Looking for a good Antagonist


Advice


Hey all,

I am DMing a group of 7th level PCs. We are in a bit of a lull in our ongoing campaign,waiting for a few events to pan out and whatnot. So i was looking for an interesting NPC to keep them occupied for a session or ten. The theme of the overarching plan so far is disappearing elven magic users, and the last few games have a thieves guild/ undead thread. I have a few problems coming up with balanced threats, there are 6 players and they all have very good stats. I have been throwing generic CR9/10s at them but i am looking for a more flavour. Any suggestions welcome. Thanks in advance.


Our recurring villain is an Ifrit Master Summoner (his level is unknown so that the GM can fudge things here and there). He pops up, throws a newly evolved eidolon or group of summoned monsters at us, and then skates away when things start going south. It lets our GM motivate throwing things at us that aren't pulled from random encounter tables, and it's made things interesting in our campaign.

Liberty's Edge

Bards are always great masterminds, and single enemy encounters usually a bad idea. A 9th level Bard (Cr 8) and 4 5th level, fairly combative, minions (CR 4 each...maybe go Slayers if aiming for that thieve's guild feel), makes a very good CR 10 encounter for a 7th level party. A Bard + Master Summoner (both 9th level) is also a very good CR 10 indeed, but less of a singular villain (since it's so clearly a team effort)...but a pair of villains can work very well if you set up for that.

The same is true of other classes as well, though a bit less so given their comparative lack of buffs to throw out for the minions.


Have some middling outsiders, demons or devils, show up to cause some havoc.


A Dwarven or Human cult who believe that magic users are stealing the strength of the divine. They can be set up as a red herring. Your PCs think they are responsible for the disappearances, but they are actually up to something else. (High level Cleric NPC leader, with multiple mid-level cleric NPCs. They focus on dispelling/suppressing magic)


DocShock and Deadmanwalking, thanks for the feedback. I was not thinking in terms of player classsed npcs. i had my head stuck in the bestiaries. Totally forgot about that route. The ifrit angle will fit in well because a trip to the planes is on the cards. Cheers.


Stealthy Alchemist Mad Bomber with fast bombs and a range or discoveries to pickup all the good bomb versions.

If you really want to put the hurt on them Mindchemist for crazy damage bombs with insane DC's .

Tactics are strike and fade at the worst possible moments for the PC's i.e. when there dealing with an encounter out pops the mad bomber to unleash a lot of pain in a very short space of time only to disappear before they can really do much to stop him.

help turn encounters they're finding too easy into real challenges.

load him up with magic gear to make quick escapes very easy.

One thing to keep in mind is you are running 6 players who collectively bring 6 standard actions a round to the table, if you are throwing less than the equivalent of that back at them then that would be why they are having an easy time.

Maybe the best solution for an antagnoist is not one NPC but 2 or 3 who are deigned to work extremely well in tandem. Just remember anything the player can do you can do better.


Just one bad guy has too many weaknesses to cover. Make a bad guy group. I like the idea of a murder of crows gang made of tengu. They can be a crime family. Your party may kill off a couple per encounter but one always gets away. And their kin are always coming back for more revenge for the last time you killed their family.


Reincarnated Druid with the Shade of the Uskwood feat.

The reincarnated druid can survive fighting the PC's directly, even if he dies (unless they use death effects- and reincarnated druids are also built to withstand that with +4 to saves and rerolls at the levels we are talking about). And reincarnating provides the perfect cover in the underworld- everybody literally thinks you are dead, and you look nothing like you used to. This gets particularly interesting if you have a level 13 druid, since that allows them to pretend to be previous lives, and they can still beat out a true seeing. Make your players think there is an entire cult of crazy druids.

The Shade of the Uskwood feat provides both the mechanical benefit of giving you animate dead (so can write off the undead elements you introduced), and its ties with Zon-Kuthon means there are plenty of disturbing ways in the actual roleplaying to make this interesting and use the 'kidnapped elven mages' and 'thieves guild' angles.

