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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jeffh" data-source="post: 6828863" data-attributes="member: 2642">Most "big bads" in most RPGs, with Pathfinder being worse than average in this respect, need a LOT of beefing up. The biggest problem is that the action economy works against them; they generally only get to do one action to the opposition's four to six. Anything that stuns them for even a single round or otherwise wastes one of those actions - even a single lousy dice roll, sometimes - magnifies that problem to the point where they're a joke.In many systems, to be a convincing "boss", a creature needs:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">At least twice the hit points (or similar ability-to-take-a-beating) it's likely to get out of the RAW, especially in the case of Pathfinder,</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Some means of going more than once in a round, if not an outright second (and perhaps even third) turn then a lot of abilities that can be used in response to PC actions,</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Some means of resisting or at the very least VERY easily shaking off status effects, especially those that deny it actions, preferably without the PCs feeling like you're cheating them (one solution is to let it drop a stun or similar effect at the expense of taking a certain amount of damage),</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">And dramatically improved accuracy for certain "signature" abilities, or at least the ability to reuse them until they actually do something effective.</li> </ul>Even within the D&D family, some systems have at least partial solutions to this. 4E solos solve the first problem and maybe even go too far in the other direction, and that system was starting to do decent work on the other issues in its post-Essentials commercial decline. 5E legendary actions seem like a good solution to the second problem (I say "seem like" because I haven't seen them in actual play yet) and could be easily pressed into service to solve the third. 13th Age might be a good source of ideas here as well.</blockquote>

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