How do you create villains?

[TheOneHawk]

I'm a rookie DM who's trying a home brew after I finish up the module we are doing first. I'm curious how you playgrounders make your villains? Do you build them like you would a PC? That seems like it would get labour intensive at higher levels. Any tips or tricks?

[SowZ]

I'm a rookie DM who's trying a home brew after I finish up the module we are doing first. I'm curious how you playgrounders make your villains? Do you build them like you would a PC? That seems like it would get labour intensive at higher levels. Any tips or tricks?

While making a campaign, I build a bunch of stat blocks of 'lower level NPCs' of various types. I build them like a PC, but care little for optimization and all NPCs of that general type are the same. I have many of these types I carry over from campaign to campaign. ((All towns have similar guards. Expert 1/Warrior 1 with an occasional Sargent who has 2 Warrior levels.))

I sometimes move a stat or feat around on the fly before a skirmish so the PCs don't expect too much, but sometimes don't.

I also have generic cut purses, soldiers, highwaymen, assassins, etc. etc. Each person of a given job gets the same base stats and skills regardless of race, (though race modifies stats of course,) with long lived races like elves getting a flat plus two to their level. Usually warrior or expert. Fighter if they are nobility.

I'll also build some generic casters of various kinds and use monster and beastmen races as they are in the MM.

Usually, there is one or two NPCs per session I build personally and with real intent, and I do it during the week before the session. Although I only run overarching campaigns, each session has its own climax and final boss. Sometimes they go off the rails which is fine. They usually have to fight the guy later in that case so it wasn't a waste of time. If they subvert that villain entirely, (sometimes they do,) meh, what can you do? It's whatever.

It does get time intensive at higher levels. But I don't DM characters above level seven or eight, usually, so bosses are usually just fine being levels nine to fourteen or so. The investiture of time is worth it for memorable and party crafted encounters.

[TheOOB]

http://www.giantitp.com/articles/rTKEivnsYuZrh94H1Sn.html

Obligatory link to the Giants very well made article on the subject.

As far as mechanics, I rarely make full characters for villians. Only explicitly stat out abilities that may be used in a presence of the PC's that they have some ability to interact with, and it is neither required nor preferable for them to follow the exact same rules as the PC's(though they should feel like they are following some rules).

[BeerMug Paladin]

If you don't like to give a bunch of class levels, dragons are an easy, out of the book villain to go with. They're intelligent, can scheme for all sorts of things, have access to lots of wealth to (potentially) hire mooks, or so on.

The only thing to keep in mind is that while evil dragons are generally murderous and greedy, they also have plenty of reasons they might talk with people instead of just kill them. They basically hide their lair away, but could easily be motivated to do just about anything that would motivate a humanoid villain.

Of course, this still requires you to do something like draw up a general mook hireling in your notes, or such, but generally such people are powerful mostly in large numbers and don't have more than 1-4 levels.

[TheOneHawk]

Dragons will likely make an appearance (on both sides) but the BBEG is a human sorcerer. That article is pretty graat, I wasn't aware those were there. I also really like the idea of generic guards etc, so ill be using that.

[Subaru Kujo]

Put together stat blocks, give them a motivation (or in other words, why they are a villain in the first place). Add in some traits, tendencies, and so on and you are golden.

[Remmirath]

It depends on how major the villain is and how much you expect them to need to do in the campaign. I focus primarily on the villain's personality and motivations to begin with, but they all need at least some stats.

For monsters and hordes of minions and such, all they need is HP, Attacks, AC, Saves, and Initiative (anything they use against the PCs in battle counts as an attack, including spells and such). They don't need to be well explained, they don't need sheets, and they certainly don't need skills or anything.

Minor but recurring villains will get a bit more. I won't break out the full sheets until I get to the top few villains in any given campaign, unless I have some specific reason to sheet out a lower ranked villain (such as if one were to try to infiltrate the party, or if they were specifically doing something where they I need to know how good they are at various skills).

Really, I treat the villains the same as I treat neutral or allied NPCs -- they all get personality and description, and as many stats as they need to do their job in the plot.

It also depends a good deal on the style of your campaign and the preferences of your players. My players' preference is for an equal amount of action and roleplaying, and they have been often known in the past to talk down opponents I didn't expect them to or even convert some of them to their side, so I take that into account when deciding what stats various NPCs need and tend to give them a few more than they need if I think there's a possibility of that. In a campaign that is focused very much on combat, they probably don't need anything other than what they need to hurt, maim, or kill the PCs.

