Building a Crusader villain.

[H_H_F_F]

I know how to build a competent crusader as a PC. How would you build one as a villain though?

On the one hand, a lot of the issues with "tanking" are solved by virtue of him being the bad guy the party wants to kill; he doesn't need to protect a backline or anything like it.

On the other hand, He'll need to be designed to fight multiple opponents, not one. Additionally, using "dirty" single target tricks like greater divine surge + strike of righteous vitality feels cheap, not to speak of idiot crusader loops and such - it's a low-op party.

So, how would you approach this? What maneuvers/feats/multiclassing options suddenly become more/less viable in this context?

Ideally, I'd like no casting/psionics involved, though strictly buffing is okayish. No meldshaping. Willing to do slight homebrew if necessary, given that he's not a normal person within the worldbuilding. Refluffing is fine.

"Darkness" theme, LN, human, level 20, crusader of "Mother Void". Any suggestions?

[Aegis013]

As long as your villain doesn't have to be solo, there is one stand out stance that goes from a PC's trash to a villain's treasure: Aura of Tyranny.

I'd suggest giving your Crusader villain a small team of weaker necromancer allies to provide a bunch of undead fodder for your Crusader to drain. Depending on the level of your party, Skull Lords from MMV can serve this purpose very well with their Create Servitor ability, plus they can provide support from the back line.

An alternative is give the Crusader the Tomb-Tainted Soul feat and have him go into battle with a bunch of skeletons (I like cats for the low HD) that were made with the Corpsecrafter and Destructive Retribution line of feats even if the necromancer doesn't personally join the fray. As Mr. Crusader drains the skeletons, if they die of it, they explode, hurting your party and healing your bad guy.

Makes charging headlong into the bad guy a bad plan but it can be overcome in a so many ways that as long as your low op party plays carefully they should be able to navigate it.

[H_H_F_F]

All very cool, but sort of creates problem with the whole "LN" part of the equation. Thank you though!

[Doctor Despair]

I've been on an intimidation kick, so I'd probably go that route. Are you averse to going samurai 10 / crusader 10 out of curiosity?

If that's fine, you can use the Drow of the Underdark fearsome armor enhancement to get move-action intimidation, samurai 10's mass staredown to make it a 30-foot radius AOE around him, and use standard, swift, or immediate-action maneuvers while you demoralize enemies around you (to cowering with Imperious Command)

Note: use of the intimidate skill (or other similar natural abilities, if there are any) are the only way to get fear effects that aren't mind-affecting, as the Rules Compendium made all extraordinary, supernatural, and spell-like fear effects that are not spells count as fear attacks -- and explicitly states that fear attacks are mind-affecting. Fear spells, of course, carry the mind-affecting tag already. At level 20, a party will likely already have mind-blank or some sort of immunity up, but they may have overlooked specifically fear immunity. There are only 30 or so classes that grant it, and a small handful of spells that grant it while not being mind-affecting themselves, so it could catch an unprepared party member by surprise.

Since it's level 20, and you're going initiator, you might be interested in ditching the fearsome enhancement and instead taking two levels of Avenging Executioner (so Samurai 10 / Avenging Executioner 2 / Crusader 8). That would allow you to do your entire schtick in an antimagic field, so you could grab one or two antimagic torcs and proc them before the fight. That would have the added benefit of disabling a lot of enemy protections (and possibly sources of fear immunity) when you get into your melee range.

[RandomPeasant]

All very cool, but sort of creates problem with the whole "LN" part of the equation. Thank you though!

Wee Jas is a LN god that's totally fine with necromancy, and she's even the god associated with the Crusader-friendly Ruby Knight Vindicator. If you re-fluff that to your "Mother Void", that seems like an extremely workable setup.

[Particle_Man]

If you want a "puzzle" villain make all the stances Stone Dragon so that pcs might realize that if they can just move the villain (or put the villain into a situation where they want to move) they can disrupt those stances.

You might make as many maneuvers as possible Stone Dragon so the PCs get a hint as to what is going on here.

[H_H_F_F]

Wee Jas is a LN god that's totally fine with necromancy, and she's even the god associated with the Crusader-friendly Ruby Knight Vindicator. If you re-fluff that to your "Mother Void", that seems like an extremely workable setup.

Its just that Aura of Tyranny itself is [evil].

[Aegis013]

Its just that Aura of Tyranny itself is [evil].

I've been looking but I haven't found any rule that explicitly says a LN crusader couldn't take or utilize the Aura of Tyranny stance. It has the [evil] tag, sure, but you could refluff it or have your Crusader only willing to use it to drain undead and never use it on the living or any other justification you can imagine.