Villian tactics?

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I am creating an NPC villain, and am looking for advice here.

Here's the ground rules:

11th level wizard, human.

Books: Core 3, Complete Warrior, Complete Mage, Complete Divine, Complete Arcane, Complete Psionic.

Said mage cannot use any divination spells, and is specialized in Necromancy. (He is an alternate wizard from the Nyambe campaign setting, in that setting all wizards specialize in necromancy and cannot cast divination spells.)

I find direct damage somewhat uncivilized and lacking in finesse, I prefer more strategic elements to my wizard villains.

He needs tactics for:

-Dealing with a large party (The group is 7 people large, plus the druid has two animal companions)

-Escape, should the encounter not go his way. (If the wizard dies, he'll be reincarnated as something else, however that will put a damper on his plans, so he'd rather avoid death if he can.)

[virgil]

Depending on your DM, you should consider the fact that you're just now able to enter the Wish economy, where such a fact will make tremendous differences as to what you can do.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I'm the DM, this is for an NPC villain. Hence:

I am creating an NPC villain, and am looking for advice here.

[Josh_Kablack]

There's always Magic Jar shenanigans

multiple castings of Extended Command Undead + Animate Dead = Horde of undead minions.

Waves of Fatigue = Good nonlethal trap spell to slow down large party. Not exactly a win, but no save and removes charging from PC/animal companion options. Also see Symbol of Pain.

Undead = Immune to Cloudkill / Stinking Cloud

Evards Black Tentacles: like direct damage, but better. Also see Acid Fog.

Vampiric Touch = best spell to put in your henchmen's spell storing arrows

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1178315143[/unixtime]]There's always Magic Jar shenanigans

multiple castings of Extended Command Undead + Animate Dead = Horde of undead minions.

Waves of Fatigue = Good nonlethal trap spell to slow down large party. Not exactly a win, but no save and removes charging from PC/animal companion options. Also see Symbol of Pain.

Undead = Immune to Cloudkill / Stinking Cloud

Evards Black Tentacles: like direct damage, but better. Also see Acid Fog.

Vampiric Touch = best spell to put in spell storing arrows of henchment

I have been given a specific request by two of my players to not use undead for a while, so using undead is out for now. Maybe next time.

I might bump the levels down a bit, I just re-read Frank's "Spells that fvcking kill people" thread, and I decided level 11 is definately too much for my players. I'm bumping it down to 9, or maybe even 7.

This group has not fought a primary spellcaster yet, so I want them to remember this guy.

[User3]

Solid Fog should still be a good for neutralizing a number of players, although that's not much fun for them. If you could catch the animal companions in it, though, that'd be a help, and no one would have to sit out the combat.

Illusions could easily be *huge*, if they haven't fought a primary spellcaster before. A couple Programmed Images set up before the fight (so that he doesn't have to spend his valuable actions concentrating) should mess up the players something fierce, especially if you include some real traps in there.

Speaking of actions, you'll need a bunch of henchmen/planar bound monsters/whatever, because if they get to focus fire on your BBEG, he will be toast. 7-9 actions trumps one action, no matter how good that one action is. I recommend some Lesser Planar Binding, but you could just as easily give him arbitrary allies.

His best course of action would be to separate the party, but that's probably a terrible idea DM-wise.

Slow and similar mass-debuffs are probably his best bet in terms of evening up the fight. Making the players worse without taking away all their actions is the most fun way to do this, I would imagine.

Dimension Door or Teleport, possibly even Contingent (off a scroll if he's below 6th level), are the classic escape spells, but a well-designed lair (walls reinforced with metal bars and small breathing holes) + gaseous form can also work wonders.

[shau]

I was going to suggest the contingency (when I die) mind jar combo, but you seem to be lowering the level.

For a necromancer I would start things off with a casting of fear. It is thematic and it will probably remove a few players and those animal companions. Evard's black tentacles is another spell that is really effective against a large group and feels right with a necromancer.

Survivability is going to be a huge problem here. You can probably do a lot of bad stuff to the party, but if they get through they will beat you to death in no time at all.

[Judging__Eagle]

Use medium-sized golems as mooks.

You will need mooks to keep them back early on.

