Most unusual BBEG motive you've seen?

[fortesama]

A rather short campaign in D&D 3.5 I joined in had us dispel a vampire wizard's spell of eternal night... which she cast just because she wanted to join a flower viewing event. Now, she decided to go out using a magic parasol our artificer made instead for the said event.

Some time before that, a large number of kobolds began searching for what i suspect were radioactive elements... since a pyromancer (in this case, a venerable dragonwrought sorcerer/incantatrix with a thing for metamagicked fire spells and searing spell) from another plane wanted to create a nuclear reactor to start an industrial revolution.

So, what are some of the stranger motive's have you guys seen?

[Ormur]

The lonely red dragon that just wanted a large family.

So yes, we fought a lot of various half-dragon creatures of all kind in that session.

[Assassin89]

A rather short campaign in D&D 3.5 I joined in had us dispel a vampire wizard's spell of eternal night... which she cast just because she wanted to join a flower viewing event. Now, she decided to go out using a magic parasol our artificer made instead for the said event.

Some time before that, a large number of kobolds began searching for what i suspect were radioactive elements... since a pyromancer (in this case, a venerable dragonwrought sorcerer/incantatrix with a thing for metamagicked fire spells and searing spell) from another plane wanted to create a nuclear reactor to start an industrial revolution.

So, what are some of the stranger motive's have you guys seen?

I think your DM is a fan of Touhou, as it appears that those BBEGs are Remilia Scarlet in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, although it was a scarlet fog rather than an Imperishable Night, and a combination of Utsuho Reiuji (for the fire and radioactivity) and Kanako Yasaka (at least in terms of where she is from and her goal). Is there going to be a ghost with the ability to invoke death, who steals spring to see who is buried under an evil tree, but the body is herself?

The goal of one enemy in a Pathfinder game I am playing is to be loved, by forcing people to love her, which entail shooting yourself or someone else on her command. As for the main BBEG, apparently his goal is salvation, of what and for who I do not know yet.

[Beelzebub1111]

A paladin who wanted to purify the silver flame...by expunging the rakshasa lord inside of it, unleashing it upon the world.

[Admiral Squish]

Well, the motivation wasn't so awesome, but the method was interesting. I heard the tale of a lich who infiltrated the city planning committee and, with years and years of careful work, was slowly converting the city's map into a giant magical sigil and was going to use it to sacrifice every soul in the city and ascend to godhood.

[Urpriest]

A recent campaign I was in involved an ancient Eladrin Artificer-King who planned to use enchanted weapons to suck out peoples' souls and bind them into constructs, thus granting everyone immortality. My Eladrin Wizard would probably have switched to his side if he had had a good opportunity.

[mikeejimbo]

Well, the motivation wasn't so awesome, but the method was interesting. I heard the tale of a lich who infiltrated the city planning committee and, with years and years of careful work, was slowly converting the city's map into a giant magical sigil and was going to use it to sacrifice every soul in the city and ascend to godhood.

Ooh, I do like that. Being a lich, I'm sure he had the time and the patience!

[Fiery Diamond]

Well, the motivation wasn't so awesome, but the method was interesting. I heard the tale of a lich who infiltrated the city planning committee and, with years and years of careful work, was slowly converting the city's map into a giant magical sigil and was going to use it to sacrifice every soul in the city and ascend to godhood.

Hmmm....

*cough*FullMetalAlchemist*cough*

[Tengu_temp]

Well, the motivation wasn't so awesome, but the method was interesting. I heard the tale of a lich who infiltrated the city planning committee and, with years and years of careful work, was slowly converting the city's map into a giant magical sigil and was going to use it to sacrifice every soul in the city and ascend to godhood.

Your DM is a fan of Full Metal Alchemist, ain't he?

Gah, ninja'ed!

[Zanatos777]

Well, the motivation wasn't so awesome, but the method was interesting. I heard the tale of a lich who infiltrated the city planning committee and, with years and years of careful work, was slowly converting the city's map into a giant magical sigil and was going to use it to sacrifice every soul in the city and ascend to godhood.

I had a vampire who had basically the same plan but replace "infiltrate" with "create" and "ascend to godhood" with "commit mass deicide, steal divine essence and then ascend to godhood".

Edit: Yeah it was very FMA but I liked the idea and none of my players had read or seen FMA (it was several years ago)

[Kallisti]

A lich moneylender who plans to conquer the world through compound interest.

[Fiery Diamond]

A lich moneylender who plans to conquer the world through compound interest.

Okay, you win the thread. That is just awesome.

[Admiral Squish]

I've never seen all of FMA... I HAVE FAILED AS A NERD!

[Christopher K.]

Well, I can't top the lich moneylender, but we had a once-heroic vampire who had self-replicating paper golems folded into envelopes that he sent as a chain letter to kill undead that functioned in society. (In this campaign, the major cities accepted undead to the workforce under strict conditions, close observation, and much discrimination.)

[Tvtyrant]

I've never seen all of FMA... I HAVE FAILED AS A NERD!

There is plenty to be ashamed of. :P

TBH, I haven't either. I did read the whole manga though!

[Kallisti]

Okay, you win the thread. That is just awesome.

I won a thread? Cool. I think I'll keep it in a jam-jar under my stairs.

I also think Skin-And-Bones from Changeling: The Lost deserves a mention.

He's effectively a boogeyman you can summon through a broken mirror. When he appears, he says "Give me a name." And you give him a name, and he goes and takes the person you named away, and they're never seen again.

I swear I had never read the entry in Night Horrors: Grim Fears. I didn't even know he was from a published book.

My character, upon meeting him (long story) responded "You don't have a name? That's tragic. I'd offer you mine, but I lost it somewhere. You could be Anaphora, if you liked. It's a very pretty name."

