D&D 5E Save Our Villians

Uller · Sep 11, 2015

In the PotA thread http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?p=6698111 the discussion has turned to keeping glass canon NPCs alive. Particulary villians that have been built up by the plot only to end up having so few HP that one or two PCs novaing on them could take them down in one round.

A couple sessions ago I had an NPC go down while trying to escape the wrath of the party. As she fled the party wizard got one last crack at her and took her out with a fireball. After the game I realized she had a cleric underling...she knew she would be fighting the PCs and they were dangerous. She could have had her cleric cast Deathward and she would have escaped.

So DMs...what are your tricks for keeping your villians alive an extra round or two to give them a chance to deliver that really kewl attack or to escape to fight the party another day?

As a DM I try to play the really important NPCs like they are my PC. They want to live. They want to win. Any clever means within the rules is fair play. DM fiat or deus ex machina is out.

delericho · Sep 11, 2015

Have multiple 'potential' villains. Whichever ones make it out alive are the real villains.

Dausuul · Sep 11, 2015

What do you consider "within the rules?" Does this mean your villains have to be built as PCs, using classes from the Player's Handbook? Or is it acceptable to give them homebrewed abilities as long as those abilities are planned in advance rather than added on the fly?

I regard the latter as acceptable (I don't see the PHB classes as an exhaustive list of options), so if I want an unusually durable villain, the simple solution is to give that villain more hit points, magic resistance, or what have you. If you want to stay within what the PHB offers, your best bet is probably illusion magic. You can't kill a villain who was never there in the first place! Contingency is also worth looking into.

Uller · Sep 11, 2015

Dausuul said:
What do you consider "within the rules?" Does this mean your villains have to be built as PCs, using classes from the Player's Handbook? Or is it acceptable to give them homebrewed abilities as long as those abilities are planned in advance rather than added on the fly?

I regard the latter as acceptable (I don't see the PHB classes as an exhaustive list of options), so if I want an unusually durable villain, the simple solution is to give that villain more hit points, magic resistance, or what have you. If you want to stay within what the PHB offers, your best bet is probably illusion magic. You can't kill a villain who was never there in the first place! Contingency is also worth looking into.

Oh I definitely don't believe in building NPCs by PC rules. But the PC rules are definitely in play.

Let's take my recently defunct NPC as an example. She was blind and had blindsight. She wanted revenge on the party so she worked with an evil NPC priest to create some on shot magic items that created the darkness like the spell. This gave her tremendous advantage in the fight with the PCs. Later it became a plot point when the PCs learned villagers had been sacrificed to make the darkness orbs.

ExploderWizard · Sep 11, 2015

Well first of all, is to keep in mind the resources and knowledge the villain has and use them. Your death ward casting cleric is a great example of a resource that you just forgot to use.

Beyond that, I try not to have the most important bad guys be glass cannons. I build NPCs like monsters making sure they have appropriate HP to their CR rating. Some of them have class abilities similar to the PCs and also abilities not available to PCs because " monster". Any villain with a halfway decent CR is going to have enough HP to not get one-rounded. Looking at the DMG guidelines, even a CR 2 villain could have up to 100 hit points. A CR 7 or 8 villain could have close to 200 hit points.

A lot of my fighter villains have abilities like action surge, second wind, and battle master maneuvers but their base stats are still designed as if they were a monster of their CR.

Beyond the stats, also remember to play the villain as smart as their INT and WIS indicate. Would an 18 INT wizard villain freely enter combat against a whole party of seasoned adventurers if there were ANY other means of dealing with or avoiding them?

Nebulous · Sep 11, 2015

One thing that has not come up yet in our 5e games is the use of counterspell or Dispel Magic. Having 1, 2 or 3 villainous mages guarding your BBEG, maybe even while hidden but watching, will disable and ruin the first and second and probably third rounds of magic thrown at the party. I know that when our sorcerer wants to take someone out it's ALWAYS a twinned chromatic orb out of the gate. Having that snuffed out without even a save or opposed check (something I'm not really happy about, but i haven't seen it in play yet) would be a tide turner. Having multiple mages capable of doing it 9 times would be.....horrifying. Well, they wouldn't live long enough to do, but it would certainly give the BBEG time to unleash his big guns too.

Speaking of the BBEG, i also would not give him or her a PC build, but instead one or two special abilities suited just to the NPC.

Uller · Sep 11, 2015

Counterspell has been used plenty by our part wizard and yeah...it's pretty annoying. I though he als had dispel magic but he didnt and that allowed the darkness orbs to work very well but I think he learned that lesson.

Nebulous · Sep 11, 2015

Uller said:
Counterspell has been used plenty by our part wizard and yeah...it's pretty annoying. I though he als had dispel magic but he didnt and that allowed the darkness orbs to work very well but I think he learned that lesson.

Honestly, it should be an opposed check of some kind. I'm going to use this tactic in the Temple coming up and the spellcasters are going to hate it. And then they'll start using it against ME, and I'LL hate it, and it will be annoying for both sides

77IM · Sep 11, 2015

The wizard in our group has established that the somatic component of counterspell is flipping the bird. ;}

To answer your question, I use two techniques:

One is to surround the enemy with an overwhelming number of minions at all times. Give the villain a bad@$$ honor guard and fortifications, and he or she can interact with the PCs a LOT without a fight breaking out. Really deadly powers (disintegration rays, for example) also scare players really well. In short make the villain appear SO dangerous that the players, favoring self-preservation, try to AVOID conflict. ...Then, if, after careful planning, they get the villain alone, and gank him hard, it will feel triumphant rather than anticlimactic.

Two is to foreshadow my opponent as just having some magical extra-hard-to-kill powers. A lich phylactery or vampire misty escape are some classic examples. 5E has a lot of these actually. Canonically, if you kill an extra planar creature on a different plane, it re-forms on its home plane. Creatures like rakshashas and aboleths explicitly get reborn to harass the players repeatedly. Good times.

Uller · Sep 11, 2015

The one thing I've noticed is a distinct lack of counterspells in NPC descriptions. So I have not used it against my players much yet. But it seems almost a shield/magic missile/mage armor type of spell. If you are a caster and you expect to fight other casters you don't leave home without it.

I think if I used it on them a few times I could persuade them of a house rule to turn it into always being a check and maybe it doesnt take up a prepared/known slot. If it's on your class spell list you just have it.

D&D 5E Save Our Villians

Uller

Adventurer

delericho

Legend

Dausuul

Legend

Uller

Adventurer

ExploderWizard

Hero

Nebulous

Legend

Uller

Adventurer

Nebulous

Legend

77IM

Explorer!!!

Uller

Adventurer

Similar Threads