Pathfinder Final Boss

[antoniosmith198]

So I'm having some issues here trying to figure out how to end my campaign. The basic premise is that The Kingdom is divided up into different providences. My players have to unit all the providences together to defeat a force known as The Darkness. I was just wondering what would be the perfect monster to use to be The Darkness for the final battle. I would prefer some type of horror monster but anything will work. I don't have my full party yet and we have not started the game. I just have a story in mind and I'm looking for a final boss

[Wartex1]

Maybe look at some 3.5e creatures and port them over, like that Dead Baby God creature, whatever it's called.

[stack]

Approximate level range?

One thing to consider when building a boss is that single enemy encounters are terrible. Too many ways to hose a single target and if it is tough enough to survive attacks it will often shred PCs in return. One way to help is us to essentially mash multiple critters together, so a single spell removes one set of actions rather than the entire creature. I've seen this done different ways, though most often as you damage it, it loses actions as appropriate to there being less "creatures".

Unless you are just looking for a big bad that fits you fluff. That goes back to the level question. Shadow demons can be interesting with possession and such.

[grarrrg]

to defeat a force known as The Darkness

Do you want Magic Missiles?
Because that's how you get Magic Missiles.

[Psyren]

Do you want Magic Missiles?
Because that's how you get Magic Missiles.

Okay, you win :smallbiggrin:

@OP: Seconding stack, we need to know your players' final level to challenge them properly. There are lots of different enemies that could qualify as "The Darkness" and serve as a final boss to a lot of different parties of various levels.

[Agahnim]

Do you want Magic Missiles?
Because that's how you get Magic Missiles.
And that's how the funyuns get stuck in the machine.
Anyway OP, I agree with the previous poster who advised you to make it multiple creatures. Wether it's one bad guy with decently powerful minions, or a huge creature with independent parts floating around it. For example you could have the main creature be some kind of huge undead or elemental, but with no eyes, and have a Beholder float around it - and that would be its actual eyes! So when they kill the beholder the main creature would become blinded.
That "Darkness" monster reminds me of the Incal, btw. Maybe take a look at the graphic novel for inspiration?

[CharonsHelper]

Frankly - "The Darkness" could as easily be an evil organization as a single creature. Perhaps they always meet their superiors in darkness so that they don't know their identity or some such.

The organization benefits from keeping the kingdoms apart. It also would explain why the PCs need to unite the splintered kingdom. Because "The Darkness" has an army, and the big boss is just their "Council of Darkness" while the armies of the 5 kingdoms deal with the bulk of the organization.

[Eldonauran]

I'd make it some sort of possessing creature of a ridiculous amount of HD, but make it so that it has to invest those HD into possessed creatures in order to manifest parts of itself on the material realm. A full assault on the creature would be quite suicidal in its own realm, but taking out its smaller pieces could render it weaker after each victory.

So, when the players eventually find the 'portal' to its domain, its powers have been weakened to a point that it still poses a real challenge to the group just by itself, BUT there is a twist. Each of the bad guy bosses that the players have killed off have been drawn into the shadow's realm (mostly in spirit form) and manifest as part of the fight. This way, you have flunkies that serve as a sort of barrier and action economy stabilizer for the final boss. You can even keep one HP total for all the creatures, essentially the Darkness is possessing all of them at once and they have to be defeated before it is.

[Serafina]

Possession sounds like a good idea for a variety of reasons:
- you can do it at pretty much every level.
- You can just say it can't take over the PCs because the possession needs a lenghty preparation ritual, if that's a concern. NPC powers can be fun like that.
- it fits with something called "the Darkness", especially if you add appropriate manifestations on the possessed creatures
- you can justify encountering the boss earlier in weaker states
- most importantly you can make the boss fight about more than fighting just one big creature.

Because boss fights of "party vs. single monster" are horrible ideas.
The party will have a huge edge in action economy that way, allowing them to easily outmaneuver the boss.
The boss will also just get to act much less than the party, making them less interesting.
Upping the numbers only works to a degree - more HP are mostly boring (and encourage super-hard hitting builds too), while higher defenses quickly make the PCs feel helpless and higher offense can easily just lead to a TPK.

So instead, have them fight a bunch of enemies at once. One can of course be stronger and the leader, but the others shouldn't just be fodder either.
If you want, "the darkness" can just fully take over one enemy at a time, with showy manifestation and all, and if that one is defeated it surges into another enemy. That can lead to interesting tactical challenges, especially if you make the surge heal the newly possessed creature.

[Someguy231]

Maybe look at some 3.5e creatures and port them over, like that Dead Baby God creature, whatever it's called.

An Atropal?

[AslanCross]

I agree with what everyone said above---action economy is one of the most powerful advantages PCs have against single boss monsters. Single monsters have to take advantage of mobility (like dragons), terrain, and have the ability to separate the party or attack everyone in order to prove to be a significant threat, especially if they are the final boss.

That said, the Havero (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/havero/) is an epic level monster that appears in Curse of the Crimson Throne.
It's not actually the final boss, but one of the possible encounters in one of the mid-level dungeons. Instead of fighting the whole monster, the module just has individual tentacles awaken as multiple CR 6 boss monsters; the complete CR 24 monstrosity does not awaken in the encounter. The havero has the interesting ability to customize its own attack set, so it actually can keep up with action economy.

[mikelibrarian]

This guy is CR 21 and lives on the Negative Material Plane. Sounds pretty dark to me.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary5/hundun.html