[3.5e] I've plotted myself into a corner

[Dark Knight Renee]

It's odd that this bothered me the most out of all that, but why is the Paladin 'Chaotic' Good? xD

Paladin of Freedom is a variant found in the SRD that’s Chaotic Good, plus she has the Holy Liberator PrC from CD, which is basically the same. Aside from the lack of focus on lawfulness and the silly code nonsense, though, she plays fairly similarly.

But on to more important matters, Did you want this BBEG to be human, or could it be some sort of non human shapeshifter, and what is this character's personality?

By default, he’s assumed to be a human male, but nothing is truly set. I’ve been assuming that his public ID is that of a particular aristocrat NPC who has climbed the ranks rapidly, but it’s not too late to change anything. On a related note, most civilized regions of the setting are inhabited by an integrated mixture of humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings.

His personality… dunno. Pragmatic and cunning? He’s smart, patient, wants to control the region and may have plans from there, he’s allied himself evil churches but doesn’t bother with the gods much himself, he doesn’t hesitate to betray his allies when it suits him, and he likes to have contingency plans. Overall, smarter and way better at planning ahead than me -_-

One of the problems I have is that the PCs can’t simply kill the BBEG and be done with it. It looks like they’ll also have to mop up his allies, and try to make it so that even lesser minions of those allies can’t simply take advantage of the power vacuum once their backs are turned. Surviving goodies aren’t too likely, as he was having them assassinated or framed for things (execution-worthy, no doubt) even before the PCs ran off to spend months chasing the MBEG, and slowly replacing them all with allies. While he might have handed off one or two to an Evilly religious ally, it’s unlikely any are alive, barring low-ranked aids and bureaucrats. At this point, he’ll be more worried about preventing his subjects from even thinking about rebellion and keeping his neighbors from realizing he’s a serious threat before he’s built enough of an army to deal with either.


Throwing them in prison or otherwise trying to have them executed is a tactic he’ll probably try, but he’s not even likely to catch them all – some of those rogues will almost certainly escape an arrest attempt, and that’s assuming he has powerful enough minions who can publicly attempt to arrest anyone. More likely, he’ll just lose some hapless soldiers and give the PCs some bad PR. I doubt they’d get anywhere near a dungeon, and I don’t think this city has one that would keep them entertained for an entire session even if they did. What they do after that is more the problem.


Flickerdart: The PCs just did that to death with the MBEG, and they’ll probably do it again – but the BBEG’s power structure is such that getting rid of him isn’t so neat – all the evil allies to fill the void, some of them much eviler and less subtle, others potentially almost as sneaky.

How do you feel about exploring other planes/times/multiverses? Can your campaign support a onetime(?) event which throws the characters somewhere else giving you time to figure out where the adventure is going as the characters struggle to figure out where they are and how to get back to where this quest is. Given that the big bad might have magical powers he could use those to do it, someone allied to him could, or even the mists of Ravenloft could. Once somewhere else you could dangle plot hooks to get them to stay there as long as you want them to, and when and if they come back from wherever they went to, the look on the BBEG's face will awesome.

Hmm. I’ll have to figure out the most likely means to actually put them on another plane, but considering it’d freak them out while giving the BBEG more time to solidify his power, this might be a perfect next step. I play a multiverse game where the PCs end up being yoinked from universe to universe (each with its own planar structure and, occasionally, entirely different rules). Normally I’d abort that way, but the dead PC issue prevents me from doing it. An unwilling planar excursion, however, would have no problems.

I just thought of the weirdest plot twist.

The BBEG slips in the shower and breaks his neck. Of course, the players don't know it. So they can spend time investigating a person who is already dead.

LOL! In the absence of PCs, his allies and minions would probably tear each other apart once they realized he wasn’t giving them orders anymore. Not so good for the local populace, though. Very tempting, if kinda cheep.