Quote Originally Posted by BD_ View Post
I agree that those quests need to be dealt with individually, but if you bump the defenses of the NPC's/protect items then you have a situation where unless an uber champion spawns, those quests would become nearly impossible to fail.

There are certain quests where champions have a much greater impact than others - escort/protect quests are among them. Sure (most of) those quests had issues already, but putting champions into them can come close to "breaking" those quests.
The NPCs having a good chance to live doesn't make the quest nearly impossible to fail, because the regular mobs as well as the champions still pose the same danger to the PCs as they would in any other quest. They just pose less danger to the NPCs. In the high road for instance the NPC makes himself invulnerable when attacked using a force field, yet the party can still wipe if they cant handle the mobs themselves, or run head first into the trapped area. In this regard monster champions still affect the overall quest difficulty, but do so in a way the players can attempt to control, rather than having some NPC run off and get itself killed (which is an issue with or without champions).