I like to optimize them for a thing that's cool, but not optimize them for taking on the party. You could build an autocrit magus to kill one PC per day and escape, or a treesinger druid that's immune to most of the party, but it's not fun for anyone. The goal in building an NPC from class levels is usually to make them distinct, not more powerful. You can just crank CR for that.
If your players are getting lax in strategy, designing something that gives them some tips on how to deal with certain challenge types could be useful though. Introducing challenges that are ideal targets for one of your players and awful for another can also be useful.
Ultimately, what's the difference between an optimised 7th level cleric and an averagely built 8th level cleric? Not so much. About the only final difference is that the 8th level guy is worth more XP, if you're doing that. So you can get the same ultimate effect by running with the Slow XP Track instead of the Medium one.
Just optimise them enough to provide a fun and varied challenge.
Compare to the Monster Creation guidelines and you have roughly an answer. Ideally as a DM, you're tweaking encounters to your party's general level of skill. Our goal as DMs are to present challenges but not so ludicrous that the players can't win. I guess a thing to remember is that the players are supposed to win. Or rather, the players should generally be favored to win. Circumstances might change that a bit, maybe bad decisions might put them in a disadvantageous position and bring that favor more closely to the 50/50. A truly disastrous string of actions may favor their own doom.
The simple answer as to why you don't do this is...The DM will always win any kind of possible arms race. No ifs ands or buts. The party dies? The game is probably over. Very very few campaigns can simply pick back up with a new party. A dead party jars players from actually being immersed in what's going on if they need to roll up new characters every book.
Just my 2 cp.
It's often "better" (more humbling and has more of an effect on the players actions/attitudes), especially if the players are getting sloppy, to optimize a group of minions (or team of NPCs a level or two below the average party level) for tactics/teamwork (instead of straight numbers) than it is to optimize a single big bad; use terrain and battlefield control, counterspell PC casters (spell warrior skald can be fairly effective, in addition to the enhance weapons weapon song being a great buff), have an enemy caster follow an enemy tripper by using animate rope or web on the prone PC, etc. This also is less likely to result in a TPK.
You can also have the minions/NPC team violate the Evil Overlord Handbook by not finishing off the PCs if they win. Have the minions/NPCs gloat over the disabled/entangled/etc. PCs (and maybe steal an item or two) and leave laughing. Note: This can upset some players even more than character death, so it may not be appropriate for all groups.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Compare to the Monster Creation guidelines and you have roughly an answer. Ideally as a DM, you're tweaking encounters to your party's general level of skill. Our goal as DMs are to present challenges but not so ludicrous that the players can't win. I guess a thing to remember is that the players are supposed to win. Or rather, the players should generally be favored to win. Circumstances might change that a bit, maybe bad decisions might put them in a disadvantageous position and bring that favor more closely to the 50/50. A truly disastrous string of actions may favor their own doom.
The simple answer as to why you don't do this is...The DM will always win any kind of possible arms race. No ifs ands or buts. The party dies? The game is probably over. Very very few campaigns can simply pick back up with a new party. A dead party jars players from actually being immersed in what's going on if they need to roll up new characters every book.
Just my 2 cp.
I'd also add to this (and in response to Mark Hoover's post directly above), while there is certainly an artistry to optimization and build creation, these aren't steps you're required to go through as a GM nor is there any particular benefit to doing so. You are already choosing the level and available resources of the opponents in question. You are choosing their special abilities and templates. You don't need to have created a hyper-optimized character if you want an entity to deal damage in a certain range -- you could simply put something there that does that damage with a low-optimization setup that requires significantly less work, if that's how strong the opponent is supposed to be.
My own mentality with the design of NPCs is always driven by simulationism. Even if I think it's likely that a particular character will become an opponent of the party, I don't design them as a "villain" in the first place, but rather give them the abilities appropriate to them for who they are in the world and setting. I love the granularity Pathfinder provides for fleshing out characters and adding small elements of depth, and make extensive use of them when creating elements of the world...but not for the sake of optimization.
Spending extensive effort to create an elaborate build for maximum potential at a specific level is a great deal more work when you could have simply changed some ability scores around and put in something 3 levels higher. You are already choosing what level best approximates the strength of opponent the party is fighting. I feel like there is a mentality that if it's possible to create a build that does X, Y, or Z at a particular level, that makes it "fair" for that level. An exercise in justifying the challenges they present. But it's well-established that CR is an extremely flawed system in the best of cases, and outright nonsense at worst. From the players' side of the table in the midst of combat, the difficulty that went into creating the build of their opponents means nothing -- only the challenges they present, regardless of whether they're reasonable or unreasonable.
