So I would like to concept a BBEG that has few or no spells, is an epic battle, and still gives the group a run for its money.
I want it to be powerful, but not one shot players (except maybe on a good crit)
i want it to have good defenses but not be nearly impossible to hit or cast against.
I want it to require more than spell dump/full attack to kill it.
lets balance this for a group of level... say 10. so they have access to some hefty spells like hate, chanells and buffs.
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Off the top of my head I am looking at something with multiple attacks like a modified dragon or simply a Bad Bobby with an adamantine great axe he can swing 5 times...
I feel fine giving him some basic AOE like a breath weapon because I expect the AOE to be generally a less effective attack than the melee only used for its area effectiveness.
AC would be high but not too high... i want the heavy melee classes to hit with about 1/4 to 1/3 of their primary attacks. remember with haste around that usually means 2 or 3 full attack bonus attacks per turn.
SPells, I dont want him to have too many spells. maybe some defensive things like mirror image or blur. or maybe some utility spells like true sight, but nothing spectacular, this is a melee brawl.
this monsters claim to fame will be survivability. I want it to survive at least 10 rounds of combat getting hit hard by fighters, paladins and flanking rogues, not to mention a spell caster doing his best to get thorugh his spell defenses.
I want everyone to be usefull so no anti-magic or too many immunities fields but a high SR and Saves is nice.... also a dynamic and interesting spell defense that a caster has to figure out may be interesting.
also a great durability... I find DR, hardness and fast heal to be rather limited... unless they are closer to 25 than 10 so I think a simple enormous hitpoint pool will suffice. like 500 or so. or a combination (300 Hitpoins hardness 10 + fast heal 20 with the intelligence to avoid damage and heal when possible.)
any geneal ideas that may point me in the right direction?
Without spells you will need SLA or SU's that will mimic spells. No pure martial creation is lasting 10 rounds vs a 10th level party, unless you make it into what I call a puzzle monster.
These monsters have some strange weakness such as the hydra that can regrows its head unless the head is sundered.
Also as for what can last 10 round will depend on the group..You are better off giving it minions to divert some of the attacks, otherwise the group is going to focus fire.
Yeah, I just can't reconcile that hit point total with a CR 10, or even against a party of 6 or 7 level 10 PCs.
My thought is that what you need is some kind of giant with class levels. But you aren't going to get that hit point total no matter what. You might instead think of placing the encounter some place that is advantageous to the creature. Perhaps some effect in place in its lair is regenerating it?
If it were me, I would not expect to have this thing survive a single stand-up fight intact, but might provide some kind of contingency, so that once felled, it comes back. If you want your caster "figuring out" what is going one, it's probably better to make the puzzle environmental, than inherent to the creature. That way, a PC will have a possibility of getting-to the item or area causing the effect, and neutralizing it, rather than having to continue targeting a moving, fighting, threatening opponent.
If going solo, give it a way to break the action economy. I don't mean making it go twice. I mean giving it abilities that will affect the players even when it's not the BBEG's turn. For example, a stench aura that the players have to deal with, or Combat Reflexes, or any other way to disable or limit players. Also look at making the environment favor it and not the PCs. Difficult terrain to prevent charging, heavy winds or something to make casting and ranged attacks difficult. And it needs to have good defenses. DR, incorporeality, regeneration, SR. These are all good things to add. Of course, it'll need a weakness. One the player can figure out with Knowledge rolls, but at the same time more tricky to pull off. Look at advancing a shadow demon. It has DR and SR and incorporeality, although no fast healing. It's DR is also someone tricky to bypass.
true...
I have to work it out. i want the battle to be entertaining, and a bit terrifying... but I have players (rogue, paladin, fighter, magus) that can easily enough do 30 to 70 damage each per hit... I dont want to just raise the CR because then the monster hits ALL the time and deals 50+ damage per hit and crits pretty much guarantee a kill.
but i would like something where the CAN hit, CAN deal damage, but the battle still takes enough time to feel EPIC and not a race to clean up the trash mobs then kill the boss in 2 rounds of focus fire.
Here's an idea I've used. I had a golem that had special crystala that essentially made him invulnerable to any damage. However, breaking the crystals would lower his immunity to DR and do feedback damage to the golem. Once they got all the crystals shatter, they could finally fell the construct. Was a very cool, epic fight.
Also, you can have the creature constantly spawning little guys that still retain some danger. Spawning swarms would be hella mean!
I would use something like that but they alerady faced a caster with something similar.
but i may still try to figure out a puzzle to defeat the enemy...
I am trying a battle today where rather than buffing up the enemy I have exhausted the players getting to the enemy.
at this point they are in a situation where MOST of their spells and abilities are used up for the day... the pally has 2 lay on hands left (that he can smite with) the magus has just enough arcane pool to pull up a spell or two. the cleric is down to 1 or 2 channels and a level 1 or 2 spells the fighter and rogue are not so limited but will have to look out for the dangers of not having buffs or major support.
my only fear is that this battle will become boring rather than grueling.
hope it works...
number of round does not equal epic..
I would just try to set up something challenging, and not try to force it.
Multiclass Anti-Paladin 2/Invulnerable Rager Barbarian 8 could be freaking scary (especially if he has some powerful template, such as half-fiend).
Although I'd wait the PCs get a few more levels so I could make the BBEG Anti-Paladin 4/Barbarian 10... Just so he's really freaking dangerous! lol...
I know Anti-Paladins have spells, but they really don't need them to be dangerous. And they only get them at 4th levle, so before that, he is a pure martial class.
