Greatest Villain?

[Tvtyrant]

What was the greatest villain that your party ever ran into? What made that villain distinct from the others?

[Zaydos]

Marcus the ullitharid.

What made him distinct:

1) he bantered with them at the start of every battle.

2) he always had an escape plan (this escape plan at one point involved jumping off a cliff to escape a Dimensional Anchor)

3) he knew the DMPC beforehand (because my IRL players have always had a tendency not to do any backstory). :smallredface:

4) he had a tragic backstory (used to be good; got turned into an illithid). It made the PCs actually vow to eventually go into hell to pull his soul out and revive him as a human.

5) he was the reoccuring villain in my longest running campaign (2+ years).

[Dylaer]

The best villain I've ever seen was an evil Crusader our DM created for a one off adventure. When voicing him, he had this almost palpable aura of barely restrained violence and insanity. It was disturbing, but he proved so popular that he became a running villain. It still gives me the shivers thinking of it.:smalleek:

[Tvtyrant]

The best villain we ever had was a bartender that we had wronged while we were first level. We burned down his bar while he and some other people were inside during a fight with the local guards (they were corrupt). When he showed up again he was a Drunken Master three levels above us who was coated in burns from the alcohol fires when the bar burned. The whole scene was amazing, because we were in a crypt trying to kill a vampire and he followed us into the crypt to kill us. The vampire took the opportunity to run off, and if the campaign had gone on for longer would have been a recurring character.

[Dienekes]

My personal three? These would be the three I had the most fun with as GM rather than my players had fighting.

In SWSE a Neimodian Senator. He was hilarious to play since the PCs knew he was evil, knew he was corrupt, and even vaguely knew what his plan was and they couldn't touch him. He required my players to roleplay further out of their comfort zone of killing everything in sight than they ever have before and I will always treasure this guy. Also watching my players try to hold back their fury at what he was getting away with while publicly humiliating them was great.

DnD a gnomish wizard. The entire campaign revolved around finding which powerful spellcaster plunged the world into chaos. At the very beginning they met 2 of the 3. One of which was a friendly gnomish wizard, the other a rather arrogant and abrasive human. When the clues made it clear it was one of those two my players immediately started targeting the human rather than furthering the investigation. The reveal that they were wrong and had just killed their potential ally was absolutely priceless.

DnD low level torturer, who through his own plans and the PCs own actions grew to further prominence and power than I ever thought he'd achieve. It was great for me to watch because it was so unexpected. I thought he'd be a throw away gag character, a memorable personality and appearance but that's it. I gave him a rather simple plan with a few traps that was supposed to be a side note in the plot for the PCs to disrupt. A bit player to show how fragile the kingdom was and how everyone had their eye on the throne. They proceeded to miss all the clues, bungle all his traps, and clear a path for him to rise to power without any prompting by me. While he never got as far as BBEG before they eventually cornered and killed him, I had to level him up 5 times to make him encounter appropriate and he became one of the three major contenders for the kingdom.

[Alleran]

Setting aside one villain that I'm rather proud of but who the current party hasn't reached yet, when Graz'zt showed up a few times to a previous party it was suitably impressive.

He was engaged in a plan-counterplan-countercounterplan thing with Mephistopheles at the time, and the PCs were caught in the middle. As it turned out, the whole thing was orchestrated by Asmodeus to slap down Meph. The amount of thought that went into that twisting, garbled tangle of plot threads wasn't something I'd care to go through too often. It was a nightmare to keep everything straight sometimes.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

My personal favorite villain was the leader of the Order of the Magi, an extremely powerful martial adept gish with Ebon Phoenix Mage levels. Fortunately, two of the PC's were in the Order, and both trusted and looked up to him. He was introduced to the game fairly early on, and he showed up rather often just to secure some important information that he could use against his enemies(the PCs included).

The main plot was to take out a weakened demonic god-monster before he could regain all his strength and be impossible to kill, and this was after his cult had grown immensely large and had taken over the world using the ancient technologies of a golden robot god. He backed the PC's up until the demon god was killed, and pretty much just took his throne so he and his six EPM buddies could rule from a lofty position without all the effort that would normally be required for ruling the world. The final battle consisted of them fighting the demon god, killing him, everyone achieving divine rank 0 and then immediately fighting the Crystal Archmagus, and this was when the party had blown all their big spells and maneuvers and he conserved his big guns. That was fun.

But now that I think about it, he was kind of only one or two steps down from 'ruler of the world' already... Maybe there were just metaphysical powers having the position had. Meh.

[Earthwalker]

On of my favourite bad guys was called Ted. Ted was the lead researcher and man in charge at a Renraku chemical research plant outside the walls of Seattle. He was a nice family man, maybe too dominated by his wife who kept pushing him to get promoted till he roses to a level way beyond his ability and moral threshold.

Ted has a problem, to cut cost the site has been dumping toxic waste on tribal lands. The hippy tribe near the compound is up in arms and trying to go to the paper or government or anyone who will listen. Not knowing what to do, Ted asks his head of security Anna to deal with the situation. Anna of course deals with this situation as you would expect she rounds up the local comune and has them all killed, destroying the bodies with some toxic waste. She calls in Ted to have a look at her handy work (presumably expecting him to congratulate her on a job well done).