Since the capabilities of a party at any given level will vary greatly (as has been demonstrated by showing contrasting builds at specific levels in this topic already), how dangerous a certain encounter is will always be relative to the party facing them. This is one of those areas where you simply need to learn the thresholds and strengths of the party in question, ideally erring on the conservative side for the reasons Scavion mentioned before you get a really good grasp on them. Experience helps, but even that can still be imperfect since player tactics and expertise can still mean more than how good their build is.
Edit: Also something I see rarely mentioned, though encounter more often at the table, is the concept of enemies with poor tactics. These could be a result of personal philosophies, grudges, or biases, but the point being that an enemy that should be far too powerful may be prone to making poor decisions -- not in a misguided effort to "go easy" on the PCs, but in the interests of being true to their character. This can be a tricky thing to present, but it again shows that difficulty is an intricate spectrum, since an opponent may not always bring the full destructive potential they have to bear. Just another thing muddying the waters of what kind of "challenge" is appropriate to a given party.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I love to theory-craft, so I quite enjoy "optimizing" villains.
Very seldomly are they ever optimized for damage, but they are almost always optimized to provide a memorable encounter. I build them to be fun for me to run against the party. I design them to have something fun or silly or neat or memorable to do to/against the party.
I would rather impose silly conditions upon the party... even if its not setting anything else up. Lol. Just shut down their nova-specialist for an entire encounter by blinding them with Dirty Tricks/Debilitating Injury. Teamwork will inevitably kill the clown doing the Dirty Tricks... but they will at least remember the encounter, joke about it later... maybe even learn something, possibly be more prepared against such tactics in the future.
In Kingmaker, for example, they ask for a 14th level vanilla Cleric Hag... I made her my "quintessential Cleric"... Divine Paragon 5/Evangelist 10. Ultimately, it was only adding 1HD, and the way Evangelist works, she was still only a 14th level Cleric. Lol. Did it help? No. Not really. Hard to tell that late in the game.
I do try make named NPC enemies memorable. I will optimize them extensively in that regard.
*Asks about optimizing villains*
Second sentence appears to have a Black Dragon on the ground to be charged by a rogue.
So...I think Better Tactics might present a better challenge than optimizing the stats.
It's fair to optimize, but unless you find it fun it's more trouble than it's worth. If you want to give your bad guy six tripping attacks per round and 15 foot reach and an aura of grease, just do it. You don't need to look for feats that make it legal. You can say he's possessed by a demon or whatever.
Sometimes... I make a whoopsie, though.
I have a plethora of builds in various stages of completion... over 200... some are complete 1-20, base stats and gear established, just waiting for a race and name. Others are still needing to be finished. Some need completely redone because I know more now than I knew when I made that particular character.
And so when an AP calls for something that I have in my notes, I will just slap the AP's profile on my build and send it. This has gotten me into "trouble", because even characters that I never optimized for damage are MASSIVELY more capable than literally everything in a printed AP [that I have encountered thusfar in my very limited experience]. I don't consider myself an especially deadly character crafter, either.
In my Kingmaker campaign, I wanted to add something to repeatedly harass the party. Simple enough, right? I started with a Bogeyman, added the Nightmare template. He made an appearance, not much of a fight [involving the Bogeyman, itself]. A good few levels later, I added the Implacable Stalker template on top, and reintroduced him. And... oops.
Stacking templates can have unexpected results. Like the death of a PC, and literally no chance any of the other party were going to make their saves against any of his fear crap after they all failed their first attempts... it wasn't going to get any easier for any of them. Could have been a literally unstoppable TPK if I had played him with intent. Instead, I had him bounce out... spooky hit'n'run $#!+...
Since then, he has been bumped up to 25HD, and is relatively capable as an endgame villain. I think I have him pretty comparable to CR23 critters, or that's where he landed on the tables(?), it's been a while.
So, I can say that optimized villains may not belong mixed into printed AP's. Lol. Be careful.
I only run homebrew games and I tend to run them
By chapters with each chapter having a big bad. I tend to way optimize the big bad of a chapter but other villains could go either way.
Like for my next session I made a monster that will either tpk the party or die in 1-2 rounds. I made a monster that can only be hurt by positive energy (Holy and a Paladin smite work as well ad good aligned weapons) everything else it brushes. I also gave it the energy drain special ability with touch attacks. 8 player party with 3 people able to do positive but its a construct so I know that won’t be the first thing to come to their mind with a knowledge check. That isn’t even an optimized fight but more of a make them think mechanic fight.
Sometimes... I make a whoopsie, though.
