Your Best Villain

[STARP_JVP]

What's the best villain or bad guy you've ever had, either as a DM running it or a player experiencing it?

Mine is either the aforementioned Temptresses, Lara and Sheena, two pretty young things who totally put one over on the PCs - one of the few times I've ever managed to get the better of my players like that, or the Zornites. The Zornites were the clerics of the god Zorn who had taken over a country and made it into a theocratic dictatorship, with a very Third Reich-like culture. The Holy Legionaries, which were elite fighters, were collectively one of the few baddies I've put in my PCs' way that they were actually scared of.

Recurring villains are not common in my campaigns, as my players have this rather unfortunate habit of killing everybody very quickly and looting the bodies.

 

[Hand of Evil]

the mother of one of the characters.

 

[demiurge1138]

I've been proud of a lot of my villains, but I think my favorite is the Knave of Thorns. The Knave is a splinterwaif, a race of evil fey from MMIII. Basically, they're humanoid creatures covered in thorns that ambush children, turn them into bushes, then feed on them.

The Knave is a reoccuring villain from my Eberron game, and I like him because of the organization he leads. The Brotherhood of Nightmares is a legion of various creatures that officially only exist in far-off lands or in fairy tales. Because nobody believes that they're real, they're free to prey on the children of Sharn, and their crimes are blamed on serial killers, random lunatics, and the dregs of society. Whether or not they have a further motive I don't know, but the PCs definitely think they do...

Demiurge out.

 

[Psion]

I cribbed the idea of a rabidly neutral paladin named Fein who had a habit of beating the PCs to the punch.

You can be desipicably evil and you are just another villain to the players. Beat them to killing the villain and taking his stuff, then you are on the party's list...

 

[Evilhalfling]

A dwarven bard/acoloyte of skin.

He managed to defeat the whole party but one, a casual gamer who managed a stroke of genius to defeat him. He was banished from his dwarven clan and vowed revenge, showing up later in a Magocracy to block the players poltically. He faked his own death once, and burned a teleport scroll to escape from the party. He finally died ignobiously in a tree and was beheaded and burried in two unmarked graves.

I had a PC's mom as a villian as well. Well sort of, she was the NE priestess of the goddess of secrets. She bullied the players unmercifully, using smoke and mirrors to overstate her power. Even after the PCs had gotten powerful enough to kill her, they still were deathly afraid of her. As the campaign ended one or two loose ends were wrapped up without fanfare, leaving only hints that she was responsible. (she was good at hireing/blackmailing powerful agents)
She was a mystic theurge with few combat spells, but a good network.

 

[Steel_Wind]

- deleted -

My players read this forum from time to time - and I just decided to get patient again

>>>zipps it<<<

 

[Crothian]

His name was Payne. He was a dentist turned wizard who built flesh golems from people he killed. He gained power as the party gained power and was always one step ahead of them. They chased him around for a few years real time, and in the end battle his magic messed up turning him into an infant. One player still wanted to kill him, but the the others stopped that and had him rasied by some good rangers.

Years later I introduced him as an NPC and he become a big ally to a group, all the while not trying to atone for the evil he did. He wasn't evil anymore, but felt he owed people nothing for his past activities.

That NPC has seen use in 5 campaigns all the while growing more and more as a character and never quitea good guy but not as bad as he used to be. And trust me when I say this explanation just does not do hiom justice.

 

[Kid Socrates]

I have three.

Caelis Balthazar, a well-respected scholar and sage who stumbled across the ruins of an ancient evil underneath the capital city of the country and realized that the evil's purpose was remaking the world every time there was a critical flaw. He now believes he can remake the world in his own image, and will use this ancient evil to do so. He's been hounding the PC's for over 45 sessions, showing up at inopportune times to taunt and harass them, but his flunkies/slaves have been dropping like flies lately, and he's retreated to his fortress to plan his next move.

Lamec, an assassin who grew up peacefully in an island fishing village, until the navy occupying it went out of control and stepped far over the line in one seven-year-old boy's eyes. That boy took one of the guns from the naval officer and went from house to house, shooting the soldiers, and shooting to kill. Many escaped, though, and returned a week later and burnt the village to the ground, killing everyone in it. The boy was sent away by his parents to survive, and saw the flames as he left. That's the PC's backstory -- he never realized, for 13 years, that someone else escaped too. That boy, two years younger, watched the PC attack the soldiers and then was sent away too, and saw his mother's home burn as he sailed away, tears in his eyes. Where the PC set out to make things right and find a way to make peace with himself, Lamec was haunted by the visions and set about making HIS peace -- killing all those responsible. Of 13 people in that naval contingent, 10 are dead, victims of a masked assassin calling himself Taijiya, the Slayer, whose last words to each man he kills are, "I never wanted this to happen... why do I have to kill you to make this right...?"

