So I have an idea, and I am sure it has been done a dozen times over because what hasn't. But essentially the villain is, or was, a treasure hunter, that slowly over time accrued so many magic items that he is now a formidable opponent and pretty much does whatever he wants. With every item he found he went further and further off the deep end, either stealing or killing for the next order and his nature twisted and he became more and more evil.
Right now I am thinking about having ten...yes ten magic rings, a magic circle, and whatever else. Just basically a standard person in the world that has oodles of magic items and that is what makes him dangerous. I'd love to hear thoughts and insights from other DMs on this, because obviously the party will want everything he has, but more of my items typically have non renewable charges anyway.
Only thing I am having problem with his coming up with a subplot for this guy. I could have him going after more magic items, or maybe a specifically powerful one. I know that I do want him to be fairly established with magic items so it is less like an origin plot with the party poking their heads in and more of a "Hey we gotta stop this looney toon" type of deal.
One question to ask is what motivation this villain has to seek out magic items. That may help you develop your subplot. "Lust for power" is a clear motivator, but I think this works better if that's a secondary motivation or one that came later, after the villain already started their "collection."
So with that, some ideas. Mix and match them as you like.
The villain started as an archaeologist of an ancient civilization. He is motivated by a need to collect all of the ancient relics of this civilization, which was skilled in the art of creating magic items. He may want to ultimately revive this civilization with him as its new god-king. The relic he's looking for may be the key to unlocking the hidden potential of the items he already possesses or to uncovering other ancient secrets.
The villain is fascinated with magic, but he's not a spellcaster himself (or not a very skilled one). He might be jealous of their gifts, one that he was not born with, and so he collects magic items to compensate. Perhaps the item he's looking for will help him strip other spellcasters of their power, either stealing it for himself or using it as a means to take vengeance on some spellcasters that wronged him.
The villain is a classic collector. He's wealthy, bored, and his pursuit of power through these items is more of a game to him. His wealth gives him a great deal of resources, making him dangerous beyond the magic items he possesses. Maybe he uses the items to control a great merchant empire or to wield great power in the noble court of a nearby nation. He might be seeking an item to help him increase his grip over his chosen domain. Or alternatively, he's recently had a setback, and he needs the item to reclaim his throne.
The villain wants immortality (but is uninterested in lichdom). He's in pursuit of true immortality, of the kind possessed by planar outsiders and the like. The items he's been collecting haven't just been a hodgepodge, but they all serve this specific purpose in some way. Perhaps each item allows him to overcome some of his biological limitations. Perhaps he's physically frail without the magic items and needs them to survive.
An extension of the above - the villain is a tinker and is slowly replacing his own body parts with magical items. He believes he can build a better construct, more life-like than any golem, and is starting with himself. He dreams of creating a race of such beings using the power in these magic items.
Bored with having all of these trinkets, and being king of the mountain, the magic items he's gathering are now being used to allow him access to other planes. His thirst for a new challenge takes him to the elemental planes, the Abyss, maybe even to a point where he's to challenge the gods. This has caused the magical items to resonate in such a way that it's causing turmoil and twisting reality, the party is met by a higher power which is asking them to aid in stopping the threat.
I like the idea of him traveling to other planes, replacing his body parts with magical items, and trying to restore a lost civilization as my group has time and again found weird remains of some long forgotten humanoid race. (At first it was just for mystery and flavor but now is taking on a life of its own)
What if his overall goal is to make himself stronger, I was thinking initially he is unmagical and weak, hence all the items while working to find a way to bring his people back, and maaaaaybe taking magic away from the world so only him and his kind can use it. (which could result in a plot hook where only the party and few people world wide can still use magic, the majority inexplicably had the ability taken away?)
But if he is replacing his body with magic parts I'm not quite sure how to work that or build the stats for it. Hence why this idea was born with him have 10 magic rings that gave him the necessary resistances, strengths, and spells he would need to handle business. Plus other items.
Thoughts on that? Any idea on WHICH rings or items he would use or input on replacing some of his body with them?
The one problem you're going to immediately run into mechanically is the limit on attunement. So you'll have to either hand-wave that or limit his attuned items.
