BBEG how much gear should they have?

[SirNMN]

I am working towards the end game for a campaign and the party is headed for it first and maybe last encounter with the big bad. Up until now I have just been using the NPC wealth table to but the gear to out fit the people they have face, but he will be my campaign ender when all is said and done it will end either with him wiping the party or they kill him and be come the most powerful force world. Could I use the PC Wealth chart for him? This might be a DM help question sorry not sure which it falls under more

[AlanBruce]

If he's your campaign ender and you want to make him survivable (as in, lasting more than 1 round), there is nothing wrong with giving your villain PC WBL, according to the chart outlined in the PHB.

Chances are that the party is armed to the teeth to face him and if he's going to be alone, might as well have as much gear as he can to keep up with the action economy.

[Itsjustsoup.com]

gear your villain out right. If you want to max him out, gear him as a pc.

Then Roll for treasure.

Then give your Villain access to the treasure to buff his gear.

In fact, when rolling treasure for any villains in the dame area,fortress,dungeon,etc

Have the villain get the pick of the treasure and swap treasure freely, giving the crap items to the lackeys.

Now the villain gear, IS THE BEST GEAR.

[tiercel]

From a functional point of view, generally BBEGs' gear has two major purposes:

A) Let a BBEG do all the necessary/cool things you want him to do
B) Serve as a loot pile for your PCs when (if...?) they defeat him

This gives you your balancing act: enough to do (A), not so big that (B) is a problem for your game.

Since we are talking campaign-ender, (B) is not really a concern. Load him up with whatever would provide the best challenge for the PCs. This is the kind of situation when you might even think "artifact": appropriately epic, not worried about gold cost, and has a "cool factor" as loot even if the PCs don't actually get to significantly wield it in play.