My players are finishing up Lost Mine of Phandelver, and I'm transitioning to creating my own scenario from that adventure. To that end, I'm making a new "big bad". Trying to figure out if this baddie is too tough for a group of six characters of level 7 or 8. Not a ton of hit points, but plenty of ways of reducing damage, avoiding hits, and controlling opponents. Thoughts, ideas, constructive criticism, just about any good faith feedback is welcome. I tried to give her a creepy/sinister weapon that helps a bit with survivability. Is having the legendary actions too much? Is CR 10 about right?
Haven't done this before, so hopefully the link works!
My players are finishing up Lost Mine of Phandelver, and I'm transitioning to creating my own scenario from that adventure. To that end, I'm making a new "big bad". Trying to figure out if this baddie is too tough for a group of six characters of level 7 or 8. Not a ton of hit points, but plenty of ways of reducing damage, avoiding hits, and controlling opponents. Thoughts, ideas, constructive criticism, just about any good faith feedback is welcome. I tried to give her a creepy/sinister weapon that helps a bit with survivability. Is having the legendary actions too much? Is CR 10 about right?
Six PCs at level 7-8? If they're fresh, you need around CR 20.
Nivari will not survive a round. You need more hit points, more spells (of higher lvs) and minions to protect her.
I would, also, give it more mobility to act as a better glass cannon. Misty step and a way to do it as a legendary action comes to mind.
Legendary resistances, also, would be handy.
My 8th lv PCs fought an Adult Dracolich and two enslaved Deva minions and won - it was a tough battle, but they won and it was not even the first battle of the day.
Initiative and surprise are the achilles heel of your PC-turned-NPC. Without surprise, or being invisible at the start of combat, an 8th level fighter can almost drop BB here on their first turn, with an action surge and decent luck. If there is a rogue in the party that is worth their salt, they're gonna seal the deal before BB gets to use that dagger effectively. The action economy of the statblock doesn't support 1v1, let alone 1v6.
I might suggest paring the metamagic and spell list back to what can be used in 3 rounds. If you want the metamagic feats, list them as actions with the specific spells and narrate the casting of spells without components. The AC could use a bump to 17, just to make it sporting, and the HP pool should probably be maxed at your HD listing, so 124. If you want this fight to be fun for anyone, give her some minions to summon and control as bonus actions on her turn, a limited use (3/day) shield reaction would probably be welcome, as would a magic item that would allow her (and her minions) to regain HP as a Legendary Action.
Minions don't have to be anything big or powerful, just something to get in the way and make things more dynamic. Cause some chaos on the battlefield, shift focus a second and make the PCs make some decisions. Something like a reskinned steam mephit might be a consideration.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
She'll go down before she even gets to take a turn, and when she does, she can barely inconvenience the party. 75hp is basically a level 8 Fighter hit points.
Siphoning Kiss will barely hurt anyone, and won't be used. Increase the damage to something threatening like 10d8. Other than that she only has Fireball, which won't hit everyone.
Rather than just pick apart your monster, I'd like to suggest some points to help you learn to build challenging monsters, which can be pretty difficult!
1) Boss Legendary actions Bosses need 1 legendary action for each opposing party member after the first. Therefore against a party of 6, the boss needs 5 Legendary Actions.
Give them a ranged attack Legendary.
Give them a movement with no opportunity attacks Legendary.
Give them a defensive Legendary.
Give them a powerful 2 or 3 action Legendary you can pull out when you want.
For a spellcaster, let them cast additional spells as well as Cantrips, but limit the level of the spells (e.g. level 2 or less is fine).
2) Boss Legendary Resistances As a creature of importance, you can't have the boss Banished, Polymorphed or otherwise in the first turn of combat. Your boss needs 1 Legendary Resistance for each party member after the first, so 5 again.
