Use a Joker antagonist!

[Totally Guy]

I just read this article about tailor making the villain to push the players button. Create a Joker for their Batman

It's pretty sweet. That's the kind of thing I like.

[OMG PONIES]

The Joker Bard. While your article deals more with fluff-related things, the Joker Bard shows you how to make an excellent villainous foil for a Batman wizard (or really, any high-op group). I've been dying to one run against my party since I read the thread.

[Totally Guy]

Again, I am disappointed.

[The Rose Dragon]

The Joker Bard. While your article deals more with fluff-related things, the Joker Bard shows you how to make an excellent villainous foil for a Batman wizard (or really, any high-op group). I've been dying to one run against my party since I read the thread.

That is, however, completely useless to anyone who doesn't play D&D 3.5.

[OMG PONIES]

That is, however, completely useless to anyone who doesn't play D&D 3.5.

Even as a base for homebrewing something similar? I thought the theory-level discussion of it was pretty solid.

[Tiki Snakes]

Good article, very thought provoking. It's pretty spot on reguarding Batman's cast of characters and villains, too. If I ever get back to DMing, I may just have to give it a go, in-fact.

Quite a shame we have an immediate threadjack, really.
Imma let you finish, but...

I would have liked to see more examples on the link, actually. Have you tried this out in your own games yet, Glug?

[Psyren]

That is, however, completely useless to anyone who doesn't play D&D 3.5.

I would gather it's only "completely useless" to someone who doesn't grasp the theory behind it.

[WarKitty]

Good article, very thought provoking. It's pretty spot on reguarding Batman's cast of characters and villains, too. If I ever get back to DMing, I may just have to give it a go, in-fact.

Quite a shame we have an immediate threadjack, really.
Imma let you finish, but...

I would have liked to see more examples on the link, actually. Have you tried this out in your own games yet, Glug?

This +1.

The Joker Bard. While your article deals more with fluff-related things, the Joker Bard shows you how to make an excellent villainous foil for a Batman wizard (or really, any high-op group). I've been dying to one run against my party since I read the thread.

The Joker Bard is actually the very antithesis of what the OP was talking about. The original article is about making a character that shares the same traits as the cast. The bard article is about creating the opposite of a prepared wizard, a character that is seemingly random.

[O_Y]

I like the linked post - it seems like a quick, interesting and discretely formulaic way of fleshing out a campaign. I think I'll try organizing a plots/villains like that, the next time I get a chance.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The Joker Bard is actually the very antithesis of what the OP was talking about. The original article is about making a character that shares the same traits as the cast. The bard article is about creating the opposite of a prepared wizard, a character that is seemingly random.

Well, to be honest, the original point of the task was to create the perfect foil for the 'perfect character'. He took the Batman Wizard's tactics, and used them against him.

And actually, one of the concepts of the Joker Bard, before I figured out a better way to do it, was with Bard/Sublime Chord for Mind Blank and a few other high-end goodies. However, eventually I figured out how to pull it off without needing to use high-end spells to counter high-end spells, and that build was cast aside.

Basically, at the core, a Batman Wizard can defeat just about any threat he faces that he prepares for, and generally has enough divination to be able to prepare for anything he's going to face, or at least have an escape button so that if he does face something he isn't prepared for, he can evac and come back more prepared.

The Joker Bard concept foils this by a) not being anywhere near the Batman Wizard, and b) by doing his best to fool divination. Fool Scry, for example, is surprisingly nasty since you can't cast spells through Scry. Anticipate Teleport is another of the Joker Bard's favorite spells.

The point is, the Joker Bard is just as much a plotter and schemer as the Batman Wizard is, if in different directions. He doesn't build a single plot which must succeed in order to win, he sets up entire scenarios of Xanatos gambits so that no matter what happens, he still gets a victory of sorts.

