Villainous Competition LIII: Christmas Edition!

[loky1109]

We have a Frozen tree, a Dark tower, a Collosal worm, a Hungry bush, an Ecological extremist, a Revenging ghost, and a God-fighting were-spider.

Far from everything of this was expected for elf-themed round.

[AvatarVecna]

Spoiler: scrapped submission

Show

Venerable Grey Elf (Prodigy/Spellwarped)
Wizard 5 (Elf ACFs)/Elf Paragon 3/Olin Gisir 10

A mage who devoted their life to sealing away dangerous knowledge from the past, stumbled across secrets that warped their body and mind, and drove them to see the world drowned in snow and madness.

Olin Gisir is a 3.0 elf-only lore master focused around keeping dangerous ancient knowledge from falling into the wrong hands. The history bonus it gives would've been enough for this guy to be able to hit DC 50 comfortably by the time he got 8th lvl spells, which is enough bonus for him to get suckered in by The Killing Frost Of Ghulurak. Basic villain plan:

1) Get an almost-finished ice statue set up and frosty in every major city, with three scrolls of Symbol Of Insanity on hand.

2) Get someone locked up near each statue, with restraints self-releasing on new year's eve (or whenever), and use buff spells to infect them with KFoG knowledge/geas.

3) Starting on new year's eye, pop around the world creating new statues in random places.

End result: in every major city, there pops into existence a lethally-cold storm that infects the minds of any who survive. If the sculpture at the heart of the storm is destroyed, the super-cold mile-radius part that geas's people into making more statues sticks around for another 90 years and can't really be dispelled (maybe powerful weather magic could make it go away? I don't recall, but I don't think so). Meanwhile, more bubbles of super-cold/madness are popping up around the world. The way the villain figures, even if he personally gets killed before creating a bunch of areas, he just mass-murdered most of the currently-living humanoids. And because all of the really big cities tend to be in spots that are really convenient for trade (mountain passes, river mouths, that sort of thing), that area being permafrosted for another century makes them close to unusable, which makes civilization's recovery much harder. And if he doesn't get stopped because the big-boy mages are too busy trying to keep society from fulling collapsing, then in a few hundred years the whole planet will be overtaken by the madness snow and this world will be Ghulurak's.

Scrapped for a few reasons. First, build felt like just another mage build, which I don't really like having in these. I just took a wizard, and a full casting PrC, and stuffed it full of Int bonuses. It's not that interesting on its own. Second, the length of time it takes for KFoG to actually threaten the world, along with the seriousness of that threat, means it's hard to pull off in any world with other nigh-epic/epic mages running around, so he has to settle for just killing a lot of people in one burst and crippling the economy for centuries, which was betraying the original intent behind the villain. Granted, that still requires a lot of setup and pre-planning, so still works for the requirement, but it leads into the third reason.

Namely, for this to be the villain, the bombs going off has to be the campaign failstate, so the whole campaign takes place before that. So the PCs aren't really fighting him, as much as uncovering all the prep work he's done. Finding out someone's buying up all the scrolls of symbol of insanity, tracing some missing persons, learning about Ghulurak without succumbing to his madness, getting in contact with the Olin Gisir organization to try and find out who's behind this, arranging with various cities to raid these sculpture houses all at once so that he doesn't panic and try to trigger armageddon early (like might happen if PCs tried to shut them down personally, one at a time). It's an interesting campaign, but it's one where the villain is less the BBEG and more the inciting incident, a figure in the background pulling strings that the PCs can't really mess with because this story only works if he's a nigh-epic caster prior to getting geas'd by Ghulurak, and nigh-epic casters with insane Int and capacity for long-term planning don't get murked that easy.

So the entry would've ended up either reading like the last paragraph (summarizing the cool campaign that could take place with very few actual details), or could get into the weeds (which would be a lot of effort showcasing stuff that isn't the villain himself). As the build didn't feel very inspired, and the story would either be nonexistent or require a monumental effort on my part, and as the original intention had been determined too infeasible to actually work, I decided against continuing.

