bekeleven
2013-08-27, 08:12 PM
A few years back I was in a very fun, sadly short campaign playing a group of quirky, ineffectual villains. The party makeup included (this is a partial list, because we had a ton of people):
I played "The Unknowable One". I was a Shifter whose evil villainous plan was to become everything in the world so that I could safely destroy it. I lived in a lead-lined cardboard box set on a custom magic item of Tenser's Floating Disk and, if anyone knocked that off of me, I had a second lead-lined box underneath it coated in contact poison (I was also coated in contact poison, being a warforged). Since all of these counted as my possessions, once combat began the entire box+disk combo would turn into a dinosaur.
A man with extreme multiple personality disorder. He wrote up 5 or 6 character sheets sharing nothing but race and equipment, and every time he regained consciousness (waking up each morning, or from hitting negatives) he would roll a D% to determine which personality he controlled. One was good-aligned but, sadly, it didn't come up in the 2-3 sessions we played. This is the first of many examples in which the rules were less funny than our imaginations.
A mad scientist (very poorly optimized wizard). He spent most of our fights standing in the back making perform(villainy) checks. In his off-time he made poisons and left them in unassuming places, such as on our food.
One person wanted to build Luigi using a leap-attacking dragoon build he found online. Being evil, he was of course playing Waluigi instead. He would ride when I turned into a fleshraker.
One guy, who had never played D&D before, insisted that he knew enough to design custom classes off the top of his head. He started the campaign as a "Roplemancer", with supernatural abilities allowing him to tie people up or summon "rope elementals". Every time he joined, he would very quickly provoke someone's ire (usually the Servant Soul, below) and be killed, then return to the table 5 minutes later with a 3x5 card detailing his next -mancer class. I also recall the Ninjamancer (summoning ninjas) and the Wetamancer (which it turned out wasn't very useful in forests).
One evil wizard was trying to set up gladiatorial games. I can only assume his ultimate plan involved Tenser's Transformation.
One person played evil Bill Cosby (he was a bard). His goal was laying traps that accidentally killed the party.
Our "designated minion" took a dare and played a multiclass Truenamer/Souknife/CW Samurai.
The nominal "Leader" of our party was a neutral-good Servant Soul with an item of undetectable alignment (not that any of us were competent enough to check). She would subvert all of our plans behind our backs. Your basic "Swap the water main poison with potions of Aid" or "Tell us the BETTER orphanage to burn is the abandoned building across the street".
The campaign started with us taking over an island shaped like a skull for a home base (curiously it had previously been owned by evil creatures), then getting a base near the local city (curiously chasing away some large monsters that would threaten it; our servant soul leader told us that this was "prime real estate" for launching attacks). Anyway, the entire experience was great fun, and I recommend trying it with some good friends, especially if you are all of legal drinking age.
Submit your own ineffectual villain concepts below!
I played "The Unknowable One". I was a Shifter whose evil villainous plan was to become everything in the world so that I could safely destroy it. I lived in a lead-lined cardboard box set on a custom magic item of Tenser's Floating Disk and, if anyone knocked that off of me, I had a second lead-lined box underneath it coated in contact poison (I was also coated in contact poison, being a warforged). Since all of these counted as my possessions, once combat began the entire box+disk combo would turn into a dinosaur.
A man with extreme multiple personality disorder. He wrote up 5 or 6 character sheets sharing nothing but race and equipment, and every time he regained consciousness (waking up each morning, or from hitting negatives) he would roll a D% to determine which personality he controlled. One was good-aligned but, sadly, it didn't come up in the 2-3 sessions we played. This is the first of many examples in which the rules were less funny than our imaginations.
A mad scientist (very poorly optimized wizard). He spent most of our fights standing in the back making perform(villainy) checks. In his off-time he made poisons and left them in unassuming places, such as on our food.
One person wanted to build Luigi using a leap-attacking dragoon build he found online. Being evil, he was of course playing Waluigi instead. He would ride when I turned into a fleshraker.
One guy, who had never played D&D before, insisted that he knew enough to design custom classes off the top of his head. He started the campaign as a "Roplemancer", with supernatural abilities allowing him to tie people up or summon "rope elementals". Every time he joined, he would very quickly provoke someone's ire (usually the Servant Soul, below) and be killed, then return to the table 5 minutes later with a 3x5 card detailing his next -mancer class. I also recall the Ninjamancer (summoning ninjas) and the Wetamancer (which it turned out wasn't very useful in forests).
One evil wizard was trying to set up gladiatorial games. I can only assume his ultimate plan involved Tenser's Transformation.
One person played evil Bill Cosby (he was a bard). His goal was laying traps that accidentally killed the party.
Our "designated minion" took a dare and played a multiclass Truenamer/Souknife/CW Samurai.
The nominal "Leader" of our party was a neutral-good Servant Soul with an item of undetectable alignment (not that any of us were competent enough to check). She would subvert all of our plans behind our backs. Your basic "Swap the water main poison with potions of Aid" or "Tell us the BETTER orphanage to burn is the abandoned building across the street".
The campaign started with us taking over an island shaped like a skull for a home base (curiously it had previously been owned by evil creatures), then getting a base near the local city (curiously chasing away some large monsters that would threaten it; our servant soul leader told us that this was "prime real estate" for launching attacks). Anyway, the entire experience was great fun, and I recommend trying it with some good friends, especially if you are all of legal drinking age.
Submit your own ineffectual villain concepts below!