So it's clear that when it comes to BBEGs, Necromancers are totally unbalanced compared to other classes, only Wizards and maybe a few clerics and druids (and one or two rogues) even come close to being able to hatch plots so immense and powerful that their thwarting justifies a party of adventurers to go out into the land, perform epic feats while fulfilling epic quests, and ultimately save the land from those classes' evil hijinks.
So how do we make other classes besides necromancers competitive in the BBEG stakes?
While I can't help too much until I know the exact system (because each class has different amounts of power in different systems), I CAN say that if you want to make a BBEG that can wreck the land as well as piss off the party then you can go down this route.
This one's pretty easy.
Cleric - Cult leader.
Barbarian - Evil Warrior king a la Legate Lanius.
Fighter - Mercenary badass biggest motherfucker in town or like an evil, Dark Knight kinda guy.
Rogue - Shady manipulator a la Izaya Orihara from Durarara.
Artificer - lunatic genius with a magical anarchists cookbook running an organization outfitted woth custom gear
>>44553236
Stop caring about classes for bag guys and NPCs in general.
>>44553405
So, stop having fun wrong faggot
The obvious answer is by giving them political power or influence instead of magical power. A conquering warlord intent on world domination could belong to any class. While the necromancer is poring over his tomes and learning dark rituals, an anti-paladin has time to amass an army, and an assassin could be picking off all the right politicians to start a war.
>>44553515
Yeah, there's BBEGs beyond Emperor Palpatine.
>>44553515
And also he's a polymorph'd dragon& he's a she
>>44553236
Make a wealthy fighter.
Money is a helluva equalizer. Loads of minions.
Need a boat? Guess who owns the boat.
Staying at the inn? Guess who owns it.
Aloft, untouchable, and money to burn...
Any class will do.
>>44553365
>Rogue - Shady manipulator a la Izaya Orihara from Durarara.
I was thinking more in terms of Carmen Sandiago or Lupin - "Oh no, we must stop his plan to steal jangling hiter before it's too late!" - the deeds of the BBEG on his own should be immense enough that they present a danger beyond any gang or group they control.
Probalby a better way to illustrate what I'm talking about is by considering Fighters and Barbarians leading armies: In theory their armies can be a big enough deal with threaten kingdoms if not even in some cases whole worlds or planes, but even then the Barbarian or Fighter, to be a necromancer tier BBEG, has to be a herculean or Achilles type figure whose defeat and death is both very difficult to arrange AND substantial blow to the overall power of the army rather than just because it's lost its leader.
It's THAT aspect that I feel the necromancer has much more easily than other classes; other types of wizard for instance don't quite have that whole "Turn into a lich" trump card that necromancers have to instantly powerup their Bigness and Badness in a single ritual, clerics and druids can sort of get near there by becoming avatars or similar things to their Gods/to Nature (think Swamp Thing), with Druids having the closest analogue because they can always go Worm-That-Walks if they need a twist to their Badness if not Bigness, but Worms-That-Walks don't have that primal connection to the things underpinning their nature magic in the way that liches are sort of stepping closer to the source of their necromantic arts (or else the various analogues of Wood Elf Druids would be famous for Going Worm in a way that they aren't).
The Artificer can probably take a similar tact by uploading or brain-in-a-jaring himself into some uberpowerful creation like the Dwemer did with numidium from Morrowind.
But the Barbarian? Like, he can leap quite far and maybe raise an army. Where's the Rage Beast/Avatar of War aspect? It's rarely there.
>>44553236
The only thing limiting your BBEGs is your imagination.
I had a barbarian from far north as BBEG. He was strong, charismatic and cunning - and he managed to gather an immense horde of both northlings and people of lands he conquered. The only supernatural thing about him was frost witch's blessing, which made immense cold follow him and granted him and those who fought for him strength in it.
Secondary BBEG was a knight who formed a criminal syndicate that essentially ruled the kingdom the game was in. He wasn't magical at all (well, until he died and came back, at least, but that's another story from another campaign).
>>44554195
Then have the Barbarian give himself to the primal forces and become a giant monster upon initial defeat. Kind of like Pic Related
Or for the Fighter, the bravado of the party impressed him and if they beat him they can rule his empire as they see fit.
>>44553236
I actually do BBEG without a direct combat finale. I like doing traps and puzzles, so a lot of the time my players just have to figure out how to fuck with them in order to win and it's a lot of fun just sitting there with a shit-eating grin on my face as they scribble out solutions and shit.
The last campaign I ran had the BBEG as a group of crazed, frenzied, primal/feral druids that were going to summon some fucked up version of Gaia from Captain Planet to turn the local kingdom into nothing but wild lands, with all the non-animal/plant life turning into plants and animals.
Now the party could try to take them on directly, I mean they were doing this Pally Pow-wow thing and if they actually thought of it could've summoned their own dude to fight Gaia like that one part in FFX, but they finally figured out the puzzle I set up for them.
Each of the Druids specialized in tapping into a blind, but brief, bloodlust and becoming their unique Spirit Animal to fight, which were ordered from small animal to large animal. After learning each of those forms the party pieced together on paper that the animals they turned into loosely followed a food hierarchy in the animal kingdom. All the paladins had to do was mess with the Druids' senses and make it so they attacked and ate each other in turn so the party could then just gang up on the last one easy.
I'm not really sure that's how you should do BBEG, but my group seems to like these puzzle fights.
>>44553236
My next BBEG will be an epic-level smith and artificer, making a variety of interesting constructs to terrorise the realm with.
Their basic units are Bronzeblades, which are essentially a collection of slender, hinged razor-sharp blades animated and supported by magic, that are usually in a vaguely humanoid, almost corvid-skeletal form, and can fold themselves up like Swiss army knives to be delivered to battlefields/strikezones by the thousands, or even smuggled into places. They only need about the size of a Pringles can.
In other words, this smith got smart.
>>44553236
>mfw Tiberium concept art
To answer the question somewhat seriously, though, you start by building the character before you give them a class. Decide what this BBEG really IS before you decide his stats or any of that shit. Is he/she a direct or indirect threat? Are they intelligent, brutish, powerful, conniving, charismatic, or insane? Decide how you want them to interact with the players, then build everything else off of that.
>>44553236
If you're talking about the actual class, blame spells and spellcasting being OP and shit.
If it's about it being an essential part of what plans they have and what magnitude of effect those plans will have on the world, that's just because you're relying too much on BBEG using brute force to cause world destruction. The BBEG could be a fucking beer brewer who hired a crack team of alchemists and herbalists to make his/her products super addictive and thus sell more at the cost of horrible side effects. and all the quests the party goes through is loosely connected to that plot like sahaugin attacks increasing on land because their waters are being polluted from the brew wastes or the party is hired to help another brewer from being taken over by Big Bad Evil Brewery via bankruptcy or corporate espionage. Shit I just made that up on the spot I'm about to write that shit down for the next campaign I run don't steal it.
>>44553350
This is such a beautiful idea. I...I must use it.