I have a plethora of builds in various stages of completion... over 200... some are complete 1-20, base stats and gear established, just waiting for a race and name. Others are still needing to be finished. Some need completely redone because I know more now than I knew when I made that particular character.
And so when an AP calls for something that I have in my notes, I will just slap the AP's profile on my build and send it. This has gotten me into "trouble", because even characters that I never optimized for damage are MASSIVELY more capable than literally everything in a printed AP [that I have encountered thusfar in my very limited experience]. I don't consider myself an especially deadly character crafter, either.
In my Kingmaker campaign, I wanted to add something to repeatedly harass the party. Simple enough, right? I started with a Bogeyman, added the Nightmare template. He made an appearance, not much of a fight [involving the Bogeyman, itself]. A good few levels later, I added the Implacable Stalker template on top, and reintroduced him. And... oops.
Stacking templates can have unexpected results. Like the death of a PC, and literally no chance any of the other party were going to make their saves against any of his fear crap after they all failed their first attempts... it wasn't going to get any easier for any of them. Could have been a literally unstoppable TPK if I had played him with intent. Instead, I had him bounce out... spooky hit'n'run $#!+...
Since then, he has been bumped up to 25HD, and is relatively capable as an endgame villain. I think I have him pretty comparable to CR23 critters, or that's where he landed on the tables(?), it's been a while.
So, I can say that optimized villains may not belong mixed into printed AP's. Lol. Be careful.
Fear lol . I made the mistake of an intimidation build (all 4 damnation feats and level 7 I believe) was able to intimidate as a swift action and stronger then shaken conditions. I think I had a +20 to intimidate too (I gained the nightmare creature template vs. a level (we worked it as part of the story of damnation) with every fight being a chase cause they were running away it got boring super fast as a player with them
Scared of me.Never thought of doing it as a NPC
A few years back, I had a couple of lvl 12 slayers pre-made for a short 6 sesh campaign that I was going to be a PC in, but I couldn't decide which character I wanted to play so I made two so that I could decide later; one was a TWF Dirty Tricks Slayer and the other was a Dex 2-hand Reach Cleave Slayer with a spring-loaded custom weapon. I decided to play the 2h Dex Cleave Slayer, but I kept both the character sheets anyway. Anywho, about 4 campaigns ago, the PC's led a direct attack against the final BBEG of a campaign, who was a shapechanged black dragon, and they obliterated his entire operation by like 50-60% in a single day (even rescuing the King's kidnapped son that the BBEG was using as leverage against the King), and the PC's decided to party that night, and they even slept in separate areas. So I threw both of these Slayers at the split-up party that night as the BBEG's assassins and killed two of the five PC's.
I didn't really feel sorry for them tbh. They went full offense at a BBEG and didn't even think about nor prepare for the repercussions of their actions. They were level 12 and had access to resurrection spells, so it wasn't anything they couldn't fix. I think there's a time and a place for throwing optimized NPC's at a party, and this would be one of them.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Mark Hoover... I get that.
It all starts with a little bit of this, sprinkled on a few of those.
Then, you have an entire ecosystem, economy, and history behind something the party doesn't ask a single question about and kills in three rounds flat. Lol.
It's still worth it to me, if for nothing more than mental masterbation. That process of fitting different pieces together in different ways is my "happy place". I used to pick up the free cars for sale catalogs as a kid and just flip through them, mentally "building" random cars with my limited knowledge of the automotive aftermarket. You should see my mad scientist paintball marker collection, where I literally tinker with fitting different pieces on different things in different ways. If I had money, I would customize my real steel in a similar fashion, but I don't have the b@lls to modify real guns myself with a hacksaw/dremel like I will my paintball markers.
Point is, no matter what, my mind is probably going to be breaking SOMETHING down... examining its various parts, and trying to reassemble it in an improved manner regardless, so I might as well build Pathfinder characters...
|
Lately I've been creating several different npc's for my home-campaigns. One campaign is a low-wealth campaign, which requires some adjustments to my enemies damage output and to prevent lots of sudden wealth. The other was a dungeoncrawl with humanoids inside as well that went up to and played at lvl 20 (fun, but balance goes out the window...)
Both homegames learned me that encounters that rely on big numbers grow boring fast, and that enemies who use unorthodox tactics can really liven things up. The low-wealth campaign has had a bunch of[ Hobkin Rogues on top of some 20ft stones harass some captives. The initial rain of returned ranged attacks was devastating on the party, who then needed to reassess their tactics.
The high-level campaign has had a moment of terror versus two Jungle Drakes in dense foliage. My party of 5 level 10 characters had their Wizard Gnome and Human Inquisitor abducted into the tall grass, and the rest of the party couldn't keep up with them. The Wizard almost died.
