Creating an Engagement for Level 4s

[BiosTheo]

So I am need of some advice on how to go about creating an engagement (my own term for a series of encounters leading to a BBEG).

If you are in my campaign, and I know only one of you actually peruse these forums, stop now!

Basically the party has decided to hunt a ganglord down from a bounty board. Through a series of events, involving one of the party almost dying in a pit fight to gain information, they gain an ally (a Level 8 Paladin with a grudge against BBEG) and information on where hes staying. The Paladin proposes a raid in three days time. The building is in the Warehouse district.

So, basically I was thinking some kind of engagement outside (where the party can sneak in, talk their way in, or just kill their way in), then on into the interior for one or two encounters (maximum of two because the last will be the BBEG).

I wanted something more from the vanilla: Oh look BBEG kick his ***. Basically, I already set up the Paladin to fight the BBEG (they're both level 8), and for the party to deal with the flunkies (of which their will be many). But I wanted an interesting way to go about this.

Multi-leveled area for archers raining death from above? Traps? Ideas?

Also, build advice on BBEG would be appreciated.

[Taku Ooka Nin]

Copy and pasted from a previous post:

I tend to use this for building encounters these days. The players never run into an encounter with a single monster in it unless it is a boss monster, and even then I have found throwing a single CR+3 monster at a party of 4 people is easier than 4 CR (APL-1) monsters. These are set for each individual player, so things are just additive per player. You can also mix and match the below so long as it is within the same parameter (If there are 4 players you can have 1 (APL-1), 2 (APL-3), 3 (APL-4), and 4 (APL-5) monsters to form one encounter, but NOTE: the lower the CR of the monster the more it needs to focus on using its CMB for everything, so pick monsters with high CMBs [The undead Owl-bears, CR2, have around +12 to grapple] or monsters who focus on using magic for everything so long as it is effective [Magic Missle always hits unless the target has the Shield Spell, CL 1 Magic Missle averages 3.5 due to the +1, in multiplicity this becomes 4[14], 8[28], 12[42], and 16[56] average damage in 1 round, so never underestimate the power of 16 level 1 wizards/sorcs. It doesn't matter if they die in 1 hit, NPCs should be damage focused not suitability focused anyway.

The real power of the 4x[(APL-8) to (APL-5)] elements are when they are used as traps--possibly compound traps that activate EVERYTHING. Pit traps that are set to not fall for the first 3 on the way down a dungeon and then all of them activate when the last trap activates tends to hit the entire party if they are in line formation. Anyone who fell in is now stuck fighting up against the enemies who were watching the party and now are attacking them from outside the pit.

Be aware that you should always mix things up, send neither continual commando squads 4x(APL-1), nor hordes 16x(APL-8), nor mix and matches, but mix it up by using all of them so the party cannot adapt to just that one thing. Also, do use compound traps such as rope bridges that dump the party into bear traps, rooms that have one or two pillars of 1,000 arrows, but are also filled with hidden beartraps that are pinned to the ground.

4 monsters per player (4 players = 16 monsters)
CR (APL-8), CR (APL-7), CR (APL-6), or CR (APL-5) monsters (Standard), (Difficult), (Hard), (Epic)

3 monsters per player (4 players = 12 monsters)
CR (APL-7), CR (APL-6), CR (APL-5), or CR (APL-4) monsters (Standard), (Difficult), (Hard), (Epic)

2 monsters per player (4 players = 8 monsters)
CR (APL-6), CR (APL-5), CR (APL-4), or CR (APL-3) monsters (Standard), (Difficult), (Hard), (Epic)

1 monster per player (4 players = 4 monsters)
CR (APL-4), CR (APL-3), CR (APL-2), or CR (APL-1) monsters (Standard), (Difficult), (Hard), (Epic)

So for your encounter do this:
Your BBEG is the same level as your party, great, make sure he is using NPC gold, and NPC attributes. This makes his CR (APL-1) or CR 7.
this means you can have how man other players there are groups of enemies in this final encounter.

Last encounter should consist of the # of PCs groups:
So Big Bad (Epic)
and however many players aside from the Paladin (Epic) encounters.

Example:
4 Players.
BBEG (Epic), 4 CR3 monsters (epic), 3 CR4 monsters (Epic), and 2 CR5 monsters (Epic).

As always, the lower the CR of the monster the more grapple focused they should be. The Undead Owlbears CR2 have a +12 grapple check, with CR3s you should be able to do better or just give the undead owlbears the advanced template.

[BiosTheo]

Thank you very much I will have to look through some things but this helps a great deal.