What sort of a BAM can I put a strong 20th Level Party up against?


Advice


In a bid to get more of my friends to play Pathfinder I've agreed to show them what the "best" they can be is. The true end game. Each character is level 20, Epic Level points buy and I'm creating a handful of homebrew artifacts for each of them.

What sort of monsters would be a challenge for these guys? I don't want to throw the King of Hell at them, cause they'll die. But I do want to throw a good, challenging enemy.

The premise is they are long dead heroes, brought together to fight a strong, enemy in the midst of a war. They'll have to deal with waves of minions and the BAM, so the plan is to keep them almost constantly fighting.

Characters:
King Jurn Snerr - Urban Barbarian 20
Pingu - Ranger 20
Unnamed - Theurge 20
Reave - Serpent Striker 1/Rogue 1/Wizard 8/Arcane Trickster 10

These characters aren't optimised persay, but they do have ridiculous stats and items. So basically. What can challenge them, but lead to a well fought story battle.

Also, the whole campaign will be 10 hours or less.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Is BAM Big @$$ Monster? Like a BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy)?

It sounds like you want your PCs to shine.

Is it a tanky barbarian, archer ranger, Mystic Theurge, and melee or ranged rogue/wizard?

I would look at the CR 18-22 monsters. Group or pair them up. 1 BBEG vs 4 is very hard to make a fun challenge at 20th level. They can 1-round CR 24 or 25 beasties!


BAM is BadAss Motherf*%@er.

Theurge is a mystic theurge-ish base class.

Probably this one;

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/kobold-press-open-design/ theurge

As for OP, I don't really know what to tell you. Try have Orcus fight them.


Are these brand new PF players playing these high-level epic characters?

If so (and I recognize it's not the advice you're looking for) but I'd be a bit cautious about trying to get new players interested in the game by giving them a character with a whole pile of abilities, bonuses, spells, etc to keep track of, and expecting them to just roll with it.

I mean, we're talking about players who don't know what a 5 foot step is, or the rules on stacking of different bonuses. I expect they'll find running a 20th level character to be rather intimidating, and possibly rather frustrating.

Having said all that, if you plan to move ahead with this, I'd recommend planning out the battles carefully to gradually introduce more complicated tactics.

First fight or two should be fairly basic melee brutes, with the expectation that they will easily fall. The idea is to use that fight or two to introduce the core mechanics of the game. Expect it to take much longer than you might expect while you explain different parts of the game (and don't move on until you feel like everyone understands).

You could then progressively add in more complicated fights. Maybe have a fight on difficult terrain to highlight how that works, and how it might limit 5 foot moves and full attacks. And include some flying enemies, to show how that sort of challenge might work.

I'd actually spend as much time planning out those battles as the main bad guy at the end. And assuming you plan to break this out over multiple sessions, I might even hold off on deciding on the final BBEG until you see how they handle the initial fights. That will give you a much better sense of how much of a challenge they can handle.

td;dr: Be careful making brand new players run high level characters, but if you do, plan out the initial fights in a way to introduce core concepts gradually before encountering the BBEG.


Thoron Entheart wrote:


Characters:
King Jurn Snerr - Urban Barbarian 20

Tell me that is a Game of Thrones reference for John Snow? lol


Buligup wrote:
Thoron Entheart wrote:


Characters:
King Jurn Snerr - Urban Barbarian 20
Tell me that is a Game of Thrones reference for John Snow? lol

It most certainly is. He ners nerthern jern snerr.


The Steel Refrain wrote:

td;dr: Be careful making brand new players run high level characters, but if you do, plan out the initial fights in a way to introduce core concepts gradually before encountering the BBEG.

They've all played some pathfinder before, some more experienced than others, but the discussions where which rpg they should be playing so I want to give them an example of high level pathfinder.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Unique Monsters to check out. Look for ones that are easy to run.


Consider a war against fell frost giants (include some with the fiendish template and/or character classes) who are invading a beloved homeland led by Kostchtchie (sp?). I had something similar planned, albeit not for level 20 characters.

Frost giants and white dragons and winter wolves (winter wolves with rogue class levels are fun in the snow/blizzards) and fiendish dire polar bears and ice mephits with lots of caster levels can be a nice mix, and be sure to sprinkle in some nasty conjured ice devils or something appropriately demonic for fun.

Just a suggestion. Good luck!


Zygomind.

Make them doubt their sense of reality...

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

One thing I wouldn't do is use monsters with lots of immunities.

If you are trying to demonstrate how fun PF is, don't negate all the cool abilities 20th level characters have.


Mythic marilith demon sisters maybe?

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Vatras wrote:
Mythic marilith demon sisters maybe?

Maybe with some Advanced Medusa Fighter archers?

Also, definitely use whatever favored enemies the ranger chooses.


I've looked into it a little bit, and ai started them off against 2 Pit Fiends, just to get a baseline on how strong they are. They pretty much demolished them. I'm looking at the rune giant fighter on the unique creatures page and that might be a fun thing to throw in, and the rangers favoured enemies include undead and evil outsiders, so thats fine. I use those all the time anyway.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber

The Tanes. They're living nuclear weapons of fey gods.


A Tarrasque with 20 Wizard levels and that weird Dragon Magazine feat (Lost Traditions?) that let you change your casting stat.

Muscle Wizard.

Could also pull from the Tome of Horrors (Complete), it has some nasty stuff up to CR(37?).

The Kaiju from Bestiary 5 would be a fun encounter, as would a pile of Godspawn.

Still love that spell.


How about a weaker monster that they need to get on their side?

Better yet, they have to rescue, then convince, then keep it alive.

At 20th, killing is easy, defending is harder.

Takes more work to GM than a standard hit scenario.

Dark Archive

İt would be bam big evil guy you looking for just sayin. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/devil/devils-un ique/devil-lucifer-prince-of-darkness-tohc


Hoards of small CR creatures to use up there resources and then higher CR creatures (which are harder do to the fact that often the PC's use a lot of there good stuff to deal with the mass'es of small creatures.)

MDC

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Maybe 8 CR 17-19 critters? That way, each PC can be flanked.

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