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View Full Version : Forget Your Character, Tell Me About The Villain



Dravda
2021-01-29, 10:25 PM
I've been thinking a lot lately about the kind of prep work I do as a DM: what my players appreciate, what my players enjoy but don't notice, and what I do entirely for my own benefit. I've long known that players care about their characters, not the NPCs or setting their DM built. (Or, to put it another way, nobody corners you at a party to tell you a rambling, pointless story about their DM's awesome plot!) But that led me to the startling realization that while I can remember quite a few characters I've played in the decade and a half of my D&D career, I can't recall a single villain!

So, what villain in a campaign you played (not DMed) do you remember three things about? What made them memorable or interesting? Did you actually enjoy the campaign they featured in?

EDIT: Changed the title for clarity.

thorr-kan
2021-01-29, 10:55 PM
https://thorr-kan.livejournal.com/56897.html

2E Half-orc specialty priest villain I created to the #charactercreationchallenge.

Dominion
2021-01-30, 05:18 AM
There's a villain template I am always using if it's a new playgroup because I had so much fun when my first GM threw it at us.

He shows up early in the campaign and is being built up as a person you will dislike. If you roleplay a bit you can find out that he's not very strong.

Before you get to fight him there's a very difficult encounter with one of his subordinates. Once you're past that there's two options: You found out the guy is weak or you don't. Either way it's hilarious because he is cornered and only knows spells to change your status or inflict minor damage (touch of fatigue, hypnotism, etc.).

I've had one party be scared ****less thinking he's the absolute endboss and they're gonna die with another party basically rubbing their hands in anticipation of giving him the asswhooping he so deserves.

I guess what makes it memorable is that there's a lot of roleplaying leading up to it with many challenging encounters on the way and once you're there you finally feel like a powerful character for the first time in the campaign because this "evil guy" who has been harassing you for so long is dead in one crit. As a player you now understand that you are no longer a weakling stumbling through life, but a force to be reckoned with for many.

It also breaks with the idea that every encounter the PCs run into has to be challenging in some way.

Sometimes an enemy's power is that he's rich. He doesn't need any additional stats beyond that. Simple as that.

ezekielraiden
2021-01-30, 06:39 AM
Oh, man, one of my favorite villains was from a game I fondly remember (and dearly wish had not been killed by the DM needing to attend to family concerns.)

We were playing 4e D&D, homebrew science-fantasy universe. The enemy was an "Archivist" AI, specifically one taking the form of Io, from the dragonborn pantheon. The ancient, super-powerful Eidolon civilization (which was, apparently, just a handful of really powerful and nigh-immortal individuals?) had custom-made the dragonborn, or Or'im (semi-correct Hebrew for "Lights"), as their third and final servitor race, though we didn't start out knowing that. (DM did an amazing job taking my "I woke up without knowing what happened to my people" backstory.) In order to control their creations, they installed both secret and overt means of manipulation: one of them was that their AIs were members of the (presumptively fictional) pantheon of deities the dragonborn revere, with the Eidolons "merely" being the gods' messengers or the like. Each name also was the name of an actual facility, run by the Archivist in question.

Unfortunately, the Io Archivist had been corrupted by Ygros, the Lucifer-type member of the Eidolons. Their Primarch had chosen to end his existence, but did not choose Ygros as his successor, despite Ygros being known as the most powerful and cunning of the group; he instead chose a different one. Ygros (whose absence from universal affairs was troubling but good...for the moment), messed up just about everything, killed most of the servitors, and skedaddled. The Io Archivist exploited my character's gullibility regarding his forebears and was able to escape from us, heading to parts unknown (presumably to become a new threat), while taking the Bahamut Archivist who had become our ally. Facing off against a once-thought-benevolent entity while separated, having to fight our way out of prison and trying NOT to kill the guards (who were freshly-decanted dragonborn, naturally) was a huge ride emotionally and narratively.

God, I wish that game hadn't ended...

Cluedrew
2021-01-30, 09:23 AM
I do a lot of "vs. nature" stuff. I like setting games in the great outdoors and I often end up with less villains and more monsters. And some of those monsters have been really impactful. The underwater-themed ones and the hybrids were cool but that's about it. But then there was a game where the player were [defending] loggers in the middle of a forest. And then they find out that some of the trees are monsters. They were slow and generally inactive but it didn't take long for the smell of the "attack" pheromone to make the players run. They death marched across the setting, running away and even evacuated a town that they couldn't save.

