Time traveling villain?

[Redhood101]

So I’m running a game that is low key based on the MCU (our villain is basically magical thanos) and our group is about to fight the big bad. But they want to keep playing after that so I need to make a new big bad. Going back to marvel for ideas I started kicking all round the idea of a kang type villain. Any one know how this could be done. Or have any other ideas? For those that don’t know kang is a time traveler that goes back because the avengers ruined his future)

[Unoriginal]

So I’m running a game that is low key based on the MCU (our villain is basically magical thanos) and our group is about to fight the big bad. But they want to keep playing after that so I need to make a new big bad. Going back to marvel for ideas I started kicking all round the idea of a kang type villain. Any one know how this could be done. Or have any other ideas? For those that don’t know kang is a time traveler that goes back because the avengers ruined his future)

You could take inspiration from the Archmage in Gargoyles.

BBEG is defeated, but rescued at the last second by their future self. Future self teach time magic to the BBEG, who then goes on to rescue their past self and teach them time magic, etc.

[Vogie]

I'd use a sort of Doctor Who/River Song interaction between the party and the villain - that is, they're running into each other in the wrong order. After they defeat & kill the oldest version of the villain, they will keep running into younger and younger versions of him (hence getting more & more powerful, as each time the party defeats him they loot his stuff). The oldest version of the villain (which the PCs fight first) is basically only attacking them because they've nothing else to do, and out of frustration, as he has so many defeats against them

[Beechgnome]

Tome of Beasts by Kobold Press has Eonic Drifters, a people from another time who flit about in search of a way home. They can call a future version of themselves to aid them and their future selves can hit PCs and knock themselves and the PCs forward in time d4 rounds.

You could Supe one of them up or take inspiration from that to make a Kang, make him/her a high level wizard/Artificer with cool toys and throw in a few heavy duty constructs as minions: steel predator, cadaver collector, etc. I had sketched out a villain like that for my players. Tome of Beasts had some good clockwork automatons I used along with the Drifters to make up his invasion army.

As for handling time travel, I prefer it when characters inhabit their own bodies should there characters exist in that timeline, if only because it eliminates some paradoxes and allows for PCs to either level up big or level down or do something unusual like occupy an earlier or future person from their bloodline. That lets them switch it up if they want to explore a different class while still connecting to the story of the original PC.

[Particle_Man]

The biggest problem is why doesn’t the villain destroy all possible threats in their infancy.

Maybe there are limits and he can’t change history too much or he isn’t born?

Speaking of Kang, my head canon is that it is Kang, disguised as Reed Richards, that sabotaged Young Victor von Doom’s first attempt to rescue his mother, this driving a wedge between the two and making this era easier to conquer.

Maybe you could try something like that where the pcs remember on original time line where things went right but now things have gone wrong (allies are enemies, some heroes are mere commoners, etc.) and they have to fix things? Or at least try to make certain things happen close to the way they should?

[Unoriginal]

I'd use a sort of Doctor Who/River Song interaction between the party and the villain - that is, they're running into each other in the wrong order. After they defeat & kill the oldest version of the villain, they will keep running into younger and younger versions of him (hence getting more & more powerful, as each time the party defeats him they loot his stuff). The oldest version of the villain (which the PCs fight first) is basically only attacking them because they've nothing else to do, and out of frustration, as he has so many defeats against them

Getting attacked by a crazed old man and then meeting more and more powerful and younger versions of him would be an interesting way of doing the "escalating villain threat".

[PhantomSoul]

The biggest problem is why doesn’t the villain destroy all possible threats in their infancy.

Maybe there are limits and he can’t change history too much or he isn’t born?

Or more broadly not being able to change anything that would mean they don't time travel.

E.g.
- They got time travel through a warlock pact, so they can't go back to prevent that pact
- They started adventuring because their best friend died, which means they can't save their friend unless it also leads to their past self adventuring (and probably alone)
- They can't go back in time and kill what they perceive to be a major villain and thereby remove their motivation to revolt

Thanks to butterfly effects, that gives a good amount of DM wiggle room, and if there's something you don't want them to have done, then it gives you a key to understanding/developing them as a character (ok, they didn't do this... so why not?).

[Unoriginal]

I would advise using a "can only travel to some points in time" than "can't change things if it cause something that would make the time travel impossible", since it's impossible to know the consequences of everything you do. Maybe buying an hotdog to a specific vendor would result in not being able to time travel.

My suggestion: have that the bad guy can only travel to a given numbers of points in the past, kind of like the magic well in Inuyasha that bridge the Sengoku period and the modern days.