NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Uller" data-source="post: 6698811" data-attributes="member: 413">This brings up an interesting point.  So last night my villain survived to fight another day (after I gave him lots of extra spell-like power (including Stone Wall), gave him a 7th level caster ally in addition to the Shadowdemon he already had and fought a fighting withdraw from round one.   By round 3 he fled, abandoned his allies to be slaughtered and had 43 out of 136 hp left.This presented a new problem.  While he had some "priest" NPCs about, not one had any healing spells.  There are a few potions of healing around but other than than the only healing he had was to take a short rest (I allow NPCs to use HD just like PCs and my players seem to expect that).Meanwhile the party had a priest of life and a paladin.  So they were able to heal up a good bit, loot the room and then they decided that since they could not really go back the way they came (they used several castings of spider climb to get to where they were) and they couldn't wait there because the enemy would mount an organized attack, their only option was to plunge ahead and fight their way out.  This was a good tactic.  The main villain could not engage them directly.  He was all out of spell like powers from his magic weapon had down to 1/3 of his HP. So he was moving about the dungeon rallying his forces and sending them at the PCs.  It was only the betrayal of an NPC that has her own agenda that saved the PCs.    Anyway...another thing for DMs to think about in coming up with ways of making big villains able to survive to fight another day is...then what?  How does he heal enough to get back in there?  Does he heal enough?  Or is he left fleeing and finding other ways to deter the party until they give up.And yes...someone mentioned up thread that giving an NPC villain a surprise round is very useful.  My players manage to get surprise A LOT (they have a shadow monk who likes to use Pass without trace to great effect).   When an NPC BBEG gets first shot, it can really set the party back on its heels and leave them momentarily thinking they are dead...gives the game a bit more of a 4e vibe.</blockquote>

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