Karzoug...Weak BBEG?

[Cesare]

Let me preface this by saying that RotRL has some awesome villains. Nualia, Aldern Foxglove, Xanesha...the list goes on and on. However, I found Karzoug to be kind of...weak...as a BBEG. Sure, Book 6 has an amazing writeup of Karzoug's past, but that happened 10,000 years ago.

In my first runthrough, my players completely missed the little hologram in book 1 and finally realized who Karzoug was by Book 4, when they looted Mokmurian's body. I tried playing up Karzoug's evil by running little flashbacks of his villainy, but since he never affected the PCs personally, they generally affected a very cavalier attitude.

DM: "He was the most diabolical and twisted archmage of his day."
PCs: "How long ago was this?"
DM: "Umm...10,000 years ago."
PCs: (yawn)

I guess the closest parallel that I could think of at the top of my head is the BBEG of FFIX. No, it wasn't Kuja...it was some flying dude with green skin. There was no foreshadowing of this guy at all throughout the game, so fighting him was a let-down.

I was reading KJW's posts on the old What are DMs to Do forum and he brought up some good points with regards to villain-making:

There is another thing...personally, BBEGs are best heard and not seen. It is very common for DMs to want to showcase their BBEG early in a campaign, it is a staple of books and movies. The BBEG shows up fights and the PC runs away until she is ready to finally meet the BBEG and have their climactic battle. I will give you a warning...PCs don't always run, BBEGs don't always survive, and the scariest BBEGs are the ones the PC does not meet.

Reputation and mystique is what make BBEGs and the trick for making a BBEG truly fearsome is A) keep them out of sight, B) have people talk about them, and C) give them cool and scary minions. Let's look at three examples...Sauron from LotR, Emperor from Star Wars, and Voldemort from HP. These are three superior BBEGs, best of the best when it comes to bad guys. Structurally, Tolkien, Lucas, and Rowling handle them pretty much the same. First, they keep them out of sight, not till the climax do you have the hero face off against the BBEG. Sauron is never encountered and I would argue that because of this he is the scariest of the three, because he is a mystery and no one could face him. Second, people talk about them and people are scared of them. Voldemort is the classic in this regard, 'he-who-must-not-be-named' is over-the-top, but it should be and it is how you make a BBEG truly frightening because people a PC respects are scared of him. Third, they have cool and scary minions. We deal with Darth Vader in Episode IV and V and he is scary...but who does he kneel down to...yes, the old wrinkled guy, clearly that means old wrinkled guy is very, very scary. This formula really works.

I guess Karzoug comes closest to the Emperor Palpatine model, but I always felt Palpatine was overshadowed by Vader.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[,]

Well, karzoug is definitely NOT seen. He's stuck inside the event horizon of the magical portal. Siphoning energy from his failed minions in a bid to open the door and return as the first Rune Lord to awaken.

My problem with the party encounter with Karzoug was that the fight takes place inside a tube. The party is (Should hopefully be) of an epic level and the fight should feel like such.

Poor Karzoug just doesn't have the room to maneuver in the set up.

Though it entails extra work for the DM, changing that 'pocket reality' into something else would enhance the encounter. Of course, then the problem become, if Karzoug has too much area to work in, will he out class the heroes/heroines?

Though an encounter where the players are Sara and Karzoug is Jareth....yeah, that type of scene is cool. =)

Just some random thoughts.

[Cesare]

What if Karzoug awoke at around the time Burnt Offerings started? He's a 20th level transmuter. How would he spend the first couple months of his freedom?

- Scout out the world; see how much it changed in 10,000 years
- Make sure he's the only one who awoke
- Attempt to destroy the other slumbering runelords somehow
- unify the giants and attempt to raise an army
- sweep through Varisia in a wave of conquest

I think dealing with an awakened (but still weak from his centuries of inactivity) runelord makes for some pretty epic gaming. I'm debating on whether I should go this route.

[Gorbacz]

Cesare wrote:

What if Karzoug awoke at around the time Burnt Offerings started? He's a 20th level transmuter. How would he spend the first couple months of his freedom?

- Scout out the world; see how much it changed in 10,000 years
- Make sure he's the only one who awoke
- Attempt to destroy the other slumbering runelords somehow
- unify the giants and attempt to raise an army
- sweep through Varisia in a wave of conquest

I think dealing with an awakened (but still weak from his centuries of inactivity) runelord makes for some pretty epic gaming. I'm debating on whether I should go this route.

- the moment PCs become something of a variable in his plans (say... the moment they knock Mokmurian out), Scry + Teleport + TPK.

There are several reasons why Karzoug isn't in a "free running around mode" at the start of the AP. The most important one being, that a person with INT 36 would pretty sure make sure to turn the PCs into a pile of ash the moment they pop up on their map.

In other APs, the BBEGs either can't do that for other reasons or really shouldn't discover that PCs are a problem until it's too late.

[Lord Fyre]

On one level I actually agree with the OP.

Spoiler:

Yes, he is a Lvl 20 wizard, and the PCs sould be arround Lvl 16 or so when the meet him.

However, he suffers from the problem of being one vs the entire party.

Since by the PathfinderRPG rules, he drops down to a CR20 even with his Attributes and Gear.

Some things that would help him tremendously would be ...

Add some minions to make up the the 102,400 experience. I like: 2 Avanced Iron Goloms, and a Lamia Matriach (w/wizard levels). This will help Karzou manage the battle more effectively by preventing the heroes from ganging up.

make the battle area a little larger (to accomidate the extra creatures).

Beyond that, what stops him from "communicating" with the heroes? While he cannot yet attack them, he might find it amusing to chat with them from time to time.

