Steam Punk Campaign thoughts on final boss

[tk32]

I'm the DM for a new Steam Punk Campaign we'll be starting in a few weeks, where Thay has established itself as an economic power by discovering that the undead are a fuel source. Necrotic factories have formed to process zombies and other undead beings into a powder that's highly combustible. It's used for powering early guns, airships, and undead skin is used to for artificing implants to enhance people. Most any spell can be artificed onto a body with limited uses. e.g. Fireball could be artificed onto a barbarians body and with 2 uses. Can be used to fling a standard fireball into battle twice and then the rune is burnt out.

With limits.

My goal for a final boss around 15-17th level at the end of the campaign I'm thinking is time itself if it were a sentient being. (Or artificed to be manipulated to continue the cycle of undeath throughout the planet. So, a rogue unthinking enemy that would ultimately need to be destroyed to restore the balance of time.

I'm not sure what I would base this being on though for abilities? I was thinking of starting with Tiamat as a template for capabilities. But, instead of heads, it has time portals. One for future, present, and past. I'm not sure yet how it would function in terms of what what types of damage it would do. E.g. On hit, 1d4 con damage. For each point of con damage, the creature reduces in age the equivalent of 5 human years (adjusted for longer living races like elves. e.g. 20 years for elves or something like that.) For the past attack, for the future attack, the person is aged older based on con damage. and For the present, the attackers damage is reflected back at them. Once they exceed their life span either prior to birth or post death (upon reaching 0 con) they are killed.

I want it to be brutal but winnable. I'm not sure what the key would be to the PCs winning, and whether this concept would work. I want the enemy to be as abstract as time really is, but manifested as a force that can be fought and a balance restored, but ultimately can never be defeated. Any thoughts or suggestions on making father time be a fightable being?

No pun intended, but I've got some time, as we're just starting the campaign in a couple weeks I'm using the unearthed Arcana steam Punk compendium for 5th edition as a basis for the tech and classes. However, I wanted to tie what the necromancers have done to elevate Thay into a powerhouse to damaging time and causing father time to become a malevolent force (unthinking or thinking).

 

[jaelis]

A fun place to look for inspiration for boss battles is the old 3E epic level handbook. You can check out some of the monsters here:
http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/epicMonstersAndObstacles.htm

In particular the phane abomination is time-based.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Two things come to mind: Iron Kingdoms and their gigantic walking war machines (can't remember what they are called), and the BECMI module Earthshaker.

In Iron Kingdoms there was one adventure that I played in (friend was DM'ing that campaign) where we had to 'infiltrate' one of those massive "war machine/mech". There were shifting panels, rotating corridors/rooms, dangerous gears spinning all over the place, sudden blasts of steam, etc. It really had a cool feel to it. It was quite the challenge 'mapping' and at the same time trying not to get killed by the machinery!

In the (Companion?) module Earthshaker, the gnomes (yes...gnomes...) have constructed a redonkulously huge 'iron golem' that operates by steam, levers, pullies, gears and sprockets. The PC's are tasked with stopping it before it gets somewhere (a city?). We never played or DM'ed it, but I have it and have glanced through it a couple times. The goal, iirc, is that the PC's start in one of the 'feet' of Earthshaker and have to work/fight their way up to the control room (head/brain).

Anyway...for a big "steam punk" type adventure finale, something like that might be cool. Where the PC's have to fight their way up from the bottom, avoiding the guards as well as the gears/mechanisms of the thing, eventually reaching the top where they must kill the BBEG....or do they? A nice twist would be to see if one of them is willing to sacrifice himself. You know, the BBEG's last dieing breath he utters a self-destruct word (like Code zero zero zero. Distruct. Zero" or something... ). Obviously the whole machine is warded against entering/exiting via magic (duh!), so the PC's have a choice. The only way to not level an entire city below (of COURSE the climax has to be RIGHT before the thing reaches it's destination), is to "invert the power flow runes....by hand". This will, obviously, cause the machine to release it's sphere of annihilation engine core (the undead were fused with magic such that when in contact with a Sphere, it releases a HUGE amount of energy...hello magical anti-mater drive! ). The result will be that within seconds, everything in a (however big it is + an extra kilometer or so...which will just reach a bit inside the city walls...I mean, the other PC's have to have something to do...they have to get to the town and get people out/away from the blast zone; people don't want to just leave everything they own, so... hilarity ensues). Anyway, a PC has to remain in the control room and place both hands on two different runes to delay the explosion.

