Non-magic BBEG

This desu.

Take your faggy meme and shove it up your faggot ass.

>It's not that hard.
It actually is if the Wizard knows what he's doing. Not much you can do if you get Dimensional Locked + Forcecaged, or slapped with Solid Fog if you don't have Freedom of Movement, or nailed with an orb for most of your HP, or the million things you can do to a pure martial.

Yeah. And the advantage for preparation goes to the Wizard. The BBEG has to hunt down or steal magic items and countermeasures for all these Wizard spells. The Wizard just has to sleep for the night, maybe go buy some scrolls to copy, and then whatever random disabling spell he's picked will probably go through.

If you're not an idiot and use ToB, sure.

no

First off, just remember that the overall balance of 3.5 requires magic at high levels. If you want a martial enemy who is level 10 or so, he's going to have a bunch of magical gear if he wants to be competitive. Don't be afraid to make up magic items that don't exist in a spatbook. Start with something that gives him flat spell resistance.

Fudge his HP and saves. Just make them completely impossible for his level. I know it's cool and all that D&D enemies can be made in the same way as players but if you want a good final boss sometimes it's just time to throw the system out the window and make something fun. Give him a bunch of feats.

Make sure that there are plenty of supporters. The final battle should not be BBEG vs five players, it should be those five players vs the BBEG and his six underlings.

A pirate king. 'nuff said

Martials aren't limited just to their ability to get into a physical brawl user. If you've got an evil wizard that has contingency plans and ways to stack the odds in his favor up the ass, who's to say you can't have a fighter that does as well. If anything, the martial should strive to have even MORE shit stacked in their favor before the battle begins since they know their physical limits. Make them control the battlefield: favorable ground, traps fucking everywhere, snipers and other nasties waiting in the wings to harass and wear the party down; the works. This is all just as important as the BBEG himself. If you'd like to make the fight even more difficult then you can still definitely make the fucker hit like a semi-truck. That way the party will find themselves between a rock and a hard place as they try to decide whether or not they want to fight this fucker on his terms or try to force their way through the menagerie of bullshit that's laid out on the battlefield to gain any advantage they can.

Sure but not without a bunch of magic items.

>I know it's cool and all that D&D enemies can be made in the same way as players but if you want a good final boss sometimes it's just time to throw the system out the window and make something fun. Give him a bunch of feats.
This.

Bend the rules a little

Yes, if the party kidnaps his daughter.

I think for this to work you basically just need to ignore the rules and have this guy basically be an Epic Level Warblade with a supercharged Iron Heart Surge.

For him to work as a high tier threat in 3.5, he basically needs to be able to wade through most hostile spells to little detriment.

If someone uses a charm spell, he shakes it off after maybe a moment. Illusions? He walks through them like they aren't even there. Summon an army? It might stall him, but he'll crush through it without getting tired. Drop a meteor on him? He'll bench it and throw it back. Gate him to hell? He'll come back in a day leading an army of demons after conquering it.

He needs to be a sort of slow unstoppable force that's technically mundane, but so far past normal human limits that hardly anything can even phase him.

Please do this. Have the kingdom charge the players with getting a Sleeping Princess out of the country. Princess is 'BBEG's' daughter. He goes on a fucking rampage to get her back, players think its an Army but its just one man tracking them down.

Yes.
Start with the Crusader class from Tome of Battle. It's a huge sack of hit points plus a delayed damage pool class feature, healing maneuvers, and heavy armor proficiency.

Then bring out the gestalt rules from
Unearthed Arcana. I like to make my major boss NPC's gestalt characters in otherwise non-gestalt campaigns.
You can gestalt your BBEG Crusader together with something flavorful. PHB monks actually work better for monsters than PC's; the flurry of blows feature will help your BBEG to fight off an entire party of PC's.

You need to make your guy big. Consider the half-ogre or half-minotaur templates. Give your guy a reach weapon.
Take advantage of the Crusader's Thicket of Blades stance. Really make that reach work for you.

