Some background: I am currently playing Curse of the Crimson Throne with several significant changes in the plotline. First off, the Queen of Korvosa is the younger sibling of Togomor (the seneschal and wizard advisor) her oldest brother and Sabina (personal bodyguard and general of all her military forces) her older sister. These three siblings have made the kingdom of Korvosa into their personal playground and have made the PCs' lives miserable. Throughout the campaign, I have greatly foreshadowed the power of Togomor and Sabina - often referencing the fact that they may have an infernal patron or not be mortal in some ways. Now that the PCs are all 14th level and the paladin has acquired a Holy Avenger-esque greatsword after a harrowing adventure in a haunted castle, they feel ready to take their enemies on.

Now, for the inevitable confrontation with Togomor - I want it to be epic in scope. They've hated this guy since day one and I want to give them a battle that they can remember for a long time. The problem is, I am not used to running adventures over 10th level and I don't quite know where to start with this.

He is an 18th level wizard/malconvoker/master specialist. A specific build might be nice, but what I'm looking for is tactics. What would a megalomaniacal genius with extremely potent arcane powers do to preserve the status quo against a band of determined 14th level adventurers? Since he is a summoner type, what kind of minions will he have on hand for this fight?

The party consists of the following:
-Rogue/Shadowdancer with two weapon fighting and godly dexterity. She is very hard to hit and does obscene amounts of damage with her sneak attacks. Her biggest weakness is her low will save.
-Paladin specialized with fighting with a greatsword with Holy Avenger-like properties. We are using Pathfinder Beta rules and she does tons of damage with the smite/devastating blow or smite/overhand chop or any number of power attacking combos.
-Conjurer/malconvoker is probably the most powerful member of the party. He is actually the former apprentice of the BBEG in question and the final confrontation will be all the more exciting for it. Anyways, he enjoys flinging sudden empowered, maximized acid orbs and manipulating the battlefield with fogs and dimensional spells.
-Cleric/monk/sacred fist is the main healer. She has the potential to be a devastating melee combatant but lately has taken the role of providing support with healing and buffing. She has very, very good AC.
-Ranger specialized with the bow. This guy should not be underestimated by any means. A ranged threat with his machine-gun like fire rate and hippogriff mount, he's saved the party's bacon on numerous occasions.
-Sorcerer/dragon disciple/fighter. He fights with a scythe and has the highest strength in the party. Though this looks like a gish build, his magic ability is actually quite paltry compared to his physical abilities. He also has the highest hit point total in the party (again, we are playing with Pathfinder rules) and his scythe does ridiculous amounts of damage with devastating blow. His dragonform abilities further augment his already significant offensive capabilities. Also, his mobility is only second to the wizard.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys. Thanks!

In THIS thread I gave just such a build to a player looking for a summoner to play in a CotCT game. The build is spot on with what you are looking for.

More importantly, toward the end of my post I list several links to handbooks that I think will help answer a lot of your questions.

Take some time to read through them and see if that gives you what you are looking for. If not, let us know and I will see if we can give you more specific advice.

Sean Mahoney

As a side note, battlefield control will be what this battle is all about. I would try to use whatever control spells the parties Malconvoker is using against them if at all possible. Once the party thinks they have things under control, a quickened transposition spell turns the whole then around and then a double summons from the BBEG puts whoever he is targeting at significant risk.

While using his in place spells against him, the BBEG should mock him constantly for not having thought them out better and daring to challenge him. It is a personal thing for a former apprentice to challenge a master and you want to make sure at the end of the fight that the apprentice feels personally vindicated.

Don't forget the power of planar bound allies either. Probably a big bruiser type. You will find a breakdown of options in the links I provided.

Sean Mahoney

-Rogue/Shadowdancer with two weapon fighting and godly dexterity. She is very hard to hit and does obscene amounts of damage with her sneak attacks. Her biggest weakness is her low will save.

-Paladin specialized with fighting with a greatsword with Holy Avenger-like properties.
-Conjurer/malconvoker is probably the most powerful member of the party. He is actually the former apprentice of the BBEG in question and the final confrontation will be all the more exciting for it. Anyways, he enjoys flinging sudden empowered, maximized acid orbs and manipulating the battlefield with fogs and dimensional spells.
-Cleric/monk/sacred fist is the main healer. She has the potential to be a devastating melee combatant but lately has taken the role of providing support with healing and buffing. She has very, very good AC.
-Ranger specialized with the bow. This guy should not be underestimated by any means.
-Sorcerer/dragon disciple/fighter. He fights with a scythe and has the highest strength in the party.

The biggest advantage of a Summoner is flexibility. Observing the party in action against some disposable minions, he can quickly choose strategies to counter their strengths.

