An instructive (and fun) example is the case of Cazador Szarr (an antagonist in Baldur’s Gate 3).
(Spoilers, though not very important ones, below for anyone who hasn’t played BG3.)
Cazador is a vampire lord—old and very powerful. Astarion (one of the companion characters in the player’s party, and himself one of Cazador’s spawn, formerly[1] in the vampire lord’s thrall), in the course of telling the player character about Cazador (and explaining why Cazador never turns his spawn into full-fledged independent vampires—despite this being possible and indeed very easy—and instead keeps them as thralls under his absolute command), says that “the biggest threat to a vampire… is another vampire”.
In the normal course of events, it would be totally unbelievable for the player character to defeat Cazador. (Indeed, you would never even learn of his existence.) What makes Cazador’s downfall possible is the introduction of an Outside Context Problem, in the form of… well, the main plot device of the game.
However, the way things proceed is not just that Cazador is happily vampire-lording along, and then one day, bam! plot device’d right in the face! No, instead what happens is that the main plot device is injected into the normal state of affairs, things get shaken up, but what this does is allow for the possibility of Cazador being defeated, by radically changing the balance of forces in a way that he could not have foreseen. Then it’s up to the good guys (i.e., the player character & friends) to take advantage of being the right people in the right place at the right time, and exploit their sudden and temporary advantage, their brief window of opportunity, to take down Cazador.
Thus we get the best of both worlds: the enemy can be powerful and intelligent, but their defeat is nevertheless believable and satisfying.
An instructive (and fun) example is the case of Cazador Szarr (an antagonist in Baldur’s Gate 3).
(Spoilers, though not very important ones, below for anyone who hasn’t played BG3.)
Cazador is a vampire lord—old and very powerful. Astarion (one of the companion characters in the player’s party, and himself one of Cazador’s spawn, formerly[1] in the vampire lord’s thrall), in the course of telling the player character about Cazador (and explaining why Cazador never turns his spawn into full-fledged independent vampires—despite this being possible and indeed very easy—and instead keeps them as thralls under his absolute command), says that “the biggest threat to a vampire… is another vampire”.
In the normal course of events, it would be totally unbelievable for the player character to defeat Cazador. (Indeed, you would never even learn of his existence.) What makes Cazador’s downfall possible is the introduction of an Outside Context Problem, in the form of… well, the main plot device of the game.
However, the way things proceed is not just that Cazador is happily vampire-lording along, and then one day, bam! plot device’d right in the face! No, instead what happens is that the main plot device is injected into the normal state of affairs, things get shaken up, but what this does is allow for the possibility of Cazador being defeated, by radically changing the balance of forces in a way that he could not have foreseen. Then it’s up to the good guys (i.e., the player character & friends) to take advantage of being the right people in the right place at the right time, and exploit their sudden and temporary advantage, their brief window of opportunity, to take down Cazador.
Thus we get the best of both worlds: the enemy can be powerful and intelligent, but their defeat is nevertheless believable and satisfying.
It’s complicated.