Make sure your guy has teleportation, flight, protection from mind-affecting spells, and some way to detect sneaky PC's.

Good luck!

>Is it possible to create a strong, capable, devastating, and all-around powerful martial BBEG...
Well, of cou-
>...using 3.5?
Nooooooooo

>Crusader/Monk

Split the party up.

>half-minotaur
1/4 bull?

Anything you can do to make the guy big. You just really need to make the guy big somehow, and if you aren't giving the guy Hidden Talent (Expansion) from Expanded Psionics Handbook, then it is going to have to be a race or a template. You don't want racial hit dice, so template is your best bet.

Though lycanthropy templates would also work. Many of those increase your size. Look for one that turns you into vermin, like a giant crab or a swarm of insects. The vermin type makes you immune from mind-affecting stuff.

Another way to make a martial BBEG that turns into stuff would be to use the Wild Shape variant Ranger from Unearthed Arcana. Make sure you combine that with something from Tome of Battle using either multiclassing or gestalt rules.

If your BBEG is a goliath, there is a racial substitution level for Barbarians from Races of Stone that increases your size while you rage. That would work too.

Are you trying to suggest that the BBEG should be a Giant enemy Were-crab?

Every BBEG needs a second form.

>Honestly, I think you'd want to have it sort of be a double BBEG situation, where one is the unstoppable charismatic warlord of a leader, and the other is a highly skilled spymaster with all sorts of poisons, skills, and tactics to set up plots behind the scenes.
who gave you my campaign notes?
they're foils of my players' characters ideologically and mechanically

ihititwithmyaxe.tumblr.com/post/5994449301/the-charging-fighter-breaking-35-dd

Start with this and add shit that will keep the party from stopping it from happening.
>inb4 "a link to something from tumblr kys faggot" just read the fucking article you fucking retard

>Anything you can do to make the guy big
I tried this and my players couldn't stop asking why he wears the mask

Ooh! There's another way to do it.
Tauric Creature template from Savage Species.
realmshelps.net/monsters/templates/tauric.shtml

You can make the Scorpion King.

> Papa Nier as the BBEG.

It's like you people want the world to be uninhabitable afterwards.

Holy shit though, Papa Nier fucked things up so badly that they had to retcon it so that humanity could survive into another game. You don't steal this motherfucker's daughter.

A martial with a constant powerful anti-magic field on at all times.

the trick now is to see if a party of low health, low bab sissy men in robes can successfully beat a martial to death with their staves.

mfw my bbeg's master plan is to catastrophically interpolate the material plane and the elemental plane of fire with no survivors

That's one of the easiest ways for him to get fucking murdered. Getting laughed at by a flying Wizard that your AMF can't even touch and ending up cockslapped by Glitterdust, a spell that goes right through your AMF, is not good.

It'll work just fine to shit on party martials though.

12/10 good stuff user

Big boss/Solid snake don't have any powers

The big final dungeon is not too big so there's no free space to fly up.

It helps if the campaign only goes to mid levels.

I think he meant rules wise. As for character wise
>All conquering warlord, absolute military genius and combat monster with an elite guard of extremely skilled fighters
>Seemingly mindless berserker hacking his way through everything in his path for some unknown reason
>The greatest swordsman evar, he wants to kill the party because he sees them as worthy opponents or he purposely manipulates things for the party to face to toughen them up until they can face him on even ground

Well if you wanted to get yourself blocked off by a Wall of Force, be my guest.

well there's the half-giant template it comes from the Book of Erotic Fantasy though

Kinda true, dnd is a broken horrible mess after level 12 really.

Once played a half-ogre warrior using the spiked chain meme-build and it was hella funny to be tripping everything that came within range and then distributing opportunity attacks to anyone who dared stand up again
Using this for a BBEG or at least a bodyguard/underling would definitely pose a threat and a challenge to PCs

If you give him some Ex and Su abilities, you probably can.

For example: (Su) agility that he can use to make two or three attacks more than normally or, instead, use to dodge and evade.
(Su) Will/Charisma that gives him bonuses to saves.

