Characters How Evil are your Campaigns' Villains!

[Knightfall]

I had a thought a few days ago. I can't remember why. I might have been watching a movie with a really nasty bad guy.

Anyway...

What I'm wondering is 'how Evil are your campaigns' villains?'

What's the worst thing a villain has done to defeat the PCs? Dirty tricks? Killed loved ones of the PCs?

What's the worst thing a villain has done just for the sake of being evil? Sacrificed innocents? Killed henchmen for fun?

Are all your NPC villains irredeemable? Or can the PCs save a villain from him/herself? What have the PCs done to redeem a villain? Did it work?

Cheers!

Knightfall

[Herremann the Wise]

I prefer my campaign villains to not be the uber evil types. Certain enemies will be as evil as sin can be, but the long term villain for me is more rounded than that pure evil level of predictability. If the bad guy has a "good" side, it makes for some really interesting challenges to throw at the PCs. In regards to what he/it will do to them: anything that makes the PCs want to hunt him down and rip his guts out is a good start.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

[Kamikaze Midget]

Currently, they mostly aren't entirely evil.

Though I am a fan of "gray" villains, often who do horrible things in pursuit of something good, so it's only a matter of time before someone burns down an orphanage to save the orphans from starvation or something.

[Dannyalcatraz]

It depends- mine run the gamut.

Some are evil with a capital EVIL, some are just mercenary. Some are just normal people in unfortunate circumstances...perhaps acting under duress.

In a supers campaign set in 1900, one supervillain henchman named Forge was a power armor goon. His suit was steam powered and was also equipped with twin flamethrowers. Another henchman, Legion, was essentially a trained commando type who could create multiples of himself.

Despite being a high-level hireling, Forge was so irredeemably evil that he actually used his flamethrowers on an opponent 2 of Legion's dupes were fighting...while they were actually grappling with the hero.

The lesson? Pyromaniacs in power armor suits don't play well with others.

[weem]

I like the idea that the "bad guy" is only the bad guy in some peoples eyes - and it's even better when the PC's are somewhat divided (as mine are now).

I have never had any truly evil, really really bad guys... so that may need to change in the future, hehe.

[fba827]

I generally do not have an inherently-bad BBEG, but rather he has his own view and perhaps takes it to an extreme.

However, his extremeism is what may cause the PCs to define the BBEG as "evil" but it still keeps it open enough that the BBEG could manage to get a few alliances on purpose rather than allignment. For instance, I can have a "good" temple ally with the BBEG because of the cause.

Another of the BBEG's alliance smay be with someone who is pure evil but they often make for very one-dimensional villians who make better stepping stones rather than the big boss themselves.

Having said that, if i'm trying to keep things "simple" for a particular campaign (say we just ended a plot-heavy one and we need a change of pace, or it's just a light-hearted pick up game) there might be a BBEG who is evil, plain and simple (complete with goatee and mustache to twirl). .

[Hand of Evil]

My soapbox, define evil in your games, because, not all antagonist are evil!

Had one (goblin the players had fought in their first session) that would leave body parts of victims where the players could find them, like a cat that brings dead mice to their onwers. It was normally, body parts of children.

Another was a powerful noble, the players could not touch, nor did they have the proof to bring him to justice, he knew them and they knew him having busted up a drug ring and slave market of his. After the parties latest success against him, he gave them a party as a job well done. After the party the players found out some of their contacts and friends had gone missing, later they were informed the missing friends were the dinner!

[Dannyalcatraz]

Y'know, for a guy whose online handle is "Hand of Evil," posting in a thread about evil villains, that post wasn't sufficiently evil.

Color me disappointed.

[jdrakeh]

Originally Posted by Knightfall

What's the worst thing a villain has done to defeat the PCs?

Rather than give a captured PC the obligatory chance to escape, the BBEG had them immediately brought before his throne, told them nothing, and murdered them in cold blood by shoving a sharp spike into their brain, through their ear drum (no save). It wasn't very sporting and the party whined about it, but the guy was evil. Whaddya want?

