Topic: High Powered NPC's

[yammahoper]

Previous threads inspired me to dig out some of my high powered NPC's and post them.

Tonight I am posting an diety from old school ADnD, Bahgtru, Orc God of War.  I have used him a few times with success, mostly because the players enjoyed his direct, gruff and predictable behavior (smash first, smash some more, leave the thinking to the weak).

If this thread takes off, I will gladly post other monsters and NPC's.

Bahgtru, Orc Diety.
Ag 100, Co 118, Re 39, Me 51, Sd 110, Em 20, In 105, Pr 107, Qu 100, St 111
Ap 0, PP 0 (he cast no spells), Will 207.

Lvl 65, Size 16' tall, BR: 135/x5/+100, Hits 780, Init +20, Crits: SL, AT 11(60)
OB 290HBa(x2, 5D), 250HGr(3D)/150HCr<<(x3D), 350Wp (all, x3D)

Travel: Can return to his fortress at will but is very limited in his ability to get places, requiring summoning, portals, gates, teleport, etc.  His prefered method of travel is walking.  When pressed, he is known to find and subdue/dominate a dragon to ride.  He can travel his base rate tirelessly through any terrain.

Form: Can assume any humaniod form from 4 to 16 feet tall.  Typically large and hidious, though any orc will find him exceptionally attractive (auto charms all orcs).  He can inspire fear (100' radius, level 30rr, -100 mod) and dominate any target with the force of his will (lvl 65 attack, -40 mod if not using Will Table in Chan Companion, then - Will of 207, range sight).

Resistance: +60 vs Chan, +75 vs Ment, -15 vs Ess, +39 vs Arcane, +150 vs poisons (immune to poisons level 10 or less), +90 vs fear, Ignores stun, all stun no parry reduced to stun, can never be foreced to parry, immune to unbalance crits, -20 to all crit rolls.  Only items with +15 or better bonus can harm him.  Is completely immune to all spells cast by level 18 or lower casters and ignores all spells level 8 or less regardless of casters level.

Special: Hands may strike as maces (x3D, +30 OB, one attack a round, delivers holy crits), knows all combat skills at 200, effectively 60 ranks. 

Immortality: If slain, it takes 51-150 years to fully recover his strength.  He will remain in his fortress until recovered unless summoned forth by some need.

Bahgtru loves to fight.  It is his greatest joy.  A master of all weapons, he prefers to use his brute strength, crushing his foes with his bare hands and ripping them assunder with his mighty grip, dripping their hot blood all over him.  He is very direct and under no circumstances will he break an oath or promise, though any benidiction delivered without his given word is suspect.  He maight in the heat of his emotions forget an oath or promise, but if reminded will always do whatever is required to keep them. Bahgtru is a hopeless slave to his emotions, with anger being the dominant force of his psyche.  Easily angered, this mighty being is not to be triffled with, but he can be carefully manipulated by the insanely brave, as his mental faculties are limited.  He knows nothing of tactics, and dispite his power, he is one of the most frequently slain Gods in all the pantheons.  He despises Aries as a cowering fool and will never avoid an opportunity to engage "that foppish boy toy."  Bahgtru is more a primal force than a persona and is extremely narrow minded about pretty much everything.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Interesting... My War God is the God of War, Politics and Assassination, the common theme being mastery of those around you, so He's probably somewhat more... cerebral than Bahgtru. I never statted him out, but... his Archangel, "The Host", when summoned has approximately the same effect as an asteroid strike. I mean Dinosaur Killer, climate change type asteroid. You've seen pictures of a major battlefield? The wreckage, the burnt, wasted look? He creates that effect everywhere he goes, continuously, all the way to the horizon. It's rather like being in the presence of an erupting volcano.

I never got anyone high enough level to justify statting out the Host, much less Tzaaj Himself. I mean, it's a God, not just a monster. It's supposed to be something capable of wrecking the entire world accidentally, isn't it?

[yammahoper]

My gawds tend to defeatable, but unkillable,

I have several gawds of war.  A setting I like is magic rich europe, egypt, greece, mongols, china and the 15th century discovery of the new world with its primarily channeling based magic users.  I keep the pagan gawds and ignore the christion/islam faith in that setting.  More fun.

In RM though, I can count the number of times parties have actually fought gawds on both hands.

[Zedul]

Interesting... My War God is the God of War, Politics and Assassination, the common theme being mastery of those around you, so He's probably somewhat more... cerebral than Bahgtru. I never statted him out, but... his Archangel, "The Host", when summoned has approximately the same effect as an asteroid strike. I mean Dinosaur Killer, climate change type asteroid. You've seen pictures of a major battlefield? The wreckage, the burnt, wasted look? He creates that effect everywhere he goes, continuously, all the way to the horizon. It's rather like being in the presence of an erupting volcano.

I never got anyone high enough level to justify statting out the Host, much less Tzaaj Himself. I mean, it's a God, not just a monster. It's supposed to be something capable of wrecking the entire world accidentally, isn't it?

Like Godzilla?      

Ironically my normal pantheon really aren't capable of wrecking the world... it's the upper powers, my Lovecraftian inspired monsters that do the real damage.

[Zedul]

Here you go:  PS, I write stuff up sometimes but often I describe my creatures by post adventure stories that describe what actually happened on the adventure.

