The BBEG of my campaign is an aboleth, trapped far underground slowly trying to influence the inhabitants of the mine it was found in and the nearby town.
Aiding it is a wizard. This wizard is in pursuit of of knowledge and was responsible for the freeing of the Aboleth from its prison in the mountain. The wizard itself is a willing participant in the aboleth plans, he protects himself from the Aboleth with a magic item that prevents him becoming enslaved and lives in the town.
Initially the wizard will be a close ally of the party, his whole aim is to discredit he council and get elected as town mayor allowing him the power to then help the aboleth enslave everyone. As such he is a spider creating trouble for the town from afar. The campaign is starting at level 1 I intend for the final battle with the Aboleth to take place at about level 6-7. However I am not sure how to pitch the wizard. I have read that applying CR to an NPC created with player rules doesn’t work due to the low hit points the NPC will have.
What is the best way of pitching this wizard so they are a fair challenge to the party by the time they get to level 6 (when I intend them to face off and fight the wizard)? I am thinking number of spells, spell slots and level in addition to hit points and AC. If the players discover the wizard earlier that is fine, they can either bide their time or retreat from the fight if they find he is too strong.
Well, for the final encounter with the wizard you are going to want some other NPCs/monsters around so that the party can't use ALL their actions against just the poor wizard.
You could search the monster database here on DDB for NPCs and find the ones which are based on wizards and find one around the CR 6-7 mark, as long as you have those extra allies around. (Set "Monster Tags" to NPC in the advanced search options.)
Sounds like an interesting villain! Great job on the concept.
Regarding the encounter, a wizard alone against a prepared and determined party, is going to go down extremely quickly - even if you beef him up with additional levels and the like. You've pitched him as an intelligent master manipulator, who would no doubt have a handful of minions that he's lured to his side. Some meaty bodyguards will help take some of the direct fire off the wizard.
Also - how is he protecting himself from the Aboleth's control? Perhaps he discovered a powerful artefact in that mine... Perhaps that artefact could provide some interesting effects during the battle, perhaps a similar to some of the Aboleth's charm abilities, to control the battlefield and foreshadow what they'll be up against later!
There's an archmage in the basic rules, CR 12. Of course, that's tougher than the aboleth you had planned, assuming you use the standard aboleth. You could start with that archmage, and tone it down a bit. Or decide the wizard was the real boss all along and was manipulating the aboleth.
The wizard escapes and becomes the recurring villain for the 7-10 campaign. Trust me. Do not waste a good bad guy, it is the easiest way to give your characters an 'in' to the next storyline.
Sounds like an interesting villain! Great job on the concept.
Regarding the encounter, a wizard alone against a prepared and determined party, is going to go down extremely quickly - even if you beef him up with additional levels and the like. You've pitched him as an intelligent master manipulator, who would no doubt have a handful of minions that he's lured to his side. Some meaty bodyguards will help take some of the direct fire off the wizard.
Also - how is he protecting himself from the Aboleth's control? Perhaps he discovered a powerful artefact in that mine... Perhaps that artefact could provide some interesting effects during the battle, perhaps a similar to some of the Aboleth's charm abilities, to control the battlefield and foreshadow what they'll be up against later!
There are 2 options, first is some form of the spell protection from evil and good, either he has the spell himself that gives him 10 min bursts of time with the aboleth for the initial conversations and then uses a longer range communication spell from there. Or a magic item such as a ring that has the protection from charm effect of the spell only from aberrations. He owns and runs a magic store so could have made it himself. Alternatively I may give him a magic item that allows him to cast the mind blank spell once every full moon, this combined with judicious use of the protect from evil and good spell will allow him, over time, to negotiate and deal with the Aboleth. I got the inspiration for that from posting a question on the roleplaying games stack exchange. The benifit of this is when they defeat him the players will have access to a tool that will help them defeat the Aboleth.
