Need a CR 10ish bad guy / monster

[sjeshin]

I need a cr 10ish monster / npc with a lot of hp / healing. This group likes to fight a bunch of weak guys mowing them down dynasty warrior style then have a big boss fight with some screwy plot twists and traps and puzzles tossed in the mix. The players are allowed all flavors of cheese and 3.5 / 3.0 material not updated except for kobold and early entry stuff like. One is a charge fighter, one is a fairly well op dmm cleric melee kill train, a ranger barely optimized, and a wizard / master transmogrifist. Level 10. They arent too experienced at using all the toys i gave them to choose from so throwing 1 level 10 warlock that was kinda optimized, no flaws or any overpriced gear and it was a party wipe. Any good cr 10 monsters with low ac, temporary debuffs of some kind, and a huge health pool. They like epic boss fights, but not missing over and over. Im trying to cater to the players maybe too much because it gets most of my family together once a week. I can make a nasty character, but I dont usually try to pump hp instead of ac and miss chances, and I dont DM a whole lot, just know the rules pretty well. I am just not that familiar with the beastiary.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Do you have more info on the PCs? It seems weird that an optimized DMM cleric got taken out by a lightly optimized warlock, so I am very curious as to how that went down.

Advice for parties with wildly different power levels between players: use a variety of enemies. This is nornally a good plan but becomes more important because it let's you try to give enemies that the weaker players can manage while the stronger ones target the more optimized players.

[Vaz]

Dragon Shaman 17. Can fly and breath. Not too optimized but huge sack of HP and can fly. Additional levels make up for lack of actions.

[sjeshin]

The cleric didnt come prepared with a decent spell list. Fell flight, wand of invisibility, and mortalbane eldritch blasts took him out. Burned his only detect magic early, no ability to see invisibility, only the cleric could fly... apparently none of them brought ranged weapons... they have played this game, with me as DM, and I guess they are just busy and dropped the ball? I also did since i glanced at character sheets and didnt see ranged weapons...

[sjeshin]

Dragon Shaman 17. Can fly and breath. Not too optimized but huge sack of HP and can fly. Additional levels make up for lack of actions.

I have seen it said once or twice that they have a lot of hp... do they have it because of just a D10? I don't see anything in the class entry. Am I missing something?

[Flickerdart]

Sounds like you need my favourite combo. It can be put on pretty much any melee monster with enough feats.

Get hella reach (Large or better + reach-boosting feats + spiked chain). Take these feats: Snap Kick, Combat Reflexes, Power Attack, Improved Trip, Knockdown, Knockback, and the relevant prerequisites. Boost your Dexterity. You want one level of Monk for Decisive Strike, but a second level for one of these bonus feats isn't out of the question.

The PCs encounter your creature, seeing it from far away. They close for battle. On its turn, the creature uses Decisive Strike and Power Attacks the ground. The stupid fighter charges. Attack of Opportunity! The fighter eats two hits (for double damage), is tripped, eats two more hits (for double damage), and then is flung back away from the creature each time he gets hit.

The rest of the PCs (and the fighter, if he survived) now have to solve the puzzle of "how do we kill this guy without approaching him."

[sjeshin]

Sounds like you need my favourite combo. It can be put on pretty much any melee monster with enough feats.

Get hella reach (Large or better + reach-boosting feats + spiked chain). Take these feats: Snap Kick, Combat Reflexes, Power Attack, Improved Trip, Knockdown, Knockback, and the relevant prerequisites. Boost your Dexterity. You want one level of Monk for Decisive Strike, but a second level for one of these bonus feats isn't out of the question.

The PCs encounter your creature, seeing it from far away. They close for battle. On its turn, the creature uses Decisive Strike and Power Attacks the ground. The stupid fighter charges. Attack of Opportunity! The fighter eats two hits (for double damage), is tripped, eats two more hits (for double damage), and then is flung back away from the creature each time he gets hit.

The rest of the PCs (and the fighter, if he survived) now have to solve the puzzle of "how do we kill this guy without approaching him."

Like I said though, they don't want something they can't hit or have to figure out ranged attacking, or how to not get murdered in one round. I tried throwing a challenge at them and they got murdered and were frustrated. It's a high OP AVAILABLE campaign, but even the cleric doesn't know what to do. It is kind of like Captain America just stepped out of the chamber...

[Vaz]

I have seen it said once or twice that they have a lot of hp... do they have it because of just a D10? I don't see anything in the class entry. Am I missing something?

D10, I'll double check when I get back. With a +4 Fast Healing, and some DR means that you are going to gradually have less damage taken and can bug out for a quick heal. Alternatively; Power Attack, and Roll with It feats to get like DR10/- and can Dive Bomb for pretty high damage, going off party AC's.

20th level and maybe 20 Con on average rolls are like 265HP. Its not clever and its not pretty. Just is a bruiser that can fly, which has enough issues.

It is a terrible class for player, but as an over levelled boss monster, definately enough.

[Pleh]

I like this search engine (http://monsterfinder.dndrunde.de/).

It doesn't give stats, just a reference where to look them up. But you can ask it to search monsters by CR 10 and see all the CR 10 monsters from all the Monster Manuals.

[Thurbane]

Half-troll Phaerlin Giant Barbarian 1/Frenzied Berserker 4. CR 10.

A literal bucketload of hitpoints, fast healing 5, +14 natural AC, rend, frightful presence, SR 14, scent.

Sources: Fiend Folio, Monster of Faerun, Complete Warrior.

Actually, just rechecked the reqs for Frenzied Berserker: you'd need 12HD before you can enter due to feat requirements, so maybe Barbarian 4/Frenzied Berserker 1.