Recurring Bad Guys

[Water Bob]

I've been trying to set up a recurring bad guy in my campaign. I strive to allow my players all the freedom they think they have all the time (it's not always possible, but they don't know that), so, in combat situations, I never pull punches with Bad Guys. If the PCs manage to kill 'em, then the Big Bad Guy dies. Good for the PCs. My players trust me to play that way.

My first attempt at a recurring bad guy, I set up a scenario where the guy had an excellent head start in a chase and had the skills to easily overcome the obstacles I presented. This was kind of a neat scenario as the PCs chased the Bad Guy along the limbs of these giant, connected trees. I call them Thicket Trees. A copse of them can be miles long--this grove of big, thick tree trunks with these impossible limbs that stretch out, actually growing into the limbs of nearby Thicket Tree trunks.

I thought the Bad Guy would make it through that one, but one of the PCs nabbed him pretty good with a javelin, caught him, and shoved a dirk into his gut.

Bye-bye Bad Guy.



Tomorrow, we're playing again. It's our first time in a few months, and I've devised another encounter where I hope I'll have a recurring bad guy. Long story short, it's a (fairly weak) demon that has crawled up out of the Pit. The enemy stronghold, where the PCs are, has a room where the enemy has closed off this room and barred it--where the demon stays.

The demon, I made up, basing it on a young black dragon. It's humanoid, scaly and has claws, wings and a short tail. It's got a long snake head and neck, though. So, the head can twist and curl all around it's body, looking in any direction.

Anytime it's bite is successful, a check is made to see if the Demon has locked its fangs into its victim. If so, the Demon goes to town raking the victim to bits with its claws. The victim has to pull a small weapon, like a dagger, and then stab, stab, stab away to get the thing to release.

If the PCs reduce the Demon down to 10 HP or less, I'm going to have it retreat down into the hole (in the same room) from which is crawled up out of the earth.

But, going into this, I know that there's a good chance that the Demon I made up will not make it out of the encounter alive to be the recurring Bad Guy.

I like the idea of this thing showing up later, bigger, badder, meaner, living out in the woods (kinda like in the first Alien movie where, evertime the crew encountered the Alien, the thing was bigger and meaner).

I think it would be neat if, in unrelated future game sessions, the players run across a footpint in the mud that they know is the demon. Or, have the demon attack NPCs in the Players' village. Maybe even surprise the PCs one day by having the thing speak to them....can't you just see this thing, it's back to you, with is snake head curled around under its left armpit, looking straight back at you, speaking, telling you that your dead grandmother wants the Demon to tell you "Hi".

That'd be cool.

Lots of ideas, I have, for further encounters.

But, first, the doggone thing has got to make it out of its first encounter with the PCs. I'll tell ya. TI'm not betting on the demon.





So, what about you? Do you have recurring bad guys in your game? If so, how'd that work? Did you ensure the Bad Guy would make it no matter what the PCs did? Or, did you try to stack the deck like I did above (and still failed) to try an end up with your recurring bad guy?

 

[S'mon]

Bad guys who survive tend to have either really good escape/evade abilities like Teleport, or they don't actually fight the PCs. One favourite of mine was a mild-mannered Arasaka Corporation executive who would never have dreamed of actually fighting anyone; he was captured at one point but killing him would have made no difference as he'd just have been replaced.

 

[steeldragons]

If your BBEG is a demon, even a minor one, shouldn't he/it have inate invisibility and teleport? Or some kind of dimension door/limited teleport?

Couple those together, so even if they are in a big open area, he teleports or dim-door's away, comes out invisible (or turns invisible first or whatever). Even if he technically would be in "view" of the PCs, they have no clue where exactly he might be.

It's got wings? Turn invis and fly away!

If the NPC is to be recurring, they need to have an exit strategy, not necessarily a "defeat the PCs" chance. And something that should be intelligent and conniving, like a demon or demon, should have no trouble removing itself from the battlefield.

They, also, should be more than capable of defending themselves from most if not all of what the party can throw at them...given enough spying, time, preparation.

And/or there's always DM fiat. If you don't want it to have innate or spell use for teleport, give it an amulet/tongue-ring/nail polish with a teleport or "word of recall" that will return it to some hidden sanctum/chamber the PCs don't know about or could find/follow.

And yeah! The PC's might hem and haw. "We had it! We should/could have beaten that! Coward! Get back here! That's not fair!" Yeah. There will be "unfinished" or "jipped" feelings. That's totally natural and, in my experience, helps!

But the PCs are not guaranteed to succeed in every encounter...nor are they entitled to have things go the way they like.