What's the worst thing a villain has done just for the sake of being evil?

I've had a villain who broke every bone in a prisoner's body with a small hammer, one bone at a time, using magic to keep them alive and in pain. I stole that from a novel, though, so it wasn't my own idea.

Are all your NPC villains irredeemable?

No. But PCs rarely try to save them.

[conanb]

I think it really depends on the players to determine how evil my villians are. Sometimes my players act pretty evil themselves, killing and intimidating people forcing them to tell them what they want to know etc. They act much more like the punisher than spiderman type of thing. In these cases I feel then that my villains really shouldn't be that evil. I sometimes think it makes a better story to show how the players have become more evil than the villains in their pursuit of justice. That at the end of the day through their own actions they may have defeated the man who attacked the village, but to do so they've become very dark men indeed.

Now other times having a really good villain who is unredeemable is interesting. But unless that villain is some demon then they must have a motivation that would make sense. Greed, Lust, Jealousy, etc. to explain why they do what they do. The true evil mad man genius should be exceedingly rare. The noble who wants to entrap the woman he lusts after using dark magic is much more common in my world. He may be a not so good man who's turned to not so good ways to get what he wants, but he is motivated by what he thinks is love.

[Nymrohd]

I don't believe there is irredeemable evil, I'd expect that given the right circumstances anyone mortal and almost any immortal can be redeemed. But I do have extremely evil characters, not in that they are monolithic evil people who identify themselves as such, but sadists, completely amoral tacticians, or immortals whose timescale makes the sacrifice of thousand if not much more seem as nothing are all over the place in my campaign. (I am rereading the Malazan book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson and it helps set up a very dark mood).

[Gilladian]

I rarely have evil NPCs that are even remotely human. My BBEG's are almost always monsters, maybe demons, maybe something else totally nonhuman. I just cannot play an evil human/humanoid/demihuman. Even as a DM, I'm so turned off by evil human acts, that I just don't like to do it.

My evil humans are almost always redeemable, or are killed quickly enough that nobody has to see them commit evil acts "on camera". I'll just sort of mention that they're "really nasty" and my PCs are willing to take it as a given.

I once had an NPC torture somebody, and my players were shocked. They just didn't expect it at all. But it was in the module, so I did it. But I was really annoyed that I hadn't found a way around it in my pre-planning.

Maybe this makes me a Bad DM, but I think nasty monsters are enough evil in the world...

[weem]

I tend to imagine that truly super evil people/creatures are tools more often than masterminds. So, I may have a BBEG who does bad things, is corrupt, etc - but he employs the use of, say, a demon - itself a purely evil entity.

[Crothian]

I don't have evil villians. I have antangonists that do things that the PCs disagree with. I firmly beleive the villian is the hero of his own story. He feels he is doing what the world needs at the time. This can be important because I've had my antagonist confuse the players by explaining very rationally what they are doing and why the player characters should actually be their allies.

That's only some of the villians. Others are completely insane and do all sorts of great atracoties. Others are just misguided people that can be saved if the PCs realize that. I try to have my bad guys run the whole gauntlet of evil to EVIL so it keeps things fresh and interesting.

[Hjorimir]

I have a full range of opponents for my players to contend with. Some are just misunderstood, some just have a different opinion on things, some are in it for a power grab and the PCs just happen to be in the way, and some are EEEEEVIL (the kind of evil that some of the players may well sacrifice their own characters for a chance to be rid of).