Dr. Arich Zokunnen, a scientist who lost his fiance to a sudden and vicious accident a mere week after proposing to her, and dedicated his life to finding a way to restore her to life. He planned to use a machine that harnessed the power of summoning without a human mind to call the aeons to bring something strong enough to restore his love to life -- the very machine that killed her. However, in his moment of triumph (with the PC's helping), something went wrong, and the machine overloaded and went critical, exploding and hurling all of them throughout the room. When the dust cleared, he was dead -- only to be reborn in the Phoenix. His strongest wish was to find a way to restore his love to life, and unable to control the Phoenix inside of him, and also unable to die, for he will be reborn again, he has sworn to exact what pleasure he can by killing those responsible for her death and his life.

I have so much fun with these three villains it's not even funny.

 

[Luthien Greyspear]

I got three nasties as well:

The first is from an Aberrant game, White Wolf's superhero 'prehistory' for their AEON Trinity SF game. The group is fairly low-key, trying to keep their powers secret so they can have a normal life. The bad guy, Nemesis, doesn't care about normality; infact, he goes out of his way to mock, belittle, and ultimately destroy it. Of course, he is constantly brought into conflict with the characters. The problem is (for the party) he has the ability to create new powers in himself for short periods of time. This means he has literally every power in the book at his beck and call, at least for a few combat rounds. He's sort of like a racist, terrorist Ultra Boy. What makes him so good as a villain is his Mega-Charisma, and the fact that he's sort of right (in a totally psychotic and violent way, but he's still right). The group has a hard time saying decisively that he's wrong in what he's doing, so he's never been fully put down or put away.

The second villain was only around for one session, but he left a lasting impact. The party was on the road to an ancient city, and on the way a terrible storm swept through the area. In the distance, a manor could be seen on a hilltop, so off the party goes to try and get some shelter. Inside is a nice country home, lots of art (portraits) and a genial host, Lord Scarsdale. One of the party members is aristocracy, and agrees to sit for a portrait while the storm is keeping everyone there. Of course, Scarsdale is evil, and is in the habit of stealing people's souls while painting their portraits, and trapping them in the paintings. The party couldn't believe that I'd created a villain that did something that evil and got absolutely NOTHING out of it. He didn't get immortality, or dark boons from an evil deity, or anything like that. He just liked trapping people's souls. They still talk about him, and this was over 10 years ago (real time).

The last villain was in the same campaign, and is one of the oldest chestnuts: the evil twin. For those of you familiar with Central Casting, the aristocrat listed above had gotten a random background event at birth that gave her an evil twin that had been taken away at birth and raised in secret. This twin was raised to be the opposite of the character (who was a NG elven wizard), and then let loose on the world. The character was (of course) constantly blamed for crimes she didn't commit, and even arrested once for petty theft. The real conflict came into play after she had met her twin for the first time. After a brief altercation (the twin had seduced, then robbed, a party member), the twin got away and the party couldn't find her. Then, about a month later, the party got word in a tavern that the Crown Princess of Celene had returned to her home to celebrate her grandfather's 800th birthday. Needless to say, the REAL Crown Princess was kind of shocked. The party was forced to sneak into Celene disguised as celebrants, they had to outwit an evil adventuring party disguised as THEM, and they had to prevent evil twin from killing off her father and grandfather and taking control. Eventually, the real truth came out: the evil twin was actually half of the Princess' soul, and their separation was part of this bizarre duality cult's experiment with good and evil. The cult separated the soul in their mother's womb, took the first baby to be born away, and led rescuers to the mother to find the second baby safe and sound. They then allowed the one to grow up as her natural inclination suited her, and raised the other themselves (again, as her inclination suited her). In the end, the two princesses fought, the PC won, and the evil twin was absorbed back into the victor's form, making her whole. The whole villainous plot took a while, but it really all paid off.

 

[caudor]

Mine was the vampire clown, Rictus Killgrave, from the Bastion Press 'Villians'.

An evil vampire killer clown makes a great villian