In a discussion on the SFC's battlestar galactica boards, I broached the topic that the cylons really seem to br good at sneak attacks and ambushes, but basically suck when it comes to anything resembling a fair fight.

Someone replied that the series needed the cylons to suck in fair fights in order to keep the series going, as if they didn't suck in a fair fight the series would have ended in a couple episodes with the destruction of the fugitive fleet.

So, do you think a good story or game needs an incompetent enemy to give the good guys a chance, or do you think it's better when the bad guys are competent and the good guys (or players) have to be better than them?

Real life is full of examples of good guys winning because the bad guys were dickheads, like ww2. We hear how awesome the nazi military was, but in reality the nazis made multiple stupid mistakes along the way, like not developing a good strategic bomber anything like the flying fortress, not developing radar, starting a war on two fronts when it was unecessary, making elaborate, complex, heavy tanks that broke down frequently, etc.

But as a GM or player, does your game rely on stupid bad guys to give the players a chance, or do you prefer competent enemies? I get a little tired of the "How did this bunch of morons ever become a major power???" type enemies and prefer to rely on competent antagonists that make mistakes about as often as regular people, and who usually make mistakes based on arrogance or overconfidence rather than stupidity.

I try to make my enemies as competent as possible, within the limts of their character.

For instance, a thug-type dictator (like Stalin, to continue the WWII analogy) will not do the same things an incredibly shrewd opportunist (Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski).

For me, really, it depends on the NPC's personality.

Unless you're playing a "villains as protagonist" game, villains need to not overshadow the protagonists.  There needs to be room for the protagonists to tell their story.

If their story requires success against the villains ... well then, the villains need to be defeatable.

Hypothetically, you could have a story that isn't about that:  a story that is about, say, surviving a horrible genocide.  In that case the villains can be very clever, and achieve all their goals with grace and elan, because the story of the protagonist isn't about stopping them, it's about being one of the few who escape.

But most of the time, the story involves (at least) thwarting the villains for a time.  At the same time, the harder that thwarting is the more dramatic the story is.  Hence the attraction of villains with huge strengths and huge weaknesses ... it lets your heroes bounce up against someone so powerful that they seem unbeatable, but still beat them.

Arrogance and overconfidence (as Nox points out) are great alternatives to stupidity.  Those are things that even smart, savvy bad-guys are vulnerable to ... maybe more vulnerable to than a stupid thug.  Likewise, compassion is a great weakness for certain classes of bad-guy, as is honor.  Give 'em some human traits, and watch how our basic humanity trips up even the best of us.  It's funny because it's true.