[Frozen_Feet]

I roll stats for a character.

Then I put the character on the way of the players' characters and tell them "it's a villain!"

The players' characters will then proceed to commit horrible attrocities on the so-called villain.

The rest of the game will be about the "villain" or his family and associates trying to get (completely just) revenge on the player's characters. :smallamused:

Seriously, try it. Especially inexperienced players who take black-and-white morality at face value will not think to question exactly why a character is a "villain". They will cheerfully slaughter the character without a second thought, in very imaginative ways.

You can then get many giggles out of having other NPCs trying to apply said "imaginative ways" back on the PCs and see how much they like being subjected to the same treatment.

[TheOOB]

Remember that (almost) every great villain is the hero of their own story. You can occasionally have the team evil villain like Kefka or Xykon, but they should be the exception, not the rule.

Also, it's usually folly to make a villain dangerous to the party purely by being personally powerful. They *can* be powerful, but having all of a villains strength and power come from their abilities in combat is asking for anti-climax. A low level aristocrat can be the most scary villain in a high level campaign if they have significant influence and schemes within schemes. Remember that Superman's greatest foe is a businessman with really good PR.

[Mutazoia]

Rather than re-type I'll just link THIS thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=197339) instead.

[Mastikator]

First I come up with the concept for the villain, which I base off the context they live in, then I do some guidelines for their stats and when the PCs encounter the villain I make up stats on the fly based on the guidelines.
Sometimes I make stats if I find it interesting or important.

For example in my last campaign as a GM (last year sadly) I made an array of potential villains each in charge of a faction that didn't have the PCs interest at heart.
The first faction was the tribe in the north close to the forest (but still in the plains), they were a tribe that worshiped nature spirits, particularly wolves and practiced a form of religious magic that allowed the more adept (about 1/10) to take on wolf-like traits. The matriarch of the tribe and the high priest were both capable of transforming into worgs. Their quest was to capture and eat an ancient immortal elf that lived in the forest guarding a trapped demon (they didn't know about the demon, only the elf knew).
The second faction was a lowly sorcerer whos only magic ability was to command animals, which he used to turn ravens into his spies, the PCs hilariously overestimated him and feared him. The fact that he was friends with a group of trolls did help him though. The sorcerer was their second quest giver.
Their first quest giver was a jarl who again and again sent them on quests with promises of treasure only to proclaim that they've failed and therefore not give them the whole treasure. The main point of this villain was to get them moving to the sorcerer.
The third villain was a troll the sorcerer sent with them on the quest he sent them on, it was a troll they've seen and defeated before. The point of the troll was to give them some nostalgia and also to make them take the quest seriously (instead they started cowering, I may have been too heavy handed in my killer-dm style).
The fourth villain was the demon which was trapped, it was trapped in a magic tome and was only able to give suggestions to anyone that touched the tome.
The fifth villain was a kingstroll that was trapped in his own rune staff (an accident that happened hundreds of years in the past when he trapped the demon in the tome). The fifth villain was similarly able to give suggestions to anyone that touched the rune staff, but also able to impart a small amount of his sorcery to the wielder of the staff to use at the wielders digression (in hopes of being let out by depleting the staff of magic power).
The fifth villain gave up on trying to lure the PCs after they rejected the magic, they gave the staff to their troll friend villain #3 which in turn turned on them using the staff but since he wasn't a learned sorcerer he perished from overuse of magic (and stabwounds from the PCs :smallwink:)

They never got to meet the immortal elf, the tribesmen or even know about the demon because they fled before things got interesting.


My opinion? Don't just have one BBEG, have several villains, make most of the villains non-hostile to the PCs, make them hostile to each other and try to use the PCs as pawns against each other. The PCs can only win by refusing to be railroaded. Don't have a grand plan, have a grand gaping abyss of chaos and mayhem.

So yeah, make lots of villains, as many as you can, just come up with a rough concept for each. Then make guidelines for their stats that reflect what they're about. Then make stats according to those guidelines when the need arises.
Make stats for generic pawns. But also make generic personalities and apply them to the pawns when the PCs talk to them, remember which pawn is which. The NPCs will become more interesting and alive.

I find that the NPCs are the most important part of the game, more than the land scape or the city outline or the stats. People are more interesting than objects.

Edit- this turned out to be a wall of text. Fixing with bold and stuff.