And an area where they could choose to wade through, but it was infested with Chickcharneys. Yes, a fireball could explode most of them, but they chose to walk around that area with a wide berth.
But even though those are memorable encounters, the players do need to be challenged on a numbers level every once in a while (you have DPR cannons for a reason). For my high tier campaign I had created a Cockatrice Monk, a Changeling Coven (that nearly wiped my party), a Protean Psychic as campaign endboss, and several humanoid NPC's to help them all out (Muscle Summoner, Muscle Spiritualist, and a Swarm of Gnomes created by the Ankhou's Shadow Slayer). I should still have those builds written down somewhere.
I did find my low-wealth campaign's Awakened Wolf Druid. As the OP stated they sometimes scoured the forums for builds, I'll leave it here as well.
Sköll
Female Awakened Wolf Druid 9 (Wolf Shaman)
Large Magical Beast
Init +8; Senses darkvision 60ft, low-light vision, scent; Perception +20
Defense
AC 23, touch 13, flat-footed 16 (armor +4, Dex +4, natural +6, size -1)
hp 126 (4d8+9d8+75)
Fort +13, Ref +8, Will +10 (+4 vs fey and plants)
Offense
Spd 70 ft.
Melee Bite +12 (1d8+4+trip)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Spells Prepared (CL 7th, concentration +11)
5th – Teleport, Wall of Thorns x2
4th – Ball Lighting x2 (DC 18), Dimension Door, Echolocation
3rd – Air Geyser x2 (DC 17), Fly, Greater Magic Fang, Nauseating Trail (DC 18)
2nd – Alpha Instinct, Barkskin, Cure Moderate Wounds x3, Locate Object
1st—Burning Disarm (DC 15), Cure Light Wounds x2, Faerie Fire x2, Longstrider
0—Create Water, Detect Magic, Detect Poison, Purify Food and Drink
Domain: Travel
Tactics
Before Combat She casts Alpha Instinct and Greater Magic Fang every morning, and refreshes her Wild Shape to take the shape of a Dire Wolf. If it is known that people will come, she will cast Barkskin, Echolocation and Longstrider (already in stats)
During Combat Sköll will stay at her higher position and cast Summon Nature’s Ally 5 as a standard to summon 1d3 Aerial Dire Wolves. She will continue to use summoning spells as long as there are less than 2 wolves, otherwise she will use Ball Lightning, Burning Disarm, and Air Geyser
Morale If Sköll ever gets below 30hp, she will use Dimension Door or Teleport to escape.
Statistics
Str 16, Dex 18, Con 20, Int 14, Wis 18, Cha 9
Base Atk +10; CMB +11 ; CMD 28 (32 vs trip)
Feats Augment Summoning, Natural Spell, Power Attack, Skill Focus Perception, Skill Focus Stealth, Spell Focus: conjuration, Superior Summoning, Versatile Summon Nature’s Ally
Skills Acrobatics +14, Climb +7, Handle Animal +9, Intimidate +12 (+4 if larger), Knowledge Geography/Nature/Planes +7, Perception +22, Sense Motive +17, Stealth +19, Survival +12 (+4 with scent), Swim +7
Languages Common, Aklo, Druidic, Sylvan, Speak with Wolves
SQ Agile Feet (9/d), Dimensional Hop (90ft.) Nature Sense, Totem Transformation (move ac-tion), Totemic Summons, Trackless Steps, Wild Empathy (+8, +12 vs canines and as full-round action), Woodland Stride
Gear Studded Leather Barding (large)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
for the last Pathfinder game we played, I made most of the NPCs for the GM, who is a big ole softy and we'd steamroll almost every encounter, just so I'd have some fun in the combats.
I would make whole groups around a theme and just hand them over and let the GM figure out how to use them.
For the last, we were pushing 17th and mythic so I came up with the Cult of Grendel, who I remade and was led by a mythic Night Hag named Mother Night, who would use the Nether Cauldron to sacrifice whole towns to summon Grendel for a giant orgy of killing and destruction. She rolled with an army of mounted Goblins, Orc beserkers and Ogre rangers and sorcerers and a few lesser hags and four or so named lieutenants and made for a rather epic number of encounters. All the "minions" were built around Innocent Blood and instilling fear on the soon-to-be-slaughtered and to eek out every last drop of effectiveness to allow the spells to land from the casters. Looking at that file, I made 14 pretty ridiculously overpowered custom NPCs or types for that group.
Fortunately? Mother Night never got to summon Grendel as we stopped her before she could complete the ritual, but she killed all but two of the party in doing so, raising most of them as undead during the fight to prevent resurrections and other shenanigans.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
for the last Pathfinder game we played, I made most of the NPCs for the GM, who is a big ole softy and we'd steamroll almost every encounter, just so I'd have some fun in the combats.