Mechanically, you might want to make him a jack-of-all-trades type. He'll need to have at least some base stats for this to work. Maybe some combination of rogue and whatever spellcasting classes are needed for attunement (but with one level at most in each, so that he's magically weak). This set of skills also explains how he managed to acquire the magic items, using cunning and deceit and some trickster-like magic.
As for what magic items would be useful specifically, that's a bit difficult as there's such a variety of them to choose from. Essentially though, I'd focus on giving him a couple very strong items that provide offense, defense, and utility and then filling that out with other more minor items as needed.
I'd suggest sticking with items that are Very Rare and above for the most part, as that should give him most of his oomph. Try filtering by rarity and specific tags (like Combat, Warding, Utility) on D&D Beyond.
Are you looking to build him more as a spellcaster or as a physically weak warrior empowered by his magic items to be very strong? Or both?
For replacing parts of his body with magic items, you could go with some sort of carefully crafted adamantine or mithril or something similar. Perhaps he's found a way to absorb the energy from certain magic items and embed it in these new, mechanical body parts so that they effectively function as those items. So, for example, he might have destroyed some Boots of Speed and channeled their power into his construct feet.
I'm thinking that without the items he is just a normal, weak guy that has no real aptitude for magic and has had a harder time than most just because he's weaker. So maybe that translates to such a huge chip on his shoulder that his main goal is to banish most if not all magic and that is the plot. Or he can be those things but also looking to rebuild his lost race and civilization. Few ways that could play out. He originally spawned in my head as a treasure hunter who found magic item after magic item and eventually got consumed by the power of it all and lusts for more.
Atunement I could waive as I do subscribe to Matt Colville's "bad guys should have different skills then characters do and sometimes their stuff just works" way of thinking.
I have 10 rings picked out that handle some resistances, tricks, and magic spells for his use. I kind of want him to at first SEEM unbeatable until the party susses out that he is only just hiding behind magic items and thus, bit by bit, his power can be stripped away. He has the ring of regeneration, ring of spell storing, spell turning, some of the elemental rings for the spells they have, things like that. I'm gonna stay away from metal hands as that coupled with rings seems overly Thanos like lol. I like the idea of maybe metal feet imbued with the boots of speed and things of that nature, maybe get some magic earrings, a cloak, armor. Or maybe his body has literally been melded with armor that is in turn imbued with magic. So his chest is literally adamantine or something along those lines.
I'm planning on a circle of scorching ray as well. Basically I want him to run like a very high end magical enemy, but like I said all of his powers can be stripped away bit by bit as he loses, or has taken various magic items and when you get through all that he is no harder than a lone goblin.
Or maybe somethings like the grey stones (name escapes me) that hover around a characters head and give them +1 to stats. Basically I want all of his strength to come from having gathered all the magic items lol.
An interesting subplot: All the accumulation of magic items has driven him mad. Some of the items he owns have their own personalities, or they did at one time, and all of the whispering in his mind has made him nuts. Now you can literally have him do ANYTHING you want and not worry. One day he might be hunting the PCs to steal THEIR stuff, the next he could be trying to banish all the frogs in the realm.
An interesting subplot: All the accumulation of magic items has driven him mad. Some of the items he owns have their own personalities, or they did at one time, and all of the whispering in his mind has made him nuts. Now you can literally have him do ANYTHING you want and not worry. One day he might be hunting the PCs to steal THEIR stuff, the next he could be trying to banish all the frogs in the realm.
Taking Darkaiser idea: Your villain gained a magic tome that gave him the power to cast spells( I am just going to assume sorcerer) but the tome is haunted/possessed however with the covetous/greedy spirit of a dragon and all you commoner npc/adventure magic items are from the dragons old hoard and he is going after the PC's because an item they have used to be part of this dragon's hoard. The NPC is beening driven mad by this tome to reclaim all the items that use to be in the hoard.
I got one for ya that is definitely different than what has been presented (for better or worse, you decide lol).
