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Message: <blockquote data-quote="giant.robot" data-source="post: 5395108" data-attributes="member: 93119">I've always explained the lack of epic monsters overrunning the world in terms of threat radius. Even the most bad-ass dragon has a fly speed of 10 squares, this gives them a maximum of 100 mile range assuming they are performing full round movement. They're unlikely to want to stray too far from their lair so you divide that by 2 to get their threat radius of 50 miles. Everything in a 50 mile radius circle of the dragon's lair is under threat but as long as your village is outside of that range you're cool. When a dragon becomes a threat is when some noble decides to annex some region unknowingly (maybe knowingly) in the dragon's threat radius or when the dragon first moves into an area. The distributed nature of agrarian societies works against the dragon as well, the places with the best loot at the best defended and likely developed outside of the dragon's effective threat radius. BBEGs need large armies to do their evil deeds on a large scale. Getting these large armies to the places they want to commit their evil is a limiting factor on their plans. The best case scenario for a BBEG is somewhere like Bael Turath where portals were opened for the devils and there was an existing population to recruit or feed on. BBEGs might also have over kingdoms of their own to send against their enemies Sauron style but it would take years to build their own forces and destabilize the opposition. Epic level evils are kept in check as long as they have credible opposition like epic level NPCs and PCs.I like to level BBEGs with the PCs when they get up to a level to challenge it. My BBEG might start at level 20 when it starts it's evil campaign but due to the actions of it's minions is able to gain power as the campaign goes on. A level 20 BBEG is impressive at the paragon tier but once the PCs hit level 20 the BBEG bumps up a few levels to maintain the power curve. Back at level 20 the BBEG was a valid threat to the paragon tier NPCs that otherwise kept it in check but as it gained power it falls to the PCs of increasing power to deal with it.</blockquote>

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