Tips for making non-spellcasting villains

[Cosmar]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to get suggestions for how to make non-spellcasting villains interesting and challenging. It just seems like every villain tends to be a top-tier full caster, which makes sense given the huge range of things they can do, from using magic to spy on the party, summon defenses, disable/blast the party, escape, etc. But what about non-spellcasting villains, like rogues/assassins or melee types?

Especially when the party contains 1 or 2 full casters, non-spellcasting villains often tend to fall flat in my experience.

Ideas about races, builds, feats, skills, equipment, henchmen, lairs, etc. are all welcome.

I mostly play D&D 3.5, so stuff available/applicable to that edition is most welcome, but the same problem exists across editions IMO so even just generalities that can apply to the others are welcome too.

[pabelfly]

I ran a largely nonmagical dragon for a high-level one-shot recently which worked really well. Only one spell (I used Quickened Scintillating Scales spell to greatly boost my touch AC), the main abilities I used were a big attack routine with feats like Multiattack, Rapidstrike, Improved Rapidstrike, Improved Natural Attack, etc. Combined with bonus damage from strength, I was doing considerable damage and had a formiddable opponent for the players.

If you need a humanoid involved in this, you can make the dragon the character's mount, maybe give them a bow and assorted feats to make bows do decent damage.

[Doctor Despair]

A lot of what makes a villain villainous is what he does outside of combat. He doesn't need to be a spellcaster to manipulate people or commit great atrocities against people near and dear to the party. The encounter difficulty can be ramped up by adding bodyguards/minions/monsters to the actual BBEG fight. Heck, he or she can even employ spellcasters to do the magic part for them.

However, I had a lot of satisfaction with a recent mini-BBEG in a campaign recently. It was a changeling with racial emulation dipping human and half-elf paragon for bonus feats, using Quori Dread and Imperious Command for move-action check-or-cower. Since it's not a save, a nat 20 doesn't confer success, and we can pump his intimidate check absurdly high so that it basically obviates the need for it. Toss on Quick Change and Abominable Form for an AOE save-or-shaken that can escalate. Combat can basically go:

1. Move action Never Outnumbered intimidate (basically automatically cowering for 1 round, then shaken for 1 round), move-action reveal his true form (save-or-shaken for con-mod rounds)
2. Everyone's cower has just worn off; now they're shaken from Imperious Command and shaken from Abominable Form, so they're all frightened. Anyone who failed the AF check scatter, breaking up the party formation. Either way, we can either standard-action attack or move-action minor change shape back into kalashtar to continue using quori dread.

This obviously works best in the actual encounter with minions to take advantage of the debuff, but you can counteract this by putting traps in the room ahead of time that a frightened creature might flee through and trigger. Against a smaller party, being able to disable one party member and debuff another consistently makes it a spooky statblock as well. However, you asked about a villain, not just an encounter.

The ability to take on disguises with minor change shape and use quori dread from 120 feet allows for some serious dread-building where the party feels like they're being hunted -- particularly in an urban environment where the party has no good means to find him.

[Coeruleum]

I think you need magic to be functional in D&D, but you don't have to be the old wizard in the wizard tower. Make a psion, binder, totemist, incarnate, initiator, whatever. Honestly, old wizards in the wizard tower and clerics are probably so widely-used because people get annoyed at school (wizard = teacher/professor) or church/religious services (cleric = pastor/priest or another religion's preacher like rabbi or sheikh.) The less-common sorcerer enemy is like fighting the trust fund kid with their magical bloodline. On the other hand I don't see very many druid enemies because most people like nature and don't want to fight a nature guardian, and the same seems to be true for all the other non-wizard, non-sorcerer, and non-cleric classes. No one wants to fight a psion or a swordsage as a BBEG because people like psychology and martial arts. If you are fighting a druid, psion, or swordsage you're probably just in a campaign about nature, science fantasy, or martial arts in general and you probably have at least half your party members who can talk to animals, use psionics, or initiate.