So, do the PC's come up with some very cleaver out-of-the-box thinking and save everyone? Do they eff things up and kill themselves and half a city? Do they do their darndest to save as much and as many people as they can before one altruistic PC releases the runes and self-destructs? Tune in next week! When you hear Niggles the Thief say "Awww...dang it! I ain't got nuttin' but a tee-shirt outta dis one!"

^_^

Paul L Ming

PS: Dang. That does sound like a fun adventure! Sometimes my brain surprises me...sometimes. Usually it leaves me sorely dissapointed.

 

[tk32]

I like that a lot.

The gears and moving parts could be clockwork creatures all working together to make the big machine work. (Think transformers merging to form a larger transformer).

Heh. That could be entertaining! I use 3 printed terrain, I could use dungeon rooms as the legs and so on , the body has several floors and is longer and then decisions need to be made to go for the "brains" of the monster (which could be anywhere), or to just rampage every room until they disable it. In the steam punk compendium there's a new spell added that's a death ray. Turns everything in a 20 mile radius into glass or something like that. And anyone caught in it takes damage over time from the glass shards on the ground and from the ray itself. Creature could be infused with the runes to fire such a ray. Heh.

 

[AtomicPope]

The plot of the campaign module Tomb of Annihilation is built around a techno-magical device (Soulmonger) that captures souls, preventing resurrection. There are plenty of useful encounters to cherry pick. One such encounter you might be interested in is the undead fetus of a Titan - Atropal. The full stats and write up for 5e can be found in Tomb of Annihilation. The monster is only CR13 so it would be a mini boss in your campaign. Or perhaps the Atropal is the "past" version of the villain you have to face. The "future" could be a Death Titan (just reskin an Empyrean with Necrotic attacks). To prevent the "future" from occurring they have to take on a legendary Storm Giant (Storm Giant Quintessant from Volo's Guide to Monsters. Just swap out lightning and thunder damage for necrotic and psychic). Maybe they have to destroy the machine that is bringing the "future" to the present time. In this way they have to fight the "future" version but only for a few rounds as they scramble to shut down the machine. Fighting a CR 23 Titan (Empryean is in Monster Manual) would be TPK, unless it was just a few rounds while the PCs hurried to send it back to the future. Princes of the Apocalypse do this with the Princes of Elemental Evil. The PCs only have to fight for 2 or 3 rounds but even that could kill half a party. The PCs are really destroying the ritual portal that is bringing them to the Forgotten Realms.

To keep the steampunk feel you should look into traps and lairs. With lairs you can create environmental effects that would mimic the sort of things you could expect in a mad scientist's laboratory: crackling electricity, alchemical explosions, and robotic servo-arms. As previously mentioned, you can reskin monsters: shocking grasp is a techno-glove, firebolt is a ray pistol, etc. Using the Warlocks from Volo's Guide would be a great alternative to magic. Give them a Shield Guardian as a mechanical robot guardian and they're VERY durable and scary. Warlocks use rechargeable spell slots. Unlike standard casters this lends itself to a technological origin.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Whatever you decide for a boss, be sure to include Clockwork creatures and perhaps a Gearforged Templar or two as minions for said boss from the Tome of Beasts.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

How about having a undead-skin zeppelin that gain sentience as the final boss? All the adventure the party oppose a BBEG, only to find that the actual evil guy is his zeppelin who mind-controls him. You fight the the BBEG, thinking you finally got rid of his evil presence, only to discover that you are INSIDE the real evil mastermind who's a gargantuan flying undeath-themed sentient war machine.

 

[tk32]

what I love about D&D is the creativity of the people involved.