Designing Villains Pt. 3

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

I've been diligently reading the 'designing villains' articles over at the WoTC headquarters of late; parts one and two, particularly, were loverly and good stuff all around, and their author is the loverly guy who produced the excellent 'Adventure Builder' series- which has been, I'm not ashamed to admit, a great help to me as a designer of adventurers and a putative DM.

This newest article, though...doesn't ring true to me.

I'm in agreement that villains need minions; a lone threat is either invincible (and thus pointless) or quickly dead (and thus pointless) from a player's point of view. So, okay, got me there.

Where I start having qualms is the 'minions as scenery' section. Yes, it's good to have explicit minions be easily identifiable...but to be so generic you can be described as 'scenery'? Absolutely not.
I prefer my minions with some degree of flavor- an unusual feat choice, an exotic weapon, even just a nasty scar or missing finger.
They aren't 'scenery' if you have to fight them, and especially at low levels, virtually any fight is a threat.

The advice on weakspots and traitors, okay, can dig.
Alarms, definitely, and I see this ignored a lot- the orcs gaurding the dungeon door aren't going to go for their swords and try and take down the adventurers when they spot them, they're going to blow the horn of summoning a lot of other orcs.

The sections on unlikely minions are good stuff, if nothing your more evil DMs didn't know already; forcing a moral dilemma is part of why your players will beat you with mountain dew bottles, yes, but it's also fun.

Minions as fall guys...is okay, up to a point, but if you use these kinds of tactics too often, combat stops feeling like a threat, and that's something I really like to avoid.

I think either I'm talking about a different kind of 'Minion' than the author is (perhaps the "henchmen and minor officers" to which he refers) or we have fundamentally different ideas about them...in my view, even the monsters the players can easily defeat should still be monsters; scary creatures in the service of an evil cause, not bumbling incompetants who trip over their evil pointy shoes- this is fun every once in a while, but as a key component of a campaign-level evil organization, it's not very believable or good.

That's my opinion; what do you guys think?

[Dervag]

Right.

This article seems to be derived from the videogame mindset in which the hero batters their way an endless succession of identical 'guards' who mindlessly obey orders and never think for themselves. Villains are supposed to be sneaky and underhanded, but on the other hand when they actually attack someone they apparently prefer to do it with a horde of brainless low-level mooks.

I don't think this fellow really gave his concept of villainy much thought.

[Attilargh]

Shiny: I think you and the author have different ideas of minions. The author seems to use it to describe Mook, the 1st Level Goblin (aka Joe the Stormtrooper), while you're thinking Hench Man, the Villain's Right Hand.

Dervag: What's wrong with hordes of low-level mooks? After all, one can only encounter a limited number of Fleshed-Out Henchmen With Exotic Features before they start to undermine the BBEG. Mooks are not villains, they are tools. You wouldn't use a hammer that tried to run away every time you used a bit excessive force to nail something (For long, anyway.), so why employ mooks with brains?

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Shiny: I think you and the author have different ideas of minions. The author seems to use it to describe Mook, the 1st Level Goblin (aka Joe the Stormtrooper), while you're thinking Hench Man, the Villain's Right Hand.

Dervag: What's wrong with hordes of low-level mooks? After all, one can only encounter a limited number of Fleshed-Out Henchmen With Exotic Features before they start to undermine the BBEG. Mooks are not villains, they are tools. You wouldn't use a hammer that tried to run away every time you used a bit excessive force to nail something (For long, anyway.), so why employ mooks with brains?

Mayhap that's true.
Of course, I do have a problem with the mook concept itself, because it presents a logical fault: if the henchpersons/minions of the evil organization/villain are so incompetant, how did they get where they are today? Aren't there any other adventurers around who would have killed these bamillion goblins afore now?

I see fleshed-out minions as part of the proper challenge of a DM; no matter how cool or scary they are, their master must be even scarier- a fact that can make your players positively (and happily) terrified. A villain who only has to be cooler than Joe Stormtrooper doesn't have to be very cool at all- so making lesser villains, henchmen, and yes, mooks more 'cool' is my way of motivating myself to create truly awesome villains.

The problem with brainless mooks is twofold; first, that they'll screw up your plans (which the players want, yes, but the villain doesn't) and two, they're just not very reliable. There's a place for the brainless, but not much of one.
Consider which a villain would rather have: an army of brainless goblins, little more than cannon fodder, only as loyal as the gold he pays them....or, a cadre of bugbears sworn to the same dark deity as he, supporting his plans with all the tactical savvy and raw ferocity they possess?