Those feelings get (hopefully) balled up (the PCs hold a grudge) into the next time they face it and (presumably) will take extra care/alter tactics to try to account for the abilities they witnessed and defeat it the next time.

Unless it is some kind of evil overlord, super-powered wizard, or something like that that I want around for the whole campaign, I generally let/like the recurring villains 3 appearances. If they get killed in the first encounter...I can always come up with another/the next one.

If it IS that kind of recurring BBEG/overlord/ultimate guy behind the scenes...then he IS, mostly, behind the scenes. With hordes of lackeys, hench-creatures and most likely personal bodyguards/"lieutenants"/etc... to carry out their bidding, bring their scheming machinations to fruition.

Maybe this minor demon of yours can conjure/gate in imps/more minor demons to do some things for him...or help/distract in battle...spirits to possess the party members so they're more troubled/defending against/interested in how to fix their teammate then getting the demon that's slinking away from the combat. Heck, throw a few charmed (many demons get innate dominations or charms) ogres or bugbears or whatever at them while he runs/flies/teleports away.

Then after, an appearance or 3, not even necessarily a direct encounter, but the PCs learning who they are, what they're after, seeing them slip away while they battle the minions, the climactic endgame battle ensues and, hopefully, the PCs are victorious.

Recurring villains are the best. Build the tension. Build up their personalities through the recurring limited encounters. Make them feel like real villains to fuel the PCs continued pursuit to overthrow them and/or disrupt their plots (What?! So-and-so is behind this?! Let's gettem!)

And, honestly, imho, if you want them to really be around for a while and really build that ongoing "us vs. him/her/it" feeling into the various threads of the game, then a certain amount of "story security/immunity" might be necessary in the beginning.

If story immunity makes you uncomfortable and the players do manage to take them out on the first appearance, there's always more evil to step in and take their place...most likely bigger and badder than the one that came before.

Maybe they will smudge the floor with this new demon of yours...maybe it has a big brother who's not happy about that. "Hey! Didn't we kill this guy already? Why is he three feet taller than he was last time? Did he have two heads, before? Since when can it cast Fireball!!!???"

Just my thoughts on the subject. Good luck and have a great time with it.
--SD

 

[nedjer]

A decent escape plan makes sense for a lot of recurring enemies - especially inside their own bases.

They can also put in other 'appearances' where:

• the PCs see them doing something dreadful - but are just too far away to intervene
• the PCs see the aftermath of their work
• the PCs arrive as the bad guy's just heading out the door/
• the PCs find insults or messages left to wind them up
• the PCs only encounter a dressed-up double or a projected image

Destroying the PCs' home/ friends and family/ homeland while the PCs watch from afar through a crystal ball/ magic pool or mirror tends to light a fuse

 

[Gilladian]

IMC the pcs have a group of rival npcs. They're almost all evil, except for the rogue, who is a self-interested neutral and often gives the PCs tidbits of info.

This week, the NPC group is going to go raiding a tower near the PCs home, and will flee in panic as they meet worse than they expected. Hopefully the PCs will meet them with jeers and happily go after what the NPCs fouled up on.

Recurring villains always die on me, so this is my latest attempt at adding continuity to the game.

 

[Dioltach]

[*]the PCs find insults or messages left to wind them up
[/LIST]

Preferably in the form of rude haiku poems, on a silver tray with a small selection of expensive chocolates.

 

[nedjer]

Preferably in the form of rude haiku poems, on a silver tray with a small selection of expensive chocolates.

lol

Harsh - I cannot XP you for you have been too ninja lately.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=92305]Water Bob[/MENTION]
No offense, but the "black dragon demon" you presented doesn't sound worthy of being a recurring villain. The extent of recurrence is "and now it lurks in the forest killing anyone who enters it's turf." IMO a recurring villain needs to have broader scope and be more proactive than that.

If you're heart set on it though, I'd say a switch encounter is the way to go.

Start with the demon as the threat, then halfway introduce the *real* challenge of the encounter (perhaps something hostile to the demon too) and have the demon run away at that point.

 

[Rogue Agent]

I've been trying to set up a recurring bad guy in my campaign. I strive to allow my players all the freedom they think they have all the time (it's not always possible, but they don't know that), so, in combat situations, I never pull punches with Bad Guys. If the PCs manage to kill 'em, then the Big Bad Guy dies. Good for the PCs.

If you're running this kind of non-railroaded, "let the dice fall where they may" kind of campaign (and I heartily endorse that), then you can't try to pre-plan who the recurring bad guys are going to be. You just have to let the dice fall where they will and see who the recurring bad guys turn out to be.