[Battlechaser]

Spoiler: Unused build idea

Show

One of my idea's was a Szarkai (albino drow) sleeper agent in a major city. A dread necro/cloistered cleric /runecaster/Yathrinsee with mother csyt and a max profession (baker-patissier) who would make the most heavenly elven sweetbreads. She also was a known philantropist feeding the poor.
The plan was to use permanent runes of necrotic cyst above the dooropening that would trigger when passed thus increasing the chance of infection. One-time use runes could be written upon the sweets.
Where I live, when you go to the baker with a young kid, they always offer a sandwich for the young one. Kids have abysmal saves. So we're gaining more and more possible minions, bombs, scrying points over the generations until you reach a critical mass and then you can take over the city using necrotic tumor to keep the the useful ones and bloat/burst the others who automatically rise as zombies.

The main problem was the subterfuge part: not enough skills or abilities to bluff everybody, hide alignment or magical aura's. In a gestalt build that could be solved by adding spymaster.

[Inevitability]

Some great entries, looking forward to the judgements!

An idea I had but didn't end up submitting would've been a Baelnorn lich; elf-only liches that get Turn Undead and can create up to three projections with half their HP but full spellcasting ability per day. Go Dread Necromancer to get unlimited healing in-between projections and send them in so the PCs have to deal with three glass cannon full casters before the actual encounter even starts, then flavor the whole thing as a Christmas Carol 'spirits of christmas past/present/future' thing.

But with the benefit of hindsight, I think I'd have been stepping on Shalan's toes a lot going down that route, so I'm glad I went with something different. Also, making explicitly good creatures into villains always has some question marks surrounding it.

[loky1109]

Table finally.

#	Name	Alignment / Race	Class Levels	Chef	Total	Place
1	Aren Godslayer	CE Were-Tangle Terror Star Elf	Elf Wilderness Companion Martial Wizard 1/Divine Crusader of Ghaunadaur 2/Seeker of the Misty Isle 7/Arcane Archer 2
2	Disappointment	CE Evolved Undead Keening Spirit Karsite Drow	Blasphemous Incantation Cleric 8/Drow Paragon 1/Defiant 12/Lurking Terror 3
3	Camus Ci'xot	CE Greenbound Forestlord Half-Elf	Elf Ranger 3/Half-Elf Drow Fighter 2/Wildrunner 2/Divine Crusader of Merrshaulk 4/Arboreal Guardian 3/Seeker of the Misty Isle 4
4	Feed the Tree	CE Symbiotic Dark Wood Element Spellwarped Yellow Musk Creeper // Star Elf	Totemist 9/Souleater 1 // Lore Song Inspire Awe Music of Creation Bard 7/Binder 1/Lyric Thaumaturge 2/Sublime Chord 4/Spellsinger 5
5	Cestoda Cironess	CE Symbiotic Century Worm // Half-Drow	Dread Necromancer 1/Cloistered Cleric of Kiaransalee 3/Drow Paragon 1/Seeker of the Misty Isle 7/Yathrinshee 5
6	Shadows of the False Elder	CE Tower-Merged Sun Elf	Shadowcaster 7/Elf Domain Martial Wizard 1/Noctumancer 10
7	Woe Tannenbaum	CE Spirit Tree	Binder 1/Ur-Priest 4/Master Alchemist 5

[H_H_F_F]

Do we have any prospective judges for this round?

[Inevitability]

Would anyone be willing to judge this round?

[NotInventedHere]

Eh, I'll toss my hat into the ring to judge the round. The Villainous Competition was the reason I finally signed up the board, I'd rather it not die from lack of judges. It'll take me a little while to whip up a full round of judgements, though, just to set expectations.

[Inevitability]

Eh, I'll toss my hat into the ring to judge the round. The Villainous Competition was the reason I finally signed up the board, I'd rather it not die from lack of judges. It'll take me a little while to whip up a full round of judgements, though, just to set expectations.

