Coolest BBEGs you've ever made/fought/etc. in a game?

[danielxcutter]

Preferably, at least go into some depth about what they could do, and what they actually DID do, please. I'm sure you guys have got quite a few...

Oh, "coolest" includes both fluff and crunch.

[the_david]

Phil the contract devil, and Byron the ranger.

I never intended this to be more than a single adventure for 2 players, but my players kept pestering me for more so I added one and a half adventure before realizing that I had no idea where I was going with this. I did get the most shock value out of a single villain, even though I think what I came up with wasn't that original.

One of the players was playing a tiefling rogue, the other one was playing an aasimar ninja. Somewhere halfway through the first adventure I got the request for a dream session from the player of the tiefling that would reveal something about her background. So in a dream she met this contract devil who showed her a woman that made a deal with the devil, 9 months later the little tiefling was born. The woman had an argument with her husband and then her husband took the baby and dropped her off at the nearest temple. It was then that the tiefljng recognized her father. It was Byron, a ranger who wanted revenge on the tiefling for killing his wife in a fire. Oh yes, she killed her own mother. Byron and his dead wife were part of the background that the player provided me, but the twist was all mine.

Ofcourse it doesn't stop there. The contract devil then took her to hell, where she could see her mother, well... burn in hell. She asked if there was anything she could do to save her. (This was a neutral evil character.) The contract devil explained that normally one could trade a soul for a soul, but as her soul was impure she couldn't trade her own soul. He said that he could arrange something for her, if she'd agreed to accomplish 3 tasks for the contract devil her mom would go to heaven. (A contract devil normally offers 3 wishes for 1 soul, it seemed like a good deal.) Mom disappeared and the Tiefling wanted to check up on her to see if the contract devil kept his end of the bargain. Ofcourse the tiefling rogue had no means to do so, and so she offered her soul so she could travel to heaven to talk with her mom. In one session the tiefling had made 2 deals with a devil.

The next adventure was a heist in which the 2 planetouched tried to recover a mcGuffin for the contract devil. The aasimar had no idea who they were working for until the contract devil showed up to claim the mcGuffin. The aasimar took the mcGuffin from the tiefling and activated it with a Use Magic Device roll. I had no idea what to do as the adventure didn't say what the mcGuffin could do so they ended up planeshifting to an unknown plane right in front of a gate that said: "Welcome to Barovia."

That's about the end of the story. I had a case of DM burnout at this point and I knew it wasn't a good idea to let the 2 explore Ravenloft together.

The guy who played the Aasimar is now running solo sessions for the player of the tiefling as a secondary story to his Way of the Wicked campaign. He did retcon a lot of the story, but Phil the contract devil was the biggest bastard I've ever used. The players loved to hate him.

[Calthropstu]

Ah, my best villian eh?

Flu# wise he was extremely generic. He was a mid level boss who was running a sub plot. He basically had killed some people and raised them as zombies and set them loose on a town. He had been hired to do so by a criminal group looking to distract from their heist.

The pcs had tracked him down to his lair and decided this guy would be no match for them. They had lots of spells, lots of mee capabilities and lots of stealth.

So they slaighter his guards and minions easily and get to the final room.

The room is a large tower made into a singular room.

Crisscrossing the whole room is a series of wires with bells attached around the whole place

The mage was hidden behind an illusionary wall. Between his hiding place and the pcs was a globe of silence. The mage used mage hand to trigger the bells. The mage expended 70% or so of the party resources just with mage hand.

[danielxcutter]

Ah, my best villian eh?

Flu# wise he was extremely generic. He was a mid level boss who was running a sub plot. He basically had killed some people and raised them as zombies and set them loose on a town. He had been hired to do so by a criminal group looking to distract from their heist.

The pcs had tracked him down to his lair and decided this guy would be no match for them. They had lots of spells, lots of mee capabilities and lots of stealth.

So they slaighter his guards and minions easily and get to the final room.

The room is a large tower made into a singular room.

Crisscrossing the whole room is a series of wires with bells attached around the whole place

The mage was hidden behind an illusionary wall. Between his hiding place and the pcs was a globe of silence. The mage used mage hand to trigger the bells. The mage expended 70% or so of the party resources just with mage hand.

Wait, so the party spent all of those spells for nothing because they thought he was bumping into the bells, but he wasn't? That's hilarious! :smallbiggrin:

[Ruethgar]

Jivens Ulshar was originally a character of mine, but I made him more and more crazy. He was a magic skull focused on mind magic. One of the things he would do was leave the party behind just before they reached town and fly in on his slightly larger than normal raven familiar who would then hold Jivens in a talon as the raven said poems about happy bunnies in the field... speaking abyssal. He would also seek out priests of pelor and stealthily cast Miser's Envy on them when they were taking collections. After his initial game ran it's course he become more and more malicious in his pranks, eventually escalating to mindraping people to think they were him. He eventually became an artifact god of mischief and entered a few parties as one item or another. Sometimes a belt, sometime the head of a staff.

He never did anything too deraily from within the party, except that one sorcerer who took the voices in his head a bit too far, but a couple times he was the BBEG using his extensive mental manipulation powers to orchestrate major plot lines of insane cultists or undead armies. He had a tendency to use others instead of doing things himself and used both magic and skills(bluff/hypnosis/diplomacy) to drive people more and more crazy and erratic. His plans varied greatly in scope and planning. Sometimes it would be these intricate weaves of plans causing wars, sometimes it would just be making a village think they were chickens.

He was certainly the most entertaining villain I've ever done.

Edit: As far as coolest crunch-wise was Victor Dalen, another character I wrote to be a lesser sort of vampire and blood mage. He eventually came out of villainy when he got control of his magic, but I was really proud of the 3.P mechanics I managed to smash together to mimic the bloodlust and lack of control. He became progressively weaker the longer he didn't feed eventually going into a blood rage but he was also addicted to his blood magic and would become progressively weaker if he didn't cast. But if he did cast he had a good chance of going into a different type of blood rage. So yeah, lose, lose, lose situation like a vampire should feel despite his significant power.

[Seneschul]

I currently have a purple ooze BBEG in my game. The players have slowly learned of it's existence through character death and sundry.
OOC, they believe it's based on The Creep, from Starcraft.

I've had great fun, insinuating it in their backstories, the druids are setting up to make this continent the last stand as the material plane has been getting taken over, continent by continent.

They'eve even lost characters wholecloth, due to double 1s on a percentile teleport. (those characters will be making a return ^_^ only purple) and being absorbed into the purple stuff.

What my players don't realize is that this BBEG is a combo of The Creep from Starcraft and the Smooze from MLP (My Little Ponies:The movie 1986).

If they fail to save the world?
I'll be emailing them the PDF link for "Courage is Magic 2.2" and telling them to draw up characters.

*cackles*

[BWR]

There haven't really been any long-term BBEG's in my campaign. Unless you count the Immortal Alphaks. The PCs have meddled in his plans a few times over the years which put them on his "Annoying, need to be taken care of when I have the time" list. Any real confrontation with him would only occur if/when the PCs become Immortal themselves. Apart from that, there have been none that have been a focus and danger outside the scope of one adventure or a short period.

There have been a few powerful opponents, however.