[SECTION]The First Flame. The Bonfire acts as his own arcane focus, doesn’t count fire-based magic items against his 3 item attunement limit, and his concentration checks for fire spells have advantage. Additionally, all allied flame mages within 30 feet who can see and hear The Bonfire similarly have advantage on concentration checks for fire spells.[/SECTION]
>>This represents his leadership of the flame mages, so they have an easier time sustaining conjure elemental and wall of fire spells in his presence. It also lets him attune to all the items described in the DRAGON article.
This is pretty good, though the attunement thing is odd, in the sense that it’s more a justification for yourself more than anything, because without an in-game explanation the players are still going to be puzzled by his large item list, if they’re made aware of it at all.
[SECTION]Paranoid. The Bonfire cannot be surprised while he is conscious, he gains advantage on Intelligence (Investigation) checks to detect disguised creatures, and can always tell whether his food and drink are poisoned.[/SECTION]
>>I thought this was equivalent to 1-2 feats, as the Alert feat grants immunity to surprise, +5 (advantage) on initiative, and other creatures don't gain advantage on attack rolls against you while hidden. It represents the sort of lengths such a paranoid leader of a secret society might go to, especially when there are holy slayers and agents of the Grand Caliph who'd love to get their hands on him.
This is fine to me except for the poison thing. He should either have a tester or a magical means of discerning this, should it come up. I only say this because I feel like players trying to poison the big bad is pretty rare, and having a custom ability to shut that down would be a big buzzkill.
[SECTION]Pyromancy. The Bonfire’s fire spells have advantage on damage rolls, and when he does damage with a fire spell to a creature with fire resistance, the creature loses its resistance until the end of the Bonfire’s next turn.[/SECTION]
>>I'm uncertain about both parts of this one. Advantage on delayed blast fireball (12d6 / avg = 3.5*12 = 42), for example, would yield (12d6, advantage / avg = 4.5*12 = 54. So that's +12 damage per target, which is pretty potent!
I’m not so concerned about the damage, so much as the resistance loss being annoying to me. Especially with how likely this guy is to have AoE (fireball is famous for a reason), it seems like this just punishes players for itemizing or preparing for their foe, if they learn of his theme. If anything, I’d go the opposite way and make his damage increased further, which can add interesting complications if he has mage-minions trying to dispel the PC’s protections.
One idea for an attack (lifted straight out of WoW, but it was interesting, sue me) was a debuff that ticked down from 10 seconds or so, and then detonated for basically lethal damage to those around the person afflicted. You could use similar ideas here to either force the PCs to split up into unfavorable positions or expend resources to get rid of the magic.
I’ll try and come back and post some more specific attacks, but from a more philosophical design approach, I’d like to point out there’s more ways to relate to fire than just the heat. Smoke, for instance is great for messing with battlefield vision, heatwaves can cause mirages and distortions, and in rare cases an intense enough fire could simply consume all the oxygen in a given space, allowing for suffocation to be a threat.
Personality wise I’d think him to be cold, surprisingly. Flame doesn’t exist for long without something to burn, and I’d expect him to take a similar pragmatic stance in regards to the dirty work he and his associates do; they’re a secret society that rules from behind the scenes because they need society at large to act as the kindling.
Although, if he doesn’t say “there’s smore where that came from” at least once I’ll be disappointed.