At higher levels this is even more important. My home game is age of worms and I can tell you that single creature BBEGs just get minced by my group at 18th level.
This was a problem I ran into. I laid some extra hit dice on a few, like the dracolich. In fact, with the dragons in general I found it useful to make liberal use of feats and occasional class levels from the Draconomicon. That's a darn good book. Honestly, lots of the BBEGs in AoW weren't terribly optimized, and I felt that given the amount the baddies knew about the PCs; it was unfair to them.
I also slipped in a couple extras. Robbed their house (lots of evil artifacts stored there), killed their dog (used to be the druid's animal companion and beloved member of the party, lost his Int and other bonuses when the druid upgraded but remained a pet), and created a foil in the form of a party of evil "adventurers" led by a former comrade of theirs who knew them all very well and were working for Kyuss's cult.
They actually aren't too obscure, and none of it is setting specific, interestingly enough. I don't have a list right at hand.
Frostburn, sandstorm, Unearthed Arcana, and PHB2 should be just about it.Oh, and contemplative from complete divine, but you could comfortably drop that dip. It's for a bonus domain, and is a very common dip.
To be clear, tainted sorcerer has no class abilities after first. In other words, six levels isn't really a dip in the classical sense. :)
Unearthed Arcana's not even necessary; the Tainted Sorcerer and Taint rules are in the SRD.
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At higher levels this is even more important. My home game is age of worms and I can tell you that single creature BBEGs just get minced by my group at 18th level.
This was a problem I ran into. I laid some extra hit dice on a few, like the dracolich. In fact, with the dragons in general I found it useful to make liberal use of feats and occasional class levels from the Draconomicon. That's a darn good book. Honestly, lots of the BBEGs in AoW weren't terribly optimized, and I felt that given the amount the baddies knew about the PCs; it was unfair to them.
I also slipped in a couple extras. Robbed their house (lots of evil artifacts stored there), killed their dog (used to be the druid's animal companion and beloved member of the party, lost his Int and other bonuses when the druid upgraded but remained a pet), and created a foil in the form of a party of evil "adventurers" led by a former comrade of theirs who knew them all very well and were working for Kyuss's cult.
Sounds fun. My party are evil though. They're bascially working for another god to prevent the rise of Kyuss. We've had our share of long running vilains, one of tehm from the first session right up until level 10. It was fun all round when he fnally bit the dust.
Unfortunately Kuma, I have minimal time for extra prep so tend to run with things as is, though I d try to swap some fo the spells from the spell compendium in at times. Rather than tinker with things too much, I just tend to merge encounters into longer running battles. This is particularly easy for dungeon type settings, and doesn't really detract from the session.
Cheers
Sounds fun. My party are evil though. They're bascially working for another god to prevent the rise of Kyuss. We've had our share of long running vilains, one of tehm from the first session right up until level 10. It was fun all round when he fnally bit the dust.
Can you really call them villains if your the evil guys? :)
Can you really call them villains if your the evil guys? :)
Sounds fun. My party are evil though. They're bascially working for another god to prevent the rise of Kyuss. We've had our share of long running vilains, one of tehm from the first session right up until level 10. It was fun all round when he fnally bit the dust.
LOL, good question...
A better term to use is "foils".
A foil can be villainous, virtuous, or neither. As long as he's working against the heroes of the story, he is a foil. His actions determine his true nature.
But sure, a villain who pillages and plunders the innocent AND tries to thwart the party at every turn is both a villain and a foil.
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Can you really call them villains if your the evil guys? :)
Evil is often a definition of perspective, though in this case my guys are truly evil. They once tricked another band of adventurers (more virtuous than they), into attacking one of their enemies. When the good guys were wiped, my group ported in behind them and took down the big guy while he was still weakened from the fight. Then they looted all the bodies and got their money back.
They beat the major villain of the story arc, and trust me he was a bad guy. They were just doing so using very unscrupulous methods.
On the same note, there's a whole town of people who almost worship the group, becasue they saved them from a rampaging wizard riding a dragon. The group never told them the town was only attacked becasue they were staying there. As far as that town is concerend, the party are heroes.
Perspective I tell you.
Can you really call them villains if your the evil guys? :)Evil is often a definition of perspective, though in this case my guys are truly evil. They once tricked another band of adventurers (more virtuous than they), into attacking one of their enemies. When the good guys were wiped, my group ported in behind them and took down the big guy while he was still weakened from the fight. Then they looted all the bodies and got their money back.
They beat the major villain of the story arc, and trust me he was a bad guy. They were just doing so using very unscrupulous methods.
On the same note, there's a whole town of people who almost worship the group, becasue they saved them from a rampaging wizard riding a dragon. The group never told them the town was only attacked becasue they were staying there. As far as that town is concerend, the party are heroes.
Perspective I tell you.
Now that is priceless!
A foil can be villainous, virtuous, or neither. As long as he's working against the heroes of the story, he is a foil. His actions determine his true nature.
But sure, a villain who pillages and plunders the innocent AND tries to thwart the party at every turn is both a villain and a foil.
You can refer to someone as a "villein" as long as the live in a village! The current usage of villain is really kind of a harsh stab at poor people.
As for the good/evil dichotomy, I think it's clear that this is a false structure. Morality is dependent on viewpoint, after all. Even a good or neutral dragon might murder entire groups of people for trespassing, but if a human did it people get all uppity.
