Need Help with Homebrew Final Boss

[Arctic Wolf]

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Hello everyone. First, I would like to say I am working on a campaign where the final boss will be a demon prince but one that I am making up. I am sort of having some trouble with thinking of some move names and effects for him.

So the background for him is that he is an Obyrith called Nihilious, Prince of Time. He betrayed the Queen of Chaos by going against her when Miska the Spider-Wolf was being fought with the Rod of Seven parts, which resulted in their loss. He did it because he has some weird quirks where he likes to intervene with fate and reverse time to let others redo history for specific events, but at the price of their soul when they die. This is what caused the universe where the Obyriths came from to die since he bargained with so many beings and he is the one who came up with the idea to breach another realm. Unfortunately for him, the Queen of Chaos was stronger than he anticipated, since he like her, never showed their true strength, and he used most of his power to seal her in one of the planes in the Abyss.

After this, his soul wondered about in a sleepless state when in a wonderous turn of events, he was reborn as a human. After he grew up and realized who he was, he later learned that his power was split into 4 gems that represent the four most interesting things to see in history and that reappear throughout time: False leaders, War, Famine, and Death (this is where the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse theme comes in).

So when the PCs meet him, they will think he is just a normal Noble Consort of the Queen (well as normal as one of those would be lol)of the country they are in while he secretly trains them up to retrieve these gems to restore him to his former glory and the reason he is doing it this way is to make it more interesting since he loves history. All while this is going on, his own consorts will aid the PCs in making the Rod of Seven Parts so he can get back at the Queen of Chaos by destroying Miska since the Rod in my game serves as a key to the plane Miska is trapped in as well as the key to destroying him and eventually her. He really doesn't care about anything else except how people will use his power to overcome fate, and to kill Ashardalon for using so many souls at the Bastion of Unborn Souls, and his consorts (explained below) because they have such interesting backgrounds and aid him in his cause.

His Consorts that aid him in information gathering are a drow who is a former server of Lolth, an eladrin which is a former server of Corellon, an elf who is infiltrating Vecna's cult, the Queen of the country, which is a Tiefling and a servant of the Raven Queen who wants to see her portfolio of fate brought down a notch, who keeps him informed of events that happen in the world, Oublivae the Queen of Desolation, another Tiefling who is a servant of Pelor, and a pit fiend who serves and gives him info on the Nine Hells. As you can see he is very well informed and he uses it to his advantage so he can complete his goal.

Anyways, the only things for attacks I have for him are as followed:

Reverse Time (Aura 10): Immediate Reaction The target has to redo their last action and what happened with the previous action didn't occur except critical hits.

Time Flashes Before Your Eyes: Vs Will. The target is taken out of play and cannot take any actions (save ends). The target relives their life and Nihilious sees everything they see. Fifth Failed Saving Throw: The target dies and Nihilious has combat advantage against all the targets allies until the end of the encounter.

Wrinkle in Time: Vs Reflexes. Nihilious teleports 8 squares and makes a basic melee or ranged attack against a target. He gains combat advantage for this attack. If he has combat advantage from time flashes before your eyes, the bonus increases to +3.

Sphere of Ultimate Destruction: Vs Fortitude. Nihilious condenses time-energy in a sphere and hurls it at an enemy. They are temporally an older version of their self and weakened (save ends). If this attack kills them, they turn to dust and are removed from everyone's memory except their fellow group members.

So this is what I have so far. I would just like to say that he will be doing a lot of Necrotic damage since I believe that necrotic damage is just a condensing of time energy since it deadens flesh and wounds souls. Any ideas are welcome to his moves and to the story if you feel like adding it in there. Hope you enjoyed this too!

 

[the Jester]

A couple things:

I think "fifth failed save" is the equivalent of saying "never happens". If this guy is epic, I think it's fine for a second failed save to kill.

If he's focused on necrotic damage, make sure that he has a way to ignore resist/immune necrotic.

Finally, check out the phane abomination (MM1) for possible inspiration.

Good luck!

 

[Quickleaf]

Three things.

1. Do you have MotP? There's a L26 "time wrinkle" hazard that would be interesting to include somewhere along the fight.

2. Have you checked out AngryDM's blog about 3-phase boss monsters. IMHO that's "the way to go" for any kind of game finishing villain.

3. Temporal magic is one of those rare situations where I would say stun is appropriate. However, I would establish some kind of mini-game, puzzle, fight, or skill challenge faced by those who are stunned - they must solve it to escape and if they do well they gain some boon when they return to the current time.

Cheers!

 

[Arctic Wolf]

@ the jester: Thanks for the MM1 monster, I think I can use some of its abilities. Also true, since he is a last boss it should be lower than 5 and 2 works well. I think I will just have his Variable Resistance count with necrotic or just all types of magic damage to make him a more interesting Demon Prince.

@ Quickleaf:
1: I have a pdf copy and will look at the time wrinkle hazard to use it.
2: I took a glance at it and might have it where phase 1 is navigating the hazards to find him, 2 is fight him in his human form which is basically a mage, and the third where he is in his true form which is more melee to make it interesting.
3: That sounds like a good idea for his Time Flashes Before Your Eyes and maybe some other moves. Have a reinactment of that specific point in time as a skill check and if they pass it is a successful saving throw.

P.S. Thanks again for the ideas, keep them coming if able

 

[Quickleaf]

What about some kind of recursion or time anchor power preventing delayed or readied actions either save ends or as an aura. You could take this to the extreme to force someone to repeat same action over and over again until broken out of the recursion loop. Just an idea.