Just like the Batman Wizard, the Joker Bard does his homework. Legend Lore, for example, works well to give basic information, as does Bardic Knowledge checks, since by this time the Batman Wizard is well powerful enough to be considered a legendary figure. Joker Bard also has Glibness for a stupidly absurd Bluff check, so he can pretty much convince anyone to tell him what they know about the Batman Wizard. So he starts off, months if not years (game time) in advance, plotting and scheming and examining the Batman Wizard's moves. How he thinks, how he reacts, what he does.

Then he begins his play, careful and slow at first. He sets up scenarios that are somewhat different than what he has observed the Batman Wizard face, to see how the Batman Wizard is going to react to that. How is he going to react to a Point of No Return, or the Fateful Choice, or any other Crisis of Consciousness.

In fact, he's quietly manipulating the entire campaign structure from behind the scenes, because at long last, he's found someone worthy of his interest, someone he won't be bored playing with. In fact, developing a rather unhealthy obsession about him. Yea, he's that level of creepy.

Only then does the joker bard start letting some of his more obvious cat's paws out to play, including one whom he has absolutely convinced that the minion is, in fact, the real Joker Bard. Then sets this minion up in such a situation that the Batman Wizard would shoot first and answer questions later. So the Batman Wizard uses Port n Pwn techniques, vaporises the fake-joker in the surprise round, congratulates himself on foiling some not-so-BBEG, and proceeds to sack the area for loot.

That's when the real fun starts...

You see, the joker bard isn't in it for the money. He's not in it to 'put one over on the batman', he's not in it for prestige or power. He just wants to watch the world burn... and tormenting the only being who might be able to stop it from happening.

And then, at the very end of the campaign, when they finally track down the *real* joker bard, he just laughs

"Don't you get it? I've already won! The game wasn't to beat you... it was to make you dance to my tune. I made you, quite possibly the most powerful group of beings in the Prime Plane, dance to my tune, to dance my jig, to play by my rules.

Go ahead, kill me. Please. I will already live forever as the one opponent who pulled you out of your groove and made you play his game. I will be a legend, the stuff nightmares are made of. I shall become immortal, simply by being your foil. And in the end? When you wake up at night, shaking off the nightmares caused by our little games? Remembering all your closest friends I killed? I'll still have put one over on you.

Kill me. I can't win any harder than I've already won. To survive now would be an anticlimax."

Mechanically, he's the total opposite of the Batman Wizard. He doesn't use a lot of powerful spells to warp reality. He uses small, subtle magics. He's the guy who, with a bluff check and ten minutes of roleplay, can turn Harvey Dent into Two-Face.

But thematically? He uses the same tactics Batman Wizard does, just goes about it in different ways. He uses extensive information gathering on the Batman Wizard, just as the Batman Wizard makes extensive use of Scry n Die tactics. He exploits weaknesses in his opponents, just like Batman Wizard. The only difference is that the Joker Bard's whole lifetime goal is to make the Batman Wizard play his game.

[WarKitty]

Spoiler

Show

Well, to be honest, the original point of the task was to create the perfect foil for the 'perfect character'. He took the Batman Wizard's tactics, and used them against him.

And actually, one of the concepts of the Joker Bard, before I figured out a better way to do it, was with Bard/Sublime Chord for Mind Blank and a few other high-end goodies. However, eventually I figured out how to pull it off without needing to use high-end spells to counter high-end spells, and that build was cast aside.

Basically, at the core, a Batman Wizard can defeat just about any threat he faces that he prepares for, and generally has enough divination to be able to prepare for anything he's going to face, or at least have an escape button so that if he does face something he isn't prepared for, he can evac and come back more prepared.

The Joker Bard concept foils this by a) not being anywhere near the Batman Wizard, and b) by doing his best to fool divination. Fool Scry, for example, is surprisingly nasty since you can't cast spells through Scry. Anticipate Teleport is another of the Joker Bard's favorite spells.

