Making the Players hate the BBEG

[Death_Lord12]

I want to give my players more of a reason to go after the BBEG than "do this, get money". So what are some ways that I can make the players hate the BBEG so that they really want to go after him and take him down?

[LordOfCain]

I want to give my players more of a reason to go after the BBEG than "do this, get money". So what are some ways that I can make the players hate the BBEG so that they really want to go after him and take him down?
Way with 100% success rate: make him take their treasure

[Calthropstu]

Way with 100% success rate: make him take their treasure

No, have a subbordinate do it so they can get it back.which leads to an escalating series of harrassment from bbeg who wants revenge for losing a valuable henchman.

[Telonius]

It depends on the group, but basically it's all about hurting something that the PCs care about. If it's a bunch of murderhobos, the BBEG can sunder (or Shatter) an expensive piece of their loot. For other people, killing innocents, or helpful NPCs. For others, beating them at something and taunting them about it.

[Afgncaap5]

Also, if your players (or a single player) has a single, always-works trick for ending certain kinds of combat, it might make the players hate the person more for being the one person in the world who's familiar enough with magic/their fighting style/whatever to have an ideal counter for it. Case in point, a lot of my players absolutely love Flaming Sphere, and always have it prepared for its ability to absolutely wreck most low-level underlings. However, when they were fighting a gang of elves, the combination of their knowledge of warfare, wizardry, and forest survivalist techniques meant that they knew very well that the magic rolling ball of fire could be extinguished just as easily as any fire of its size, so while one or two of them just put out the rolling ball of fire the others focused on fighting the players, who were now down a spell slot that they'd expected to keep giving them help for a few more rounds. The players were very, very eager to fight off this invasion of elves after that happened.

I wanted to try this again with a player who kept summoning celestial bison with Summon Monster 3 (He alternated between calling it "Plan B" and "Plan Bison".) Eventually I wanted a villain to use Protection From Good to prevent the bison from being able to touch him, but tragically the player's character died shortly before meeting that villain. Ah, well.

[Waker]

Probably my most hated NPC was a mad scientist type. He loved creating new monsters and siccing them after the party. However the thing that made the party hate him was that he never acknowledged the party. Whenever the party won, he would just shrug his shoulders and go back to building. To him the party weren't foes to be defeated, they were just research subjects.
The point of the story is attack their ego. Many players suffer from a need to have their characters in the spotlight. Have your villain ignore them, smear their reputation, damage their credibility...

[nedz]

Also with 100% success rate: Have him befriend them and then try to kill them.

And also with 100% success rate: Unreliable quest giver whose helpful hints turn out to be lethally unhelpful.

[Deophaun]

100% Success Rate: BBEG was a former DMPC.

[Afgncaap5]

Probably my most hated NPC was a mad scientist type. He loved creating new monsters and siccing them after the party. However the thing that made the party hate him was that he never acknowledged the party. Whenever the party won, he would just shrug his shoulders and go back to building. To him the party weren't foes to be defeated, they were just research subjects.
The point of the story is attack their ego. Many players suffer from a need to have their characters in the spotlight. Have your villain ignore them, smear their reputation, damage their credibility...

There's a great wisdom to this. I had a DM do this for a while and it sort of made the game really, really tedious after yet *another* tier of bosses failed to be interested in me, but I think in general this is a great method.

[Strigon]

On the flipside of ignoring the PCs, there are 2 other ways to make a BBEG hateable. The first is to make him extremely condescending; lecture them about how their tactics are sloppy when they lose, lecture them about how their cause is a foolish one whenever possible... think of Elan's father. Nobody likes to be given an unwelcome lecture - especially if it's deliberately talking down to them.

The other way is to make them incredibly arrogant and smug. Have them laugh at the PCs when they're losing. Let them toy with the PCs in a fight; get creative.
Really, all 3 of the tips are just variations upon making the villain think he's completely superior to them, and making no effort to hide it.

[kellbyb]

I don't have much to add, but I know someone who can help.

Red Fel, Red Fel, Red Fel.

[Squark]

That being said, too much smugness can make a villain just frustrating, especially if you're good about making sure they succeed in spite of/because of the player's actions. One thing that might help is planning one or two moments where something will genuinely get under the Villain's skin, and cause them to lose their cool- Mark Hammil's Joker from the DCAU comes to mind. He could be incredibly smug and calculated (in his own insane way) around people who weren't Batman, but a few people (the Creeper, Charley Collins, and Terry McGinnis) managed to make all that fall apart and this was incredibly satisfying (or terrifying in the last case) to watch.