 

[Arctic Wolf]

@ Quickleaf: Maybe call it Time Loop and it forces the PC to repeat its actions and save ends?

Also what creative effects should be here? I know I can use slow, stun, weakened, and removed from play, but any fun things you could think of to use? Always fun to spice things up

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6686199]Arctic Wolf[/MENTION]
You don't by any chance own True20 do you? The Borrowed Time setting has some interesting ideas. So does the Complete Chronomancer.

There's a lot of different aspects of time travel, so I'm not sure which part you want to focus on or if you're going for kitchen sink...

Eternal Return - This is a big thing in eastern religions, the wheel of life by which humankind is bound to a cycle of rebirth. You could have your BBEG reincarnated automatically, or you could have PCs that are dropped to 0 HP become temporarily revived as minions.

Prophecy & Fate - Powers could include declaring a space a creature must occupy or an action it must perform, and if the trigger occurs it has drastic consequences.

Multiple Selves - Depends on how you rule it as a DM, but this concept works really well for a solo (Planescape Torment did a great job of this btw).

 

[Arctic Wolf]

No I don't own it and that does sound interesting. Does any of the background on him give you an idea on what sort of time control he would have? To me it seems like he focuses on time altercation. Also do you have a download for that? Would be interesting to read.

 

[fba827]

@ Quickleaf: Maybe call it Time Loop and it forces the PC to repeat its actions and save ends?

You may end up with a daily power getting used repeatedly. i don't know if allowing that would be your intent or not. if it's not you may want to word it something like "chose one at-will power and a square, you can only use that power and target a creature in the chosen square every round (save ends)"

"Time Flashes Before Your Eyes: Vs Will. The target is taken out of play and cannot take any actions (save ends)"

That may be a bit redundant - removed from play includes inability to take actions.

You may want to consider instead of 'removed from play' to use "unconscious (save ends)" where the character basically collapses and is sort of like dreaming his life.

Really not too much different other than whether or not the body is there. (and being unconscious while there opens it up for a coup de grace if you're enemy is vicious like that) but on the flip side, allows allies to give bonus saves/save bonuses/etc.

Fifth Failed Saving Throw:

As someone already said, that's less than 2% likely to ever come up (and that is being generous by assuming that the PC has 0 ways to get a bonus save or save bonus). So not even worth having a 'fifth failed save item' just wasted text space. make it a second failed save or just remove it.

Wrinkle in Time: Vs Reflexes. Nihilious teleports 8 squares and makes a basic melee or ranged attack against a target. He gains combat advantage for this attack. If he has combat advantage from time flashes before your eyes, the bonus increases to +3.

Is this supposed to be a solo creature? If so, you need some multitarget attacks. I nominate this one to be tweaked such as:
Wrinkle in Time: vs Reflex. Close burst 10. 1d4+2 additional versions of Nihilious appear within range (representing different ages of the guy). Each version makes a basic attack (melee or ranged) against a different target. And then the duplicates vanish.

*though if this isn't an at-will or recharge power, but instead will only happen once. then rather than a variable number of duplicates, code it in as a number like 4 duplicates.

Also what creative effects should be here? I know I can use slow, stun, weakened, and removed from play, but any fun things you could think of to use? Always fun to spice things up

I like the idea of rewinding time to make things that just happened be undone. However, such a trick requires the -players- to be aware of it so that they can notice how many HP and what powers have the potential to be undone.

So that means you could force time to rewind back to the start of the encounter (this works best if you're still in the first, second, or maybe third round of combat) since it's easy for players to just reset everything back to how it was at the start of the encounter.

Time Rewind: Trigger: the third round of combat begins. Effect: combat is reset to the first round - powers expended during combat are recharged, lost hp and surges are regained, etc.

Alternatively, you have to give him some sort of marker

Time Marker: Minor Action. Effect: You set a marker for your time rewind. players should note hp loss and power usage from this point. In 1d4 rounds, time will reset to this point.
(Thus, plays have the chance to kill him before time resets and if they don't, well, they have to go at it again and hope luck is with them)

In a totally other frame of mind:
Steal the mechanics from a Rust Monster to represent touching the item and rewinding it back to it's original materials OR fast-forwarding the age of the item touched to the point of corroding/aging

anyway, looks like fun stuff over all!

 

[Arctic Wolf]

[MENTION=807]fba827[/MENTION] : For the Time Loop power I was thinking of making it an Illusion spell so he thinks he is attacking the guy with a basic attack just like you said. I think of it as a record skipping and repeating the attack but on a fake version of the guy. So maybe it would make the enemy unconsious and save end wakes it up.

Thanks for noticing that since I didn't xD. and true, the unconsicous thing could be interesting. I was thinking of making it a melee touch attack where he appears in front of them and touches their forehead so they just stand there hyponotized until they save. How does that sound?
I agree that a Failed Second Saving throw works since some monsters can kill in one hit.

I like your Wrinkle in Time attack and it works better. The way I imagined it is that when he teleports, he alters time so that he teleports in different areas and hits everyone so that works. I think it would be a good recharge power or just a one time thing and he is weakened afterwards since it would require a lot of energy and he still isn't up to his full strength.

I think the time rewind would work well as just a second wind for him instead of make the PCs remember that much but that does sound fun. I will consider it when I make him in a rough draft.

That would be interesting, maybe make it give the PCs a -hit chance since their weapons aren't as powerful?

Also on a sidenote, I am flirting with him having an aura, Nothing Stands the Test of Time, that makes all resistance and immunities negated to make it interesting. And what animal to you represents time? I want his demon lord form to represent his mastery over time.