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Background:
The fun factor of low-level play can be compromised by high-level characters playing down or similarly leveled characters that have significant "crunch" optimization.
This can be especially true for a new player, playing his very first game. Based on his or her very first experience, they may assume all games operate in such a way that a lone player (or two) usually dominate a table - and the amount of investment required for them personally to dig deeper into the game isn't worth the effort.
This can be especially amplified when a party encounters the final, climatic villain at the end of the scenario and players watch the "boss" defeated before they are even able to take their turn in the initiative count.
(Yes, I know that's an extreme... but I've personally seen a large majority of T1-5 end villains dropped before they take their second action already)
The situation often seems to be one of these:
1) A T1-2 scenario with mostly level ~1s and a level 5 playing down.
2) A T1-2 scenario with mostly level ~1s and a "highly optimized" level ~2.
Both a level 5 playing down or a highly optimized level ~2 can completely turn a scenario upside down based on their relative power level to the scenario.
This can be done many different ways, but two that come to mind are...
Physical Damage Output:
The level ~2 character could hit (without a critical hit) for 30 damage in round 1 before any other character event acts, defeating the end villain of the scenario.
The level 5 character can obviously do this for even greater damage.
This will instantly defeat most villains in T1-2 scenarios, sometimes before they even act.
"Save Or Die" Spells/Abilities:
A level 5 character could easily cast a DC20 Deep Slumber at the T1-2 end villain and his support and end the encounter.
The Goal = Having Fun = Taking Turns:
Ultimately, the game is about having fun.
Some folks may enjoy watching a single character (that is not their own) completely dominate the evening.
However, most likely want a chance to do "something" in the final encounter. Even if it's as simple as an aid action or two, casting bless or rolling Acrobatics to at least get into flank. If you're playing Amiri or Valeros for the first time, you'd probably like at least 1, if not 2 chances to roll to hit something.
To deliver a satisfying, climatic final combat encounter for an evening, every player should at least get a chance to perform 2 actions with their character.
This is a guideline. Obviously not every scenario is meant to be identical and *always* last at least 2 rounds.
The goal here really is that a level 5 playing down, or a super-optimized level 2 doesn't radically compromise the epic feel of the scenario for the other players.
This means that if a T1-2 end villain has 30HP, ideally the "uber character" (L2-5) doesn't simply charge in and provide a swift end to everything.
You don't want to apply a permanent "nerf" to these characters. Their power is largely circumstantial (a L5 playing down), or is simply a result of system mastery.
How To Get An End Villain To Last 2+ Rounds:
First, the "super-character" should get the satisfaction of rolling high numbers in the case of physical damage or announcing his impressive spell DCs.
What we need is:
a) A way to detect when an "super-character" is present
b) A way to enable the end villain to withstand 2 rounds of combat with the "super-character"
Detecting Uber-Heroes:
It should be clear to any GM (especially any GM with 2 or more stars) when an uber hero is present. At the very least, it should be clear by the time the climatic end battle begins.
There shouldn't be a problem with this being discretionary. In non-organized play, a GM will know his tabletop group and be able to adjust the campaign/module difficulty accordingly.
When No Action Is Needed:
Certain end villains will be resilent to the super-character automatically. The end villain might be a haunt or a swarm (you never know) and the super-character was simply a powerful barbarian. Essentially if the end villain is something that the super-character isn't going to completely dominate, then there's no need to do anything.
Unfortunately, sometimes the end villain (or villains) is something that the super-character can not just solo, but can do it in a round (or worst case two).
Climatic Villains:
If our goal is that each character acts at least twice in a final encounter with a climatic villain, how do we keep our Big Bad alive for two rounds with the super-character that blows away this difficulty tier?
Well, that's the whole purpose of this rambling... to give that some thought.
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Villain Feats:
Essentially, when an experienced GM has identified they are running a game with an super-character, they can opt to add a special "Villain Feat" to the end boss.
That's it!
I don't think there needs to be more than a couple options for the Villain Feats, either.
I make no claims these are right - these are simply raw thoughts...
Villainous Resilience:
Once per day, the villain can select a single target. Identify the villain's regular maximum HP (disregarding effects such as false life, etc) and divide this number by 3. The selected target cannot deal more than this amount of damage in a single round to the villain. In the case of a critical hit, increase the maximum damage by the weapon's multiplier.
The goal here is to prevent a single character that significantly breaks the DPR curve from soloing the end-boss in a single round. Now, it will take them 3 rounds (not counting any critical hits) at a minimum, which if they are first in initiative order, gives the rest of their party a chance to act twice before they "solo the boss".
Worst case, the ability ends after 3 rounds, and the super-character shows he truly is uber and finishes the villain off with a flourish.
Best case, the other 5 players (say level 1s with the level 5 superhero) feel like they did something.
The super-character should take the fact he's been chosen for the feat's effect as a badge of honor, as it means he really is the "most dangerous guy in the room".
Villainous Favor:
The deities that favor this villain tip the scales of fate in the favor of their chosen mortal device. Once per day, as an immediate action, the villain can choose to gain +8 on a single d20 roll before it's rolled, +4 after it's rolled, or to simply re-roll a roll and take the second roll even if it is worse.
This is basically a folio re-roll for the GM when the scenario is being destroyed by that single super-character.
This is meant to effectively bust something akin to a DC20 Deep Slumber used on an end encounter by a level 5 character playing down in a T1-2 scenario.
It's likely that some GMs are actually already doing this behind the scenes, this just makes it official that in some circumstances, it's understood as a necessary evil for those evil guys.
Ideally this could be embellished in some way to cover some of the other situations that I haven't even touched on, like a level 5 character with an insane grapple bonus that rushes up to the T1-2 villain and simply grapples him to death.
