Big Bad Evil Melee Guy

[Burn_Boy]

Generally, I've seen at least, the BBEG(Big Bad Evil Guy) for a campaign is a wizard, cleric, dragon or something that can cast spells, lots of them. And why not? A high level wizard is the perfect "Oh sh*t" enemy for party. AoE spells, high DPR and enough protection spells to keep anyone from hitting him for too much.

But, what if the focus of your campaign, and the final enemy for it, is focused around a melee character? Someone who relies on brawn to win his fights? For a solo campaign, that's fine. In a solo campaign I ran once, the paladin PC faced off against an anti-paladin for the final duel outside the castle and it was fine. But you throw your basic four PC party, which will generally have at least one spellcaster, against that hulking Orc with the amazing HP total and the greataxe with so many enchantments on it, it probably breaks a couple rules, it's going to be a fairly short, one sided fight. A well placed Disintegrate or a Cone of Cold or two and BAM he's down for the count.

Not that that's not good. All hail the conquering hero's and everthing, but come ON! The BBEG is supposed to be the culmination of everything! You knock the bruiser out in two rounds well Hell, it's all been for nothing then!

So my question is this. How can you create a melee fighter that can stand up to a PC arcane caster without dropping in a two or three rounds?

 

[Noir le Lotus]

Did you try AM Barbarian ??

 

[Loonook]

Not that that's not good. All hail the conquering hero's and everthing, but come ON! The BBEG is supposed to be the culmination of everything! You knock the bruiser out in two rounds well Hell, it's all been for nothing then!

So my question is this. How can you create a melee fighter that can stand up to a PC arcane caster without dropping in a two or three rounds?

Alright, I'll take it from the point where an individual would gain Disintegrate... Since we're discussing Pathfinder rather than D&D I'll go with available Pathfinder classes, and recreate one of my favorites from an older 3.x game set in a fairy tale style world: The Knight of Mirrors.

The Knight was a Varoot Fighter 13. With this he has the following racial advantages:

- +2 Wounding weapon of choice: It's a Shard Weapon option they gain.
- Disguise Self 3/day and Mirror Image 1/day (lvl = HD).
- Outsider Traits
- Reflective SR (equal to HD+12): Targeted spells "I'm Rubber, You're Glue"'ing back to the caster in question if the SR passes. RSR: 13.
- Mirror Jump: Can 'get away' as long as they have a mirror to jump into, essentially Shadow Walking up to a mile away from their attacker. They can do it as a standard action at will.
- +3 Natural Armor.
- Cold/Fire/Electric Resist 10
- Sonic Vulnerability (+50%)
- Dex +4, Con +2, Wis +4, Cha +6

A Ring of Energy Resistance (Sonic-Major) and Ring of Blinking, their inborn Shard Weapon, and some beastly Armor and Shield for the sword and board effects will also help him be difficult to defeat and strong against casters. In Pathfinder he would be able to deal some really great damage. Personally I would have loved to have Bloody Assault (5 bleed per attack possible for -5 to attack!).

He can bounce around a battlefield, appearing from mirrors, disappearing through the party's 'shiny' items when things get real, and has a decent amount of personal defense against casters and fighters alike (those energy weapons aren't helping him a lot... ).

If you dipped him into the Pathfinder Rogue for the benefits of Evasion he is also useful... The Knight was built in the game as a Gestalt character against Gestalt PCs and provided one of the harder fights for the PCs as they lost quite a few of their tagalongs and one PC in battle.

Of course I also had him backed by various creatures due to action economy. Mirror Image Simulacra created by his former Mistress helped to harry the PCs and cohorts (I think the group was at around 7 with 3 PCs, 1 DMPC, 2 Cohorts, and an Animal Companion) and the party Mage really had to bite down when the DMPC bit it on a failed Disintegrate/reflection/failed throw .

Overall he's a beastly possible individual. If you boost his wealth (perhaps he has ruled over a large nation through his assistants and their court mages, removing those who get uppity and think they are the real power) he can also be quite a beast... But of course this is a specific type of encounter.

Also, as long as the creatures have Spell Resistance, good saves, and the ability to combat the amount of actions/PC, any challenge by a BBEG can go well.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Salthorae]

There are ways to make a melee guy your BBEG for sure and have it work successfully. It's harder if you want to have a single enemy vs the party for the final battle, but workable still.

As suggested earlier, there is the Antimagic'd Barbarian.

There is the King Obold Manyarrows route where you are empowered by a supernatural being (god) and have magical resistances, etc.

Any race with natural spell resistance would work, the Varoot from Fiend Folio are an interesting choice as mentioned above. Drow, etc.

An Evil Monk at high levels gain SR and have great saves AND in Pathfinder the flurry of blows bonus makes BAB=HD so you have't lost anything on the martial side, use an enchanted monk's weapon for the flurry's.

