Need help with designing the Epic Level Villain of my campaign into a stat block.

[damascoplay]

So, currently, my players (all 5 of them, who are already at Epic level) have managed to beat Tiamat in combat. Yep, Tiamat, with 615 hp, 30 regen, Ac 25 and etc with no alterations to the Stat Block. Needless to say they are very very powerful, with most of them having the Vestiges of the Divergence from the Tal'Dorei's Guide (Huge fan of CR btw). So of course, knowing what they're capable, i want to know how to structure the MAIN EPic Level Villain of my campaign. A Powerful Lich who managed to ascend into godhood...(yep, ik that sounds familiar)

For the sake of knowledge, i'm going to leave the player's characters here to guide you guys:

Mountain Dwarf, Paladin of Vengeance ,20 - Wields a Holy Avenger, Cape of Fire Resist, and a Dwarven Plate Armor. Also has the Boon of Invencibility, and can easily deal at least 200+ dmg a single turn.

Tiefling Barbarian, Path of the Berserker ,19 - Uses a Dragonslayer greataxe and has THE Titanstone Knuckles. Also has the Boon of Recovery.

Half-Elf Monk (Shadows) ,20 - Has the Wraps of Dyamak, and the Boon of Imortality

Forest Gnome Necromancer ,20 - Has the Spiral of Conflux (Not Exalted yet), and the Boon of Spell Recall.

Bronze Dragonborn Sorcerer (Draconic Lineage) ,19 - Has a Homebrew magical item, wich allows him to don a magical armor, AC 13 + Dex, plus resist. to cold dmg, and cannot be restrained or grappled. No Boons (He is the new player of the group).

With this in mind, it becomes difficult to set up a fight against them, primarily because of their power, and because they've already beaten Tiamat (But only destroyed it's physical essence). So, unless i manage to BEEF UP the**** outta this Villain, they're going to beat it no problem. I've considered increasing HP +-1k, giving more spell slots, Magic Resis., but that's it. Any thoughts on how to proceed?

[Aembrosia]

His hp is 0 the fight ends when you say it ends, when there is the best moment of dramatic tension.

The fight begins as normal. When they start to squirm thinking he must be close to dying describe, for example, a paladin smite cleaving his torso in two as the skull fractures and beams of light erupt from his sunken holes for eyes. The body falls limply to the ground indistinguishable from the other skeletons and zombies in the clamoring horde he brought with him. Queue maniacal chuckling. In his godlike state the entire army of darkness is his physical avatar. His essence moves to occupy the space of any nearbye undead. Which may include a dracolich, a death knight, a death tyrant, zombie giant... Or thematically maintain a single look for him describing a quick transformation of a skeleton.

Make a 20th level divination wizard with 3x as many spell slots, + the subclass abilities of a necromancer, bring a pet that likes to smash and some archmage worshippers.

Set the fight somewhere an ancient secret is locked away that if he gets to it would be contrary to the heroes ideals and goals. Make him move to it.
PCwin condition: kill lich
Lich win condition: the secret to spinning anew the fabric of reality allowing him to turn living people into his phylacteries on a whim

More?

[MrStabby]

If you want to make the lich harder, put him on the offensive.

If the players are hunting down the lich's phlactery they might get it. If the lich out of the gates is trying to kill the players and is pretty chill about throwing his corpse at them on the premise he can grow a new one then the PCs might find themselves needing to conserve spell slots at the end of the day to fight the night time ambushes.

Likewise give the lich spells like dream so he can screw with the players throughout the campaign. The players are really powerful. They are less powerful if they don't have any spell slots and are exhausted.

To make the final fight hard I would load it up with illusions. I think that At will duplicate like the trickery cleric could do pretty well (as a legendary action - create and move both the lich and the duplicate). With recovery mechanics like the lair spell slot recovery and maybe a legendary save recovery mechanic you catch the PCs in a bind - go slow and the recovery makes the fight a lot harder. Burn resources quickly and you risk wasting a lot on illusions.

Second legendary action is to cast wall of force - possibly on a recharge. Separate and isolate melee elements. Get casters to waste high level spells and abilities on duplicates. Split the party so fewer saves are made within the paladin's aura. You may need some low cielings given the flying and running up walls available - else you can box them against a wall.

Make sure the Lich has counterspell - and rocks at least a +7 int bonus. This is not enough to shut down a caster completely but it can persuade them to attack less directly.



Probably the most important spell is nystul's magic aura. Make an innocent object appear like a phylactery to attempts to detect it so when the party goes on a quest to destroy it they are simply going into an ambush. Get creative with where the real phylactery is - another hostile plane possibly. Certainly hard to reach and protected by forbidance spells and suchlike.

When it comes to magic items, if I were a lich I would be on the look out for protection from radiant damage and protection from fire damage items so probably resisting these two as a priority.


So yeah, this isn't enough - you will need some epic stats but hopefully playing your antagonist hard and going out to disrupt the players plans means that they won't have to be that tough. Making the players shepherd resources should make it a pretty fun encounter.

[damascoplay]

Probably the most important spell is nystul's magic aura. Make an innocent object appear like a phylactery to attempts to detect it so when the party goes on a quest to destroy it they are simply going into an ambush. Get creative with where the real phylactery is - another hostile plane possibly. Certainly hard to reach and protected by forbidance spells and suchlike.

This is probably my favorite part. I Appreciate it :D

My plan now is to ambush the players while they're searching for it in the Astral Plane, in an Astral Stronghold. While dealing with a couple of astral dreadnoughts on the way. Real phylactery is actually an homunculi that resemble's the Lich's long dead spouse... :smallbiggrin:

[damascoplay]

His hp is 0 the fight ends when you say it ends, when there is the best moment of dramatic tension.