Check out the ... crap, its this medium sizzed construct in MM 2 that is essentially animated armour with a sword and sheild.

It's got sucky HD though; just give it as many HD as you feel like; giving them 10 or 12 HD each will give them up to two attacks (crappy construct BaB progression) and a pile of HP.

They're ground-based and slow.

You could get away with them having 5-9 HD and having a Mass Haste spell go off.

Make it a trap that targets everyone on specific squares in the main room; the ... argh, I even have the DDM mini for this fvcking thing and I cant' recall it's name; anyway.

Have the 'trap' set off when people walk into the room; the trap casts Haste on the 7-12 Constructs with 5-11 HD.

That will be a shock to the PCs, a squad or platoon of very fast moving guardsmen.

Attaching Magic Mouth to each of them wil let you have them "talk" as if there were guys in those suits.

When the PCs can't crit, sneak attack or mind-control these "gaurds"; it'll be funny.

I'd also suggest using a pair of huge or colossal skeletons with animate objects cast on them.

It's a poor use of the spell, but if the 'objects' were wired to move like a skeleton, then the wizard who animates his dinosaur skeletons on display.

Two huge or gargantuan animated objects; really they're sort of sucky, but are great for "oh shit" value, players hate seeing shit that has more than 10 feet of reach.

Just some ideas.

the sad thing is that I never really do boss encounters.


I've got my players roped into doing an assasination job in Hades now though. They've gotta kill a Rashkasha, who's the mayor of a town that surrounds an Oasis in Hades.

So far they've bribed their way past a herd of local Nightmares and their Cauchemar cheif; given suitable baksheesh to get themeselves past the Hamatula captain of the guard and on their way to the mayor's manse they helped subdue a fiendish half-fiend pyro-hydra (I should have made it a part half-white dragon as well); the hydra gave up and accepted to be their 'servant'; but now they've got to pay off the injured parties of the hydra's rampaging.

[erik]

Difficult terrain could ease up his worries so he isn't necessarily mobbed immediately. Even if he has to be somewhere in particular for this encounter, impeding terrain is relatively easy to accomplish: rubble, knee-high water, tons of roots on the ground, a massive bone yard (a red herring to make them think, aw crap, more undead), etc.


I think the construct Eagle is thinking of is a dread guard. At CR 2 they're mostly speed bumps, but that's okay. If including these in your world, then their cost should definitely be less than 40,000 gp apiece to create. That's just crazy bullshit. Anywho, they're out due to not being in the books listed.

I didn't see the levels of the adventuring party members, it's really hard to guess what is needed to challenge them without a notion of their tactics, and likewise hard to judge what is needed for him to have a viable escape plan. I was guessing that they were around 7-8th level, but the ratcheting down of the wizard to 7th level threw me for a loop.

For escape, it definitely matters if this combat is out in the open or in a more dungeonesque environment. It really limits one's options for escape if you're out in the open.

Does this wizard have anything memorable about him to shape his tactics (has an exotic menagerie, a knack for constructs, demonic pacts, is an illusory trickster, an enslaver of minds, etc.), or is he more like a generic wizard mid-boss/mook? Really it's fun if you can shape a theme even around the mid-bosses and mooks.

[Iaimeki]

A 7th-level wizard would probably get mobbed by 7 7th-level warriors, much less real PC classes. No matter what you do at 7th level, when the PCs have 9 tries against it, chances are at least one or two of them will beat it and then have the chance to apply the beatdown, which, because you're a wizard, won't take long to kill you.

Your best 4th-level spells are probably fear (it's the only 4th-level necromancy spell that will matter in this combat), solid fog, and evard's black tentacles: each of them has a good chance to lock down most of the party. (Unfortunately, "most" isn't "all," and depending on who's still active, that could be severe trouble.) For defenses, false life and alter self (into a troglodyte) are obvious, and you'll want to think hard about blink: it has a chance to ream you (if you go ethereal while casting a critical spell), but it will make you much harder to kill, and can serve as an escape route too (duck through a wall). Other buffs depend on the party's composition and how much time you have to prepare; fly, in particular, is an escape route, but only if the party can't, and a defensive buff, if the party's ranged is worse than its melee, provided, again, the melee can't fly. Gaseous form and dimension door are the best pure escape spells available at this level, but the latter is costly in terms of your spell slots.

