I would have made him one level higher, but then his own attacks would have been strong enough to one-shot some of the players
Level 1 woes are real, but remember, NPCs don’t have to follow player character creation rules
Yeah, I learned that too. I had come up with a villain later on who had a very defense/counterattack focused stationary fighting style combined with sundering armor, and I thought I could make him a big threat, but then he ended up completely flopping because there just wasn’t support for building that style and making it strong. Now I’m playing looser, and stealing lair actions from D&D (minus the lair part most of the time) to make my loner villains work.