The fight begins as normal. When they start to squirm thinking he must be close to dying describe, for example, a paladin smite cleaving his torso in two as the skull fractures and beams of light erupt from his sunken holes for eyes. The body falls limply to the ground indistinguishable from the other skeletons and zombies in the clamoring horde he brought with him. Queue maniacal chuckling. In his godlike state the entire army of darkness is his physical avatar. His essence moves to occupy the space of any nearbye undead. Which may include a dracolich, a death knight, a death tyrant, zombie giant... Or thematically maintain a single look for him describing a quick transformation of a skeleton.

Make a 20th level divination wizard with 3x as many spell slots, + the subclass abilities of a necromancer, bring a pet that likes to smash and some archmage worshippers.

Set the fight somewhere an ancient secret is locked away that if he gets to it would be contrary to the heroes ideals and goals. Make him move to it.
PCwin condition: kill lich
Lich win condition: the secret to spinning anew the fabric of reality allowing him to turn living people into his phylacteries on a whim

More?

I love this idea. Thanks for the input! :smallwink:
That's all i need.

[furby076]

Id also make his lair an extension of his will. Make a zombie tarrasque his lair. It does not move, but when the players enter it does try to bite. A sucesful hit does max HP drain which lasts until a full rest. Oh, but there is no full resting here as the lich knows the adventurers snuck in. He plagues their dreams preventing full rests, so the players should learn fast they can only short rest. Even then, they can't do it often, as the inside of the zombie tarrasque are also monsters that attack. Come up with appropriate encounters (from simple skeletons/zombies, to undead beholders, etc). Reskin the monsters as parts of the tarrasque (skeleton = tarrasque undead antibodies, undead beholder could be the heart of the tarassque, etc). Make it creepy. Heck, dim the lights, play creepy cave sounds (dripping water, foot steps) and have this playing in the background the entire time. This should be 3-4 sessions. By the time you are done, your players should be happy to have left the dungeon. The lich, heck, the lich is just a fight. The dungeon, that is an experience that should leave your PCs with PTSD. When DMing, move slowly. Look up from behind your battlemat, stand up slowly, walk around the table. Be sort of creepy (don't cross borders like touching people). Your goal is to weird out your players and make them feel like they are in your environment.

Do not allow them to use extrplaner tricks for resting. If they try and jump into a portable hole, to sleep...Well, this is the liches home and he knows all. He will show up, grab the hole and seal it up. Players die. give them a hint. Don't allow any teleportation abilities (including things like misty step). They can only come in and out through the mouth. Find other convenience spells and screw with them. Don't gimp the players too hard, frustrate them. Do the players love casting light on stones and throwing them down holes to light the path? The moment the player throws the stone, the light winks out of existance. Dwarf has darkvision? it doesn't seem to work so well. Again, the goal is not to punish the players by removing core abilities, but just to tweak them a bit so they suffering and getting stressed out. If they players as why, tell them "you don't know, but considering you are fighting a god lich, who has immense magical powers, you think his force of will is screwing around with magic. Use your magical abilities at your own risk..." Have fun with it, but let them have fun with it too :). You want the players to use up 50% of resources before hitting the lich. They know its a boss fight and will want to be at 100%. Don't let them do that as that will not only give them an advantage, but make them stressed about the final fight. Make them use 9th level spells before the fight. Make the lich immune to crits. Crits dont happen often, but the melee will hate you for that restriction. It's more mental pain than actual pain to the players

The final fight is with the lich-> who is waiting. . He has buff spells up, and maybe more than 2-3 concentration spells (he is a god). His minions include the brain of the tarrasque, plus other bits and pieces coming in. Maybe blood of the tarrasque shoots out of zombified veins. These are jets of acid, or a substance that makes your characters sticky and move slowly, or both. Maybe a random PC has to make a dex save, each around, to avoid being tripped by some muscle strand of the tarrasque trying to trip the player. They don't know when it will happen, to whom, etc. It should be a simple trip. It may not mean anything (paladin stands up, continues to swing), but the fact that it's happening will stress them out.

Finally, as others have mentioned, the players have to defeat the lich not just once, but twice! After they are done killing the lich, they have to hit the phyllacetory for 5 ROUNDS (doesn't matter 1 attack or ten attacks, its rounds..and no the players don't know that). The lich regenerates after 3 rounds coming back at 25%health. The first time should be autofail at destroying the phyllacetory. They won't know it until the 3rd round kicks in, and the lich pops back. The tarrasque is still harassing them. Then, afte they kill the lich again, they only have 2 more rounds to attack it (they don't know this though). However, it won't be that simple. Maybe the tarrasque spawns fast moving maggots that paralyze the person who has the phyllacetory and steal it from him. Now the players are spending rounds trying to retrieve it. 3 rounds are ticking away. If they get it back in time, and hit it for 2 more rounds it is destroyed. But, if they were not able to get it by the 3rd round, the lich comes back at 25% of max hit points again. It is attacking them, while the tarrasque is harassing the pcs and trying to keep control of the phyllacetory. Once they destroy it, the lich can be fully destroyed.

Just adding hit points won't be enough. The players will realize your boss fight is just a meat chopping experience. You want to stress your PCs and the players. My DM stressed out our group once by keeping us in a spider dungeon for 3 sessions. We were stressed and had the hair on our necks raised the entire 3 sessions. We hated it and loved it all at once.