The point is, the Joker Bard is just as much a plotter and schemer as the Batman Wizard is, if in different directions. He doesn't build a single plot which must succeed in order to win, he sets up entire scenarios of Xanatos gambits so that no matter what happens, he still gets a victory of sorts.

Just like the Batman Wizard, the Joker Bard does his homework. Legend Lore, for example, works well to give basic information, as does Bardic Knowledge checks, since by this time the Batman Wizard is well powerful enough to be considered a legendary figure. Joker Bard also has Glibness for a stupidly absurd Bluff check, so he can pretty much convince anyone to tell him what they know about the Batman Wizard. So he starts off, months if not years (game time) in advance, plotting and scheming and examining the Batman Wizard's moves. How he thinks, how he reacts, what he does.

Then he begins his play, careful and slow at first. He sets up scenarios that are somewhat different than what he has observed the Batman Wizard face, to see how the Batman Wizard is going to react to that. How is he going to react to a Point of No Return, or the Fateful Choice, or any other Crisis of Consciousness.

In fact, he's quietly manipulating the entire campaign structure from behind the scenes, because at long last, he's found someone worthy of his interest, someone he won't be bored playing with. In fact, developing a rather unhealthy obsession about him. Yea, he's that level of creepy.

Only then does the joker bard start letting some of his more obvious cat's paws out to play, including one whom he has absolutely convinced that the minion is, in fact, the real Joker Bard. Then sets this minion up in such a situation that the Batman Wizard would shoot first and answer questions later. So the Batman Wizard uses Port n Pwn techniques, vaporises the fake-joker in the surprise round, congratulates himself on foiling some not-so-BBEG, and proceeds to sack the area for loot.

That's when the real fun starts...

You see, the joker bard isn't in it for the money. He's not in it to 'put one over on the batman', he's not in it for prestige or power. He just wants to watch the world burn... and tormenting the only being who might be able to stop it from happening.

And then, at the very end of the campaign, when they finally track down the *real* joker bard, he just laughs

"Don't you get it? I've already won! The game wasn't to beat you... it was to make you dance to my tune. I made you, quite possibly the most powerful group of beings in the Prime Plane, dance to my tune, to dance my jig, to play by my rules.

Go ahead, kill me. Please. I will already live forever as the one opponent who pulled you out of your groove and made you play his game. I will be a legend, the stuff nightmares are made of. I shall become immortal, simply by being your foil. And in the end? When you wake up at night, shaking off the nightmares caused by our little games? Remembering all your closest friends I killed? I'll still have put one over on you.

Kill me. I can't win any harder than I've already won. To survive now would be an anticlimax."

Mechanically, he's the total opposite of the Batman Wizard. He doesn't use a lot of powerful spells to warp reality. He uses small, subtle magics. He's the guy who, with a bluff check and ten minutes of roleplay, can turn Harvey Dent into Two-Face.

But thematically? He uses the same tactics Batman Wizard does, just goes about it in different ways. He uses extensive information gathering on the Batman Wizard, just as the Batman Wizard makes extensive use of Scry n Die tactics. He exploits weaknesses in his opponents, just like Batman Wizard. The only difference is that the Joker Bard's whole lifetime goal is to make the Batman Wizard play his game.

Point taken. I think it was more that it would be nice to have a discussion about the concept in the original article, not a discussion about a concept build that happens to share the same name. Like, has anyone used the strategy in the article for building opponents? Or what would those opponents be like?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Point taken. I think it was more that it would be nice to have a discussion about the concept in the original article, not a discussion about a concept build that happens to share the same name. Like, has anyone used the strategy in the article for building opponents? Or what would those opponents be like?

Unfortunately, due to threadlock, it's not really possible to include it in the original article.

[WarKitty]

Unfortunately, due to threadlock, it's not really possible to include it in the original article.

