Has anyone statted out Loris Raknian as a Death Knight? My players house a special hatred for him and I would like to bring him back as a special guest in "Dawn of a New Age"...
Has anyone statted out Loris Raknian as a Death Knight? My players house a special hatred for him and I would like to bring him back as a special guest in "Dawn of a New Age"...
I was probably going to go the easy route and have him be a Kyuss knight, but if you're going to use the Death Knight template, make sure Raknian is advanced at least to 16th level, if not 20th. By 'Dawn of a New Age', your PC's power level will be out of hand, and I doubt you want such a hated villian to go down with a single spell. Give him a ring of spell turning and a way to protect against positive energy (There's a spell called Life Ward in the Spell Compendium that stops this, it'd be easy to make a magic item with it...I think there might even be something like that in Libris Mortis.)
I personally love giving the Bad guys unique 'superpowers' such as an aura, flight, haste, or whatever the villian is lacking to be effective and memorable. Remember to add +1 CR or even +2 CR depending on the gifts you give him or if he carries a lot of good magic items like those above. Consider also giving him a Cauchemar Nightmare or better...nothing sucks worse than having him unceremoniously dumped to the ground when/if the Nightmare fails a Save or Die spell.
My game (Champions Belt) had minor penelties for letting the yellow worm thing bust out. They didn't kill the apostle and at the end of the last fight, he burst out. They (the two teams) decided to work together when he was getting out, so they healed, Auric was eaten, fel energies popped up, I rolled an 8 (2d4) for the wights to appear. Raknian turned evil, they killed the worm, all made will saves vs wight, most of the spectators got out, they shot down the nightmare before it got to Raknian (summon swarm, magic missle, ect.) They climbed to his spot in the ring, I got the death knight template out, they acually fought him and his bodyguards and one (one was not in the negatives at the end) but it was extremely fun.
Here's an update on Raknian for my game. My PCs have just begun 'Dawn of a New Age', and as one of the encounters in fighting despair in the city, they'll have to go to the arena. Within will be Raknian, advanced to 17HD, given the Death Knight template and some Kyuss gifts and equipped with some serious gear including a vorpal sword. Joining him within the arena will be an Ulgurstasta/ Barbarian 6 and about 100 wights who surround a huddled group of frightened citizens. Raknian will be re-enacting (spelling?)his 'performance' in the free city arena, giving the citizens one-by-one the choice to die by his sword or feed the hunger of kyuss (Ugly). He's gonna yell, "Is there none who can best the True Champion of the arena?" Cue heroes... They'll have to save so many citizens to count it a victory while simultaneously fighting Raknian and the Apostle...The basics are there, I'll post the numbers and semantics of the encounter for DMs wanting other filler encounters in Alhaster, at least once I run it and make sure it works...
i did (foolishly) apply the Death Knight template to Loris and had the PCs encounter him in Alhaster while they were waiting for the banquet with Prince Zeech. unfortunately, i underestimated their abilities at the time, and, even though i gave him a pet Nightwing as a cohort, the party chewed through them easily.
so, definitely follow the advice above and either give him some more levels in fighter (with commensurate equipment) or go with one of the more Kyuss-specific templates.
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I'm having Raknian show up right after the group is finished with the Spire of Long Shadows, just when they think they can relax. I've boosted him to a 14th-level fighter with the Death Knight template, and used the retraining option (from PH2) to change his Leadership feat to Undead Leadership (from Libris Mortis).
As a result, he has a literal horde of undead following him: about 150 human skeletons (arranged into three mobs), 19 human zombies, 7 troglodyte zombies, 4 troll skeletons, 8 ghouls, 2 shadows, 3 ghasts, and a wight. The whole thing comes out to an EL 18 encounter.
Oh, and his cohort? A 10th-level gravetouched ghoul monk. I've got full stat-blocks on the whole schlemiel (it's a 3-page Word document, though I could make it a PDF if you prefer). Drop me an e-mail and I can send it to you -- just put "Loris Raknian" in the subject line so I can spot it easily.
My address is either lonepaladin#peoplepc,net, or iprovemurphyslaw#aol,com. (Substitute # for @, and . for , as needed, naturally.)
Oops. Change that first address to a .com, I got it wrong.
'Statted out' is one thing, but has anyone with artistic talents sketched out or done a Photoshopped (tm) Raknian as an undead? His original art representation was certainly memorable, as are most all of Eva Widermann's NPCs.
Half of my players are great illustrators too, but of course I don't want to tip them off before their much-despised craggy-jawed nemesis makes his comeback...
I had Raknian reappear in Alhaster, as well.
He and Okorol were two of the Ebon Triad heretics hung to illustrate Zeech's "Justice" in the market square.
'Statted out' is one thing, but has anyone with artistic talents sketched out or done a Photoshopped (tm) Raknian as an undead? His original art representation was certainly memorable, as are most all of Eva Widermann's NPCs.
Half of my players are great illustrators too, but of course I don't want to tip them off before their much-despised craggy-jawed nemesis makes his comeback...
I will see what I can do. Between teaching Art full time, helping raise a toddler, and spend time with my wife, not to mention right my campaign, I might just find time to do this.
Sol wrote:
"I will see what I can do. Between teaching Art full time, helping raise a toddler, and spend time with my wife, not to mention right my campaign, I might just find time to do this."
...well thank you Sol-more power to you! For a smallish .jpeg of Raknian, in color, I would be more than willing to swap some original counter art by that player of mine, who is also a freelance artist, F/T art college student and whose wife is expecting a baby shortly. Sounds like you two have a lot in common-including an ironic sense of humor...
RoF
I like the suggestion given in Dawn of a New Age; use Maralee's Advanced Kyuss knight stat block for Raknian too. We're finishing this weekend so the plan is to use the same stats for both Maralee & Raknian, but describe him so he's recognizable. Easy, memorable, and a worthy challenge for the PCs.
J-