[Crake]

I think you need magic to be functional in D&D, but you don't have to be the old wizard in the wizard tower. Make a psion, binder, totemist, incarnate, initiator, whatever. Honestly, old wizards in the wizard tower and clerics are probably so widely-used because people get annoyed at school (wizard = teacher/professor) or church/religious services (cleric = pastor/priest or another religion's preacher like rabbi or sheikh.) The less-common sorcerer enemy is like fighting the trust fund kid with their magical bloodline. On the other hand I don't see very many druid enemies because most people like nature and don't want to fight a nature guardian, and the same seems to be true for all the other non-wizard, non-sorcerer, and non-cleric classes. No one wants to fight a psion or a swordsage as a BBEG because people like psychology and martial arts. If you are fighting a druid, psion, or swordsage you're probably just in a campaign about nature, science fantasy, or martial arts in general and you probably have at least half your party members who can talk to animals, use psionics, or initiate.

I think if your feelings about fighting an enemy are based around their class, and not their ideals, then that might be a storytelling issue. Whether the enemy is a swordsage, cleric, wizard, psion, or druid, none of that should matter. In fact, the players shouldn’t even really know what class they are until well into the campaign, where they’ve been opposed to the bbeg on an ideological level

[Gruftzwerg]

The recent Iron Chef competition entries made me aware of the Soul Eater prc. It can build up an near infinite wright army given the time and opportunities. And those wrights keep their classes (and possible spells casting abilities). But the main villain doesn't need to have any spellcasting at all.
Does this help maybe?

[Crake]

The recent Iron Chef competition entries made me aware of the Soul Eater prc. It can build up an near infinite wright army given the time and opportunities. And those wrights keep their classes (and possible spells casting abilities). But the main villain doesn't need to have any spellcasting at all.
Does this help maybe?

Wight*. Someone’s been using a certain third party website with a typo :P

Also, wights dont keep class levels by default, and nothing in the soul eater prc says they keep them, so no, you cant make spellcaster wights as a soul eater.

[Telonius]

I come down kind of in the middle. Making a memorable villain means much more than having an impressive statblock. (Have a look at the superpowers of Lex Luthor or the Joker for reference). But you also have to be able to pose a credible threat when the fight happens. A well-optimized party (particularly with a full caster in it) just has too many ways of saying "no" to "poke it with a pointy stick." Caster supremacy is one of the big tensions of 3.5, so it's something that every DM ought to at least look at and consider.

So how do you deal with it? Standard advice is to use multiple enemies in the boss fight. Don't have just your bad guy, have his minion cleric and wizard and assorted monster flunkies. Use terrain to your advantage. Not just cover, but make the players fight the battleground, not just the enemies on it. An exploding volcano with lava geysers; planar junction that causes dead magic areas; flooding chambers; anything that would make the fight both cinematic and hard to maneuver. It is more work for the DM, and there is no getting around that.

If you do have to have a single main bad guy, build up to it, and think outside the box a bit. You need a lot of ways to say "no" to the usual tracking methods. Things like the Darkstalker feat or (if you're dealing with a more optimized party) Vecna-Blooded can help with keeping out of the party's scrying. For an example of what a melee-focused BBEG is capable of: shameless self-plug, but I made this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=19662145&postcount=66) Villainous Competition entry a few years back. It took first that round. Not strictly mundane (it did have 5 levels of Totemist); but it's definitely not a full caster.

[Gruftzwerg]

Wight*. Someone’s been using a certain third party website with a typo :P

Also, wights dont keep class levels by default, and nothing in the soul eater prc says they keep them, so no, you cant make spellcaster wights as a soul eater.

No, the 3rd party site has it correct. This was just me in the morning typing to fast and half asleep...^^

[Anthrowhale]

You could make an interesting BBEG by having them pay for PAO[Formian Queen] and then using Assume Supernatural Ability[Telepathy], Mindsight, and diplomacy to create a fair approximation of omniscience with masterful manipulation in a 50 mile radius. The underlying creature could be anything large size with an Int of 20.

[Gruftzwerg]

Also, wights dont keep class levels by default, and nothing in the soul eater prc says they keep them, so no, you cant make spellcaster wights as a soul eater.

Dunno about that. According to the Iron Chef entry they have "Advancement: Same as base creature". It doesn't seem to drop the class levels at all like "some" undead templates do.

[Crake]

Dunno about that. According to the Iron Chef entry they have "Advancement: Same as base creature". It doesn't seem to drop the class levels at all like "some" undead templates do.

Wights arent a template, theyre a standalone creature on the srd: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wight.htm

[PoeticallyPsyco]

The easiest villain thing to do without magic is "impact the plot", since that can be done with things like intrigue, armies, smaller teams, artifacts... basically whatever you can imagine. Sure the villain could be about to lay waste to the nation with a cataclysmic spell, but they could also just be planting explosives on a critical dam. The heroes still have to stop them, magic or no magic.

You also usually want the villain to be memorable once the players actually encounter them (ideally in addition to any build-up you've already done before they meet the PCs). That will typically require at least one of: thematics, survivability, or a gimmick.

Thematics is the general idea and theme of the villain, but also how they're presented. Base your villain off a character your players know from other media, make them a dark reflection of one of the PCs opposing them (ideally also tie them into that PC's backstory for this one), give them a great or terrible sense of humor; these are all not directly mechanical things that can nonetheless help you design a villain, and make them stick out in the players' minds. As mentioned, this has nothing to do with whether or not they use magic, but if your villain is lacking in the other two categories because they're missing magic you can patch that up a bit with good thematics.

Survivability. If your villain can encounter the heroes multiple times, that's great for making sure the PCs remember them. That means they need ways to escape the PCs (or ways to force the PCs to flee from them, which is much harder). Spellcasters of course have teleportation, but Warlocks/Totemists/Binders have short range teleportation and invisibility, lots of classes and monsters have rare or even unique movement and stealth options (or crowd control in a couple of cases), and any of these options pair nicely with a simple really fast movement speed. Extra HP is also a good idea if you're worried that the villain won't survive long enough to do their thing, but be prepared to quietly pretend they have less than they do if the fight starts to drag on too long. Also good ideas are counters to or ways to stay out of range of the party's save-or-lose effects (don't forget even purely martial villains can have magic items and/or spellcasting flunkies). If you want to make the PCs flee instead, that'll require a very strong gimmick (see below); specifically, it'll probably have to be either a defensive one, some sort of fear build, or something nonlethal, because "strategic retreat" is not usually part of the PC tactic book, so counting on them to recognize that they're up against superior firepower is a recipe for a TPK.

Gimmicks. Give the villain something that makes fighting/encountering them unique. They're immune to damage and the party has to figure out their one weakness and then exploit it. The final bossfight takes place in a crazy environment that changes conventional tactics (underwater combat, or dodge the spinning gears and blades, or chained fire elementals attack the closest creature whether good or evil, or go completely nuts and make it a multiplanar mansion where every room follows a different one of those paradigms). The villain is hella stealthy. The villain is (ab)using the fear stacking rules. Be careful with things that completely change the paradigm; the final confrontation being a courtroom drama instead of a fight could be awesome, or it could just be frustrating and boring.


Okay, that was a lot of talking, so let's have some examples.

Azoth, the Raven's Shadow (http://bit.ly/2kfZ3rs) (Rogue/Monk)
Azoth is mostly survivability and gimmick; light on thematics beyond "edgy assassin that is also a reference to a book series your players haven't read". Both gimmick and survivability come down to stealth. Monk has some of the best ACFs for a stealth character bar none: Azoth can turn invisible every three rounds, blink indefinitely as the spell, and has total concealment outside of direct sunlight or the daylight spell (this total concealment is also not negated by see invisibility or truesight). This is paired with damage in the form of Sneak Attack, Skirmish, and Iaijutsu Focus, and mobility from being able to phase through obstacles, walk on walls, and take multiple 5-ft-steps per round. In their first few encounters with Azoth, players will struggle to interact with him at all while he accomplishes his assassinations and then retreats with ease; they'll have to put serious effort in both in and out of character to trap him and neutralize his powers, at which point he will still be a lethal combatant but a far more standard one, and the PCs can finally beat him down. The above link includes a full 1-20 build, and Azoth is an effective antagonist at any level.

