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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orryn Emrys" data-source="post: 536145" data-attributes="member: 6799">As my group recently started into the late teens in levels, I finally began constructing them encounters involving some of the campaign's greatest villains... epic-level NPC's that have remained in the background for the entirety of the previous four years of campaigning.  Fortunately, I 'd never bothered actually writing up the bad guys until after the epic-level handbook came out.  Consequentially, some of the PCs' most recent encounters have been extremely challenging... but extremely climactic as well.  The heroes' most recent encounter, with a party of six ranging from 17th to 19th level, pitched them against a (somewhat over-confident) 25th-level wizard and his cronies.  The backdrop was a pitched battle between the heroes' and villain's armies, allowing me to use some epic-level magic to affect the entire field of battle, during which the PC's ended up confronting the magus directly.  The battle was a near thing, but it's rare that I get to see my group so intensely caught up in the scene.In conclusion, I'd say that the odds were heavily stacked against the PC's in terms of sheer combatative potency, but judicious use and abuse of the villain's capabilities allowed me to realistically exhaust some of his power prior to the confrontation without weakening him significantly enough to make the players feel that they had an advantage.  And the villain fully intended to capture some a couple of them for his master.  Fortunately, my players seem to be really good at thinking on their feet... two were imprisoned, another mazed, but the villain was neatly skewered in round four.</blockquote>

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