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View Full Version : (3.5) Villain ideas and write ups for striking terror into your players



maniakmastah
2009-05-05, 12:13 AM
Hey ya'll, i've been looking for some ideas for villains that make even the most battle-hardened and jaded players shiver. Not just power and ability wise, but also by their appearance, personality quirks, terror tactics, and more. Right now i'm considering doing a revamp and enhanced Lemot Sediam Juste from the old AD&D Ravenloft setting. His whole shtick is that he's an illusionist who can alter and control reality on his stage and can control the minds of those around him, however he's cursed too never leave his theatre and believes that everything around him is nothing more than a figment of his imagination, and people around nothing more than puppets made from his own mind, to be used and discarded as he sees fit. Any suggestions on both abilities and personality.

Also, what're some stories all you DMs have that made your players genuinely creeped out or had them shaking.

Rhiannon87
2009-05-05, 08:44 AM
Well, I'm not DMing this one, but we just finished Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, and the party was f***ing terrified of Strahd by the time we were done. Primarily because he kept using scry to watch us, and then various sending-type spells to get in our heads and mess with our minds. Trying to turn the party against itself by spreading rumors, mind-controlling people to make them attack one another... yeah. It was bad. By the time we actually got to the Final Boss Battle, we were all quite nervous.

Then we killed Strahd with a Disrupting Thighbone to the head. It was anti-climatic and awesome.

So my suggestion: have your villain watch the players, tormenting them from a distance within their own heads. Creates a charming atmosphere of paranoia.

afroakuma
2009-05-05, 08:56 AM
Here is a litany of ten villains that might serve you:

Prince Meridius (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5712242#post5712242), a devious Machiavellian plotter from below the waves who has mastered the Xanatos Gambit
The Augmoha (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5407303#post5407303), a cunning predator who nests below, and preys upon, whole cities
The Omenwrath (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5777061#post5777061), a menacing foe from above who bears an ancient druidic curse
The Caillteanas (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5253896#post5253896), an unseelie fey who experiments with mortals by taking that which they value most
Tsartajius (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5814382#post5814382), a tragic monstrosity shaped from nightmares
The Maiden's Weeping (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5213912#post5213912), an evil plant that steals the life from young people
The Thief King's Palace (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5749075#post5749075), a spell come to life that possesses important locations to annoy people
Dandag the Quiet (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5299871#post5299871), the leader of an elite assassin's guild
Prystele the Golden (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5910625#post5910625), a lich unlike any other
The Silver Hellstar (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5453448#post5453448), a sentient weapon from the Nine Hells whose impact spans the whole campaign

Each is fully statted and fully detailed, including background, motivations, encounter tips and plot hooks.

herrhauptmann
2009-05-05, 11:08 AM
The entire Renoir family from Ravenlofts Richemulot (sp?) domain. At first I was just wondering why we kept having to fight rats (new back then, and didn't know other werebeasts existed besides wolves).
And I was getting nervous because at seemingly random times in the combat, DM would tell me, 'roll a d20,' and NEVER TELL ME WHAT IT MEANT. (Save to see if I contracted lycanthropy)
Finally when we all realized what it meant, the family started stalking us.

Zaq
2009-05-05, 01:46 PM
Give them a couple personality quirks and/or mannerisms that you, the GM, the physical person behind the screen, can subtly act out. Let me repeat, subtly. Point at people (or things) with your lips instead of your hands. Emphasize one inappropriate word at least every other sentence. Answer questions with questions. Don't speak in verse, but slip in a rhyme just a liiiiiiittle too often to be coincidental. Like that. Not making a funny voice or getting into theatrics (though that can be a lot of fun in the right group), but little things that your players won't necessarily notice.

These won't make a villain scary on their own, of course, but it'll add an unsettling dimension to one that's already scary.

Another trick is to have the bad guy give the players an occasional gift. Not a "gift," an actual gift. Have him leave behind a couple CLW potions after he gives a speech and leaves. Occasionally have the party interrupted by a messenger bearing a small bag of gold "compliments of Master Evu" (Or whatever his name is), or a hot and tasty meal served with a scroll of either Detect Poison or Neutralize Poison to set their minds at... ease. This has two effects. One, it shows that the villain feels confident enough in his power to humor the PCs, to treat them with a mockery of cordiality, to even help them occasionally. Second, it makes players really paranoid. It'd be the easy thing to do to give them a few innocent trinkets then slip something truly nasty into their hands, but that's what they're expecting. Keep it innocent. Don't make any of the potions poison, don't put any scrying beacons on the trinkets. Your players will have no idea what's going on and they'll start questioning things, which is great for instilling fear and/or suspense.

