A Proper Villian

[Splodge]

Too often when you play in a campaign, the PC's are smart enough to use gameworld metaphysics and story protocol against you.

As a DM, this is annoying.

So instead I have decided to create a proper villian, who is Dangerously Genre Savvy, follows the 36 Stratagems and has studied the entire Evil Overlord List.

I've already had a few ideas, such as exploding cities, changeable terrain and a puppet Chessmaster to knock the PC's around a bit.

Anyone else got any ideas?

[NB: This is not restricted to any one campaign setting or system. Although specific devices are fine, more general pan-system gambits would be more appreciated.]

[Choco]

If you want to be an ass, make it so the villain is constantly using some form of divination/future reading/astrology/whatever the setting uses to determine who will eventually grow to be a threat to his existance. He then promptly kills them. So, kill the PC's at level 2 before they can ever grow to become a threat and use metaphysics against you

EDIT: on a more serious note, just make it the type of game where the PC's are already pursued by the villain and the majority of the campaign is them just fighting to survive.

[Geiger Counter]

oops, never mind.

[Everyman]

I've found that truly proper villian inspires such dread that no one wants to challenge him until they've prepared for him or his minions. I think there are few things more effective than fear to make a villian memorable and powerful.

For example, I have a party of "rogue-ish" characters I'm DMing for, who have become remarkably afriad of ravens. Why? Because every time they find one of the artifacts of doom in my campaign setting, there are conspiracies of ravens watching them. The central villian of my setting has a raven motif about him, and he only refers to himself in the third-person. His name is Grief.

For fun, I had a stuffed raven in someone's library. I had just finished describing the black feathers when one PC freaked and shot it with an eldritch blast.

[DragonBaneDM]

I've found that truly proper villian inspires such dread that no one wants to challenge him until they've prepared for him or his minions. I think there are few things more effective than fear to make a villian memorable and powerful.

For example, I have a party of "rogue-ish" characters I'm DMing for, who have become remarkably afriad of ravens. Why? Because every time they find one of the artifacts of doom in my campaign setting, there are conspiracies of ravens watching them. The central villian of my setting has a raven motif about him, and he only refers to himself in the third-person. His name is Grief.

For fun, I had a stuffed raven in someone's library. I had just finished describing the black feathers when one PC freaked and shot it with an eldritch blast.

I ruv dis!!!

[Abd al-Azrad]

Go all the way and make the dude a metavillain. His evil schemes take the form of seeking out broken combos that were banned by the Gods (a.k.a. the DM), such as questing for a Kobold Master of Many Forms to brainwash and trick into ascending to Pun-Pun levels, or scouring ancient libraries to find knowledge of a busted-up feat from some obscure Dragon Magazine that you won't allow into your game. His divination attempts literally target the PCs character sheets... as could his magical attacks, erasing or suppressing key abilities or prerequisite feats in battle so a character entirely falls apart. The campaign could be about trying to learn how the villain gained access to the metagame, and shut down his connection to it (probably via some portal through the Far Realm, or something).

[The Shadowmind]

I know of two "proper villian" types:
The guy that nobody suspects(Bonus points it is a PC, and arranaged before hand, and the players a okay with a possible turn coat.)
-~-That shop keeper that sees items to the players for a 5% discount, but the items have a curse/command word effect that is not know till the party till the final showdown. The shopkeeper has been "helping" orphans find parents, but actually using them to make an undead army that is keep in a basement with a permanent silence spell on it.

The guy that is to powerful to take on directly.
-~-This is the guy with the fortress and hordes of minions. Unlike the stereotype villain he doesn't send weak mooks to fight the party, he sends well trained mercenaries after them, places a reward for their death, and shoots first, burns the body then gloats.

[Traveler]

Contigency contingency contingency. Your villian should always have a plan and not just plan A, plan B, plan escape. I mean your villian should be ready for the PCs and has taken percausions and extra percausions if the first ones didn't work.
If possible, make it that the villian is never near what is actually going on. No giant deathmatch, just a powerful minion with a note stuck to his shirt saying "Sorry, the evil villian you are looking for isn't here. But he did leave this for you. (explosive rune)"
Hope it help.

@Everyman: Wow. Pure wow.

[BRC]

A wizard, with a scientific bent. He has developed some method of essentially mass-producing people with class levels. He takes a person, and puts them through some process. When they come out of it, they have class levels and are mindlessly loyal to him. Or maybe he just builds things that he can then gives class levels to, whatever.

As the game progresses, he improves this method to create increasingly more powerful characters, but the PC's frequently run into his creations. They defeat these creations, which is what he wants.

You see, he knows he has the potential to create very powerful servants, he just doesn't know exactly how. So he sends them out into the world to cause trouble, and records all fights they get into. Whenever somebody defeats them, he looks at the recordings, and takes notes.

Make this very clear to the PC's. When they defeat his minions, what they are doing is giving him ideas, and making the next batch that much more powerful.

