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Mephisoth
2008-11-05, 12:46 AM
In a campaign I run regularly, I've got a BBEG who is a sneaky sort, I've got him imagined as a gestalt Swordsage/Ninja 10, seeing some interesting combinations of abilities with the two classes. However, I'm having a difficult time going through the large numbers of abilities, feats, magic gear available and selecting a batch of them.

For a little background, the last time they went up against this fellow, he was a straight Ninja, and it seemed that the limited number of actions, combined with low damage and weak survivability, made him pretty easy to take down, and resulted in a fairly anti-climactic battle, in which he was beaten down almost single-handedly by the party's low int barbarian, forcing him to flee after 2 rounds, despite waves of minions they had to fight through before hand without a rest. (They aren't exactly major powergamers, either, most of them are playing pretty tame stuff, like poorly put together bards and straight class fighters, with one player who is a notable exception, playing a batman type wizard)

I'm looking for round two to present more of a challenge, however, at the same time, I'm not looking to floor the party, so I'm not really after the most optimized builds around. It's safe to assume this character has the resources on hand to manipulate and seperate members of the party and attack at times and locations of his own choosing, and the members of the party will likely be around levels 7-8 when this occurs.

I'm hoping for something looking at Setting Sun, Shadow Hand, and Desert Winds, as they seem to fit the character better than the other schools.

I'm going to avoid giving more specific details about the party composition, as they will likely recognize their own characters if I do, as some of them frequent these forums, and will likely read through this regardless of whether I ask them not to.

Whatever help you can offer me would be greatly appreciated, as other things have left me with much less time to prepare for my games, and it's having a noticeable impact on the game.

elliott20
2008-11-05, 02:10 AM
The good thing about the martial adepts lies in their ability to dish a lot of damage in a single maneuver, so that should be your focus, figuring out maneuvers that he can use to which can deliver a considerable amount of damage in one go. Having said that, SS themselves aren't really able to take a lot of damage. In the end, he is still only one man, and so with the whole party focusing on him he won't last anyway.

You need to use his strength though, and that's his ability to sneak away, disappear and pluck at the PCs from the darkness. This works with shadow hand and so your base tactic should be a hit and run tactic. With swordsage, your ninja is that much better at doing JUST that.

so here's what I suggest you do:

first, the most dangerous member of this party seems to be the batman mage. If your SS is aware of this, (either through his previous experience or through more investigation work) that's what he'll be spending his big damage move on. you need to get close to the wizard first. Shadow Stride (shadow hand 2) stance allows you to teleport 50 feet as a move action. Of course, being that you're a ninja 10 as well, there are probably other abilities you can use to achieve the same end.

The most important thing though, is to not let him fight the party alone! Even if just for distraction and meat shields, throw some minions at them! They could be body guards who are all just lvl 3 barbarians, it doesn't matter.

What he would do, if I were in his situation, is I would have the lackeys close in on them and engage them first, while keeping myself hidden. (again, there are shadow hand maneuvers and ninja abilities that allow you to do that) The wizard will almost certainly retreat and try to cast from a safe distance while getting the party warriors to step in between when he sees the melee warriors closing in on him.

That's when he'll be isolated and is also the best time for your ninja to sneak around the side, jump out and do your own big hit. you might take out the wizard, you might not. The point is the threat of death will be very real this time. After that? use cloak of deception (shadow hand 2, gain greater invis for one round) to run away into concealment, and start taking shots at the rest of the party one by one.

Don't go too far from the wizard though as the party, if they are an effective one, will try to help him out so he can get back to contributing to the battle. This will also serve as the one chance the PCs have to pin him down and take him out.

too bad he's only level 10 and not level 12 as he could also get desert tempest (desert wind 6, fire damage to all those he moves past). then, spend one maneuver on turning invisible with cloak of deception, making you invisible and impossible to hit, turn on assassin's stance (shadow hand 3, +2d6 sneak attack damage), and then use desert tempest to do sneak attack damage as well as fire damage to everyone you run past whilst invisible.

