D&D General Favorite villains from your games

[RangerWickett]

It can be hard to have a memorable villain in a TTRPG, because for the players to appreciate the villain, they need to see them, and if they see them . . . well, they'll probably try to kill them. If Leia, 3P0, and R2 had either been TPK'd in the first scene of Star Wars, or if they'd gotten some lucky hits and killed Vader, he'd hardly have been a memorable part of their adventure.

What villains from your games have been top shelf? How did your group interact with the, and how many times before someone tried to stick a pointy thing into the baddie?

What sorts of villains do you like best? Do you want ones with a cool aesthetic? Ones with a compelling personal story? Ones with a unique personality that's fun to interact with?

And finally, if you play published adventures, how often do you come away from an adventure with an appreciation for the villain, rather than them being a quick combat encounter?

 

[Stormonu]

Strahd. Everyone who plays with me knows his name and nods sagely about how much they hate him and his schemes. His ability to drop into a fight for a couple of rounds, drop pain on the PCs and escape with maniacal laughter to repeat it 3-4 times I've seen many a player grit their teeth at his name.

The Slavelords of Suderham. First round was a "fight to the death" the PCs lost (by the skin of their teeth), got resurrected and thrown into the pits of the undercity. The players were itching to kill the slavelords when they again ran across them.

Raagard. Already an anti-hero when the party met him (at about 4th level), they were in awe of his existing legend and enjoyed having him in their party, even if he was a bit bloodthirst. He was even good enough to inform the party before he betrayed them into the hands of their enemy. Only for the players to discover he WAS the BBEG. After escaping and dodging his henchmen, the party finally snuck back into his fortress and defeated him. "Well played," he told them when he was beaten and they had him at swordpoint. It was the only time I ever saw a party not kill the bad guy, and actually let him go (though they took all his stuff). Six months later, he actually rejoined the party to help down the organization he had build and been toppled from. When the party finished, they actually parted ways as somewhat friends once again.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Take Gargamel, make him serve as both an advisor to the local good guy NPC leader as well as secretly working with the bad guys, in case they win. That's a recurring villain in my campaign.

The players pegged who he was based on almost immediately, but it doesn't matter. They love to hate him, waiting for the day when he finally went full villain. He did, but he also escaped in the final battle, almost as if I intend to have him show up as a thorn in their side again in the future ... (And, more basically, his primary goal is to live to graft another day, so he was always going to betray his allies and run, whoever the allies were.)

 

[aco175]

I had another adventuring party in the same town as the PCs- The Far Riders. They were not hostile to the PCs, but took credit a couple times for their actions. They were in the bar when the PCs returned from the adventure and would walk into hearing stories of the Far Riders doing what the PCs had just done as they offered to buy the PCs a drink. The whole town seemed to like the Far Riders except the PCs who wanted to kill them. They did show up in one adventure to help the PCs who were fighting over their heads and some of the players did not want their help or wanted to attack them instead. The PCs did have revenge once they found the crystal ball that was being used to steal their glory.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

Hmm. Kinda variable for me. Altogether a threatening villain with a compelling backstory who manages to be either legitimately lethal and challenging, or funny, when finally confronted?

Ran an adventure once where the PCs ran afoul of the machinations of a bigoted, and obsessively vengeful hunter-type character. Instead of directly confronting the guy, the PCs turned around and manipulated him right back; duping him into provoking an unwinnable fight with another enemy. Whole proceeding managed to be both very clever and hilarious.

 

[cbwjm]

A villain I want to bring back is "The Red Talon!" He was a dragonborn leader of a similarly named smuggling ring that stole an ancient book detailing various rituals used by the dragon elders to empower their followers, he sold this to the main villain of the campaign who seeks to steal the power from one of the sleeping dragon elders in order to break his pact and prevent his soul being claimed by Mephistopheles when he dies.

The reason why I like him is that he's just in it for the money, he isn't a world domination kind of guy, he doesn't seek to overthrow a kingdom or summon a demon lord to the prime plane, he just wants to get rich and smuggling and thievery was how he did it. Now that his smuggling ring is disbanded thanks to the actions of the PCs, he's moved on to his next get rich scheme (he's technically already quite wealthy, he sold the book for a small chest of diamonds which he ended up not having to share with his men).

He also has a very specific magical item that likely would be claimed by the dragonborn in the party, the Eye of the Red Talon (actual name lost to time, it is actually replacing one of his eyes), an elemental shard of power that has the power to double the effects of the fire breath of a dragonborn, improves their fire resistance to fire invulnerability but also making them vulnerable to cold), and grants them the ability to summon a great axe of lava (think shadowblade but a great axe).

At some point, I want the PCs to run into him again, I don't know how or why or what he'll be doing but I love the character and feel like he needs to make a comeback.

 

[mcmillan]

@RangerWickett you'll probably appreciate that I think the villain from the Zeitgeist campaign was really well done (kept vague for spoiler reasons). I think a big reason was the combination of 2 main factors. First that the first few times encountering him the party didn't quite know the significance, they weren't immediately going to attack, but allowed him to pop back up later and draw connections they might have missed at first. And once they did know to recognize him, they also had more reasons to talk than fight until the climax of the campaign. Second, he was written in a way that had clear motivations the players could understand, but who was choosing a path that especially in the later parts of the campaign was still a clear villain that could be opposed. That was something I appreciated about how you wrote the campaign in general. Even the minor antagonists were setup nicely more in terms of "this is their goals and what they will do if not interfered with" so it was easy to adapt in response to player actions rather than having fixed paths I needed to force the players down or have to figure out on my own.

