I'm relatively new at DMing and I'm running a campaign in Eberron. So far I've been using standard monsters from the manual, but I want the BBEG to have some unique flavor. What level should the BBEG be in comparison to pc levels? Eg if they are lv 10, I thought the npc could be around lv 15, is that too much? Too low?
Well from the sounds of it you're making the npc into a full fledged character. Unless by lvl 15 you really meant CR 15 in which case that would generally be far too high a CR for most lvl 10 parties to beat without uhm... creative use of game mechanics... As far as making the npc a lvl 15 PC that you can control... honestly it's a tough question to ask whether that would be balanced or not since dnd rarely branches into pvp in most cases, and when it does usually one side dominates the other. I'd say it would ultimately end up depending on the items your players have versus the items the BBEG has, and how many PCs are in the campaign. For instance if they're a party of 6 or 7 players than they'll probably be able to win fairly easily just by relying on the action economy being extremely in their favor, but if it's a party of three or four it would be more difficult to consider and would basically depend heavily on how many powerful magic items the players have collected throughout the campaign. In either scenario you can expect multiple PCs to go down simply because a lvl 15 character would have enough health and dmg potential to knock a few unconscious before going down himself
If by lvl you meant CR than I'd recommend CR 10-12 again depending on how difficult you want it to be and how many PCs are in the party. In addition I'd probably also include a couple CR 2-3 creatures that could be used to break up the PC and disrupt the party otherwise it's totally possible that they'll just gang up on the big bad and make the fight relatively trivial by locking him down and getting more or less permanent advantage on all melee attack rolls from flanking him. Basically keep the action economy in mind (how many actions can the PCs make each round vs how many can you make). Finally, I'd personally make sure that the 2-3 CR monsters mentioned earlier have max hp or maybe even give their hp a slight buff just so they don't die too quickly. As for making the CR 10-12 boss you can reference similar stat blocks and use one you like as a template if you have trouble making your own monsters. Also as mentioned earlier you may want to use the encounter builder; however, don't think it'll necessarily be balanced just because it says it should if the PCs have a lot of loot or missed a lot of loot throughout the campaign you may need to adjust the difficulty up or down as you see fit.
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I'm relatively new at DMing and I'm running a campaign in Eberron. So far I've been using standard monsters from the manual, but I want the BBEG to have some unique flavor. What level should the BBEG be in comparison to pc levels? Eg if they are lv 10, I thought the npc could be around lv 15, is that too much? Too low?
Thanks for the help!
You could use the encounter builder on DNDB: https://www.dndbeyond.com/encounter-builder
Alternatively you can go here for quick reference: https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/calc/enc_size.html
That's what happens when you wear a helmet your whole life!
My house rules
Well from the sounds of it you're making the npc into a full fledged character. Unless by lvl 15 you really meant CR 15 in which case that would generally be far too high a CR for most lvl 10 parties to beat without uhm... creative use of game mechanics... As far as making the npc a lvl 15 PC that you can control... honestly it's a tough question to ask whether that would be balanced or not since dnd rarely branches into pvp in most cases, and when it does usually one side dominates the other. I'd say it would ultimately end up depending on the items your players have versus the items the BBEG has, and how many PCs are in the campaign. For instance if they're a party of 6 or 7 players than they'll probably be able to win fairly easily just by relying on the action economy being extremely in their favor, but if it's a party of three or four it would be more difficult to consider and would basically depend heavily on how many powerful magic items the players have collected throughout the campaign. In either scenario you can expect multiple PCs to go down simply because a lvl 15 character would have enough health and dmg potential to knock a few unconscious before going down himself
If by lvl you meant CR than I'd recommend CR 10-12 again depending on how difficult you want it to be and how many PCs are in the party. In addition I'd probably also include a couple CR 2-3 creatures that could be used to break up the PC and disrupt the party otherwise it's totally possible that they'll just gang up on the big bad and make the fight relatively trivial by locking him down and getting more or less permanent advantage on all melee attack rolls from flanking him. Basically keep the action economy in mind (how many actions can the PCs make each round vs how many can you make). Finally, I'd personally make sure that the 2-3 CR monsters mentioned earlier have max hp or maybe even give their hp a slight buff just so they don't die too quickly. As for making the CR 10-12 boss you can reference similar stat blocks and use one you like as a template if you have trouble making your own monsters. Also as mentioned earlier you may want to use the encounter builder; however, don't think it'll necessarily be balanced just because it says it should if the PCs have a lot of loot or missed a lot of loot throughout the campaign you may need to adjust the difficulty up or down as you see fit.