For example, in my current campaign the PCs have just recently managed to kill a woman who has been tormenting them for 20 sessions. She started life as a minor NPC who was there to deliver a little bit of exposition. But instead of getting killed the way I thought she would, she survived. And shortly thereafter circumstances found her bitterly angry at one of the PCs and leading a group of assassins to kill him... and somehow managed to escape from that one, too. And things just kind of built from there.

OTOH, in the middle of all this, I had a player join the group and decided to set things up so that he would have a vendetta against a cult leader. I figured this cult leader would be good fodder for some recurring villainage. Instead? The cult leader got killed with a single shot in the back of the head while his back turned. He literally never even saw them coming; and the PCs didn't even know who they'd killed until half a session later.

This is actually true for a lot of stuff: For example, if I want the PCs to become friendly with a couple of colorful characters in the local bar I won't just prep a couple of colorful characters in the local bar. I'll prep six or seven and whichever ones the players "click" with are the ones who'll get developed as play continues.

Out of all of this, I can give you two tips:

(1) The villain needs a supporting cast. And they need to decide to run away long before the end of the encounter.

(2) Once a bad guy has clicked with your players, you can effectively build their hatred for him through minions without ever putting the bad guy back in the line of fire. (This can also work with the bad guy never getting introduced, but it's trickier and usually less effective. But if the PCs have already met the guy, forged a personal connection, and got a real hate-on going... That's when any mention of his name is just going to piss them off more.)

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

The most effective recurring villain I ever had in a game was an agent of an enemy country in a fantasy action-espionage game.

He encountered the players in their first mission and by the time a fight broke out, his side had overwhelming force. The PCs were in a fishing trawler, he had an ironclad frigate. He was a little stronger than any of them, but they could have beaten him in a fight - but the difference in their ships was overwhelming and they retreated. They did accomplish their goal for the mission, which was to find out what power was backing a spy ring in their country and what they were trying to achieve, so even though they fled it was still a "win."

The PCs met him a second time, once again without fighting due to the circumstances, and this time he actually did foil them. Again, they might have fought him and won (or lost; he and his support would have been tough to beat), they might have succeeded without fighting him.

The third time they encountered him, they were after an experimental submarine made by his country. They got aboard (losing their ship in the process) and had no choice but to fight him to the death. It was a close thing, but they did manage to kill him and comandeer the vessel.

However, to patch over the ruffled diplomatic feathers, they had to send his remains back to his home country.

Now, this was a setting with rare resurrection. Unfortunately for the PCs, the main mechanism for resurrection in-setting was something they knew this guy's masters had. The PCs weren't certain, but the players were, that when they were asked to turn those remains over they were ensuring they would see their nemesis again in some form.

Their expressions when they realized they had to do it anyway were glorious.

He was out of the picture for a long time, months both in- and out-of-game. Long enough for the players to start to believe his resurrection was a red herring. His former colleagues came after the PCs for revenge, they had other missions and adventures -

And then they got a mission to infiltrate their nemesis's home country. They split up and worked with various local rebels, and one of the players made a series of bonehead moves that got him exposed. Cue the return of their nemesis, now a sort of Steampunk Darth Vader - more machine than man, with a magical power source. When they heard me switch to his familiar voice with a newly mechanical hitch in it (one of the benefits of doing voices at the table), there was a wonderful "Oh. ." from multiple players, especially the one whose character was isolated.

If the PCs had fought him as a group, they still would have had a chance to beat him, but their first exposure to his new form was a lone PC going up against an enemy statted to take them all on. The results... had an impact.

They avoided an open confrontation with him until the very end of the game, and finally did defeat him in the sense that they were winning the fight against him and accomplished their objectives. Even then, he'd become sufficiently intimidating to them that they chose not to take the fight to the finish (both sides were fighting a running battle with a third party as well, and everyone was pretty battered by this point), and both sides survived.

In that same campaign, the villain I originally planned to be the main bad? He was a teleporting magic user with access to the same source of resurrection as the one who ended up being the PCs' nemesis.

After two encounters (one where he beat them handily but they escaped, one where he teleported away), the PCs tracked him to his safehouse and planted a bomb powerful enough to kill him in one shot. It was a harrowing thing because they had to avoid notice - and did. He died offscreen, in the rubble of a building that fell into a ravine in the middle of an avalanche, and his body was never found.

He stayed dead, because they had a great plan, they pulled it off at great difficulty, and the red herring of his return was more interesting than him actually returning. It also set the players up to believe the guy who became their nemesis might not come back, and to be extra nervous when he did.