A villain in 2 rolls!

[Ry]

Hello; as always, I'm looking for ways to shorten my campaign prep time. Looking at the old 2E Complete Book of Villains, and its tables, I got thinking... Often I don't have the time to put together villains' motives, deeper personality traits, and so on. But there are several archetypal villains that have personality traits that we just naturally associate with them.

What I intend to do is make 2 short tables:
Table VA: Quick, classic villains
Table VB: Twists

Disclaimer: This list isn't for your exceedingly well-developed villains; although you can do that later, these fellows are primarily to give you a game-worthy idea for a villain very, very quickly. The list is NOT designed to be your sole source of plot and villainy for the campaign.

So what do we need to include on a list of the 12 most important archetypal villains? To demonstrate what I'm searching for, I'll give it a stab:

Table VA:
1. The newly-awakened lich.
2. The power-hungry sorcerer.
3. The commander (Vader).
4. The mad barbarian.
5. The invisible assassin.
6. The devoted servant (evil cleric, typically).
7. The mastermind (always playing games, frequently a noncombatant)
8. The Bounty Hunter
9. The Seductress
10. The Mirror Image (that is, villain modeled on a PC).
11. The Mighty Dragon (Red Dragon)
12. The Vampire (urban, with cover identity)

Table VB:
1. In Power (or At the King's Ear)
2. Fallen hero (or hero gone mad)
3. Doubly Villainous3
4. Alien4
5. Introduced as an ally.
6. A Recruiter
7. The Many7
8. Unusual Ability
9. Unusual Class
10. Unusual Race
11. Unusual Type
12. Villain with a nice side
13. Many henchmen
14. Hidden master
15. Unusual Henchman
16. Sadistic Flair (decapitation…)
17. Professional / detached attitude
18. Fanatic
19. Top of a hierarchy
20. Member of a network

3 Roll again on table VA, and try to combine the two.
4 The most straightforward way to make it alien is to make it an aberration of some kind.

So what did I miss? Would you use this as a quick table for villain creation? Are there more twists that you'd definitely include?

Finally, I was thinking about how to introduce these villains... anyone have an idea for a table VC: Introduction?

 

[demiurge1138]

A decent d12 suite of villian potentials, but archetypal villains should have much more flexibility. "Relentless hunter", for example, is an example of the archetype of "The Obsessed".

Demiurge out.

 

[Ry]

A decent d12 suite of villian potentials, but archetypal villains should have much more flexibility. "Relentless hunter", for example, is an example of the archetype of "The Obsessed".

Demiurge out.

Hmm... I certainly want that broad baseline to be there, but I also need to associate each of these with something tangible enough to work out of the box. I want to have archetypal villains, but not necessarily archetypes, to start, and then (with a second or maybe third table) twist those villains into other examples of the same archetypes. I'll edit the original post, I think, to get that a bit clearer.

 

[BOZ]

5. The invisible assassin.

ooh, i hate them! the DM we had at one time used one of these guys to wreak all sorts of havoc on the party...

 

[Incenjucar]

A lich is just a fraction of the "powered-up" archetype.

And you forgot things like:

-The backstabbing ally

-The fallen hero

-The desperate/deluded hero (I must save the world.. by eating babies!)

 

[shilsen]

How about "the hero on the wrong side"? That's for those fun RBDM moments when you bring your heroes up against a paladin who is out to destroy that evil artifact which they think is necessary to save the world. It could be seen as a variant on Incenjucar's "The desperate/deluded hero".

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Are you trying to come up with some kind of Zodiac of the Damned?

 

[Ry]

Are you trying to come up with some kind of Zodiac of the Damned?

Not exactly; I'm trying to make a villain generator that starts simple, and grows in complexity the more you work with it. Thus, I want to roll on table A: Archetypal Villains, and be able to have an idea for a villain right away. Then, if I don't think of any twists myself, I can roll on table B (which I have just a few ideas for so far), which will take what I had in A and give it a twist. After that, I'm not sure if I'll be working on a table C or just keep rolling on B until I have a complex enough villain. I'm not worried about getting the _entire_ range of villainy, which is something the Complete Book of Villains tried to do, I think. I'm more interested in getting something that will hit a nice, playable swath of villains, basically from 2 tables.

 

[VirgilCaine]

ooh, i hate them! the DM we had at one time used one of these guys to wreak all sorts of havoc on the party...

Invisible could mean different things. Might not an expert in disguise and infiltration be as invisible as an...invisible assassin?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'd put the Avenging Sibling/Spouse/Relative onto the main list. It's a classic for heroes, but it's also a motivator for villains. It can be the heroes who killed/imprisoned/humiliated/whatever their loved one, or it can be an authority figure or some sympathetic (or not necessarily sympathetic) third party.