3) Spellcasting Do not expect any concentration spell to be maintained; the action economy favours the larger party, even with legendary actions. Do not spend time giving boss characters a bunch of spells they'll never use in combat unless they are going to be doing a lot behind the scenes outside of combat (so Sending is appropriate). Instead look at what spell you want them to cast every turn, and just give them those spells. Nor can you rely on a gimmick like Greater Invsibility; Faerie Fire will ruin your plans, as can many other spells.
4) Surviving the onslaught
Calculate the average damage each party member will do at level 8.
As an example, a level 8 Fighter or Barbarian would have 18 Strength, and will to make 2 Greatsword attacks. Both are likely to hit (through whatever abilities the fighter has like Precision Attack or Reckless Attack), dealing 13 (2d6+6) damage each for 26 damage. This is assuming no feats like GWM, which would up us to 46 damage.
A wizard or sorcerer will likely Fireball or Lightning Bolt for average 28 damage.
A rogue will likely Sneak attack for 22 (1d8+4d6+4) damage.
All of this assumes no magical weapons, but let's say average damage for a level 8 character is 25 damage per turn, and it's fine to assume everyone hits because we're ignoring Action Surge, Destructive Wrath, Twinned Spell etc. 25 sounds reasonable.
So if your boss comes last in the initiative roll, 150 hit points dies in the first turn of combat, and 300 dies before she gets a second turn.
A boss against 6 characters should have around 450-500 hit points to survive a reasonable amount of time. This is way out of line with the terribly designed 5e monsters. My PCs are level 10, and I increase adult dragon hit points to nearly 600 so that it has a chance to actually dent them.
5) Create a gimmick so that you deal damage every turn regardless of what the PCs do so they feel under threat. Your boss shouldn't just be an upscaled PC. They ought to have something special that will always stay in the PC's mind as "That was the fight where..." is true, rather than just a hit points race. If the boss does not have abilities that always deal damage, their lack of action economy means that on a bunch of bad dice rolls the boss is going to fail to achieve anything and the fight will be a whiff.
Example custom ability (2 parts, each is an action):
Psionic draw. The boss draws all creature within 90 feet towards herself. Creatures that fail a DC16 Strength saving throw are dragged 30 feet towards the boss and suffer 8d6 force damage. On a success they take half as much and are not pulled in. All creatures movement speed is reduced by 10 feet until the start of their next turn.
Psionic Release (recharge 5-6). The boss releases the gathered psionic energy. All creatures within 30 feet of the boss suffer 12d8 points of psychic damage, with a DC16 Charisma saving throw for half.
6) Go bigger on the damage dice than you think is reasonable 8d6 sounds like a lot, but most of the time it's 14 points of damage. Don't be afraid to hit level 7-8 characters with melee hits for 4d10+8, or spells for 60 points of damage. The PCs can take it, they have defences, healing spells, potions and all sorts. They'll also employ clever tactics that will mess up your strategies, and your boss will usually deal much lower damage than expected even when you go crazy on the numbers.
D&D Monsters in the books are designed to last 2 turns of combat. I find that 4-5 turns of combat is much more satisfying. So boost everything up much higher than you think it should be, or most fights will be a whiff.
My bad, should have mentioned this. There will be other monsters in the fight. There will be a barbarian bodyguard CR 6-7, and 2-4 Gibbering Mouthers. The players will watch other people in the area basically melt together into the mouthers right as the fight starts caused by an burst of far realm energy from Nivari. The players aren't affected because reasons (maybe knocked prone, though?).
Starting the fight with her invisible is a good idea.
The characters will be surprised (no ifs ands or buts), so she will go first no matter what. So turn one she casts greater invisibility. On her second turn she will be subverting their big melee fighter with heightened suggestion (they have +1 wis saves, meaning 15+ back to back rolls required to save, less than 9% chance and if it fails, she will do it again), rather drastically shifting the balance of the battle. Oooh, those are both concentration spells. So to make that work she'll need something like "aberrant will" that lets her concentrate on two spells at the same time. Anyway, with the other 5 in the party likely dealing with a barb, the fighter PC, and the mouthers and her under greater invisibility powering her up (damage wise) much more doesn't seem very fair. Increasing her hit points might kind of makes sense, though. Especially since she will run if the battle is obviously not going her way, saving her second 4th level spell for another greater invisibility if needed. She will also be making use of counterspell to ensure she gets to stay invisible (eliminating faerie fire, dispell, etc).
