I'm currently DMing for my first time and pretty excited. I'm, funny enough, starting a campaign with some of my church people and youths and made a campaign that has some subtle ties to biblical stories. Now where I'm in a bit of mental bind is the protagonist, Silas, is essentially going to be based off the Satan (go figure), I'm reaching out to y'all for thoughts and opinion. Is there a monster from the monster manual that would closely relate to Silas and just reskin it? Or do I make him a class such as a Warlock (seems pretty devilish to me)?
Remember that not all Warlock are devilish per-say. Some make pacts with Celestials. Gee, maybe I need to lie about what I main to my church if that’s not the case! Lol. A fiend pact warlock could still work; you just need to reflavor it a bit. Remember warlocks make deals with powerful entities, and like it or not Silas/Satan is meant to be a powerful entity.
There are plenty of devils or even demons (not the same thing; demons are more of a nuisance in hell whereas devil rule them.) that could fit the build. It really depends on what kind of version of the villain you are trying to portray. Classic angry with horns? More suave and kaniving?
i’d recommend looking up the devils of the dnd universe and doing some research (in your private browser, of course. Hehe.)
If you need more sources and are down for spending a little more money on something hellish, the Illrigger class is a custom class made to represent soldiers of hell as well as comes with plenty of lore. Not exactly WotC official lore, but stuff you can work with nonetheless.
Now go my son, arm thyself with the breastplate of truth and the belt of… Look, the sword is your bible; that’s all I can remember, so make sure you have swords coming out of your books!
In all seriousness have fun! If you would let me know how it goes. I’ve wanted to do something like this for quite a while and am curious how it goes.
One last note, and this is very important to me: if you end up with a Bard Paladin multiclass name it Tim!(There, that should rack up some brownie points for me.)
Edit: I reread your post and got a little confused. Is this suppose to be before “the star that fell from heaven.” Wait… are you playing the bad guys!? Or is this just before he… well you know.
Either way, here is a stat sheet of Asmodeus, the being who is believed to be the highest ranking Archdevil.
HA I appreciate this well worded response. No this will be after he.... you know fell from heaven. My players are going to be the hero in this adventure and ultimately have to clash with Silas in the end. I plan to have Silas reappear throughout the campaign, after their initial discovery of who he truly is, and attempt to turn players to his side or turn them against each other. Ultimately he is the Devil currently masking himself as common villager. I will gladly tell you how the first session goes since we will be playing it this Saturday. Stay tuned!
Interesting. Well, if you’re using those stats I hope you plan to play at least to level 20 if not beyond with more epic boon feats, but it’s up to you. Anyway, you are most welcome friend, and I look forward to hearing what you and your friends come up with! :)
I'm currently DMing for my first time and pretty excited. I'm, funny enough, starting a campaign with some of my church people and youths and made a campaign that has some subtle ties to biblical stories. Now where I'm in a bit of mental bind is the protagonist, Silas, is essentially going to be based off the Satan (go figure), I'm reaching out to y'all for thoughts and opinion. Is there a monster from the monster manual that would closely relate to Silas and just reskin it? Or do I make him a class such as a Warlock (seems pretty devilish to me)?
Thanks in advance!!!
I assume you mean "antagonist", not "protagonist".
Like any new GM with some kind of story in mind, you should be wary of forcing it. Ultimately, it's the players' story, not yours. Trying to force things to go in a particular direction rarely goes well.
There are also easy mistakes to make with a specific antagonist:
If you put them directly on stage, the players will likely try to fight them.
Don't build enemies as classes, build them as monsters. The game is designed that way.
If you keep them off stage until the players are ready to fight them, the campaign may well end before they do.
There's a tendency to want to stat them out at the beginning, when you don't know much about running the game yet, and don't know how long it'll last. If you're keeping them off stage (generally the right choice), you should leave their exact power levels unspecified until it's time to make the final battle, at which point you can build them to be a challenge for the actual players you have. By deciding in advance that this guy is actually Satan, you're talking yourself into making him super-powerful. Then, when the campaign seems to be heading for a natural end at level 8, you've got a problem. If you leave his exact nature unspecified beyond "a force for evil", you have more flexibility.
Also:
Players don't notice your subtle references. (Or your blatant clues.) This will be fine in this case, unless you try to make them important.
If you make things too explicitly Christian, you're going to start having to deal with the differences between that and the generic pop-culture fantasy assumptions of the game. It's likely doable, and you know your players, but it's something you may have to give some thought to.
