What mini-bosses do you love sending at the players?

[MarauderX]

For my money, it'd have to be the halfling bard: innocuous enough for them not to know who's causing them trouble, and innocent-looking enough to discourage them from out-and-out killing the little pest.

I agree. A bard of any flavor could do it, with a few lies, twisting of the truth, and a little smoothing of ruffled PC feathers. The bard could easily claim to be under the thumb of the BBEG, but spread enough dirty rumors to give them loads of trouble. Even think of the little things, like when they go to sell loot and the vendors suddenly close up shop. Not knowing who is pulling the strings might even push the paladin over the edge.

 

[Dykstrav]

No he wouldn't. In 3e, money is everything. You don't destroy your number one resource. You kill opponents and take their gear, not kill the gear and leave the opponents alive. After all that's what the PCs do, and with good reason.

If that's your style of play, it's perfectly valid.

When I'm on the player's side of things, I do destroy gear- very often as it turns out. For example, enemy cleric healing the BBEG? Go sunder that unholy symbol. Chances are, you can trick out a melee character to smash it to bits with one strike. Alot easier than just taking out the caster itself. The typical heavily-armored fighter with a magic two-handed sword? He's probably gonna be useless because he's sunk so many feats into using that one weapon (and thus you can kill him at your leisure). For that matter, I'd be damned if I'm gonna worry about how much a lich's staff is worth on the open market while he's still holding it. The priority in a battle should be killing the evil critter, not divvying up its loot like a game show prize package.

To me, the monsters-as-walking-chests-of-loot mentality is one of the shortcomings of D&D. I don't penalize my players for destroying enemy gear, and come to think of it, I can't think of any DM I know that does.