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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8232777" data-attributes="member: 85555">I disagree strongly (which probably isn't a surprise <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=":)" />. Definitely Dominic D'Honaire didn't resonate with me, but it had nothing to do with his lack of combat prowess. I thought it was good that some domain lords were physically powerful and enduring, while others were more vulnerable. But D&D is not always about combat. Since 3E things have been highly structured around combat encounters building to a big final encounter, but back in 1E and 2E that really wasn't how the game was played in my experience. There was a whole approach where the goal was to play smart and avoid combat. And when combat did arise, didn't necessarily need to culminate in a big final encounter. With ravenloft in particular that wasn't a setting that was meant to be about fighting. It takes pains to paint itself as not having as much focus on that aspect of play (encounters happen for sure, but a lot of the effort is put into making counters atmospheric and building to a sense of horror). With characters in Ravenloft who are schemers but physically not powerful, I think the D'honaire entry handles it exactly as one should: he has protectors. As a GM that means you need to play the character smart. He is scheming in the background. Clever players may confront him, they may have to get through his protectors to get to him, or they may find a way around them, but it probably isn't going to be easy to attack the fragile spider in the center of a web like that. I had a Ravenloft campaign featuring a bishop character who wasn't that powerful but had henchmen who served as muscle. he was a terrific villain for a long time. Eventually though the players found out where he was at a vulnerable time (I think he was delivering mass in a church), and they essentially surprised and killed him. He may have had a henchmen or two with him, but their plan was sound and he was taken out, murdered by arrows as he tried to escape through a narrow window. It was a bit of a humiliating end, but my players commented on how great they thought it was for ages after (and one of the reasons was I didn't give the villain plot immunity in the final fight, he died at the fall of the dice, when it happened). And they liked that he had been this looming figure in the background up to that point. I think one failing of D&D in the 90s, and you see this a lot in the Ravenloft line, especially as it goes on (and really in gaming in general at that time) was not embracing the dice as much---fighting against them to get a desired result. I think something similar happens when we prioritize having big final boss encounters (either by fudging dice, stacking the NPC so they last a sufficient time, etc)</blockquote>

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