Needs help for a boss construction

[Hairlight]

Hi!i'm a DM that needs some tips about how to construct a boss enough strong to face 4 level 20 PGs(a cleric with no relevant combat prestige classes ,two warriors and a debuffer sorcerer).They're full equipped(yeah those hugged badly the christmas' item tree XD)and the boss(because of lore) must be an assassin with a strong base of illusionist's spell or however illusionists' tricks.Will be wonderful if someone can posts a complete sheet of the png or at a least posts a good detailed one .The race should be human and with an appropriate level that could be an hard challenge(they're seasoned players).Thanks for the attention i hope that i can find there many ideas.

[PacMan2247]

Going from "needs some tips" at the beginning to asking someone to provide a fully-developed character for your use by the end is quite a jump; there are some people out there who enjoy this particular aspect of the game, so you might end up finding better luck than just hearing from me.

Some more information might be useful. Will this assassin be facing them alone, or with minions available? Is it definitely human, or might it be something using its illusions (or possibly racial abilities) to pass as human? Does it know the PCs are coming for it? Will it be in its lair, or otherwise have time to prepare for combat?

Your initial post raised more questions than this, but these are the ones I'm hoping might be constructive toward someone being able to help you.

[Hairlight]

Going from "needs some tips" at the beginning to asking someone to provide a fully-developed character for your use by the end is quite a jump; there are some people out there who enjoy this particular aspect of the game, so you might end up finding better luck than just hearing from me.

Some more information might be useful. Will this assassin be facing them alone, or with minions available? Is it definitely human, or might it be something using its illusions (or possibly racial abilities) to pass as human? Does it know the PCs are coming for it? Will it be in its lair, or otherwise have time to prepare for combat?

Your initial post raised more questions than this, but these are the ones I'm hoping might be constructive toward someone being able to help you.

Facing them alone,human,he knows that are coming,is in his lair,and have lot of time to prepare for combat.

[drack]

Ooh, fun, fun.
Get poisons. They're prohibitively expensive for PCs, but why be a boss if you can't get the good stuff?
If you boost stealth/hide/move silently you can use sniping, which gives a penalty to hide but lets you do it again after every shot. Add in the invisibility from your illusions while standing still for +40 to hide. Look into arrows of spell storing vampire drain to deal 10d6 damage and heal up at the same time. This will stack with any sneak attack damage they have as an assassin. Remember to use environmental conditions to penalize the players. As an NPC you can set the level arbitrarily high making up for any lack of op through simply throwing more numbers at them. If you don't wanna stat stuff, just pull a gloom out of the epic level handbook and slap some illusion stuff on it. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: If there's lots of prep time drop some body doubles for them to chase their tails on around the lair, set some traps, and heck, you can even have them let their guards down by killing a body double before he kicks off combat by sniping them in a surprise round turning his base itself into a PC confining death trap. :smalltongue:

[Braininthejar2]

Don't play fair. Take a hostage. Use home ground advantage to split the party. Dump someone through a trap door into a cellar full of poison gas.

[Braininthejar2]

Oh, if you're looking for a ready build, you might try looking through the "villainous competition" threads.

[Jowgen]

+1 to the poison idea. Having to make saves and taking ability damage adds a lot of urgency to an encounter.

For the actual boss, I recommend the Phantom creature template from Monster Manual 5. Then you can design a boss-room that takes advantage of the incorporeality, e.g. put in solid barriers he can move through. Maybe add Shot on the Run. Scout/Ranger with Swift Hunter for some more assassin flavour. Then just pick your ranged poison delivery method of choice.

[PacMan2247]

Alternatively, if your concept is more "illusionist who assassinates" you'll want to think ahead about dealing with things like true seeing and dispel magic. Forcing the PCs to run a gauntlet of traps before dealing with you will soften them up and use up some spell slots. I'd probably pick evocation and enchantment as prohibited schools, but that's a playstyle preference. Keeping access to necromancy lets you retain access to some of the nastier symbol spells, and blindness/deafness will deal with true seeing: if they can't see, they can't see true. Deafening the casters would also impose a spell failure chance for anything with verbal components. Bestow curse is another handy one to drop on them (obviously, I'm a fan of necromancy), and unluck might be worth a shot, too. Depending on how many rounds you're able to get with simulacra, you could do a lot of damage in de-buffs. Dispel magic isn't going to help too much- the simulacra would only have half your big bad's level's, so they probably couldn't overcome the PC's checks, and by the time they get to the big bad you might have de-buffs of your own that you'd rather not risk. If you want to go in this sort of direction, the Master Specialist prestige class probably has some stuff you'll want, and it was why I asked earlier if this character has to be human- making it a vampire would only add +2 to the challenge rating (and a CR22 encounter should be manageable for "seasoned players") while making the caster an awful lot more durable, though it could become risky if they figure it out and the cleric tries turning.