Keld Denar
2008-11-05, 02:42 AM
Use some of the good Shadow Hand disables and ability damage moves. The str and con damaging strikes are pretty good, and since its damage, it'll stack up over time. Also Hand of Death is pretty nice, since it paralyzes a foe for 1d3 rounds. You could get lucky on this. Take

Set up the area where they fight with lots of cover. Big columns or other obstructions that the guy can hide behind while recovering maneuvers or repositioning. Think like, the Basement stage from the ol' Goldeneye N64 game. Shadows, alcoves, pillars, and the like. Maybe throw in some grizzly or garish statues to taste.

Stock him up with a couple of medium leveled healing potions so he can retreat for a round and chug and maybe take Vitalizing Recovery for a little extra healing. To get into and out of combat, use your ninja ki to turn invisible then make some decent move silent checks to get in or away. Definitely get this guy a pair of Boots of Springing and Striding or have him chug a potion of Expeditious Retreat, he'll need as much movement as he can. While hes out in the open, use counters like Baffling Defense and Setting Sun counters to keep as much damage off of you as possible. Child of Shadows stance would probably be the best stance to stay in, as this would give you a 50% miss chance on just about every round.

Then, just duck in with ki invisibility and make a strike. You'll have 50% miss chance from stance and if anything gets through that, use Baffling Defense or another counter. Next round, hit with a Mountain Strike or similar, and then Shadow Stride (move) behind a pillar. Next round, ki invis and run in and strike again, and then use Cloak of Deception, strike again, and move behind another pillar. Refresh maneuvers and chug a potion as needed, and then repeat. If you run out of ki, you can still run in with Cloak, strike, then strike your next turn and Blink, hide and refresh manevuers, and repeat. You could potentially do this all day long, provided the party doesn't huddle into a group and turn on a bunch of lights. If that happens, retreat and watch from afar. When they let their guard down, STRIKE! They'll be so scared to even sleep, they'll probably be crazy freakin out.

Oh, and make sure you grab the Diamond Mind manevuers for fort and will saves. No point in having an awesome trick get ruined because the wizard readies an action to Phantasmal Killer your beshadowed badass. With 8 maneuvers readied at level 10, you could have a line up like:

Moment of Perfect Mind
Mind Over Body
Shadow Stride
Cloak of Deception
Baffling Defense
Bloodletting Strike
Strength Draining Strike
Obscuring Shadow Veil

That gives you some good mobility, defense, and 3 different damaging strikes to do, depending on who you need to soften up. You can always buy a round to refresh maneuvers from hiding, so only having 3 strikes isn't a huge deal. Be careful about burning out on swift actions though. Best to retreat to recover if you are forced to use a counter, than chance a extra attack. If you want to be a total bastard, you can take Adaptive Style, and after you see your mage is out of boom (or out of commission from str damage) you can swap out some of your more defensive abilities for offensive ones to taste. Also, the Shadow Blade feat is very nice here. Use a dagger, since your strikes and dex will be doing most of the damage, although a short sword would work just as well.

This is gonna be VERY trying on your PCs though. Its frustrating when you can't just grab something and smash it. If things get too tense, break off, or maybe even parlay from a position of power. Or just kill em all off willy nilly. You're the boss!

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-05, 03:30 AM
How set are you on the Ninja half of the gestalt?

A dark grey elf swordsage 10//factotum 10 can be very sneaky and accomplish all of what you want while actually being a threat.

Assuming 32 point buy you want an 18 in Int and an 18 in Dex. That is 20/20 after the grey elf bonuses. Put both level up points in Dex and you want the best Dex and Int boosting items you can get. Without items your Hide and Move Silently bonuses should be +32 and +30 respectively. With masterwork items your looking at another +2 each.

For feats you want Faerie Mysteries Initiate (Dragon #319), because it lets you use Int for bonus HP instead of Con, Adaptive Style, Shadow Blade, and Weapon Finesse. Wield a dagger and you get to base To Hit off of Dex and gain Dex to Damage as well. If you want, change your racial bonus feats to Font of Inspiration using Embrace the Dark Chaos and Shun the Dark Chaos (but you shouldn't need to do this).

Factotum gets you Int to Initiative (in addition to Dex), which combined with the Swordsage bonus means that you should win Initiative when it comes up (your at +14 before items).

