Help with Earth-themed villain? [Spoiler for the Center Cannot Hold]

[Skjaldbakka]

I have an adventure in which a cleric of Obad-Hai has taken over a diamond mine and the PCs are supposed to go in and remove him. I was looking for advice in terms of earth thematic feats, spell selection, and templates to give this guy, who needs to be CR 10-11. I would like for him to be able to cast 5th level spells, so he needs to keep at least 9 levels of cleric.

So far, I am thinking about using the mineral warrior template.
I have an advanced Earth mephit cohort for the cleric, and he has 3 other mephits that he is controlling via Earth Domain.

I was planning to have him prepare spells like Wall of Stone, Meld into Stone, and Stone Shape, and Summon spells to augment his earth elemental minions/allies.

I have no idea what to give him for feats, aside from possibly going for Augment Summoning.

[MCerberus]

hmmm I'd say leadership to give him a druid cohort but that would likely break the encounter...

If he's going to be bringing down sections of the cavern, then Lightning Reflexes would be a must to help him not get squished. Clerics don't have good Reflex saves.

[graymachine]

The half-clay golem template is particularly nasty, based on my recollection. It sports a lot of immunities, which include, I think, physical damage immunity. I'm not sure what book it's in but do a search for the Ikea Tarrasque 2.0 (on giantitp I think) and it should be included there.

[graymachine]

A good rule of thumb if you want to make an encounter more challenging is to exploit you players' saves. This isn't to say use them to kill the players, but I've seen quite a bit of tension at the table when a DM calls for a particularily low save.

[Fishy]

I'd be tempted to give him the Summon Elemental reserve feat, powered by Summon Monster IV. Of course, however themey, It's not going to be worth it unless it's an extended battle.

I'd have the mine be composed of several branching sections, and the party has to use their elite tracking/divination skills to pick the tunel he's most likely to be in. Then, a quick fight- the Cleric sits in the back and tosses out healing and protection spells, and lets the mephits tangle with the adventurers. When that starts to go bad, he uses his burrow speed (Mineral Warrior is probably your best bet here,) to melt through the wall, and one of the mephits breaks away and flies up the mineshaft.

Adventurers play 'catch the mephit' for a little while, as it winds back down another branch of the mine- and the Earth Elemental pops out of the wall, and bull rushes whoever is in the front row- bunching everyone together for Soften Earth and Stone to collapse part of the wall on them. Short fight, flee, repeat- escalating to Spike Stones this time.

About the third fight, let the pets die off, and then have the cleric cast Divine Power, and transform into 'Zilla mode for the final showdown, swinging a large sledgehammer of some kind.

Featwise, I'd take Summon Elemental, and some interesting things for him to do with his turn attempts. Elemental Healing could get nasty in a room with three mephits and an elemental, and possibly Divine Shield or Divine Vigor for the melee battle. You'll also want to invest in something to protect him from being one-shotted early in the encounter: consider Diehard, one of the Luck feats, or DM Fiat. :P

[Nebo_]

Maybe give him the mineral warrior template and/or stone plate from Races of stone.

[Huduvudu]

Need to go through my resources and verify that these are OGC, but if you have the books I suggest you look for these feats.

Earth Focus [General] (DR314 p29)

Earthbound Spell [Metamagic] (PH2 p91)

Divine Metamagic [Divine] (CDiv p80)

Divine Vigor [Divine] (CWar p107)

[mostlyharmful]

make him an elemental savant, if he can't make the prereqs just homebrew a similar ability. then have him earthglide all round the mine, poping in and out and slinging acid at the intruders until they find his shrine. Then he drops out of the ceiling and divine powers, starts swinging a Maul and we're golden:smallsmile: