Showing A BBEG's Kind, Softer Side

[Leliel]

Firstly, I would like to come clean: This thread isn't actually asking for help doing this, but rather one where the responders can throw ideas around about how to do this.

That being said, I would like to know how your villains would pet the dog, so to speak.

My example is from my (yet unstarted) 4E campaign, where one of the BBEGs owns a Siamese tabby, Ellie. That may sound like stereotypical villain fare, but for him, it's less about a symbolic metaphor of a vain nature and more about owning a pet that depends on him, makes him feel altruistic. Well, that, and he ranks with the best of 'em, so he's more likely to have a pet that personifies that independent and trickster streak. He's also a werefox, so his subconscious seeks another solitary predator to be with.

[valadil]

I've always been a big fan of turning an ally into an enemy. It gives the PCs a chance to see the human side early on. And betraying the group is a wonderful way for a BBEG to personally earn their hatred instead of just being that guy who is going to take over the universe.

My favorite of these that I've ran was a halfling paladin. He was a member of an all halfling party. He saved the PCs on numerous occasions (I don't usually like saving PCs with NPCs, but showing them that this guy was powerful was useful for when they went against him). Eventually he couldn't take the racism against halfings, fell from grace, and became a blackguard and the end boss of the game.

[Cuddly]

Give him a cat.

[Cuddly]

OP: How would you show the villain's softer side? (question)
Me: I would give him a cat (response).

[Solo]

As detailed in the second line of the first post, the villain already has a cat.

[TheCountAlucard]

This thread isn't actually asking for help doing this, but rather one where the responders can throw ideas around about how to do this.

Emphasis mine. While Cuddly said something that had already been said, there's no need to harass him about it when he was contributing to the thread in the way that the OP had asked.

Somebody set you up the bomb!

That's pretty rude.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Hmm. While the cat is good, it's not NEARLY enough. A cat is not something that will be a living testament to the good side of the villain, and gettin' the cat BECAUSE he wants to look altruistic is terribly dehumanizing. No, what you need is loved ones, people who will hate the PC's for taking a kind man/woman whom they loved from them. THAT'S what you have to aim for.

[Solo]

Hmm. While the cat is good, it's not NEARLY enough. A cat is not something that will be a living testament to the good side of the villain, and gettin' the cat BECAUSE he wants to look altruistic is terribly dehumanizing. No, what you need is loved ones, people who will hate the PC's for taking a kind man/woman whom they loved from them. THAT'S what you have to aim for.

Maybe a loved one that has been Baleful Polymorphed into a cat?

[mostlyharmful]

Make him a Philanthropist in his local city, plenty of people in the world today that I can only charactirze as Evil with big honking horns give money and time to charity, walk around talking about their charitable works and try to sell others on dedicating time and effort to noble cause X. All while profitting from horrendous things, perpetrating crimes against humanity and possibly eating small cute puppies. Have the PCs walk in on him talking to the local priest of Pelor or volunteering in an after-school club.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Maybe a loved one that has been Baleful Polymorphed into a cat?

Yeah, that could work. If you have him invest a lot of his time and money, react really violently, and the like, it would work out fine.

[Cuddly]

Hmm. While the cat is good, it's not NEARLY enough. A cat is not something that will be a living testament to the good side of the villain, and gettin' the cat BECAUSE he wants to look altruistic is terribly dehumanizing. No, what you need is loved ones, people who will hate the PC's for taking a kind man/woman whom they loved from them. THAT'S what you have to aim for.

Ah, two cats then.

[Leliel]

Have the PCs walk in on him talking to the local priest of Pelor or volunteering in an after-school club.

That latter one I can see, but not the first. He...has issues with the clergy of Pelor.

And yes, he has a loved one, albeit one who serves as one of his cheif minions and has an equal amount of hate for him.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Two cats would be swell.

But only if Leliel eliminates the "look altruistic" part. Nobody cares if the guy is Gandhi + Marting Luther King, that's so dehumanizing the players are going to pee on the corpse.

[Calemyr]

Well, the game I'm in almost had a pet the dog moment that is probably going to turn into something resembling irony.

Our party of level 3 trouble makers are trying to find the source of a local drug that suffers from violent (and animalistic) withdrawal symptoms. The party tracks them down to a camp a day and a half away and procede to sneak in under cover of night, wipe out the guards silently, and free the slaves used to make the drug. On our way out we manage to catch the drug lord and his girl friend out on a stroll. Before they even have a moment to react, our burly fighter forces the drug lord to the ground and beats him into unconsciousness and our mage reduces the girlfriend's health to 1 with a single well rolled spell. We captured them and took them in for trial while their camp burned.

The "ironic" part of this is that the DM tells me that if we'd looked a little harder we would have found the girlfriend's journal that suggests that she was pregnant and the drug lord had agreed only that morning to quit the business. Kinda takes a little wind from your sails to learn that and be reminded that the enemy is more than a faceless evil. Now there's a pretty good chance they're going to become our mortal enemies instead.

[Tola]

Me, I'd make him him....oh, a noted healer/doctor or something. You hear about how great he is. Maybe about that time you hear about some killings. Incredibly precise, killed with barely a mark, or any sign of WHAT did him in; the sort of thing only a master assassin or something could pull off. Then there's the VIOLENT killings that start turning up. Very gruesome, very bloody-it's as if the body turned on itself, or the nature of the body showed they died VERY slowly, with maximum pain.

....It's the same person talked about in all cases.

The guy still travels, healing the sick and what not, but he also kills to serve his purposes, and those purposes aren't sweetness and light. He's not doing the healing as cover: he genuinely wants to help people.

Doctors/healers are....worrying opponents. All that knowledge of the body, toxins, etc. is of great use when needing to kill and torture....