All of her spells are going to be far realm/eldritch horror flavored.
If I need more legendary actions maybe summoning/commanding eldritch tentacles that can move/grapple/prone people might be fun.
My group is pretty green, one died in the redbrands lair in a fight with three bugbears (at level 2), and one went unconscious in the Nezznar fight (level 4). There were only 5 PCs for those fights.
Another good trick is for the first battle to do as follows:
Start invisible and REMAIN so. She is there to observe, not attack the party. In fact, during this first battle she never attacks the party at all.
Instead, have a minion that never speaks attack the party. This minion will not speak a word.
But while the Minion is not speaking, have NIVARI using Telepathy to taunt and otherwise communicate with the party.
Repeat this a second or possibly more times.
End result, the party may believe the 'minion' is speaking to them telepathically, and think they killed the boss. But be surprised when the same telepathic enemy attacks them again, with a different 'body'.
Ideally the party should not figure out what is going on for several battles. But if they are lucky and use some means of seeing invisibility they will find it out quite quick.
Mmm... Maybe you could use the Mouthers to make the fight longer and prolong Novari's life? It depends on whether you want to give the players the chance to save the people who became the mouthers but an alternative would be that, since the people in the area were drawn together, melted, and turned into the mouthers by something Novari did, they are connected to him more deeply. So if your players focus on him and drop his HP to zero, they get to watch how, as they died, their body melt into a wreck of flesh and one of the surviving mouthers shift and turn into a completely healed Novari. That way his gimmick is that you have to kill all the mouthers first, so you can space them out so that they are not caught in an aoe attack and take advantage of their own aoe effects.
To further develope the flesh crafter theme, increase the damage of the kriss and make it so that not only does it heal Novari but that the players have to pass a saving throw or have their hp maximum decreased like if they were fighting a spectre. Or give Novari or their bodyguard regeneration. You might also want to increase their number of legendary actions.
Also, I think that the mouthers have effects on the terrain? It might be a good idea to give both Novari and their bodyguard a way to not be affected by those. And since you already made it so that a pulse of enegy transformed people into mouthers, you might as well keep doing stuff with that every turn. Either as lair actions or legendary actions, you could do stuff like melting buildings/the street, making portals or teleporting Novari around, causing shockwaves that push away or knock prone those who fail saving throws, cause horrific visions that frighten people for a turn, etc.
Oh, that is dastardly! I like it. I'll see if I can't figure out how to incorporate that. Might not work out this time, but I'll definitely keep that tactic in mind.
This is great stuff, thanks! She's not really a flesh crafter, creating the mouthers wouldn't be intentional, and I already decided there's no saving those folks short of a wish spell, that change is pretty permanent. Also, after the first burst, people are NOT going to be sticking around. There won't be anyone to affect.
Mouthers turn an area around them to difficult terrain, and creatures within a certain range have to pass a saving throw to avoid being confused by the gibbering.
Having her recreated out of a mouther is a pretty good idea! But they will likely finish the mouthers off first due to invisibility anyway. I might use that for a higher level fight, assuming she survives this one. I might even be able to have her "teleport" between mouthers as a legendary action, and have the future lair generate like 1d4+1 (or something like that) mouthers as a lair action every round. But future stuff is kind of off topic, even though it is fun.
Rather than just pick apart your monster, I'd like to suggest some points to help you learn to build challenging monsters, which can be pretty difficult!
1) Boss Legendary actions Bosses need 1 legendary action for each opposing party member after the first. Therefore against a party of 6, the boss needs 5 Legendary Actions.
