D&D 5E What's your Master Villain like?

[Viking Bastard]

Mine are a cabal of Moon Elves (high elves) who, behind the scenes, have taken it upon themselves to make sure that no civilization advances beyond a certain point, out of fear of the (re-)discovery of 10th level spells leading to (yet another) apocalypse. They replace the Drow in our Against the Giants game.

Their main agent is The Spider, a moon elf assassin/wizard who has fractured his being into eight parts, with all eight hive-minded copies working at various civilization-hampering schemes around the world (the Giant invasion on the Flan being one such plan). They have defeated one such copy so far. With the defeat of each copy, the remaining copies get more powerful.

The idea came to me as a solution to the typical D&D dilemma of letting the party fight the big bad without killing him. Well, let them! There are more of him where he came from!

 

[JackOfAllTirades]

My Master Villain?

The Infamous Gnomish Assassin, Silent G!

He'd explain the joke, but then he'd have to kill you.

Silently.

 

[Azurewraith]

For a campaign im planning on running when we finish our HotD run through(really poor starter module imo the GM running it is first timer and he didn't realize it would be so much work oops sidetracked) is just a voice lol i haven't given any thought to any physical traits. Ill explain the jist is the pcs wake up in cages have never meet each other before and are greeted by voice who basically says see this cave here its full of relics of a forgotten race you bring me those relics i will reward you bring me THE relic and your free to go mess with me or disappoint me in anyway expect me to bring da pain.

 

[Celtavian]

I had a lot of fun with Irovetti as a villain Kingmaker. I created a beautiful, powerful sister for Irovetti named Adriana. I had Irovetti use his sister to infiltrate the PC's kingdom. She became the king's lover and close friends with one of the other PCs. The PC who became dear friends with Adriana had a child. Irovetti threatened to kill the child to force his sister to assassinate the king. She killed the king while he slept to save another PC's child from being killed.

Irovetti initiated a Godfather-like assassination plot. His sister took out the king while they were together at night. A Halfling assassin took out the prime minister while he watched a play celebrating the deeds of the PCs. Another Halfling assassin disguised as a child tried to take out the high priestess by giving her a jewel with imprisonment on it while she was healing the sick and feeding the hungry. She managed to avoid it. Another assassin went after the general and the high marshal. Both managed to survive. After he took them out, he marched his armies on the kingdom to take it.

The PCs were riled at that point. It was a lot of fun running the battles between the kingdoms and the final fight between Irovetti's crew and the PCs to the death.

 

[Sezarious]

I love hearing these stories. There's something very satisfying creating a hated enemy that frustrates the players as well as the character. I find it makes them more determined to succeed in their quests.

 

[Will Doyle]

My favourite villain was the shadowy leader of a circle of assassins that worked as "troubleshooters" for the realm. One of the PCs joined this secret order early on in the campaign, and for literally years of real-life play, he worked his way up the ranks by performing secret hits between adventures. This culminated in him killing the king, who he'd been told was mad and endangering the realm.

We played this excellent solo assassination mission with the rest of the players watching, at the end of which the PC killed the king and received his next mark: a member of his own adventuring party. When the player went to question his orders, he discovered the awful truth - the circle never existed, and he'd been manipulated into killing the king by a lone wolf in the government. His face when he realised this was amazing. Pure horror.

 

[Celtavian]

My favourite villain was the shadowy leader of a circle of assassins that worked as "troubleshooters" for the realm. One of the PCs joined this secret order early on in the campaign, and for literally years of real-life play, he worked his way up the ranks by performing secret hits between adventures. This culminated in him killing the king, who he'd been told was mad and endangering the realm.

We played this excellent solo assassination mission with the rest of the players watching, at the end of which the PC killed the king and received his next mark: a member of his own adventuring party. When the player went to question his orders, he discovered the awful truth - the circle never existed, and he'd been manipulated into killing the king by a lone wolf in the government. His face when he realised this was amazing. Pure horror.

I would have loved to see the look on the player's face when you revealed that. That is evil.

 

[Syntallah]

One of our more memorable 3E campaigns had Gritka: a female wizard who specialized in summoning magic. She would summon all manner of beasties and have them attack the Party, but would always have an escape plan for herself (e.g. dimension door, teleport, etc). After many such encounters the PCs (and their players!) hated her. Remember that back in that edition, you didn't get experience for a monster summoned by spell...

They did track her down to a lair at one point, and were in her bedroom. One of my players was so mad that she wasn't actually there that he spluttered: "I... flip her bed over..!!" Been a running joke for many years now... lol.

 

[Minigiant]

Since my setting has a "War of the Pantheons" theme, there is a villain worshipper of an evil deity for each side in the war.

There's Rulibex, a formerly human warlock. He plans on helping the Stellar Pantheon escape their prisons in the sky and get back in power. In return, he and his follow believe they will become the new angels for the Stellar. The Cult of the Unchained Stars use logic and morality that only they understand. Anyone who infiltrates the Cult ends up joining in earnest.
Because their plans are nonsensical, no one knows how to deal with them and the most obvious response might be part of their plan. The CotUS has been known to terrorize areas and then drop their weapons and wait for heroes to kill them or torture them or worse.

Then there's Hidan, Great Khan of the Hobgoblin Hordes. He's the standard evil military genius. He has an succubus wife who births him hobgoblin cambions who rapidly age to adulthood to serve as generals, captains, and elite warriors. He wishes to conquer the Feylands as revenge for the fey for the exile and removal of feyness of goblinkind. The goddess of war in the Titanic Pantheon promised demons to him to help him conquer and dominate the fey. Hidan is rarely seen on the material plane but he often sends his cambion children to gather resources or seduce heroes and villains to his cause.

Finally there is the Matron. The Matron is a half red, half green dragon. Her birth was sanctioned by the Sun Pantheon to battle the other pantheons but surprise surprise she stopped listening and went full evil. She has many dragon sorcerer sleeper agent great grandchildren in almost every royal court sowing distrust and dragon cults subduing and forcefully taming dragons to attack other dragons and kingdom who refuse her demands.

The campaign starts with the Matron, polymorphed as a young human, and Rublilex, altered to still look human, starting a bar fight to get a PC to save the Matron from the "drunken violent" Rublilex and for Matron to "reward" the PC with a "totally not cursed dagger". All with one of Hidan's sons watching the whole thing. Turns out Rublilex knows the real significance of the reward and is too crazy for anyone to get that it went brought to a special place frees and revives Hadar. Maybe. Only Rublilex knows what actually does it. The Matron and Hidan are too afraid to kill the involved PC because it all might be part of Rubli's crazy plan.