Pathfinder 1E Beefing Up The Big Bad

Even though an insane wizard is the traditional (in my experience at least) "Big Bad" in a campaign, I want to go a little differently. I have an Orc Barbarian I'm building to be the main enemy and I want my players to have their first confrontation with him this weekend. Odds are they'll beat him, and he'll escape before they can deliver the death blow, due to his devil-ish patron saving his mortal champion.

I know my players and they love the "dedicated rival" thing. I also, during the fight, want to show that he's a little more powerful than your standard barbarian. What I was thinking, while the PCs are fighting their way to him, they see him talking to his Devil Boss and he is granted power. Turn his skin red, give him an extra +2 to Strength and Constitution, maybe some damage reduction. Thoughts?

try this:

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/indices/templates.html

Make him Mythic.
It's the best use of those rules. 2-3 levels higher and a mythic tier or template and he'll be memorable. Especially if he can act twice a round.

The issue of fighting a single guy in most rpgs, pathfinder especially is that simply upping your antagonist's stats still just leads to your PCs just dogpiling on the villain and whaling on him until dead.

Give him haste and freedom of movement. That way he can be a mobile threat to keep your PCs on their toes. It also makes his escape easier.

Most "big bads" in most RPGs, with Pathfinder being worse than average in this respect, need a LOT of beefing up. The biggest problem is that the action economy works against them; they generally only get to do one action to the opposition's four to six. Anything that stuns them for even a single round or otherwise wastes one of those actions - even a single lousy dice roll, sometimes - magnifies that problem to the point where they're a joke.

In many systems, to be a convincing "boss", a creature needs:

• At least twice the hit points (or similar ability-to-take-a-beating) it's likely to get out of the RAW, especially in the case of Pathfinder,
• Some means of going more than once in a round, if not an outright second (and perhaps even third) turn then a lot of abilities that can be used in response to PC actions,
• Some means of resisting or at the very least VERY easily shaking off status effects, especially those that deny it actions, preferably without the PCs feeling like you're cheating them (one solution is to let it drop a stun or similar effect at the expense of taking a certain amount of damage),
• And dramatically improved accuracy for certain "signature" abilities, or at least the ability to reuse them until they actually do something effective.

Even within the D&D family, some systems have at least partial solutions to this. 4E solos solve the first problem and maybe even go too far in the other direction, and that system was starting to do decent work on the other issues in its post-Essentials commercial decline. 5E legendary actions seem like a good solution to the second problem (I say "seem like" because I haven't seen them in actual play yet) and could be easily pressed into service to solve the third. 13th Age might be a good source of ideas here as well.

I adapt solo rules from 4e liberally for Pathfinder.

For turning a normal opponent into a solo monster I give them hp equal to their normal hp multiplied by the number of party members. I give them attacks that can potentially affect the whole party. Usually area attacks like a breath weapon or spell like abilities that affect multiple targets, or for melee I give them free whirlwind attack letting them hit everyone who engages them in melee. I usually try to give them some reaction ability like hitting them damages you, or reaction moves that activate off their turn as reactions or interrupts. This means its attacks are not overwhelming but he engages more of the party and lasts more than a few rounds.

It has worked well for me.

BBEGs almost always (and especially in Pathfinder) tend to need some mooks or significant environmental advantage in order to not be simply dogpiled on and stunlocked into death.

I love the idea of a big bad orc leader badass as a BBEG, but to make sure he's not immediately ass-kicked it would probably be handy to either have him aided by either many sucky troops (like level 1 or 2 orc grunts) or 1 or 2 strong lieutenants like (assuming your BBEG is level.. 10?) then a level 5 shaman/sorcerer orc and a maybe more tactical level 5 Fighter. A few easily dispatched or hard-fought lieutenants plus the BBEG orc barbarian's huge hit point pool should let him last a while. And make sure to give the mooks/LTs some handy scrolls or potions that would be able to break any stunlock on the BBEG or buff him up.

If the PCs are going to see some devil or something give a boon to the orc then be sure to make that boon something serious. Maybe the devil casts powerful magic on the orc like Globe of Invulnerability (or the lesser form) or Stoneskin or something, either given as one-off spells cast by the devil onto him or maybe a 1/day or one-off magical item that the devil gives the orc for use in tough fights like against PCs. An Orc barbarian warlord is scary, but an orc barbarian warlord with Stoneskin giving DR 10/adamantine? Holy hell scary