No, they really don't. A boss with no legendary actions who just just one-shots 2 PCs per turn is perfectly scary. It's just not terribly fun; players would prefer a boss who does 50% damage to four PCs a turn than a boss who does 100% damage to 2 PCs, and legendary actions do a good job of splitting up the damage into more manageable chunks, plus they make the randomness of initiative less important.
My bad, should have mentioned this. There will be other monsters in the fight. There will be a barbarian bodyguard CR 6-7, and 2-4 Gibbering Mouthers. The players will watch other people in the area basically melt together into the mouthers right as the fight starts caused by an burst of far realm energy from Nivari. The players aren't affected because reasons (maybe knocked prone, though?).
Starting the fight with her invisible is a good idea.
The characters will be surprised (no ifs ands or buts), so she will go first no matter what. So turn one she casts greater invisibility. On her second turn she will be subverting their big melee fighter with heightened suggestion (they have +1 wis saves, meaning 15+ back to back rolls required to save, less than 9% chance and if it fails, she will do it again), rather drastically shifting the balance of the battle. Oooh, those are both concentration spells. So to make that work she'll need something like "aberrant will" that lets her concentrate on two spells at the same time. Anyway, with the other 5 in the party likely dealing with a barb, the fighter PC, and the mouthers and her under greater invisibility powering her up (damage wise) much more doesn't seem very fair. Increasing her hit points might kind of makes sense, though. Especially since she will run if the battle is obviously not going her way, saving her second 4th level spell for another greater invisibility if needed. She will also be making use of counterspell to ensure she gets to stay invisible (eliminating faerie fire, dispell, etc).
All of her spells are going to be far realm/eldritch horror flavored.
If I need more legendary actions maybe summoning/commanding eldritch tentacles that can move/grapple/prone people might be fun.
My group is pretty green, one died in the redbrands lair in a fight with three bugbears (at level 2), and one went unconscious in the Nezznar fight (level 4). There were only 5 PCs for those fights.
I can't see anything about "Heightened Suggestion" on her stat block. Presumably you just mean Suggestion, or there something missing as far as I can see.
It's fine to give her a surprise round, allowing her to get up Greater Invisibility although this then means that for your big fight, the PCs can't see the boss.
You still have an issue in that your fight hinges on the boss having two concurrent spells running, and even if you have 2 spells up then a single hit on the boss can cause her to fail both concentration checks. These things can, and will, happen. counterspell is less effective than you think when the party have 6 actions compared to your boss's single action.
Her damage output is still negligible, and her hit points and low AC are still way too low to survive more than a single turn, but I did the maths for you on that already, above. I really don't think you're experienced in how much damage a group of 6 x level 8 PCs will inflict in a single turn of combat, nor just how easily they're likely to disrupt things like Invisibility. The Suggestion effect can be easily removed with dispel magic or a variety of other spells or potential abilities that level 8 characters have available, the saving throw can be made and so on.
Honestly, as someone whose players were level 8 about 3 months ago, my players' 5 man party would kill your modified boss in under 2 turns of combat regardless of Greater Invisibility, and they'd do so easily. They have about 3 Rare magic items and Uncommon items only.
At level 2, a group of 6 characters will regularly (and easily) put out 70 damage in the first turn of combat. Your boss would still only last 2 turns against a group of level 2 characters.
Rather than just pick apart your monster, I'd like to suggest some points to help you learn to build challenging monsters, which can be pretty difficult!
1) Boss Legendary actions Bosses need 1 legendary action for each opposing party member after the first. Therefore against a party of 6, the boss needs 5 Legendary Actions.
No, they really don't. A boss with no legendary actions who just just one-shots 2 PCs per turn is perfectly scary. It's just not terribly fun; players would prefer a boss who does 50% damage to four PCs a turn than a boss who does 100% damage to 2 PCs, and legendary actions do a good job of splitting up the damage into more manageable chunks, plus they make the randomness of initiative less important.
