Experiment: The most Neutral of all neutral Neutralizers....

[GrayDeath]

Hello Forum!

My Co DM and I are planning to make the actual "End Game" Big "Bad" of a Campaign a fanatic neutral Balance for balances sake" Guy.

Now that and the personality are easy (also the Race is fixed as starting out as Human, as he has already been encountered, if only in passing).

Now the question is how to gain the most abilities to penalize others for their "extreme" Alignments, while not maiing that your only shtick. So far the only thing aisde him (having been/being Human) is that he needs some kind of Social Ful or Mind Control to allow for the fact he has loads of minions that the players have already fought.

We do have some vague Ideas, but I thought I`d try to ask the Playground for inspiration.

At the End of the Campaign he will have 20 Class levels (or even a bit more, although we ar enot utilizing epic Rules, so at most some Templates on top of 20 Class Levels).
All official 3.5 that is not "near impossible" to find is in, unless it is setting specific to either FR or Rokugan/OA.

Inspire me, pelase! :smallbiggrin:

[Maat Mons]

Unfortunately, Xan Yae has been given very little support.

Or maybe the support is just impossible to find or read. "Anything that achieves true balance disappears into invisible perfection," as she teaches.

[zfs]

Just a few abilities off the top of my head that punish "alignment extremists":

Word of Balance (Druid spell, also in the Balance domain)

Weighed in the Balance (only found in the Balance domain)

A Concordant Killer's greatsword (always treated as holy, unholy, axiomatic and anarchic). But you can't take it from them, so the only way you're getting it is crafting it as a custom magic weapon or Polymorphing into one of them.

[hamishspence]

Hello Forum!

My Co DM and I are planning to make the actual "End Game" Big "Bad" of a Campaign a fanatic neutral Balance for balances sake" Guy.

Now that and the personality are easy (also the Race is fixed as starting out as Human, as he has already been encountered, if only in passing).

Now the question is how to gain the most abilities to penalize others for their "extreme" Alignments, while not maiing that your only shtick. So far the only thing aisde him (having been/being Human) is that he needs some kind of Social Ful or Mind Control to allow for the fact he has loads of minions that the players have already fought.


Cleric with the Balance domain from Underdark (and also Spell Compendium) would fit best. The Word of Balance and Weighed in the Balance spells do what you're asking for.

For minions/allies, Fiend Folio has Rilmani, Dragon Magazine 321 (July 2004) has Concordant Dragons, and MM IV has the Concordant Killer - an Outsider that he could Gate in.

[Jowgen]

The True Neutral Paladin variant from Dragon 310 called "Incarnate" gets to Smite Extremists (i.e. any alignment without a neutral component), but that's about it from there. Thought I'd add it for completeness.

[tiercel]

A couple of RP thoughts...

“Balance” True Neutral fanatics are / can be seen as... a little wacky. If one of your PCs’ Social Fu is strong, expect a boss “fight” that at least starts with a Philosophical Throwdown (e.g. an argument that, in some sense, Good is actually more balanced for a greater number of people than Evil is).

If you want to play up how fanatic TN Guy is, have an actual Evil BBEG for the final confrontation as well, and have TN Guy observe, join the weaker side, and then *switch sides* or try to take down both “extremes” in a 3-way battle. (Bonus points if you drive your PCs to at least contemplate a truce with Evil in order to ace TN Guy :P )

Mechanically...

Others have mentioned “balance magic,” but I kinda feel like social/minionmancy is a strong play for a Seeker of Balance, especially if he largely operates by subterfuge/manipulation/behind these scenes. Bard and Beguiler both wave hi at this point in terms of crunch matching fluff....

On the other hand, if you really want to play up fanatical cultism (Balanc eor otherwise), possibly nothing says that more than Thrallherd. Not sure what would be creepier ... an army of TN fanatics, or a TN Balance cult leader whose thralls are actually drawn together from across the alignment spectrum and fighting together at TN Guy’s behest for the cause of Balance....

[Maat Mons]

If one of your PCs’ Social Fu is strong, expect a boss “fight” that at least starts with a Philosophical Throwdown (e.g. an argument that, in some sense, Good is actually more balanced for a greater number of people than Evil is).

Nah, just tell him you believe all extremes are wrong, and you're fighting him because he's taking balance to an extreme.

[GrayDeath]

The Philosophical Discussion is expected, yes.

Hmmm, never would have considered Thrallheard, and the Balance Domain is also very fitting. Combining them sounds like a good start so far, but keep it coming!

[Bohandas]

Yes. The Balance domain.

[Telonius]

I was playing around with something like this in my "Elder Evils" villainous competition entry (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22032908&postcount=116). The rules of the competition specified Evil, but you could adapt some of the plan. Basic idea is to get a Super Xag-Ya (Positive Energy elemental) and a Super Xeg-Yi (Negative Energy elemental) present on the Material Plane at once. They rush at each other, with the resulting explosion devastating most of the plane.