I've recently done something similar, where the big bad appeared several times throughout the campaign, annoying the players, demand they do things, using them as pawns. The players started to HATE this guy, but at the same time were scared of him. They didn't know his level, or how much power he had, that's because I didn't know. Any encounter, I let him use an ability that was above the players level, casting finger of death on them at level 3 was mean, but they instantly knew this guy wasn't messing about. I waited until the campaign naturally reach a point where they were ready to have a showdown with him, then decided a monster to reskin him as. If I had decided upfront what he was going to be, say an arch devil, then we are forcing the campaign to reach a high level climax, and for all I knew, it was going to be ready to conclude at level 8.
I ended up having mine be a pawn of Zariel, and their goal was to stop him from allowing Zariel out of the hells. But if we kept going to level 17+, then Zariel could have been the eventual goal.
And +1 for not building enemies as player classes, it get very messy, and you'll be adjusting their sheet on the fly when you realise your guy is either insanely powerful, or far too weak. I made that mistake, and won't be making it again!
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Hey all.
I'm currently DMing for my first time and pretty excited. I'm, funny enough, starting a campaign with some of my church people and youths and made a campaign that has some subtle ties to biblical stories. Now where I'm in a bit of mental bind is the protagonist, Silas, is essentially going to be based off the Satan (go figure), I'm reaching out to y'all for thoughts and opinion. Is there a monster from the monster manual that would closely relate to Silas and just reskin it? Or do I make him a class such as a Warlock (seems pretty devilish to me)?
Thanks in advance!!!
Remember that not all Warlock are devilish per-say. Some make pacts with Celestials. Gee, maybe I need to lie about what I main to my church if that’s not the case! Lol. A fiend pact warlock could still work; you just need to reflavor it a bit. Remember warlocks make deals with powerful entities, and like it or not Silas/Satan is meant to be a powerful entity.
There are plenty of devils or even demons (not the same thing; demons are more of a nuisance in hell whereas devil rule them.) that could fit the build. It really depends on what kind of version of the villain you are trying to portray. Classic angry with horns? More suave and kaniving?
i’d recommend looking up the devils of the dnd universe and doing some research (in your private browser, of course. Hehe.)
If you need more sources and are down for spending a little more money on something hellish, the Illrigger class is a custom class made to represent soldiers of hell as well as comes with plenty of lore. Not exactly WotC official lore, but stuff you can work with nonetheless.
Now go my son, arm thyself with the breastplate of truth and the belt of… Look, the sword is your bible; that’s all I can remember, so make sure you have swords coming out of your books!
In all seriousness have fun! If you would let me know how it goes. I’ve wanted to do something like this for quite a while and am curious how it goes.
One last note, and this is very important to me: if you end up with a Bard Paladin multiclass name it Tim!(There, that should rack up some brownie points for me.)
Edit: I reread your post and got a little confused. Is this suppose to be before “the star that fell from heaven.” Wait… are you playing the bad guys!? Or is this just before he… well you know.
Either way, here is a stat sheet of Asmodeus, the being who is believed to be the highest ranking Archdevil.
https://********/bestiary/asmodeus-coa.html
HA I appreciate this well worded response. No this will be after he.... you know fell from heaven. My players are going to be the hero in this adventure and ultimately have to clash with Silas in the end. I plan to have Silas reappear throughout the campaign, after their initial discovery of who he truly is, and attempt to turn players to his side or turn them against each other. Ultimately he is the Devil currently masking himself as common villager. I will gladly tell you how the first session goes since we will be playing it this Saturday. Stay tuned!
Interesting. Well, if you’re using those stats I hope you plan to play at least to level 20 if not beyond with more epic boon feats, but it’s up to you. Anyway, you are most welcome friend, and I look forward to hearing what you and your friends come up with! :)
I assume you mean "antagonist", not "protagonist".
Like any new GM with some kind of story in mind, you should be wary of forcing it. Ultimately, it's the players' story, not yours. Trying to force things to go in a particular direction rarely goes well.
There are also easy mistakes to make with a specific antagonist:
Also:
I've recently done something similar, where the big bad appeared several times throughout the campaign, annoying the players, demand they do things, using them as pawns. The players started to HATE this guy, but at the same time were scared of him. They didn't know his level, or how much power he had, that's because I didn't know. Any encounter, I let him use an ability that was above the players level, casting finger of death on them at level 3 was mean, but they instantly knew this guy wasn't messing about. I waited until the campaign naturally reach a point where they were ready to have a showdown with him, then decided a monster to reskin him as. If I had decided upfront what he was going to be, say an arch devil, then we are forcing the campaign to reach a high level climax, and for all I knew, it was going to be ready to conclude at level 8.
I ended up having mine be a pawn of Zariel, and their goal was to stop him from allowing Zariel out of the hells. But if we kept going to level 17+, then Zariel could have been the eventual goal.
And +1 for not building enemies as player classes, it get very messy, and you'll be adjusting their sheet on the fly when you realise your guy is either insanely powerful, or far too weak. I made that mistake, and won't be making it again!