I would make whole groups around a theme and just hand them over and let the GM figure out how to use them.
For the last, we were pushing 17th and mythic so I came up with the Cult of Grendel, who I remade and was led by a mythic Night Hag named Mother Night, who would use the Nether Cauldron to sacrifice whole towns to summon Grendel for a giant orgy of killing and destruction. She rolled with an army of mounted Goblins, Orc beserkers and Ogre rangers and sorcerers and a few lesser hags and four or so named lieutenants and made for a rather epic number of encounters. All the "minions" were built around Innocent Blood and instilling fear on the soon-to-be-slaughtered and to eek out every last drop of effectiveness to allow the spells to land from the casters. Looking at that file, I made 14 pretty ridiculously overpowered custom NPCs or types for that group.
Fortunately? Mother Night never got to summon Grendel as we stopped her before she could complete the ritual, but she killed all but two of the party in doing so, raising most of them as undead during the fight to prevent resurrections and other shenanigans.
I like the cut of your cloth.
However, there is no such thing as overpowered in mythic... that's just the name of the game at that point. I don't mess with mythic, but I have been building a cult/Coven of Hags, and an army of Changelings, often using gestalt for both flavor and power.
It sounds like your Mother Night is quite comparable to my Dreamthief Hag Souldrinker... Melinoe, named after the goddess of nightmares. Ten levels of Crossblooded Sorcerer and all ten levels of Souldrinker makes her a formidable 33HD, although I didn't go out of my way to make her especially scary... might go back and change that... turn it up to 11. Lol.
Melinoe is not, however, my Coven's mother. She [Melinoe] has aspirations that span time and space, she cares not for the petty matters of mortals. Sentient mortals are simply a source of souls, the universe is her garden, and souls are her harvest. Melinoe sits the courts of the Horsemen, and is explicitly banned from entering Pharasma's Boneyard.
Melinoe used to wander the realm of shadows with Count Ranalc before he lost his mind. She is the patron that sent the Bogeyman to aid Nyrissa with her conquest of the River Kingdoms, although that ended in disaster [for Nyrissa]. Melinoe is the one who whispered to Gyronna's harold, the Knurly Hag, to send her Black Sisters into Heibarr.
Melinoe is a legacy NPC of mine that I try tie into pretty much everything. Lol.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
the animate dead (mythic to boot!) was during the climatic battle at the end of the campaign, so it wasn't all that bad. The GM even let them play the mythic skeleton champion version of their characters against the rest of us, so they didn't even have to sit on their thumbs!
@VM, Mother Night was a gestalted 16th level Witch (Gravewalker)/Dirge Bard, mythic tier 9 (in the world, there were no 10's for in-game reasons) and used Trailblazer rules, giving her 2228 hps (which only lasted her about 3 rounds after the beat-sticks got on her). She came with 4 mythic skeleton champion Grey Renders (which I said were previous bodies of Grendels summoned, since they kind of look the same) that gave her a bit of a meat wall to hide and cast behind.
Her big thing in the scenario was using mythic Modify Memory to erase all history of the Cult's presence from nearly every plane of existence, leading us on a pretty epic multi-dimensional quest to find out what exactly she was planing and how to stop it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
@VM, Mother Night was a gestalted 16th level Witch (Gravewalker)/Dirge Bard, mythic tier 9 (in the world, there were no 10's for in-game reasons) and used Trailblazer rules, giving her 2228 hps (which only lasted her about 3 rounds after the beat-sticks got on her). She came with 4 mythic skeleton champion Grey Renders (which I said were previous bodies of Grendels summoned, since they kind of look the same) that gave her a bit of a meat wall to hide and cast behind.Her big thing in the scenario was using mythic Modify Memory to erase all history of the Cult's presence from nearly every plane of existence, leading us on a pretty epic multi-dimensional quest to find out what exactly she was planing and how to stop it.
You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.
By the sounds of it, I really need to up my Hag game. My little Graeae Coven just doesn't measure up to Mother Night...
I personally optimise my villains very much, beyond what i already know, because i think it get tedious to do. I'd rather spend my time and energy on crafting an interesting adventure. Not that it's impossible to do both, but alas i don't have unlimited time to prepare each week sessions.
I will optimize their basic numbers if needs be, like grabbing power attack for an ennemy that needs to hit hard, or Spell Focus for casters if i need them to be a treat, but i won't look out for every possible combos i can make with various feats.
I will make my villain stronger by virtue of using effecient tactics or being well surrounded.