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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elric" data-source="post: 1962290" data-attributes="member: 1139">The iconics that dcollins pointed out are not badly built characters.  They have their magic items and feats generally well chosen.  All of the melee characters have Boots of Speed. The Paladin has Spirited Charge and a Holy Lance, which works well with +18 damage smites.  Almost all of the characters have cloaks of resistance, weapons with a high magical plus, stat-boosting items, and AC boost items.  Mialee has Time Stop and Wail of the Banshee (and a Tome of Insight +5); the Druid has Elemental Swarm.  The value of the magic items for each character seems around 400k (more for some, like Krusk, less for others, like Mialee- this could have to do w/ her spellbook costing gp).  Obviously they aren't as optimal as you can make a character, but I would imagine that 20th level versions of these characters would be equal to 17th level, well-optimized characters.  Also, player characters typically become more optimized by getting better at fighting high CR monsters, which these enemies are not.  For example, Power Word Kill (which Mialee has) is generally bad against high HD enemies, but a player character who takes a quick 60 damage is in trouble.These characters are much better than the sample NPCs in the 3.0 DMG (more treasure may be a large part of this).</blockquote>