Atriox, Leader of the Banished (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23999697&postcount=95) (Werewolf Warlock)
If Azoth was survivability + gimmick, Atriox is thematics + gimmick. The conversion of a Halo villain into D&D mechanics and setting, Atriox is the leader of an army of ogre werewolves, at war with the Mind Flayer empire and now the surface as well. His combat style is all about flinging enemies around and concussing them with his gravity hammer (mechanically a near-infinite combo he can pull off on anyone not immune to trip and bull-rush attempts). The players can either invest in countermeasures to become immune to his combat gimmick (at which point he's still a very dangerous Glaivelock with HP for days), or try to beat him at his own game and fight him army to army. Or both.

The Littlest Nightmare, Pollyanna (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24809459&postcount=45) (Wendigo)
And to round things off, Pollyanna is primarily thematics and survivability... at least until the climactic showdown. Mechanically, she's slippery as an eel, with a ridiculous fly speed, at-will incorporeality, invisibility, blinding attacks, crowd control, short-range teleportation, and the ability to warp her environment to her will (lucid dreaming skill). Thematically, she's the child the party failed to save, a rabid puppy that can't be contained and can't be cured... and so must be put down.

[Gruftzwerg]

Wights arent a template, theyre a standalone creature on the srd: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wight.htm

Dunno if the (3.0) BoVD Soul Eater is targeting the MM creature. The Soul Slave ability seems to affect any creature that dies to the negative energy. And if we go by the MM wight, we could turn a chicken or a rat into full humanoid sized wight. And that feels wrong to me (Chicken Infested Wights anyone?^^). But I guess up to DM decision/conversion.

[Crake]

Dunno if the (3.0) BoVD Soul Eater is targeting the MM creature. The Soul Slave ability seems to affect any creature that dies to the negative energy. And if we go by the MM wight, we could turn a chicken or a rat into full humanoid sized wight. And that feels wrong to me (Chicken Infested Wights anyone?^^). But I guess up to DM decision/conversion.

Rising as a wight from energy drain happens by default, and isnt for humanoid creatures exclusively. The difference that the soul eater ability makes is that the wight is under their control, rather than being an autonomous entity

Also for reference, this has been the case since 3.0, including the 3.0 wight not being a template

[Gruftzwerg]

Rising as a wight from energy drain happens by default, and isnt for humanoid creatures exclusively.

Hm? Dunno if I misunderstand you, but...
According to the MM's "Wight - Create Spawn" ability, it sole works on humanoids.
The dragon template has the same limitation for their spawn ability, but not for the template itself.

I still kinda feel confused that any creature form (like the mentioned chicken and rats) should turn into humanoid shaped standardized undeads.

The template feels like the more mechanically fitting choice here. But your (or any DM's) opinion may vary here.


_______________________________

@ topic

Changeling into Warshaper is another good base for a non caster villain.

Grow the Bite attacks of a Hydra (the Morphic Weapon ability ain't limited to standard natural weapons, thus you can go for specific choices). Now you have multiple bites and may move + full attack with em. Tailor some nice feats and maybe add other prc level depending on your party lvl.

[Crake]

Hm? Dunno if I misunderstand you, but...
According to the MM's "Wight - Create Spawn" ability, it sole works on humanoids.
The dragon template has the same limitation for their spawn ability, but not for the template itself.

I still kinda feel confused that any creature form (like the mentioned chicken and rats) should turn into humanoid shaped standardized undeads.

The template feels like the more mechanically fitting choice here. But your (or any DM's) opinion may vary here.


_______________________________

@ topic

Changeling into Warshaper is another good base for a non caster villain.

Grow the Bite attacks of a Hydra (the Morphic Weapon ability ain't limited to standard natural weapons, thus you can go for specific choices). Now you have multiple bites and may move + full attack with em. Tailor some nice feats and maybe add other prc level depending on your party lvl.