Boss monsters almost always have 3 legendary actions because they are all balanced around fighting a party of 4 characters. If you don't modify your monsters for up-scaled party size then the monsters will always be too weak. Why would you run a dragon that can put out 6 attacks per turn against 4 characters and still does 6 attacks per turn against 6 characters?
If it doesn't have legendary actions, a party of 6 will hit the monster with enough Conditions and tactical problems that it will be greatly limited in what it can do.
Saying "Players would prefer" is a pointless way to discuss something, because what you say is fundamentally just stating your own personal feelings. It ignores the game design, and tries to dominate a discussion by stating something as fact when in fact it's your opinion and has no basis in fact.
Boss monsters almost always have 3 legendary actions because they are all balanced around fighting a party of 4 characters. If you don't modify your monsters for up-scaled party size then the monsters will always be too weak.
Nah, to go against 6 characters I just need 50% higher hit points and damage. It doesn't terribly matter whether that damage is split into six chunks or four.
A scary boss should do the party's total hit points over 3 turns (with healing and so on, the party should be still functional after that, but running on fumes). A typical level 8 PC might have 59 hit points (assumes d8s, 14 Con), so I want 118 dpr; given that attacks can miss, we want a true dpr that's significantly higher. This means we're starting at around CR 17, and accounting for misses will push it a bit higher (though high CR monsters have enough attack bonus that they aren't gonna miss a whole lot). An adult red dragon seems like a totally credible challenge for six level 8s.
Boss monsters almost always have 3 legendary actions because they are all balanced around fighting a party of 4 characters. If you don't modify your monsters for up-scaled party size then the monsters will always be too weak.
Nah, to go against 6 characters I just need 50% higher hit points and damage. It doesn't terribly matter whether that damage is split into six chunks or four.
A scary boss should do the party's total hit points over 3 turns (with healing and so on, the party should be still functional after that, but running on fumes). A typical level 8 PC might have 59 hit points (assumes d8s, 14 Con), so I want 118 dpr; given that attacks can miss, we want a true dpr that's significantly higher. This means we're starting at around CR 17, and accounting for misses will push it a bit higher (though high CR monsters have enough attack bonus that they aren't gonna miss a whole lot). An adult red dragon seems like a totally credible challenge for six level 8s.
So between a CR 10, a CR6, and 3 CR2s, that should basically be a CR20. Not to mention turning a party member against them.
My players are finishing up Lost Mine of Phandelver, and I'm transitioning to creating my own scenario from that adventure. To that end, I'm making a new "big bad". Trying to figure out if this baddie is too tough for a group of six characters of level 7 or 8. Not a ton of hit points, but plenty of ways of reducing damage, avoiding hits, and controlling opponents. Thoughts, ideas, constructive criticism, just about any good faith feedback is welcome. I tried to give her a creepy/sinister weapon that helps a bit with survivability. Is having the legendary actions too much? Is CR 10 about right?
Haven't done this before, so hopefully the link works!
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/2422262-nivari
Six PCs at level 7-8? If they're fresh, you need around CR 20.
Nivari will not survive a round. You need more hit points, more spells (of higher lvs) and minions to protect her.
I would, also, give it more mobility to act as a better glass cannon. Misty step and a way to do it as a legendary action comes to mind.
Legendary resistances, also, would be handy.
My 8th lv PCs fought an Adult Dracolich and two enslaved Deva minions and won - it was a tough battle, but they won and it was not even the first battle of the day.
Have some minions to go with the BBEG, so that PCs have other targets on which to use their actions.
Initiative and surprise are the achilles heel of your PC-turned-NPC. Without surprise, or being invisible at the start of combat, an 8th level fighter can almost drop BB here on their first turn, with an action surge and decent luck. If there is a rogue in the party that is worth their salt, they're gonna seal the deal before BB gets to use that dagger effectively. The action economy of the statblock doesn't support 1v1, let alone 1v6.
