Help with CR 25 BBEG spell caster for Campaign

[geniussavant]

First off, long time no see. I've been out of the game for a while now, but was recently given the opportunity to run what will likely be my final 3.5 game as well as a high powered game with a group that wants to play instead of screw around.

So, here's the story:
I need help creating a bbeg for the end of the campaign. The party should be around EL 20 or so. No epic spell casting, infinite loops or game shattering effects. Party consists of an Artificer focused on item creation and building golems at ridiculously low cost I looked over the math and he's at something like <15 % market price and an intelligent iron golem body guard created with rudimentary intelligence(run by me, with assistance from the player), a Shadowcraft mage focusing on creating extra real spells, and one undecided character.

The campaign centers around the very small nation of the players that has come under attack from two sides, on one side(the first half of the campaign) a dragon that has started raiding villages and cities and the second half, the invading army of a much larger country. The bbeg will be the ruler of the invading country.

I'm thinking CR 25ish, the party only has 3.5 characters, but at least two will be optimized as well as the body guard of the artificer is likely to be a brute in melee. I want the bbeg to be a spell caster of some sort ideally with circle magic as it fits the rough theme I have for him. Was thinking of either cleric necromancer or red wizard, but I'm open to suggestions. I've built characters to near epic levels before so I know how powerful they can be, but what are my options as the DM to challenge my players?

Assume 48 point buy, all character classes as non associated until greater than racial hd, all 3.5/3.0 and dragon and dungeon, no home brew that requires learning a new system.

Prospective builds that are open to suggestion

Cleric hathran necromancer creating an army of undead to rule his nation with

Red wizard incantrix spell casting out the wazoo

Even toyed with an evil adapted malconvoker summoning demons to serve him

Thanks everybody

[Solo]

What are your villain's goals in life?

[geniussavant]

You mean other than be evil mcevilness?

He wants to bring the world into a realm of darkness with himself as the ruler of the world. In more specific terms, he wants to take over the surrounding nations, continue to rule his own nation, and to either kill off all magic users or enslave them eaome how.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

An idea I've been toying with, is :  CR O/D A
as in CR Outsider or Dragon racial hit dice wtih Adept.

22 O/D rhd / 21 Adept and perhaps an LA+1 of something.
It's a cr of 22 if you did things right, and rather tasty looking.
Technically you could fit a Major Bloodline in there too.
Mega skills, mega mega feats, max'd casting level, lots of epic.
Small pile of Quick Heals going off every now and then.

[geniussavant]

How are you getting either an outsider or a dragon with 22 hd at cr of 11? I'm sure I'm missing something. Assuming I'm missing something, that would be awesome, especially if I could trade the adept levels for a more powerful spell casting class.

[Nanshork]

How are you getting either an outsider or a dragon with 22 hd at cr of 11? I'm sure I'm missing something. Assuming I'm missing something, that would be awesome, especially if I could trade the adept levels for a more powerful spell casting class.

A mature adult black dragon has 22 HD and CR 14.  Adept is a non-associated class for dragons, so ever 2 levels of adept increases the CR by 1.  Either aDMg knows something that I don't or his math is a little off, a 22 dragon / 21 adept should have a CR of 24.5.  (This is the lowest CR I could come up with for a true dragon of that HD.)

[geniussavant]

Those are the numbers I was coming up with. The only other thing that comes close is a filth demon at cr 14 with 21 hd + 16 levels of adept fit a final cr of 22

Anyways, the Black dragon would likely be the way I'd go as the campaign begins with a dragon nemesis for the first half anyways. Maybe they were related out the first dragon was what was keeping the second one away.

[KellKheraptis]

How crazy powerful a BBEG archmage are you wanting?  Are we talking easily gate in an Atropal at level 25 and control it without a chance of failure to augment it's army, or are we talking gate in and drop Unicron from a cantrip?  ESPECIALLY over the top Red Wizards are one of my fortes, so just let me know how insane this guy needs to be.

