Fallen Paladin as a Big Badass Foe

[ezequielandrush]

Hi all. I am DMing a long long campaign. They had a paladin friend ,which in a plot twist, became a fallen one.

His story is of vengeance. Being the last survivor in his Sacred Order, remorse and hate grow inside him making him fall into the domains of Cas (Lord of vengeance, from Heroes of horror)

I have the Character pretty clear in my mind, but I don't know how to make a decent Character Sheet out of it in order to make him a dangerous enemy in battle.
Besides, I've never played a Paladin on my own.

Any suggestions? Advices?

Cheers

Zeke

[Geddy2112]

I am assuming your party is fairly high level, and your going for a very bruiser/damage monster paladin.

For stats, charisma/strength as the highest, then constitution. Wis and dex help for saves and initiative but are not overly important. Throw intelligence down a well-all it nets are more skill points you don't need.

Equipment is going to be mithral full plate of speed, whatever 2 handed blade does the most damage, then enchant for as much sheer damage as possible. Dueling, speed, wounding, and vorpal are all great boosts. Scale to your party appropriately.
Otherwise you want items to boost charisma and strength, saves, AC and resistances/immunities. Utility items to stop grapples or negate save or lose/status effects that end a solo fight.

For feats, power attack and cleave to hit multiple party members, juice saves, resistances, hitpoints the like. Ensure that all buff spells are cast before the combat.

[lord_khaine]

If the party is just the least bit optimized then that sounds like a very bad idea.. especially cleave.. that is just about a waste of a feat when fighting pc's.

But if you want help to challenge your party.. then perhaps you should start by describing your party to us.

[Troacctid]

A single beatstick is not going to be a challenge to a typical party. For every action he takes, they will be taking, like, four. That's not a winning proposition, so you need to do something to even the scales.

Step 1 is a fiendish servant. Give your Blackguard something big and imposing that can hold its own in a fight, like a wyvern. That'll help even the odds action-wise.

Step 2 is to use the environment to his advantage. Set up the encounter so that the PCs are subject to environmental effects while the Blackguard is immune. For instance, he might have a ring that lets him see normally in magical darkness, and the whole battlefield could be covered in a deeper darkness effect. Or maybe there are obelisks around the battlefield that toss out random bursts of sound that damage, deafen, and sicken anyone in the area, and the Blackguard is immune to sonic attacks. This makes the fight more cinematic and memorable, and also gives the PCs secondary objectives, like "dispel the darkness" or "sunder the obelisks", which is always fun.

Step 3 is to plan out the Blackguard's tactics. Take stock of all the abilities he has at his disposal, and determine how he's most likely to employ them against the PCs. What will he do in the first round of combat? Who is his primary target? Will he focus fire on one PC, or use debuffs and AoE effects to try and hit all of them at once? How will he react to common tactics that you might expect the PCs to use? It's important to think of these things ahead of time, because you simply won't have time for it during the session--you don't want to make the players wait while you drag out his turn deciding what to do.

Basically, you're not just designing a character, you're designing an encounter. Prepare accordingly.

[TheMooch]

I think this would work well for a bbeg. It has plenty of extra minions (mount, cohort, familiar) that are decent in combat plus a summoning focus so you can just keep bringing in minions.

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boa...sg6531#msg6531

[endur]

First question ... is the fallen paladin now a blackguard, or is he just a fallen paladin ... i.e. fighter type without the feats?

Second question ... is the fallen paladin supposed to be close in level to the PCs or can he be higher level? Does he have to be human or another race? Can he have acquired templates?

The answers to those questions and the abilities of your party members will really drive what the fallen paladin will need to be a challenge.

[ezequielandrush]

Wow... that was a lot of feedback.

My players have party composed by a lvl 8 Ranger, a lvl 7 wizard, a lvl 8 rogue, a lvl 8 bard and a lvl 8 cleric. I know, there are no warrior/barbarian, but they proved to be very resourceful and creative in order to work that out.

My villain is a dwarf blackguard of Cas, I guess Lvl 9/10 it's OK. My approach to the encounter is make the players get closer to the final encounter wandering trough an abandoned castle, making the EL bigger and bigger (partially because I want them to make a good economy of their spells) with the last encounter in the "Big Boss with minions" style.

The environment will be the blackguard castle, so I guess I can put some traps and antimagic zones or other kind of goodies to make a more colorful battle.

We relay heavily in roleplaying and story telling, so the party and PJ's builds are no optimal at all, so I had to take into account that to prepare the encounters. That's something I've learned the hard way (2 PJ killed by an Ogre Barbarian) They have only one tank (the cleric). The rest of them are squishy as hell.


Thanks again for all the feedback

Zeke

PD: Endur, sorry for the misunderstanding. In spanish Blackguard makes no sense at all, the class name translated is "Paladín Caído" wich is literally fallen paladin.

[endur]

PD: Endur, sorry for the misunderstanding. In spanish Blackguard makes no sense at all, the class name translated is "Paladín Caído" wich is literally fallen paladin.

In English, a "fallen paladin" is a paladin who is no longer lawful good and can not use his paladin abilities, so he is basically still a fighter, but does not have smite evil, etc.

In English, "Blackguard" is a prestige class which "fallen paladins" and other evil fighter types can belong to. DMG page 181-183.

It makes sense that a worshipper of Cas would join the Blackguard prestige class.

So your level 10 dwarf Foe could be a level 7 paladin (fallen) / level 3 Blackguard.

[lord_khaine]

PD: Endur, sorry for the misunderstanding. In spanish Blackguard makes no sense at all, the class name translated is "Paladín Caído" wich is literally fallen paladin.

No offense meant, but i honestly think the translator who orriginally coined that term should be beaten with sticks, seeing as it feeds the idea that most Blackguards used to be Paladins, when becomming a blackguard should be the least likely choice a fallen paladin would take.

Anyway.. in regard to building your Blackguard as a memorable challenge for the party.. and not accidentially killing anyone..
Then i would personally recomend Cleric 8/Blackguard 2. With a lot of skeletal minions animated from the remains of his victims.

The advantage of having a spellcasting boss it that it allows for tuning the encounter difficulty very subtly, seeing as the players dont know what spells are prepared.
If the fight is going bad for the party, then the villain might waste a round starting to cast a summon spell, where a lucky hit on him can waste his spell. Or he might stop up to heal his wounds.
On the other hand, if the party is having it a little to easy then he might slam with with something more nasty, like a group buff or curse to swing the tide.

[Man on Fire]

Good idea would be to give him a party - make him gather some allies that he leads, likely casters who have reasons to join him.

[ezequielandrush]

Good idea would be to give him a party - make him gather some allies that he leads, likely casters who have reasons to join him.

I'll do that. Slowly I am less prone to the idea of having just one big enemy. I am crafting an enemy party for most of my encounters. The downside of this approach is that I am a "slow" DM. So my init loops in the battle trend to be slower than before.

Sometimes, if there is 2 allies NPC and 5 enemies I play with 7 characters while my party are just 5 people. I feel like I am playing alone :P

Do you have this issue? How do you work it?


Be good

Zeke