[Ambrus]

One BBEG I ran dabbled in all manner of productive activities for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to:

• Supplying and running a gray-market drug trafficking network.
• Using the proceeds from his drug trafficking to set up a lycanthropic breeding program using expendable female slaves to birth mongrel offspring which could then be trained as feral mercenaries.
• Plundering the Banewarrens to collect the most vile artifacts imaginable.
• Killing and beheading his own daughter once he realized that his affection for her had proven a liability to his plans when he was made to rescue her from the PCs.
• In reprisal for attacks by the PCs, inflicting a holocaust on the populace of a large city by unleashing a handful of the worst Banes he'd pilfered from the Banewarrens including:
- thousands of curses.
- thousands of nightmares.
- an unstoppable Doom Fog which spreads and inflicts amnesia upon all whom it touches.
- an aggressive epidemic soul rotting disease that slowly drains its victims of a Wisdom and Charisma.
• Using the chaos created by the holocaust to capture and convert panicked citizens into fanatically loyal thralls by forcing them to drink from the Black Grail.
• Using his thralls to slay citizens and then convey their bodies back to a magic cauldron that animates their bodies so as to form an ever growing legion of undead skeletons.
• Using the Phylactery of Forsaken Souls to create spectres, who in turn form an ever growing legion of spectres by slaying panicked townsfolk.
• Using artifacts to gate in two Pit Fiends.

Sometime after the city was abandoned by the few remaining survivors and the PCs, the party succeeded in tracking down and finally slaying the BBEG in his extradimensional fortress; thanks to the help of his terrified son who sold him out to the PCs.

[Lancelot]

Varies, depending on the campaign. However, this is the most common of the themes that my players have seen...

1. There is a clearly Evil uber-villain (generally Epic-level) that is "behind it all". The uber-villain is generally identified fairly early in the campaign, and is clearly out of reach for the PCs. Maybe it's Orcus, or Kyuss, or something similar. The uber-villain is too far above the PCs to mess with them until the late stages of the campaign, and then he's fairly straight-forward in his evil - laying waste to cities, bringing about the downfall of emperors, and seeking to crush any opposition in his way. If he encounters the PCs, it's a fight-to-the-finish... unless he or they somehow escape the battle. Then it becomes a matter of cold revenge, and all bets are off. I've seen atrocities on both sides in these kind of protracted duels: lawful good PCs sacrificing a soul-trapped NPC to Lolth in the Abyss to ensure he stays dead, chaotic evil villains killing/skinning/wearing a PC's beloved father to provoke him into a final confrontation, and worse.

2. There are one or more shades-of-grey NPCs. These are the guys who really fascinate my players. They might be a patron, or a temporary ally, or simply a contact. My players have learned that the really nasty stuff generally comes from the NPCs, even though they're also gaining significant benefits from them (e.g. a devil's deal). My shades-of-grey NPCs usually stick to psychological and alignment damage: they don't kill, abduct, torture or steal. Instead, they trick, bribe or convince the PCs into doing the killing, abducting, torturing and stealing. My players hate these guys more than the "true" (?) villains, even though they also can't entirely do without them.

3. ...and finally, there are the single-module or short-arc villains. These are generally servants of the uber-evil from category #1 above. Their actions depend entirely on their motivations. The worst I've ever inflicted on my players was a ghastly affair where a pacifist combat medic (long-running henchman) was separated from her primary PC for a time, murdered by a supposedly-friendly gnome NPC, who then hollowed her out like a gourd and stitched himself up inside the corpse. He used magic to masquerade as the medic for several sessions, only revealing himself to the (horrified) PC at the worst possible time by cutting his way out while the PC was asking for aid in a crucial battle.

[Shemeska]

One of my villains made my players cry. Not the PCs but my actual players. Some of them have ventured into territory that I'm distinctly not comfortable descending into in my writing, because it's disturbing and unpleasant to even attempt to get into the head of such a thing to describe the events of the story.

The incident in question was here. Though I will also point out that the fiend in question was -not- the primary villain in the campaign. Not even close.

[Barcode]

Most of my BBEG are quite evil, but there are a lot of shades of grey in the lieutenants and other antagonists encountered along the way.

The worst one possessed a PC's child while it was still a fetus and was carrying out his evil deeds from within the womb of his mate. It did not have a happy ending.

[Lord Xtheth]

I described an evil act that made a player vomit once. I'm saving the actual event for one of my writings in the future though, sorry.

Suffice to say my villians don't stop at kicking puppies and jay-walking.