Your best villains.

[SangoProduction]

Some villains are strong. Others are fast. Yet only a regrettable few are not forgettable. What's the most memorable villain you've had the opportunity to play (with/against/as)?

[Kymro]

My party recently killed one of my favorite little baddies. His name was faush and he was a gnoll ranger that fought with a +1spiked chain and a comp bow. He also rode a worg which made him pretty formidable. (Unfortunately the party managed to kill his worg in its stable before they had to face him)

[chainer1216]

Skath, the wereshark aquatic troll. He fought with an anchor that was shoddily reforged into a gargantuan scythe.

Ill always remember the look of shock and hopelessness on my players faces when i began describing his transformation into hybrid form.

[Parra]

An Angel, Solar specifically. Solars, as the highest form of Angel, either represent a God or are the embodiment of a concept. He was the physical embodiment of the concept of 'The Greater Good'. And as we all know from the trope, The Greater Good usually means doing some pretty evil stuff in the name of The Greater Good.

[Thurbane]

"Vilgax"

Half-Illithid Were Giant Squid War Troll

...qualifies for lycanthropy with the Human Heritage feat. Based (loosely) on a Ben 10 villain.

[SangoProduction]

"Vilgax"

Half-Illithid Were Giant Squid War Troll

...qualifies for lycanthropy with the Human Heritage feat. Based (loosely) on a Ben 10 villain.

I get Half-Illithid. I would even get Were Giant Squid. But why both?

[Xaroth]

I get Half-Illithid. I would even get Were Giant Squid. But why both?

Because Thurbane is a bad, bad person.

I really don't want to assume things but I don't think my players are ever going to forget the BBEG of my campaign, I'm certainly not going to; Schrador, the Undead Dragon God of Necromancy that caused hell itself to find its way to Earth. He's been a constantly recurring character, slew the town wizard - who created the majority of the town as a figment of his imagination - and caused the party to have 24 hours to reconstruct a town, which they succeeded in doing with the help of a nearby city. In addition to that, he wiped the Drow and all sub-species (Driders, Draegloth) from existence, and usurped Lolth's position as a God in doing so. Currently, in order to take down Schrador, the party are assembling a God-killer weapon called "Very carefully" (running joke in my group where whenever someone asks how to kill something extremely powerful I just tell them 'very carefully'. They don't know that's the name of the weapon) which will allow them to nullify all of Schrador's divine ranks long enough for a fight to the death.

They're level 12 at the moment, and I'm thinking they'll probably be level 20 by the time they manage to reach the final piece of the weapon. After that, they're going to attempt a mass banishment to send every devil and demon back to their home plane, or just murder them all, all the way to Asmodeus (I still have no idea how they're gonna do that tbh).

Needless to say I'm one very very excited DM.

[Shadowquad]

My favorite villain was Groovy Gary, a Ghoul Bard/Dirgesinger with a tremendous Disguise score. He spent half the campaign travelling with the PCs and studying them for his master. He befriended them as a sympathetic and innocuous low-level human bard.

They had quite a shock when he casually cast a 20th CL dimensional anchor from a scroll they found, even more so when they realized it was him who planted obvious plot hooks for them to find since the beginning.

Good times...

[TheBrassDuke]

http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87/CainePorter/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_2209_zpszxnszh27.jpg

My favorite villain is one of my most recent ones, and boy was she fierce!!!

Her name is Eleisa Marche, a Human Cleric 3/Church Inquisitor 3/Shadow Adept 1/Shadowcraft Mage 3, and she served the dark goddess Midnight. Her final showdown took place at the temple of her old faith, and it was glorious.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?504030-Cleric-Shadowcraft-Mage
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?504871-Dark-Priestess-Encounter
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?505841-The-Dark-Priestess-Ascending-Session-Logs

[daremetoidareyo]

A trio of rangers/ barbarians/fighters with exotic weapon proficiency. One with net, one with gnome disarming sword/cloak, the last with bolas. These rangers basically tail adventurers and pounce on them after they come out of dungeons carrying off as much loot as they can disarm or steal from the entangledand tripped pc's before retreating on round 3.

Players hated them. The third encounter saw them get wiped. Druid sentt companion out to hunt them down on the way out of a temple. I was sad to see them go.

[Thurbane]

I get Half-Illithid. I would even get Were Giant Squid. But why both?