[Crafty Cultist]

If the villain persues multiple objectives at once then the players are forced to chose which objective to stop. if the villain is really smart and has enough resources for it he might make a false objective and sprinkle leads for the heroes. they think they're foiling his plans when they're just being kept out of the way(or lead into a deathtrap)

[jiriku]

It's nice to reverse common tropes. For example:

In many campaigns, players are supposed to stop a villain from acquiring an evil artifact. What if the players are tasked by their king with recovering a long-lost heirloom of his people? They quest for it the entire game, only to discover at the end of their campaign that the artifact is an evil villain, and by recovering it they've ensured the corruption of their king and the doom of their civilization.

Often, heroes are part of a prophecy, naming them the chosen ones to accomplish some great deed? They spend the entire campaign struggling to understand the prophecy and follow it. What if at the end of the campaign they discover that this prophecy is actually intended for the villain, and that they've made it possible for him to succeed?

Sometimes, the players must prevent a villain from resurrecting an ancient evil. What if through their efforts, they accidently release this evil themselves?


And, err, yes. I've done all these things.

[Splodge]

A campaign I enjoyed running was about an insane Prophet who had a few semi-Godlike powers - precognition, immortality, psychometry.

He had gone insane because he could not handle his immortality, and the precognition allowed him to always be one step ahead of the PCs, and the psychometry meant as soon as he touched a PC, he knew everything about them.

After their first encounter with him, they turned paranoid and were very, very scared.

[Telonius]

You might want to read up on the Joker Bard. It's specifically designed to annoy the bejesus out of a Batman Wizard. (Note that it doesn't attempt to beat him, just seriously annoy him). Anything that's capable of that, ought to be capable of out-maneuvering most standard - and many optimized - PCs.

[Emmerask]

It's nice to reverse common tropes. For example:

In many campaigns, players are supposed to stop a villain from acquiring an evil artifact. What if the players are tasked by their king with recovering a long-lost heirloom of his people? They quest for it the entire game, only to discover at the end of their campaign that the artifact is an evil villain, and by recovering it they've ensured the corruption of their king and the doom of their civilization.

Often, heroes are part of a prophecy, naming them the chosen ones to accomplish some great deed? They spend the entire campaign struggling to understand the prophecy and follow it. What if at the end of the campaign they discover that this prophecy is actually intended for the villain, and that they've made it possible for him to succeed?

Sometimes, the players must prevent a villain from resurrecting an ancient evil. What if through their efforts, they accidently release this evil themselves?


And, err, yes. I've done all these things.

Or that the villain had tempered with the prophecy to fulfill his own ends

(I had enough clues ready for them that the prophecy was indeed tempered with but they ignored all of them... well more fun for the villain ^^)

[Choco]

If the villain persues multiple objectives at once then the players are forced to chose which objective to stop. if the villain is really smart and has enough resources for it he might make a false objective and sprinkle leads for the heroes. they think they're foiling his plans when they're just being kept out of the way(or lead into a deathtrap)

Yeah, this works wonders, and is better than the cliche "your patron is actually the BBEG" trope.

Only problem I come across with that approach is how many chances do I give the PC's to realize they are being lead into a trap. There are only so many stray rumors and so many gather information/perception checks I can give them (almost none if the villain is actually that good and serious about it) before I just let em walk into the trap and whine that their characters should have had access to the info needed to determine it is a trap.

[TheEmerged]

I'll leave some of the mechanical stuff for others.

1> Remember that in the Real World(tm), very few people are scenery-chewing evil. It's not completely true that "the villain is always the hero of his own story", but there's a certain wisdom there.

So when the players get to the Big Bad the first time... make them discover the "villain" is considered a Good Guy/Hero by a lot of people.

The success rate here will depend on your players: if you've got the "I RPG to blow off steam" type, making the villain the actual good guy is a waste of time, and dedicated roleplayers of a certain bent will be offended if you pull a twist like this.

2> Another classic is to make "the villain" something other than a single individual that can be conveniently offed. Instead of a single Big Bad, make it an organization with a cell-like structure where nobody is sure how many heads the hydra has.

3> Don't try this one unless you've got veteran players and you're reasonably sure they won't get offended by it.

Make the villain one of the PC's. He's hiding his power, hanging out with the PC's as part of training one (or more) of them to take his place, while simultaneously taking out some of his opposition. This will require a player able to pull it off and other players that aren't going to freak out on you when they find out. Whatever you do, don't fall into the trap of allowing the "mole" to get the players out of problems though; the mole has to be Batman-level committed to maintaining the secret until the climax.

[JohnnyCancer]

The villain could already be dead and gone. He left an elaborate set of sealed letters that his advocate has been dutifully delivering without knowing the contents of. Mercenary companies and assassins are being hired with money from his estate, monster breeders deliver bizarre creatures to unlikely locations, bribed courtiers lobby on his behalf. Nobody knows about any other part of the scheme, they're just doing what they have to in order to get their slice of the villain's estate promised in his will.

