NPC Boss creation need help as new DM

[Okamigekido]

Just a warning! I've never used forums before, but have heard they come to great use when seeking DND help. Anyhow, I've prepped the first enemy encounter for my friends to come across in the first session. And in doing so, I decided I wanted to make a boss of my own! Originally, I made him with a PC's character sheet-and later read that, is a horrible idea due to some sorts of imbalance.
Please keep in mind that I'm super new to DND, especially DMing-but I have played in quite a few sessions!I want to prep a boss that is a Warlock Tiefling named Valentin, a level 3 (CR 2?) (From what I've inferred from what I've read. The stats I have down for him on the PC sheet I originally made is:
Infernal; The Hexblade; Pact of the Blade
STR: 10 ll DEX: 14 ll CON: 16 ll INT: 9 ll WIS: 12 ll CHA: 17
AC: 16 ll HP: 30

Skills selected: Arcana, Deception

I don't know if the spells/cantrips/weapons I have selected will help at all with this, but I will list them just in case.
Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Green Flame Blade, Thaumaturgy
Spells (lvl 1): Arms of Hadar, Hellish Rebuke, Hex, Wrathful Smite
Spells (lvl 2): Crown of madness
Weapons: Dagger, Greatclub, Rapier

For Eldritch Blast I have the Agonizing Blast (Im not exactly sure if this is a cantrip, and if it is how exactly do I use it for him?)
Prerequisite: Eldritch Blast cantrip
When you cast Eldritch Blast, add your Charisma modifier to the damage it deals on a hit.

He's supposed to be a creepy sort of character (that I believe I want to be possessed someway but thats for another post I think) Any feedback or anything like that is greatly appreciated!

[JackPhoenix]

What level is the party, how many characters are there, how difficult is the fight supposed to be, will there be any other enemies, anything else that may be important about either the party (notable magic items, classes, specific tricks) or the boss?

[Okamigekido]

(Sorry If I dont reply correctly, I'm not used to this ^^; )
The characters are all 5 players, all lvl 1, I would like the fight to be difficult enough to where they will struggle, but still 'limp away' in the best terms I know to put it! There will be no other enemies, and neither will have any sort of magic item. It's going to be their first boss, as I want it to be a memorable one.

If it helps, the party consists of:
Dragonborn Ranger, Tiefling Wizard (Necromancy), Human Bard, High-Elf Paladin, and a Dwarf Barbarian.

[Great Dragon]

For Eldritch Blast I have the Agonizing Blast (Im not exactly sure if this is a cantrip, and if it is how exactly do I use it for him?)
Prerequisite: Eldritch Blast cantrip
When you cast Eldritch Blast, add your Charisma modifier to the damage it deals on a hit.

Eldritch Blast is a Cantrip, with a range of 60 feet.

Agonizing Blast is an Invocation that can be selected to add an effect to the Cantrip.

There aren't a lot of Invocations that can be combined. But Eldritch Spear can be combined with Agonizing Blast.
Spear increases the range of Eldritch Blast to 300 feet.

So, Ranged Spell Attack (Proficiency bonus + Cha modifier) doing 1d10+3 damage.

Ok. From my experience, using a Class-based Villain puts them close to being "on par" with the PCs.

But, if this Villain does not have any friends or minions, then his main problem will be keeping the PCs off of him - especially melee.

Most likely casting Crown of Madness from maximum range on the Ranger if they have a bow, otherwise target the Barbarian; and then targeting the other PCs one by one with Eldritch/Agonizing Blast until they drop.

If you give him Eldritch Spear, have him use that until they get within range for Crown, and then run away, and keep blasting up to 300 feet doing 1d10+3 damage per hit.

[Bjarkmundur]

I do for something along the lines of

Stats:
HP: 70+
AC: 15
Damage: 3
Multiattack
Attack: 4
Saves ranging from - 2 to +2
Advantage against fear effects.


× HP is calculated based on your group's minimum damage output with constant fire.
× AC based on your average player hitting with a roll of 10.
× Damage based on killing a player in 6 rounds with 50% hit chance.
× Multiattack added since there are more players than enemies
× Attack based on your average pc having AC of 14
× Saves perimeters make sure nothing is auto-saved or auto-hit.
× Having a big bad evil guy cower in fear isn't dramatic, so "Bravery" feature is added.