....I realise it's a disjointed idea; that's why I don't write.

[Koji]

MY BBEG is actually doing something that would help the whole world. It just happens to go against the personal interests of the player characters.

[Hectonkhyres]

Maybe a loved one that has been Baleful Polymorphed into a cat?

By him or someone else? It makes a difference. It really does.

Give the guy family that he honestly cares about; a kindergarten-aged daughter preferably. I would rather he have an old, senile hunting dog rather than a cat. The thing is stiff and gray and shakes... but he still takes it everywhere with him and cuts it scraps from his own food.

[Mewtarthio]

MY BBEG is actually doing something that would help the whole world. It just happens to go against the personal interests of the player characters.

Well, obviously it's easier to make a sympathetic villain when the PCs are Evil.

[Hectonkhyres]

Well, obviously it's easier to make a sympathetic villain when the PCs are Evil.

The PCs don't necessarily have to be evil. Different groups have different priorities and visions of how-the-world-is-supposed-to-be. One person extols the virtues of a world united under one government, another is willing to die for freedom however flawed. Who is right?

Nothing wrong with that sort of campaign.

[FlyMolo]

Two Words: Common Enemy.

You're looking for a villain that's not big-e Evil, but just someone working against the PCs for basically creative differences, right?

Common Enemy works well for humanizing a BBEG.

[StoryKeeper]

No, what you need is loved ones, people who will hate the PC's for taking a kind man/woman whom they loved from them. THAT'S what you have to aim for.

If you really want to rub in the fact that this person genuinely cared about the BBEG, have them be a Paladin. If the loved one didn't know about the BBEG's evil activities, then for all he/she knows, you simply murdered him/her, and need to be brought to justice.

[Mewtarthio]

The PCs don't necessarily have to be evil. Different groups have different priorities and visions of how-the-world-is-supposed-to-be. One person extols the virtues of a world united under one government, another is willing to die for freedom however flawed. Who is right?

Nothing wrong with that sort of campaign.

Well, he did say "personal interests of the PCs." Granted, I suppose it could be something along the lines of "We need to sacrifice your wife to avert the apocalypse," but the "personal interests" line made me think the PCs had less-than-honorable motives.

[Tokiko Mima]

I agree the easiest way is to make the villians goals noble, but only if seen from a particular perspective. Perhaps the villian in question has seen a catastrope in the distant or not-so-distant future and is working to prevent it, regardless of the costs of innocent lives in the here and now.

The PC's of course only see the bloodshed (there should be LOTS of this), and don't care about the villains motives for causing it. As they fight the villians lower level henchmen, introduce them to some of the people that they are saving. Make those NPC's the very definition of pure and kind people who are polite and give out useful but cheap freebies (Players love NPC's who give out free stuff.)

Over the course of the campaign, the PC's will be drawn elsewhere to fight. Meanwhile the main villian comes backs and pleads with the good people you left behind, explaining his motives to them personally. Of course, then all those people that were previously on the PC's side are now turned to the villian's side, who conveniently won't be around explaining when the PC's return.

The good NPC's will now beg the PC's to stop fighting the villian, explaining that he is trying to save them. Now the PC's are in a dilemna: Save the people the villian is killing, or hope that the villagers didn't get bluffed into believing a villianous lie. Either way they'll likely end up fighting to the villian, unsure of what they'll do when they finally confront him.

Bonus points if the villian confronts the PC with their own hypocrisy: How many of his servants did they kill to achieve their own selfish ends?

Now that I write it out like this, it kinda sounds like the plot to Watchmen.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Evil Overloard Tip #(?): I will have a family. Preferably, I will have at least one daughter or granddaughter under the age of 5 around whenever I am in my throne room. When the hero bursts in hoping to fight to the death, I will ask him to explain to her why he has to kill grandpa. When he launches into a longwinded explanation of morality that goes way over her head, she pulls a lever and drops him into a crocodile pit. This serves 3 purposes. It's always good to spend time with the kids, it eliminates my enemy, and what child doesn't love crocodiles?

[Azerian Kelimon]

Corollary: I'll make sure my granddaughter murders her mother. Don't want her trying to usurp my power.

And then I'll take her out for ice cream.

[Jastermereel]

Give him a good PR agent.

<Story Time>
My PCs were sent to kill a dread necromancer that had been (allegedly) attacking a camp of Centaurs. I had my PCs walk in to the BBEG dressed in the cliche blackguard garb, wearing a small (green) baby on the front of his armor, and beating a man who was suspended from the ceiling like a pinata. By the time the vizier/diplomancer was done, the PCs were actually rather impressed with the BBEG who appeared to be running a halfway-house of sorts for reforming evil species. While the brigade of orcs and bugbears the PCs had mercilessly slaughtered had been trained in combat, they were having their skills put to more positive uses (including crudely made macaroni-framed cross-stitchings above the throne made of skulls reading "You can't spell slaughter without laughter" and "lair, sweet lair"). The baby and pinata-man were explained away as being part of the BBEG's minion-benefit package that included the daycare and chiropractic services.

The players came to assassinate him. They left praising him.

Of course, this meant that the time I spent developing a pair of high-level spell-casters, researching the homebrew Baby of Wonder, designing a library maze (later to be a burning library maze) and a cinematic final fight turned out to be a waste of time, but generating semi-plausible excuses to go with the high diplomacy/bluff rolls made me feel good about my English degree
</story time>

Again, get a good PR agent. He doesn't need to have a softer side. He simply needs to look like he has one.

P.S. That cat people keep suggesting could actually be an electricity weapon; After 3 rounds of petting the cat's static charge can deal 1d8 electrical damage on a touch attack. Commoner's beware!

[Nonah_Me]

Ozzymandias from the Watchmen. Model your BBEG on that guy.