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View Full Version : DM Help Help me put the finishing touches on a villain



Gluteus_Maximus
2018-01-10, 01:53 PM
In my 5e campaigns, I love to have the party encounter the main endgame villain early on, either unknowingly to the party or clearly and in their face about it.

In my current campaign I'm setting up for, I was flipping through the Monster Manual looking for a suitable final boss. And then I found it: the Rakshasa. I had never used it before, and I certainly enjoy the hit-and-run tactics it uses to annoy its prey (the party).

So anyway, after thinking about it, his original goal is to acquire an item I made based on one of the new XGtE spells, the 9th level Invulnerability, which makes the target immune to all damage until concentration is broken, or for 10 whole minutes. The reason for this is that the Rakshasa fears his innate vulnerability to magical piercing weapons so much that he wants to cover all damage he could ever take. After getting the item, he finds that he cannot use it to it's full potential due to not being able to cast the powerful spell that the item holds, so he seeks out a mage to learn the basics of the arcane before killing his master.

The problem I have, however, is that I don't know what his end goals after he gets the item would be. Help? Nothing about his character, besides that he hates magical piercing weapons, has been fully decided yet.

Another problem I have, tangentially, is that this character is more suitable for a novel or a TV show, since I can't just pan over to the villain to see what's up with them.

Dr paradox
2018-01-10, 09:23 PM
Hmm.

Couple of points - Rakshasa traditionally seek out political power, either to elevate themselves to positions of power or to tear down good aligned power structures from within.

Secondly, if Rakshasa are killed, they are banished back to the hell from whence they came to suffer a period of torment until its body reforms someplace on the material plane months or years or longer later. When they eventually claw their way back out of the underworld, Hellraiser style, they retain all memories of their previous lives.

This suggests something to me, at least. This Rakshasa was banished to Hell sometime ago, perhaps by a magical piercing weapon. An artifact, I'd be inclined to say for the purposes of a campaign. It's fear of this weapon, and probably the family or organization that it's associated with, that has driven the Rakshasa to go to such lengths to protect itself. Perhaps this artifact was once carried by an order of Paladins who protected... something or other important. Maybe they were the royal guard to the throne of a powerful kingdom, and the particular ability of the weapon banished the Rakshasa for a full hundred years or more. In the meantime, the order has dissolved, or fallen out of favor, and the weapon with them. Now the Rakshasa is back to complete its plans.

What plans? You could go OOTS and have the paladins have been like the Sapphire Guard, specifically there to protect a cosmic wormhole or whatsit, or else it could be as simple as the Rakshasa's desire to tear down a civilization that has extolled good and law for nigh on a millenia. If it were me, I'd go with that latter one, but have it become clear that time has already mostly done what the Rakshasa could not - a once proud empire has become corrupt and decadent, faltering at the borders and oppressive towards its people in the name of preserving a legacy that is already dead. I'd have the Rakshasa realize this slowly as well, and eventually decide that the better thing to do would be to turn to darker impulses of the nation against itself, and push it those last couple of steps into a full on Evil Empire.

The players, meanwhile, must foster and lead a revolution of their own to tear down the idolized system and use what's left to erect something better in its place.

That's where I would take it. That might be too ambitious, though.

Demica Fatali
2018-01-14, 08:23 PM
The Rakshasa could also have sworn a blood hunt on the family of the one who killed him and made him suffer so much torment. That would give the players someone to save and the Rakshasa an agenda for different plots/quests.

Gluteus_Maximus
2018-01-14, 08:29 PM
It turns out a player put in their backstory that a local newly raised to nobility noble was focused on killing the local fanatics of a certain good-aligned faith and was utilizing a (possibly dominated) mercenary band to do so.