My first guess would be to look at the stat block for a Death Knight for inspiration. A Death Knight is a CR 17 creature, so in and of itself would be a daunting enemy to overcome for any party
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews!Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
True, but usually for a monster or NPC you dont need to "build them out" from the ground up like you would a PC. You can go that route, but usually stat blocks have less to keep track of while still giving plenty of cool and unique abilities to play with.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews!Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Great point. This character is going to be a pretty big NPC, though, so I don't mind building them out.
If thats the route you want to go, one "evil paladin" build I have been looking into is the combination of Oath of Conquest Paladin with levels in Undead Patron Warlock (pact of the blade). I think the two subclasses synergize fairly well in a few places and give off the feeling of a quasi undead, intimidating force.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews!Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I'm developing an adventure where the BBEG is an evil paladin. Any ideas on how best to build them out?
Impossible to say since we don't know anything about the campaign. You're baisaclly saying "I'm buying a car. Which one should I buy?" We can't give you any advice since we don't know what you will use it for. It's the same with this NPC. Will they be a frontline general commanding a conquering army? Are they a scheming strategist planning to overthrow an empress? Are they a harbinger of a great old one bringing destruction and oblivion to the whole of creation?
One of my table's campaigns included a Conquest Paladin who was featured as the "big bad"...and let me tell you, he was terrifying.
See, the way the Conquest Paladin works is solid for a player character...they can fight hard, and they can you a moderate amount of tanking...some monsters are immune to fear, however, so it balances the mechanics. Doesn't really matter much, though, since paladins are naturally gifted warriors anyway.
Against other players, however...it's grueling to fight a Conquest Paladin.
Their damage is staggering...constant smiting, at higher levels.
Players, unless they have ways to block it, are susceptible to the "Fear" effect...which means that players will become paralyzed when near the Conquest Paladin...which means they will be taking constant psychic damage for as long as they're paralyzed.
And if they attack the Conquest Paladin...they will take even more psychic damage.
Likewise, Conquest Paladins have fantastic saving throws, so spells can be difficult to land.
When our party fought the Conquest Paladin, we narrowly avoided a "Cloudkill" when we were boxed in, but three of our melee characters became trapped in the terrible death-cycle of the Conquest Paladin's fear & psychic effects.
Every time we hit the guy; we took more damage.
We had no idea what was going on.
IT...WAS...AWESOME.
Conquest Paladin's make fantastic villains. That fight was so very thrilling.
Kaboom's idea of starting with the stat block for the Death Knight (CR 17) is a good idea. To customize it to be your BBEG you could add the Oathbreaker's bonus spells to the DK's spell list, and give the DK resistance to non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage (like the Oathbreaker's level 15 ability). That won't really change much because by that level pretty much all characters have a magical attack. If you want to buff it a bit more you could give it 3 Legendary Resistances, to make it a bit tougher for the casters to hurt it. And if you really wanted to be cruel you could say the DK recovers 10 hit points at the end of each round unless it took either radiant damage or damage from a Holy weapon that round.
That would easily boost the CR up to 18 or 19.
But the toughness of the BBEG alone is only one piece of the puzzle. BBEGs don't usually face enemies alone. The DK is the General of an army of undead. It'll have let's say 50 skeletons and 50 zombies out front as cannon fodder. The next rank will be 10 ogre zombies and 10 specters. The next rank might be 2 wraiths and 2 bodaks. And of course there'll be a couple Vampiric Mists or maybe a couple Flameskulls flying around. And finally, at the DK's side, maybe there's a boneclaw or a shadow assassin as his lieutenant.
That should be a painintheass challenging fight for a party of 19th level players.
I'm developing an adventure where the BBEG is an evil paladin. Any ideas on how best to build them out?
My first guess would be to look at the stat block for a Death Knight for inspiration. A Death Knight is a CR 17 creature, so in and of itself would be a daunting enemy to overcome for any party
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Looks like Oathbreaker might be an option, too.
True, but usually for a monster or NPC you dont need to "build them out" from the ground up like you would a PC. You can go that route, but usually stat blocks have less to keep track of while still giving plenty of cool and unique abilities to play with.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Great point. This character is going to be a pretty big NPC, though, so I don't mind building them out.
If thats the route you want to go, one "evil paladin" build I have been looking into is the combination of Oath of Conquest Paladin with levels in Undead Patron Warlock (pact of the blade). I think the two subclasses synergize fairly well in a few places and give off the feeling of a quasi undead, intimidating force.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Impossible to say since we don't know anything about the campaign. You're baisaclly saying "I'm buying a car. Which one should I buy?" We can't give you any advice since we don't know what you will use it for. It's the same with this NPC. Will they be a frontline general commanding a conquering army? Are they a scheming strategist planning to overthrow an empress? Are they a harbinger of a great old one bringing destruction and oblivion to the whole of creation?
One of my table's campaigns included a Conquest Paladin who was featured as the "big bad"...and let me tell you, he was terrifying.
See, the way the Conquest Paladin works is solid for a player character...they can fight hard, and they can you a moderate amount of tanking...some monsters are immune to fear, however, so it balances the mechanics. Doesn't really matter much, though, since paladins are naturally gifted warriors anyway.
Against other players, however...it's grueling to fight a Conquest Paladin.
Their damage is staggering...constant smiting, at higher levels.
Players, unless they have ways to block it, are susceptible to the "Fear" effect...which means that players will become paralyzed when near the Conquest Paladin...which means they will be taking constant psychic damage for as long as they're paralyzed.
And if they attack the Conquest Paladin...they will take even more psychic damage.
Likewise, Conquest Paladins have fantastic saving throws, so spells can be difficult to land.
When our party fought the Conquest Paladin, we narrowly avoided a "Cloudkill" when we were boxed in, but three of our melee characters became trapped in the terrible death-cycle of the Conquest Paladin's fear & psychic effects.
Every time we hit the guy; we took more damage.
We had no idea what was going on.
IT...WAS...AWESOME.
Conquest Paladin's make fantastic villains. That fight was so very thrilling.
Kaboom's idea of starting with the stat block for the Death Knight (CR 17) is a good idea. To customize it to be your BBEG you could add the Oathbreaker's bonus spells to the DK's spell list, and give the DK resistance to non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage (like the Oathbreaker's level 15 ability). That won't really change much because by that level pretty much all characters have a magical attack. If you want to buff it a bit more you could give it 3 Legendary Resistances, to make it a bit tougher for the casters to hurt it. And if you really wanted to be cruel you could say the DK recovers 10 hit points at the end of each round unless it took either radiant damage or damage from a Holy weapon that round.
That would easily boost the CR up to 18 or 19.
But the toughness of the BBEG alone is only one piece of the puzzle. BBEGs don't usually face enemies alone. The DK is the General of an army of undead. It'll have let's say 50 skeletons and 50 zombies out front as cannon fodder. The next rank will be 10 ogre zombies and 10 specters. The next rank might be 2 wraiths and 2 bodaks. And of course there'll be a couple Vampiric Mists or maybe a couple Flameskulls flying around. And finally, at the DK's side, maybe there's a boneclaw or a shadow assassin as his lieutenant.
That should be a
painintheasschallenging fight for a party of 19th level players.Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.