I recently had a good idea for a BBEG in a campaign.
A jester-like trickster with an armor class of 30 but health of 1, or something like that.
He crafted a weapon worthy of gods, so fine that when he held it, it ate away at his mortal essence until he had 1 hit point, but gave him godlike perception, hence the 30 armor class
Does anyone have good backstory tips, or how I could implement him into a campaign?
Evasion would definitely help. I like the idea of the "weak but really hard to hit" monster. I think you can develop this concept a little more and get to where you want to be. In a nutshell, let's build this monster without getting bogged down in specific numbers.
Low hitpoints
High AC
High DEX
Evasion
Disengage as a bonus action
Invisibility (?)
Hiding (?)
Flying (?)
Basically, you're building a variation on the rogue theme. You can build the monster that is really hard to hit. The challenge is to present this monster in such a way as to keep the encounter interesting to the players. You can absolutely do this, so I'm not trying to discourage you.
Just use the Nilbog stat block for the BBEG. It's basically what you are looking for. Now all it needs is some legendary or lair actions to round it out.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
Also a nat 20 always hits, so with 1 hp your setting up a chance it could be very anticlimactic. Or as stated magic missle and game over. 5e is set up more in the idea of hp grinds. Conceptually I think it's a cool idea.
You can negate magic missile and a nat 20 by giving his lair action something like a copy self spell. The trickster and then can be ghost like in form at the start.
If your magic missile person has three then have like 6 to 8 copies. When one copy dies it merges with the other remaining copies making the trickster more solid. When there is only one left he becomes solid and then can be killed.
I like the idea of multiple copies, also since basically your banking on him being hard to hit give him the shield spell as a reaction. Otherwise the round after magic missle takes out 3 of his 6 copies, round 2 will be a second magic missle volley. At level 8 they can spam that spell. Of course they would have to know to cast it in the first place, as player I wouldn't assume at level 8 the big boss has 1 hp, I would try some bigger spells out first.
I think the boss you're thinking of would work better more as a puzzle that's a capstone to a campaign than as a straightforward encounter.
Here's my reasoning for that. I'm worried that if you just make a guy like that, his stats would make the encounter boring for a lot of classes. For example, a martial class that mainly hits things with attack rolls would be effectively completely useless without a crit. Alternatively, if someone got a crit on the first roll, that would make the encounter super anticlimactic. As mentioned, the base concept you had was super weak against save-or-take-half-damage spells, or magic missile; but if you buff him against that, it ALSO makes spellcasters feel useless. To the players, an encounter like that might seem like "each of us tries to do things. Nothing hits. We try more things. Nothing hits. We die." No fun.
HOWEVER, as a capstone to a quest chain or puzzle, this guy would work brilliantly. So you design this guy to be super-high AC, protected in many ways against spells, and in some way against crits. As an opening act, you have the PCs run into him in a situation where they're given the opportunity (and encouraged) to run away (and since they don't know how the boss works, they can't hurt him yet.). (Maybe the boss is slaughtering some army somewhere, the PCs get to ineffectually get in his way and get shoved aside). Then, they've got a bunch of quests to find out how the BBEG works and what his weakness is. Maybe they have one quest where they find out about his super-weapon (and learn they only need to get one hit on him) and then they have another quest to speak-with-dead or reanimate the corpse of the wizard who designed his anti-spell defenses, and THEN they can come up with a plan for how to kill the guy (and probably have another quest to get the necessary weapons or ingredients or spell scrolls).
And then they get to confront the guy and make their plan work!
Hit Points are just an abstraction, not necessarily a direct analog to cuts, scrapes, stab wounds, etc. So you could give you BBEG hit points, but from a narrative perspective just describe all the attacks a missing outright. That Magic Missile that auto hits, is deflected away and doesn't come close to touching the BBEG, but you still ding the creature for it.
This way you aren't trying to fit the mechanics of D&D to fit your cool idea (square peg round hole), but as far as the players are concerned that is narrative experience they have.
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I recently had a good idea for a BBEG in a campaign.