[Strigon]

That being said, too much smugness can make a villain just frustrating, especially if you're good about making sure they succeed in spite of/because of the player's actions. One thing that might help is planning one or two moments where something will genuinely get under the Villain's skin, and cause them to lose their cool- Mark Hammil's Joker from the DCAU comes to mind. He could be incredibly smug and calculated (in his own insane way) around people who weren't Batman, but a few people (the Creeper, Charley Collins, and Terry McGinnis) managed to make all that fall apart and this was incredibly satisfying (or terrifying in the last case) to watch.

Oh, agreed; there's a fine line between hating the villain and being genuinely irritated. Tread carefully.

[Red Fel]

I don't have much to add, but I know someone who can help.

Red Fel, Red Fel, Red Fel.

Yes... "Help." That is precisely what I do. Let me "help" you.


I want to give my players more of a reason to go after the BBEG than "do this, get money". So what are some ways that I can make the players hate the BBEG so that they really want to go after him and take him down?

On the one hand, you're asking the impossible. This is the same question as "How do I make the PCs care about this NPC?" but in the opposite direction, and there is very little way to predict how the players will react to a given stat-bag. If you know your players well enough to predict their reactions, you really don't need to ask the question, you simply use what always work; if you don't know them well enough, there's really no way to predict what will set them off.

That said, I've seen some good suggestions so far. To wit:


Way with 100% success rate: make him take their treasure


The point of the story is attack their ego. Many players suffer from a need to have their characters in the spotlight. Have your villain ignore them, smear their reputation, damage their credibility...


Also with 100% success rate: Have him befriend them and then try to kill them.

And also with 100% success rate: Unreliable quest giver whose helpful hints turn out to be lethally unhelpful.

These all demonstrate varying degrees of success, and are all illustrations of a much simpler definition:


It depends on the group, but basically it's all about hurting something that the PCs care about.

This. Allow me to give you a perfect illustration:

http://www.indianajones.dk/Webside/Billeder/Indy-side/Hvor%20er%20de%20nu/Belloq.jpg

This is René Emile Belloq. If you remember him, it's as the villain of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first Indiana Jones film. You probably don't remember the names of the other villains in the film (Nameless Nazi and Nameless Nazi with Glasses). You probably don't remember much about the villains of Temple of Doom (Evil Prince, Evil Vizier, and Heart-Rip-Out Guy). You probably don't remember much about the villains of Last Crusade (Nazi Girl and Evil Executive). But you remember Belloq. Why? One line.

"Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away."

That's it. That's why we remember him. That's why we loathed him. He was a smug snake who built his career by subverting Jones' achievements. He didn't achieve on his own; he took from those who had achieved. He was smug and smarmy about it, smirking and arrogant, and worst of all, he kept getting away with it.

That's the essence of villainous hatred. It boils down to three things.
Let him take what they value. Destroy possessions. Kill loved ones. Poison their ideals. Turn friends against them. Make them enemies of the state.
Let him be smug about it. Not constantly lording it over them, but let him reveal that he did it. Let him laugh at the fact that they can do nothing to stop him. Let him get a quip off so that they know the focus of their hatred.
Let him get away with it. At least temporarily. Until the time comes, he finds a way to escape justice. That makes the players want to bring him to justice. Or revenge. Mind you, this doesn't mean giving him plot armor - rather, it means that he's smart enough to only expose himself to the PCs when they have no opportunity to attack - for example, if they've been captured, or in the town square, or anywhere where hostile action is frowned upon.
That's it. Follow those three rules, and you have a strong likelihood of inspiring PC loathing.

[martixy]

Not making a cartoon villain out of him helps a lot, I've found.
As in be legit Machiavellian.
Be like the Queen of Blades when she was cool(in Brood War).

As a workaround, if you have trouble being actual evil, just take things they care about.

[Calthropstu]

I found another way to make players hate villians. Have them escape.

[Hiro Quester]

What Red Fel said. That totally worked in our current adventure.

DM had this recurring villan who took our stuff, knew our characters well enough to thwart some of our best tactics and plans, kidnapped our NPC friend, and arrogantly made sure we knew it was him doing this to us. And got away with it.

