I want my PCs to meet and talk with my BBEG in our next session, but my PCs pretty much already want to kill him. I'd like him to survive a bit longer, and while numbers say that's likely (he's CR11, they're currently level 5), what's the best method of escape from such a situation?
The BBEG is a rogue, so no spell casting. The meeting will be pre-arranged, and he'll insist that they'll be disarmed. That's not really going to stop them though, they've already discussed multiple ways of concealing weapons and sneaking them in.
The best I can come up with is a potion of invisibility and/or a potion of gaseous form. Is there anything better that could help him secure his escape?
Rogues have UMD. Scrolls are your friend.
Scroll of Project image 6th level bard spell. Does not last too long unfortunately.
Have the meeting take place somewhere where the pc's can't physically attack him. Shadowy figure behind a thick glass in a dark room. His voice coming from an indefinite source. If the PC's attack him breaking the glass it is revealed there was only a mannquin and he was using scrolls of Ventriloquism. Have the mannequin be trapped with stinking cloud and have the BBEG laugh at them while they retch helplessly on the floor. Then send in the minions.
He can escape with Cape of the Mountebank or Dimension Door wand or scroll.
Escape in a burst of light with this stylish cape.
His stealth should be much higher than their perception. He could probably stealth away easily.
BBEGs are clever, have him use terrain. If it is outside of the city have them meet at a chasm or a river on different sides. A level 5 group will not be able to follow him quick enough and with every party member.
If it is in the City you can do just the same.
Or meat up in a crowded place and threaten them to involve civilians in the fight.
(credits to my GM who did exactly this. With a Wizard threatening the good party to use the meanest AOE-spells in the tavern)
Yours is not a wizard i understand, but have him set up some alchemical bombs first (bending the exact rules to fit your storytelling)
Or simply bring a pack of goons that he orders to kill the group. Nothing too bad, the BBEG has to know the group survives this, otherwise the meet-up wouldnt make any sense. Just enough hassle for him to escape.
WagnerSikas ideas are cool aswell.
You just have to know what kind of guys your guys is, and what he would do most likely.
Ah, the classic version: Bodyguards. Flank him with guys the party can't beat just yet.
I just ran a certain module were a certain traveling venue had a magical creature under their control.
It was actually their "Star Attraction"
They marketed it as "barely under the ring master's control!"
In actuality it was a bard using silent image along with ventriloquism. At all times the sphinx was behind a cage so the PC's couldn't interact with it.
The best way to pull this encounter off, I think is a cloak of elven kind, and then a scroll of Major Image.
Have the Rogue hidden away maybe in a rafter or something using his super high rogue stealth, while controling the figment.
Maybe add to the flavor
"I have come disarmed, and as such you should have as well. If you attack me, I can promise you I will be burning down the orphanage, so think wisely before you do anything foolish."
Then if they do hit the Major image, have the Major image taunt them like:
"You shouldn't have done that, you really shouldnt have done that, would you think I would be as dumb as to trust you fools not to bring weapons? I guess you really dont care about the orphans"
Mythic Contingency can solve most problems.
How many PCs? What classes?
Smoke sticks; tanglefoot bags; potions (Gaseous Form might be a good choice, depending on what the PCs are comprised of) - all are easy to obtain, legit means of self-protection/escape for a Rogue.
If he's arranging the meeting, and he's the BBEG, you're telling me he wouldn't arrange to have minions &/or traps in place for insurance? He wouldn't pick a location that favored him, and allowed him the best options for defense/escape?
How about a one off teleport or dimension door item? Doesn't require a UMD check or anything on his part.
Send in a Wax Golem. Those things are wonderful fake-outs, and can easily be fluffed to have the personality of the person they imitate. Then you don't even have to worry about escaping. Let the fools think that they've killed you.
Magic is never off the table. Between UMD and hiring spellcasters, the only limit is the depth of your pockets.
I always like to introduce some betrayal. Have either a party member or somebody the party trusts betray them to let the BBEG escape.
One of my favourites is to give the PCs something else to think about. Enter the minion holding a knife to the throat of a NPC the party likes - the bad guy escapes while they save the NPC or their friend gets scragged.
Or the rope with the candle burning through it which is suspending the innocents over the pit.
Or the alchemist's fire in the room full of alchemists fire barrels/gun powder/burning oil. Innocents tied up.
Are you detecting a theme here? Magic is handy but sometimes mundane means are even more satisfying.
Even the NPC having knowledge the PCs need can be enough. You'll find out where your wife/friend/child is once I am safely away.
I can't help thinking: if he's so badass, why does he have to "get away"? Proper buffs, traps, and bodyguards, and let him punish them if they try to backstab him. Just make it clear that he's badass before they go there, so they don't expect to just be able to gank him without consequence.