Non-intelligent or very unstable villains (orc chieftains, giant jarls, animals, mad cultists) may employ brainless mooks frequently, but they're hardly the 'gold standard' for villainous henchpersons.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Mooks aren't just cheap and plentiful, they're actually highly effective in stories- except against the protagonists. Think about it. Everyone else is terrorized and overrun by the mooks. It's just those blasted parties of heroes that slice through them like wet tissue.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Mooks aren't just cheap and plentiful, they're actually highly effective in stories- except against the protagonists. Think about it. Everyone else is terrorized and overrun by the mooks. It's just those blasted parties of heroes that slice through them like wet tissue.

True, but, although adventurers are comparatively rare, they do exist; unless the villain is working somewhere way out of the way or otherwise unimportant, shouldn't a couple of first-level fighters have come through town by now?

[Viscount Einstrauss]

That's what the henchmen are for. They seek out the bigger problems for the villain and wipe them out early. Henchmen aren't nearly so plentiful or cheap, so they'd be wasted if deployed like the mooks.

[Fhaolan]

Yeah, mooks are servants, gofers, filler, to terrorize the commoners with their interchangable oppressive evilness. Henches are needed to deal with adventurer-types. That's why villages in the shadow of the BBEG tend to have either no PC class-characters left that aren't Henches; the Henches have already passed through and sterilized the area.

[Attilargh]

Of course, I do have a problem with the mook concept itself, because it presents a logical fault: if the henchpersons/minions of the evil organization/villain are so incompetant, how did they get where they are today? Aren't there any other adventurers around who would have killed these bamillion goblins afore now?

1st level warrior is hardly incompetent, it's usually the standard. (Low as it might be.) After all, if the city guards are mostly 1st level, how come no-one's taken over yet?

I see fleshed-out minions as part of the proper challenge of a DM; no matter how cool or scary they are, their master must be even scarier- a fact that can make your players positively (and happily) terrified.

That's a good point. Good thing I'm not a GM, as I have a tendency for taking the easy way out.

The problem with brainless mooks is twofold; first, that they'll screw up your plans (which the players want, yes, but the villain doesn't) and two, they're just not very reliable.

Actually, they are very reliable. You just have to rely on their incompetence. That's why you have backup plans from B to K, right?

Smart minions are unreliable, as well. You always have to watch out for any of them developing ambition, lest they attempt to usurp you, at the very least providing a possibly fatal distraction. And if they're utterly devoted to you, how much of a brain does that show? You're a honkin' Evil Overlord out to conquer the world and probably file your minions under "resources, expendable"!

[belboz]

Yeah, I'm kind of torn here, myself.

Level 1 goblin warriors can, indeed, be very effective against the right sort of opponents. Since over 99% of the population is 5th level or lower, a sizeable number of 1st-level goblins can easily overwhelm most small groups.

On the other hand, the less colorless monsters the adventurers fight, the better from a storytelling perspective, IMO. Low-level adventures shouldn't be against identical groups of nameless 1st-level goblins; they should be against distinct groups of named 1st-level goblins, with their own entertaining habits and quirks, whenever possible. Obviously, if your characters are going to encounter 75 individuals over the course of a single adventure, most of the characterizations are going to have to be pretty *broad*, but as much as you can put in is to the good, I think.

[Mewtarthio]

I see fleshed-out minions as part of the proper challenge of a DM; no matter how cool or scary they are, their master must be even scarier- a fact that can make your players positively (and happily) terrified. A villain who only has to be cooler than Joe Stormtrooper doesn't have to be very cool at all- so making lesser villains, henchmen, and yes, mooks more 'cool' is my way of motivating myself to create truly awesome villains.

Here's the thing, though: Mooks generally just look scary. To return to the Star Wars analogy, the Stormtroopers have an identifiable design but get mowed down quickly by the heroes. Nobody wants to waste any more coolness on a Stormtrooper than is strictly necessary to show that everyone else is afraid of them. Having a cool henchman, on the other hand, is quite useful: You know that Palpatine has to be pretty powerful if he's got Darth Vader as his errand boy (of course, in ANH, Leia described Tarkin as "holding Vader's leash," and Vader was subserviant to the Grand Moff, but that seems to have been retconned out of existence).

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Viscount; true enough. Point to you.
However, you're assuming the BBEG and his henchmen have the necessary resources to identify all powerful people of any kind within a 100-mile radius. Maybe.

Fhaolan; this assumes that the area in which the Villain operates is predominantly evil; 'mooks' or 'minions' of the sort under discussion are flagrantly inappropriate choices for a villain who has to operate in a predominantly good environment (or otherwise be subtle).