As Ted looks over the mass grave, with trees awash with the blood of the innocent he has had ordered killed, Ted snaps. It might be repressed emotions from his constantly nagging wife, or the shock, or even some magicall juju the tribe had been laying down but something inside Teds head just snaps. He covers well but a new personallity is born (yes I know multiple personality disorder doesn’t work this way, lets say the magic did it).
The new personality is Red Fern a toxic shaman. Red Fern begins a series of attacks on the compound. Seeming to know the security inside out and able cause a lot of damage.

Its at this point the players entered the story.

First they are hired to break into the compound, told to use non lethal force and steal a data chip. The players do so and find out this was all a set up by Ted, he wanted to prove to Anna how weak the security was.
Next job is for the Players to help close any security gaps and help deal with Red Fern (they are told he is a local shaman, attacking the compound), he is always seen wearing a hazmat suit. The players improve things and bolster security. Red Fern attacks and is repulsed by the players.

In the attack one of the attackers is killed, turns out it’s a former employee of the compound. To learn more the Players turn up to his funeral. Oddly this was hopfully going to show the players the consiquences of their actions.
They follow clues but don’t ever manage to get to Red Fern as he always seem one step ahead. They find the mass grave, question there loyaties.
To try to get to Red Fern they cut Anna out of the loop and still get nowhere. In the end they act without telling Ted and get to a point to fight Red Fern.

When its all revealed at the end that Red Fern and Ted were the same person and they missed so many clues that told them that, I get that wonderful amused / angry look from all my players.

[Jay R]

I once ran an early Silver Age comic-book hero campaign. The introduction included the following:

"The world has always had heroes. Gilgamesh, Achilles, Robin Hood, Scaramouche, Zorro, Phantom Eagle, Tomahawk, the Blackhawks, the Lone Ranger, the Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, Cheyenne Bodie and Kwai-Chang Caine are all historical figures, well-documented in any history book. The super-powerful ones don’t exist (yet). You may assume the existence of any well-known Golden Age comic hero (except the ultra-powerful -- Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Captain Marvel, Spectre, etc.) if you have a specific need for him or her. (Your character was saved as a child by the Red Bee, which is why he wants to be a hero, for instance.)"

Their first adventure involved a report of a rocket landing out of town, with monsters coming out of it. They fought the monsters for some time before they realized that they had blundered into the origin of the Fantastic Four.

My intersession notes to the players were interspersed with news they could get from the papers, such as:An unknown clown was found beaten to death on the streets of Gotham city. There was no evidence linking the crime to anybody, and the only unusual aspects of the case are that the coroner was unable to take off his white clown makeup and green hair dye, and that his face was frozen in a hideous grin, like the victims in a couple of earlier crimes also in Gotham. The police suspect that his murderer must also be guilty of the other crimes, but no other clues are available.
...
A green glow has been reportedly seen at several minor crimes, mostly on the west coast.
...
There is also evidently a new costumed villain in New York City. The papers there are all talking about the illegal exploits of this “Spider-Man” character, but it’s not entirely clear what crimes he’s done.
...
A couple of weird weather conditions have been seen in and around Central City (bizarre lightning strikes on a clear day, large amounts of ice in the streets, and whirlwinds that cannot be explained meteorologically).
...
A man wearing a weird suit with question marks all over it has been found with his head caved in at the scene of a Gotham city bank robbery. He has been identified as Edward Nigma, a puzzle editor on a local paper. Nothing in his background explains his presence at the crime scene or his death. He appears to have been beaten severely.
Several episodes into the game, they start finding evidence of a super-powered crime ring. Eventually they learn why some heroes didn't exist. The bad guys were the Crime Syndicate - evil versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. Note that these were the first five heroes I told them don't exist, and that I'd been giving clues of their existence for some time.

[3SecondCultist]

I think the greatest villain I've ever seen was Arkhos, the Walking Shadow. During my first year of playing legitimate Dnd, I picked a Lawful Anal aasimar paladin to play, and called him Eos. At the beginning of the campaign, the DM gave my character this awesome sword, and then had a great black wyrm chase us all around the continent, demanding its return.

So anyways, one of the other PCs decided to betray us, ending up with the party getting ambushed. DM told me that my character had been abducted, gave me no saving throw or any roll whatsoever, after I had won initiative. Apparently, it was a surprise round.

So I roll up a new character. After a while, we go into this dungeon, where we meet Arkhos. As it turns out, Eos wasn't killed, just turned to the dark side. He was a blackguard now.

As much as all of that stung, Arkhos was an effective villain, with real, plausible goals and a legitimate reason to hate the original party. After all, they left him to die. And while he was a bit cliched at times, he was played well. Ironically enough, he was so disciplined that made the rest of the Chaotic Stupid party look dishonorable by comparison.

[Combat Reflexes]

My all-time favorite villian was an illithid that called himself 'Majesty' and was building this large underground crypt city filled with undead and charmed/dominated/willing slaves. His goal was as simple as it was cliched (world domination à la Napoleon complex).

The players were, of course, recruited to counter Majesty and his evil plans. They have fought him many times (about six to seven battles) but always failed to kill him.
To finally satisfy the players, I had planned for the next campaign session that Majesty would become arrogant enough to attack the PCs on their own ground - a small keep named after a former player character. This was to be the campaign-ending climax fight.

The session begins. Players rest in keep, do a small quest, and return to find Majesty in front of the gate, alone. He is cackling madly and challenges the PCs to 'come and get it'.

For some reason all of the PCs immediately surrender and kneel at his feet, and asking him to become officials in his new kingdom. I kind of lost it there, but as the experienced DM I am I created a completely alternate story on the fly, with the PCs now at the forefront of Majesty's armies :smallbiggrin: