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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greenfield" data-source="post: 5793312" data-attributes="member: 6669384">Let me start by welcoming you to the forum.Now to address the question...  how to word this...Okay, here goes:Don't do it, it's a trap!  While this campaign doesn't sound like a pure Monte Haul, it has those overtones.  And a DM who runs his own PC in the game?  There may be some badly hurt feelings here.Start with this:  Lose the fixation over the one PC.  You're desire to kill the PC is as bad as his desire to "prove" himself by running it.  When a DM has it in for a particular player's character, it never ends well.Your bad guy may have heard of the PC, but probably in the context of the team he leads.  He should be preparing for the team, not the single PC.Now, to prepare for the damage output of the ranger, consider a simple Stone Skin spell.  In 1st/2nd Ed it nullified a certain number of attacks, no matter how much damage they did.  That's a good way to buy him some time.Don't dominate the monster with Psionics.  Use a Cursed magic item for the task.  When the party wins, which the bad guy expects them to do, they'll loot the body.  So the party wins the "big battle" (and make it a fight to remember), congratulate them and hand out the spoils of victory.  Let them feel like they've accomplished something, like they've earned the congratulations you're giving them.Next will come the big after-battle party, when the goodies get Identified and divvied up.So, who ends up with that ever so delightful item?  If it's an Intelligent item that can control someone, it can seize the person who tries to Identify it.  (Remember, you have to hold or wear an item as it would normally be held or worn in order to cast Identify on it, so it's guaranteed to be triggered.)  If it finds its new toy less than satisfying, it can direct the Identifying Magic User to hand the item to the most powerful character available.And just who would that be?  Three guesses... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />That behavior, by the way, is right out of the DMG's section on powerful, intelligent items.And while the newly owned uber-character dukes it out with his former companions, your real bad guy gets to sit back and laugh.  He has a front row seat to the show, but is never in any danger at all because the PCs never have to know that he's pulling the strings.  They won't attack him, and even if they did it won't change anything.Now this approach will tend to decimate the group as a whole, which was the real bad guy's plan all along, and may or may not kill the lead PC.But if you want to be really ugly, include a Scroll of Disjunction in the loot.  (I think they had that in 1st/2nd Ed)  Let the party Magic User realize the "mistake" you made and seize upon it, casting the spell that will disenchant the intelligent item and free their friend.  And oh yeah, it will also disenchant every other piece of overly neat gear he's carrying, a move that will drop him back to more mortal power levels.Raising their friend from the dead is fairly possible.  Replacing all his gear?  And the gear of anyone else in the area when it goes off?  Now that's actually a fate worse than death.So there's your triple whammy.  It doesn't reek of a DM on a vendetta against a particular PC, but it does do the job. (Even if it does reek of passive-aggressive sneakiness.)</blockquote>

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