Spells:
Your spell selection should add something to the encounter, so look for effects that do more than numbers.
Misty Step is a great example. This way he can teleport from melee, push the big red button, and continue to fight. Or teleport through a heavy iron gate to escape before putting the house on fire. 2 Spell Slots should be fine.
For calculating stuff, like self-healing, shield spells, hex and bless, we usually include it in the base stat. For example, if my 15AC boss has shield spell, it pre-emptively lower his base AC to 13. Same with Hex, I'd lower his base damage by 1 or 2 to balance it out. If a boss has self-healing, I'd lower his base HP to compensate. These spells do add something to the encounter with their effects, you just have to manage the numbers. Hex is cool cause it affects your player strategy, but with unchanged numbers at level 1, it's just gonna look like you're single-ing out a player to die.

Encounter
× Have a half-way event, something that arbitrarily happens between round 3 and 4. Like the villain using a burst thunder spell that pushes everyone away and then proceeding to try to further his goal, before the heroes manage to stop him. Most likely he realises there's at least a 50/50 for him to be defeated, so he's most likely trying to accomplish something before that gets a chance to happen, or use his surroundings to gain an edge. Switch rooms, collapse the roof, make a wall of fire between him and the players, summon a demon and try to espace in the chaos etc.
× Have some secondary objective, something your villain is trying to accomplish, or his minions. This makes sure the encounter isn't just "hit bad guy" but instead "stop the enemy from doing the thing, and that other thing". This also gives your ranger more things to shoot at, if some kill-in-one-hit minions with 10 AC are constantly trying to deliver some necrotic rejuvenation liquid to the boss, which heals him but poisons the PCs. Think legolas at helm's deep. Pewpewpewpew.
× Level 1 is incredibly lethal. I recommend finding a way to work around that to some degree. Accidentally killing PCs is incredibly easy (that's why we stay away from damaging spells at level 1) . You could allow them to regain hp by expending a hit die and adding their con modifier at the half-way event, or have them start the fight with 5 temporary hit points.
× First villain hit matters. Make him take out half of someone's HP with a double-hitting multi attack. This makes PCs **** their pants.
× After the first big hit, Don't target the same player with both attacks of multi attack, and remember he's supposed to have a 50% hit chance.
× Write everything down, so you can reference it for your next big boss battle.
× Minions are spice. I recommend having them, just to eat up actions and keep the encounter from getting stale. I usually have minions basically read "takes an action to destroy" or "a single player can keep the minions from entering the door, but it takes up his action" and then describe the action and not the mechanics.

Reasoning:
× You want him to survive around 4-6 turns of focus fire with basic attacks
× You want him to be able to kill a PC in three good hits, and hit about half the time.
× After the first 3 turns the player have gotten in position and use their big guns, so you need something to keep the last 3 turns as exciting as the first 3.


..... Wow, that was a much longer post than I intended it to be.
And its the kind of post I hate. "Here are a bunch of recommendations, but no real good answers ".

Feel free to reply with which parts you might want more details about. I want to help, but I don't know what help you need, so just ask :)

[JackPhoenix]

Ignoring weird homebrew, CR 2-3 is appropriate. The party is pretty balanced, but level 1 characters are squishy.

I would start with Cult Fanatic (from MM), switch the spellcasting to warlock one (EB is classic, you may want some other spells to make things interesting... I would aim more for defensive and crowd control abilities than anything that adds damage), give him better equipment (to up AC to more respectable value) and add tiefling traits (Darkness could be good, if you combine it with Devil Sight, because it's something the party could work around. Fire resistance is a bonus, but it doesn't look like your party relies on fire spells anyway).

If you *really* want to, you can give him some legendary action, as 5 vs 1 is a lot, but I would give him some minions... 2 Cultists or something like that, especially if it's the party's first fight in a day.

[Bjarkmundur]

Cult fanatic is killed in 6 hits. he'll be downed in 3 turns, assuming 11DPR from your party. Doesn't give much room for a dramatic fight.

Better pick some good spells or raise his HP some.

[deljzc]

I asked a similar question about a month ago here and I got some good advice:

Don't make NPC's like PC's.

If the boss or leader is only meant for that one adventure (i.e. not a recurring bad buy) and meant to be dealt with most likely in one encounter, build the NPC like a monster in the monster manual.