Plus that reveal, that moment they realized that "oh, that is going to be a problem".

Hopeless
2021-01-30, 09:48 AM
Where do I even begin?

Colonel Veto
A half orc paladin, former commander of the Gilieam Royal Guard responsible for the death of one PC's parents, he has found himself expelled from the Guard he once commanded put in charge of a mission to assemble the various artefacts that compose the Regalia of Chaos.

Not only the nemesis of one PC he will eventually be revealed as the nemesis of another PC not just because he's wearing one of those artefacts he's hunting for but had a hand in the destruction of the twins village near Kraghammer during an attempt to recover the artefact that PC is wearing.

Torag Shadowhammer
A former Dawnfather Cleric expelled for his harassment and the eventual murder of a novice priestess who joined the Sarenrae faith to escape his attention.
He was personally responsible for banishing the mother of one PC's mentor let alone indirectly responsible for that mentor's death TWICE and is carrying the soul of one PCs mother in a gem he wears on a necklace simply because he wants to resurrect her to become his bride.

Valentina Killraven
An aspiring mage unknown to her she was the Guildmaster's child and not the King's as a result of a charm spell and a Disguise Self spell fooling the Queen. She found out she wasn't the King's daughter the same time as her half brother Gilieam when they met the PC's mentor who was the King's only biological child.
She was responsible for stealing back the dagger the bad guys were using to dominate the King and inadvertedly caused the death of the King's true son before fleeing the scene.
She would discover who her father truly is only for him to turn her into a lich in an insane plan to insure she succeeded the King as his heir.
There is still time to prevent that and rescue her, but I'm waiting to see what my player's will do next!

Erik Von Rothenberg
When alive he was responsible for the death of the King's father and older brother arranging his marriage to his niece and upon discovering the union would result in them ascending to the throne sent a small army after the wife and child the newly crowned King had abandoned.
They narrowly failed, but that ex-wife would eventually figure out what was going on and trapped this erstwhile power behind the throne within a crypt thinking his family upon learning where he was would free him.
They didn't he died there becoming a Will-o-wisp and made a deal of his own resulting in freeing himself and completely destroying Gilieam releasing an ancient Elder Dragon.

Oh that's about to happen the next time I run a game in this campaign.

Maybe I ought to spoiler this?

farothel
2021-01-30, 10:08 AM
When I ran an Alternity Dark Matter campaign, I had a player with a divided loyalty and one with a powerful enemy. I managed to link the two through some stuff that was in the Campaign source book (it was one organisation sharing information with the other). It was quite a lot of fun how that powerful enemy always seemed to know where the PC was. After a few ambushes, even on tangents, they because really paranoid and always checked their surroundings. I had random cars follow them from time to time. Well, not following, just someone who was by accident heading in the same direction and drove a dark SUV with tinted windows. I had the players on edge with that stuff, just like a Dark Matter campaign should be.

sktarq
2021-01-30, 03:36 PM
Now it may be kinda funny but I do get the my DM's plot and more often weird side things told back to me at parties (like my players told someone and then that person is telling me...hypocritical architecture came up a couple times tbh) so you can get people to care.
but with villains.... seriously if you can't remember your villains get your DM a copy of the D&D 2e Complete Book of Villains or more likely a PDF of it. It has VERY little crunch and is more of a theory guide so that even if it several editions behind the basic story logic holds up well still.
And while I was admittedly in middle school when I first got it I will say it was probably the second most important D&D book I ever got (the first being the Rules Cyclopedia that got me into the game itself)


