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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6777976" data-attributes="member: 996">Or a gigantic dragon or demon or avatar of an evil god or some-such, yes.Very often, that final villain is the only spell-caster of meaningful power presented in the story.  Doesn't seem practical.  One thing that makes casters viable antagonists is not just how much power they have in combat, but the way they're abilities let the DM hand-wave and set-up all sorts of things - magically-empowered toadies, magical traps, hideouts in other dimensions, existential threats to whole realms, and so forth.  An "arch-warrior" is just one tough guy.  He doesn't facilitate anything, he can't wipe out a kingdom.  He can win duels, bully some people, maybe turn the tide of a conventional battle.  That's about it.  He just doesn't rate a party of adventurers.hps can be pretty arbitrary.   Single target damage is the one thing 5e allows that a warrior-type can be really good at, so that's a given.  Presenting a credible threat to a whole party would require reaching well beyond the existing mechanics/concepts.  At minimum, you'd want options like 3.5 WWA.D&D turns the steroetypical knight or barbarian hero vs evil wizard or monster dynamic on it's head by making most PC options casting or at least magic-using (and having some moderately monsterous races).  It only seems reasonable to swap the other side of the equation around and have a warrior as the ultimate antagonist.  Usually such a character, a black knight or orc warlord or something, would only be a test along the heroes way or a lackey or lieutenant of the big bad.  Upgrading it to the major, climactic challenge would be difficult.  Not just because D&D gives martial concepts very little credit when it comes to anything other than DPR, but because the stereotypical arsenal of the genre 'evil wizard' &c is already in the hands of the many spellcasting PCs.</blockquote>

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