The individual in question originally was some wealthy aristocrat or noble who was in love with someone who didn't reciprocate that love. This other person made the claim that if your villain personally retrieved some mystical jewel or something, then that would make them truly love them. Unbeknownst to the villain, it was said mainly in jest to denote that they would never love this person. So the next day the villain hired a party of adventurers to act as bodyguards and to assist him in retrieving said item. This first set of bodyguards lost most of its members in some suuuper violent way, and so the villain had to hire more. This continued for about 20 or more bodyguards as this quest was extremely dangerous, and watching these deaths changed them along with giving them some serious PTSD. Months after the journey began, this aristocrat returned successful with this prized jewel, only to find his love interest had married in his absence, and was quite rudely informed by this love interest that this nor any other action would ever be enough to earn their love. Hearing this after enduring the things they had seen mentally broke the villain, making them obsessively attached to the item they had obtained, awakening a desire to fill the void of unrequited love with rare magical items like the one he foolishly sought in the first place at whatever cost necessary.
I know I am biased, but I think this would work the best because it adds a lot of human elements to the villain and basically makes their motivations based around being broken as an individual due to not being good at understanding sarcasm and the trauma that was endured due to their own vanity in believing that some material possession could buy them love. It also subverts the normal assumptions people would make about what actually motivates them.
I'm just thinking what will happen when this villain is defeated. Are you certain you want the party to be handed this incredible treasure trove of artefacts? Perhaps a suggestion, one of the early artefacts this villain found is a sort of ancient phase transporter item. It allows him to steal other magic objects from a distance through the performance of some ritual, but the object being stolen takes about a day to phase out of existence in its current location, and appear in the device. The catch is that the object hasn't actually been taken, its essence remains at the original location, but through some sort of wibbly-wobbly phasey-wazey magic it is now held by the villain. The catch is that if the device is destroyed, the "phase crystal" used for each ritual is smashed or the villain is killed then the objects suddenly phase back to their original location. The villain could demonstrate this power by visibly stealing a magic object from the party, then allowing the associated crystal to be broken and the party gets the object back.
This has many positive implications for the story (as well as preventing the trove of objects on defeat): the magic of the device and the crystals could explain the ability to attune to so many objects, the power of the device explains how such a weakling managed to acquire so many powerful objects, the crystals could be destroyed one by one as a way to weaken the villain, or the party could try to destroy the device (the device itself is also rigged to explode when the villain is defeated - no free stuff for the party).
To Regent's point, the first thing that came to my mind in this story is that if, in some way, this being has some how become a simulacra of the magic devices; attacking him now does essentially nothing, and his hit points are made up of the artifacts themselves. The players have to locate and destroy each item to "free" the maddened man, who may then have info about other magical items to give you in trade. Alternate idea; the artifacts were a hoard from a single evil wizard, and each artifact added more of his mind and soul into the poor collector. That "one big score" may make the man at least a little sympathetic. Still, I think the idea has a lot of potential
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Fenchurch, Gnome Wizard, Red Skies in Mourning
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So I have an idea, and I am sure it has been done a dozen times over because what hasn't. But essentially the villain is, or was, a treasure hunter, that slowly over time accrued so many magic items that he is now a formidable opponent and pretty much does whatever he wants. With every item he found he went further and further off the deep end, either stealing or killing for the next order and his nature twisted and he became more and more evil.
Right now I am thinking about having ten...yes ten magic rings, a magic circle, and whatever else. Just basically a standard person in the world that has oodles of magic items and that is what makes him dangerous. I'd love to hear thoughts and insights from other DMs on this, because obviously the party will want everything he has, but more of my items typically have non renewable charges anyway.
Only thing I am having problem with his coming up with a subplot for this guy. I could have him going after more magic items, or maybe a specifically powerful one. I know that I do want him to be fairly established with magic items so it is less like an origin plot with the party poking their heads in and more of a "Hey we gotta stop this looney toon" type of deal.
Thoughts?
One question to ask is what motivation this villain has to seek out magic items. That may help you develop your subplot. "Lust for power" is a clear motivator, but I think this works better if that's a secondary motivation or one that came later, after the villain already started their "collection."