[Red Fel]

In my mind, there's a difference between a Villain and a boss. A Boss is a big, scary combat encounter, probably with extra HD and boosted saves, nasty SoD abilities, things like that. It's a combat, and it may or may not be memorable, but as a combat it requires stats if you're going to be fair. (If.)

A Villain is a creature apart. The Villain may or may not be involved in combat encounters, but that is incidental. A Villain is a story piece. A living instrument of plot. A creature designed to evoke emotion in the players - perhaps sympathy, perhaps pity, perhaps rage. It is a vessel through which you can give the players an emotional connection to the story, and the world. As such, it is less necessary to "build" a Villain than it is to build a Boss. Frankly, you could just not stat a Villain at all. Have him surrender, or fall quickly if the players fight him.

What you do with a Villain is create situations where the players won't get to fight him. At least, not yet. Drag it out. Give him his narrow escapes, his smirking monologues, his minor victories. When the players finally face him, you don't have to make him elaborate stat-wise. If they fight at all, keep it simple. A good Villain isn't necessarily a good Villain because he's powerful - he's a good Villain because he fights smart, and because his story is memorable.

Short version: I don't "build" Villains; I build bosses. The villains sort of create themselves over the course of a story.

[SowZ]

In my mind, there's a difference between a Villain and a boss. A Boss is a big, scary combat encounter, probably with extra HD and boosted saves, nasty SoD abilities, things like that. It's a combat, and it may or may not be memorable, but as a combat it requires stats if you're going to be fair. (If.)

A Villain is a creature apart. The Villain may or may not be involved in combat encounters, but that is incidental. A Villain is a story piece. A living instrument of plot. A creature designed to evoke emotion in the players - perhaps sympathy, perhaps pity, perhaps rage. It is a vessel through which you can give the players an emotional connection to the story, and the world. As such, it is less necessary to "build" a Villain than it is to build a Boss. Frankly, you could just not stat a Villain at all. Have him surrender, or fall quickly if the players fight him.

What you do with a Villain is create situations where the players won't get to fight him. At least, not yet. Drag it out. Give him his narrow escapes, his smirking monologues, his minor victories. When the players finally face him, you don't have to make him elaborate stat-wise. If they fight at all, keep it simple. A good Villain isn't necessarily a good Villain because he's powerful - he's a good Villain because he fights smart, and because his story is memorable.

Short version: I don't "build" Villains; I build bosses. The villains sort of create themselves over the course of a story.

Rather than arbitrarily boosting saves and HD, I just slap monk levels onto my bosses until the numbers look right. Increases speed, which makes shenanigans to defeat him harder. Increases HP and even makes him more viable if he loses his weapons or armor somehow.

[NickChaisson]

Building villains is one of my favorite things to do as a DM. Usually I get inspired by looking through books and bumping into some bizarre item/feat/prestige class and thinking "who would actually use this!?" and going from there.

I prefer to run reoccurring villains. I stat them out like I would a character (I usually don't roll for attributes I just assign what feels right) and I try to give them around the same wealth a character around their level would have, unless they have some background reason for having more/less gold.

I think another great way of building villains is looking at villains from other works of fiction (or real life) and figuring out why they worked as a successful villain, why people latched onto them so much and add similar things to my villains.

Hope that helps ^_^

[Black Jester]

I create a character for the setting, and make sure that he fits well into these surroundings. Any character who is not an organic part of the setting they play in is a blemish, but the more relevant the character might become, the more important is a tight fit and a higher level of interconnection with the plot and the setting. Then, I try to give him or her distinct motivations. For antagonists, these may very well clash with the motivations of the player characters or their allies, but otherwise it is the same for every relevant character (PC and NPC alike). Then I try to visualize the ressources and means that character has or is willing to use to achieve these ends, so what the character is willing to do and what he actually can do. Than, I can extrapolate the stats for the game and introduce the character properly.

[WbtE]

Quite simply, I don't.

When I run a campaign, I create characters to people it with. Some of them get called villains, others get called heroes, but that's not my department.

[Aasimar]

Well, sometimes, when a mommy villain and a daddy villain love each other very much...

[CombatOwl]

I'm a rookie DM who's trying a home brew after I finish up the module we are doing first. I'm curious how you playgrounders make your villains? Do you build them like you would a PC? That seems like it would get labour intensive at higher levels. Any tips or tricks?