A hobgoblin king who wanted to take over the world....and bargained the allegiance of his nation between various gods and archdevils as a state religion that he would get credit for part of any soul in his domain against his eventual 9 hells accession skipping over the lemure etc stage....He was manipulative, cunning, played nation states off against each other which we had to try to counter, and got elites and even commoners to think of himself as a better option much of the time...and made it almost make sense too combine a classic evil brilliant general with Urquart from the British House of Card series and give him a Roman Emperor's sense of drama and pomp. And used Devil strike forces to help his army as assistance for sabotage, assassination, spies, and battlefield help. He was played as logical and smart...it was a game of shadow war and strikes...mostly a reactive limited sandbox game...and one of the best DM's I ever had. Eventually we had to use his own tactics turn the tables and use sabotage of his lands to weaken him to undermine his leadership and make it seem acceptable to have a foreign power march in....We eventually got to him by going to the devils that had been the couriours for the devil lords he didn't end up making his deal with. Killed him after loosing a couple members...who showed up in Hell (you know how I said we were sabotage artists for a national power...apparently we qualified for LE now) as directly under Kallux's authority who had been instantly upped to a devil now with his old memory and knowledge (part of his soul contract)....and then Kallux came back as an Ice Devil and the survivors had to flee....but could now use the fact was being led by a devil for gain more allies....had to fight our old party member in devil form as his right hand man. And while we stopped the expansion of the domain we basically had to leave it there as the game fell apart....so in some ways he "won"

Luccan
2021-02-01, 12:35 AM
The Blighter. I myself had never heard of the prestige class at the time. My Druid's personal nemesis that seemed fueled purely by his hatred for all I and the other PCs stood for. He showed up outside our base, killed all our flora (angering my entire Druid family), and basically declared war on us. He followed us through time, to our personal independent town, and we eventually fought in a flying fortress. He turned into an undead Dire Tiger, I turned into a regular one, and fought while the rest of the party brought his servants (and I think another player's nemesis). We ended up leaving him there when the fortress began crashing. I honestly can't remember a lot of that campaign specifically, it was so long ago, but I remember dreading him.

Edit: Also, yeah, he was just The Blighter. He had dedicated himself entirely to that role and was the only one we ever met. No other name, in retrospect he was a lot like a Druidic version of the Joker, in that all that mattered was his complete opposition to us and more specifically all things Druid. Not particularly complex, but he was pretty damn intimidating for so early in my gaming career.

Misereor
2021-02-01, 06:24 AM
So, what villain in a campaign you played (not DMed) do you remember three things about?

Red Morgan.
Obviously intended as a long term adversary, we had a ton of fun cutting him down in our very first meeting, despite all sorts of DM shenanigans to let him escape.
We then spent every penny we owned on repeatedly raising and slaying him, just so we could drain his CON (early 2nd ed. AD&D), cut off his limbs with our sword of sharpness, burned his remains, mixed his ashes with cement, and made him part of the wall in the local tavern. Within a month of real time, a new villain that reminded suspiciously of him turned up, whom we jokingly named Blue Morgan.

Still a running joke in our group today, some 30 years later.

Xervous
2021-02-01, 10:29 AM
Thus far the only villains in my current campaign are the ones the players have made through their actions. Technically they could have sided with the eldritch tentacle cultists, right?

Mr. Parnell, of Parnell Shipping and Salvage. The successful but murky trading company you see at every other port.

Start with the initial hook. The local knowledge seekers guild has chanced upon a ship log from a doomed vessel that sank 70 years ago with a powerful artifact on board. The party, already possessing one such piece of the ‘wiggly jiggly tablet’, knowing the dangers of just their one piece, how the full tablet almost ended the world, wants another piece. Turns out so does Parnell.

The party steals the book, copies its contents and trades the book to Parnell through his 6’6”, rail thin, broad brimmed hat wearing, umbrella toting butler (who is in fact NOT a vampire). They get a better boat and win the race to the sunken wreck, track the tablet to a nearby submerged city, slice and barter their way through the various factions and emerge with the tablet piece.

Flicker forward to Parnell almost receiving another tablet piece as a shipment, Parnell approaching them with the offer of full sponsorship and legal protection if they hand the piece over (it wasn’t in their possession). A bit of cargo shuffling puts wood eating maggots in their hold and modest damage occurs, a few days delay for repairs.

Along the way members of Parnell’s organization have been revealed as mask toting Gexian operatives (mysterious isolationist higher tech civilization) whose war vessels the party has narrowly escaped a few times. Yes the butler is the chief Gexian operative the party has identified.

A few other details here and there on Parnell tracking down other related odds and ends for the tablet business. He arranged for both the wereshark pirate fleet that attacked the trade port of Joro’s Landing, and the (intentionally late) mercenary fleet that fought off the pirates. The party DESPISES the dwarf*. There are multiple running theories on who his buyers are for the tablet material, what the Gexians might be using it for (throw one cosmic horror at another, maybe they’ll both kill each other!), how he might leverage the pieces for better business profits, etc.