I might suggest paring the metamagic and spell list back to what can be used in 3 rounds. If you want the metamagic feats, list them as actions with the specific spells and narrate the casting of spells without components. The AC could use a bump to 17, just to make it sporting, and the HP pool should probably be maxed at your HD listing, so 124. If you want this fight to be fun for anyone, give her some minions to summon and control as bonus actions on her turn, a limited use (3/day) shield reaction would probably be welcome, as would a magic item that would allow her (and her minions) to regain HP as a Legendary Action.
Minions don't have to be anything big or powerful, just something to get in the way and make things more dynamic. Cause some chaos on the battlefield, shift focus a second and make the PCs make some decisions. Something like a reskinned steam mephit might be a consideration.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
She'll go down before she even gets to take a turn, and when she does, she can barely inconvenience the party. 75hp is basically a level 8 Fighter hit points.
Siphoning Kiss will barely hurt anyone, and won't be used. Increase the damage to something threatening like 10d8. Other than that she only has Fireball, which won't hit everyone.
Rather than just pick apart your monster, I'd like to suggest some points to help you learn to build challenging monsters, which can be pretty difficult!
1) Boss Legendary actions
Bosses need 1 legendary action for each opposing party member after the first. Therefore against a party of 6, the boss needs 5 Legendary Actions.
2) Boss Legendary Resistances
As a creature of importance, you can't have the boss Banished, Polymorphed or otherwise in the first turn of combat. Your boss needs 1 Legendary Resistance for each party member after the first, so 5 again.
3) Spellcasting
Do not expect any concentration spell to be maintained; the action economy favours the larger party, even with legendary actions.
Do not spend time giving boss characters a bunch of spells they'll never use in combat unless they are going to be doing a lot behind the scenes outside of combat (so Sending is appropriate). Instead look at what spell you want them to cast every turn, and just give them those spells. Nor can you rely on a gimmick like Greater Invsibility; Faerie Fire will ruin your plans, as can many other spells.
4) Surviving the onslaught
Calculate the average damage each party member will do at level 8.
As an example, a level 8 Fighter or Barbarian would have 18 Strength, and will to make 2 Greatsword attacks. Both are likely to hit (through whatever abilities the fighter has like Precision Attack or Reckless Attack), dealing 13 (2d6+6) damage each for 26 damage. This is assuming no feats like GWM, which would up us to 46 damage.
A wizard or sorcerer will likely Fireball or Lightning Bolt for average 28 damage.
A rogue will likely Sneak attack for 22 (1d8+4d6+4) damage.
All of this assumes no magical weapons, but let's say average damage for a level 8 character is 25 damage per turn, and it's fine to assume everyone hits because we're ignoring Action Surge, Destructive Wrath, Twinned Spell etc. 25 sounds reasonable.
So if your boss comes last in the initiative roll, 150 hit points dies in the first turn of combat, and 300 dies before she gets a second turn.
A boss against 6 characters should have around 450-500 hit points to survive a reasonable amount of time. This is way out of line with the terribly designed 5e monsters. My PCs are level 10, and I increase adult dragon hit points to nearly 600 so that it has a chance to actually dent them.
5) Create a gimmick so that you deal damage every turn regardless of what the PCs do so they feel under threat.
Your boss shouldn't just be an upscaled PC. They ought to have something special that will always stay in the PC's mind as "That was the fight where..." is true, rather than just a hit points race. If the boss does not have abilities that always deal damage, their lack of action economy means that on a bunch of bad dice rolls the boss is going to fail to achieve anything and the fight will be a whiff.
Example custom ability (2 parts, each is an action):
Psionic draw. The boss draws all creature within 90 feet towards herself. Creatures that fail a DC16 Strength saving throw are dragged 30 feet towards the boss and suffer 8d6 force damage. On a success they take half as much and are not pulled in. All creatures movement speed is reduced by 10 feet until the start of their next turn.
Psionic Release (recharge 5-6). The boss releases the gathered psionic energy. All creatures within 30 feet of the boss suffer 12d8 points of psychic damage, with a DC16 Charisma saving throw for half.