From the energy drain and negative levels glossary entry of the DMG, p283 second last paragraph:


A character with negative levels at least equal to her current level, or drained below 1st level, is instantly slain. Depending on the creature that killed her, she may rise the next night as a monster of that kind. If not, she rises as a wight.

Being killed by negative levels will always rise you as a wight, regardless of creature type, the soul eater is no exception. Again the only difference with the level 9 ability is that the wight is under your control, and not an autonomous being. The fact is that, even within humanoid standards, the default wight creature doesn't fit, why would a small halfling rise as a medium wight? I think even in standard circumstances, it's expected that the DM would modify any given wight to match the creature it spawned from. The same could be said about most other "standardized" undead, like vampire spawn, shadows, wraiths etc.

The wight's special ability is specifically for humanoids with regard to a) the wight rising in 1d4 rounds instead of the next night, and b) the spawn being under the wight's control, rather than being an autonomous individual.

I also think that expecting an officially published book to use a dragon magazine source without explicitly saying so is a bit of a stretch.

[Gruftzwerg]

From the energy drain and negative levels glossary entry of the DMG, p283 second last paragraph:



Being killed by negative levels will always rise you as a wight, regardless of creature type, the soul eater is no exception. Again the only difference with the level 9 ability is that the wight is under your control, and not an autonomous being. The fact is that, even within humanoid standards, the default wight creature doesn't fit, why would a small halfling rise as a medium wight? I think even in standard circumstances, it's expected that the DM would modify any given wight to match the creature it spawned from. The same could be said about most other "standardized" undead, like vampire spawn, shadows, wraiths etc.

The wight's special ability is specifically for humanoids with regard to a) the wight rising in 1d4 rounds instead of the next night, and b) the spawn being under the wight's control, rather than being an autonomous individual.

I also think that expecting an officially published book to use a dragon magazine source without explicitly saying so is a bit of a stretch.

Doesn't change the fact that the Wight's "Create Spawn" ability (both in dragon and MM) are more specific than the general rule.

Create Spawn (Su): Any humanoid slain by a wight
becomes a wight in 1d4 rounds. Spawn are under the
command of the wight that created them and remain
enslaved until its death. They do not possess any of
the abilities they had in life.
&

Create Spawn (Su): Any humanoid slain by a wight's energy drain becomes a wight within 1d4 rounds. Spawn are under the command of the wight that created them and remain enslaved until its death. They gain the wight template.
Both versions are more specific and thus trump the general rule.

[Crake]

Doesn't change the fact that the Wight's "Create Spawn" ability (both in dragon and MM) are more specific than the general rule.

&

Both versions are more specific and thus trump the general rule.

Firstly, the general rule applies to soul eaters, so how a wight makes spawns is largely irrelevant.

But secondly, the monster manual doesnt contradict the energy drain rules. The spawn ability refers to any humanoid killed by the wight in any capacity, not just energy drain, but if another type of creature is drained to 0, their spawn ability does not apply (meaning it doesnt rise in 1d4 rounds, nor is it under that wights control), but it does not stop the general rule from applying, so the creature will rise the next night as an autonomous wight.

[Gruftzwerg]

Firstly, the general rule applies to soul eaters, so how a wight makes spawns is largely irrelevant.

But secondly, the monster manual doesnt contradict the energy drain rules. The spawn ability refers to any humanoid killed by the wight in any capacity, not just energy drain, but if another type of creature is drained to 0, their spawn ability does not apply (meaning it doesnt rise in 1d4 rounds, nor is it under that wights control), but it does not stop the general rule from applying, so the creature will rise the next night as an autonomous wight.

Ah ok, now I get what you mean. Somehow this did confuse me a lot..^^

[spectralphoenix]

Strictly speaking, the villain doesn't need to be a combat threat at all. The corrupt seneschal may just be a jumped up aristocrat with a Ring of Mind Shielding, but he can send assassins after the characters at any time, and he lives in the palace under full protection of the king and royal guard. The players can't run up to him and stab him, even if they succeeded, he'd get resurrected and they'd be arrested. They have to fight his minions and capture the one piece of evidence that will prove his treason beyond all doubt.

