D&D General Favorite villains from your games

[HaroldTheHobbit]

My latest favorite villain was known as "Heffaklumpen" (the alluded blue elephant thingy from Winnie the Poh). I made him as a not so big bad for a short drug smuggling side adventure meant as a distraction while the lowbie characters where on their way to a major city. It turned out my players went all Miami Vice and spent a years sessions investigating the webs and tentacles of the (now massively expanded) drug ring. They had a few encounters with the illusive and slippery Heffaklumpen, played as a seriously insulting and moustache-twirling bbeg. They finally unmasked him as the oldest son of the noble family von Braun, but not before I had tied the operation to the original Chrystal sphere-threatening campaign plot frame.

And von Braun got the nick-name Heffaklumpen as a boy when he went to boarding school, due to his massive sized trunk. Yeah, my inner 12 year old sadly show up more and more often...

 

[ilgatto]

I'm a huge fan of running games with many intricate, multi-layered stories running the background and I therefore typically have many NPCs ending up involved with the PCs and vice versa. So, while there are usually a number of villains behind an adventure the party are not very likely to run into until various later stages in the game unless they put one and one and one and one and then some together very quickly, I am particularly fond of villains (or other NPCs) who sort of come about during play and as a result of how the party treat folks. For example, early in one campaign, the PCs ran into a group of scouts (mounted, ranger-like "police") led by a self-important sergeant who pushed them around for a bit as a matter of course and just because he could (we all know the type). Not sure what the patrol was about and because they were low-level at the time, the party decided to suffer the treatment and leave it at that.
However, when one of the PCs left a large inn run by bandits a mere couple of months later and found said sergeant quietly taking a leak in some bushes, it all came flooding back and he treated the fella to a thorough beating, to the great satisfaction of all players.

Another villain born.

 

[payn]

Gonna go a little left field on this one. My favorites are rival adventuring groups. There is just something about competition in the same realm for adventures, setting engagement, etc.. Typically, starts as harmless rivals, but can ramp up to direct competitors and/or enemies.

Also, factions. Why? Because they are factories that churn out villains, competition, and experiences. Also, a faction can not be simply defeated in a single combat. They have staying power that requires a campaign or at least an adventure to face.

 

[Mad_Jack]

One of the best villains I ever came up with was only ever supposed to be a nameless Random Mook #5, a lump of hit points to be chewed through, but due solely to the emerging circumstances during the game - and without any real intentional effort on my part, lol - the party inadvertently turned him into the primary villain of the campaign...
(Or, at least the primary face of the bad guys, since this guy was pretty much the embodiment of the "Uber-competent Henchman" trope.)
In one of the very first fights of the game, bad tactical decisions and some lucky/unlucky rolls allowed the nameless thug to escape, taking with him something the party was looking for and warning his employers. I made the mistake of having him fire off a jaunty remark as he made his escape, which apparently really stuck with a couple of the players... When the party got to the point of confronting the people he was supposed to be working for, one of the party members specifically asked if the guy was present. During the ensuing fight, a PC's attempt to go after the guy backfired badly, and he once again escaped in a stylish fashion.
Even a level later, with a new villainous organization to go after, the party was still talking about tracking this guy down, so I decided to replace one of the assistant assistant head mooks with this guy (using a different name) and partially blame the party's lack of success on this guy's interference with their efforts. The party pretty much lost their minds when they found out their old pal was working with their new enemies, lol. And once again, party choices and dice rolls led to his escape even after the new organization was destroyed.
Fast forward to a few sessions later, and this guy has now become the party's eternal nemesis despite the fact that this guy doesn't even have an actual name or any personal motivations other than "Because... henchman." They were completely uninterested in anything other than chasing this guy down.
So I just decided to roll with it, and had the party discover him working with pretty much everyone they were ever up against. The guy just kept upping his evil henchman cred as the party became bigger and bigger heroes, and even after he got to the point where the party would routinely find out that he was actually behind the groups they were fighting, it would always turn out that the guy was just working to fulfill the shadowy agenda of someone bigger.

Over the course of the short campaign, this guy had pulled all sorts of shenanigans on the party, including:
After being caught in the party's rooms stealing stuff, he led the whole party, clad only in their nightwear, on a wild chase through the back alleys of the city, only to have the female paladin (doing the whole Arthurian/Joan of Arc "paragon of purity" thing) burst out onto the main street in time to tackle an "old woman" out of the way of a runaway wagon. Said old woman was actually the bad guy in disguise, who kissed her on the lips and whispered, "Nothing personal, love", before jamming a knife in her ribs and leaving her to bleed out in the street dressed only in basically a t-shirt...
He framed the party rogue for a murder and several other crimes.
He'd nearly gotten the cleric excommunicated from their Church.
He stole the wizard's spellbooks and burned them in front of him (he'd actually replaced the books with fakes, then stolen the fakes and burned them, lol).

The game ended up breaking up eventually, so we ended it with the party capturing this guy and seeing him hanged.
The funny part?
Not only did the party never find out who this guy was actually working for...
...They never even found out his name.
(And I hadn't even given him one beyond the identities he'd taken on.)

 

[M_Natas]

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?

The coolest villian was in my last campaign. The players called him Doug.
Doug was an Agent of Neymon, a country who wanted to controll all of magic in the world and Doug was created torugh horrific experimentation to be a god killer.

But when my players met him the first time, they thought he was a refugee from an underwaternation that was destroyed by a kraken and they helped him.get to an island, where there was a God he wanted to murder and wasn't able to enter without the help of the characters.

