[drewal]

When I played my Stormlord of Talos, I didn't worry about maintainging rep. The advantage the traditional evil group has is that the party only has 4 or 5 people in it, so the levels come faster, and the individual characters are, in general, some of the more powerful in the game. Edwin = best mage. Korgan = one of the best tanks. Vicconia = good cleric so long as you equip her with some strength boosting item (gauntlets of ogre power, girdle of XXXX giant strength).

Things should be harder for the most evil group of people in the land.

Think about gangs of outlaws in the Wild West in the U.S. in the 18th century. They were constantly being hunted by the law.

Since I purposely kept my rep. at 1, I faced the Amnish Guards and Cowled Enforcers in Athkatla regularly. At the early levels, they are just too much to battle - the right techniques will mean a win, but then you've got to go rest everytime you enter a new area of the city - it gets tireseom.

So Iberius Ixtasatol - the Stormlord, led his party of evildoers (Edwin, Korgan, Vicconia) into the wilderness.

Again think of the parallel to the Wild West - the outlaws hung around in the west, on the frontier, not back in civilization, back east.

Thus, an evil party should spend most of their time in the Umar Hills, the Shadow Temple, Nalia's Keep, and the Windspear Hills, before wandering around Athkatla a great deal.

Doing so makes sense from a role-playing perspective.

By the time you get up enough levels, the law-enforcers will be a piece of cake. A couple of power words/pierce magics at the two enforcers, and then a few area of effect spells and all of the do-gooders are dead, along with a few innocenet bystanders.

After a time, blasting the law-enforcers will be no more annoying - or time consuming - than waiting for you party to gather before moving to the next area.