As an advantage, when they do finally have all the pieces in place to bring him down, you get a dramatic scene where the court turns on him and he gets arrested, instead of the "Limited Wish to tank his saves, followed by a sudden quickened Finger of Death" that tends to bring an abrupt end to high-level combat against a single opponent.

[Drelua]

A non-caster could be in charge of a large group of soldiers or mercenaries, and be a threat that way. An evil king, a merchant so rich he's more powerful than the king, a bandit leader. All characters that benefit from a high Charisma but don't necessarily cast spells themselves. Or a crime lord like Fisk in the Daredevil show who has a good reputation and mostly contacts other criminals through a trusted intermediary could be difficult for the players to even find out is the villain, could send a lot of deadly people after them, and if the players can't prove he's the bad guy, attacking him could make them criminals. He'd need some protection against divination, but there's a lot of items that can do that, or an allied caster, or certain class features.

Action economy works against a villain that works alone, but one that's surrounded by 20+ soldiers/guards/mercenaries, even if none of them can cast a single spell, might be able to overwhelm even a party of casters.

[Gorthawar]

One of the lessons I learned is to not be afraid to counter some of the players ability that could tilt the battle decisively in an important boss fight. The druid in my party (lvl9) likes to share bite of the weretiger with his tiger ac and have them pounce and grapple the villains. To allow a recent boss (a variant jack b quick melee type) to do his thing unmolested by the tiger his support wu jen cast force whip and scared the tiger away for a bit for example. Also the boss having moment of perfect mind allowed him to resist an initial glitterdust that the party wizard uses extensively.

[pabelfly]

One of the lessons I learned is to not be afraid to counter some of the players ability that could tilt the battle decisively in an important boss fight. The druid in my party (lvl9) likes to share bite of the weretiger with his tiger ac and have them pounce and grapple the villains. To allow a recent boss (a variant jack b quick melee type) to do his thing unmolested by the tiger his support wu jen cast force whip and scared the tiger away for a bit for example. Also the boss having moment of perfect mind allowed him to resist an initial glitterdust that the party wizard uses extensively.

The bad guy could well be gaining intelligence on the players since they're opposing the players, so it's reasonable they could have a few direct counters to some of their stronger plays and abilities.

[Gorthawar]

The bad guy could well be gaining intelligence on the players since they're opposing the players, so it's reasonable they could have a few direct counters to some of their stronger plays and abilities.

Absolutely, this was actually the second encounter they had with the boss and his minions.

[Metastachydium]

Wights arent a template, theyre a standalone creature on the srd: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wight.htm

[OFF] Unless Savage Species is somehow 3rd party now, Wight is absolutely a template besides being a core creature.[ON]


A non-caster could be in charge of a large group of soldiers or mercenaries, and be a threat that way. An evil king, a merchant so rich he's more powerful than the king, a bandit leader. All characters that benefit from a high Charisma but don't necessarily cast spells themselves. Or a crime lord like Fisk in the Daredevil show who has a good reputation and mostly contacts other criminals through a trusted intermediary could be difficult for the players to even find out is the villain, could send a lot of deadly people after them, and if the players can't prove he's the bad guy, attacking him could make them criminals. He'd need some protection against divination, but there's a lot of items that can do that, or an allied caster, or certain class features.

Action economy works against a villain that works alone, but one that's surrounded by 20+ soldiers/guards/mercenaries, even if none of them can cast a single spell, might be able to overwhelm even a party of casters.

Hm. That's actually a role where a Marshal would do just fine. Pehaps combined with a high level Warchief for Devoted Bodyguards to soak up single target spells and ubercharges with?

[Crake]

[OFF] Unless Savage Species is somehow 3rd party now, Wight is absolutely a template besides being a core creature.[ON]

At the time of BoVD's publishing, the wight template was a dragon magazine publication, and savage species was not released.

[Gruftzwerg]

At the time of BoVD's publishing, the wight template was a dragon magazine publication, and savage species was not released.
Good point in bringing up release dates...^^


Book of Vile Darkness: October 2002
Monster Manual I: July 2003
Dragon #300: October 2002

Which means, that at the time of the release of BoVD, the Dragon template was the most up to date official release of a Wight (as template in this case). Interesting to note that they did come out simultaneously.