Later they met Doug on the Island again and saw trough him and saw, they he is an Agent of Neymon. They attacked but Doug whopped their Butts, because he was quite strong. But he fled and didn't kill them, because he needed the players to summon the god on the Island and make him whole again (the god hat split herself in several parts in order to don't get killed by agents of neymon, but by doing so inflicted all the Priests of her with madness, because now instead of hearing one god, they heard 4 in their heads ... so that process needed to be reversed).

So when the players reassembled the God trough ritual, that's when the Island became vulnerable to outside attack (because on part of the goddess was a big fog surrounding the island keeping evil at bay), so an army (including a kraken as a siege weapon) attacked as a diversion, so Doug could sneak onto the god to kill her. And that nearly worked. But the god sacrificed herself and bestowed her godliness onto the PCs, which enabled them to kill Doug (at least, that'd what they thought, in reality it was his simulacrum).
And the players were really passed at Doug and onto themselves, becausethey brought him on the Island.

Sadly the campaign ended shortly after, because I already set up the next big evil guy - namely the God that was supporting the PCs. In reality, he was working for the really big evil guy and Neymon were actually trying to stop then, by taking so extreme measures, that they looked like the evil guys ... .

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Some of my favorite villains to play are the ones that never really do anything Capital E evil so that the PCs can justify taking direct action against them. That razor's edge antagonism is a lot of fun. One recent example from my campaign was Deeph the Phoenix, a bodyguard of Chimera, an influencer duo that the party needed to talk to. He was clearly a bad guy, even if he never actually did anything villainous, and the party was this close to coming to blows with him on multiple occasions, but never did.

 

[Stalker0]

My best one is Kadim Sul.

Thousands of years ago, the barrier that kept out the elemental chaos shattered, destroying the 3 empires. From their ashes formed Taranya, the greatest city in the multiverse (according to everyone that lives there). And from that city came the greatest special forces every known....the Ataridan.

Kadim Sul lived in the time of the 3 empires, his entire family and people destroyed. But he was not, he was infused with the elemental power, and given the power to beat destiny itself. For Destiny requires that all things must have an end, and destiny is no exception to that rule. That rule infused Kadim Sul with the power to defeat destiny itself.

Made Immortal by the change, he slowly worked his plans, to travel back in time. The party encountered him a few times out in the great desert, never directly, always far off in the distance. Eventually they learned of his plans... to go back in time and stop the barrier from ever breaking. The 3 empires would be saved....but Taranya would cease to exist. And Destiny would be broken, her will undone.

Ultimately Kadim had no malice towards Taranya, nor its people, nor the PCs.....he just wanted his family and his home back. The PCs really felt for him, and if they were not so zealously in love with Taranya (culturally the citizen are so pro Taranya its pseudo brainwashing), they might have even agreed with him, for while they would save a million citizens in Taranya, they condemned the billions of the 3 empires to remain dead.

So they traveled back in time with Kadim, fighting at the edge of the barrier, as it was slowly cracking. The fight was an epic 20th+ level 4e combat, for the party had also been granted by destiny a boon to help fight Kadim. Both sides literally got to "make up a rule" each round, changing reality as they fought. Eventually Kadim was defeated, providing some epic final words, tears falling from his eyes as he hoped to see his wife and children again. An epic end to the campaign.

But.... the rules of destiny cannot so easily be undone, and ALL THINGs must have an end. I run a living universe, and each campaign flows from the last. And so Kadim Sul has reincarnated in many forms in my games, always working to undo destiny in his own way. He is not always the big bad in every campaign, but has been a few times.

Now....the meer mention of Kadim Sul draws fear and excitement from my players.

 

[GuyBoy]

As a DM, it has to be Tom Lumpyface from a Middle Earth campaign I ran for @TheSword and three others. Tom was a Breelander who the PCs rescued (with others) from an orc attack, but he later got to a nearby settlement ahead of the PCs and successfully claimed all the credit for the battle, denigrating the role of the PCs to also-rans. He later went on to actually side with the powers of darkness and create merry hell for the party. He was never a combat threat and was actually a snivelling coward, but he certainly enraged them to a point where, 3 or 4 campaigns later, his name still excites fury if mentioned during coffee break.
As a player, well the von Wittgensteins in Enemy Within are truly foul but my deepest hate still goes to the assassin, Mylekek, in my friend's 1E campaign back in the early 1980s. He murdered my character's lover and caused countless other problems till I finally caught up with him and slew him in an epic fight. Not that I couldn't let go or anything, but I even brought him back as an assassin when I returned to D&D in around 1998 after a long hiatus.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Praxtan the god slayer...

I have updated an run him and his sister in 2e 3e 3.5, and 5e

Praxtan was a warrior, one that didn't like magic or spellcasters, but understood there tactical uses... until the day his mother died and the priest could not resurrect them.
He turned his mind to the gods... and found out (hey it MIGHT BE TRUE) that gods are not gods... they didn't create the universe they are just old powerful creatures useing worshipers as batteries to make themselves MORE powerful. No diffrent then an enemy dragon really.

So he went to war with the gods. The druids made some artifact weapons and armed the holy armies with the power of the planet itself... nature and divine came togather to lock him away forever. All written and oral stories of him magically erased... except from his sister Ryth a powerful sorceress who waas neutral in his war.


Centrrues latet with an exterplanar threat coming the PCs join the story with legends of thesse articafts that blend nature and divine magic... that might be able to turn the tide. BUT since all record of praxtan have been lost taking the items frees a worse threat... one that makes the oncoming threat look like an orc tribe.

 

[LordEntrails]

Nixoxious
He's a minor lieutenant presented in Storm Lord's Wrath. He's really nothing special, but he's one of the player's favorites because he has a knack for living and escaping! When he sould show up, the players would go out of their way to try and kill him. After the third or fourth encounter with him, they finally managed to kill him... maybe G