In terms of the encounter my games are fully open world and the players will be interacting with the wizard from level 1 in town so while I may be able to build protection into him I will be roleplaying him as a fairly helpless, inquisitive intelligent but absent minded shop collector and seller of magical items. He will give the players quests early on, help them as they fight the schemes he has put into motion, and generally be a mentor and guide to the magic users in the party. However I know players and I know at some point they may just find his secret in a way I can’t control. If all goes according to plan the adventure will play out a bit like invasion of the body snatchers with NPCs seeming to change personality and act out of character as time progresses. I am also anticipating the wizard may well escape giving me a future BBEG to develop. But I get the point it may be I have to rely on giving him spells to help him escape and evade combat situations rather then go toe to toe with the players, maybe I can have towns folk who are enslaved always just be around, browsing in the shop, delivering supplies. A perceptive player may spot something odd about the situation as it progresses and the wizard has his protection nearby.
Mage or Warlock of the Great Old One are both suitable options. Alternatively you can add some Wizard Spells onto a Kraken Priest. All of them are around 5/6 CR so you'd want to give them some minions to make them a decent challenge for your party. If you have Ghost's of Saltmarsh, Skum are Aboleth slaves/worshippers who have transformed into pale tentacley things.
There's an archmage in the basic rules, CR 12. Of course, that's tougher than the aboleth you had planned, assuming you use the standard aboleth. You could start with that archmage, and tone it down a bit. Or decide the wizard was the real boss all along and was manipulating the aboleth.
I am actually thinking a tougher NPC is probably ok, the party is actually 8-9 players strong so I can probably beef up the wizard, but have him hide his true power. I don't like the idea of him manipulating the aboleth, but there will be a bit of tension between them. The Aboleth will not like being in a position of weakness unable to enslave the wizard and just take what it wants. It is not liking having to trade off it's millenia of knowledge with a mere mortal 2 legged thing, but it has no real choice currently The wizard on the other hand has been studying all he can get his hands on about aboleths for years. The plan is eventually the players may well find his hidden workspace beneath his magic shop, his prize possession a tomb made up of pages stolen, ripped or copied from books across the planes. Containing the single greatest mortal repository of Aboleth history and facts collected. If this is found and studied then it will provide the players with important information to help them prepare to face the aboleth.
I am actually considering allowing this to be an option, it will very much be player dependant, I don't like to artificially make things like this happen but I can see him having a secret teleport circle somewhere designed to whisk him away to another location. The idea after the aboleth is to allow the party to spread their legs a bit and travel further afield across the continent. It has also got me thinking about the wizards motivations, power and knowledge simply for the sake of it is rarely a good motivator so.
Lawful Good wizard who years ago lost the women he loved to an illness or curse caused by a link to undeath, her descent to death was slow and he thought he had time to research or learn the cure to this disease but she succumbed. When she did he was away seeking the cure and found it, but he arrived back 2 days too late, her body already burnt so as not to risk rising from death into un-life. He was distraught, broken and then found a new focus, he turned his gaze towards a different aim, reversing time, allowing himself to break the very laws of nature and return just one day earlier. However he quickly realised that this would require more time than he has in a lifetime to achieve. That is not a problem, once he knows the answer to the puzzle he can undo all that has happened. Slowly his drive led him to shift from Lawful good to Lawful evil. His quest became an obsession to allow him to extend his life beyond that of a mortal man, always the driver being that he would never again run out of time that he would take eternity of needed to learn how to return back to that moment before she died, to cure her.
He envies the Aboleth because it never truly dies, it knows and learns all knowledge. His research has shown him that the only known way to extend his life is Lichdom, but he refuses to take that step wanting to retain his own nature aware that if he where to become a Liche he would lose some aspect of himself and possibly his drive to save his love. He hopes the Aboleth can impart on him knowledge of how he can extend his life without becoming undead but his own survival must trump that of the Aboleth.