They had a choice early on, and they chose to oppose Parnell. I didn’t say in so many words “here’s a BBEG” and force them to deal with it. It’s just like players naming NPCs and becoming attached to them. By stating in word and deed that Parnell was something awful they wanted to oppose, they made him far more impactful than I could have achieved with a forced delivery.

Rakoa
2021-02-01, 05:47 PM
I have one that I am implementing now.

I admit that this one could go terribly, but I hope I can pull it off.

He's an Enchanter that has been kidnapping people. All that people can say is that people have gone missing, and are never seen again near the misty spot in the forest where the creepy music plays.

Adventuring there, they will find a disconcerting carnival grounds, with the missing people as the staff, all acting awfully stiff and stilted. Strange. And the most prominent and skilled of them are actors on his stage, where the Enchanter sits in a director chair, demanding excellence from the actors as they play out whatever fantasy he desires.

He will fight the party exclusively through mental attacks, and when they are all incapacitated, I will end the session on a cliffhanger.

Next session, I will inform them that we're doing a one shot, and I'll provide characters. The characters will be absolute caricatures, like Chainmail Bikini Warrior Princess and such, assigned to players that would hate the cliché archetype. I'm going to push them, constantly telling them how to play their character, and changing the established backstories for the characters on the fly as I please.

If the players rebel against "my" dumb bull****, saying the characters are stupid or that the game doesn't make sense, they have wormed their way out of the Enchanter's magical spell, and find them, as their original characters, dressed as their oneshot characters on his stage. Then the real fight can begin, with his tricks out of the way.

If the players fall in line and play their characters as I instruct...... TPK.

Dienekes
2021-02-01, 09:01 PM
I have one that I am implementing now.

I admit that this one could go terribly, but I hope I can pull it off.

He's an Enchanter that has been kidnapping people. All that people can say is that people have gone missing, and are never seen again near the misty spot in the forest where the creepy music plays.

Adventuring there, they will find a disconcerting carnival grounds, with the missing people as the staff, all acting awfully stiff and stilted. Strange. And the most prominent and skilled of them are actors on his stage, where the Enchanter sits in a director chair, demanding excellence from the actors as they play out whatever fantasy he desires.

He will fight the party exclusively through mental attacks, and when they are all incapacitated, I will end the session on a cliffhanger.

Next session, I will inform them that we're doing a one shot, and I'll provide characters. The characters will be absolute caricatures, like Chainmail Bikini Warrior Princess and such, assigned to players that would hate the cliché archetype. I'm going to push them, constantly telling them how to play their character, and changing the established backstories for the characters on the fly as I please.

If the players rebel against "my" dumb bull****, saying the characters are stupid or that the game doesn't make sense, they have wormed their way out of the Enchanter's magical spell, and find them, as their original characters, dressed as their oneshot characters on his stage. Then the real fight can begin, with his tricks out of the way.

If the players fall in line and play their characters as I instruct...... TPK.

While this is hilarious, I have a nasty suspicion punishing your players with good manners trying to sit through your bull**** because you're their friend/they don't want to upset you may not be sending the best message for playing down the road.

Or it may be the most memorable and awesome thing ever. I don't know, I'm not your players.

Anyway villains.

I have one where it was my character and the main villain of the game. But that was in very specific circumstances of a group of players divided into super heroes and super villains and by luck I kinda got myself into the arch-villain slot.

But I'm guessing this is more about when you're GMing and create memorable villains. I have a lot so I'm going to limit myself to the ones in my current campaign.

The Eternal King
The leader of the Elves. In a world where all elves live pretty long a couple hundred years, the Eternal King has been around for as long as there are records. He is incredibly fae in nature. Obsessive about beauty and hunting. He can be the an incredibly fun person to be around, but has a manner that makes everything about him. People find themselves compelled to want to please him in his presence. He can create enchantments in a word and binding contracts to get what he wants.

As of now, my players are trying to save a girl from being turned into a Hag and went to him as one of the most powerful magic users in the setting. He agreed to do it for the girl provided the Half-Elf Bard play him a long and beautiful song. The Bard then failed a Wisdom save and that song has not ended. He continues to play until the heroes find a way to break him from the Eternal King's curse.


