Monster Stats Help

[ways and means]

I need some stats for a shadow lord and his shadow servants to challenge a fairly optimized party of 4 chest deep players (a focused practitioner with 10 effective discipline being the most dangerous) they will have to fight there way up a tower of slum accommodation (filled with victims and horror) fighting the shadow servants of the boss waiting on the roof.  The servants should be really easy to kill (no consequences, toughness) but also dangerous enough to sap the party before their fight as well as numerous and faceless the shadow master at the top should be able to hold his own or even win if the players play it badly.   

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions I would welcome your input.   

[Deadmanwalking]

For the shadow-master, give him the same Physical Immunity to magic that Ogres have. Or, actually, from a thematic perspective, give him full Physical Immunity with a Catch not easily done with magic (or the magic the Focused Practitioner uses anyway), or that takes a few turns to set up. Combine that with Channeling/Evocation using Shadow as an Element, and he'll be really scary.

For the servants, Inhuman Strength, Inhuman Speed, and Claws paired with decent combat skills always make for loads of damage that probably gets to take at least one turn before it dies. Give them Cloak of Shadows, Stealth, and have them attack from ambush, and it just gets nasty. Nasty enough you may want to skip out on the strength, actually. Hmmm, I can throw together a quick minion...

Aspects:
High Concept: Living Shadow
Other:
Killer In The Darkness

Skills:

Great: Fists, Stealth,
Good: Athletics, Endurance,
Fair: Alertness, Intimidate,
Average: Conviction, Presence,

Powers:

Claws [–1]
Cloak of Shadows [–1]
Inhuman Speed [–2]
Gaseous Form [–3]

Total: -7 Refresh

Stress:

Mental: OOO
Physical: OOOO
Social: OOO
Armor: 0.

Toss on Inhuman Strength if you want more punch, but Claws plus probably getting your PCs to defend at Mediocre should be plenty. If they seem overly tough, drop their skills all a rank, that oughtta soften 'em up. As an extra benefit, they provide an excellent justification for their master to know the PCs weaknesses as he can have them watch the Pcs more-or-less at will.

[Sanctaphrax]

Venomous Claws might be fun on the minions. They tear at your shadow, and it bleeds. You fade away as a result.

Anyway, I'm mostly with Deadmanwalking here. But I'd like to add that if you want your boss to fight the PCs alone, you might want to give him some stuff that messes with the action economy a bit. Extra Appendages and Dangerous Aura fit the bill, and are probably thematically appropriate. They're not canon though.

Also, zone/spray attacks are good for a lone foe. Spread the pain around.

Defensively, your priority is probably to stop an alpha strike from inflicting consequences and starting a death spiral. Enchanted Item defences might be a good tool for that...make them run him out of uses. The Feel No Pain custom Power is good for stopping a death spiral too.

[UmbraLux]

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions I would welcome your input.

Here's one possibility, may lean more towards outsiders than you want but that can be tweaked by changing aspects.

(click to show/hide)

High Concept: Shadow from Beyond the Gates
Trouble: Weakened by the Light
Other Aspects: Patient Stalker; Soul Eater;
Skills

• Alertness +3
• Conviction +3
• Deceit +4
• Discipline +3
• Intimidation +2
• Lore +3
• Might +4
• Presence +2
• Stealth +4

Stunts

• Rule with Fear (Intimidation)
• Wrestler (Might)
• Blend In (Stealth)

Powers

• Cloak of Shadows;
• Spirit Form;
• - Poltergeist;
• Domination;
• - Possession;
• Physical Immunity (Only applies to physical attacks, energy still hurts; stacked Catch is Light);
  
• Inhuman Recovery (Catch is Holy)

Stress

• Physical: OO
• Mental: OOOO
• Social: OO
• - Armor: none

Notes:  Typically works through human tools by corrupting and brainwashing (i.e. Create Renfield).  When direct action is required it possesses a victim and uses them up.  While in possession, it has all the abilities and limitations of the possessed body.  Physical attacks against the body do normal damage to the body and force the Shadow to leave if the damage is severe enough.  However, the Shadow itself isn't harmed by any of those attacks unless they also met its catch. 

If you want weaker spawn as minions instead of dominated humans, you can drop Domination, change Spirit Form to Gaseous Form, drop Physical Immunity to your preferred level of Toughness, and lose Recovery altogether.  You end up with a weaker version who needs to turn physical to attack.  Could even use both if you flavor the dominated Renfields as having a spawn planted in their body which grows into the gaseous shadow version...and, eventually, into the primary version.

[Deadmanwalking]

• Physical Immunity (Only applies to physical attacks, energy still hurts; stacked Catch is Light);
  
• Inhuman Recovery (Catch is Holy)

This is not how Stacked Catches work. You have one Catch (like Light or Holy) for all Toughness powers including Physical Immunity, and then a second (stacked) one for Physical Immunity specifically. There's no way to get three.

That said...I'd also be really leery of using anything with a vulnerability to magic vs. a focused practitioner with Discipline 10. That sounds like a really good way to get your boss one-shotted.

[UmbraLux]

This is not how Stacked Catches work. You have one Catch (like Light or Holy) for all Toughness powers including Physical Immunity, and then a second (stacked) one for Physical Immunity specifically. There's no way to get three.

"...get three"?  Not sure what you're talking about.  Perhaps a simple bullet point list wasn't clear, but I was simply listing powers not going into detail.  If you want the details explained, it's got a limited immunity to damage caused by physical masses.  Kinda goes with spirit form.  The catch for everything is Holy.  The stacked catch for physical immunity is Light. 

That said...I'd also be really leery of using anything with a vulnerability to magic vs. a focused practitioner with Discipline 10. That sounds like a really good way to get your boss one-shotted.

In this case it depends entirely on the practitioner's element and how the spell is described.  Besides, jumping from one body to another is what this guy was built to do...give him a bunch of hostages to use and the PCs have to figure out how to stop him without killing the hostages.  Unless they don't mind murder charges of course. 

Brute force is often a poor answer to dealing with protagonists' / PCs' power and negating PC powers gets old (and d!2#-ish).  Far more fun to move beyond 'get a bigger stick' sometimes. 

[Deadmanwalking]

"...get three"?  Not sure what you're talking about.  Perhaps a simple bullet point list wasn't clear, but I was simply listing powers not going into detail.  If you want the details explained, it's got a limited immunity to damage caused by physical masses.  Kinda goes with spirit form.  The catch for everything is Holy.  The stacked catch for physical immunity is Light. 

From the write-up it looks lie the Physical Immunity has two Catches (Energy in general, and light) while the Recovery has a third (holy stuff). If it's just light and holy stuff that's fine, but this sentence really needs to go:

Only applies to physical attacks, energy still hurts;

Since it strongly implies all energy. Especially without a cost written in.

In this case it depends entirely on the practitioner's element and how the spell is described.  Besides, jumping from one body to another is what this guy was built to do...give him a bunch of hostages to use and the PCs have to figure out how to stop him without killing the hostages.  Unless they don't mind murder charges of course. 

See above. If it's just light, yeah, things are probably fine.

Brute force is often a poor answer to dealing with protagonists' / PCs' power and negating PC powers gets old (and d!2#-ish).  Far more fun to move beyond 'get a bigger stick' sometimes. 

Oh, agreed, just throwing ideas out there...

[UmbraLux]

Since it strongly implies all energy. Especially without a cost written in.

Perhaps...it does state "Physical Immunity - only applies to physical attacks..." with the catch specified later.  Seems reasonably clear...but everyone does bring their own frame of reference.   

[Mrmdubois]

No shadows in darkness, I'd make that the Catch for a fun twist.

[Richard_Chilton]

Here's a catch that is rarely used with Shadow mages, creatures, etc that might catch your players off guard.
Darkness.

For Shadow is a mix of light and dark.  In complete, total darkness there is no shadow - only darkness.

So scatter some glow sticks and other weak light sources around the villain's lair and watch the players try to puzzle out why those are there.

Richard

[Mrmdubois]

Exactly.

[Richard_Chilton]

Exactly.

I'm sorry - I didn't see your reply.  I opened a bunch of tabs and must of typed in others while you were typing your reply.  Yes, I saw the "another person has posted" warning, but I routinely  ignore that outside of hardcore debates.

They say that "great minds think alike" so congratulations on having a truly great mind.

Richard

[Mrmdubois]

It's cool, you elaborated better than me so your post was just a useful or more than mine.