Some kind of cloning artifact.

Any Wizard worth his salt can kill a Fighter of equal level. He can also kill him and his 5 hirelings.

Let's watch him kill 10 High level fighters with perfect coordination and unless you kill the right one they keep coming back.

>it's 2016
>you are still playing 3.5

Help guys, my Internet Explorer 5 can't display this site!
I tried to install the witcher III on my abacus, but it doesn't work! I think it might be drivers, though.

>hey guys im a dumb sheep who buys the new and shiny because the "independent reviews" tell me to
>old things are, like, bad ohmygod

...

Crusader 21

Lots of offense, but even more defense, both physical and mental. Give him all around high stats, like seriously base 18 in every stat. Artifact weapon (or maybe shield or something).

Get really creative with gear and feat/maneuver selection.

Personally, I hate weeabo fightan magicks, but whatever.

Yes, the are tons of splat books to help.

First and fore most Tome of Battle.

>Without magic items
>3.5
Thank god I don't actually have to follow such retarded rules and have accepted that magic is required after, fuck honestly level 5 if you want to be relevant or even think of being powerful*

*Baring certain very specific builds that probably aren't used very often because no sane/good gm would force a no magic item/still allow Wizards campaign

Give him an army and a way to get right up a wizard's face and cleave through displacement, invisibility and others with ease.

>cast fly/mage armor/sheild
>Fireball/any aoe
>Spam
>double so if more than one caster
Rip

But please tell me how Mary mcbbeg will slyfully escape.

Like most things,this is a problem exclusive to 3.5.

4e works fine at any level,even if early levering are fairly dull, and for its many faults 5e works well,I think.

Don't fight fair. Have your BBEG blindside the party from behind a door, kick people down stairs,and show up in the middle of the night. Casters generally need a full days rest to be prepared for a fight don't let them get it. They also need some distance or things get dicey fast, so have your BBEG attack the party from behind.

>break the 4th wall via strength check
>DM beats your head against the table until you fall unconscious
>now your wizard is out of the fight

>cleave through displacement
Well first you need to hit their stupid high AC thanks to mage armor/sheild/natural armor bonuses, then you need to roll a percentage dice and hope you rolled that 50% to hit

Not to mention the crowd of summons or undead they may have, or that they might just be flying over you, or it's just an illusion copy, the real one is behind 3 more good job, you might hit through some temp hp before the enervations start to rape everyone.

If you can't tell I like to play necromancers.

bbeg closes a door and waits 20 minutes before fighting you.

So in other words you need to resort to meta gameing to win Mr gm, GG no re.

Simple. You fly, while the BBEG throws a huge fucking wardrobe cabinet or whatever at the flying wizard. Since a martial has a pretty damn high BAB, even with an improvised weapon, he'll probably hit despite your mage armor/shield/whatever. And since you're a squishy wizard, you don't make the fort save to not get knocked back by the huge-ass thrown weapon, and end up sprawled on the ground.

Alternatively, reach weapon. Spiked chain, with a trip attempt.

Or maybe just a normal goddamn jump. A martial at the level where wizards get really 'fuck you' tough should easily be able to roll the DC for a quick 5-10 foot high jump, especially if he gets a circumstance bonus from using furniture as a springboard.

Any good GM will adapt the BBEG to the players' abilities and numbers. Scale him up if he's going to be taking on an entire team, give him allies or minions. If the players are all wizards, the BBEG has enough saves to weaken the players' chance of getting a spell off. Ideally, 50/50, complete with a strong resistance against save-or-die.

Obviously if you have a good gm then yes everything will generally tailored both for and against the party, but my posts are currently running off OPs retarded logic that you can some how, by RAW, in a system that constantly fucks martials with a rake over a bench, hope to deal with laser shooting, demiplane creating, enervating, undead creating, fireball throwing wizards, with no magic items to boot.

I agree with you 100% but honestly there is a good reason people cry constantly about wizards being op, I should know, I'm currently playing a Lich necromancer

(Though that isn't to say I haven't been working with the gm to gimp myself a bit for the sake of balance at times, just the fact that some of these spells are encounter destroyers)

they only cry because they're too much of a pussy to use underhanded tactics as well. How do most wizards fare against poison? against sneak attacks? against called shots? against thievery? There are countermeasures to all these things, but it's hard to defend against all at once without losing their value to the party.

>Poisons
>Those DCs
>Ever being used
Other wise yes you have a point, and that when the party as a whole starts to matter, because then the paladin or cleric start to really shine, and buff mclargehuge the barbarian can hit mcbbeg in the dick with a cleaver.

So I guess the moral of the story is, unless you go full super universalist wizard, a wizard is only as powerful as the party that backs him up.

But holy shit flee for your life if they decided to make a well optimized wizard.

>BBEG is entrily non-magic
>all of his fortress and army is non-magic in fact
>by means of fuck-huge epic permanent anti-magic zone
>and THEN apply all those nice class/race advice from above

But anti magic is still a kind of magic, a spell that can be cast.

So, Alfarius and Omegon.

1) first half of your comment makes no sense
2) it could be divine blessing or some sort of psychic stuff, or whatever. a guy is so disdainful of magic and so strong of will, that he literally projects an anti-magic field.

Nigga be a Yuuzhan Vong

>not making every bbeg a werecrab

9/10 of those just don't work when you can fucking crank call the deity of your choice every single day and ask about your near future. Also Blink, Displacement, Mirror Image, Barkskin, Stoneskin, Alarm, Planar Binding a Succubus for that sweet telepathic ethereal invisible scout etc.

Also poison immunity can be bought with a 50gp potion, and diviner wizards literally cannot be surprised (but this is PF, not 3.5)

>Then bring out the gestalt rules from
Groans*

Low levels? yes
High levels? Pfhahahahahahahaha, no, unless ToB, but even though, no, you just have someone that deals tons of damage, but can easily be dispatched with magic shenanigans from the wizard/cleric/druid

Just rise their saves till they pass every spell ever, I dunno +200 to all should sufice.
2000+ HPs
100+ BAB
Something like that could have a chance against the casters

You forgot rope trick and L's tiny hut

Every wizard and sorcerer ever has, in 3.PF, advantage on perception though, how people don't know this?

A smart enough martial will always fuck up a wizard. They rely on spells, which eventually run out. Either burn out their magic, or if they are too smart for that, don't fight them in a situation you don't have the advantage. Villains usually have the edge in resources, so they can utilize kidnapping relatives and lovers, anti-magic fields, traps, thieves that will take away your spell book.. there are tons of ways to neutralize a wizard if you have an ounce of creativity

tru

Loses to Maze, which has no save

yeah, but do you have all of those on at once? Did you drink your poison potion the first day in the dungeon, what about the second? If your god tells you that going in a castle will get your ass kicked will the party follow you? When do you cast your buffs if the bbeg just walks out the door beside you? Are you going to blow a 9th level spell to learn how to survive what the GM thinks the most dangerous part of the dungeon is or how to get the drop on the boss? If the boss gets next to you and lands a full round, how many mirror images will you have left?

>le you just have to be smart argument
>le just metagame argument
See, wizards can also be smart, they actually are SMARTER because they have high Int stat.

they have high perception generally and a familiar to get another check but it's usually lower than a rouges stealth

If thieves were smart they would all look to steal spellbooks since those things are cash money, but if a dm does anything to a spellbook (including counting pages) that isn't charging a wizard for ink they bitch incessantly.

>but do you have all of those on at once?
yes? most of those spells are useful for many many situations, you have lots of spells and picking those spells is always a good idea.

>b-but batman quantum wizard!
No, see, this isn't about having THE best spell for every situation, that's unrealistic, but wizards never were about that, they still have the 2nd and 3rd best spell for a given situation, which coincidentally work for many more, that's how you make a good spell list, you pick the good spells that work for different scenarios not the ultimate good spell for a single and unique situation.

Srly, there're tons of guides out there that tell you which spells are a must because, really, they're that good and work that fine for lots of situations. And sure, you'll move the goalpost again with "well, the GM can build a situation to fuck up the wizard", yeah, and in that case I already win because you had to bend backwards just to stop me, and by doing so you killed the rest of the group more than probably because if I'm incapable of dealing with that scenario with these spells, they for sure can't.

What's metagaming about actually being wary and clever dealing with people who throw fireballs and cross dimensions? There's no rule for Fighter not being allowed to have high int. Much less so if it's the big bad.

Wizard players are rarely smart, because they use magic to solve problems and get lazy due to it.

Advantage doesn't exist in 3.PF, retard

that rule is called "common sense"
no one with high int would become a fighter

>There's no rule for Fighter not being allowed to have high int
There's not, true, but circumstances would turn that pretty hard. Martials are MAD for the most part, they need Str, Con, Wis, Int, sometimes Dex and Cha.

Ignoring the fact that a bound succubus lasts forever, you can have multiple active, and is pretty much the perfect scout:

Lets pretend I'm an 11th level wizard. I can craft a permanent CL1 slotless item of Delay Poison for 4000gp, a pittance. If God sats the castle's gonna fuck me up, I don't have to go anywhere close to it. I could use Stoneshape to demolish the tower, Scry and Teleport in and out in 18 seconde, send summoned earth elementals, who can fly through stone to do my bidding, or just fucking use my summoned/bound manpower to fucking Geas someone else to do it, no party required. If the BBEG walks away, I can track him with Scry, Locate Creature, a bound succubus etc, I can pursue with Dimension Door, Teleport, Plane Shift. If he teleports right fucking next to me, I have fucking Contingency to bail me out and pull my ass together. Any spell I don't need right now I can scribe to a scroll to be used at my convenience at a later time, and I can always craft Pearls of Power to give myself more fucking spells per day if I'm so inclined. And at iith leve, Mirror image is a minimum of 4 images, so a full attack can only just knock out all 4 if by some fucking miracle I've walked on a BBEG landmine with literally 0 prep time.

>Wizard players are rarely smart, because they use magic to solve problems and get lazy due to it.
?
These arguments are getting weirder and weirder and people are ignoring the actually issues: THE FUCKING SYSTEM

Fighters can be smart? so can casters, but casters have the system's help on top of that. Whatever you add to the martials (roleplaying, tactics, whatever) the wizards have all of that + the system.

>Nothing is wrong, see, some dumb people play these obviously broken classes so everything is balanced

>50172965
So what? DM isn't restricted by a system. Neither are players. You roll good enough, you'll get that high int Fighter. But the DM can just create one if he wants his bad guy to be the evil warlord version of Sun Tzu. Having high int doesn't automatically make you a wizard, and it wouldn't be out of place to have an 18 int level 1 aristocrat.

ranged weapons are still martial, right?

make it a ranger. with some sort of bow thingie. or maybe a shooty fighter. something like that.

now, what's important, is the race. make it a tarrasque. tarrasque ranger. shooting bows at people. massive, ballista-sized bows. laugh as they try their typical anti-tarrasque tactics, flying around and stuff.
make it have a big album-like book. you know how entomologists keep butterflies on pins? this BBEF would keep magic-users impaled on ballista bolts this way

i was talking fluff-wise. in-universe.

no one with brains enough to figure out magic would be a fighter. no one, not ever. that's bullshit.

Wait, your GM doesn't have high int martials that immediately target your spellbook with sunder or thieves that go for the steal? Mines have, and most of the time fail because I have decoys and shit (he knows it but he can't metagame), we sleep in rope trick, I have copies, etc. Is not as expensive as you might think, and after all it isn't like I'm going to spend money on armors, weapons and shit, a couple of rods, two rings and a cape and that's it.

Even though you lose your book you dont' lose spells, you just can't learn new one and are stuck with the list you picked that day till you get a new book, if the list is good enough this might not be that much of a problem, an issue still though.