Atillargh; most likely because there's so many of them, and they constitute lawful authority- and because, after all, player characters and villains are equally rare.
The easy way out is for players to frustrate you with.

In the matter of smart minions, you're ignoring one thing: not all villains consider their 'minions' or hench-persons expendable.
Let's go back to our previous example, of the goblin 'mooks' and the intelligent bugbear cadre.
Now, let's assume that in the former case, because they're faceless, the villain does consider the goblins expendable- he throw them away like stale candy corn. The heroes kill them, and the villain loses. Boo hoo for captain evil or pontiff korruptus.
However, let's consider the case of the dedicated Bugbear Cadre. Here, the Villain and his Minions are both sworn to the same evil deity- let's say Hextor, for purposes of argument. The Bugbears aren't faceless minions, they're a mercenary company who, after winning much success in the field, have joined the villain's side for the promise of reward- and the greater glory of the black hand of their mutual god.
In this case, the Villain almost certainly considers the Bugbears somewhat valuable- they share his cause, and likely they've shared a good torture session or two in their time. He'll support them with healing magic, plans, and equipment, and in return, these 'minions' are far more likely than not to provide him with good service; if the villain's plan is of particular importance to the faith, the more devout among their number may even sacrifice themselves for the cause!
More intelligent minions present a risk, yes, but if goals are compatible, sometimes even evil creatures work together- a fact worth noting.
Now, knowing that, let's say you're an intelligent Villain: which of the two options do you choose?

Belboz, that's pretty much what I'm sayin'. ^^;

Mewthario- I'm not necessarily saying that Minions/Mooks actually have to be scary in the sense of actually being a danger to the players.
However, I do think they have to feel scary; even if they know they can most likely cut them down in one or two rounds, a group of goblinoids wielding weapons spattered with dried blood, each sporting a ritual scar in a different spot, etc. is better than just a bunch of goblins with the same tabard.

The Stormtroopers, to me, didn't even look scary; they weren't anything but comical penguin-troopers. They're ducks on a shooting range, minor obstacles. Yes, they have blasters, and numbers. That's pretty much all.
In the D&D world, the people that matter have blasters too, and numbers matter a lot less; if you want them to be invested in your world, and if you want them to think the minions even look scary, they'd better have some degree of effort. They have to at least look scary, as you say- and to do that in the context of D&D, they have to be more than faceless mooks.

[jjpickar]

Well I don't know about y'all but I like my villains in this hierarchy:

Head Villain: The big meany himself. Complete with escape plan and powerful equipment (that the PCs might steal )

Henchman: The big cheese's right hand man. Most likely he's not trusted so much as compelled to be honest (the boss may have custody f his soul/loved one/phylactery what have you). He is pretty tough but not strong enough to oppose the boss (not yet anyway).

Grunts: Everybody else. Some may be stronger than others and some may even be henchmen to the henchman sometimes entire evil organizations (I'm looking at you vampires) are just a network of henchmen. Yet anyone in the grunt category is basically cannon fodder and sacrificed without a care. After all, a little necromancy can replace them easily enough.

[TheOOB]

I've always put minions into four groups

Mooks/Grunts: These are the faceless hoards who assert the villans will and subdue the normal folk who would oppose their master. They are weak, easy to stat out on the fly(no annoying abilities), usually with simple stratagies and tactics, and are cannon fodder for adventurers. While all villans need minions, not all villans use mooks

Henchmen: These have more complex abilities, and acually pose a threat to the adventurers. They usually lead minions or handle problums that can't be solved my a mass of weaklings. Still, henchmen are faceless minions and don't have anything too hard to work out on the fly.

Officiers: These are the villans elite servants, and are uniquely stated, often with PC levels. They run most of the elaborate plots agienst the PCs, and serve as legitimatly deadly challenges. While their fate is still to be defeated alongside the rest of the minions, they will have at least some role-play value

Generals: These are fully stated minions who are close to the evil masterminds level of power. They have their own backstories and agendas, and canbe considered a villan in their own right.

[LoopyZebra]

Honestly, I didn't see what was so bad with the Designing advice. And, Shiny, most of his advice could still be applied to your Bugbear example. He didn't really imply anywhere that different groups of minions should act as a giant, colorless, uninteresting blob. The 'scenery' title seemed to argue against that, but it was just that: a title. There will be large groups to be affected by AoE spells and there may be some sort of distinguishing mark on all of them. While what you've said is true and correct, I don't see how his stuff conflicts with yours.

