4 Epic Boss Enemies To Challenge Even The Strongest Characters

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Big Bad Evil Guys. They are the ultimate challenge for your players. They bend, break, or flatout ignore rules at will. I explored reddit and found a table of original demon lords. Upon discussing with their respective creators, I did up stat blocks to allow anyone to use them in their own campaign as the final boss for their players. All of these enemies are CR30; powerful enough to provide a solo challenge for a level 20 party on full resources. Of course, these haven’t been playtested in the flesh, so your mileage may vary. Feel free to make any changes you see fit to any of the enemies here when you run them in your own game.

1) Bronocalos - The Demon Lord Of Warped Bones And Emaciation
Creator: u/south2012

He causes crippled and sickly babies to be born, and for people to grow hunchbacked, and limbs to atrophy. Simply standing close to him begets weakness in all those around him. Bronocalos has access to powerful magic, including the ability to tear the skeleton straight out of a mortal’s body, and animate it to serve his own whim.

2) Cantus - The Demon Lord Of The Maddening Melody
Creator: u/Jacknerik

Cantus built his lair beneath a bards college, where he whispered his melody to all that studied there. The melody obsessed those who heard it, who dedicated themselves to spreading it as far as they could. This obsession either lead to those who heard it becoming thralls to Cantus, or to madness for those who tried to resist.


The first huge challenge of Cantus is reaching him. His lair is a complex system of intricate design, populated with brainwashed thralls with powerful abilities. Cantus is the “man behind the curtain”, who lives behind his own reputation and followers. However, when he is eventually confronted, he is more than a match for even the most powerful heroes.

3) Sergorius - The Demonic Orc Lord
Creator: u/DragonBolt101

Sergorius lives only to destroy everything in his path. The more destruction, the better! As chaos unfolds around him, his powers increase, building adrenaline from this destructive energy. As he gets more and more riled up, he increases in both size and strength. Legends say that blade and spear can never strike the final blow against him.

4) Bazim Gorag - The Primordial Demon Lord Of Chaos And Chance
This big bad evil guy is actually not an original one, but doesn’t have scores of history for himself. I took him in a slightly different direction to his existence in the traditional D&D setting, and gave him some overpowered stats and abilities to boot!

Bazim Gorag is a Primordial Demon, Lord of Luck, Chance, Chaos, and Gambling. He is a mutual ally of Orcus, and together they want to bring down The Raven Queen, so that Orcus can rule her death domain, and Bazim can inherit her fate domain.

Building an appropriate challenge for high-level characters is always a difficult task! How many of your campaigns have reached 20th level? What kind of end-game bosses have you been throwing at your party? And who’s your favourite Big Bad Evil Guy of them all?

Peter is an avid dungeon master, role-player, and story teller. When he's not running homebrew campaigns, he is creating new worlds, or he is reading and writing fantasy stories, forever immersing himself in the gaping black-hole known as the fantasy genre.