I'm building a story arch for a campaign with some very experienced players. I have been really interested in some concepts I've found on the idea of Necrobotany, basically reanimating the dead with plants to aid in function and movement, slowly becoming more mutated with vine limbs and muscle made of plants themselves. Its a neat concept with lots of flavor for some difficult-to-impress players. I found some amazing homebrew work already done on the reanimated beings and monsters already which is designed for a necrobotany style villain. But I can't seem to grasp a good BigBadBoss design. Archfey? Lich? Archfey Lich? Homebrew monster? Evil Treant? Is Orcus involved in this villain's story? Help me meet this character, they are just out of reach in the corners of my brain.
Evil Druid could work really well, as you'll have a lot of ways to make the backstory interesting. Also, an evil druid would make sense, once they meet the villain after fighting it's minions.
This sounds right up the alley of the Golgari swarm on Ravnica. You could grab Vraska, a planeswalking gorgon as a BigBad, or one of the current or former Golgari guildmasters.
Okay so after looking at Circle of Spores, which somehow I've never read closely, I think that would be a great starting point. Maybe add some homebrew necromancy flavoring and choose a race which would be significant as a boss battle, like an archfey or something, and have at it. I just gotta figure out how to build it all into one character.
The final build I made was for a pretty high powered party of experienced players so I had to get a bit creative. I used a custom built Spirit of Durthu mini from warhammer for my bbeg. His final build was an archfey necromancer Druid. He wasn’t leveled due to being a bbeg obviously, but he was pretty highly scaled in the end. I pulled mostly from circle of spores for the Druid spells. I also balanced the encounter by adding 16 botanic skeletons as a pseudo army that regenerated periodically until the party killed the bbeg. I had a party of 8 at the time and all were mid level so having a full scale army was definitely a good move. The bbeg had three forms in order to break up the battle, the first was his largest form in which he inhabited armor made from the corrupted body of a dead treant. The second was his archfey form. The third was the next day as he came back in an undead form. While this was running, I had his “Master,” a skeletal dragon that he was restoring to life, reforming off screen on a timer so at the end of the battle was had a dramatic moment where this monsterous undead ancient green dragon flew overhead and into the jungle. It was a good time and one of my favorite drama moments for all the players involved. We had several druids and worshippers of Melora in the party, as well as one Fey warlock under Titania. So lots of personal investment in this battle for those characters.
I'm building a story arch for a campaign with some very experienced players. I have been really interested in some concepts I've found on the idea of Necrobotany, basically reanimating the dead with plants to aid in function and movement, slowly becoming more mutated with vine limbs and muscle made of plants themselves. Its a neat concept with lots of flavor for some difficult-to-impress players. I found some amazing homebrew work already done on the reanimated beings and monsters already which is designed for a necrobotany style villain. But I can't seem to grasp a good BigBadBoss design. Archfey? Lich? Archfey Lich? Homebrew monster? Evil Treant? Is Orcus involved in this villain's story? Help me meet this character, they are just out of reach in the corners of my brain.
Evil Druid could work really well, as you'll have a lot of ways to make the backstory interesting. Also, an evil druid would make sense, once they meet the villain after fighting it's minions.
That makes sense. How would you incorporate the necromancy? Multiclass the Druid?
Circle of Spores, possibly reflavored.
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You could also make it have some custom abilities, it doesn't have to be 100% non-homebrew.
This sounds right up the alley of the Golgari swarm on Ravnica. You could grab Vraska, a planeswalking gorgon as a BigBad, or one of the current or former Golgari guildmasters.
I don't know anything about Ravnica, but I'll definitely look into it!
Yeah, I just have zero experience with crafting my own homebrews. I have no idea what I'd even start with.
Okay so after looking at Circle of Spores, which somehow I've never read closely, I think that would be a great starting point. Maybe add some homebrew necromancy flavoring and choose a race which would be significant as a boss battle, like an archfey or something, and have at it. I just gotta figure out how to build it all into one character.
I've tried making a necrobotanist character, and what I did was start as circle of spores druid and multiclassed into necromancy wizard
The final build I made was for a pretty high powered party of experienced players so I had to get a bit creative. I used a custom built Spirit of Durthu mini from warhammer for my bbeg. His final build was an archfey necromancer Druid. He wasn’t leveled due to being a bbeg obviously, but he was pretty highly scaled in the end. I pulled mostly from circle of spores for the Druid spells. I also balanced the encounter by adding 16 botanic skeletons as a pseudo army that regenerated periodically until the party killed the bbeg. I had a party of 8 at the time and all were mid level so having a full scale army was definitely a good move. The bbeg had three forms in order to break up the battle, the first was his largest form in which he inhabited armor made from the corrupted body of a dead treant. The second was his archfey form. The third was the next day as he came back in an undead form. While this was running, I had his “Master,” a skeletal dragon that he was restoring to life, reforming off screen on a timer so at the end of the battle was had a dramatic moment where this monsterous undead ancient green dragon flew overhead and into the jungle. It was a good time and one of my favorite drama moments for all the players involved. We had several druids and worshippers of Melora in the party, as well as one Fey warlock under Titania. So lots of personal investment in this battle for those characters.
For the class maybe a Death Cleic / Circle of Spores Druid multi class could work ?