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<blockquote data-quote="Greybar" data-source="post: 1429183" data-attributes="member: 4938">One thing that many of these discussion remind me of:&nbsp; The lone villain concept is at a severe disadvantage to a party of heroes.&nbsp; As GMs, we tend to use lone villains because they are easier to conceive of, easier to run, and easier for the PCs to know and hate.But while your stereotypical party has access to top-level divine, arcane, and direct-combat capabilities the lone villain can't match you on all three.&nbsp; So the counter-methods that are built into the 3.5 system may not be available to him.To beat the Buff-Scry-Teleport, a PC group can have one of its members always have a teleport/planeshift type escape.&nbsp; Losing that one spell slot across the entire party isn't a big deal.&nbsp; Losing that one spell slot to a lone villain may be a big deal.&nbsp; So then you give the lone villain items to make up for his lack of breadth of power - so those items either detract from the real power items that he might have, or makes him overstuffed with treasure goodness.&nbsp; You also see this with many high-level monsters - demons/devils/angels all have a breadth of spelllike abilities providing combat might, defensive, antispell, and movement/teleport abilities just to keep up with the PCs.So, anyway, this makes me think that I really have to set up major villains to have a party-type build to match the PCs - that or be substantially higher in theoretical CR while built broader (and thus less potently) just to survive.what do you guys think?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Greybar, post: 1429183, member: 4938"] One thing that many of these discussion remind me of: The lone villain concept is at a severe disadvantage to a party of heroes. As GMs, we tend to use lone villains because they are easier to conceive of, easier to run, and easier for the PCs to know and hate. But while your stereotypical party has access to top-level divine, arcane, and direct-combat capabilities the lone villain can't match you on all three. So the counter-methods that are built into the 3.5 system may not be available to him. To beat the Buff-Scry-Teleport, a PC group can have one of its members always have a teleport/planeshift type escape. Losing that one spell slot across the entire party isn't a big deal. Losing that one spell slot to a lone villain may be a big deal. So then you give the lone villain items to make up for his lack of breadth of power - so those items either detract from the real power items that he might have, or makes him overstuffed with treasure goodness. You also see this with many high-level monsters - demons/devils/angels all have a breadth of spelllike abilities providing combat might, defensive, antispell, and movement/teleport abilities just to keep up with the PCs. So, anyway, this makes me think that I really have to set up major villains to have a party-type build to match the PCs - that or be [b]substantially[/b] higher in theoretical CR while built broader (and thus less potently) just to survive. what do you guys think? [/QUOTE]

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