In my current Kingmaker game, I am trying to make new villains because the overall plot and direction of the game has gone too far away for the original villains to be any good.
However, I am not good at creating villains, stat-block-wise. How far is too far?
Currently, the idea is that there are four people, lead by some as-of-yet unknown entity are heavily opposed to the player character's kingdom for one reason or the other. I'm thinking said entity is a gestalt heavens oracle/ starsoul sorcerer 20/20, simply to be ridiculous, but even I realise that may be way too much.
However, for the four villains, my current ideas are thusly:
A: A crossblooded draconic/stormborn sorcerer. He specialises in lightning magic and dispel magic, through elemental focus, destructive dispel and spell focus (evocation). Personality-wise, he is likely sanguine, the insane one, the hothead who loves the thrill of combat. - at the moment, I have him statted out at 11th level and 19th level. At 11th level, he is throwing out lightning bolts and electrified fireballs that deal 10d6+11 damage with a DC 25 reflex save for half. Looking at my player's character sheets, only the monk has a decent chance of dodging, at something like 40%. Is this too much?
B: An oracle of bones. Of course specialising in necromancy. Blindness/Deafness, Bestow Curse, Ray of Enervation, negative levels, undead armies, the standard drill. There's also potential for psychological warfare, seeing as one of the PC's wife died, and they never found her body. Likely the choleric one.
C: A diviner wizard. Responsible for anti-scrying, scrying on the player characters (justifying the DM meta-knowledge, go go) and generally being the douchebag and the "face" of this villain group - a melancholic personality. Have him statted out at 9th level currently.
No idea about the fourth one. Possibly a phlegmatic martial monk, or some form of martial character. Could ramp it up to eleven by making a cleric.
I realise it's difficult to know if they are too strong or too weak without any actual stat blocks to show - but there's also the concern that, for instance, the sorcerer would one-shot the party wizard (who, of course, has 8 con and 30 hit points). I've killed off some characters during the course of the campaign, but I don't want to be a jerk by showing up with way too powerful villains.
So... any tips?
You need to provide at least some info on your guys to receive any sort of help here. APL? Classes?
You need to provide at least some info on your guys to receive any sort of help here. APL? Classes?
There's eight characters (only six of them are played at once, though)
All characters are 8th level, and the party consists of:
Elf Wizard
Dwarf Monk
Elf or Half-Elf Magus
Human Sorcerer
Kobold Alchemist
Halfling Bard
Human Fighter
Dwarf Fighter
Magic items are very varied. Some are over-equipped, others are under-equipped. I don't have their character sheets here at the moment.
I'm only a player in a Kingmaker campaign, so I can't add much (and will probably not return to this thread, to avoid spoilers [*THPOILERTH!!*]). What I will say is, look for something natural that grows out of your PCs backgrounds, yo.
For instance, in our campaign, one of the PCs has a stronger background (mostly homebrew) with the swordlord who commissions the founding of the kingdom than was apparently intended for the campaign. Our GM created a rival sword school and built them up as offended noblemen, upset that it wasn't THEM who had the commission from Brevoy to found a kingdom. They eventually decided to try and take the kingdom from us, even assaulting our town with an army of 200 men (mostly on horseback). Our GM houseruled the mass combat rules from the later books for smaller unit fighting and we had a great (and long) night of slugging it out between our meager army and the polished, deadly invaders. We were only 5th level at the time.
It. Was. Great. My GM is le Awesome.
The lost wife can be a thrall to the Oracle, as Blade's mother was in one of the sequels. Beware, as some players get protective of their backstories. When I did this line, the player went all snarly. He only relented his attitude when another player pointed out that it was used in the movie and I was just imitating it. (Not true, I still have not seen the movie.)
"I don't want to be a jerk by showing up with way too powerful villains." Life happens and there are 20 results on the die. I had a -2CR encounter recently in which the enemy Wizard hit 3 players with a flesh to stone ray, and the two tuffies rolled a 2 and 3 on saves.