Even after we finally defeated him in battle, it wasn't enough. He had a cleric ready to cast true resurrection on him, and then he messaged us to let us know how he had again stolen the McGuffin we thought we had finally won. And rub it in some more.

We totally hated him so much, especially because even when we thought we had a victory, he was still taking what we value, smugly taunting us, and getting away with it.

[Darth Ultron]

I want to give my players more of a reason to go after the BBEG than "do this, get money". So what are some ways that I can make the players hate the BBEG so that they really want to go after him and take him down?

This is really more of a question of ''how can you make the players care about the game''? And that is the real trick: to get the players to care.

And you really need to have the players care about the world more then ''it's my personal murderhoboo sandbox'' . And once they care about the world, they will want to stop bad guys.

Also there is a lot to making it personal, by encouraging the players to have their characters be part of the world. For example, the characters would care about their castle full of loot.

Having the bad guy steal from a character just about always works.

[Kelb_Panthera]

How insufferably smug can you be?

Assuming the PC's aren't going to interact with this character solely through application of pointy bits of metal and fire, there are a number of personality traits you can affect that tend to really get people's dander up; insufferably smug being the most effective IME. You can also hit on entitled (you're going to lose because he's just a better person than you, etc), needlessly cruel (having minions or bystanders killed for very minor annoyances/ failures or just for the fun of it), and little niggling things that you know bug your players (I loathe a punster, for example.)

Others have made suggestions for things to do -to- the players that are also good advice, go with some of that too.

[DeadMech]

I think I agree with a few of the other sentiments. Someone who had been helpful betraying the party is sure to be hated. Especially if they threaten the players sense of entitlement to the nice shiny things they are risking their character's hides for. You don't even have to actually succeed or try to steal their loot. Just threaten it. It can help to if you can built them up a bit without risking the villain. Some communication between underlings and their boss like through letters or magic holograms can let the players get to know the guy without giving them a chance to blow him away with a lucky round or two of combat.

The single most hated character I even faced off against was in a free form chat rp I played in some time ago. While it's not entirely the same I think it highlights a few things that worked entirely too well against me. I'll admit that like many people in their early rp careers I was playing a character who was little more than an idealized version of myself.

So I had been playing for a few months when a newcomer arrived. He was known to a few of the other players from other things and he played... an insane magic jester. He arrived on the scene hunting a lost artifact, murdered several npc's on his way to collecting it, and he did so while my goody goody dude was around to notice it. This results in instant conflict in which he lures me out to a graveyard taunting and cackling the entire time. Now this being another player defeating him wasn't going to happen. I think I had reasonable outwitted him a few times but he wouldn't allow a scratch on him resorting to changing his momentum in mid air or pulling magic chainmail out of nowhere. My character takes a couple hits and he's shaken so he ran away. The next day I log on again and he's already made friends with the other players characters. I went to the authorities, the other players, to make the case against him. When brought out to answer to this he claimed insanity from being separated from his mcguffin and promised that he would never harm anyone again. That didn't stop him from trying to surround me with throwing knives while I was fixing a roof the next day though. And he made sure to make me aware that if I tried to kill him for what he had done I would be no better than he was despite the fact that he was still endangering people regularly. And so forth.

Basically he was the exact opposite of my character in pretty much every fashion, did unspeakable things to npc's whenever he desired without any attempt to find alternative action, was able to gain the trust of anyone influential who otherwise should have been stopping him, continued to antagonize and provoke my character from a position of immunity, tried unsuccessfully to subvert the relationships my character established, languished in cliched edginess, and of course worst of all broke nearly every rule of freeform roleplaying.

Basically the Joker to my Batman. At the time I despised him. The player. He even made a second character months later to try to tempt my character's girlfriend. Over time though I kind of appreciate just how effective he was at being a nemesis. At least in some fashions. He was very good at getting under my skin in particular.

[dascarletm]

I want to give my players more of a reason to go after the BBEG than "do this, get money". So what are some ways that I can make the players hate the BBEG so that they really want to go after him and take him down?

Well for my group, I have a few different voices that will grant an NPC instant adoration, or hatred. My pompous pretentious person or P3 voice and my (for lack of better term) "greasy" voice brings the hatred every time. That's if I'm feeling lazy.

For deeper hatred, I need to look at the player (or character), and see what drives their underlying deep hatred. Treasure or other such things will bring the hate, but to truly scathe the character you need to look deeper. This usually is best if brought about over multiple sessions.