[Hairlight]

Oh, if you're looking for a ready build, you might try looking through the "villainous competition" threads.

? Can you link me those threads?can i start a competition as well?

[King of Nowhere]

don't let this villain battle directly with the party, or he'll be toast. keeping distance and wearing them down is the only viable option. this means mostly sniping. I'd suggest a ranged build

[Telonius]

When you say, "Assassin," do you mean it has to have levels in the Assassin prestige class, or can it be anyone who hires himself out as a killer? If actual Assassin levels aren't required, that opens up a lot more possibilities.

[Hairlight]

When you say, "Assassin," do you mean it has to have levels in the Assassin prestige class, or can it be anyone who hires himself out as a killer? If actual Assassin levels aren't required, that opens up a lot more possibilities.Assassin is as i mean,prestige class

[Hairlight]

don't let this villain battle directly with the party, or he'll be toast. keeping distance and wearing them down is the only viable option. this means mostly sniping. I'd suggest a ranged build
lik?because i need something more detailed,there isn't a post or something like that allows me to start a '' villain competition'' or however an homebrew competition?

[King of Nowhere]

lik?because i need something more detailed,there isn't a post or something like that allows me to start a '' villain competition'' or however an homebrew competition?

i'm not experienced enough to offer better advice than others. I can only say that i tried assassin bosses in the past, and they did well if they could hide and snipe and set traps, but as soon as they actually engaged in melee - even if they did so to unleash a deadly sequence of sneak attacks leaving a pc almost dead - they went down in one round like sacks of potatoes.

sniping with poisoned arrows is a likely strategy (i suggest dragon bile as it is the only poison with high enough DC that it can reasonably work on high level pcs). A party of that level is likely to have easy access to true sight, so illusions are probably going to be ineffective. sniping precludes you from making more than one attack per round, so you can take manyshot; you still deal sneak attack damage only once, but you can poison 4 times per round. there are a couple feats to increase poison damage and DC, but I don't know where.
Give the guy plenty of ways to sneak away from danger, too - like a scroll of still silent dimension door that he can use while grappled, and some of quickened dimension door to use otherwise. a contingency to counter a dimensional anchor too. have him covered in oil of slippery, grease and butter. make him immune to most save-or-lose effects.
that's all i can say

[PersonMan]

Villainous Competition (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22096598&postcount=1) (includes links to all the previous ones)

[Selene Sparks]

Assassin is as i mean,prestige classIf you must use the prestige class(which I think is a bit silly on the grounds that classes are metagame constructs, but that's neither here nor there at the moment), then might I recommend this build (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?471334-Weekly-Optimization-Showcase-Wizsassin-(Tempest_Stormwind))?

I think this manages to match exactly what you need. It's a human(as illumians are humanoid(human), uses the assassin class, is still a full-powered wizard with even more action economy advantages thanks to Augmented Casting and quicken. If you want to improve it, one thing you'll want to invest for the NPC is drakehelms, so you can add more buffs from odd lists onto the assassin's buff list via persistomancy shenanigans. Metamagic reducers are also a good idea that synergize well with Augmented Casting, and you could even sub out the last two assassin levels and an unseen seer level(using a drakehelm or a nice interpretation of extra spell for Hunter's Eye) to put on three levels of Uncanny Trickster, as it should advance the double-advancement of Ultimate Magus just like it does Hellfire Warlocks, to allow you to abuse more metamagics. On a similar note, you could add on a major bloodline to accomplish a similar improvement to Augmented Casting that would, in fact, stack with the Uncanny Trickster shenanigans.

One final thing to keep in mind is that, if the wizsassin has over eight hour's warning, he can simply buff up on persistent spells before bed and still have a full compliment of spells to buff further and nova on the PCs.