Also, is the SCM in the party built to spec like one of them on here?  That's basically the only limiter on whether you want them to have a chance or potentially face an auto-TPK taking him on head on.

Finally, are mythals on the table for epic?  While incredibly lengthy to cast and such, they crank the difficulty through the roof by an insane factor.  Just look up the stats sometime for Jaerome Darkwind - JD was one of my main inspirations in my early days of Char-Op, and one look at his red mage will show you why.

[geniussavant]

Well, she's basically going scm into incantarix last I checked with her. Wants to make shadow magic her *itch. I fully expect her and the artificer to be built well enough that just the two of them could handle cr+2 encounters without a sweat unless I work overtime on the encounter. I want the party to struggle to kill the bbeg without resorting to him escaping. I'd like a knock down drag out fight. On a scale of commoner with toughness to true dragon loredrake venerable dragonwrought kobold, err on the side of the kobolds.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

aDMg knows something?
_{(shh kitty avatar you promised to not tell)}

I wasn't thinking True Dragon, but some might work.
Dretch and Psuedodragon have to do LA buy-off
but even LA+3 is gone by 24th level, as I count it.

Things can be turned into outsiders or dragons.
I've hit a road block in going from Playable Races
to the CR system.  But the 1/2 CR per Adept level
and the 1/2 CR per O/D racial hit dice, is core.


Fey RHD is further out there, at 1/4 per in CR
although usually without casting at Adept levels.

[altpersona]

Fey RHD is further out there, at 1/4 per in CR
although usually without casting at Adept levels.

and now im pondering 80 - 100 hd fey

[geniussavant]

Off hand, if I can find a template with low +cr that change hit dice from giant to either dragon or outsider, an eldrich giant from mm3 seems like it could be interesting.

On another note, mythrals seen to be exactly what I was looking for as far as far reaching permanent magical effects to shroud his kingdom in. Any suggestions on ones to create?

[KellKheraptis]

Off hand, if I can find a template with low +cr that change hit dice from giant to either dragon or outsider, an eldrich giant from mm3 seems like it could be interesting.

On another note, mythrals seen to be exactly what I was looking for as far as far reaching permanent magical effects to shroud his kingdom in. Any suggestions on ones to create?

Look up the rules for Deities and Demigods and Divine Realms, and that is -close- to what a mythal can do.  And a personal one can make you invincible, to the point that the most an absurdly high CL check on an epic dispel can do is supress your mythal for 1-4 rounds (and at this level, that likely triggers several contingencies).

As for a class layout, your options are fairly open - an Archivist can count as a cleric of Mystra to get a free metamagic of your choice on every casting, get into Hathran for circle magic, get any spell you want on any list, easily get access to DMM (enter metamagic you didn't pick for being a priest of Mystra), PLUS qualify just as easily for Dweomerkeeper.

Archivist 5/Dweomerkeeper 10/Hathran 5/Dweomerkeeper +5 seems like a nice build, with very little bookwork on the classes themselves, and doesn't lose a single CL.  Be sure to take Magical Training to get into DK, and load up on metamagic.

War Weaver at this level can get downright insane, especially if you hack your weavings with Legacy Champion.  Wizard 3/War Weaver 5/Haluuran Elder 5/Spellguard of Silverymoon 5/Legacy Champion 5/Archmage 2 would get you 24th level casting, with a built in +3 CL, plus free metamagic from Haluuran Elder AND circle magic, with the ability to fire 9th level spells out of the weave (8 at a time or 10 at a time...can't remember which gets the higher number between # of spells and spell level for the weave).

Finally, a balls out SCM with circle magic would be able to emulate literally every spell and power in the game at higher reality than anyone natively, from cantrips, with insane CL to boot.  Raising a CL 40 cantrip to a 20th level slot gets you another +20 CL from Earth Spell, for a native CL of AT LEAST 60 before items.  This opens up such world-enders as Apocalypse from the Sky, among others, and your Gate can literally call in elder evils.  Finally, Twinned, Chained, Repeating Spell Matrices are completely doable, as even a cantrip can be a Shadow Miracle, allowing an insane amount of simultaneous firepower to be brought to bear.