You want Assassin's Stance and Cloak of Deception. Basically, you hide and sneak up on the party, attacking from surprise. Once you're in position you launch a sneak attack on one of the party members, spending 2 Inspiration Points to gain your Int bonus on the attack and damage roll and 3 IP on cunning strike to gain +3d6 sneak attack damage on the attack. With Assassins Stance you deal 1d4+5d6+4+5 damage and have +19 on the attack roll (with the player being denied Dex to his AC). That's an average of 29 damage, which will drop a wizard with no Con bonus and average HP to negatives in 1 hit. Use the Elder Mountain Hammer strike for an additional 6d6 damage, meaning an average of 50 damage.

And that's just the surprise round. Since you should have won initiative then everyone else is still flat-footed. Take this opportunity to finish off the PC you targeted if necessary and then use Cloak of Deception and run away. Hopefully you finished off your target in the first round, if so then after retreating you should make a hide check. Now you wait until your IP and maneuvers have been recovered and repeat the process.

Blue Paladin
2008-11-05, 11:45 AM
Jeez Tippy. He said not floor the party. Your SS//F could probably wipe the party...

A few notes: Shadow Stride is lvl 5, not 2. The level 2 teleport move is Shadow Jaunt and is a standard action. It's okay for an escape hatch, but no good for an ambush.

I'm going to just list a bunch of not-exactly-optimal maneuvers and why you might consider them:

Dragon's Flame (Desert Wind 5): it's a cone AoE fire effect. 6d6 is an okay amount of damage, and you might snag the whole party. Save for half.

Searing Blade (Desert Wind 4): on your attack, each strike gets an extra 10+2d6 fire damage. Use this on the party tank for extra pain. [Yes, you can use it on the party squishy and kill him, but you're not looking for party wipe, right?] As DM you have the right to make this the Boost it should be.

Death Mark (Desert Wind 3): another (usually small) AoE fire effect. 6d6 again, and it's fun to describe how you're making your target explode in flames and hurting his buddies.

Soaring Throw (Setting Sun 5): Chuck someone you really have no business chucking. Fling him away and deal 8d6 as a kicker.

Strike of the Broken Shield (Setting Sun 4): Hit a guy; he saves or is flat-footed. Useless if you're solo, but if you're in a room full of minion level 5 rogues...

Baffling Defense (Setting Sun 2): If said Batman decides to drop a touch spell on you, you can pull this out of your hat.

Counter Charge (Setting Sun 1): I always get this anyway; even if the Barbarian doesn't do Lion Totem cheese, it's nice to have an option.

Bloodletting Strike (Shadow Hand 5): Con damage (save for half) gets scary over time. If you're doing hit and run, you can nickel and dime the party to death (or as close to death as you want).

Strength Draining Strike (Shadow Hand 3): Str damage (save for half); basically a non-lethal version of the above strategery. Also fun to watch the expressions of the players as they get incrementally worse and worse at combat (or the looks of terror from the wizard's player as he goes down to 4 Strength and is a hairsbreadth from not being able to carry their own spellbook). Dropping someone into medium/heavy load because of their own gear just makes me laugh. Especially when I'm controlling the full-speed light load enemy who's getting away...

Assassin's Stance (Shadow Hand 2 stance): Extra +2d6 SA. More dice is more fun. Good times.

Shadow Stride (Shadow Hand 5)/Shadow Jaunt (Shadow Hand 2): Non-magical teleport. Pretty self-explanatory.

Island of Blades (Shadow Hand 1 stance): Again, useless by yourself. Get a bunch of minions and SA away.

And this is just the Swordsage side. I haven't mentioned Ninja because I'm not all that familiar with it. I know it has ki-based invisibility tricks and what not. Figure out what overlaps and what you don't need. Just have fun with it.

The Glyphstone
2008-11-05, 11:57 AM
Jeez Tippy. He said not floor the party. Your SS//F could probably wipe the party...
.

I think Tippy is psychologically incapable of not designing an overpowering encounter...remember, the Tippyverse has dozens of advanced 48HD Dire Tigers as a weakened version of a boss fight for level 20 PC's...

