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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CandyLaser" data-source="post: 9396183" data-attributes="member: 7029413">Actually, I quite enjoy having the BBEG attack the PCs early on, as long as you can make it happen in a way where PC death isn't the inevitable result. In Fellowship this is even one of the suggested campaign openers, but I've done it in D&D too. In my last 5e campaign set in Eberron, the BBEG for most of the campaign was Erandis Vol, first in a mortal guise as Lady Illmarrow and later in her true lich form. I had her make her first appearance when the PCs were around level 7; they had a MacGuffin she wanted, so she teleported in and tried to take it. The PCs couldn't hurt her (literally; she had an invulnerability spell up), but they were able to play keep-away with the item in question long enough to destroy it. That, in turn, caused her to get pissed, kill one of them (with a quick power word kill) and then leave. Vol didn't kill the PCs en masse because doing so would have exposed her to unecessary risks. Her attack came when the PCs were in a public place, so she didn't want to stay out for too long, and they'd also managed to strip away the illusion on her and reveal her true form, so being in the public eye might have drawn unwelcome attention from her other enemies.The scene was a big success for several reasons:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It helped remind the players that combats don't need to end in indiscriminate killing. Vol wasn't there to kill them; she wanted the MacGuffin. They couldn't kill her. Even when the MacGuffin was destroyed, she expressed her anger by instakilling one of them, but since it's D&D that's really just a speed bump after a certain point.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">While they knew that Lady Illmarrow was their enemy, the PCs didn't know (in character) that Illmarrow was in fact Erandis Vol. Some of them might have known OOC; I don't actually know what Eberron lore they had going in.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The encounter reinforced the power gap between them and Vol and told them what they'd need to overcome to have a chance against her. A second encounter later in the campaign when they were around level 12 reinforced this, with them also losing that battle but managing to actually inflict a little damage and escape without any deaths.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Their defeat helped puncture the aura of invulnerability/plot armor that sometimes follows PCs around.</li> </ol>What's more, it didn't feel forced; the PCs knew that Illmarrow/Vol wanted the MacGuffin, and in fact they were trying to deliver it to someone who could protect it better than they could. Because she was after the MacGuffin, she couldn't, e.g. open combat by throwing a meteor swarm at the party, because that would risk damaging or destroying it. She was trying to remain in character as Lady Illmarrow and keep concentration on her invulnerability spell, which further prevented her from unleashing her full magical might on the PCs. And she didn't know exactly what the PCs were capable of, which meant she didn't want to stick around and risk her own (un)life once her objective (the MacGuffin) was destroyed.</blockquote>

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