If you really want to be on the safe side, have him be one of the bodyguards, with the one speaking being a henchman. Ventroliquism can be used perhaps if he wants to speak with them directly, or otherwise he could just trust the henchman. Or be that obnoxious bodyguard type that tells his "boss" what to do.
While I can understand wanting to protect a villain for later re-use, it doesn't feel remotely as necessary to make him into a coward if he's much stronger than the PCs.
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Thanks for the suggestions, everyone, they're all great!
He has indeed engineered the situation in his favour: the meeting is in his mansion (which he's about to abandon anyway), which he has rigged with traps and filled with guards/monsters. And yeah, he already has one of the PCs' friends hostage, so will be using that. And the plan is to place him on an upper balcony in the ballroom, talking down to the players on the main floor, so they can't reach him.
Really I was just trying to figure out what kind of backup plan he should have in case the PCs don't play ball.
For whoever asked, my party is 6 characters: fighter, paladin, gunslinger, alchemist, inquisitor and ranger, all level 5, although I think the inquisitor and ranger will be absent for this session. So they actually won't have many resources anyway (Alchemist is the only "caster") if they give up their weapons before the meeting.
I'm probably just worrying too much. I just don't want him to be killed off or captured yet, and want to avoid GM nonsense physics to help him get away.
Haste + Grace/Burst of Speed works. :P
I think there was a spell to send an avatar of yourself, as like a plant in the shape of you, in your place. I forget how it was done by my GM did that with us once.
Skin Send
You cause your own skin to peel off your body and animate as a magical creature you control. You may project your consciousness to your animated skin or return it to your actual body as a standard action.
It's a level 2 spell, so fairly cheap, if grotesque and painful. - If your BBEG has trusted advisors (or is willing to lock himself in a vault that only he can open from the inside), he can let himself get into whatever horrible situation the PC's want to put him in, die easily, and completely screw with them when they realize the lengths he will go simply to screw with them...
Add an Aegis of recovery for extra safety, in case there's say an earthquake that causes some damage to your helpless body before you can get your skin back to you. (Basicaly I'd consider this spell knowing I'm probably not going to get my skin back, but also knowing it would completely mindscrew the PC's to deal with defeating (deflating?) nothing more than an empty bag of skin.)
(EDIT) I've played my share of rather psychotic evil characters, and could easily see doing this to a group of adventuring heroes to mess with them.
Inviting the PC's to a dinner party is another good one, as was previously mentioned. My take on this, below, excerpted from an earlier post of mine.
That evening, the party receives an embossed, formal, invitation from the lord of the keep (wizard) to a formal dinner/masquerade party.
Unknown to the party, the wizard already had enough time to question the locals about (generally) what the party had to offer, and took steps.
While the party was sitting down to the meal, and the lady-vampire (disguised, of course) was using a wand of wall of force blocking the party from pushing out their chairs too far, in the guise of directing servants from cane-point. ( No one saw through the sleight of hand check to conceal the use of the wand.)
The lord had a spell prepared that made shrapnel out of any convenient objects, and would reflect off of walls, and also had both the metamagic feat that allowed spells to do push-back effects and the feat that allowed a spell to be shaped. -
It basically turned all of the cutlery and silverware into a giant meat-grinder of death, all for the application of a 1st level spell made a 4th level spell from two metamagic feats, and six uses of wall of force.
This creative application of two basic spells freed up the majority of the wizard's repertoire to target specific PC's with specific kinds of spells. He even had a scroll of harm with which to save his lady-love in case she got too close to becoming a vapor.
If you wanted to adapt this, it wouldn't be hard to replicate this with a wand of "wall of force" and good slight of hand for your rogue, using it as a stick to direct servants and a good scroll of telekinesis or maybe animate objects. Turn all the cutlery into animated missiles that the PC's can't escape because the walls of force have them hemmed in.
You'd keep them from pulling out their chairs to fight you, before they even start to think about fighting you.
(EDIT) Heck, combine both ideas and /really/ mess the PC's minds. Your BBEG wouldn't have to be a very high level to pull it off, and you could allow your BBEG's skin to be shredded by his own attack, allowing him to work in the shadows until the PC's discover that he is actually still alive. - Just make sure to use smaller walls, or make sure the servers know in advance which side to approach from to avoid having the PC's discover the walls too early into the meal.
Second the decoy, hat of disguise on a minion, give the BBEG a ring of invis and have him cast message to use his proxy like a telephone.
Against level 5 pcs a complicated trapdoor that leads to a fast moving means of escape for 1 should probably be enough. I'd say have him design a trap to drop a large stone block just on his heels as he enters into the secret tunnel behind the meeting place, where he has a fast horse/racing broom/wizard friend with teleport ready to make sure his escape. Go with the minimum level of speed necessary to beat your pcs if he gets a round or two head start.
The downside of meeting the villain is that sendings solely for the purpose of trash-talk officially are a go.