[Dervag]

Dervag: What's wrong with hordes of low-level mooks? After all, one can only encounter a limited number of Fleshed-Out Henchmen With Exotic Features before they start to undermine the BBEG. Mooks are not villains, they are tools. You wouldn't use a hammer that tried to run away every time you used a bit excessive force to nail something (For long, anyway.), so why employ mooks with brains?

Because they last longer and do more damage to the enemy, that's why.

Again, the problem is that a villain with an infinite army of expendable, brainless mooks that will all cheerfully throw themselves in front of their master to take a lethal hit becomes dull. The individual mooks don't have to be unique, but they should be intelligent enough to present memorable, if noncritical, challenges.

Mooks aren't just cheap and plentiful, they're actually highly effective in stories- except against the protagonists. Think about it. Everyone else is terrorized and overrun by the mooks. It's just those blasted parties of heroes that slice through them like wet tissue.

That tends to strain credulity. Unless the PCs are extremely high level, mooks that they can handle easily should be something that NPCs can counter. If the mooks aren't using some kind of intelligence, then it's hard to justify making them a threat to their surroundings. Even NPCs will oppose the mooks if the mooks attack their homeland or threaten their neighbors, and if the mooks aren't smart enough or individually tough enough to win against large NPC forces, then they aren't going to last very long.

Smart minions are unreliable, as well. You always have to watch out for any of them developing ambition, lest they attempt to usurp you, at the very least providing a possibly fatal distraction. And if they're utterly devoted to you, how much of a brain does that show? You're a honkin' Evil Overlord out to conquer the world and probably file your minions under "resources, expendable"!

First of all, many smart people are loyal to their organization. You don't always have to choose between competence and loyalty, even if that's the stereotype in fiction. There can be incompetent but treacherous underlings, and there can be competent and loyal subordinates who give good service to the BBEG for many years.

The problem is that if you're the only person in your empire who can think, your empire won't last and won't grow. It's hard to imagine such a thing surviving for very long unless it has competent officers to manage things.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Honestly, I didn't see what was so bad with the Designing advice. And, Shiny, most of his advice could still be applied to your Bugbear example. He didn't really imply anywhere that different groups of minions should act as a giant, colorless, uninteresting blob. The 'scenery' title seemed to argue against that, but it was just that: a title. There will be large groups to be affected by AoE spells and there may be some sort of distinguishing mark on all of them. While what you've said is true and correct, I don't see how his stuff conflicts with yours.

Yeah...I suppose I may have over-reacted.
In all honesty, I'm a bit emotionally invested here, since I absolutely loved the Adventure Builder series, and even parts 1 & 2 of this one; so when this one seemed to be contradicting my ingrained 'villain design philosophies', I got that whole 'wait, wait, Elminster's wrong' feeling.

It's decent advice; I just think it's incomplete.

Dervag, I'm in agreement.

[Ranis]

Minions as scenery definitely qualify when a city is ransacked by a very powerful orc warlord (for example). There's just too many to fight by yourself, so they become the 'background' of whatever it is that you are fighting, say, the Warlord himself.

With that, I do agree with you on everything else about the article.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Minions as scenery definitely qualify when a city is ransacked by a very powerful orc warlord (for example). There's just too many to fight by yourself, so they become the 'background' of whatever it is that you are fighting, say, the Warlord himself.

With that, I do agree with you on everything else about the article.

Well, yes; obviously, if they actually are in the background, not being fought, they're scenery. x_x;

Also, read yer PM's, buddy ol' pal.

[SMDVogrin]

Does anyone else find it somewhat ironic to be discussing "intelligent minions" here on the OOTS site?

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0192.html
"Sacrificing Minions: is there any problem it can't solve?"

:)

[Lemur]

Intelligent mooks are a bad thing. They are not more reliable than stupid mooks, rather, much less so.

"Wow, these guys are slaughtering us."

Stupid Mook: "Keep attacking!"

Smart Mook: "Screw this, I'm out of here."

Smart Mooks will realize that they are weak and expendable, and thus promptly quit. The reason mooks are stupid is because only idiots would do the jobs they're required to do.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Intelligent mooks are a bad thing. They are not more reliable than stupid mooks, rather, much less so.

"Wow, these guys are slaughtering us."

Stupid Mook: "Keep attacking!"

Smart Mook: "Screw this, I'm out of here."

Smart Mooks will realize that they are weak and expendable, and thus promptly quit. The reason mooks are stupid is because only idiots would do the jobs they're required to do.