So the encounter where the party discover him becomes a time thing, he puts minions and casts spells/traps to delay them from reaching him before he has time to set and cast his teleport spell and escape as opposed to a fight to the death. He can then reappear later in the campaign as a recurring bad guy. I like that idea
Okay. Be careful with time-travel though. Time travel is pure plot and players go through plot like a wrecking ball. Also, unless you intend to plant the idea in your players heads that he's redeemable, imo, the heel turn is unnecessary for them to know about. If they just hear that it happened and didn't ever see the wizard being a great guy themselves, they won't really be invested in that bit. Every time Mr Freeze shows up in a Batman cartoon, I know I have to spend at least five minutes listening to the same schtick about poor old Nora and it always feels like time wasted.
There's an archmage in the basic rules, CR 12. Of course, that's tougher than the aboleth you had planned, assuming you use the standard aboleth. You could start with that archmage, and tone it down a bit. Or decide the wizard was the real boss all along and was manipulating the aboleth.
I am actually thinking a tougher NPC is probably ok, the party is actually 8-9 players strong so I can probably beef up the wizard, but have him hide his true power.
Be careful of doing that. Because wizards have lots of area damage, they're good at damaging large parties, but with their low defenses they get obliterated fast. This usually isn't all that fun as an encounter.
This might be a little too "4th edition" for some, but there's no rule that your NPC wizard is bound by the PC spell list. Or spell slots, or spell levels. Maybe he's got a bunch of clones and the party fights 4 of him. When all 4 go down, the 5th reveals himself and teleports away to regroup. Wizards just die too easily on their own, and if you throw in too many other things it just feels like a fight against those things. At the least, the other threats should be direct creations of the wizard like summons or living spells or something.
Okay. Be careful with time-travel though. Time travel is pure plot and players go through plot like a wrecking ball. Also, unless you intend to plant the idea in your players heads that he's redeemable, imo, the heel turn is unnecessary for them to know about. If they just hear that it happened and didn't ever see the wizard being a great guy themselves, they won't really be invested in that bit. Every time Mr Freeze shows up in a Batman cartoon, I know I have to spend at least five minutes listening to the same schtick about poor old Nora and it always feels like time wasted.
I always flesh out my bad guys, that doesn't mean the players will ever know any of that history. They probably won't but I like to work out what the motivator is for pretty much all my bad guys, even to the point of a random encounter I work out why are these wolves here, what are they doing, how will that impact how they react. Is this there territory so they will attack until the players leave, are they hungry and so will fight until death because they need to, do they have young etc.
I have run one amazing campaign that involved the players having to escape a BBEG in the very early levels with the help of un identified individuals, slowly his powers grew and in the end the only way they could defeat him was to go back in time to before the campaign began, do some stuff (which saw them finally level from 15-20, and then at level 20 they where strong enough to defeat the BBEG they had just seen themselves run away from. (In fact they realised they themselves had saved their past selves from being killed by him).
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The BBEG of my campaign is an aboleth, trapped far underground slowly trying to influence the inhabitants of the mine it was found in and the nearby town.
Aiding it is a wizard. This wizard is in pursuit of of knowledge and was responsible for the freeing of the Aboleth from its prison in the mountain. The wizard itself is a willing participant in the aboleth plans, he protects himself from the Aboleth with a magic item that prevents him becoming enslaved and lives in the town.
Initially the wizard will be a close ally of the party, his whole aim is to discredit he council and get elected as town mayor allowing him the power to then help the aboleth enslave everyone. As such he is a spider creating trouble for the town from afar. The campaign is starting at level 1 I intend for the final battle with the Aboleth to take place at about level 6-7. However I am not sure how to pitch the wizard. I have read that applying CR to an NPC created with player rules doesn’t work due to the low hit points the NPC will have.
What is the best way of pitching this wizard so they are a fair challenge to the party by the time they get to level 6 (when I intend them to face off and fight the wizard)? I am thinking number of spells, spell slots and level in addition to hit points and AC. If the players discover the wizard earlier that is fine, they can either bide their time or retreat from the fight if they find he is too strong.