Actually cast Dimension Door would blindside them
Don't leave it too long though. I think villains escaping can be a very frustrating experience, although in this case it's more like you want to set the villain up so you can make the later fight more climatic. That's fine. I just had a skull and shackles character escape on a ship combat but the PCs will see her again and probably defeat her in the next session. That satisfaction of resolution needs to be there. I think three confrontational encounters is the absolute maximum otherwise players can lose interest, and see defeating the PC as a white unicorn.
The best way of preventing the players attacking your NPC is to give them a reason not to. They need something from him.
On an aside, I really hate it when PCs cut off the roleplay to try and get a combat advantage. You can help prevent this by always starting combat with initiative - I.e. You can't get surprise just by declaring you are acting first. One assumes that everyone is prepared and it is the fastest that goes first not the first to start to draw his weapon.
Also players who interrupted roleplay in this way because they were bored of what other PCs/NPCs were saying bring down the wrath of the gods and get a disproportionate number of attacks directed at them for the combat. They soon learn.
OK, session just ended, and as usual, it did not go at all as planned!
The PCs got their "invite" to Kreed's mansion. Rather than all go, they decided that 4 of the 5 of them would go along, and the gunslinger, armed with Invisibility and Spider Climb infusions from the alchemist, would sneak his way into the mansion armed. While most of the party surrendered their weapons and waited for Kreed to attend them, the gunslinger climbed (invisibly) through an upstairs window, and the first door he opened was into Kreed's bedroom, where Kreed was preparing to go meet the PCs. In preparation for the party, Kreed had already set traps throughout the mansion, including on the door that the gunslinger opened... Immediately it turned into a fight: Kreed fled to the room containing the hostages and ordered his henchman to execute them. The gunslinger fired a shot at the henchman, ending his invisibility and starting a huge battle.
So Kreed never got to make his speech, I need to find another way of delivering a whole bunch of exposition (or not, they don't need to know what's going on) and the whole session was one long running battle as the party aggro'd every encounter in the manor simultaneously, whilst the alchemist gleefully set fire to every room he entered... It was amazing.
Fortunately, Kreed managed to slip into a side room, drink a Potion of Invisibility and get away in the chaos, donning his Hat of Disguise as he left the building and became visible again, to blend in with the panicking guards.
We ended the session with half of his manor in flames, many dead guards, and one of the other primary campaign villains dead (Kabran Bloodeye, for those who know the Falcon's Hollow adventures), so at least they got some satisfaction.
And no, it won't be too long before the final showdown with Kreed. He's now en route to the ruins of Northsap, where his plans to gain control of northern Andoran will come into effect...
Ahh, you mean you haven't taught the party not to split up yet? I would have had the gunslinger trigger an alarm, and a trap on the door dousing him with flour before being set upon by kneed and six thugs who grapple, pin and tie him up. Then the party had another reason not to kill Kreed! Lol.
That sounds like the party still had fun and you handled it well. You must have been tearing your hair out though! Ha ha.
There is still an opportunity for the exposition. Maybe by letter this time hey?
OK, session just ended, and as usual, it did not go at all as planned!
So Kreed never got to make his speech, I need to find another way of delivering a whole bunch of exposition
And no, it won't be too long before the final showdown with Kreed. He's now en route to the ruins of Northsap, where his plans to gain control of northern Andoran will come into effect...
You could set up another meetup. Except this time it is on supposedly neutral territory. Except it is not neutral at all and has been preset with traps and trap monsters before the invite went out.
The BBEG is expecting the party to pull another betrayal but [for whatever reason] wnats to explain the plot to the PCs. The trap has actually got multiple layers.
Layer One is the dummy venue. The aim here is to try and knock out and trap at least one party member - locking pits and poison gas might be useful. The BBEG is expecting the PCs to scope out the place ahead of the meeting and the traps are designed to capture the PCs and alert a recovery team. Remember the BBEG has already seen the PCs in action so knows their capabilities. The main thing is that it should take a couple of hours to release a PC, allowing layer two to take effect before the PCs escape.
Layer Two is the recovery team. The party members who escape the trap may well be waiting to ambush the BBEG's minions. The BBEG is expecting this and has his recovery team flanked by a pair of strike teams to ambush the ambushing PCs.
Layer Three is the real venue. The place is setup to maximise the BBEGs group's capabilities and be disadvantageous to the PCs. E.g. Bead curtains to counter invisibility and nothing flammable to counter the Alchemist's bombs. If any of the PCs have escaped then they should find the real venue to be a challenge.
Some more excellent advice, thanks everyone!
I think I'm just going to roll with it. There's bound to be some evidence amongst the ashes of Kreed Manor that hint at what's going on. And I'm pretty sure there's a zombie invasion just around the corner to keep them occupied anyway. (Hungry are the Dead) Maybe Drazmorg will get to be Basil Exposition... but I won't hold my breath. :P