Yes, build like a PC. You can feel free to ignore WBL guidelines, however beware what you give them because the PCs are likely to end up with the gear. It is very labor intensive, which is why a lot of people don't like running d20.

[Zavoniki]

Build them like a PC. If it's going to be a major villain I might even build them level by level(or whatever for your system).

For an extreme version you could actually write each level(or group of points) in as part of the backstory. He did this at level X which is why he has Y etc... That is a lot of work however but it makes for a more cohesive villain. Why does he have Fly always memorized? Well he was dropped of a roof as a child and it traumatized him and he would not like that memory repeated. This also explains his villainous goal of taking over creation and unmaking the concept of roofs from reality. He calls himself Roofslayer.

[Abd al-Azrad]

Step One: Ask your players to make new characters. High level, using whatever source materials or nasty tricks they want. No alignment restrictions. Give them a week. Let them share ideas. Ask them to submit to you copies of their character sheets for "inspection."

Step Two: Run a one-session adventure with these characters. Throw them into a meat grinder dungeon, lots of nasty monsters, a few hugely powerful artifacts at the end. Take careful notes about their combat tactics and clever tricks. Ask lots of questions about how they pull off their abilities.

Step Three: At the end of the session, ask your players to make Level One characters for a new game.

Step Four: At the beginning of the next session, introduce the world as follows: "A great evil has darkened the lands of (Gondor, Elfgate, whatever). It is led by the foul villains, (insert the names of the high-level PCs your players built)."

Go to town.

[ScrapperTBP]

I always stat last. It is the last thing I do. The first thing I think of is why is this character even interacting with the PC's in the first place. Do they have something that he/she wants? Is it revenge? Did the villain do something to a relation of a PC.

Once I have that ironed out, I build up the motives of the villain. What they want. What are they trying to achieve by interacting with the PC's or what are the PC's trying to prevent.

Once I have figured that out I can then think about what class this villain is going to be.

Was he the wizard who killed a PC's father in an epic duel? Is she a thief who wants a specific treasure that the PC's just looted? Are they a corrupt ruler who wants to build a theme-park on the PC's village and has to kill them to get them to move?

Possibilities are endless but if I know what I am trying to achieve it lets me write better villains.

[Yora]

The most important thing about a villain are his plans and his motivations. A villain will always be just as cool and memorable as the things he does, so coming up with a creative and interesting goal needs to come before anything else. Then I think about why he does it and want it, because that already determines to a great extend how he will act and behave. Based on that, you can start thinking about an individual background and primary abilities he uses. And last comes deciding on a class, ability scores, special skills, and the like.
What he does in a fight really isn't that important, because likely the PCs will engange him in combat only once or maybe twice. What he orders his minions to do is what defined the bulk of the adventure or the campaign.

[Jay R]

Step one is to have a feel for his character. I often start with a known villain from history, literature, or movies. Then I pick what I think are the important character traits.

Then I deliberately find ways to make him different from the template, often from a different known villain.

Finally, I pick a few lines to keep me focused on his character.

Statting him up is last, and fairly trivial by comparison

Example: My villain is the king's advisor, so let's start with Jafar. He wants power over the king (sultan), uses hypnotism, is way too egotistical, backstabs people who help him, and is looking for an extremely powerful artifact. He transforms into a snake, and uses a snake-head staff to hypnotize.

Now how is he different? Let's use Cardinal Richelieu, also a controlling first minister. But which one? For no particular reason, we will go to the 1948 Richelieu played by Vincent Price. So he actually is loyal to the kingdom (if not to the king), has his own ultra-loyal guards, and has the best spy network in the world. He laughs when he loses and shrugs it off, intending to turn the new circumstance to his own favor.

Now, pick a few quotations to help me focus on the crucial aspects:

Aladdin: What are you doing?
Jafar: Giving you your reward... [pulls out a dagger] ...your eternal reward!

Jafar: You've heard of the golden rule, haven't you? Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

Jafar: The universe is mine to command! To control!

Athos: [to D'Artagnan] My friend, my friend. My young country friend, when will you learn about Paris? By now Richelieu, without the slightest question, knows even the color of your underpants.

Jafar: A snake, am I? Perhaps you'd like to see how sss-snake-like I can beeeeeee!

Richelieu: It takes a good man to prevent a catastrophe, Milady, and a great man to make use of one.

[Kane0]

In certain groups you don't need to make the villains, either the setting or the players do.