Building a boss battle, help welcome.

[Wrex]

So, my party of about 8 7th level characters is trapped, in a jungle, with a Homcidal Sorceror and his army of stealthy types. Specifically, I was thinking a 10th level sorceror, a 10th level factotum, and a 10th level (Insert class here) as the enemies they would need to defeat. Their optimization level is....rather low, and the party consists of a Paladin (Given free LA to make him more competetive) A shadowcaster, A spiked chain crusader, A Fighter/Warblade, A Truenamer and Necronomist using Kellus's fix, and a Warblade. WHat sort of spell loadout should I give the sorceror, and how should I Spec his minions to support him?

[ksbsnowowl]

Jungle?  Entangle + Cloudkill!

Maybe the Factotum can pull off casting Entangle?  Maybe from a wand?

A druid would actually be a great addition as your third guy.  That would get your Entangle right there.

Also, Web would work quite well in a dense forest; lots of trees to hold up the Web.

[Miranius]

Does your sorcerer have a specific "theme" to him? If he`s into meddling with demons and devils, you`ll find some nice "outside help" there. My first thought on it: fiend of posession that can animate trees and/or roots to trip/entangle or just scarily stalk the players.
Another way to go would be one or more invisible alles. The cheapest way i could think of would be animated objects, created with the "invisible spell" metamagic feat but there must be many other ways to do it. If you`re going for the "dense, creepy woods" theme, just let some horror-movies inspire you   (and come to think of it, how about a dread witch or similar demoralizer?)

Another thought on the sorcerer: nothing is more agonizing than to have the bad guy escape to fight another day, this time with the EXACT knowledge on what the party can do. So you might want some spells like wings of cover, greater mirror image, benign transposition or some kind of contingency teleportation. Also, a faked death with a pre-prepared "corpse" (flesh to stone on a statue that looks like him for example) would fool the adventurers, at least for a short time.
Sorcerers being rather squishy and such, think about using illusions. Not just targeted on the adventurers, but for example to cover archers or a pit or.... As long as they dont "interact" with it (read: walk/fall through it) they get no save against it.

[Wrex]

He dosen't have a particular theme, other than that he plays like a rat-bastard and is slippery to catch (And I finally got to cast the Phantasmal thief spell in serious context, hooray). He succesfully wrested the Macguffin from the PCs, then retreated into the dungeon which he could now open with said macguffins.  I'm still unsure what his second in command should be, but I made the third guy an Illusionist, who treated the PC's to a battle they will not soon forget. Generally, the PC's will fight each of them on their own, then all three together at the very end.

My PC's aren't terribly well optimized, so even the most basic of tricks would work against them.

[Miranius]

So your sorcerer goes the illusionist-route, what does the factotum do?
If you are still looking for something, it might help to know if/why the options from other posters and me are off the table.

[Wrex]

Oh, your suggestions are definitly under consideration, and adding a couple extra escape routes so they can have a taste of what they are up against was a great idea.


The factotum was mostly to serve as general purpose UMD support (This also explains why he's carrying the primary loot of the encounter)

[Miranius]

Are you limited to WOTC material? Yesterday i stumbled over the Xenoalchemist homebrew-class (one of the two i ever read that seem usable, at least at these levels...) It has a very cool and disturbing touch and would rock with a band of minions to "play" with
Sadly it seems the forum at giantitp.com where i found it is down at the moment, but maybe they`ll be up again soon or you can find it somewhere else.

[ksbsnowowl]

Are you limited to WOTC material? Yesterday i stumbled over the Xenoalchemist homebrew-class (one of the two i ever read that seem usable, at least at these levels...) It has a very cool and disturbing touch and would rock with a band of minions to "play" with
Sadly it seems the forum at giantitp.com where i found it is down at the moment, but maybe they`ll be up again soon or you can find it somewhere else.

They were down all yesterday too.

[Wrex]

Oh yes, the Xenoalchemist, I had forgotten how dreadfully fun they are to play with 


You should still be able to access the cached version of the page, I think.

[Miranius]

so, anything new with your party? did the have new encounters with your merry band of murdering miscreants?

With all kinds of evil and/or insane types i always think that something like this is missing: http://cdn.iwastesomuchtime.com/4262013104355.jpg