A jester-like trickster with an armor class of 30 but health of 1, or something like that.
He crafted a weapon worthy of gods, so fine that when he held it, it ate away at his mortal essence until he had 1 hit point, but gave him godlike perception, hence the 30 armor class
Does anyone have good backstory tips, or how I could implement him into a campaign?
BTW Feel free to use this idea, if you want
That's a very good AC, but what happens when someone casts a spell with a saving throw and even if he makes the save, he still takes half damage?
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Hmm,
good idea, I haven’t thought of that yet
Give him Evasion.
Evasion would definitely help. I like the idea of the "weak but really hard to hit" monster. I think you can develop this concept a little more and get to where you want to be. In a nutshell, let's build this monster without getting bogged down in specific numbers.
Basically, you're building a variation on the rogue theme. You can build the monster that is really hard to hit. The challenge is to present this monster in such a way as to keep the encounter interesting to the players. You can absolutely do this, so I'm not trying to discourage you.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Magic missile. Auto hit. Pew pew.
Just use the Nilbog stat block for the BBEG. It's basically what you are looking for. Now all it needs is some legendary or lair actions to round it out.
Also a nat 20 always hits, so with 1 hp your setting up a chance it could be very anticlimactic. Or as stated magic missle and game over. 5e is set up more in the idea of hp grinds. Conceptually I think it's a cool idea.
You can negate magic missile and a nat 20 by giving his lair action something like a copy self spell. The trickster and then can be ghost like in form at the start.
If your magic missile person has three then have like 6 to 8 copies. When one copy dies it merges with the other remaining copies making the trickster more solid. When there is only one left he becomes solid and then can be killed.
Just a thought.
I like the idea of multiple copies, also since basically your banking on him being hard to hit give him the shield spell as a reaction. Otherwise the round after magic missle takes out 3 of his 6 copies, round 2 will be a second magic missle volley. At level 8 they can spam that spell. Of course they would have to know to cast it in the first place, as player I wouldn't assume at level 8 the big boss has 1 hp, I would try some bigger spells out first.
I think the boss you're thinking of would work better more as a puzzle that's a capstone to a campaign than as a straightforward encounter.
Here's my reasoning for that. I'm worried that if you just make a guy like that, his stats would make the encounter boring for a lot of classes. For example, a martial class that mainly hits things with attack rolls would be effectively completely useless without a crit. Alternatively, if someone got a crit on the first roll, that would make the encounter super anticlimactic. As mentioned, the base concept you had was super weak against save-or-take-half-damage spells, or magic missile; but if you buff him against that, it ALSO makes spellcasters feel useless. To the players, an encounter like that might seem like "each of us tries to do things. Nothing hits. We try more things. Nothing hits. We die." No fun.
HOWEVER, as a capstone to a quest chain or puzzle, this guy would work brilliantly. So you design this guy to be super-high AC, protected in many ways against spells, and in some way against crits. As an opening act, you have the PCs run into him in a situation where they're given the opportunity (and encouraged) to run away (and since they don't know how the boss works, they can't hurt him yet.). (Maybe the boss is slaughtering some army somewhere, the PCs get to ineffectually get in his way and get shoved aside). Then, they've got a bunch of quests to find out how the BBEG works and what his weakness is. Maybe they have one quest where they find out about his super-weapon (and learn they only need to get one hit on him) and then they have another quest to speak-with-dead or reanimate the corpse of the wizard who designed his anti-spell defenses, and THEN they can come up with a plan for how to kill the guy (and probably have another quest to get the necessary weapons or ingredients or spell scrolls).
And then they get to confront the guy and make their plan work!
Hit Points are just an abstraction, not necessarily a direct analog to cuts, scrapes, stab wounds, etc. So you could give you BBEG hit points, but from a narrative perspective just describe all the attacks a missing outright. That Magic Missile that auto hits, is deflected away and doesn't come close to touching the BBEG, but you still ding the creature for it.
This way you aren't trying to fit the mechanics of D&D to fit your cool idea (square peg round hole), but as far as the players are concerned that is narrative experience they have.