Wasn't talking about including things in the original article? I meant I wanted to discuss the article linked in the OP, not the other article that shares its name. Don't want to lose a promising topic to threadjack. Particularly since the original article looks a lot more useful to those of us who don't have particularly high-optimization groups than the Joker Bard build, which would just plain kill my group.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Wasn't talking about including things in the original article? I meant I wanted to discuss the article linked in the OP, not the other article that shares its name. Don't want to lose a promising topic to threadjack.

Ahh. Sorry, my mistake. I thought you wanted me to incorporate the concepts from the article into the concept post which was promptly linked

[Drakevarg]

Well as a (probably futile) attempt to move things back in the proper direction, I've sadly never had a chance to do something of the sort.

Mainly because my players can rarely be bothered to come up with characters deep enough to create a foil for.

[Fizban]

Good blog article. The first half seemed like pretty obvious stuff, but the second half had some good practical advice to it.

[The Glyphstone]

Well as a (probably futile) attempt to move things back in the proper direction, I've sadly never had a chance to do something of the sort.

Mainly because my players can rarely be bothered to come up with characters deep enough to create a foil for.

Don't your players die so frequently that any foil you made for them would be wasted effort anyways?

[Drakevarg]

Don't your players die so frequently that any foil you made for them would be wasted effort anyways?

Not all of them. Some of 'em have only died twice. One hasn't died at all.

And the cliff thing wasn't my fault.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

As another example of the joker antagonist formula, consider Drizzt vs Artemis

Okay, so it went asymptotic after a while, but the concept is there... 'this is what could have been you, if you had let it'.

The key, I think, to making a true foil is to look at the potential of the character, see where it could have gone horribly wrong, then use that as a concept.

Edit: Another example would be from Dominic Deegan. Specifically, the event which shaped the three Deegan boys...

One sought to never be surprised again, so he became a seer

One sought to oppose undead, so he learned white magic

One was so fascinated by it that he became a necromancer himself

Take a scenario, see where you can see where a different perspective becomes a really interesting villain, and run with the concept.

[WarKitty]

Hmmm...one of my players had ambitions to become a blackguard. Then he got married in-game to another PC who was NG and gave up his ambitions. I had been trying to think up an individual test for each player. Perhaps I shall do this.

[Xyk]

I've been DMing a game lately (trying to stay on track). It's probably too comedic to use the joker villain effectively. I'll use my plot as examples though, and see if I can flesh out the theory.

The party is composed of a ridiculously strong, inappropriate Half-orc fighter/barbarian, an indestructable and horny Dwarf Barbarian (who really wants to tame an animal), a heroic and charismatic Half-elf Paladin, and an Elf Sorcerer/rogue who likes to plan things out.

The quest is to claim five divine sceptres before a rival party does. Unbeknownst to my party, they will be betrayed by the organization that told them about the quest, and the rivals are really the good guys.

Using the exaggerate, complicate, and conflict technique, I tailor-made the rivals. There is a near saintly VoP monk to make the paladin unwilling to fight the rivals and question his side of the conflict (CONFLICT), an even stronger Orc barbarian to humiliate the half-orc and that is such a significant physical threat that the party may have to abandon their usual "kill the opponents" technique (EXAGGERATE AND COMPLICATE), an attractive and deadly chaotic neutral female rogue that will be tough for the horny dwarf to want to kill but will kill any of the others without hesitation (CONFLICT), and a beastmaster druid who has abilities that the dwarf wants and the ability to come at things from multiple angles to thwart the usual tactic of "disable the enemy and then hit them" that the sorcerer has been developing(COMPLICATE).

I hope that helps. It is hard to do, and I'm significantly more impressed with DC comics after reading that article.

[Totally Guy]

Quite a shame we have an immediate threadjack, really.
Imma let you finish, but...

I would have liked to see more examples on the link, actually. Have you tried this out in your own games yet, Glug?

Yeah, isn't that just the case? Anyway, Ponies and Psyren are now on my ignore list. This community consistently reminds me how terrible it is and I'm not going to take it any more.

