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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6382335" data-attributes="member: 37579">That actually sounds pretty damn heroic to me. The lone hero going out to face impossible odds against an enemy they cannot beat to save the life of innocents. That's super heroic. That's pure paladin stuff right there. Hell, if I were playing that campaign with a character like that I'd almost want to die in the duel to make the sacrifice more noble.Does that matter? It's a classic scene. Iconic almost. The army, the challenge in front of the sieged city, solo combat, etc. Heck, it harkens back to the old Dragonlance adventures from 1e.And that's a fourth choice. Yup. Pretty much. That doesn't make this bad. Establishing villains is hard in D&D, and it's tricky to make the players actually dislike an enemy. If an enemy shows up in an encounter and the adventure doesn't make them unkillable or virtually unassailable either they're godlike or the PCs will somehow find a way to kill them. Sometimes both. Such as?If you just have the big bad show up in a cut scene and do something horrible, that's not very effective as it doesn't involve the players. Rule 1 of writing is "show not tell" but Rule 1 of DMing is "involve not show". To really make a memorable villain they have to interact with the PCs. And to really be considered threatening they need to slap the PCs around. Period. Otherwise they're that guy who looked kinda scary slapping down NPCs and commoners. Or you have to introduce a badass NPC explicitly to have the badguy kill, which is just the Worf effect. And you still end up tugging on the heartstrings.</blockquote>

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