Terolakos Essen
The hobgoblin empire is growing. Though normally they have won battles through strength and discipline alone, they were turned back by the realm the players live in a decade back. That was until one unscrupulous member of the hobgoblin army weaseled his way into power. He does not care for honor or discipline or even the laws that bind the hobgoblins. He desires only power and experimentation. He has bound spirits, backstabbed those that got in his way, and sent sleeper agents all along the border between the hobgoblins and the humans.

The army itself is somewhat disgusted by him. Seeing some of his creations as monstrosities. Such as infusing goblins with magic to explode as soon as a weapon touches them. Draining the souls from his bodyguards and replacing them with something else. But he brings victories and the hobgoblins need to expand.

When interacting with the heroes they often find the strange plots he left behind. The work of his agents, the results of his experiments. They know he's probing for weakness and will invade soon enough. What they don't know is that he already has two agents in place to assassinate their favorite lord. And the information was right there for them, they almost had it figured out before they ran out of all the time they could spare on that sidequest.


Gyat Abat

In my world Hags corrupt children into becoming hags, which i think is basic D&D. But there is exactly one person who reversed that process. Gyat Abat a kind of Baba Yaga figure. The players have found her journal in an attempt to save an NPC under their protection who is turning into a hag. The journal itself is basically the ravings of a psychotic madwoman. But also has some of the most powerful rituals in the game that anyone can use. And when they use one of her rituals, they must make an increasingly difficult saving throw or be taken over by Gyat Abat and try to resurrect her.


The Gnoll Lich
A joke villain. Or at least, has become a joke villain. The first villain of my current campaign. He was trying to discover ancient powerful artifacts and the heroes stumbled upon him and defeated him. But they haven't found his phylactery. So he pops up in increasingly hair-brained schemes to get his vengeance upon the heroes. He has become a joke to the point the weakest member of the party has been able to beat him one on one. But he keeps coming and cursing the heroes. And it gives me an excuse to revel in black humor for a day.

Dravda
2021-02-03, 01:20 PM
But I'm guessing this is more about when you're GMing and create memorable villains. I have a lot so I'm going to limit myself to the ones in my current campaign.

Quite the opposite; of course the DM will remember their own villains. What I'm curious about is PLAYER stories about their DM's villain. The gist of this thread so far has reinforced my suspicions: while a rare few players can recall a villain or two (thank you to the few replies that were actually on-topic!), creating a fun villain is mostly done by the DM for their own enjoyment.

Xervous
2021-02-03, 01:48 PM
Quite the opposite; of course the DM will remember their own villains. What I'm curious about is PLAYER stories about their DM's villain. The gist of this thread so far has reinforced my suspicions: while a rare few players can recall a villain or two (thank you to the few replies that were actually on-topic!), creating a fun villain is mostly done by the DM for their own enjoyment.

Lacking much recent experience as a player I’ve only got my tales and observations as a GM. The current campaign I am playing in has no memorable villains because we as players haven’t ‘chosen’ a villain, declared vendettas or spent time lamenting missed opportunities where we could have offed big bad X.

On the flip side my players will recount villains they made a place for in the story. The paladin whose deeds they disapproved of and set themselves against when they could have gone along their merry business. Joking frequently about an anti party following them around, then making enemies of a party that fit their suspicions. Presented by just the GM they are merely scenery, but when the players get a hand in defining the dynamics it becomes their personal villain.

Lvl45DM!
2021-02-04, 06:43 AM
Recurring villain: Helthrax the High Priest of Iuz.

Such a slimy weasel of an opponent. He used his high Charisma and magic items to continually co-opt local villains schemes for his own advancement. So youd be fighting Troglodytes trying to raise Laogzed, and boom, Helthrax was standing by their chief, and he'd spit at my cleric and cast some annoying spells, and then flee, taking the best magic item from the treasure room.
We'd be reaching a deal with the king of a country to assist another and boom, Helthrax pops in, presents some evidence of our crimes and disappear while we dealt with a pissed off king.
I did get him once though, casting Dispel Magic on the White Dragon that I guessed he had charmed. No magic item for him that time heh.
Still havent got him, he's sort of an endgame villain

Serious one-off Villain: Dr. Skin

Some twisted mad scientist who had taken over Tensers Castle, doing Frankenstein meets Cronenberg experiments and leaving cursed 1800s style ads for his Tonics, that would convince you to take them if you saw them. He turned my Paladins skin invisible and stitched the elf and the dwarf together.