I've not tried it yet but I'll be trying it in my new game, we're 2 sessions in and the big bad has not made her first appearance yet. Hey, the article is only a few days old.

[Popertop]

I really like it.
I'll definitely try this someday.
Hopefully I'll get to DM against some deep characters.

I've always thought the Joker was really interesting.

[Britter]

I am definitely going to steal this for an upcoming superhero game I am going to run IRL. I am a big fan of anything that can be used to attack a players Beliefs, and force them to have to make hard decisions. I see this as a very applicable tool for designing Burning Wheel antagonists.

[Morithias]

Anyone looking for a very nice way to screw over a wizard is to check the Ravenloft book "Legacy of the Blood"

In chapter seven there is a feat that allows you to make mundane version of magical items. "Create Device".

So...

DM: "He has an anti-magic field around him, clearly it's being put out by some kind of device."
Batman: *yawns* "Disjunction"
DM: "It does nothing to the field or the device, it's being created via a mundane mean."
Batman: "What...but...how?!?"
Joker: "With SCIENCE of course!"

They say any advanced science cannot be told from magic. So which wins? The advanced and truly earned science, or the magic earned by copying a bunch of what people already wrote down.

Magic versus technology the ultimate showdown.

[Amphetryon]

Don't your players die so frequently that any foil you made for them would be wasted effort anyways?

I hope none of his players have died. These are his friends!

[OMG PONIES]

I apologize that linking to what I thought was a relevant and similar thread is considered a threadjack. I'm saddened to see that one unintentional misstep gets me on someone's ignore list.

In regards to the OP, I agree with a previous poster who mentioned that characters often lack the depth to develop a complex foil. However, taking simple notes on how your players RP can help. Identify a persistent trait, and explore both its opposite and its extreme embodiment. Either way, you can develop a striking villain from something as small as a single quality.

[Claudius Maximus]

Ponies and Psyren are now on my ignore list. This community consistently reminds me how terrible it is and I'm not going to take it any more.

Really? I don't think either of them did anything in bad faith.

And why would you stick around in a "terrible" community for four years?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I apologize that linking to what I thought was a relevant and similar thread is considered a threadjack. I'm saddened to see that one unintentional misstep gets me on someone's ignore list.

In regards to the OP, I agree with a previous poster who mentioned that characters often lack the depth to develop a complex foil. However, taking simple notes on how your players RP can help. Identify a persistent trait, and explore both its opposite and its extreme embodiment. Either way, you can develop a striking villain from something as small as a single quality.

Nah, it was relevant to the discussion, as many of the points which were made in the article, I had made quite some time ago in the thread. As was pointed out, there was a lot of theorycrafting and conceptualization behind the build in the thread, if you care to read the whole bloiting thing, which makes much the same point, if in a more roundabout and less clearly defined manner, as the blog. Or rather, it takes the concepts which the blog defines, and applies it to a particular archetype to generate an antagonist foil for that archetype. So it could, at the very least, be considered an example of the blog in question.

Honestly, there's really no point in saying 'x is on my ignore list' other than to be obnoxious about it. I'm fairly certain I'm on several individual's ignore lists, and there are several individuals who are on mine. Do I care whose ignore list I'm on? Not really. Do I care what people on my ignore list think about being there? Not in the least.

tl;dr: don't sweat it, kid. being told that you are being put on someone's ignore list only means you are pissing off the right ones anyways. The older members generally just put you on ignore and go on with their lives.

[Claudius Maximus]

I'd actually be pretty bothered to learn I was on someone's list. It would mean I made a really bad impression on someone, which I would see as a big failure on my part since I almost always post with the intention of contributing in a meaningful and helpful fashion.

Ignoring someone is to conclude that they will never post something you'll want to read ever again, to put them so beneath you that you'll never have to be exposed to their thoughts again, and to me that seems a bit excessive to do to someone because they, at worst, mistakenly linked to something that had almost the same name as your thread's subject.