A Bebelith can rend the armor of the Cleic/Monk/Sacred Fist, Paladin, Ranger and / or Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple/Fighter, leaving them more vulnerable to the attacks of other minions.

An Elder Earth Elemental can be directed to Sunder the bow of the Ranger, the scythe of the Dragon Disciple or the greatsword of the Paladin. (Players really, really, REALLY hate that tactic, 'though.)

Spells to reduce visibility or provide concealment, such as the magical Fogs common to Conjuration, or other effects, such as Deeper Darkness, Stinking Cloud or Glitterdust, perhaps created by Summoned minions (1d4+1 Dretches called with a SMV could be on Stinking Cloud duty, one by one putting clouds around the Ranger, forcing him to keep moving to get visual beads on targets, and limiting him to one arrow per round, until they are dealt with).

Assuming sufficient space, a Fiendish Colossal Monstrous Spider (as SMIX) should be able to grapple miss-dances-through-shadows, or possibly ensnare one of the other characters in webs, or lower some strength scores with it's poison.

A Hezrou has unlimited use of Chaos Hammer and Unholy Blight. That's a minor bit of damage, but, more importantly, a free Slowing effect, if used indiscriminatly on a party that contains good and / or lawful targets. As the 3 Blasphemies a day is only useful against foes of 13 or less HD, it's not sexy without some method of increasing the Hezrou's caster level (perhaps worth a Limited Wish off of a scroll, for this one encounter, to grant a +4 CL to the Hezrou?).

A group of Vrock 1d3+1 (as SMIX) could begin a Dance of Ruin, or, the Malconvoker could play on the fears of his foes, and create a Major Image of three Vrock performing the Dance of Ruin, causing the adventurers to waste actions trying to stop the effect. (One or more Vrock can make it harder to stop this by using Mirror Image before starting.)

A Bone Devil, with unlimited use of Fly, Invisibility, Dimensional Anchor, self-Teleport and Wall of Ice, makes a great battlefield controller, able to plant obstructions anywhere needed to prevent charges or deny the archer / ranged characters access to their chosen targets.

Characters rendered helpless can be taken away to the Ethereal Plane by summoned Xill (requiring a seperate adventure to save them, as the Xill don't kill their victims, just implant eggs in them and abandon them). A Chaos Beast also makes for a permanant solution.

Blue Slaad use Telekinesis at will at CL 8, allowing them to inflict 8d6 per round with a Violent Thrust use of TK on a hard solid object weighing 200 lbs. If the Malconvoker anticipates an encounter, he can choose a room with a plethora of 200 lb statuettes or whatever, for convenient use as telekinetic projectiles. Since the Slaad can be summoned at range, the room might have alcoves high up on the walls, out of melee range, where the Slaad can appear and begin wreaking telekinetic havoc, far above the walls of fog and ice and webs and giant insects that will be filling the floor space.

As a Malconvoker, evil minions turning on oneself is an issue, so it would make sense for the Malc to have at some point either increased his own caster level (through who knows what means) or Gated in some creature with a higher caster level than his own and had a Protection from Evil cast upon himself, which he then made Permanant. This will give him a minor bonus to attacks from evil critters (no use against the party, most likely), immunity to some specific Will save or suck spells and, most relevantly, immunity to physical attacks from Summoned creatures. Intended as a protection from his own summoned creatures being turned against him, it will also provide him with force-field-like protection against the physical attacks of his apprentices minions. Minions may fight other minions, but they cannot attack the master! (The boost in caster level is to prevent a Dispel Magic from easily undoing this protection, although the chance will likely still exist...)

Just a thought what what about some mirrors of opposition?

Have it when they're not aware of it so he can recruit an opposing group identical to themselves and then set them loose perhaps having them framed for crimes their doubles have waged maybe even separate them so they get to play an evil version of themselves and keep it a secret so they don't realise whats really going on...

Hmm could even have them fight what is really a good aligned version of their nemesis who uses the death to frame the PCs and they then have the entire kingdom after them until he can fulfil his masterplan...

I really prefer the summoner as chessmaster version of the character.

Build wise, the only thing you really need are the class prerequisites and aug summoning (not sure if that req'd for malconvoker, but it probably is)

Then, just sprinkle in the summons (usually the highest level spells i have prepared, with 1-2 of each lower level ones, until SM3, when dispel and fireball and fly are a bit more important).

Do not give up Abjuration or Illusion, whatever you do. Enchantment and Evocation are generally ok to lose, as you don't intend to charm or fireball the party so much as eat them with horrible monsters.

Protection from Evil (or its big brother Magic Circle vs Evil) will be key here, causing the PC summoner to play Pokemon with the bbeg, rather than targetting him directly.