6) Go bigger on the damage dice than you think is reasonable
8d6 sounds like a lot, but most of the time it's 14 points of damage. Don't be afraid to hit level 7-8 characters with melee hits for 4d10+8, or spells for 60 points of damage. The PCs can take it, they have defences, healing spells, potions and all sorts. They'll also employ clever tactics that will mess up your strategies, and your boss will usually deal much lower damage than expected even when you go crazy on the numbers.
D&D Monsters in the books are designed to last 2 turns of combat. I find that 4-5 turns of combat is much more satisfying. So boost everything up much higher than you think it should be, or most fights will be a whiff.
Thanks so much for your feedback, everyone!
My bad, should have mentioned this. There will be other monsters in the fight. There will be a barbarian bodyguard CR 6-7, and 2-4 Gibbering Mouthers. The players will watch other people in the area basically melt together into the mouthers right as the fight starts caused by an burst of far realm energy from Nivari. The players aren't affected because reasons (maybe knocked prone, though?).
Starting the fight with her invisible is a good idea.
The characters will be surprised (no ifs ands or buts), so she will go first no matter what. So turn one she casts greater invisibility. On her second turn she will be subverting their big melee fighter with heightened suggestion (they have +1 wis saves, meaning 15+ back to back rolls required to save, less than 9% chance and if it fails, she will do it again), rather drastically shifting the balance of the battle. Oooh, those are both concentration spells. So to make that work she'll need something like "aberrant will" that lets her concentrate on two spells at the same time. Anyway, with the other 5 in the party likely dealing with a barb, the fighter PC, and the mouthers and her under greater invisibility powering her up (damage wise) much more doesn't seem very fair. Increasing her hit points might kind of makes sense, though. Especially since she will run if the battle is obviously not going her way, saving her second 4th level spell for another greater invisibility if needed. She will also be making use of counterspell to ensure she gets to stay invisible (eliminating faerie fire, dispell, etc).
All of her spells are going to be far realm/eldritch horror flavored.
If I need more legendary actions maybe summoning/commanding eldritch tentacles that can move/grapple/prone people might be fun.
My group is pretty green, one died in the redbrands lair in a fight with three bugbears (at level 2), and one went unconscious in the Nezznar fight (level 4). There were only 5 PCs for those fights.
new version:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/2423889-nivari
Another good trick is for the first battle to do as follows:
End result, the party may believe the 'minion' is speaking to them telepathically, and think they killed the boss. But be surprised when the same telepathic enemy attacks them again, with a different 'body'.
Ideally the party should not figure out what is going on for several battles. But if they are lucky and use some means of seeing invisibility they will find it out quite quick.
Mmm... Maybe you could use the Mouthers to make the fight longer and prolong Novari's life? It depends on whether you want to give the players the chance to save the people who became the mouthers but an alternative would be that, since the people in the area were drawn together, melted, and turned into the mouthers by something Novari did, they are connected to him more deeply. So if your players focus on him and drop his HP to zero, they get to watch how, as they died, their body melt into a wreck of flesh and one of the surviving mouthers shift and turn into a completely healed Novari. That way his gimmick is that you have to kill all the mouthers first, so you can space them out so that they are not caught in an aoe attack and take advantage of their own aoe effects.
To further develope the flesh crafter theme, increase the damage of the kriss and make it so that not only does it heal Novari but that the players have to pass a saving throw or have their hp maximum decreased like if they were fighting a spectre. Or give Novari or their bodyguard regeneration. You might also want to increase their number of legendary actions.
Also, I think that the mouthers have effects on the terrain? It might be a good idea to give both Novari and their bodyguard a way to not be affected by those. And since you already made it so that a pulse of enegy transformed people into mouthers, you might as well keep doing stuff with that every turn. Either as lair actions or legendary actions, you could do stuff like melting buildings/the street, making portals or teleporting Novari around, causing shockwaves that push away or knock prone those who fail saving throws, cause horrific visions that frighten people for a turn, etc.