[Metastachydium]

At the time of BoVD's publishing, the wight template was a dragon magazine publication, and savage species was not released.

I mean, you said aren't and not weren't. And I did note I'm going off-topic.

[Cosmar]

Wow, thanks for all the great ideas and suggestions!

It occurred to me reading these, that there maybe doesn't necessarily have to be a single main villain. It could be a duo or even trio. Like a husband and wife team, evil king and queen, or something like that.

[Gruftzwerg]

Wow, thanks for all the great ideas and suggestions!

It occurred to me reading these, that there maybe doesn't necessarily have to be a single main villain. It could be a duo or even trio. Like a husband and wife team, evil king and queen, or something like that.

They could be even competing enemies at first and realize at a later point that they need a temporary alliance against the adventurer party.
How about competing guilds (or even just bandits/thief maybe?). And a guild don't have to be evil/the villain by itself. It can be just some of the higher ups that have enough influence over the guild.

[King of Nowhere]

I had fun with hiding assassins. With a bit of basic precautions magic won't save from you. You hide or disguise (nonmagically), you make a high dc death attack, then you dimension door away. Quickened dimension door at high level, cast from a scroll at low level.
Those can be quite annoying puzzle villains, threatening the party until it can manage a way to catch them.

But ultimately, what makes a good or memorable villain is personality.

[Crake]

I had fun with hiding assassins. With a bit of basic precautions magic won't save from you. You hide or disguise (nonmagically), you make a high dc death attack, then you dimension door away. Quickened dimension door at high level, cast from a scroll at low level.
Those can be quite annoying puzzle villains, threatening the party until it can manage a way to catch them.

But ultimately, what makes a good or memorable villain is personality.

I mean, if they're casting dimension door to escape.. wouldn't that make them spellcasting villains?

[Seward]

My most memorable villains weren't the ones who sat in their lair and waited for adventurers to show up.

Regardless of class or build, they did things the PCs couild not easily cope with. One miniboss after an early defeat hired enough henchmen (1st edition AD&D, 18 charisma) to field 3 adventuring parties, who then competed with the PCs for everything, including reputation and accolades, while simultaneously eliminating the minions of his rivals in his evil organization. When the PCs figured out what was going on they REALLY hated him.

I've seen very effective stuff done with attacks vs PC reputation. A NPC good at disguise can just behave badly while impersonating the PCs and skip town, and it can be hard to prove you didn't do it especially if he did something exactly like stuff the PCs have done in the past when they weren't on their best behavior. I had a Champions villain who was not much of a physical threat but he was so good at this kind of thing, and also just pushing buttons of PCs in battle so they behaved in ways against their own interests that he was a major problem...but also never a very high priority to deal with because he wasn't doing really awful villainy, of the "mass casualty" variety and his shenanigans tended not to attract the attention of powerful people to him personally.

It isn't that hard to take a martial-oriented monster or character build to be a major threat to anybody who isn't an armed-to-teeth PC party ready to fight. This is why thief and assassin guilds make dangerous enemies but you can also basically just have a "thug" guild that does it with big strong fighter types (or monsters) doing protection rackets and the like. A PC has to sleep sometime and the way they would directly attack meddling PCs would be ambushes, poisoned food, training a dangerous monster on their campsite or whatever, not a straight up fight. Ideally while pointing the blame at somebody else they don't like.

All that said, a martial end-of-arc ultimate boss monster fight can still be pretty terrifying, as long as their action economy, survivability vs what Pcs do and damage output is a threat. Just as one example, in the right conditions some L12 pure fighter archers with greater weapon spec, a single buff-caster to cast greater magic weapon 3 on their bows, backed by a bard, and scattered around to make use of range and avoid AOE attacks can be surprisingly difficult for a level 14ish party. Just have said martial threat tailor his final fight to what the PCs do and assume a trip to a magic mart for appropriate potions or hired spellcasting where needed.