As each area or group of summoned critters gets vanquished, the BBEG will fade back to his next fallback point, resetting the defenses as he goes. Think of this like ablative shields...as one is burned off the next is exposed, etc. Mix up the arenas of combat (throne room, outside, dungeons, library, etc) and throw in some environmental hazards (i like burning rooms and pits of toxic acid, personally) and you're golden.

For lulz, think about switching him to an Alienist (Conj3/Master Spec 10/Alienist 4?) and have horrible tentacle doom instead of devils and demons.

-t

You want to get really nasty, sicc a Neutral Evil druid on them. Thier precious Protection from/Magic Circles against [whatever] mean jack and squat to Summoned animals (the elementals are another matter). In droves ... like, off of a scroll as long as the druid's arm, with Empowered (+50% bump in hp at the least - and arguably applicable to ability scores as well, depending on the campaign) if the CL and spell levels are available.

Unless the party knows for sure what they are facing, this could be a wonderfully nasty surprise.

Or, you could be REALLY nasty and have a "dual personality" BBEG, one is the Malconvoker/Summoner/Fiendwrangler - the other is the NE Druid of Animal Summoning Doom.

Abjurations that really matter: Anti-Life Shell, Repulsion, Stoneskin, False Life, Spell Turning, all the Magic Circles he is permitted to cast. Items - 2 rings of counterspelling already "loaded" with Greater Dispel Magic. A brooch or something that protects the wearer from 1st - 4th level hostile spells (as with globe of invulnerability, personal only). I used a version of this based on lesser globe of invulnerability for a group of NPCs, and my players nearly Felton'd me for it. They won, but it was a really close fight. Good times ...

Conjurations: Rather self-explanatory, but some of the Conjuration spells are especially nasty in the 7th+ spell level range. The various planar ally spells lend him called fiends that ignore the protection/magic circle spells' injunction against natural weapons. And he can hook them up with gear. Note that these spells have a HD cap only - nothing says your baddy doesn't have a gaggle of half-fiend- and dreadnaught-templated dragons waiting in the wings, for example. I believe some or most of the wall spells fall under this school, as does the very important maze spell. Drop said maze onto another long scroll - since it allows no save - and send the dumber characters packing. One of the nasty side effects of this is that characters re-appear exactly where they left the map - so, say, they come back entombed in the very mud/stone they were sent out of, only to face a dozen slathering fiends eager to eat his/her/its face.

Illusions: Several very valuable ones - greater invisibility, project image (especially if your guy has some kind of ability via "mirrors" or something to view the end-target square of his image) and mislead come to mind. Items - Major Cloak of Displacement.

Transmutation: Combined with Abjuration this is where most of your BBEG's ability to survive comes from. Transmute Rock to Mud (and its reverse) can potentially entrap your characters' feet in stone before the summoned monsters start popping in and biting off their heads. Various nasty things like baleful polymorph and disintegrate fall under this school as well. Items - a sizable majority of wondrous items utilize a transmutation effect. Perhaps your baddy now and again indulges in a polymorph any object on a hapless character that has been feebleminded ... say, *poufing* the imbecile into a radish.

I agree with the summoning of critters to be battlefield controllers. The BBEG should already know the party's advantages and weaknesses. He should have a plan prepared specifically for each person in the party. Sure he get's X number of spells to toss out. But just like the PCs he has scrolls and items to help in that area so he can throw out a lot of bad guys.

Don't forget the beauty of using PC tactics against them. That rogue will HATE having her Dex neutralized and being hit with sneak attacks. Or with a bad will save being dominated to fight the Ranger so he can't easily get his shots off. And don't forget poison to Dex is a wonderful thing, over and over and over... as the right poison is damage and stacks.

Slow really kills melee types. They get to choose to either move to engage, or swing at air as the BBEG backs up out of melee range. Fiendish Spiders and others that entangle are great for that kind of thing. This can take a melee type right out of the fight until they find a creative way to overcome the limitation.

The gish sorcerer/fighter/dragon disciple will also hate having his movement reduced. And he likes his Scythe so hit him with a souped up Bearded Devil, scythe vs glaive with infernal wounding.

You hinted at a fiendish sponsor and possible some non mortal aspect. If you really want to drive home to the PCs some oddness let them fight through the waves of devils and such to finally get to the BBEG, they fight him and deliver the killing blow, which splits the BBEG's body into glowing red pieces and the PCs are overwhelmed with the stench of brimstone, as a Pit Fiend steps through the portal that the BBEG's corpse opened to his sponsor.

They just THOUGHT all they had to do was kill that guy. Nope fight ain't over yet boys and girls. Hope you brought a change of underwear!

I once used Soul Jar to "extend" the life of the BBEG in the encounter. He essentially possessed various minions in the room just to be able to taunt the PCs over and over.

Another option is multiple Simulacrums, which gives the minions the personal sneer/smirk of your BBEG with the table-turning impression of outnumbering the heroes, at least for a little while.