Toe to Toe - the final Battle - how to manage?

[Runesong42]

I am currently running a Buffy-esque campaign world set in the d20 Urban Arcana setting. I have two PCs plus two NPCs to flesh them out. My PC's are a half-vampire martial-artist/Buffy type who is foolishly juiced up with special abilities (including rules from Blood & Fist), and the other is a gun-slinging thiefy hacker type. I want to make "the" campaign Arch-villain, and am having difficulty deciding what to make. Specifically, I want a vailain that is going to harrass the heck out of the PCs, and isn't going to be a pushover once they end up toe-to-toe with him/her/it. I want it to be a vampire, but an uber-vampire. I am thinking of maxing its levels using the Book of Vile Darkness and having the Deciple of Mephistopheles (a vampire, immune to fire?!), but am unsure of what to use for its 'other' levels. I'm looking for a level 18, maybe... I know I'm just rambling at this point , but you get my idea, I hope. I have little experience with high-level adventures, and I want the PC's to slug it out with "the big-bad Final Fantasy multi-tier end-boss". Any ideas?

 

[Dirigible]

foolishly juiced up

What's foolish about him?

How about this... once upon a time there was a Balor that was impregnated by Lord Voldesauron, god of ultimate not niceness. Her 'merely' tanar'ric body was unable to properly handle the divine child, and it was stillborn inside her. However so charged with divine energy it was that it could not truely die, and lingered on in a bizarre, demiplane, an "astral womb", as an atrophal (from the Epic book). It remains connected to it's mother by a transplanar umbilicus.

Anyway, some time later, Dracustat, the evil-yet-gothicly-sexy uber-vampire lord comes along and binds mummy (or mommy, if you insist) into himself to gain enhanced powers (like immunity to fire).

So, when the PC's defeat Dracustat, his corpse bursts open revealing Mother Balor, and when (if?) they beat her, the umbilicus leads Voldesauron Jr. straight to them! Three generations of asskicking at once!

So, just tweak the power levels of the three critters (individually, they'll each need to be much weaker than the PC's or the god guys'll get butchered). How about a half-fiend vampire fire elemental savant, a slightly weakened Balor (lose 2-4 HD and some spell-like abilities), and a seriously weakened Atrophal.

Story needs some work... maybe the demigod-demon's miscarrage was caused by someone attacking Ma Balor, and that person/group is now the PC's patron in secret. In any case, there's some bare, bloody bones to pick over.

 

[MarauderX]

Sounds like you want a solid character build to put up against the PCs. Take some levels in fighter, but instead of doing the typical 'weapon focus' route, take some feats like Power Throw to make him more interesting to fight. Use a magic item that allows him to be Enlarged as the spell, then add bulls strength to him and have him grapple with a surprise if possible. You build a fighter that could pick people up and lob them around with the high strength, say using the Jump tables somehow. It would split up the party and have them prone until their turn so his toadies could hack away at him.

Sure the PCs will lay in a lot of damage and fast, so have him drink an invisibility potion at 1/2 HP so he can heal up with more potions or whatever. Use some other tactics too, like have one of his minions dress exactly like him so the PCs attack but then he attacks from behind a secret door/floor hatch/invisible on the ceiling etc. If he can keep doing this type of guerilla attacks he will wear down the PCs, making them frustrated and desparate, and when that happens they tend to fire off spells more quickly (such as at the look-alike peon). The players might get frustrated but when they finally kill him they will be all the more happy.