handling BBEG

[lhilas]

I was wondering how do you guys handle BBEG in your campaign? Do you make them super powerful compared to the PC's? Or just surround them with mooks? Are they hyper agrresive towards the players or maybe just caring about their evil plan, only stopping to attack the characters if those get in their way?

I'm asking all those questions , because a lot of the times I like making super duper powerful bosses who the PC's aren't suppose to 1v1 without some serious preparations, but then what usually happens is that they try to fight it 1v1 and die... :/
How do I solve it? I don't want to TPK the party but at the same time want to make really strong and tough to defeat bosses... thanks in advance.

[Inevitability]

As someone who introduced a BBEG early in the story and saw a PC die because of it, I think I have something to contribute to this thread.

I introduced the BBEG by making him threaten to kill everyone in a certain place if it wasn't emptied within a few days. The PC's, being PC's, obviously went there. So far so good, I'd expected that.

I then had NPC's warn them of the BBEG, claiming that he once killed a young adult red dragon by himself. The PC's dismissed this as exaggerated rumors.

When the BBEG showed up, he first attacked another adventuring party that had come, killing one of their members instantaneously. This caused the other party to flee. The players stayed, despite being at an obvious disadvantage (the BBEG could retreat into a sphere of darkness none of them could enter or attack through).

After poking around near the sphere the BBEG pops out and targets one of the PC's with a save-or-die. He saves, I ask him to roll spellcraft, but he fails. Being the only one who saw the attack, the others couldn't roll.

A few rounds later, the BBEG strikes once more, and this time the player fails both of his saves and dies. Only then did the group leave.


So yeah, in my experience people are going to try to kill any villains they meet or die trying. I recommend using either minions instead of the main villain wherever possible.

Whatever you do, try not to have the BBEG kill anyone. If the he is really that powerful, he probably wouldn't pay much attention to the PC's anyway. Remember, nine out of ten villains suffer from chronic arrogance.

[lhilas]

My players tend to disrespect people who they can oneshot, which includes obviously anyone but bosses and some mini bosses.
Therefore if I want to run the story I need to make sure the boss encounters the players and give them a message/ threaten them/ steal something for them/ yada yada yada...
So making the boss disappear and only using him in the end of the campaign is problematic....

[Eldariel]

I usually just make sure the BBEG is secretly weaker than the PCs from the get-go but a competent minionmancer and never fights alone. Thus, if the PCs can ever get to him he's ****ed but he has the defender's advantage and lots of resources/underlings to put between the two of them. And meetings through Project Image/whatever. But in general, if the PCs are worthy of his attention, he must have a reason not to kill them if they aren't dead. I'm not big for coincidences and random events winning the PCs the day: they ought to have the chance to earn it on their own, not win by Deus Ex Machina/Villain Idiocy. Of course, the villain usually has more stuff to worry about than just the PCs, and sometimes he's not least bit interested in them, but if the PCs prove themselves a relevant threat, I have to write him/the world so that he doesn't just Wish them out of existence and Unname them immediately if they prove to be annoying.

@Dire_Stirge: That's one of the things I've found you can clear out pre-game. At least it helps. Sometimes players have a strange expectation that they'd have a reasonable shot at defeating every creature they could potentially encounter, which makes for an awfully strange game world and overall just isn't a sustainable assumption. If you can make it clear that it is completely possible for them to find vastly stronger creatures and that they will most certainly die if they engage a target sufficiently superior to them/fail to avoid/talk one down, my experience is that players are generally more careful picking their fights (of course, savvy parties will not engage even defeatable opponents without a reason). The game has things like Sense Motive rolls and some spell effects to gauge target's power in relation to theirs so it's not like they have no ways to figure out that they're outmatched. And word on the street gets around.

[HammeredWharf]

I'm a fan of secret organizations and conspiracies. Let's say the BBEG is operating in a typical fantasy world and is against typical parties of low-level adventurers. He doesn't want to attract that lvl 20 party from the neighboring city by gating in an Uvuudaum. No, he wants to stay unnoticed. That means using his minions and sub-BBEGs to do his dirty work.

On a related note, it helps if you have smaller villains in a long campaign. They don't always have to be under the main villain's command. They could be members of an organization somewhat related to the main story. They could even be the main villain's competitors, and the party could be hired by the BBEG to destroy them. That's a common trope, but a pretty good one nonetheless.

In a political campaign, the BBEG could not be that evil and just hold problematic ideals, over which a Good-aligned party wouldn't murder him. Or he could be a replaceable leader of a competing organization. Or the PCs could have good reasons not to kill him outright, such as him being an influential noble with lots of allies. In that case, the PCs' goal could be exposing his evil deeds instead of hacking his head off.

Most importantly, I'd avoid using that cliche where the BBEG appears, does [insert evil stuff here], and walks away, possibly leaving some minions behind. Most of the time it sucks story wise, and it sucks even more in D&D, where mechanics are against such scenes.