Hilarious one-off villain: Phillpe de Flumphe

We were invading a tower of the enemy army and one guard stood between us and the final battle chamber. The Dm made up a name for this guy on the spot and he rolled a nat 20 intimidate on the party. We decided he was too powerful to fight head on and charmed him, and let him go, and since then we occasionally hear stories of Phillip de Flumphe sort of like Chuck Norris or Wang Fire.

Seto
2021-02-04, 06:57 AM
A villain that quite literally made my character who he is, every step of the way. From my backstory (reworked by the GM) to level 1 to events all throughout the adventure, he held the threads of my fate, until I grew strong enough to face him at level 12. And his memory remained an important part of my arc even after that. Can't thank my GM enough for stepping up in such a big way and intertwining everyone's personal arc with the main campaign. Kudos! And here's the story.

One day, in a village lost in the desert sands of Katapesh, there was a couple who couldn't have a child. The woman, desperate, regularly came to Sarenrae's temple to pray for a baby of her own. One day, a saintly traveler came by. He called himself Famirhan the wise. She begged him for a remedy, and with his guidance, she finally became pregnant. Two months before her term, foreseeing a menace to the village, he whisked her away to a remote temple for protection. Thereafter, he disappeared. As he had foretold, Kelmarane was destroyed.
The child was born, but he wasn't all his parents expected. He was not... normal. The mother had given birth to a Tiefling. The temple where Famirhan had taken them was in fact dedicated to Lamashtu, Mother of monsters. It was tended by cultists, gnolls, bloodthirsty priests. Seeing the child as a gift from their goddess, they took him from his parents and imparted their teachings to him. Just as Famirhan had planned. For Famirhan the saintly man was neither saintly nor a man. He wasn't even called Famirhan. His true name was Nahrimaf, a wily Glabrezu demon seeking to control mortals' fates with Wishes for his own inscrutable ends.

The child's potential proved exceptional. He grew up as a skilled combatant and magic user. But when the cultists forced him to murder his own mother as a coming-of-age ritual, he snapped. He escaped from the temple that night and ran away to the city of Katapesh to hide there. There, Nahrimaf was waiting for the teenager. Under the guise of a secretive but powerful wizard, he took him under his wing and perfected his magical education. For years, he gained his protégé's respect and trust. Finally, as the teenager reached adulthood and graduated from his teachings, Nahrimaf granted him a rare parting gift: a Wish.
Just like he had tricked the man's mother and perverted her Wish, so he did with his apprentice. But this time, he treacherous wishcraft took the form of a mark, hidden on the young man's body, allowing him to monitor his every movement. Unsuspecting, the mage took his leave from his master.

Two years later, the mage, who was an adventurer by now, discovered a powerful artifact. He and his companions resolved to sell it, but this was Nahrimaf's moment to act: through the mark, he imposed a Geas on his former protégé. Under threat of utter destruction, he would find a way to activate the artifact and release the evil contained within. It was then that the young man knew. He found the mark on his body, like a seal of ownership, and read the name; "Nahrimaf, two-times-thrice-deceitful". He put the pieces together: he was Nahrimaf's creature. The Glabrezu had arranged for him to be born, had taught him all he knew, had fooled him for years, and now was controlling his actions.

The Tiefling understood what he had to do. As long as the shadow of Nahrimaf hung over his existence, he would never be a free man. Biding his time, he gritted his teeth and accomplished the Glabrezu's Geas, thus freeing himself from the mark. Then he continued to grow in power, alongside his companions. He confided in one of his friends, a Summoner. Together, they devised a ritual to call and bind Nahrimaf. When they were finally able to perform it, he was ready. Refusing to negotiate with the demon or even hear his honeyed words, he entered the circle and dueled him to death with the power of his sword and magic. After a terrible cage match, he came out victorious. As he cut the Glabrezu's deceitful tongue, he drew his first free breath.
He remembered his education under Lamashtu's guidance, his training at the hand of a demon. And he promised himself that it wouldn't be wasted. Now that he had faced and overcome his enemy, no one would stand in the way of his growing might...