List only the things that will be relevant in the encounter. You don't have to give him the same options as a PC build. You don't have to give him as many languages or options or subclasses. Just give him abilities/spells/attacks that complete the "feel" of the character you want. You want a warlock type bad guy, make a weird combination of warlock/wizard that keeps it simple without the full backstory of a Pact and subclass. Give him some spells that give him the "feel" of a warlock.

I'm learning (the hard way) that this advice helped a lot. Bad guys, bosses, etc. don't have to be PC's and detailed like in the players handbook. Mix/match whatever abilities you want on a guy to give him the feel you want and keep his power level and difficulty in line with what you are looking for.

K.I.S.S. = Keep it simple stupid.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I asked a similar question about a month ago here and I got some good advice:

Don't make NPC's like PC's.

If the boss or leader is only meant for that one adventure (i.e. not a recurring bad buy) and meant to be dealt with most likely in one encounter, build the NPC like a monster in the monster manual.

List only the things that will be relevant in the encounter. You don't have to give him the same options as a PC build. You don't have to give him as many languages or options or subclasses. Just give him abilities/spells/attacks that complete the "feel" of the character you want. You want a warlock type bad guy, make a weird combination of warlock/wizard that keeps it simple without the full backstory of a Pact and subclass. Give him some spells that give him the "feel" of a warlock.

I'm learning (the hard way) that this advice helped a lot. Bad guys, bosses, etc. don't have to be PC's and detailed like in the players handbook. Mix/match whatever abilities you want on a guy to give him the feel you want and keep his power level and difficulty in line with what you are looking for.

K.I.S.S. = Keep it simple stupid.

This. Very much this. Especially for spell-casters. Give them 1 "default" round (Multiattack routine, blasty spell). Then give them 1-3 other "conditional" things. "X will cast escape spell Y if in melee. This can be done 1x per encounter". "X will use AoE ability Z if two or more enemies are in the blast radius. This can be done 2x during an encounter."

One other, table-specific note is that tables differ about what they consider fun challenges. My tables, for instance, find hard CC[1] very unfun when used against them. It's not so bad in reverse, because the DM has multiple monsters to run. Sure, it's not optimized or symmetric, but I intentionally avoid hard CC for those games (or only used it very rarely and targeted against people who have a decent chance of saving).

[1] things that completely remove a player from the encounter. Repeated-save stuns against people with low saves. Banishment. Wall of force, in cage configuration. Etc.

[guachi]

Level 3 is not a CR 2 creature.

If you look at CR 2 creatures based on humanoids you'll find that martial characters are similar to a level 5 PC in that the creature will have 2 attacks and a bunch of (inflated) HP about twice what a level 5 PC would have.

Spellcasters of CR 2 are often similar to a level 4 PC in the number of spell slots they have. Level 3 spells are so powerful that spellcaster NPCs with them as their highest slots are CR 3 or CR 4 (usually if not always)

In other words, if you want a CR 2 spellcaster foe I'd give him the spell slots of a 4th level caster and roughly 2x the HP of a 4th level PC. If the NPC has other, non-HP defenses such as high AC or resistances, you can lower his HP.

[Unoriginal]

IIRC, there is an Evil Mage NPC statblock that is CR 2. Making it a Warlock wouldn't be hard.

Now to make it a boss, I would definitively give them a couple minions.

[JackPhoenix]

Cult fanatic is killed in 6 hits. he'll be downed in 3 turns, assuming 11DPR from your party. Doesn't give much room for a dramatic fight.

Better pick some good spells or raise his HP some.

3 turns is about right for solo creature. The party is level 1, so they don't have that many damaging options anyway. The ranger doesn't have spells yet, paladin can't smite, both wizard and bard have 2 spells (and bard's damage suck in general without subclasses) per day. Only the barbarian has access to his main class ability. And that's assuming it's the only fight in a day.

Even just scale armor ups Cult Fanatic's AC to 16, which can lower the party's damage output considerably, and that's before any potential Darkness shennanigans or interference from minions.

Especially for a brand new GM, sticking with existing rules is better than some dubious homebrew stuff.

[Great Dragon]

Especially for a brand new GM, sticking with existing rules is better than some dubious homebrew stuff.

Very good!

I thought my Tactics for this Warlock (as listed by the OP) was pretty sound.

I noticed that he already has AC 16 (not sure how with only Light Armor and +2 Dex) so that's not a problem.

[JackPhoenix]

Very good!

I thought my Tactics for this Warlock (as listed by OP) was pretty sound.

There are some mistakes in there.

