D&D 5E Freeing Levistus

[FesterJester]

So my campaign is under way but I'm struggling with some specifics for my BBEG. SO he's tasked with creating 3 gates. 1 to the elemental plane of fire, one to the windswept plane of Pandemonium and one to Stygia. The winds fuel the fires siphoned into Stygia and free Levistus. Ok, so that parts good (and slowly being revealed to the players) but I'm struggling to come up with the multi step plan to create said portals so that the players can attempt to stop him at different intervals. The BBEG isn't powerful enough to just cast Gate 3 times so that's out. Ideas on how he might go about doing this?

Semi related side note for those who are looking to steal this idea: the cult of Asmodeus is almost the good guys here since Levistus' war in Hell will tip the scales of the Blood War in favor of the Abyss.

 

[Eltab]

BBEG wants to build a device that can 'soak up' magic power and hold it like a battery, then he can tap the charge to boost himself to cast Gate. The PCs get to reverse-engineer it and (pick one) ...

• track down some subcomponent(s) he doesn't have yet
• steal the device (or parts) from him
• sneak / bust into his lab and do the scene in Terminator 2 "No one must follow your work."

Dirty trick: break into BBEB's lair, smash the lab, steal the gadget, take it away and sabotage it, let him 'take' it back. It malfunctions on him (with unpleasant consequences) while the PCs watch from a safe distance.

 

[Quickleaf]

Fire Gate requires claiming a citadel run by the "Illuminated" cult which kidnaps people from across the planes and fakes their afterlife, indoctrinating them as born-again cultists. This is from an old Planescape adventure. The citadel just happens to have (1) multiple shifting portals, which is the first step for creating the Fire Gate. Then (2) an elemental gem or similar crystal derived from a dead elemental must be fashioned into a planar lens, which focuses all the shifting portals into one unified permanently open Fire Gate. However, the final step (3) is permanently opening the Fire Gate using a phoenix feather as the gate key.

Pandemonium Gate requires deciphering the tune played at the Harmonica (a site from the old Planescape campaign), and (1) playing the counter tune, which causes the winds of Pandemonium to shift direction. This now makes them flow towards the depths rather than up towards the top layers, so the next step is (2) to break through to a massive chamber in Agathion, the lowest layer, which is actually a vacuum portal that was sealed ages ago by the gods. Finally, (3) divine magic, such as that known by the Queen of Air and Darkness, must be used to determine where the other end of the vacuum portal anchors.

 

[Quartz]

If your BBEG can't cast the spell she needs to grow in experience to become 17th level and then have time to scribe the scrolls. Or acquire three scrolls of Gate or some other means. So why not be a RBDM and cast the BBEG not as a BBEG but as a competitor? Until the reveal, that is. Perhaps the PCs go to the lost temple of Gazzy only to find she has cleared it out ahead of them. Or perhaps she does a Belloc and claims the prize after the PCs have defeated all the guardians and are at their weakest.

 

[jgsugden]

There is a problem with a storyline where the BBEG must do three things to win.

When the PCs go to stop the first thing, they will either succeed or fail. If the succeed in stopping it, the plot either ends, or the BBEG finds a work around. If they find a work around, then it negates the prior victory by the PCs, making them feel like their success did not matter in the long run. That type of railroading does not go over very well. If they fail in their attempt to stop the adversary, the story can continue - but that usually requires either the DM stacking the deck against the PCs, or relying upon them getting unlucky. Neither of which is terribly great.

The three variants on this that I still use are:

* Three tasks must be achieved, but they can be done in any order, and it is pretty much impossible to destroy the artifacts used in this endeavor. Thus, it becomes a battle of the PCs to 'keep away' the items necessary to achieve the BBEG's goals. In a repeated game where the BBEG attempts over and over to go after those artifacts, they will eventually win. Critical Role, Campaign 2, features an element like this ....

* I use this one, but it is still a bit problematic. When the PCs start on their quest to stop the three elements, 2 are already completed, but they do not know it. The BBEG is hiding that these steps have been completed because they are stumped on how to do the third thing, and they think that super smart PC may be the one to figure out the puzzle by repeating their steps on the first few segments.

* The BBEG tricks the PCs into doing their dirty work. The PCs believe they're going to destroy Levistus right before he is freed by completing the three acts. However, that releases him. Maintaining that type of deception, especially at high levels, is hard given the magic available to PCs, but I have a few tricks in my campaign world that give the BBEG an edge on this type of thing when I fold artifacts into the plot (Artifacts are immune to normal magics, including divinations; there is an order like the Illuminati that exists only to keep artifacts hidden away - they prevent any legends from being known about artifacts and relics (which stops Legend Lore as I deem this to make the items not of legend-ary importance); Gods and their minions are forbidden from discussing artifacts; etc...). By establishing that artifacts are immune to most normal methods of magical inquiry, it gives me the tools to keep it a mystery while still allowing these magics to solve other problems.

 

[Bohandas]

To achieve the size required, the portals are being built at set of moving dimensional weak points (whose locations the portal will stabilize). They each have to be built at specific places at specific times or else they either won't be able to open up a wide enough aperture or won't be able to align the portals