Spoiler: Spoiler for a specific interaction that I don't remember if I've told you about

During the first meeting with Miller one of the player's happened to be in a talkative mood that night so engaged him in a long philosophical conversation about wanting to improve the world, but wanting to be sure the right people were in charge. When that player wanted to change characters I got his ok to keep the original character as an NPC, so had him get recruited into the Obscurati and show up as Lya's bodyguard in Ber. That led to a nice payoff of him trying to recruit the party to join them, and a showdown when they refused.

 

[R_J_K75]

Not a recurring villain per se but I had an Imp who polymorphed into a goat that started following the players around so they let it tag along. Over the course of 3 or 4 adventures it started planting suggestions into each players head until they were all convinced that the other PCs were against them. They eventually all attacked and killed each other while Imp transformed into its true form, cackled and flew away. Maybe I'll revisit that one soon.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Thus far, the greatest individual villain that the party has directly engaged with would be the Song of Thorns. Which is ironic, because it is by far the least person-like of the villains they've dealt with.

See, there are four main threats (since the Song was definitively ended): the Zil al-Ghurab (Raven-Shadow) assassin cult, led by the Grandmother of Shadows; the Shadow Druids, whom the party has learned form a horrifying hive-mind spirit controlled by Dawud al-Jana, whom they have never met; the Cult of the Burning Eye, which the party knows is led by some powerful and ancient force (the titular "Burning Eye") but they don't know what that force is yet, having only dealt with its lieutenants; and, last but not least, a black dragon that has concealed itself in their city for years and years, slowly shaping it to be its "hoard," whom they have yet to see directly. Each of these is either led by an actual person, or led by something that is person-like.

The Song of Thorns...wasn't like that. It was a spirit. Spirits can be a lot of different things in this setting, but they tend to take one of four forms:

1. Elementals and other manifestations of raw physical forces
2. Things in the physical world (both natural and artificial) that have existed for a very long time and thus taken on significance
3. Abstracted ideas, entities, or concepts which have mattered or which people have cared a lot about (this includes stuff like the spirit of Owl or The First Oak)
4. The "whatness" (formally, quiddity) of living creatures, usually beasts but sometimes other stuff too

Druids generally tap into the first and fourth things, drawing those spirits into themselves or instantaneously evoking their power, while shaman primarily tap into the second and third, binding or compelling their service.

The Song of Thorns probably started out as a spirit of the second kind (a natural spirit tied to something), but was corrupted and expanded into an infectious mind-virus, turning it into the third kind of spirit. Fundamentally, it was a spirit of savagery and entropy: decay, not in the rot sense, but in the collapse and breakdown of systems sense. It would steal the abilities of beings it infected, but the infected would slowly become more savage and brutish, losing their intelligence and even sapience until finally succumbing, meaning the Song of Thorns would grow stronger but couldn't truly hold onto any amount of sapient thought for long. This made it too basal to be a person in the proper sense; it was driven solely by instinct, like an evil, thorned kudzu with the intelligence of a predator. It wasn't in any way cruel or evil, but it was an incredibly dangerous threat to basically all animal life, so the party had to take it down.

And they did! It was a super climactic battle after they'd collected together resources and allies in the strange pocket dimension where the Song was trapped. Through their efforts, they elevated a counter spirit (they found a "predator," as one druid advised them to) to a similarly powerful state, employed various tools to weaken the spirit, and then finally transitioned into the Spirit World where they could destroy the Song of Thorns at its metaphysical root, rather than just damaging the massive plant body that was its "totem." The Bard even leveraged the fact that the Song was, in fact, a Song, re-writing its lyrics to bring it to an end, rather than exalt it for its victory over the beings it had destroyed in the pocket dimension.

I think this villain worked, overall, because it was the right mix of "personally scary" (hitting ideas and feelings that meant a lot to the players) but "impersonally active" (not really being a "person" in the proper sense.) Further, I made sure to let the players know that they were taking a great risk: by facing the spirit in its own lair, they were risking their protections against it failing, and if they got absorbed into the Song, that would have been...very bad. The Battlemaster would have given it a brilliant sapient mind that would never break down (due to a magic item he carries), the Druid would have given it the power to make any person it infected able to shapeshift, and the Bard was the most dangerous risk of all, because his magic IS song--if he had been infected, the Song could learn how to modify itself, which would make it nearly unstoppable.

Thankfully, none of that happened and they actually kicked major butt, securing a full and unequivocal victory, though at some cost to the group. (Druid's player was going on hiatus anyway, so the timing was really good IRL, but it was definitely a somber moment so soon after a thrilling victory.)

 

[humble minion]

The villains my players have hated the most have not been the major bad guys, obviously enough. They've been the little annoyances who have been not quite evil enough to kill but who the PCs have been forced to hang around with by circumstance. The narcissistic holovid star in my Star Wars game, who spoke with a very distinct and familiar Austrian accent. The spoiled arrogant nobleman in Savage Tide, who had a cringing hunchbacked Igor-like servant who would just casually drop allusions to how ridiculously mistreated he got.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. I guess the opposite is also true. Enforced extended proximity is a recipe for loathing.