Dragonwrought what?  DKK is low op in this arena - unless it's a supercharged version of Skitter

[geniussavant]

See, now we're talking. The war weaver sketch looks promising. I'd rather not go scm as the party in the campaign already has one, don't really want to play too much with what they already have.

The archivist looks interesting as well, but functionally what would he do in combat, besides what ever the hell he wants?

With the war weaver build, I see him dropping a massive set of buffs on himself and his minions/guard then proceeding to mitigate anything the party does until his minions can kill them of.

Between the two, I think I like the war weaver better.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Commoner 24 with the Demigod Epic Destiny
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=4570
(the details are a little scattershot, but do able)

Assume my 2 arguments on that are correct.
Pick 1 alignment domain and 2 "philosophies"
= DvR 1 commoner, and even 1 epic feat.
Rather quick+easy choice based detailings.

[geniussavant]

The epic destinies are something I had forgotten about even though I have the way back page bookmarked. I think I'm going to go with a war weaver build, likely with an epic destiny. What gets would be suggested?

I'm thinking eldrich giant with a war weaver legacy champion spell guard  levels.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Eternal Hero EpicD , scroll down the link,
would allow for a recurring BBEG (if that's what you want).

[geniussavant]

Not really going for a reoccurring villain, more one that's just incredibly hard to kill, but once dead, statstays that way.

Hers what I've got so far:
mature adult black dragon spell hoarding loredrake 22/War Weaver 5/Haluuran Elder 5/Spellguard of Silverymoon 5/Legacy Champion 5/Archmage 1
This gives a CR of 25(rounded up from 24.5) with spell casting as a 28 level wizard.

How do the prc spell casting increases work after level 20?

There are a bunch of feats open, any suggestions?

As for the mythral, what features should I build it with? Thinking no teleport, some way to sense magic and a few boons that the bbeg's soldiers could take advantage of and then one or two big boons only available to the bbeg's favored servants.

Is there a way to give a dragon without it, alternate form?
And I seem to recall a spell or maybe feat that let a dragon use is natural str in other forms. Anybody know what I'm thinking of?

[Nanshork]

There's an Eberron feat that does what you're talking about, give me a second. 

Hidden Strength is as close as I can find.

The biggest problem that I see is that you can't justify that the caster prestige classes that boost your dragon spellcasting are non associated class levels.  Your dragon gains a whole CR for every prestige class level listed.

Associated Class Levels

Class levels that increase a monster’s existing strengths are known as associated class levels. Each associated class level a monster has increases its CR by 1.

Barbarian, fighter, paladin, and ranger are associated classes for a creature that relies on its fighting ability.

Rogue and ranger are associated classes for a creature that relies on stealth to surprise its foes, or on skill use to give itself an advantage.

A spellcasting class is an associated class for a creature that already has the ability to cast spells as a character of the class in question, since the monster’s levels in the spellcasting class stack with its innate spellcasting ability.

(Emphasis mine)

[geniussavant]

Some how, I over looked that. Hmm,

If I changed it from:

mature adult black dragon spell hoarding loredrake 22/War Weaver 5/Haluuran Elder 5/Spellguard of Silverymoon 5/Legacy Champion 5/Archmage 1

To:

mature adult black dragon loredrake 22/wizard 1/War Weaver 5/Haluuran Elder 5/Spellguard of Silverymoon 5/Legacy Champion 5
and used the sorcerer spellcasting to qualify but used all of the prcs to advance wizard casting, would that work?

Or should I just say keep it simple and just use human or necropolitan into wizard 3/War Weaver 5/Haluuran Elder 5/Spellguard of Silverymoon 5/Legacy Champion 5/Archmage 1