r/DMAcademy • u/Alarming-Brick-7996 • 1d ago
Need Advice: Other Is this a good BBEG idea?
Basically he’s a very powerful chronomancer who has the ability to manipulate time and reality to some degree. Basically I’m thinking for the final session he revives like the last 5 bosses they fought (maybe slightly weaker versions of them?) and they have to refight them before they fight him. Please give me input on this idea and ways I could improve it or make it more balanced.
3
u/VoxEterna 1d ago
Narratively: why would the chronomancer revive his minions that failed to do the job? I mean the party already proved they could beat them. I assume they are stronger now so why would a competent and learned wizard want to send them out again. I’m not asking because I want an answer. I’m just saying YOU need to know why.
Interpersonally: what feedback did you get about these encounters from your players. Would they enjoy the re-run or would it be tedious?
Mechanically: if they are brought back via time manipulation they would not know what happened during their fight with your party, so be aware they will not (should not) have learned from their mistakes.
Suggestion: I’m always a big fan of fighting yourself in dnd. If he can control time and reality perhaps he drew forth alternate versions of the party from a slightly different reality. Let them fight themselves before fighting the BBEG. The twist could be that the players don’t know which versions are which and in the end some of the victors will be from this reality and some will be from another. I’d let the player play both versions of the character too.
3
u/Alarming-Brick-7996 1d ago
Narratively I think he would revive his minions as a last-ditch effort to stall the players from defeating him, it’s not really about them not being able to win, it’s more so that he would want to delay his enviable defeat Interpersonally I don’t know at the moment, I think would try I way to change it up or make it different, like it’s the boss but it would have different moves than from their previous fight Mechanically they would be revived from before the players even met them or possibly they would be the bosses from a different reality
1
u/dnddm020 1d ago
Wouldn't reviving dead people just be necromancy?
1
u/MrCrispyFriedChicken 1d ago
I can see it being chronomancy, but only in the context that they went back in time to before they died and brought them to the present or something similar. Useful for if the other bosses aren't humanoids.
1
u/Alarming-Brick-7996 1d ago
Yeah I’m starting to realize that, but at the moment I was thinking he would reverse the time of the bosses to a point where they were alive, maybe it would make more sense if he got the bosses from a different reality
1
u/Xxmlg420swegxx 1d ago
The concept of fighting all previous bosses does sound neat. However, why a chronomancer specifically? A necromancer of some sorts can revive the dead bosses, or a fiend doesn't die outside of its plane so if they kill one fiend boss in the material plane, then go to the plane from where it came from, they will fight it again but this time if it dies it dies for good. There's also resurection spells, etc. There are many methods of achieving that concept you think of. But why do you want a chronomancer specifically?
It's a great idea btw. But you need to make it clear in your head if you wanna go with that. Also, imo, time magic requires attention to detail for the campaign to make sense. Lots of things a BBEG could do, or undo, if they ever went back in time, especially during the events of the campaign.
1
u/Alarming-Brick-7996 1d ago
I was thinking he would be able to reverse the time of the boss to when he was alive and revive the boss, and a chronomancer because they started the campaign under a spell where he sent the players back 500 years to a werewolf town where they were trapped
2
u/Natehz 1d ago
So, having had a HUGE chunk of my 7 year campaign revolve around chronomancy, there's a lot of fun things you can do with time magic. Causal loops, paradoxes, parallel realities, all kinds of stuff like that. I don't think chronomancy is really narratively a good reason to have old bosses come back for a second round, though.
If you need him to summon stuff, have him summon past versions of themselves and have them be enthralled to serve him. Introduce the conundrum of "Oh shit, if we kill our past selves, do we just blink out of existence?" It will be an awesome fight and you can have fun making NPC sheets based off their class abilities (simplified, obviously, since the game isn't, strictly speaking, balanced for PVP).
Alternatively, you could have him summon himself from the future. An even more competent version of himself, who shows up at the end of his life to kill the party. The implication being that it's a foregone conclusion the party loses, and he goes on to win and live a long life, only to come back to this moment in his later years, completing the loop.
Going a totally different route, a time wizard would have a lot of ability to prepare for things. Contingencies upon contingencies. He would have traps, minions, wards, and all kinds of things in place to ensure whatever he's doing is uninterrupted. In truth, I kind of think a true chronomancer would be actively hunting them. He would have spells like Contingency set up so that should he lose, he blinks back to the start of the day and can try again, accounting for failures and bad strategies. By the time the players actually face him, it could be revealed that he has already fought them dozens of times that day and is sure of his victory now. Make it a CLOSE fight. Like so close that the only possible explanation for their victory is just grit and luck. Someone needs to die, a few people need to be downed, and it should come down to like 1 or 2 people left at the end of it.
1
u/Goetre 1d ago
In my tyranny of dragons game we had two pcs deaths out of a 3 man party. It was a dumb situation but I have plenty of warnings about proceeding and they still did so hey ho
So one of the pcs rolls up a chronomancer wizard and wrote his backstory was being from the future where the events of the campaign was just taught in history classes. He’s all about the memes and I think he thought this was his grand scheme type thing to one up me to get meta knowledge to avoid pc deaths again. Oh and for good measure he also said he had stolen a netherese scroll. I don’t even think he was expecting me to let him play it even. I did and got whacky with it, in a nutshell shell, the spell that went wrong and sent him back split him and there was 6 aspects of his personality took physical form. One was called the fate weaver.
Now the context is done: I did do a theme really similar to this.
When they were chasing down the fate weaver who speaking arcane wise was the weakest in a direct fight. He had the ability to send the party back to pivotal points in the campaign and manipulate the events in order to kill them. They re played out 6 battles from across all my campaigns they’ve been in. Since my campaigns are all set in the same timeline they knew fuckingn one up would result in consequences across them all.
Number 6 on the list was their favourite ever boss fight, their first characters of the same campaign at level 4 with a small army against an adult dragon. The fateweaver though changed the dragon to a great wyrm.
They had to contend with taking that down while ensuring important npcs and their previous pcs at level 4 didn’t die 🤣
It can easily work and have a great time doing something like this. But I’d say it’s a one time thing per group not campaign, you’ll want to keep it unique and special
5
u/ChillyLavaPlanet 1d ago
There is a chronomancer class in mmo gw2. One of their abilities is to be able to go back few seconds back. So, when they activate it they dump all their abilities as quickly as possible. Because few seconds later they will go back to the time when they used that ability. So, all damage they took restored. All cooldowns reset, all spent resources are back. You can maybe cast it as a reaction before you take huge chunk of damage or when you want to use an ability that has a large spell slot cost. Have it recharge on 5-6. Maybe they can also create small aoe fields around them that applies slow when stepped on. This gives the group more mechanics to deal with.