Give him a lot of body doubles. Have the first few be essentially dominated commoners with a nice disguise and some way of projecting his voice. Then start giving them abilities, so they'll think it's the real one... then bust out radically different abilities. No two body doubles should have the same class, or at least not the same setup. At least one should be an actual illusion. If you're comfortable making them, throw in wildly different things, like psionics or incarnum. Don't throw wave after wave of doubles at the PCs, though. Spread them out, so they start to forget what he's capable of, so it seems even weirder when he does something different.

Oh, and have one of the body doubles be a bard, and have that one give the most ludicrously over-the-top villainous monologue you can muster. Midway through the maniacal laughter, have another double cut him off (perhaps violently... or maybe Disintegrate would be appropriate), apologize to the party, and mutter something about not hiring bards next time.

Perhaps have him contact the PCs, asking them nicely to call off their quest. Meet them for lunch in a (DM-fiat made) pocket dimension in which no attacks may be made, no spells may be cast, no one can harm another in any way. You can go the cliche route and have him act typically when they refuse... "Oh, really? I do think you'll regret that. It's a shame I'll have to end up doing what I'm doing, but at this point I think I can say you've forced my hand..." all that good hackneyed stuff. Or, you can simply have him shrug, say that it was worth a shot, and ask them to pass the rolls. Players generally don't expect to be treated as humans or as equals by most evil masterminds.

I second the earlier suggestion that the villain could be scrying on the PCs at all times. I once had my players enter a dungeon, and in the foyer there were huge marble statues of themselves and their names elegantly carved into the door. It wasn't an illusion or anything. Make it utterly clear that the villain knows they're coming.

Choco
2009-05-05, 03:15 PM
A lot of very good advice

That is excellent right there. I too am a big fan of the James Bond-esque villains that like to have a peaceful, no dirty tricks lunch meeting with the PC's.

Another one I found effective is having a villain that the PC's know is powerful enough to wipe the floor with them without so much as breaking a sweat (at least at first), yet is too insane/indifferent to do so (often).

For example, in one of my campaigns one of the recurring villains is an ancient witch who has become the living(!) host of the largest and purest concentration of negative energy ever to "grace" the world with it's presence. So much negative energy that she can kill good beings with a single touch and turn evil beings into, well, mindless monsters of pure evil (in my world, positive energy = good and negative energy = evil, in addition to life and death). Thing is her mind is well beyond broken, so she alternates between crying about various random memories of her past, being able to hold a civil discussion, murderous rampages, complete mental breakdown, etc.

I found a good way to deal with her by the rules AND believably is to create my own, modified version of the confusion effects table ordered from the least deadly (to the PC's) states at the bottom to the most deadly at the top, use a % dice with the extremes not occurring too often, and add MINOR negative modifiers when the PC's are not threatening and/or being nice to her and positive modifiers when she may view them as a threat (depends on her current state of course :smallamused:). I then roll once at the beginning of her turn if in combat, once per in game minute if out of, and watch as the sheer danger and unpredictability gets to the players.

The first time they met her, the party didn't attack right away as it is their habit to try to talk first. She proceeded to kill a child in front of them to demonstrate a point which made perfect sense to her. By that point the PC's knew they stood no chance against her, but then she was going to kill another child to make another point so the LG crusader attacked her before she could do it (makes sense in character). He took off her arm, she carried on as if nothing had happened, and then went completely batsh*t insane when her arm started regenerating, clawing and shrieking at the new limb, falling down and scuttling into a corner. Next round she laughed and burned the crusader's legs off effortlessly. Then she educated the PC's on negative and positive energy, spent some time crying, gave the Crusader a regeneration potion, killed 2 more of her hostages, and disappeared. Needless to say, the PC's were already scared out of their minds, so it didn't help when they learned of her past a little while later and found out she became the way she was in the process of saving the world millenia ago. She saved them once too, that was priceless.