You really need a significant advantage in both preparation and terrain to take on a 7th-level party with a 7th-level wizard, unless they're unusually stupid, because action advantage is a killer. Some idea of the party composition and the wizard's backstory would help in picking appropriate tactics.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Alright, party composition time:

I haven't announced to my players yet, but they all gained a level last adventure. However, I'm not 100% sure what they'll pick for 7th level, so I am not including that.

6th level fighter. Bastard sword, tower shield, heavy armor. Took wisdom as a dump stat.

6th level warlock. Has fell flight and took supernatural transformation to make his eldritch blast supernatural. Has an assload of feats because he took two flaws because I technically didn't tell him he couldn't.

6th level barbarian. Rolled really stellar for his stats, pretty much tears through anything in melee.

6th level monk. Ho opted to take 25 point buy instead of rolling for stats, and as a result has an AC of 15 at this very moment (!).

1st level fighter/6th level sorcerer. Plans on going Spellsword. I am not entirely sure what he has spell-wise, the only thing I've seen him cast thus far is shield, magic missile, and empowered magic missile. Has the only +2 weapon in the group, the fighter and barbarian only have +1.

6th level druid. He talked me into letting him take some 3.0 feat where you get multiple animal companions. I wasn't 100% sure that was legal, but I honestly didn't care. Lost wildshape due to some weird PHB2 variant class. I think he might have some 3.0 PrC as well that improves his animal companion.

The wizard himself has been using his connections with the local gangs to kidnap people to use for his experiments. The players will (hopefully) get onvolved when a trusted NPC goes to them saying his sister was kidnapped.

The final showdown will most likely happen at the wizard's hideout, which means he will have a lot of freedom in designing the area to his advantage. Having the wizard on a high ledge will make it easier to drop an Evard's black tentacles, then follow up with a Cloudkill in the confined area down below. It would expose him to the sorcerer and the warlock's ranged weapons, plus the warlock might be flying, but that would shut down most of the group right there.

Note that due to the wizard variant the the villain is, if he falls in battle, he will be reincarnated as some sort of predatory animal with all his mental faculties and spellcasting intact, with the possibility of being reincarnated back into a human form provided he completes the proper rituals. It will delay his plans significantly, but death isn't a real problem for this character. However, he will split if the battle is unwinnable and he has the abilitiews to.

[Username17]

So it's a big party who apparently all kind of suck. Am I right there? It doesn't sound like a super threatening cadre of PCs.

Asuming you throw down something crazy like an 8th level Wizard you should probably have him walk in there with soem solid battlefield control. Literally solid. Start with a wall of ice and then start laying down the summoned monsters. I'm not even kidding, because that sounds like it'll make things difficult for your players.

If you're annoyed with the Warlock and Druid, go ahead and have the enemy mage make a wall that doesn't hit the ceiling. Then have him drop something fatal like black tentacles on the other side when the Warlock and Animal Companions obligingly jump over the impediment.

If you're annoyed with the Fighter, go ahead and throw down some poisoned pit traps in the rear area of the room and have the wizard open up with fear. Everyone who fails the save runs into a hole and gets repeatedly stabbed with poisoned spines while they attempt to climb out the buttered sides in a panic.

If you want to get rid of the Monk... seriously I think you just give the wizard a friendly ogre with a big axe. I don't really see the Monk surviving that. He could have charmed it and you could ram that point home by having the enemy mage open up by charm monstering the party Fighter.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

Low Wis fighter.

Charm or Fear; losing a PC's actions is a pain for PCs.

If you succeed on the charm, tell the fighter to keep the sorcerer from harming him; i.e. grapple the sorc.

If you do use Dread Gaurds (which... suck; they're CR 2 constructs with 5 HD and 24 HP; you could bump them up to 10 HD to make them a bit more imposing).

Frank's suggestion on dealing with the Monk and setting up "easy" paths for the warlock/Druid that are traps is also good.

[erik]

A couple abberation style mooks might be good stand-ins for the ogre. Or simply use ogre stats and say that it's an aberration that is the result of his experiments. Using generic monster stats and describing them something as a bizzare and grotesque amalgamation of creatures should do the trick.