Oh, that is dastardly! I like it. I'll see if I can't figure out how to incorporate that. Might not work out this time, but I'll definitely keep that tactic in mind.
This is great stuff, thanks! She's not really a flesh crafter, creating the mouthers wouldn't be intentional, and I already decided there's no saving those folks short of a wish spell, that change is pretty permanent. Also, after the first burst, people are NOT going to be sticking around. There won't be anyone to affect.
Mouthers turn an area around them to difficult terrain, and creatures within a certain range have to pass a saving throw to avoid being confused by the gibbering.
Having her recreated out of a mouther is a pretty good idea! But they will likely finish the mouthers off first due to invisibility anyway. I might use that for a higher level fight, assuming she survives this one. I might even be able to have her "teleport" between mouthers as a legendary action, and have the future lair generate like 1d4+1 (or something like that) mouthers as a lair action every round. But future stuff is kind of off topic, even though it is fun.
No, they really don't. A boss with no legendary actions who just just one-shots 2 PCs per turn is perfectly scary. It's just not terribly fun; players would prefer a boss who does 50% damage to four PCs a turn than a boss who does 100% damage to 2 PCs, and legendary actions do a good job of splitting up the damage into more manageable chunks, plus they make the randomness of initiative less important.
I can't see anything about "Heightened Suggestion" on her stat block. Presumably you just mean Suggestion, or there something missing as far as I can see.
It's fine to give her a surprise round, allowing her to get up Greater Invisibility although this then means that for your big fight, the PCs can't see the boss.
You still have an issue in that your fight hinges on the boss having two concurrent spells running, and even if you have 2 spells up then a single hit on the boss can cause her to fail both concentration checks. These things can, and will, happen. counterspell is less effective than you think when the party have 6 actions compared to your boss's single action.
Her damage output is still negligible, and her hit points and low AC are still way too low to survive more than a single turn, but I did the maths for you on that already, above. I really don't think you're experienced in how much damage a group of 6 x level 8 PCs will inflict in a single turn of combat, nor just how easily they're likely to disrupt things like Invisibility. The Suggestion effect can be easily removed with dispel magic or a variety of other spells or potential abilities that level 8 characters have available, the saving throw can be made and so on.
Honestly, as someone whose players were level 8 about 3 months ago, my players' 5 man party would kill your modified boss in under 2 turns of combat regardless of Greater Invisibility, and they'd do so easily. They have about 3 Rare magic items and Uncommon items only.
At level 2, a group of 6 characters will regularly (and easily) put out 70 damage in the first turn of combat. Your boss would still only last 2 turns against a group of level 2 characters.
Boss monsters almost always have 3 legendary actions because they are all balanced around fighting a party of 4 characters. If you don't modify your monsters for up-scaled party size then the monsters will always be too weak. Why would you run a dragon that can put out 6 attacks per turn against 4 characters and still does 6 attacks per turn against 6 characters?
If it doesn't have legendary actions, a party of 6 will hit the monster with enough Conditions and tactical problems that it will be greatly limited in what it can do.
Saying "Players would prefer" is a pointless way to discuss something, because what you say is fundamentally just stating your own personal feelings. It ignores the game design, and tries to dominate a discussion by stating something as fact when in fact it's your opinion and has no basis in fact.
Nah, to go against 6 characters I just need 50% higher hit points and damage. It doesn't terribly matter whether that damage is split into six chunks or four.
A scary boss should do the party's total hit points over 3 turns (with healing and so on, the party should be still functional after that, but running on fumes). A typical level 8 PC might have 59 hit points (assumes d8s, 14 Con), so I want 118 dpr; given that attacks can miss, we want a true dpr that's significantly higher. This means we're starting at around CR 17, and accounting for misses will push it a bit higher (though high CR monsters have enough attack bonus that they aren't gonna miss a whole lot). An adult red dragon seems like a totally credible challenge for six level 8s.
So between a CR 10, a CR6, and 3 CR2s, that should basically be a CR20. Not to mention turning a party member against them.