I'm not super familiar with the character, but in one of the cartoons, when he is fully submerged in water he reveals his "true form" which a large squid- or octopus-like creature.

http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/11300000/Vilgax-True-Form-ben-10-alien-force-11356649-500-282.jpg

Alternatively, dump the lycanthropy altogether and go into Illithid Body Tamer.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by TheBrassDuke
Her name is Eleisa Marche, a Human Cleric 3/Church Inquisitor 3/Shadow Adept 1/Shadowcraft Mage 3, and she served the dark goddess Midnight. Her final showdown took place at the temple of her old faith, and it was glorious.

Ahh, I remember Eleisa, and I’d been looking forward to learning how that went down.

I see you have the session notes leading up to Eleisa’s big reveal, but do you have a writeup of the rest of the session, when presumably the other party members leaped into the fray? Because I would dearly love to know what happened next.

[Jack_McSnatch]

Sebastian, a werewolf lord in a modernish setting. He was a sophisticated, well spoken, and charming southern gentleman who followed the ten commandments and practiced medicine. What made him a villain you ask? Why, nothing, aside from wanting to turn the entire popularion of new york city into werewolves. He also had this annoying tendency to narrowly escape death at the hands of the party.

He turned one of the party into a werewolf, and treated the character as his own child, despite the player constantly fighting him. He also vehemently hated the vatican, and was more than willing to call them out on their hypocrisy, which made him a staunch enemy of another party member, a catholic templar. It lead to some fun moral debates.

At times he was an ally, other times an enemy, but by the end of the game, all the players had grown fond of him in one form or another, which is why I felt compelled to give him a sad ending. Having been captured and experimented on by the real big bads of the story, he ended up becoming little more than a feral monster. By the time the players got to him, he was little more than a shell of his former self. When they won, all the players actually insisted on holding a funeral for him.

All in all it was kinda bittersweet, because I'm fairly sure I'll never make another villain that has that kind of impact on my players.

[EvulOne]

My best villain was actually a minor villain from an old low level module who 'got away' after an initial fight with the party. I decided to make him a returning villain who's grown in magical power. The final time they met him was awesome. Every thing the players did, fell right into his plan and they kept unwittingly helping him. Thanks to their attempts to stopping him, he kidnapped a princess, forced a marriage, killed the king, they players kidnapped her from him and he then became the solo ruler of the country. They had to go full on attack on him and snuck into the castle and he fought the whole party of four. When it was all over with, he was finally dead as were three of the four party members and the last one was literally stuck in a wall of force bubbled around him. He had to wait until it faded away before the arriving guards arrested him. It took a lot of investigation by the inquisitors to get to the real truth and absolve the players of their 'crimes' so they could return the Princess to her kingdom. He was so aggravating for them to battle.

[Particle_Man]

Baron Roderick from a King Arthur campaign. Just an ordinary scheming noble but he was good at the scheming and the party HATED him. To the point that when the campaign ended and they beat the BBEG they insisted on continuing to play just so they could go BACK to this guy and end him (and they failed!)

[TheBrassDuke]

Ahh, I remember Eleisa, and I’d been looking forward to learning how that went down.

I see you have the session notes leading up to Eleisa’s big reveal, but do you have a writeup of the rest of the session, when presumably the other party members leaped into the fray? Because I would dearly love to know what happened next.

I got pretty busy after that point and kind of forgot to put up the writeup. I still have it somewhere, and I'll post it soon! :D

[Palanan]

Okay, thanks. Please let me know when it’s up—I’m psyched to find out what happens to Eleisa.

The rest of the party...eh, I don’t know them, but I feel invested in her. :smalltongue:

[TheBrassDuke]

Haha, it was a lot of fun!!!

[Particle_Man]

I guess the published archetype of this would be Bargle. ;)

[Dekion]

Rhenick, a foppish swashbuckler who serves as the principle agent of one of the campaign's BBEGs. I know he was based on Archibald Cunningham from the movie Rob Roy, but tends to be much more despicable and vile. He always manages to leave our party in situations where we can't deal with him, because if we do something bad will happen that we just can't allow, so he keeps coming back. I can't even go into detail about some of the things he has done to make him so hated, as they are numerous and involved, and you would have to understand the context of the situations and included characters to truly get it. But, he's not template stacked, or extremely powerful, he just gets under our skin, while simultaneously making it crawl, and we want him to die so badly.

[Vhaidara]

Asymlori the Reasonable. An ancient lich who some scholars theorize has gone quite insane, Asymlori the Reasonable has a burning hatred for all of gnome-kind. He has made it his mission to put all the gnomes of the multiverse in their proper place: on his lawn, as statues. Experts in ecology dubbed his behavior "reasonable"

The party met him, declared his goal an admirable one, and left.