Maybe the plan goes off the rails and the culmination of the events staged never happens, the PCs are left with mopping up a broken, self-financed, automatic "machine," spewing out evil and danger.

[PirateMonk]

Make it so the villain can't be killed without consequences. They could be a semi-divine being interwoven with the metaphysical fabric of the cosmos, or something more mundane, such as a powerful banker who will take most of the world economy down with him.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Too often when you play in a campaign, the PC's are smart enough to use gameworld metaphysics and story protocol against you.

As a DM, this is annoying.

So instead I have decided to create a proper villian, who is Dangerously Genre Savvy, follows the 36 Stratagems and has studied the entire Evil Overlord List.

I've already had a few ideas, such as exploding cities, changeable terrain and a puppet Chessmaster to knock the PC's around a bit.

Anyone else got any ideas?

[NB: This is not restricted to any one campaign setting or system. Although specific devices are fine, more general pan-system gambits would be more appreciated.]

If he's a wizard you always have him have the exact right spells prepared to face the party, have the exact minions to counter their abilities and show up and kill them all when the PC's are to low-level to be a threat.
Instead of sending progressively stronger minions

Also if the PC's walk into a room with statues that come to life and attack, DO NOT describe the room as having statues. If the fail the spot check to recognize the gargoyles or golems as real creatures, you don't mention them.

[Nidogg]

If his plan requires him to be in a certain place at a certain time IMMOVABLE ROOTS! The last campain I finished one of the PCs dealt with the main villan by flying into him and bullrush him out of the square that would have turned him into a demi god. Also spell turning. Just spell turning. And hallucinary terrain. "Thats not a moon!"

[Piedmon_Sama]

I've found that truly proper villian inspires such dread that no one wants to challenge him until they've prepared for him or his minions. I think there are few things more effective than fear to make a villian memorable and powerful.

For example, I have a party of "rogue-ish" characters I'm DMing for, who have become remarkably afriad of ravens. Why? Because every time they find one of the artifacts of doom in my campaign setting, there are conspiracies of ravens watching them. The central villian of my setting has a raven motif about him, and he only refers to himself in the third-person. His name is Grief.

For fun, I had a stuffed raven in someone's library. I had just finished describing the black feathers when one PC freaked and shot it with an eldritch blast.

Hahaha, dude that's ****ing amazing. My PCs actually sleep in shifts and go every waking hour in full armor (I always remind them just how sweaty, smelly and uncomfortable that is plus they get weird and apprehensive looks everywhere) because they're paranoid of assassins, human and otherwise, but I hope to rattle them that bad one day.

[Lord Vukodlak]

If his plan requires him to be in a certain place at a certain time IMMOVABLE ROOTS! The last campain I finished one of the PCs dealt with the main villan by flying into him and bullrush him out of the square that would have turned him into a demi god. Also spell turning. Just spell turning.

I was in a campaign that ended when my fighter bull-rushed the main villain into the portal he was planning to use to summon his army of doom to the material plane.

The villain had said something like,
"I am the portal's anchor, it can never close while I am here and I can never die while it lies open."

So I bull rushed him into the portal.

[Volkov]

Too often when you play in a campaign, the PC's are smart enough to use gameworld metaphysics and story protocol against you.

As a DM, this is annoying.

So instead I have decided to create a proper villian, who is Dangerously Genre Savvy, follows the 36 Stratagems and has studied the entire Evil Overlord List.

I've already had a few ideas, such as exploding cities, changeable terrain and a puppet Chessmaster to knock the PC's around a bit.

Anyone else got any ideas?

[NB: This is not restricted to any one campaign setting or system. Although specific devices are fine, more general pan-system gambits would be more appreciated.]

Make an expy of Julius Caesar, who would be so beloved by the people of his vast and nigh all powerful nation that upon his death, that nation would hunt them down to the ends of the earth, and so respected by the rulers of other nations that they would find no asylum there either. Make him a man of matchless strategy and tactics, capable of out thinking even the smartest and wisest member of the party and incredibly charismatic. Make him a formidable warrior on his own, and no darker than Lawful neutral. Make him a politician without peer, with very few enemies in the government, and even fewer who don't like him enough to speak out against him in public.

[Nidogg]

With a monolouge like that, he was ASKING for it.

[Godskook]

Have your villain be trying to build the Emerald Legion *and* the cube. Don't actually let him, but get close enough and you'll scare your players something fierce. Even more so if they're forum regulars.

[Volkov]

Have your villain be trying to build the Emerald Legion *and* the cube. Don't actually let him, but get close enough and you'll scare your players something fierce. Even more so if they're forum regulars.

But what if they are a Cleric and for opposing the massively popular villain, their church exocommunicates them for life, the Wizard is booted from every mage guild and university, all of the fighter's peers reject him, and even the common thief considers the rogue to be trash.