Sharus the Deceiver

Demon Nightblade/Archmage  – Level  90

CO: 106 AG:106 SD:45 ME:111 RE:106 ST:101 QU:102 PR:103 IN:101 EM:106 AP: -25 to 105

AT:20 DB:574 Hits:715 BSC: +394   Melee: Accordingly +275  Nether DS (including triad) +350

Notable Skills:  Perception: +410 Trickery: +405 Sense Ambush: +397 Ambush:+208 (+120 crit rolls)

Sharus has all the Nightblade Lists to level 90, as well as the Arcane Lists: Nether Mastery, Entity Mastery, Node Mastery, Ethereal Mastery, Spell Coordination, and Spell Triggers to 50

Sharus is the consummate shape shifter:  He (or more appropriate “it”) can take the form of any being or item it touches and mimic it to perfection.  In addition, Sharus has completely mastery over Misfeel, Unpresence, and Non-Detect.  He can cloak himself from any magical detection or presence spell under 120th level of power.

The Encounter:  (Adventure 13 Post Mortem)

By this point in the adventure most of the party had been taken out of commission and the magician and the archmage NPC (our equivalent of the Merlin archetype who the players look up to and serve) are the only ones left standing.

On the other side of the portal, they entered into a large circular chamber nearly four hundred feet in diameter.  Its concave dome-like ceiling was covered in elaborate petroglyphs.  Six great pillars, each, supported the chamber, each roughly eight feet in diameter and ninety feet in height.  The pillars were wrapped with ancient iron chains and hung with beaten copper lanterns.

Directly in the center of the chamber, a hexagon dais jutted up from the cobblestone floor and upon it was a rectangular slab of limestone that looked like it had been stained with blood.  At the head and foot of the slab two large clay urns were positioned, each belching forth a bright red flame that illuminated the young woman who lay upon the limestone.  She was unconscious, soaked in sweat, and trembling as if she were suffering through an unspeakable nightmare.  Her wrists were cut and blood flowed slowly but steadily from the wounds.

Her tormentor towered above her, fully revealed as a demon of chaos.  His elongated head featured four jagged horns, a pair of serpent’s eyes that glowed with pale green malice, and a wide lipless gash of a mouth that revealed several rows of needle-like teeth that were reminiscent of a barracuda.  The demonic hybrid was naked, its ebony skin glistened with damp scales and though its appendages mimicked those of a man, they were oversized and disfigured.  Its toes and fingers were uneven and abnormally long.

It was coming for them.  The two friends began to prepare their boldest magic as they slowly retreated from the approaching danger of the chaos demon.

The shapeshifter roared as flickering tongues of black fire encased its body.  The Elementalist realized, to his horror, that the creature was coupling itself to the very essence of nether itself.  Iridius hurled a plasma bolt right into the maw of the great demon with little effect.  In the next instant the chamber thundered as Sharus unleashed a terrifying strike of its own.  Just in time, Daeron countered the demon’s assault with a shimmering wall of blue gold that nearly withered away before successfully dissipating the shapeshifter’s spell.

Sweat rolled from the brow of the great Archmage and he muttered to Iridius.  “I can’t do this for very long.”

The Elementalist, realizing their deadly peril, did away with all pretense and conservation.  He shuffled forward on the bloody stumps that substituted for his feet and heedless of the danger to himself, summoned a bolt of pure balefire.  Just the presence of one of the most deadly of elements was enough to blister the skin on his hands.  Before Sharus could attack again Iridius smote the demon with white-hot fire, the intensity of the attack was so severe that the copper lamps melted on a nearby pillar.

The shapeshifter's skin cracked and smoked and a howl of protest emanated from its needle toothed mouth but it shrugged off the attack and pressed on.  Iridius groaned with dismay and suppressed the sudden urge to pee in his breeches.  Daeron again held the demon’s following spell, but it now seemed only a matter of time before it ground them down...

[Sewercop]

Can you guys post a more complete stat block? Im just wondering how you get the db+ob and so on. Are they take from thin air or do you create your gods from scratch?

[Zedul]

Can you guys post a more complete stat block? Im just wondering how you get the db+ob and so on. Are they take from thin air or do you create your gods from scratch?

In this case this demon has a bunch of special artifact level "grafts" using soft-tech law from the Deep Space RM2/Spacemaster book that blow up it's DB by +200 and do other nifty tricks.

You can bump up your monsters through all kinds of means... but in general I just sit down and pick out primary skills a monster would have and multiply.

Say I rapid develop ... a 90th level mob is going to have 180 skill boxes in it's primary select few skills, and then it's just a matter of how you do box.  The old system was 5 - 2 - 1 - 1/2, some of the Companions have crazy variants like 5 3 2 1 or even 5 4 3 2 1..... and you end up with absurdly high skill ranks (+500 for a level 100) so  I just do 5 (for 1 to 10)  2 (for 11 to 20) and then 1 from there on out.


(Don't get me started on adding half points...   I think Grand Masters and Specialists should actually BE significantly more skilled when they keep focusing on said skill rather than only have a very slight edge (+10) over someone 20 levels under them who has spent probably 100+ less DP's  Anyway, I digress...

So this creature is going to have   50 (10)  + 20 (20) + 160 for a base non-modified total of 230 points in its selected focused skills.  But if you feel strongly about sticking to the half point system.  It would be 50 (10) + 20 (20) + 10 (30) and 75 for the remaining 150 boxes for a total of 155 points.  As you can tell the 1 point rule makes the higher end creatures and NPC's a harder curve over your PC's.

Also remember some special demonic creatures and such will have exotic skill type bonuses and sets that could break the normal +3 bonus rule and so forth.  Like a demon bred specifically by the dark overlords JUST for Assassination could be getting a +4 or even +5 level bonus in Ambush or some such trick, some artifacts and items likewise give extra level bonuses.

For underlings I always approximate and slap it down ... but for the toughed named NPC's and epic villains I generally stat them out longhand on my scratchpad worksheet before I enter them in my database or excel spreadsheet.