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One problem with this:
Experienced players (and GMS) know that taking out that final BBEG fast is the best route to PC survival.
Now, if the BBEG is just the BBEG because they have a lot of hit points, no problem, but they would already be able to handle this kind of thing.
If the BBEG is a more fragile build, which is usual when the BBEG is designed either to do massive damage or use save-or-suck spells themselves, you are going to get rapidly into situations where the extra time you have granted the BBEG is going to translate into PC deaths.
Not a good idea, since even a non-crit from him can drop most non-martial PCs, and a crit can drop a martial PC or outright kill a non-martial PC.
What do you do when your Barbarian-nerf kills a member of a low-level party because you have given the BBEG more actions than he should have gotten?
Also consider giving Chalfon Dalsine one of these feats.... Ugly, just plain ugly.
So, when an PC dies because the boss rolled a little higher or didn't die when he should have, how is the Player supposed to feel? Personally, I'd feel cheated. Or how about, if the GM just likes being vindictive, and pulls this on someone he doesn't like or when the group really can't handle it?
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I think it's fair to say nearly every GM has encountered what you're describing (although less so the level 5 playing down, since that's a substantial hit to gold rewards for the level). I am curious, though, whether you have seen this happen as often with Season 4?
I ask because I have found the recent scenarios to be far less susceptible to the "one round finale." And if that holds true for everyone, maybe the answer is to focus on fine-tuning the new scenarios (Season 5+) rather than trying to retrofit Season 0 scenarios.
Frankly, I don't think anything less than a complete rewrite will turn Season 0 scenarios into a challenge for a party that can survive Season 4.
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I would think that if there were villain feats (Villainous Traits?) that we, as GMs, wouldn't be dropping them into Tier 1 scenarios. It would be interesting, but I'd rather have some buy-in from the scenario writers as it would go along with their idea of the NPC rather than a fickle GM.
Sweet! I get to add 2 villainous traits. <looks over NPC> Cool, I'll add this +2 to attack while flanked trait to this guy who runs up into battle, with 6 characters, he's sure to get flanked. This one gives him +4 to AC, cool. And he's CR 8 with tons of hp and this is a Tier 3 game, no problem.
The Level 5 player playing along with a group of Level 1s could have played a new Level 1 without needing to play down and the experience may have been better shared.
There are far more variables mixed in with an optimized Level 2 playing with the Level 1s, but if you feel that the character is grandstanding the rest, I'd speak with the player about allowing some others a chance to shine too.
Let's say that you are running First Steps Part 1, someone has a fairly well-built Barbaran, and you decide that Ledford is the BBEG for virtue of gaining one of your proposed feats. Not a good idea, since even a non-crit from him can drop most non-martial PCs, and a crit can drop a martial PC or outright kill a non-martial PC.
I'd agree that this would be a negatively impacting decision on game play, but then I'd leave villainous traits/feats for NPCs out of Tier 1 scenarios.
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Quoted text inside hidden spoiler pop-up regarding some scenario BBEG spoilers
That's why it's an idea on a whiteboard.
I agree with you completely about Dalsine being a BBEG that you wouldn't want to boost too much, although Dalsine only lived 1 round when I played in the Dalsine Affair.
We had a group with 1,1,2,2,3,5 (APL 3.3) and this meant we were playing up in the 3-4 tier.
He did crit coming out of invisibility and dropped that PC to -8 in a single swing.
However, in this adventure, at least at our table, all of the PCs were equally contributing in earlier encounters. There was no superstar, and it wasn't a level 5 with five level 1s. At least how I imagine the villain feats working, the GM wouldn't qualify to have boosted Dalsine at all, because the level 5 wasn't obliterating the scenario while the rest of us watched.
I'd like to clarify that the villain wouldn't qualify for a Villain Feat unless the table was suffering from an imbalance caused by a single player. This is why I put this out for other folks to help define what that would mean.
For example, if there are 6 people playing a scenario and there's one level 5 and five level 1s, and the scenario is T1-2, I'd think we would think the level 5 could cause an imbalance.
In this case, the feat ONLY affects the interaction between the level 5 PC and the boss. In the case of the feat that makes it so the boss requires at least 3 hits to kill, it's only 3 hits from the level 5 PC in the T1-2 scenario. Any level 1 can step up and critically hit and kill the boss with 1 swing.
That's kind of why I thought this might be a novel solution. It effectively limits the relationship between the 1 megastar PC and the boss, and the logic where the villain gets the boost is only enabled in the case where it's absolutely clear that ONLY ONE character is the superstar. If there's 2 or 3 guys all sharing the spotlight in all the encounters, then it would never come into play -- and it could be written this way.
For the most part, I could see a villain feat actually just straight up existing in rules and scenario writers simply giving it to most end-bosses instead of Toughness. The fact an end boss requires 3 distinct hits to kill isn't necessarily a bad thing....
Outside of a couple rare scenarios, can you think of any time you've really enjoyed a PFS scenario where the end-boss died with a single hit or a single saving throw?
I'll try a reword of the optional feat, based on the feedback I'm hearing.
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Villainous Resilience:
Once per day, the villain can select a single creature. Identify the villain's regular maximum HP (disregarding effects such as false life, etc) and divide this number by 3. The selected creature cannot deal more than this amount of damage in a single round to the villain. In the case of a critical hit, increase the maximum damage the villain can receive from the selected creature in a one round by the weapon's multiplier.
The villain takes regular damage from all other creatures.
If the villain renders any creature unconscious or damages any creature for more than half of it's life, it immediately loses the benefit of Villainous Resilience.