Turns out that by "Give me a name" he actually does mean "I have no name, please give me one." And so when people give him a name, and it already belongs to someone, he takes that person. Because that name is his. It was a gift. And nobody would try to give a gift that they had no right to give; that'd just be...low.

So his villainy stems from a semantic misunderstanding and his deep, abiding faith that people are ultimately good, and would therefore never give him a name that wasn't theirs to give.

When I realized that, I could not stop laughing. The idea of a villain motivated by faith in humanity? Awesome.

Full disclosure: I did look him up after the fact. While the true meaning behind "Give me a name" is canon, the idea that he takes people whose names he's given because he's sure nobody would have given him those names as anything but an honest gift was the ST's invention.

[Shadowleaf]

I heard about this game where a God, having forseen his own death, went down on the world and started producing offspring everywhere, and hoped they'd all kill eachother so he could get his essence back.



Jokes aside. I played in a campaign where the BBEG did evil, horrendious things. Really, kicking-puppies evil. He had invested all his money, time and energy into doing this. And our group could never figure out why. This entire evil operation gets leaked to the press, and our party goes after him.
In the final confrontation, the BBEG tells us he has already achieved his goal. We are baffled, and ask him what it was.

He just wanted to be remembered in history.

[hiryuu]

My players found out a demon lord had been possessing people through the ages and had been directing the cause of nearly every major war and conflict in Eberron simply because it wanted lives cut short so it could harvest their memories and had even instigated the Mourning to get close to finishing (read: xp) to build an Eldritch device that could answer any question ever posed to it so she could ask it why her boyfriend left her. When she found out the reason, she decided the best way to "acquire morality" (the reason her boyfriend left being that she was, well, a jerk) would be to purge her memories and be reborn as a human to live a normal life.

Then they found out that the demon had thus orchestrated their rise to power and the hardship, pain, and horror they had seen was all its doing specifically so they'd want to kill her and the device they had built to weaken her and destroy her was actually the reincarnation device she had built.

They were suitably enraged. But they couldn't kill what was now an innocent human infant.

[golentan]

A mad scientist who intended to conquer the world to disband the ethics committee blocking his research.

Because if he just killed them the paperwork would bog him down, and it would be unethical to circumvent the law. Much better to conquer the globe and rewrite the laws in an above-board fashion.

[herrhauptmann]

From a novel:
An ancient wizard/psion Gith (he was born before the split into Githyanki and Githzerai) wanted to 'wear/see the crown of flame'. Something which he did once as a youth with his father. Back in a time when the suns rays didn't cause him to burst into flame like a vampire.
So he enacted a plan to do just that. His minions manipulated a shadow adept to gain access to a temple, stole an artifact created by Shar's minions. He stole a temple from Cyric, and siphoned magical energy from 2 mythals. And stole a tear from Selune (those little asteroids that follow the moon)


Hidden text...

What did he do with all that? Created a magical eclipse, one which would last for an entire day. So that he could play in the ocean surf once more before he died.
He tapped 2 mythals just so he could go wading in the friggin water like a child.

[Codenpeg]

Hrm, I'm doing a game with my brothers (maptools and skype FTW) and I still haven't figured out what to do with my BBEG. He's acting through a sleeper agent in the form of a GMPC, a cleric of Pelor, to get them to travel through Ebberon visiting different temples. The party grabs a minor object of power at each location (a holy symbol from the high priest or a small statue or something) and I'm not sure what he's going to do with it yet.

Perhaps you folks could give me an unusual motivation for this?

[Susano-wo]

in our current campaign, the BBEG created a magical plague apparently toassassinate the king, so he could marry the queen. WEll, the queen ended up dying [not from the plague, she was immune], and now he has essentially made her grandaughter look just like her, and is plotting to stick gramma's spirit inside, so he can have his obsession love of his life to be his happy happy bride.

Conquering the kindgom was just a bonus...

(note that I don't know some of the answers to some of the most puzzling questions one may ask. The mystery of the details behind this whole thing is part of the story of the campaign ^ ^)

[blackjack217]

An animated puppet who wanted to be a real boy.
First question: is he actually a cleric of pelor?
2nd: do the items have a theme?

[Amphetryon]

Parent of one of the PCs wanted son to be a famous hero, so set about creating a set of circumstances where a great hero was needed in order to stop said parent from Taking Over The World....

[Coidzor]

I also think Skin-And-Bones from Changeling: The Lost deserves a mention.

He's effectively a boogeyman you can summon through a broken mirror. When he appears, he says "Give me a name." And you give him a name, and he goes and takes the person you named away, and they're never seen again.

So... that's why Pluto's no longer a planet, eh?

[herrhauptmann]

So what happens if you name him Candlejack?

[Volos]

I had a BBEG who happened to be a deity. His ultimate goal was to win over the hearts and minds of the players (yes, the players not the PCs) so that one day he would kill the Dungeon Master and take his place.

[Otogi]

There was this one BBEG I created for an experiment, where the campaign happened in real time, with game time equal to the session (with obvious changes of course). Anyway, I was brainstorming one day and I found the perfect motivation for the BBEG:

Spoiler

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He was hungry. He wasn't some sort of giant monster, he didn't consume souls or blood or magic and he wasn't even really starving to death; he was just really irate, and the place that sells the thing he likes stop selling the thing, so he went all over town trying to find a good place. Aggressive guy, by the way.

[Amiel]

There was a BBEG who had to have the perfect stamp collection; comprised of priceless paper artifacts, these stamps were the envy of all who looked upon them. Wars arose over their possession, and obsessions were formulated over their desire.
No amount of violence was disproportionate to obtaining this precious collective of stamps; and no scheme was too extreme.

[Deth Muncher]

So what happens if you name him Candlejack?

I'm not sure there's enough rope anywhere to facilitate this.