Nerf My Gish!

[Darcand]

Here's the back story. One of the villians I have been fleshing out for ages now is a Red Dragon who has decided that the best way to keep his horde is by investing it. Thusly he has used his draconic powers to inflitrate the local population and establish himself as something like a fairly openly corrupt land baron, although not openly a dragon.

His most loyal servant is a Githyanki Gish. They met when the Red was younger and serving a Githyanki outpost and when the Gish reached level 11 and received a summons to the Lich Queen to be devoured Red took the opportunity to break pact with the Githyanki commander and aided the Gish in escape. In return the Githyanki pledged ten years of servitude to his Red Dragon savior.

The problem is that I plan on having this guy fight with the PCs a few times (beside them at level two to present him as a badass then a skirmish against them around level five, and finally a fight to the death near level eight) and I don't want him to mop the floor with them. Unfortunately he is more or less cemented in as a level twelve (Fighter1 Wizard5 Eldritch Knight 6)

Any suggestions for lowering his DC? I was considering some flavor effect, like his tongue was removed and so he has to prepare all of his spells with the silent spell metamagic feat....plus a silent villian is always extra creepy.

Any suggested builds for a sub-optimum, but surplus of cool nature preferably using core rules only and preferably without being outwardly foolish?

Oh, and on the subject, what do you think of these two character concepts?

[AstralFire]

That tongue thing is really, really cool. And I am not the biggest fan of Githyanki or Dragons, so that's a compliment.

Given that you're making him a Wizard, could easily make it so that he runs into the PCs at the earlier points with a lot of his spells pre-expended and maybe lower on hit points. Describe that he starts out looking ragged and he's shown as fresher each successive time.

[cfalcon]

Yea, just have him worn down. You could even have had him dispatch (with powerful spells) a bunch of low level guys- the PCs enter and it's not clear whether he can finish them and complete $TASK (or steal $ITEM), so he tries to kill them, sees that they will beat him in his weakened state, and he goes a merrily-dim-dooring away or whatever.

Just don't let them SEE him casting the powerful spells- let them figure out via basic forensics later that he cast spell X and Y.

[Chineselegolas]

He is a gith gish, thus will have decent intelligence. Have him fight half heartedly with some minions to do actual fighting, him directing and dropping a few spells around to give the PCs a challenge, but not kill them directly (Silence, Grease etc.)

Possibly have a few mooks accompany the party, prisoners they are trying to rescue, hireling, another adventuring party they encountered. Have them get slaughtered. Yeah, PC's might feel it is bit of a cop out that NPCs are there purely to die, but if you have some that have been hanging around for a while filling in missing role (Healer, trap finder, etc), or ones they are trying to save.

At the later levels, have him do similar to deny them all getting in. Like fight the parties tank 1 vs 1 in melee while others trapped out by terrain. Makes him look more powerful and then have something happen and he pops out. Think the end of scene with Nightcrawler from the beginning of X2, about to kill and then gone.
He isn't an optimized combatant, so taking fight into combat is playing to his weaker side, yet the fact he is a caster who is fighting up front adds a level of bad ass and makes him scarier.

Ways to drop the DC, no speicalization, no spell focus, none of that stuff.
Give him a lower intelligence, just enough to cast his highest level spells.

Course the silent villian is just creepy. Throw others in earlier who banter constantly to give a stark contrast otherwise they might not notice unless directly pointed out.

[Darcand]

Some good stuff so far...

I swapped out his level of fighter for one of ranger so I can dump points into hide and move silently, I figure that there is something spookier about a villian sneaking in through the window to deliver a "message" then one who pops in via dim door.

Also, I want the players terrified of this guy. The first time they see him in action it will be mowing down pirates 'en masse and I have no problem at all with him killing a PC seven levels lower then himself, as long as it gets the point across to the party that these people do not play around.

[Blackjackg]

I don't know if this will nerf him any (and may in fact make him more powerful) but have you considered the Nonverbal Spellcasting feat from the Planar Handbook? Instead of casting spells silently, he'd make some other sound (groaning, humming, whistling, whatever) without needing to apply a metamagic feat. You could lower his CR by two, then, because he'd be able to cast the same spells, one level lower.