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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7843318" data-attributes="member: 18">If you can't see the difference, then I'm sorry, but that's on you. It's a big obvious distinction psychologically, between a massive magical monster, and a single guy who could be a PC. The main difference, if you really can't see anything else is that players realize that they can't easily defeat a dragon, but with a single human, they are unlikely to realize that until after the fact. That means that each failed roll, each round you don't manage to stop him, is going to sting more, and it's going to vex them more. You think that's going to translate into fun. I very much doubt that. If you don't care whether it's fun - well, okay you're "that kind of DM" and yeah fine, then advice is immaterial and this discussion is over.This goes double if you're giving him Advantage on rolls that he shouldn't necessarily have Advantage on (like if you wouldn't give a PC Advantage there, he definitely shouldn't get it!). He certainly wouldn't have Advantage against Command or Hold Person or the like either, which makes this very fragile and potentially likely to end up with him getting Command'd to the floor then wrestled by PCs whereupon, if he's many levels above them, he may just have to start one-shotting them, which isn't going to impress anyone.Whereas a dragon or the like cannot be wrestled, and is probably hard to stop with spells, too. This is a fragility peculiar to single, humanoid, size-M (or L/S) non-Legendary enemies.Well, saying things like this is bad faith:I haven't talked about "powerful NPCs". So that's a strawman. I've talked only specifically about overpowered-ninja-style NPCs. That is a different category to "powerful NPCs" (a highly specific subcategory if you will). That's what I'm trying to convey here. How many OP ninja-type NPCs have you used before? Or seen as a player?I've seen a wide variety of "powerful NPCs", some unbeatable, go up against PCs. Only two categories have universally provoked derision/disdain/annoyance. Higher-level NPC spellcasters who just CC the naughty word out of everyone all the time (nobody enjoys this) and NPC "overpowered ninja"-types, who tend to be like, obviously a ninja/monk, usually with some kind of wacky over-the-top weapon (which works in the Stormlight books because there are a whole bunch of them), and tend to show off by killing people in front of the PCs (this is not new trope - though wall-running of a literal kind is!). These guys don't go on the "We've got to kill this guy!" list of the players, because they're not fun to engage with. They go on the "Oh naughty word that guy jesus ugh let's hope we never meet him again" list of the players.What's particularly problematic as well is that these guys usually aren't going to be very possible to stop later on. Well-designed ninja types can, barring bad rolls, escape from pretty much anything forever. Nasty CC types are going to CC a bunch of PCs no matter what (concentration makes this less of an issue in 5E thank goodness).Re: good faith I'd say lay out what you're going to do here, how you're going to play it, and so on, and then do that, and then report back honestly.</blockquote>

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