Plot seed: a Spell Sage with a big idea

[Douglas Muir 406]

They all laughed at Bob, back at the Academy. No familiar! No school of magic! Not even a bound object! "Spell Sage", what is that? Well, Bob's going to show them. He's going to show them all.

Bob, a Spell Sage, has somehow acquired three interesting magical items: an Orb of Foul Abaddon, a Prayer Bead of Karma, and a scroll of Gate. Bob realizes that the first two items can be combined with his Focused Spell ability to give him a whopping +9 ECL on using the Gate scroll. This means that at 11th level he can call and control a 20 HD pit fiend! (If you really want to pile on, he can gain another +1 ECL by making a human sacrifice and casting Death Knell.)

Of course, casting Gate requires 10,000 gp. Bob can perhaps just barely afford that... but then the pit fiend will demand another 20,000 gp of payment (1,000 per hit die) once it has completed its duties. Bob doesn't have that kind of money. But that's okay! He's just going to command the fiend to loot the city's treasury and bring him the money. Then he'll have several other extremely clever commands for it, which he has thought out in considerable detail, so that there are of course no possible loopholes. When the dust settles, Bob will be wealthy beyond belief and master of the city, and his enemies will be, at best, very dead. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this well-thought-out plan!

(It does not occur to Bob what a curious coincidence it is that those three particular items should have fallen, one by one, into the hands of a caster just barely powerful enough to use them. Hey, Bob's a busy guy with a lot on his mind.)

The PCs' job: figure out what Bob is up to, and stop him. You can introduce Bob earlier in the campaign, when he's first acquiring these items, one by one. Once he's got the third... well in theory he could cast Gate on the spot. But he may need to scrape together enough cash for the casting cost, and then there may be a Death Knell sacrificial victim to be acquired, and then of course he'll just HAVE to cast the Gate spell in some suitable location, like on top of the city's tallest building. So there are several points where the PCs can rush to cut him off. Of course, it's possible that Someone much more powerful is using Bob as a catspaw, and wants him to succeed...

Bob would be 10th or 11th level, making him a good opponent for a group of 7th-8th level PCs.

Thoughts?

Doug M.

[avr]

Alone, without a gated pit fiend, Bob could die very very fast to a determined group of level 7+ PCs. Bob needs minions. Of course, if he's level 11 and not 10 he might have planar bound something already as you know, or at least have a contingency/cheetah's sprint; failing that maybe a bunch of fellow nerds who don't quite know the stakes are willing to lend a hand.

[Douglas Muir 406]

Balance always has to be left up the particular DM. We've all seen campaigns where experienced players with a powergame orientation, acting as a well oiled machine, take down APL+5 opponents without breaking a sweat. Yes, giving Bob some meat shields and minions is definitely one way to balance this. Sure, maybe he's 11th level and has a bound outsider or two. Perhaps he's taken a level or two of Diabolist and has a couple of barbed devils on call. And an imp companion who's been encouraging him and giving him hints all along. (The Infernal language has a word for Diabolist. It translates as Useful Fool.)

Also, don't forget that Spell Sage NPCs can be dangerous opponents, especially if they're blasty. With feat selection or some very minor magic items, a 10th level Spell Sage would have no problem throwing a 16d6 blast. Swap in a Diabolist's Hellfire Admixture power and that's enough to one-shot most 7th level good-aligned PCs if they fail their saves.

Doug M.

[Douglas Muir 406]

Mind, it doesn't have to be a pit fiend. Any sufficiently alarming outsider of around 20 HD will do. Season to taste.

Make it worse: Bob is Chaotic Evil and he's going to summon a qlippoth. (Note that the qlippoth racial resistance to being bound doesn't apply to Gate spells.) Payment will be in human lives, of course. In this version Bob is kind of nuts, and it's not really clear what his endgame is.

Make it worse in a different way: Bob is Chaotic Good, and he lives in Evil Town. Lawful Evil, let's say. If you're in Golarion, perhaps a town or city in Cheliax. And Bob has suffered terribly, seen loved ones enslaved or killed, horrible crimes committed... So Bob is going to summon a 17 HD Brijidine Azata. Bob only has to be ~8th level for this (swap an orange ioun stone for the evil Orb), so he becomes a suitable antagonist for a group of 4th or 5th level PCs. If the PCs are evil, of course they want to stop Bob. If they're good... well, Evil Town is evil, but a combat with the enraged azata is likely to result in significant collateral damage. Also, don't forget the possibility that Bob is being manipulated; maybe some powerful devil wants the azata called for its own nefarious reasons...

Doug M.

[Just a Mort]

Use a couple of lesser planar binding of these:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/umbral-shepherd

Get em to posses nasty thingies.

Maybe a couple of these for str dmg:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/kyton/kyton-lam padarius

Have the imp invisibly scout so Bob isnt caught unaware, get couple of them to invis up and jump on a single PC. If things go south have them use deeper darkness while Bob runs away from under the cover of darkness.

[Dekalinder]

I'm not sure it works that way. First, at minimum, you need to do a caster level check against DC 18 to avoind the spell fizzling and risking mishap.
Secondly, I'm pretty sure class ability can't modify the caster level of the scroll. And in any case, just buy a Gate scroll at CL 20 and be done with it. Scrolls use their own CL, not yours. Those are the Staffs.

[Douglas Muir 406]

Dekalinder wrote:

I'm not sure it works that way. First, at minimum, you need to do a caster level check against DC 18 to avoind the spell fizzling and risking mishap.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure class ability can't modify the caster level of the scroll.

Okay -- instead of the scroll, give Bob a Candle of Invocation. Attuned to the appropriate alignment, of course.

Doug M.

[Dekalinder]

Just buy a CL 20 scroll? Way cheaper than 2 items with a combined cost of 38 K gold