Likewise for spells, everything Frank said, but for the wall of ice, consider making it functionally the same but made of a writhing mass of flesh from different creatures melded together. Fear and Tentacles already go pretty well with this kind of theme.

I'd consider making the wizard 9th level just to eke out 5th level summons (if only for 1d3 of the 4th level summons). An Enlarged Fear cone could fill the 5th level necromancy slot mayhaps.

[User3]

If you are considering Summon spells, I always like fiendish spiders. Conjure a bunch of them right underneath the necromancer's ledge to drop webs on people and also block or divert attack. The ledge could even be in some creative shape to offer cover for the wallcrawling beasties.

For delivering Vampiric Touch, Spectral Hand also works if you don't want the spellstoring arrows.

[erik]

Oh snap! I forgot about familiars and my love for them. A viper familiar who hides next to its master could be a little annoyance, or a cat or hawk familiar to deliver touch spells a slightly larger annoyance.

Could prep up a familiar with a Bestow Curse or Vampric Touch which it could hold until it comes out of hiding to hit someone.

[Brobdingnagian]

I'd like to give some advice, but I have two (very good) reasons not to.

1. Everyone else beat me to it... like, there's really not much more to say. Your PC's suck, and you still have to let them win so they can think they have big penises in the D&D universe.

2. My plans for PC's usually consist of actively attempting to kill them off with level-appropriate encounters... sometimes I feel it's only the NPC's I give them to help them out really pulls them through.

Hmm...

That reminds me of a trick I pulled, once. You may want to give your wizard three things. First off, a +1 Composite Longbow. Secondly, a Masterwork Greatsword. Thirdly, +1 Glammered Robes that are Glammered to look like a suit of Full Plate Armour. If your PC's use Detect Magic (don't give them time to concentrate), it looks like a fighter with a magic bow and magic armour, but a non-magical melee weapon. Probably a ranged combat specialist, right? When they try to close the distance to melee, they get taken out by traps/readied spells/ugly thing statted to be an ogre that you cast invisibility on just prior to the party entering the room. They want to melee your ranged combat specialist, they hit something big that they can't handle while your guy in full plate is lobbing magic. Confusing much?

[Endovior]

I'd suggest limiting the #2: when the DMPC is upstaging the players, that's a bad thing.

Beyond that, the fact of the matter is that for this group you hardly need to use tactics. Just about whatever you do will be more then sufficient to deal with them; the only question is whether you want to coddle them, spank them, or TPK them.

[Brobdingnagian]

TPK, then tell them to make effective characters.

And I didn't mean my NPC's upstage the players, it's just that the players would have a significantly harder (and it's usually hard enough already) time winning without the boost granted by an NPC.

[AlphaNerd]

I suspect that anything involving a wizard and an arrow slit will be memorable... Or metal bars that the party can't easily get past. Keep some mooks on the far side to keep them busy and actually kill them, and throw down some control spells, or hell, even direct damage will work well. Make sure the wizard keeps proc arrows up to keep the archery down to a dull roar.

Just give the wizard an arbitrary movement mode in case he gets in trouble. You know, could be as lame as "chute" or "can actually swim". I mean, do you really expect the PCs to follow a wizard down a chute? If they do, you're well within your rights to TPK them.

[Brobdingnagian]

Seriously, you could TPK this party of six with a single character of their level. They're probably doing something wrong with the characters they have.

[NineInchNall]

Party walks into room.

Wizard gives signal.

A frickin' portcullis (big enough to fit a foot into the ceiling and a foot into the floor) drops on all four sides of the party.

Wizard grins, lobs stinking cloud and wall of fire. "This is my house, bitches."

Party dies.

[User3]

1178567789[/unixtime]]And I didn't mean my NPC's upstage the players, it's just that the players would have a significantly harder (and it's usually hard enough already) time winning without the boost granted by an NPC.

Still lame.

[Brobdingnagian]

It wouldn't be a problem if they would just get cohorts like everyone else...

[User3]

1178595163[/unixtime]]It wouldn't be a problem if they would just get cohorts like everyone else...

QFT