Obviously, being tied to the underground S&M religion gives enough reason as to why you have criminal connections. Those connections can then be used in the kidnappings. Now, the actual purpose of the kidnappings be fairly flexible at this point, but 'torture' and 'going against the natural order' seem like big motifs to focus on due to the god and the fact that you are a druid that refuses to give into death and even do unnatural things like make undead. So feel free to have all sorts of weird experiments and maybe throw in a vivisectionist alchemist as an accomplish. Use tortured elven mage ghosts to power a better mouse trap or something.

Grand Lodge

How about a good old fashion dragon hunt?

Do not forget their kobold tribe to weaken the party down to the point that a single foe boss battle is not a cake walk.

Lots of treasure from a dragon hunt too. Help pay for the kingdom some of the players may be looking at buying soon.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Zharradan Marr wrote:

Hey all,

I am DMing a group of 7th level PCs. We are in a bit of a lull in our ongoing campaign,waiting for a few events to pan out and whatnot. So i was looking for an interesting NPC to keep them occupied for a session or ten. The theme of the overarching plan so far is disappearing elven magic users, and the last few games have a thieves guild/ undead thread. I have a few problems coming up with balanced threats, there are 6 players and they all have very good stats. I have been throwing generic CR9/10s at them but i am looking for a more flavour. Any suggestions welcome. Thanks in advance.

If elven magic users have been disappearing, perhaps a good side plot would be a backlash of the elves against mankind sort of thing. Have a group of elven supremacists like the Eldreth Veluuthra (from Forgotten Realms). Throw in some (possibly unseelie) fey and an evil baelnorn (elven lich) or two and you could have a diverse cast of villains for a side plot that peripherally relates to theme of your main game but could be very different in flavor.


I've always found a well built summoning priest (cleric) is a nasty combo. This priest might be paying off some 'favors' with his outer-plane allies.

This might work as a foreshadow of the plane adventure.


Dreaming Psion wrote:
Zharradan Marr wrote:

Hey all,

I am DMing a group of 7th level PCs. We are in a bit of a lull in our ongoing campaign,waiting for a few events to pan out and whatnot. So i was looking for an interesting NPC to keep them occupied for a session or ten. The theme of the overarching plan so far is disappearing elven magic users, and the last few games have a thieves guild/ undead thread. I have a few problems coming up with balanced threats, there are 6 players and they all have very good stats. I have been throwing generic CR9/10s at them but i am looking for a more flavour. Any suggestions welcome. Thanks in advance.

If elven magic users have been disappearing, perhaps a good side plot would be a backlash of the elves against mankind sort of thing. Have a group of elven supremacists like the Eldreth Veluuthra (from Forgotten Realms). Throw in some (possibly unseelie) fey and an evil baelnorn (elven lich) or two and you could have a diverse cast of villains for a side plot that peripherally relates to theme of your main game but could be very different in flavor.

Heck, throw in a ton of racial tensions. Elves have a lot of enemies. Have them accuse dwarves, orcs, and drow.

This could come up via economic sanctions against dwarves, which could cut off supply routes for ore and weapons. You could then have subjugation attempts against orc tribes (read: random 1 session side quest) which are ultimately futile since they have nothing to do with this. And against drow, the elves might presume it is the work of drow mages using magical disguises (Since who would be better for catching elf mages?), and as such they would build up paranoid policies to try to ferret out these imaginary spies.

And all the while, the antagonists are feeding fuel to this fire because all this paranoia because it distracts the elves from the real problem. Overall, this could work well as a Plot B for many of these suggestions.

SIDENOTE: the elves could be forcing the human countries to play along with this wild goose chase since it was probably human thieves guilds that were connected to it (since random human thieves were probably used in the the original set up). So if the human kings do not want to look responsible, they have to give into increasingly insane demands from the elves. This could then lead to tensions with the human higher ups, and they might agree to some anti elf plot just to spite them.

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