D&D Designing Villains

[Nightfall]

What a discovery! Villains need a motivation.

Sure they do. Some of them are down right bipolar!

 

[awayfarer]

Personally I've always found that the most memorable villains are those whose motivations are understandable and can be sympathized with; even as they use highly disagreeable methods.

Anyone out there who's played Suikoden 2? That game is a good example of this. Both your character and his nemesis get the same basic idea (uniting the city states and Highland) but each approaches it from the opposing side. You've both got the same motivation and basically the same goal.

 

[Nightfall]

*thinks the best way to be memorable is to be the most brutal, sadistic, ruthless and power mad guy around* I mean look how well that worked for Xerxes?

 

[Hussar]

What a discovery! Villains need a motivation.

While I realize that it may seem a bit obvious, there's a huge number of published adventures out there where the bad guy doesn't have a whole lot of motivation. I've fairly sure that there's a number of homebrew adventures as well where the bad guy is just "generic Bad Guy #27". There's nothing wrong with brushing up on basics.

 

[Priest_Sidran]

I have always found that the best villain is the villain that the players don't yet know about, or perhaps they even think he's their friend.

In my current campaign I have set the party up with mentors, whom they have begun to trust, and to learn from. The reality is that these mentors are at war with one another, and are slowly building the PC's up to par so that they can hash the ordeal out so that these two greater powers don't have to dirty there fingers.

A Villain that has tact, and motive, and ambition, who is also able to trick the players into believing he's on their side of things is always a good way to give flair to a campaign.

 

[Amitiel]

As a player, I would be more pissed off at the villain who wont stay dead then the villain who legitimately escapes. The trick is to avoid denying the players victory when you do this. It is one thing to have the villain disappear every time you show up. Its another for him to have to bugger off and escape because the players have completely derailed any evil plan that the villain may have had.

Then again, I am a DM more often than a player. I could be wrong.

When a villain loses a climactic fight, he should suffer some obvious setback that sticks around for a while. The loss of key henchmen or magic items is a good place to start. Also, the players should have a reasonable chance to circumvent the escape route. If the escape hinged on using the fly spell, and another player bags him with a Net, then things get dicey.

I try to run fights so that the players always have a legitimate chance of losing. The same must apply to your villains. If all your going to do is have your bad guy teleport into the campsite, throw a few fireballs, and teleport away, then you should not run that fight.

END COMMUNICATION

Yeah the 'won't stay dead' is fine if its a Lich, or outsider who can only be permenantly killed in the outer plains. But otherwise I'd rather have them escape in a clever way. Though just teleporting away is a little silly especially when they could use a far flashier method.

Caiaphas (mentioned above) was defeated and captured by the party (there was a rather massive reward on his head form a church to have him alive) and escaped with a Silent Still Gaseous Form spell from his Spell Mastery feat.

 

[Nightfall]

I'll settle for motivation for villians when I'm not running an AP.

 

[Glyfair]

I have always found that the best villain is the villain that the players don't yet know about, or perhaps they even think he's their friend.

The problem is, you have to use this sparingly. Once you do this once players are gunshy around "friends" for a while. Do it twice and they may never trust an NPC again.