Keld Denar
2008-11-05, 12:11 PM
The problem with Desert Wind boosts is that they really rely on getting a full attack in, preferably with multiple weapons. Same with Assassin's stance. If you are staging a single guy against a party and he stands toe to toe, they are gonna destroy him due to action advantage. You don't want to stand there and trade full attacks with the raging barbarian, you want to dog him and wear him out. This guy has time on his side. If you go with my maneuver setup (which only uses 2 5th level maneuvers, which is all a 10th level SS should have baring use of feats), he could get in, get 2 strikes off, and get out every few rounds, and between Child of the Shadows, Baffling Defense, and the 2 Diamond Mind maneuvers, he does a good job of negating about 60-70% of what the party tries to do to him. Thus, he shores up the action advantage while making a meaningful contribution to damage. The CON damage is especially insidious, since CON affects fort saves, which are required to keep from taking more CON damage. So you hit the BDF with it the first round, and he saves, takes 2 CON, and is then at a -1 to his fort save. Couple rounds later, he gets hit again, takes 2 more, and now has a -2 to his fort save. Couple rounds later, hit him again, and maybe he won't make the save this time, and takes 4 CON for a -4 to his save. Now he's really in trouble, because down 8 CON on top of the damage the strikes does + Sudden Strike + dex will start getting his HP pretty thin. Another hit, and if he doesn't make the fort save, he'll probably go down.

Oh, make sure you triple check the casting time on Lesser Restoration if you go with this tactic. It has a casting time of 3 full rounds. If your cleric tries to cure somone of the ability damage the are taking, shank him too. The concentration check to keep a 2nd level spell after taking 30 damge is impossible for a level 10 character to make. This'll chew through a lot of potions of Lesser Restoration then, if they have any, which also keeps the party on the defense. I think if you go with my build, you'll have a really really challenging encounter, which will be memorable.

Unless your wizard gets a Glitterdust off on the guy. Then he's pretty hosed...Even using Moment of Perfect Mind, there is no save for the illumination part, and the -40 to hide checks more than negates the +20 to hide checks you get from being Invisible. And that sucks.

Mephisoth
2008-11-05, 01:52 PM
I'm seeing some useful techniques from the responses I've recieved, thank you much. I suppose I should be a little more clear on what sort of situation this guy is likely to matter in.

The odds are high that this particular character is besieging a well defended city with a number of tough undead, orcs, kobolds, and a few outsiders.

The defenders will likely be on top of some pretty solid stone walls, with archers, Footmen, boiling oil, caster back-up, etc, but the party will probably be split up to a fair degree to deal with various threats coming at different parts of the city.

The statement about the Batman wizard was misleading, as we had his character betray the party and side up with the BBEG in question, due to player time issues.

I have a rather large group of people at the moment, which is why I try and get them a bit split up during the fight, so nobody feels useless or redundant.

So far, we've got in the party:
-A healing focused cleric that is somewhat weak due to choosing a race with an LA
-The classic low-int, high-strength half-orc barbarian
- a ranger with a very nasty sand-worm companion from Sandstorm, (He took the PrC from this book, something Dragoon)
-Two rogues, a well built halfling rogue with a legacy weapon, and a somewhat weaker human one focused on trapfinding and skill-monkeying
-A complete power-gamer of a Psy-warr who recently joined, and is looking very nasty with self-buffs and TWF
-A warforged fighter focused on defense and resilience, likes to be a tank
-Yet another ranger, archery focused, not a very good grasp of the rules, newer player
-Dragonwrought Kobold sorc, about as strong as can be expected
-A lesser celestial taking levels in his race as described in Savage species, several levels lower than the party atm, is played part-time by a person who rarely has time to play any more

And as mentioned, a fairly balanced amount of supporting NPCs, mooks, and siege weapons on both sides. I'm concerned that with a character as capable of controlling when and where fights occur to the degree that this BBEG will be pretty difficult to make challenging to make challenging to fight without feeling unfun or arbitrary. (I don't want it to seem like he simply materializes from thin air, gibs a PC, then disappears until 5 rounds later and gibs another, probably not too fun from a PC PoV)

Callos_DeTerran
2008-11-05, 03:15 PM
Unless your wizard gets a Glitterdust off on the guy. Then he's pretty hosed...Even using Moment of Perfect Mind, there is no save for the illumination part, and the -40 to hide checks more than negates the +20 to hide checks you get from being Invisible. And that sucks.