So yeah, rambling aside, it's fun to include at least one of these villains in your games. All that is required is coming up with a reason for their insane power as well as their insanity, making the insanity table to roll against (will be different char to char), and watch the PC's tiptoe around the psycho that they know might randomly decide to knock off one or all of them, with or without provocation :smallbiggrin:

Sinfire Titan
2009-05-05, 03:23 PM
I personally like to read through books for ideas. I once translated General Woundwort (Watership Down) into a DnD character as a recurring villain. The players never even knew it was him, and gave the same reactions to him as anyone who's read the book. I played him to be as much of a Magnificent Bastard as I possibly could, and it worked.

Other times, I go through the Liber Chaotica and find a good example of true Evil, then put it on paper. The Denied One (Liber Slaanesh) and Archon or even Be'lakor make great villains to scare the hell out of people.

evil-frosty
2009-05-05, 10:01 PM
If you have BoVD there are a bunch of ideas in there. But those might just completely creep the players out (i.e necrophilia) and/or want them to kill the villain even more. But overall use your imagination you know your players better then anyone here.

maniakmastah
2009-05-06, 12:47 AM
Nice ideas ya'll. Since some of the posts involve villains from their past games, guess i'll tell about one of my own.

From the beginning of the game i was running, i had someone tailing the PCs, occasionally seeing glimpses of something getting away really fast. From time to time when they would exit from a building in the town they were in (this being a quasi-Ravenloft setting, a ring of fog was surrounding the countryside and made escape impossible), they would again hear something vanishing, thus starting to make them really nervous. After awhile, i decided to break the silence and set up a "meeting" with this character and the group's Paladin of Heironeous. As he was sleeping, he managed to hear someone coming in through his window and creeping onto his bed(got a nat 20 on the listen check), before he could react, he was pinned down by a rather attractive female in black who called herself Nazza. She was basically one of the main villain's henchwomen and had been watching the party for surveillance as well as personal pleasure. From then on, she had a habit of popping up to terrorize the PCs, especially the paladin, whom she would often call "Lover" or some other lewd names or popping up to tempt and entice him, either by having a few mock battles or basically driving them crazy by taunting them in a playful manner or mocking them. After awhile, her 'playful' tendencies started to turn more violent and her demeanor becoming more sadistic and bloodthirsty, then culminated with her going on a rampage of murder in the town.

The PCs finally learned the reason for her behavior (as well as the prime motive behind the main villain's schemes) in that about 60 years in the past, she was a young 7 year old girl named Mary and had an older sister named Elizabeth, and they lived and worked with the main villain's family called the Del Vinas family, who were receiving heat from the town as they suspect them of black magic. Things finally exploded one night when an angry mob of villagers assaulted the Del Vinas manor and basically tortured and killed the family. Mary and her older sister were also attacked, both of them being sexually assaulted then murdered. That was when the fog came and cut off from the rest of the world. Mary's hatred and outrage somehow attracted the attention of a demoness named Nazzarene, and as the young girl's life was ending, bonded with the young girl, resting inside of her. After several years, the family was brought back to life, with the now possessed and older Mary with them. From that point on, she became a minion of the Del Vinas, she wanted revenge as much as they did, and became their assassin and eyes. As they found these facts, they learned that the people she was murdering were the aged men who attacked her and her sister. This gave them a dilemma, they know she's evil and has killed many innocents and friends they made in the town (as well as killed one of the PCs), but some also felt she was justified in her anger. Things finally came to a head when she attacked the father of the Paladin's girlfriend in the town, and before Nazza could kill the old man, the pally's girlfriend tackled Nazza to the ground, letting the old man get away. Outraged, Nazza decided to take her anger out on her, kidnapping her, and the PCs having to hunt her down. After finding her lair (under her old house where her and her sister lived) and nearly getting annihilated by the numerous traps inside, they finally found Nazza basically torturing and tearing the life out of the pally's girlfriend. They battled her for real, with her taking her demon form and nearly killing the party. They managed to finally defeat Nazza with a little help from the wayward spirit of Elizabeth, and managed to reunite the two sisters together in a rather touching scene, saving the girl and defeating the demon.

Nazza was an interesting character to roleplay as she shifted from being a sexual deviant (with all the lewd calls and acts made towards the paladin), being mischievous (poking fun at and terrorizing the PCs), a total sadist (grinning and singing to herself as she was killing or torturing someone), a maniac (especially shown as she was killing one of her attackers, her laughing and screaming), a scared little girl (breaking down and crying out for her sister to come and comfort her), and as someone the PCs pitied and sympathized with despite her wickedness, and even as the game continues, i haven't been able to make a villain that shook them as much as she did.