Thank you for pledging to judge!

[H_H_F_F]

Eh, I'll toss my hat into the ring to judge the round. The Villainous Competition was the reason I finally signed up the board, I'd rather it not die from lack of judges. It'll take me a little while to whip up a full round of judgements, though, just to set expectations.

Thanks a lot, NotIventedHere! Hope you enjoy judging.

[NotInventedHere]

Hey folks, sorry for the delay on this, I've had a big IRL crisis take over my life for the last couple weeks, but I've managed to carve out enough time to do a first read-through and note taking of each build, and I'm hoping to have the judgements up some time either at the end of this week or next week.

[Inevitability]

Hey folks, sorry for the delay on this, I've had a big IRL crisis take over my life for the last couple weeks, but I've managed to carve out enough time to do a first read-through and note taking of each build, and I'm hoping to have the judgements up some time either at the end of this week or next week.

No need to apologize: real life comes first! I hope you can weather the crisis - take whatever time you need and best of luck with your personal circumstances.

[H_H_F_F]

Hey folks, sorry for the delay on this, I've had a big IRL crisis take over my life for the last couple weeks, but I've managed to carve out enough time to do a first read-through and note taking of each build, and I'm hoping to have the judgements up some time either at the end of this week or next week.

It's all good! Thanks for the update, and best of luck with the IRL stuff.

[Inevitability]

How's the judgement coming along?


Also, for a possible future round, how do we feel about a supervillain theme?

Masked Menace!
-Must be capable of concealing their identity somehow, whether through illusions, polymorphing, mundane disguises, or anything else.
-Must possess and focus on the use of a single supernatural 'power' or thematically linked group of powers. A villain with fire powers is fine. A villain with gravity, attack deflection, and teleportation effects who flavors it as a single ability to fold spacetime is fine. A villain who summons demons and throws orbs of force and creates illusions and turns foes into frogs probably does not.
-Larger-than-life persona, capable of robbing banks and getting into tense standoffs with their evenly matched heroic nemesis.

[Prime32]

That has me pondering a "Master Criminal" round where you need to do something illegal and get away with it... followed by a "Master Detective" round where entrants must try to identify and arrest as many of the Master Criminals as possible. The second one could potentially be a crossover round for another contest like Iron Chef or Monster Mash.

Though going through the archives it looks like previous rounds have already had Crime Lord (two entries) and The Sheriff (five entries).

[NotInventedHere]

How's the judgement coming along?

Hi Inevitability and other folks. News is, I am continuing to have an escalatingly Bad Time IRL, sorry. Still trying to sort out the judgements among all the other stuff though. No ETA at the moment.

[H_H_F_F]

Hope everything works out in the end... Best wishes!

[Battlechaser]

Same here.

[Inevitability]

Anyone other than NotInventedHere who might be able to judge?


Also, another future competition idea:

Blood War Heroes
-Must be either a Chaotic Evil outsider or a Lawful Evil outsider.
-If Lawful, must possess and showcase lawful-only classes or feats.
-If Chaotic, must possess and showcase chaotic-only classes or feats.

If this is too generic, you can add a line mandating abilities that specifically target the opposing alignment along the law/chaos axis, like being able to cast Chaos Hammer or use Smite Chaos.

[loky1109]

Round theme idea.

Reversed Clarke's third law.
It's direct form:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Reversed form should be:

Any magic is indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology.

Task: get D&D rules and make Sci-Fi villain. He could be some known villain or just have a recognizable Sci-Fi vibe.

[Tohron]

Round theme idea.

Reversed Clarke's third law.
Task: get D&D rules and make Sci-Fi villain. He could be some known villain or just have a recognizable Sci-Fi vibe.

I've already had a villain idea floating around that would fit really well with this, so I'd definitely be interested.

[NotInventedHere]

Just to keep everyone updated, I have half the judgements done now, and the other half will be done soon. Apologies again for the delay.