Invisibility (+20) and Greater Shadows (+15) WILL lower that penalty to only -5 though which is a bad penalty to have but not crippling.

elliott20
2008-11-06, 02:25 AM
I'm seeing some useful techniques from the responses I've recieved, thank you much. I suppose I should be a little more clear on what sort of situation this guy is likely to matter in.

The odds are high that this particular character is besieging a well defended city with a number of tough undead, orcs, kobolds, and a few outsiders.

The defenders will likely be on top of some pretty solid stone walls, with archers, Footmen, boiling oil, caster back-up, etc, but the party will probably be split up to a fair degree to deal with various threats coming at different parts of the city.

The statement about the Batman wizard was misleading, as we had his character betray the party and side up with the BBEG in question, due to player time issues.

I have a rather large group of people at the moment, which is why I try and get them a bit split up during the fight, so nobody feels useless or redundant.

So far, we've got in the party:
-A healing focused cleric that is somewhat weak due to choosing a race with an LA
-The classic low-int, high-strength half-orc barbarian
- a ranger with a very nasty sand-worm companion from Sandstorm, (He took the PrC from this book, something Dragoon)
-Two rogues, a well built halfling rogue with a legacy weapon, and a somewhat weaker human one focused on trapfinding and skill-monkeying
-A complete power-gamer of a Psy-warr who recently joined, and is looking very nasty with self-buffs and TWF
-A warforged fighter focused on defense and resilience, likes to be a tank
-Yet another ranger, archery focused, not a very good grasp of the rules, newer player
-Dragonwrought Kobold sorc, about as strong as can be expected
-A lesser celestial taking levels in his race as described in Savage species, several levels lower than the party atm, is played part-time by a person who rarely has time to play any more

And as mentioned, a fairly balanced amount of supporting NPCs, mooks, and siege weapons on both sides. I'm concerned that with a character as capable of controlling when and where fights occur to the degree that this BBEG will be pretty difficult to make challenging to make challenging to fight without feeling unfun or arbitrary. (I don't want it to seem like he simply materializes from thin air, gibs a PC, then disappears until 5 rounds later and gibs another, probably not too fun from a PC PoV)
well from the sound of things, the only possible problematic player here would be the psy-war. And even then, all you need to do is just do hit and run tactics so he will never be able to pull off a full attack (and thus never utilizing his TWF)

To a degree, I can understand saying that you don't want the encounter to become running a formula over and over again. "jump in, kill one guy, run away, rinse and repeat". Something like this could be massively frustrating after the 2nd or 3rd time especially. This is why you need to do the following things to make things fair.

1. make the villain take time to do some recon work on the PCs, either through his own minions or by himself. Either way, give the players a chance to notice and/or stop said recon.

2. give the players a chance to get some ideas about him as well. The more they invest into seeing what he's capable of, the better.

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-06, 02:50 AM
Jeez Tippy. He said not floor the party. Your SS//F could probably wipe the party...

Sure, if the DM choose to have him do so. He could drop a PC every 5 miniutes or so using hit and run tactics. But give him some drow sleeping poison and just have him harass the party. Perhaps he wants to capture them instead of killing them so he repeatedly attacks them, getting the cleric to waste his spells. And with readied actions the PC's could take him out, and if they get him in a stand up fight they will win.

But the OP wanted a ninja type or sneaky type character, and that means no stand up fight.


I think Tippy is psychologically incapable of not designing an overpowering encounter...remember, the Tippyverse has dozens of advanced 48HD Dire Tigers as a weakened version of a boss fight for level 20 PC's...

This isn't an overpowering encounter (well any more than an ECL 10 against an ECL 8 party is). The PC's stand a fair chance if they think it through and plan. And if the DM decides that he doesn't want a TPK or player kill then he can just have the BBEG busy doing other stuff or attack another player this time around. Perhaps he just wanted to slow the PC's down for a few rounds to allow some of his minions to attack a location on the walls, and dropping one of them to negatives is enough to do that. As for the Dire Tigers, those are easy to fight. I could take them on with a single level 20 wizard and beat them, don't even need Cindy. It was also a final boos fight against thousand year old diviner lich that was taking place in the lich's base, assuming the PC's do everything perfectly they should have to get extraordinarily lucky to pull off the win.