So with that, some ideas. Mix and match them as you like.
Bored with having all of these trinkets, and being king of the mountain, the magic items he's gathering are now being used to allow him access to other planes. His thirst for a new challenge takes him to the elemental planes, the Abyss, maybe even to a point where he's to challenge the gods. This has caused the magical items to resonate in such a way that it's causing turmoil and twisting reality, the party is met by a higher power which is asking them to aid in stopping the threat.
Y'all do not disappoint!
I like the idea of him traveling to other planes, replacing his body parts with magical items, and trying to restore a lost civilization as my group has time and again found weird remains of some long forgotten humanoid race. (At first it was just for mystery and flavor but now is taking on a life of its own)
What if his overall goal is to make himself stronger, I was thinking initially he is unmagical and weak, hence all the items while working to find a way to bring his people back, and maaaaaybe taking magic away from the world so only him and his kind can use it. (which could result in a plot hook where only the party and few people world wide can still use magic, the majority inexplicably had the ability taken away?)
But if he is replacing his body with magic parts I'm not quite sure how to work that or build the stats for it. Hence why this idea was born with him have 10 magic rings that gave him the necessary resistances, strengths, and spells he would need to handle business. Plus other items.
Thoughts on that? Any idea on WHICH rings or items he would use or input on replacing some of his body with them?
The one problem you're going to immediately run into mechanically is the limit on attunement. So you'll have to either hand-wave that or limit his attuned items.
Mechanically, you might want to make him a jack-of-all-trades type. He'll need to have at least some base stats for this to work. Maybe some combination of rogue and whatever spellcasting classes are needed for attunement (but with one level at most in each, so that he's magically weak). This set of skills also explains how he managed to acquire the magic items, using cunning and deceit and some trickster-like magic.
As for what magic items would be useful specifically, that's a bit difficult as there's such a variety of them to choose from. Essentially though, I'd focus on giving him a couple very strong items that provide offense, defense, and utility and then filling that out with other more minor items as needed.
I'd suggest sticking with items that are Very Rare and above for the most part, as that should give him most of his oomph. Try filtering by rarity and specific tags (like Combat, Warding, Utility) on D&D Beyond.
Are you looking to build him more as a spellcaster or as a physically weak warrior empowered by his magic items to be very strong? Or both?
For replacing parts of his body with magic items, you could go with some sort of carefully crafted adamantine or mithril or something similar. Perhaps he's found a way to absorb the energy from certain magic items and embed it in these new, mechanical body parts so that they effectively function as those items. So, for example, he might have destroyed some Boots of Speed and channeled their power into his construct feet.
I'm thinking that without the items he is just a normal, weak guy that has no real aptitude for magic and has had a harder time than most just because he's weaker. So maybe that translates to such a huge chip on his shoulder that his main goal is to banish most if not all magic and that is the plot. Or he can be those things but also looking to rebuild his lost race and civilization. Few ways that could play out. He originally spawned in my head as a treasure hunter who found magic item after magic item and eventually got consumed by the power of it all and lusts for more.
Atunement I could waive as I do subscribe to Matt Colville's "bad guys should have different skills then characters do and sometimes their stuff just works" way of thinking.
I have 10 rings picked out that handle some resistances, tricks, and magic spells for his use. I kind of want him to at first SEEM unbeatable until the party susses out that he is only just hiding behind magic items and thus, bit by bit, his power can be stripped away. He has the ring of regeneration, ring of spell storing, spell turning, some of the elemental rings for the spells they have, things like that. I'm gonna stay away from metal hands as that coupled with rings seems overly Thanos like lol. I like the idea of maybe metal feet imbued with the boots of speed and things of that nature, maybe get some magic earrings, a cloak, armor. Or maybe his body has literally been melded with armor that is in turn imbued with magic. So his chest is literally adamantine or something along those lines.
I'm planning on a circle of scorching ray as well. Basically I want him to run like a very high end magical enemy, but like I said all of his powers can be stripped away bit by bit as he loses, or has taken various magic items and when you get through all that he is no harder than a lone goblin.
