In writing my homebrew campaign (levels 1-20), I've come across a problem. There just aren't that many things stopping my villain from completing her plans.
Here's the rundown:
-Desert/Egypt themed setting
-Villain aims to break the seal on a very old, very terrible curse
-Currently, the curse is kept at bay by two seals, and a third seal that keeps anyone from touching them.
-When the party is level 8, the villain enacts a plan to break the first seal, allowing access to the other two.
-With that done, there is nothing stopping the villain from breaking the other two seals, and ending the world.
-I have an idea on how to get the PCs up to level 12 before all this happens, but as far as I can tell, the level 20 BBEG stuff will be happening by then.
So my question is, how do you slow down your villains? General ideas are most welcome! Paizo APs tend to be good at putting on the pressure, saying that the BBEG is getting closer and closer, without actually putting a clock on the players. I'm just trying to figure out how to give my players more time before the villain finishes her plan without deus ex machina'ing the whole thing (time stasis, planar entrapment, imprisonment spells, etc.)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, the simplest answer is a "The stars must be right" kind of thing.
The BBEG is able to get to the first seal any time she likes, according to your timeline. She breaks it, which allows the other two seals to now be targeted. The heroes get there too late to stop it, and all seems lost...
Until they realize that the seals can each only be opened during a certain window of time. The PCs don't need to immediately get to Seal #1 because it can only be disrupted when there is a blue moon in the month of Kislev. There is a blue moon scheduled for this Kislev - but that's three months from now, so there's time to prepare and plan.
(Adjust details as needed, obviously.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If it effectively takes nothing but breaking the first seal (since the other two are apparently trivial) to release the big bad, and you want the big bad released at level 12, then why would the first seal be broken when they were level 8? Delaying the whole thing might be the solution.
I expect though, that what you what is incremental progress toward the goal, so the PCs can tell that the bad guy is getting closer to his goals. The solution there is to make 'there is nothing stopping the villain from breaking the other two seals' not be true.
If the seals are still a problem for the bad guy at this point, the PCs (and the campaign) has time for things to happen. There are tons of ways you could make the seals still a problem. Maybe they are minor artifacts and require special means to destroy. Maybe they aren't really right there, just the location of the next one and the bad guy has to get from one to the next. Heck, you could even have each seal kill the Villain off and he has to wait for his clone to finish growing before he can tackle the next one.
The point is, just alter your premise and I expect tons of solutions will occur to you.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The villain has to find the seals.
The villain realises too late that there are failsafes which lock the other two seals into a demiplane when he breaks the first seal.
The villain does is wrong.
The seal is a fake (the people who sealed the curse away weren't total morons...)
Lots of ways to do it! :) My personal favourite is that the villain has crippling arthritis and can only move at a limp. Oh - not that kind of fast...
All wonderful ideas, thank you!
I pondered this a bit more and came to the beginnings of a solution that seems promising.
Dave, long story short, I kind of wrote myself into a corner and it's difficult to change premises too much. Half because altering one means altering many others, and half because I love how they turned out and fit into the story. One of the seals isn't a problem because it was simply hidden away, but the villain (and her family) tracked it down ages ago, and have been simply waiting for access to it.
Aaron, I did toy with the idea of simply requiring certain time-based conditions to be met, but the villain's plans are equally movable, so it seemed strange for her to move too early.
Nikolaus, one of the seals is actually hidden away in a demiplane oddly enough! But due to story, that's not a problem for her.
But! The solution I'm working out might just be a merging of these ideas. Basically, the villain isn't actually the BBEG. She's trying to bring back the BBEG. And the real BBEG is just so scary that I originally had him pinned as an end-of-the-world type of ordeal. But he's not a demigod, so his coming back doesn't immediately trigger the apocalypse.
So essentially, I'm thinking of just allowing the villain to succeed in breaking the seals. However, after that is done, she and the BBEG still need time to manufacture the End of All Things. To compare it to an existing AP:
Still need to work on it to hammer out the details of course, but I think it has potential.
Good luck! It sounds like you've got the beginnings of a solution.
Let us know how it works out!
Releasing each of the remaining seals requires a separate magic McGuffin and a ritual.
The rituals can have arbitrary time requirements.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
shouldn't the players be the ones coming up with ways to slowdown/stop the villain?
I kind of wrote myself into a corner and it's difficult to change premises too much. Half because altering one means altering many others, and half because I love how they turned out and fit into the story. One of the seals isn't a problem because it was simply hidden away, but the villain (and her family) tracked it down ages ago, and have been simply waiting for access to it.
Sounds like you have found a solution that works, but in case it doesn't or you think you need more, I expect that if you think about it, you might not be as stuck as you think.
For example, even if the villain already has a seal and believes they can destroy it, it could turn out that she is wrong, and needs something more. From everything the villain (and the PCs know) she is ready, but when the time comes it doesn't work, and the villain has to figure out why and do whatever is needed to actually break the seal (or finds out that the seal isn't actually the seal after all, a clever fake perhaps). An old hermit telling the PCs that all is not lost after all, because he switched out the seal years ago could be fun (shades of "they're digging in the wrong place"). Similarly, the demiplane could be harder to get to then expected, or the wrong one, or the seal could not be there after all.
At best I would assume your PCs know what the villain believes to be true, if the villain is wrong it opens up a lot of possibilities.
You could have a siege situation where some friendly force just plops their rear ends down on one or more of the seals and try to hold off the villain. Because obviously other people might get just a wee bit concerned about world ending threats.
So maybe something with sphinx-es? They seem magical and vaguely powerful enough to at least be a major part of such an operation.
Anyway, you can then switch the mode of the campaign- have it focus on supporting the siege. Sneaking in supplies, countering the villain's attempts to sneak in, sabotaging the villain's supplies, etc. Ways to minorly hamper the villain, while wracking up XP.
shouldn't the players be the ones coming up with ways to slowdown/stop the villain?
It is the DM's responsibility to supply the plot hooks and storyline that support the players in this endeavor.
Seriously, without Mcguffins and plot hooks most of these evil BBG's would win. Not only would they win, they would have never advertised that anything untoward was happening prior to winning.
Seriously, without Mcguffins and plot hooks most of these evil BBG's would win.
Honestly this is a good summary of the problem I'm having lol. I wrote a villain, made her powerful, cunning, and deceitful. Then I put her in the world and gave her a goal, and when I stepped back to look at the big picture, I realized "Holy **** there's nothing stopping her..."
But hopefully the new additions I have incoming will change that!
Hey do you remember the old Mummy movies? Know how the BBEG was brought in to the story early on, yet he still needed to do things to regain his ultimate power?
Do the same thing. The BBEG has rituals that must be completed, and the rituals require unique material components for the ritual to be completed. Such as the tears from a baby born only 1 week hence of a retired monarch. Their cannot be many of those around.
Fun stuff like that.
I realize I'm late, but... Just have the bad guy break the seals as needed. The NPC doesn't have to progress along with the PC's. Simply place him at the seal when the PC's get there or if they come up with a plan to head him off at the pass, let them catch him and fight. As long as the players feel like they are racing against time, that's all that matters.