Well, for the final encounter with the wizard you are going to want some other NPCs/monsters around so that the party can't use ALL their actions against just the poor wizard.
You could search the monster database here on DDB for NPCs and find the ones which are based on wizards and find one around the CR 6-7 mark, as long as you have those extra allies around. (Set "Monster Tags" to NPC in the advanced search options.)
Sounds like an interesting villain! Great job on the concept.
Regarding the encounter, a wizard alone against a prepared and determined party, is going to go down extremely quickly - even if you beef him up with additional levels and the like. You've pitched him as an intelligent master manipulator, who would no doubt have a handful of minions that he's lured to his side. Some meaty bodyguards will help take some of the direct fire off the wizard.
Also - how is he protecting himself from the Aboleth's control? Perhaps he discovered a powerful artefact in that mine... Perhaps that artefact could provide some interesting effects during the battle, perhaps a similar to some of the Aboleth's charm abilities, to control the battlefield and foreshadow what they'll be up against later!
There's an archmage in the basic rules, CR 12. Of course, that's tougher than the aboleth you had planned, assuming you use the standard aboleth. You could start with that archmage, and tone it down a bit. Or decide the wizard was the real boss all along and was manipulating the aboleth.
Honestly, for a game at level 6, a Mage with some minions is plenty.
The wizard escapes and becomes the recurring villain for the 7-10 campaign. Trust me. Do not waste a good bad guy, it is the easiest way to give your characters an 'in' to the next storyline.
There are 2 options, first is some form of the spell protection from evil and good, either he has the spell himself that gives him 10 min bursts of time with the aboleth for the initial conversations and then uses a longer range communication spell from there. Or a magic item such as a ring that has the protection from charm effect of the spell only from aberrations. He owns and runs a magic store so could have made it himself. Alternatively I may give him a magic item that allows him to cast the mind blank spell once every full moon, this combined with judicious use of the protect from evil and good spell will allow him, over time, to negotiate and deal with the Aboleth. I got the inspiration for that from posting a question on the roleplaying games stack exchange. The benifit of this is when they defeat him the players will have access to a tool that will help them defeat the Aboleth.
In terms of the encounter my games are fully open world and the players will be interacting with the wizard from level 1 in town so while I may be able to build protection into him I will be roleplaying him as a fairly helpless, inquisitive intelligent but absent minded shop collector and seller of magical items. He will give the players quests early on, help them as they fight the schemes he has put into motion, and generally be a mentor and guide to the magic users in the party. However I know players and I know at some point they may just find his secret in a way I can’t control. If all goes according to plan the adventure will play out a bit like invasion of the body snatchers with NPCs seeming to change personality and act out of character as time progresses. I am also anticipating the wizard may well escape giving me a future BBEG to develop. But I get the point it may be I have to rely on giving him spells to help him escape and evade combat situations rather then go toe to toe with the players, maybe I can have towns folk who are enslaved always just be around, browsing in the shop, delivering supplies. A perceptive player may spot something odd about the situation as it progresses and the wizard has his protection nearby.
Mage or Warlock of the Great Old One are both suitable options. Alternatively you can add some Wizard Spells onto a Kraken Priest. All of them are around 5/6 CR so you'd want to give them some minions to make them a decent challenge for your party. If you have Ghost's of Saltmarsh, Skum are Aboleth slaves/worshippers who have transformed into pale tentacley things.
I am actually thinking a tougher NPC is probably ok, the party is actually 8-9 players strong so I can probably beef up the wizard, but have him hide his true power. I don't like the idea of him manipulating the aboleth, but there will be a bit of tension between them. The Aboleth will not like being in a position of weakness unable to enslave the wizard and just take what it wants. It is not liking having to trade off it's millenia of knowledge with a mere mortal 2 legged thing, but it has no real choice currently The wizard on the other hand has been studying all he can get his hands on about aboleths for years. The plan is eventually the players may well find his hidden workspace beneath his magic shop, his prize possession a tomb made up of pages stolen, ripped or copied from books across the planes. Containing the single greatest mortal repository of Aboleth history and facts collected. If this is found and studied then it will provide the players with important information to help them prepare to face the aboleth.