If you need Stupid Mooks TM then you have a Stupid Plan (C) Xykoncorp 2006
As we've been discussing, Mooks, while easy fodder for the player characters, are stronger than the townspeople. So they're not immediately going to run, even if they're outclassed. Also, more likely:

Stupid Mook: "Keep attacking!"
Smart Mook: "Eh, screw this, I guess. Wait, wait, aren't we getting paid?"

Now consider:
Smart Mook v 2.0: "We're getting creamed; fall back and go to crossbows!"

Even weak opponents, if they're smart enough, are capable of being a threat- so if you're smart, you're no longer as weak or expendable. Surprise!

At any rate, I think this dead horse has had enough beating.

[Matthew]

This sounds a lot like the calibration discussion from a few weeks back. Minions are 'level appropriate' and that's about it. There's nothing stopping an individual Storm Trooper being a level 1-5 Warrior (or whatever). The majority in the Universe may be Level 1, but the majority the Player Characters encounter may be somewhat higher.

A lot of people seem to consider Level 1 totally worthless, below contempt and, frankly, incompetent. I am not a subscriber to this view, but then most of my games play out at fairly low levels.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

This sounds a lot like the calibration discussion from a few weeks back. Minions are 'level appropriate' and that's about it. There's nothing stopping an individual Storm Trooper being a level 1-5 Warrior (or whatever). The majority in the Universe may be Level 1, but the majority the Player Characters encounter may be somewhat higher.

A lot of people seem to consider Level 1 totally worthless, below contempt and, frankly, incompetent. I am not a subscriber to this view, but then most of my games play out at fairly low levels.

Level one opponents are far from worthless, assuming you're level one yourself, of course.
My point was more concerned with the fact that opponents should very seldom appear worthless or easy to defeat no matter the level, or there's no fun, for me at least.

[LoopyZebra]

Level one opponents are far from worthless, assuming you're level one yourself, of course.
My point was more concerned with the fact that opponents should very seldom appear worthless or easy to defeat no matter the level, or there's no fun, for me at least.

Opponents, yes, but are all of a villain's underlings meant to be fought by the party? What about the chef? The armorsmith? The janitor? Some of his underlings would not be a challenge combat wise. The common soldier would not be a "opponent" to a high-level party, persay. They'd probably fill the debated role of "Scenery". It's likely that someone will be worthless when it comes to fighting the PCs.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

Opponents, yes, but are all of a villain's underlings meant to be fought by the party? What about the chef? The armorsmith? The janitor? Some of his underlings would not be a challenge combat wise. The common soldier would not be a "opponent" to a high-level party, persay. They'd probably fill the debated role of "Scenery". It's likely that someone will be worthless when it comes to fighting the PCs.

True, but the Chef et. al. are 'hirelings' rather than minions- they 'just work there', rather than being complicit in the villain's scheme (and thus party opponents).

[LoopyZebra]

Ever play Diablo I? That wasn't exactly a "hireling". :)

I guess my point was that as the party increases in level, the average guy in the villain's army (or cult, group, etc.) will have less and less of challenge. Eventually, there will reach a point where the average guy will become a "Red Shirt", unnamed cannon fodder whose sole purpose in the story is to die (borrowing from an earlier metaphor, the Stormtroopers). That's when the party fights something more troublesome than your average minion (Like an AT or Vader, perhaps). So, these "minions" will eventually no longer be a challenge. There will be a time when the Stormtroopers are virtually useless against the party.

Should they be fighting Stormtroopers at high-levels? No. But that doesn't mean that Stromtroopers have disappeared from the galaxy. They're still there, and they are very useless.

[Matthew]

I would say they are still there and still far from useless...

[Grr]

I'm actually designing a simple RPG where there are different qualities of enemies to face. Extras are just that. They're scenery you use to bring the scene to life. Nameless peasants, hordes of goblins, etc. Just like in the article. They die or go unconscious in one hit, regardless of how much actual damage was done. Above them are the Minions, that take a few more hits, but any spellcaster or skilled melee combatant will be able to take them out in one or two exchanges.

The reason I run my games this way, regardless of the rules used, is that I run them online and don't want to bog down games with long, meaningless combat. Sometimes I just want the players to tear through things and other times, when it's important, they have to work to defeat their foe.

It leaves more time for roleplaying.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

You can roleplay during combat, y'know.

I understand your point, Zebra, and in fact I agree; at a certain point, the PCs are likely to see stormtroopers running away and Red-masked Imperial Gaurd taking their place, force pikes at the ready.

When minions are no longer a challenge, relegate them to the background 90% of the time- that's my policy. I don't like no-danger combats, and that's what mookish minions provide. I don't see a point to bothering with 'scenery' minions as far as combat goes, though they can certainly act as more or less literal scenery.