Hi guys just need some help. I am working on a new homebrew, and need some ideas for the BBG. I want him/her to be humanoid. I also only use the PHB and the race's books.
All ideas will give me food for thought.
thanks gommer AKA tral. Later :-)
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How big?
If this is a homebrew epic arc, you can use this:
A Gold Dragon Blackguard, fallen paladin. At low level he seeks out the party, while greivously injured, and disguised as a human. He becomes their patron, sending them on a series of missions, which never quite feel right.
They are specifically collecting certain items, and or targeting particular groups. Specifically groups associated in some way with dragonkind. Perhaps a thieve's guild run by a half-dragon, or stealing a lance of dragon bane.
It will eventually become apparent that the party is being used. They can pick up clues along the way that everything they collect is associated with a noble Gold Dragon, and later find out other details, leading right up to his fall.
Final battle would be epic, since their patron specifically took all their good dragon slaying gear...
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For something more down to earth, it is always good to make villains that completly stomp on archetypes. For example, making a dwarven necromancer, or mind-flayer fighter. Heck, build an ogre with the elite array, give him decent intelligence and charisma, a few ranks of fighter, and run with it.
well, you might want to decide on the basic theme of your game:
if it is going to have a lot of undead; vampires and liches are always very good bad guys that can have extensive networks that include living and undead agents. Maybe they have a plot to turn the whole world undead.
Having a cleric of a demon or devil prince that has a large following with a cult that is in several cities that are trying to do something to say open a large gate to a abyssal or hellish plane that will stay open for a long period of time might be a campaign for heroes; say this cult is collecting; capturing; enslaving; large numbers of people so they can sacrifice something like 100 people in 10 locations world wide that will open gates in these areas; and each night they can continue to sacrifice 100 souls, the gate stays open and nefarious agents of evil come through; pcs could search out mysterious dissappearances or find out about various nefarious texts missing from several libraries of various individuals or institutions that contact the pcs to return the thefts; or perhaps these gates are real actual gates made of nefarious and strange ingrediants that might be another clue; maybe they look like big ugly arches or something that drip blood and wails and screams can be heard through the night of tortured souls.
You could always just have plain vanilla humans say 4 or 5 friends that are high level and trying to conquer the world; they have an army or two and a spy network and have infiltrated various governments and the guards of various cities to cause disruption and the right time or leave a gate open; that sort of thing; maybe someone has found a spy and hires the group to counter spy to find out whats going on - the person hiring would want plausable deniablility for sure.
This is what I mean about theme; how dark do you want; how gothic; do you want fantastic bad guys or more realism.
How about this- a villain who actually IS doing the right thing. They should be of a good alignment- perhaps the median alignment of the party- and have a low Wisdom score or perhaps just some personal flaw where they do not see the error of their ways. I'm sure most people on this board have seen the opening of the original Battlestar Galactica- would you say that they head chancellor(or whatever) was evil for wanting peace with the Cylons? Or just incredibly stupid/naive/misinformed/hopeful?
Continuing in the Good guy vein-What if he was a Goliath(Races of Stone) tribal chieftain(CG or CN alignment) who is taking desperate measures to protect his tribe.
Maybe they were chased out of their home territory by stone giants or a Blue Dragon and now they must find a new way to survive. A mid-level quest could be to slay the dragon on the goliaths' behalf but ultimately the chieftain fails to see the value of cooperating with humans and must be eliminated-maybe to be replaced by one of the PCs!(especially tasty if that PC is also a goliath-maybe exiled from this or another tribe and now achieves redemption with a little help from her friends)
All are very good ideas. As far as world background there isn't much. I don't play forgotten realms but use it as a back drop(I'm to lazy to draw my own maps). Just use the names and stuff and put my own stuff in.
But please keep the ideas coming. :-)
ok what if the BBEG is not really a vampire but just a wannabe-still humanoid but the PCs think he is undead(I know this is not entirely original but it could be done quite well, in fact you could maybe even adapt Ravenloft to this)
It may seem overplayed, but a "munchkinized" character. Halfling Rogue, Half-orc Barbarian/Fighter, Elven Necromancer, etc. Play off the ability modifiers and power game it to the end. The prestige classes, feats and skill selections should help you come up with some ideas as well.