For example, allow him to use the sending spell (an evocation) from time to time. (Give the relevant hero a hand-out at the beginning of the session).

Spoiler:

For a real mind game, have him act in a "frendly" manner (but not actually helpful) when chatting.

[Rakshaka]

If you really wanted to:
Spoiler:

:

If I remember correctly, the fight occurs near the "Runewell of Greed", right? You could give the Runewell or the pocket dimension he's in the ability to suppress the magic powers of the PC's highest GP costing items, reflecting the embodiment of Greed present in Karzoug. That might throw an interesting twist on the fight. In my game, only two PCs actually survived the fight, but as a Wizard with a 36 Int, I gave him the liberty of swapping out some spells to effectively Meta against my players. He never landed on the ground and no one had perfect maneuverability or hover, so no one could take a full attack against him except the crossbow wielding ranger. He had plenty of height to not get pinned down by the rogue or fighter, and his high DCs ensured more than a few PC deaths. I wish I'd had the chance to run him all PF'd out, we were playtesting Beta at the time with Ruinlords.

[Herbo]

You aren't running Pathfinder PC's on the unmodified campaign are you? A group of 16th level Pathfinder PC's will outshine a similar group of 3.5'ers.

Also consider the house rules you work with and make sure to give Zoogie the benefits as well, even if you have to rebuild parts of him.

A human BBEG wizard is always hard because you have to really have your actions in order so that you make the most of available spells and abilities. Start by ditching anything in "tactics." Not that they are bad, but you know your group better than Paizo so don't treat the published stat block like a hard lined playbook.

Constraining the group physically is much more damning for them than it is for him when you consider any AoE spells.

If you still think he's going to be a cake walk then give him access to spells that every magic user and magical cabal on Golarion would murder each other for (foreshadowing in case they come away with new spell loot). Of course this would increase your work load in preparing said new spells.

All that being said when I turned him on my players I modified tactics to fit my knowledge of the group and I gave him some new custom spells to showcase him coming from another more powerful time. We had a group of 5 adventurers run by experienced players and only 3 made it out (one of the survivors was turned to a gold statue with no foreseeable way of reversing the condition).

[pjackson]

Cesare wrote:

Let me preface this by saying that RotRL has some awesome villains. Nualia, Aldern Foxglove, Xanesha...the list goes on and on. However, I found Karzoug to be kind of...weak...as a BBEG. Sure, Book 6 has an amazing writeup of Karzoug's past, but that happened 10,000 years ago.

The whole series suffers from a lack of foreshadowing.

If I were to run it again I would add a lot.
Things like legends of the time of the runelords - it may be 10,000 years ago, but there are long lived creatures, monuments and spells to investigate the past.
So starting at the festival have a preacher mention the ancient evil empire dedicated to sin in which everyone suffered and which the gods destroyed.
When the PC's start investigating Karzoug have them find out about a decree of his that was carved in stone, perhaps condemning the citizens of a town to slavery for non-payment of taxes.

[Robert Ranting]

Cesare wrote:

I found Karzoug to be kind of...weak...as a BBEG.

...since he never affected the PCs personally, they generally affected a very cavalier attitude.

I agree that the core of the problem is that the PCs are not personally connected to Karzoug, which is something of a fault of the entire AP. The only real remedy for this is to go off the rails and write those connections yourself.

For example, when I ran RotRL as part of my 2-year homebrew campaign...

Spoiler:

I had the perfect hook handed to me by a PC who wanted to begin the campaign with partial amnesia, remembering nothing before being taken in by a tribe of savage humanoids who found him in the wilderness a year before the campaign began. Over time, I dropped hints that the character was a member of a culture from a distant land in the oriental region of the world, and suggested a connection between his people and the ruins of Thassilon. I also implied that his animal companion, a heron, was far more intelligent than normal, and it eventually began gaining strange semi-divine powers.

After defeating Mokmurian and learning of Karzoug's location, the party traveled to his homeland on the way to Xin-Shalast. Recognized by NPCs who had known him before his amnesia, he was kidnapped, and when the rest of the party went to his rescue, discovered his kidnapper was actually his former betrothed, and daughter of the nation's emperor. It turned out that he had once been a powerful monk who claimed to be the reincarnation of a dead god, and the leader of a party of 16th level adventurers who had confronted Karzoug with tragic results. Karzoug slew two of their company, and invoked a spell which expelled the divine essence from the monk's body, effectively erasing his memories and making him a level 0 blank slate onto which he had built his character. Loosed from his body, the divine essence of the dead god of nature had taken the form of a heron which became his companion, and it still retained the memories of the monk he had been. By this point, it had even gained enough strength that with the aide of telepathy or similar magic, it could communicate with the party, confirming all of this and encouraging them to defeat Karzoug, whose giant forces now threatened the princess' kingdom, and find a way to "fix" the situation, returning him to a humanoid body.

So the party, plus the princess, made the trek to Xin-Shalast, and were subsequently ambushed by the other surviving member of the the monk's adventuring party, a rival for the princess' affections. In exchange for sparing himself and the princesss after their previous battle, the rival had agreed to hand over his former ally to Karzoug, should he ever reappear from having fallen off the mountain and into a hole in time and space caused by the mountain's extraplanar nature. With the help of Glorofaex the dragon, the rival kidnapped the animal companion (who afterall, really *was* the person who Karzoug had stipulated in the deal) and gave him up to Karzoug, who promptly slew him and added him to the Runewell, leaving his broken bird-corpse at the entrance for the PCs to discover. By the time the PCs finally entered the Runewell to confront Karzoug, things were very *censored* personal for them, and the fight was quite epic.