[MintyThe1st]

Cain Dragmire, i role-played him as an homage to Ganondorf.

his actions killed 2 fellow party members, and almost destroyed an entire nation. Went down in the history of my play group as the greatest PC supervillan they've ever had the misfortune to be indebted to.

LE warlock, worshiper of Mephistopheles.

good (Bad?) times :P

[the_david]

Asymlori the Reasonable. An ancient lich who some scholars theorize has gone quite insane, Asymlori the Reasonable has a burning hatred for all of gnome-kind. He has made it his mission to put all the gnomes of the multiverse in their proper place: on his lawn, as statues. Experts in ecology dubbed his behavior "reasonable"

The party met him, declared his goal an admirable one, and left.

Oh, that's reasonable.

Incidently, now I want to play a member of the Gnome Liberation Front in one of your games...

[Gilda]

I have this NPC named Hektor Kul, a nobly born priest of Zeus from Troy. He fell in love with this witch named Elyna, who was actually a hench-woman of Immortal Koschei, a (possibly the original) lich who claims to be a peer of the immortal gods and preaches that people can circumvent the mortality the gods impose on them. On their wedding day, she gave him a skull-shaped magic helmet as her dowry... turning him Chaotic Evil.
The PCs knew none of this when they caught up with the couple in the Pripet Marshes to rescue the baby princess of Troy they'd kidnapped/adopted. Nor did they know that Hektor was 4,800 XP into Level 12 and had spent it crafting his phylactery. So after knocking him down to negative HP and letting him bleed out while they decapitate Elyna and Fireball her body (she was supposed to come back as a vampire), Anatolius the Cleric decides to cast Speak With Dead. The characters don't know what liches are, so they don't ask any relevant questions, and the next day (lucky dice roll), they have a knock-down, drag-out fight with him in a corridor of Koschei's castle that starts with him casting Blade Barrier down the hall... and they have no idea IC or OOC that this is Hektor. A few rooms after killing him for the second time, they flee in terror after one round of fighting Koschei himself.
So some weeks later they return to Troy and find that he's already there, riding a Displacer Beast and blaspheming Apollo (Anatolius's deity, who's letting him raise the dead and Anatolius is being very quiet about this as the high priests of the Olympians only have access to 4th level spells). When they catch up with him Water Walking over the Dardanelles, they manage to drop him with a combination of spells and arrows from a ferry and a flying Barbarian. Anatolius decides to have his soggy corpse dragged up so he can cast Speak With Dead again, and the lich just gives him a lecture about how Apollo is not good and coming back from the dead should be spread more widely.

That was about three weeks ago IC. He's regenerated from his phylactery in Troy and is stirring up trouble for the PCs with the cult of Gaia (which hates Apollo because he killed her pet/oracle guard Python near the beginning of the campaign). I expect this villain to be around for a looong time, as first, the PCs have no IC knowledge of what a phylactery is and second, he made it something that they can't ethically destroy.

[Gruftzwerg]

I worked on a villain concept a while ago but haven't used it yet, cause I am not DMing atm (playing in 3 campaigns with friends and waiting for my turn to DM^^).

Warlock 12 / Blood Magus 4 / Effigy Master 1 / X

Warlock 12 gives access to Imbue Item, which means we boost UMD to the max.
Blood Magus gives 2 special forms of craft feats. The warlock can now scribe Spells on his skin and brew potions in his own Blood. Take Craft Contingent Spell and you are ready to annoy your player over the course of an entire campaign.

Raise Dead from warlock & your Effigies will make up your lil dirty army.
With access to all spells your villain starts to exploit his NPC WBL (hey your player are doing it too, right?^^). Than craft Contingent Spells for any Situation your players may come up with and if he reached his max amount of Contingent Spells, he start to craft em upon his minions.

This should give you (as DM) enough room to stretch the adventure/campaign as long as needed.

And the greatest feature of this villain is: he leaves nothing (*magic stuff*) to loot (besides of the junk from the remaining of the Effigies what should be worthless). All his WBL is spend into no-real-loot stuff. All the power he wields isn't lootable and thus no balance issue in the hands of your groups caster later. There ain't many caster/magic encounters that can say the same.

[Geomancer8]

We have a nautical-pirate campaign now, where the season finale (so to speak) BBEG is the spoiled son of a pirate lord. Homeboy went full GoT on us, and I have never seen a group of people be so moved by a fictional enemy.

He terrorized us and left us powerless without being abusive. Our campaign NPC friends died to his hands and we are at the mercy of his tyranny. Each of us has a personal plan on how to kill him, and is excited to execute it. Tbh, it is so refreshing to wait and hope for this epic win.