Or maybe somethings like the grey stones (name escapes me) that hover around a characters head and give them +1 to stats. Basically I want all of his strength to come from having gathered all the magic items lol.
Ioun stones, enchanted pieces to his replaced limbs, you can pretty much fluff the heck out of this :)
An interesting subplot: All the accumulation of magic items has driven him mad. Some of the items he owns have their own personalities, or they did at one time, and all of the whispering in his mind has made him nuts. Now you can literally have him do ANYTHING you want and not worry. One day he might be hunting the PCs to steal THEIR stuff, the next he could be trying to banish all the frogs in the realm.
Taking Darkaiser idea: Your villain gained a magic tome that gave him the power to cast spells( I am just going to assume sorcerer) but the tome is haunted/possessed however with the covetous/greedy spirit of a dragon and all you commoner npc/adventure magic items are from the dragons old hoard and he is going after the PC's because an item they have used to be part of this dragon's hoard. The NPC is beening driven mad by this tome to reclaim all the items that use to be in the hoard.
I got one for ya that is definitely different than what has been presented (for better or worse, you decide lol).
The individual in question originally was some wealthy aristocrat or noble who was in love with someone who didn't reciprocate that love. This other person made the claim that if your villain personally retrieved some mystical jewel or something, then that would make them truly love them. Unbeknownst to the villain, it was said mainly in jest to denote that they would never love this person. So the next day the villain hired a party of adventurers to act as bodyguards and to assist him in retrieving said item. This first set of bodyguards lost most of its members in some suuuper violent way, and so the villain had to hire more. This continued for about 20 or more bodyguards as this quest was extremely dangerous, and watching these deaths changed them along with giving them some serious PTSD. Months after the journey began, this aristocrat returned successful with this prized jewel, only to find his love interest had married in his absence, and was quite rudely informed by this love interest that this nor any other action would ever be enough to earn their love. Hearing this after enduring the things they had seen mentally broke the villain, making them obsessively attached to the item they had obtained, awakening a desire to fill the void of unrequited love with rare magical items like the one he foolishly sought in the first place at whatever cost necessary.
I know I am biased, but I think this would work the best because it adds a lot of human elements to the villain and basically makes their motivations based around being broken as an individual due to not being good at understanding sarcasm and the trauma that was endured due to their own vanity in believing that some material possession could buy them love. It also subverts the normal assumptions people would make about what actually motivates them.
I'm just thinking what will happen when this villain is defeated. Are you certain you want the party to be handed this incredible treasure trove of artefacts? Perhaps a suggestion, one of the early artefacts this villain found is a sort of ancient phase transporter item. It allows him to steal other magic objects from a distance through the performance of some ritual, but the object being stolen takes about a day to phase out of existence in its current location, and appear in the device. The catch is that the object hasn't actually been taken, its essence remains at the original location, but through some sort of wibbly-wobbly phasey-wazey magic it is now held by the villain. The catch is that if the device is destroyed, the "phase crystal" used for each ritual is smashed or the villain is killed then the objects suddenly phase back to their original location. The villain could demonstrate this power by visibly stealing a magic object from the party, then allowing the associated crystal to be broken and the party gets the object back.
This has many positive implications for the story (as well as preventing the trove of objects on defeat): the magic of the device and the crystals could explain the ability to attune to so many objects, the power of the device explains how such a weakling managed to acquire so many powerful objects, the crystals could be destroyed one by one as a way to weaken the villain, or the party could try to destroy the device (the device itself is also rigged to explode when the villain is defeated - no free stuff for the party).
To Regent's point, the first thing that came to my mind in this story is that if, in some way, this being has some how become a simulacra of the magic devices; attacking him now does essentially nothing, and his hit points are made up of the artifacts themselves. The players have to locate and destroy each item to "free" the maddened man, who may then have info about other magical items to give you in trade. Alternate idea; the artifacts were a hoard from a single evil wizard, and each artifact added more of his mind and soul into the poor collector. That "one big score" may make the man at least a little sympathetic. Still, I think the idea has a lot of potential
Fenchurch, Gnome Wizard, Red Skies in Mourning