You can do the BBEG with leadership and have a female cohort/mage/lover/wife of only 2 levels below the bbeg (which should probably put them at the same level as your PCs if the fight is a "hard" encounter (ECL+2/3).

Also 4 words for you: Ring of Spell Turning...

 

[Epametheus]

Well, magic counters magic...

I would suggest doing something along the lines of what Neil Spicer did in Blood for Blood, book 4 of Kingmaker...

Spoiler

The final boss of Blood for Blood, Armag, was a human fighter/barbarian with a very, very simple but mean +5 artifact sword that did the following: (1) it counted as Bane vs. whatever it struck (so between his own stats and the sword, Armag did catastrophic damage every hit), and (2) if Armag got hit with a dispellable status effect, the sword would immediately cast Greater Dispel at 20th level as a free action to get rid of it. Armag wound up being a very brutal fight; fortunately he was also an insane berserker with bad tactics (he always targets the most impressive looking opponent), so he killed the summoner's eidolen 5 or so times instead of killing my paladin and all of the casters. An Armag with good tactics could've been a TPK.

An evil knight as your final villian is fine; just remember that he'll need protective measures to not get smashed, just like any other "puny human" opponent would.

 

[Ramaster]

A two-handed guy with AMF on and Step up with wreack HAVOCK on a party. But, generally speaking, Casters are so much better BBEGs because they are insanely powerful on their own

 

[SnowleopardVK]

I've seen an actual AP in which the big bad is a melee fighter, and it was handled fairly well.

Jade Regent, Major ending spoilers below:

Spoiler

In Jade Regent 3 of the final 4 enemies in the big final fight are primarily melee characters. The actual BBEG is a 15th level samurai (essentially entirely melee. He's got one SLA, but it's Alter Self, not a combat spell), and two of his team in the final fight are a 15th level ninja (rogue-ish, but again, not a caster at all) and a Wind Yai Oni (has about 4 strong SLAs per day, and a couple of at-will support SLAs like invisibility, but other than that he's another melee character).

The only member of the BBEG's team who is even remotely a caster is his lover, a 15th level Oracle, and my players found her to be the easiest of the four to defeat (though admittedly they didn't actually fight the ninja so much as they convinced him ahead of time to betray his allies and flee mid-fight). Despite that, the mostly-melee group of villains still made for a good final encounter. Though perhaps a part of that is due my players having no wizard or cleric as well. Their casters were summoners, and an inquisitor, so perhaps that helped them balance the scale.

One thing I did notice about the primarily melee group facing off with the PCs was that the four villains amount to a CR 19 encounter against PCs of 15th to 16th level. This is of course at least partly to compensate for the fact that the PCs have allies joining them in the fight, and that the villains are easily turned against each other, but I do wonder how much it's meant to compensate for that, and how much it's meant to compensate for the villains being primarily melee. Whatever the case though, overall, it worked.

 

[KiloGex]

Two words: Crowd Control.

High CMB to disarm, trip, push, and sunder. That plus Dirty Tricks to disable key characters (like blinding the caster or sickening the tank) to make sure that their actions are limited. After all, there's nothing like knocking the fighter's sword to the ground, punching the rogue in the stomach, then bum-rushing the wizard onto his ass.

Also, since this is your BBEG then having him in a more opportune location wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. Therefore, you can set up an environment favorable to him, like creating walls or pillars that create issues with LoS for ranged characters and casters, forcing them into tighter spaces. So if there's a party of 5 but only one or two of them can reach your BBEG at a time, then it creates a better situation for him and causes your players to waste time and movement rerouting to reach him.

 

[humble minion]

It's the action economy that kills you in this situation.

As Epametheus mentioned in passing, intelligent weapons are really good in this situation because they help out the bbeg with some extra actions, and can be tuned (by giving them dispel magic, restoration, etc abilities) to mitigate against one-failed-save-and-you-suck syndrome.

It's 3.5e rather than true PF, but I've found the Book of Nine Swords is really handy in this sitation actually, and that's usually my #1 go-to for this sort of thing. The real selling point is the various maneuvers that you can activate as counters using immediate actions, or the stances that are permanently active. You can even use feats to get the abilities without using the Bo9S classes. Leaping Flame, Iron Heart Focus, Mirrored Pursuit, Scorpion Parry and the various Throws, there are quite a few options, especially if you play using minis/grids etc so you can get the most out of it.

 

[Sgt_Shock]

To be honest I just lift abilities from 4th edition. Players generally don't care if a big boss can do moves or attacks they can't. If your boss is knocking back enemies, switching places with them, dragging them around, etc. its much more interesting than just watching him roll attacks all day. Recharge powers (they come back on a d6 roll of 5 or 6) like in 4th, with AOE sword attacks or death strikes, keeps the players on their toes, waiting for the next devastating special move.

This is even better when there's hazardous terrain the opponent can knock you into or drag you through with a chain or something.