.

He'd just have to take Martial Study: Any Maneuver from Desert Wind/Setting Sun/Shadow Hand/Devoted Spirit then meet the ridiciliously high feat prereqs, which can both be done by being a human.

[Douglas]

The Martial Study feat gives you one maneuver from any discipline. A Warblade who learns maneuvers from all 5 disciplines normally available to him and also takes Martial Study to learn a maneuver from any one of the other 4 can qualify for Master of Nine. Martial Study doesn't let you spend your normal maneuvers known on the extra discipline, but Mo9 only requires a single maneuver from each of 6 disciplines, so the one maneuver the feat does grant is enough.


You may want to make mention of questionable interpretation of Leading the Charge, as you seem to be operating on the ever-questionable "I'm my own ally" line of thought.
IIRC Customer Service has fairly consistently confirmed that interpretation. Regardless, dropping that stance and the Valorous weapon quality would go quite a ways towards making that build less overpowering.

[lord_khaine]

well honestly, the rulings of customer service isnt worth the electrons needet to write them down here...