Quote Originally Posted by Xenostrata View Post
In PnP, he was a level 12 NPC boss with a couple of Warforged Juggernaut levels in there (can't remember exact class spread, but nothing granting evasion). I can understand how this would be insufficient for Turbine's intentions, but in what way could they justify giving him rogue/monk/ranger levels?

Evasion should be reserved for NPCs with obvious class levels in classes that grant evasion or of a race that is superhuman in its agility. Quickfoot wizards are slightly understandable, they probably have a few rogue levels. Wildmen are less so, though I guess by some strange interpretation they might be counted as rangers. However, there is no explanation for the LoB getting evasion beyond "we wanted him to be really, really tough." A nice thought, except that most anyone is going to use against him is DoT spells.

Please, please stop giving evasion to mobs for "balancing" purposes. It doesn't work very well a lot of the time, and detracts heavily from the feel of the quest - a good rule for the DM is that if you can't find an excuse without the word/prefix "meta" in it, then you should probably rethink the mechanic. When I get to the Lord of Blades, cast something, and see "evaded" pop up, I'm not going to think "yeah, that makes sense" I'm going to think "This is a big-ass robot that I just hit in the chest with a bolt of lightning. How the hell did he dodge that?"
The reason is because they came out with a new class that can do in excess of 800 point blade barriers?
if he didnt have evasion a team of 6 well trainned and highly skilled undergeared artificers could take him out easily (as long as they all had a umd of 44+ and carried resurection scrolls rather then raise dead)

They wanted to make these quests stupidly challenging .. and to tell you the truth my experience with lord of the blades on lama in a pretty high end party with three healers .. and it was pretty challenging on normal (wiped twice but that was because of a targeting bug even with the targeting bug we almost beat him the second time)