For PCs, I find it easiest to describe my usual activities as neutral evil; but only because there's no "meh" alignment. I'm true to my heart*, baby.
*My heart tells me to post random crap at 6am when I've had no sleep.
[EDIT] Awwww, ninja'd by Wrath! When I open half a dozen tabs, I've really gotta start hitting F5 when switching between them.
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One of my favorite GMs doesn't even bother with stat blocks. If the bad guy needs 10,000 hp so be it... one tough halfling, but still he puts up a good fight! If he needs a particular spell he has it. Doesn't work for some, but works ok for others.
Personally, I like it both ways. I like having a stat block to reference, but if the stat block proves too limiting I'll easily deviate from it to what I need.
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One of my favorite GMs doesn't even bother with stat blocks. If the bad guy needs 10,000 hp so be it... one tough halfling, but still he puts up a good fight! If he needs a particular spell he has it. Doesn't work for some, but works ok for others.
Personally, I like it both ways. I like having a stat block to reference, but if the stat block proves too limiting I'll easily deviate from it to what I need.
I have a friend who DM's like this as well Krome. His games are always memorable, though much too rare unfortunately.
One thing this really stopped was the metagaming thinking that some of us were getting into the habbit of. We could no longer say things like "Well he's a fighter so he wont be able to do X" or, "That's the 3rd 7th level spell they've cast, so no more of them."
It used to frustrate me until I realised how much more challenging his finale enounters were. And I have to say, excting is what we're after for finales.
Cheers
One of my favorite GMs doesn't even bother with stat blocks. If the bad guy needs 10,000 hp so be it... one tough halfling, but still he puts up a good fight! If he needs a particular spell he has it. Doesn't work for some, but works ok for others.
Personally, I like it both ways. I like having a stat block to reference, but if the stat block proves too limiting I'll easily deviate from it to what I need.
Like I said, I do fudge things, but I have set rules for fudging things, and a solid valuation in gold or exp for anything I change. Other than the blob-o-hp which you really almost have to do in D&D. But that's fine, it's no more bizarre than the stats for a solar or the rules for burning.
Did you know that non-magical fire doesn't do enough damage to burn wood?
SCIENCE!
Like I said, I do fudge things
GOD. I want some fudge so bad now.
Me too. If you're within 90 miles of williamsburg, their candy shop is worth the drive. :)
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One of my favorite GMs doesn't even bother with stat blocks. If the bad guy needs 10,000 hp so be it... one tough halfling, but still he puts up a good fight! If he needs a particular spell he has it. Doesn't work for some, but works ok for others.
Personally, I like it both ways. I like having a stat block to reference, but if the stat block proves too limiting I'll easily deviate from it to what I need.
Like I said, I do fudge things, but I have set rules for fudging things, and a solid valuation in gold or exp for anything I change. Other than the blob-o-hp which you really almost have to do in D&D. But that's fine, it's no more bizarre than the stats for a solar or the rules for burning.
Did you know that non-magical fire doesn't do enough damage to burn wood?
SCIENCE!
Holy Smoke! Or well, maybe not? That is just plain dumb.
I was reading on the Open Design website that some of the designers complained about new people submitting are always messing with Monsters, adding things or modifying them in an unusual way. In essence they said "STOP! Just use the monster as written!"
They don't get it though. The monster as written has been fought so often it has no mystery any more. "Oh, ANOTHER Hydra... Ho hum ok here we go yet again."
The idea of modifying the monster is to keep it fresh and alive and interesting. I just don't see every single Hydra being a carbon copy of each other, nor do I see every single Efreet being exactly the same.
As for BBEG they BEG to be customized. Really, you just CAN'T use a monster out of the book as a BBEG.
You have gotten me to thinking about what I would do were I to codify rules for a BBEG. I'd make it at least 3 perhaps 5 levels higher than the party, maximize HP completely, boost ability scores to have an average of +2 or +3 per ability, prebuff with spells like crazy, even add a few unique researched spells to buff up, prepare some unique researched spells that do unusual damage or conditions, then prepare the minions, mooks and locale. Then look it over, and hope it will last a few turns and prepare to fudge some dice rolls.
mmmm fudge...
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But regardless, you are right, a BBEG fight just about cannot be done with the BBEG only.
Minions and Mooks have to be used and environment should play a huge part as well. If it comes to a stand up fight between BBEG and party, the BBEG looses real fast.
Which is rather anticlimactic.
an example, the guy who doesn't use statted out monsters- he does have an idea of their HP and capabilities though. He had one BBEG get into a dual with a Swordmaster-Swashbuckler (whatever that class is) character. His BBEG attacked and was quite impressive. The Swashbuckler-Swordmaster then took out all the tricks and in one round completely destroyed the BBEG- FAR above the expected HP and far enough there was no fudging.
The fight which was to last several rounds, and roam all across the building was over in one round.
EDIT-- to deal with that, we ran into the dead BBEG later, raised as an undead something by his own master, the Bigger Badder Finale Guy.
Me too. If you're within 90 miles of williamsburg, their candy shop is worth the drive. :)
=(
I'm in Kyoto, man.
Maybe in a couple of months, when I'm headed for Greensboro.
Uncle Binder, where are those spells from? Some of them sound so nice (Plague of Undead? Hmmm...) I'd like to take a look at them.
The great vast majority are from the Spell Compendium. Plague of Undead is on p.158 of that volume, for instance. Please let me know which other spells you'd like paginated. I'm happy to oblige.