I am actually considering allowing this to be an option, it will very much be player dependant, I don't like to artificially make things like this happen but I can see him having a secret teleport circle somewhere designed to whisk him away to another location. The idea after the aboleth is to allow the party to spread their legs a bit and travel further afield across the continent. It has also got me thinking about the wizards motivations, power and knowledge simply for the sake of it is rarely a good motivator so.
Lawful Good wizard who years ago lost the women he loved to an illness or curse caused by a link to undeath, her descent to death was slow and he thought he had time to research or learn the cure to this disease but she succumbed. When she did he was away seeking the cure and found it, but he arrived back 2 days too late, her body already burnt so as not to risk rising from death into un-life. He was distraught, broken and then found a new focus, he turned his gaze towards a different aim, reversing time, allowing himself to break the very laws of nature and return just one day earlier. However he quickly realised that this would require more time than he has in a lifetime to achieve. That is not a problem, once he knows the answer to the puzzle he can undo all that has happened. Slowly his drive led him to shift from Lawful good to Lawful evil. His quest became an obsession to allow him to extend his life beyond that of a mortal man, always the driver being that he would never again run out of time that he would take eternity of needed to learn how to return back to that moment before she died, to cure her.
He envies the Aboleth because it never truly dies, it knows and learns all knowledge. His research has shown him that the only known way to extend his life is Lichdom, but he refuses to take that step wanting to retain his own nature aware that if he where to become a Liche he would lose some aspect of himself and possibly his drive to save his love. He hopes the Aboleth can impart on him knowledge of how he can extend his life without becoming undead but his own survival must trump that of the Aboleth.
So the encounter where the party discover him becomes a time thing, he puts minions and casts spells/traps to delay them from reaching him before he has time to set and cast his teleport spell and escape as opposed to a fight to the death. He can then reappear later in the campaign as a recurring bad guy. I like that idea
Okay. Be careful with time-travel though. Time travel is pure plot and players go through plot like a wrecking ball. Also, unless you intend to plant the idea in your players heads that he's redeemable, imo, the heel turn is unnecessary for them to know about. If they just hear that it happened and didn't ever see the wizard being a great guy themselves, they won't really be invested in that bit. Every time Mr Freeze shows up in a Batman cartoon, I know I have to spend at least five minutes listening to the same schtick about poor old Nora and it always feels like time wasted.
Be careful of doing that. Because wizards have lots of area damage, they're good at damaging large parties, but with their low defenses they get obliterated fast. This usually isn't all that fun as an encounter.
This might be a little too "4th edition" for some, but there's no rule that your NPC wizard is bound by the PC spell list. Or spell slots, or spell levels. Maybe he's got a bunch of clones and the party fights 4 of him. When all 4 go down, the 5th reveals himself and teleports away to regroup. Wizards just die too easily on their own, and if you throw in too many other things it just feels like a fight against those things. At the least, the other threats should be direct creations of the wizard like summons or living spells or something.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I always flesh out my bad guys, that doesn't mean the players will ever know any of that history. They probably won't but I like to work out what the motivator is for pretty much all my bad guys, even to the point of a random encounter I work out why are these wolves here, what are they doing, how will that impact how they react. Is this there territory so they will attack until the players leave, are they hungry and so will fight until death because they need to, do they have young etc.
I have run one amazing campaign that involved the players having to escape a BBEG in the very early levels with the help of un identified individuals, slowly his powers grew and in the end the only way they could defeat him was to go back in time to before the campaign began, do some stuff (which saw them finally level from 15-20, and then at level 20 they where strong enough to defeat the BBEG they had just seen themselves run away from. (In fact they realised they themselves had saved their past selves from being killed by him).