Eldritch Blast has range of 120', not 60'.

Crown of Madness requires the victim to make melee attack, and the attack must be made before movement. If there's no valid target in reach, the victim can act normally. So it will be pretty much useless on ranged character or a spellcaster. Besides, ranger will likely have decent wisdom. The bard and the barbarian seems like the most viable targets, and the bard can easily negate the effect by standing away from everyone else. The barbarian, not so much, as it is likely both he and the paladin will be adjecent to each other in order to attack the warlock. And the barbarian is likely the most dangerous member of the group anyway.

[Great Dragon]

There are some mistakes in there.

Eldritch Blast has range of 120', not 60'.


*Sigh. Still not used to 5e changes from 3x.

Yeah, casting Crown on the Barbarian seems best.

Thanks

[Okamigekido]

I'm not exactly sure how to respond to everyone yet, so thank you so much to everyone for the suggestions, tips, and help. I will hopefully be able to craft something a bit simpler and more balanced now! Again, I'm still a newcomer-so this has all been super handy!

[Bjarkmundur]

Check Mah description, it has some really handy dandy resources.
Also the Angry GMs "source of conflict" and "dramatic question" have helped me tremendously.

[Okamigekido]

I went through the list (and asked my brother for help) and we decided using one of the pre-mades was the best option! We took the stats and changed them a little, (We even changed some of the spells and made him a tad less detailed to be more simplified), and took a snippet from nearly everyone's comment and even added in a puzzle to make it extra interesting! Thanks to everyone else, this should be a VERY fun first boss. Again, I super appreciate it!

[Great Dragon]

I'd be interested in knowing how it worked.
Have Fun!

[Bjarkmundur]

Have fun! :)

[Okamigekido]

I believe we did go with the fanatic from the MM, and we changed his AC and something else, (along with the race). Then, we did decide to use crown of madness or whatnot on the Barbarian (sorry I don't have my DND notes with me at school) and decided with how large the first area is-either A: the barbarian will just chase the team around or B: He will be able to get hold of the others. (Assuming he doesn't roll out of madness and such)
What we're doing is that when the team comes into the battle area, the boss is going to cast Crown of Madness, and at the end of his turn run behind the statue thats in the fighting area. Now, when the team tries to move forward to catch view-other enemies will come out (I cant remember what ones) and when they get a view behind the statue he'll be gone. (We know that he had gone inside the statue to hide) and while hes hiding they'll fight some of the enemies. Once they get one or two of them down, he's going to cast Darkness and then come out of the statue. (I'll most likely use Thaumatergy or however you spell it during one turn to role-play some sort of creepy-vibed action, still need to think IF I really want to do that, and when) The "puzzle" is, that if all of the characters link hands, and sort of sink inward to the darkness (because with 5 players that's nearly 30 feet which takes up a majority of the fighting zone) And they'll fight from there.
I think I forget some minor details, but for now this is all I can really remember.
(Oh! I remembered we did give him 4th level spellcasting slots and many of them aren't damage related-but I am keeping agonizing blast as I think it'll be useful)
Any suggestions and ideas are still greatly appreciated! I wouldn't mind if some of the flaws and things like that are called out in this post. The more critiques, the better I believe!

[Great Dragon]

Here's what I can think of:

Hp = 60 to 75

Bracers of Armor = 15
(This can be part of any Treasure)

Race = Tiefling for Thaumatugy?

2 Eldritch Blast attacks a round at +5 to Hit.

Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Friends, Poison Spray (Mage Hand if you don't want another attack spell)
Edit - I forget about Green Flame Blade.

2 slots per Short Rest.
First: Charm Person.

Second: Crown of Madness, Darkness, Hold Person.

Third: Tongues, Remove Curse.

Fourth: Dimension Door.

Invocations

Agonizing Blast

Mask of Many Faces. (Disguise Self)

One With Shadows (he uses this to turn Invisible in Dim Light to escape when he's hurt and out of Slots)

Devil's Sight: (very effective when combined with Darkness to Eldritch Blast twice per round with no penalty, while PCs must guess location and attack with Disadvantage.

Unless you say otherwise, can't be combined with Agonizing Blast)

Possible Flaws:

Like most Fanatics, tends to over rate self-importance, and under estimate others.

Has no problem sacrificing followers, which the PCs might be able to use to turn the followers against the Fanatic.

[Bjarkmundur]

Looking good mate