Can someone give me a hand with a boss for my party?

[SorvahrSpahr]

hey, this is my first post here
*ahem*
We started playing D&D like 2 or 3 years ago, and we're still not that good. I'm usually just a player but recently I've began to taste the awesome power of begin a dm So, currently our party consists on a Ninja, an Ex-Cleric/Rogue, a Sorcerer and a halfling rogue (my npc who will soon be replaced with a rogue/shadowdancer).

I'm planning on creating a custom boss to use against my party. The background of their side-quest is: An Order of Paladins, who once served the god Paladine (we're using Dragonlance's gods for now), betrayed Him for Takhisis during the Great War, that opposed the creatures of the Abysm against the people of the surface. Several sorcerers and clerics joined the Paladin's order to summon several demons that would be transported to the battle grounds to fight by the side of Takhisis's army. When the evil army lost the battle, the survivors of the Order's monastery summoned a stronger demon to help them get their revenge. The problem is that the demon turned against them and took the whole monastery as its lair.

The party has to find a lost artifact that is hidden at the last level of the monastery. They need it to pay a debt to my "special merchant", a guy who gives them what they need or want, for a big price.

I was thinking on using something like Andariel from Diablo 2. Something realted to the undeads and poison. The thing is, I have 3 monster manuals and I'm having some troubles finding the perfect creature. Can someone help me creating this creature? Either by suggesting a mix of several creatures, or by creating one from the scratch.

Oh btw, the whole party is lvl 8

thx

 

[MatthewJHanson]

First of all welcome to the boards!

Also, I've not played Diableo II, so I don't know much about Andariel, but here's the idea I came up with whil reading the post:

Is this boss supposed to be the original demon the bad guys sommoned? If so, I like the idea of a babau demon who has taken some levels of assassin. (Babau come with the right skills to automatically qualify.)

The demon could coat his claws with poison, sneak in invisibly, get off a couple devistating attacks, then teleport away.

Just a thought.

 

[Vorput]

Maybe some sort of mummified demon? Or perhaps just a creature with the half fiend template who's now a mummy.... would be disease instead of poison.

On the other hand, if you wanted to go the Andariel route... a half-fiend ranger/rogue/assasin would be sort of cool... particularly if you gave her a huge maze-like complex, where she'd sneak around taking pot shots at the PCs with poison arrows....

And maybe make the PCs turn green if they get hit ;-)

Andariel could also be a medusa, perhaps with either the half-fiend or some undead template.

Something else is tickling the back of my mind... I don't have my books with me, but maybe a Plague-spewer? I think that's in MM2... maybe MM3... don't even quite remember what it is, but I think it's undead and the name sounds about right.

Just some ideas.

Vorp

PS: Here's some boards lingo for you- we don't call em bosses, we call them Big Bad evil guys- BBEG for short.

 

[Herobizkit]

I'd say a Six-armed Yuan-ti, upped to Large size, should suit your purposes nicely.

Just remember that BBEG's need little guys to distract the party while they perform their vile deeds (such as summoning MORE little guys, buffing itself, casting area effect damaging spells), else it's just a bigger thing for the PC's to beat on until it dies.

 

[SorvahrSpahr]

thx

Matthew this is Andariel

She has 2 poison attacks and a lot of undeads with her when you fight her.

I like the labyrinth idea. The BBEG will be shooting at them until they get to its lair.
For the little guys, maybe a few zombies with a cleric mummy to give them a hand against the spellcaster.

As for the BBEG. The Yuan-ti will be perfect for on of the monastery's levels. I Think I'll go with the half-fiend thing. Maybe add some of the Bebilith abilities like poison and web?

 

[Piratecat]

Sure, that sounds great. The neat thing about D&D that a lot of people forget is that it's really easy to change a monster's appearance while using "out of the box" stats. It's isn't going to be her stat block that your players remember, it's going to be the cool stylish things she does. For instance, lets say we stat her out with a lot of hide ranks and multiple arms and spidery powers, and you roll peoples' spot checks in secret --

The PCs enter a room. There's an ancient throne ahead of them, carved from stone and bone, looking like a crouching beast with huge spider arms arcing over it. You describe the room as wet and misty, smelling like sulphur, with water dripping from the ceiling. The group speads out to search, and one of them feels something drip onto his arm from the ceiling.

"Fortitude save," you say. "You failed? 4 points of con damage."

"WHAT?" he says. "Where did that come from? I look up!"

"You do," you say, "and clinging to the ceiling not ten feet above your head is a shriveled abomination with spider arms and a gaping, fanged mouth. She smiles wickedly at you, and a black and pointed tongue darts out to lick her thin lips. Then she drops onto you with all her spider legs, and tries to bite you."

"How'd I miss seeing that?"

You shrug knowlingly.

"GUYS, HELP!"

Heck, she may be nothing more than a simple demon with spiderclimb and a poison attack, but the players don't know that - and that's what makes this sort of thing fun!

 

[shilsen]

If you want something related to the undead and with poison, check out the Avolakia from MM2. It's a CR10 aberration, which has a lot of Sp abilities to do with undead.

And I absolutely second Piratecat's comment:

The neat thing about D&D that a lot of people forget is that it's really easy to change a monster's appearance while using "out of the box" stats. It's isn't going to be her stat block that your players remember, it's going to be the cool stylish things she does.

I just used an avolakia in my campaign, but since I didn't want the stats from MM2, I replaced it with a bone devil, simply using the bulk of the avolakia's description with little variation. It worked great.

 

[SorvahrSpahr]

dude, that was awesome. They will never know what hit them, thx a lot guys!

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the battle should take place tomorrow if all goes according to plan.

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the battle is over. they took care of the undeads pretty fast. i cast desecrate early on the fight and a few rounds later hit them with blasphemy. made 3 of the 9 skeletons special, if they got reduced to 1 or 2 hp, they would explode causing 2d8 damage to everyone in 15 ft radius, a good reflex save would make them avoid the explosion. the BBEG took a while, managed to poison them all and even stole some hp from them. if it wasn't for the fire spells the spellcaster used, they would've died right there. the halgling npc got knocked out twice, once for getting grappled, and the second time for failing a tumble check to hit her with a sneak attack, the ninja almost died, since he has really bad luck when it comes to dice rolls, the spellcaster was left with 1 hp and the ex-cleric/rogue made it thx to a defensive spell.

thx for your tips. they'll get the artifact they came to get and will now be moving to the 3rd chapter of our campaign.