How Evil are your Campaigns' Villains!

[SlyFlourish]

Kalarel has been an ongoing villain for me in my campaign. After KOTS, he came back after being tortured in all sorts of ways by Orcus after his failure.

I based him on a serial killer who liked to hack up young women. He does so overtly to twist the paths of the souls as they head to the Shadowfell for judgement but really he just does it because he likes it.

The part has been dealing with his murders CSI style since the first night we ran KOTS about a year ago.

I'm giving Kalarel all the personality types of a serial killer. He was badly abused as a street-kid before being taken and twisted by a more powerful priest of Orcus. He takes out his rage on young women. He has no real understanding of other people, he has no feelings for them, and finds it a great unjustice when the PCs come and screw with his plans.

When they finally confronted him, he couldn't understand at all why he was being hurt and how unfair it was.

Fun stuff.

 

[Mallus]

In my last 3e campaign, my antagonists paled in comparison to the protagonists. There was at least a shred of comprehensible honor in my villains.

 

[Ahnehnois]

A while back, I ran an Eye of Fear and Flame (BoVD), and did it for real, such that the creature was coercing people into raping and killing their neighbors. It also crushed the PCs in combat repeatedly and captured and tortured one. I think they enjoyed killing it.

I also ran a town mayor and secret diabolic disciple recently whose guilty pleasure on the side was burying random tomsfolk alive.

 

[seregil]

In my current campaign, the evil guys are a loose coalition of 5 evil gods led by the clerics of the Rotlord (god of disease).

In a plan to summon a major demon to free an even greater daemon (think Temple of Elemental Evil), the Cabal developed a magical disease that makes people berserk before they die.

To develop the disease, the Cabal tested it on remote villages until it worked correctly.

Then, they infected a major town which was located at a weak point between the planes during a major festival. They also coordinated an attack by hobgoblin to coincide with it.

All in all, they wiped out over 10 000 people, piled their corpses in the city square as an altar/pyramid and performed vile ceremonies over them to summon the daemon.

The PCs were in the city at the time but arrived too late to stop the ceremony and were only able to fight a rear-guard battle to safeguard the retreating refugees (what few were left).

Later, they had to go back seal the breach. Imagine what the town looked like after a few weeks of being overrun by various daemons and having 10 000 corpses all over the place. They were helped by an order of paladins that made a diversionary attack, permitting the PCs to sneak in and seal the breach, through the sewers no less (yum yum!).

 

[kitsune9]

I had a thought a few days ago. I can't remember why. I might have been watching a movie with a really nasty bad guy.

Anyway...

What I'm wondering is 'how Evil are your campaigns' villains?'

What's the worst thing a villain has done to defeat the PCs? Dirty tricks? Killed loved ones of the PCs?

What's the worst thing a villain has done just for the sake of being evil? Sacrificed innocents? Killed henchmen for fun?

Are all your NPC villains irredeemable? Or can the PCs save a villain from him/herself? What have the PCs done to redeem a villain? Did it work?

Cheers!

Knightfall

My scale is that my villains range from annoyances such as rival adventuring companies, mercs, or political enemies but have alignments that are not evil, so they are highly unlikely to play dirty, but will not hesitate to kill the PC's if they stand in the way of their goals for what they see as "good". The other scale are the total irredeemiable types however in my presentation I just give a general blanket statement about that they are evil beyond all measure but I won't go into specifics as to why. I try to run a PG game.

If the PC's have a particular attachment to some good NPCs or an NPC, I'm not above "hitting below the belt" with the PC's on making the villian off the NPC, or worse yet, turn the good NPC into some kind of monstrocity that the PC's will have to fight later.

 

[Knightfall]

Thanks for all the replies. A lot of great 'Evil" insights.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think it's good to have at least some really Eevil villains so the players can have the fun of brutally killing them, guilt free. The more evil the villains are the more morally reprehensible the PCs can be, while still remaining the good guys.

Black And Gray Morality

 

[kigmatzomat]

I like to have varying types of villains during a campaign. Ranging from the guy who can't figure out any other way to feed his kids, the anti-hero who feels the ends justify the means and is willing to kill baby-Hitler, and the hard-core evil-for-evil's sake type.

How graphic I go depends on the campaign's tone. In Dragonlance there were the super-evil types but they were portrayed more in 4-color comic book evil. Conversely, my EarthDawn/Roman Empire game is horribly dark since it's the time of the Vandals, Goths, and Huns, ignoring the bloody nature of several religions and the virtually feral evil spirits.

 

[Mark]

Characters How Evil are your Campaigns' Villains!

My villains often break pieces of chalk into smaller pieces when they find them so that people accidently scrape their fingernails on blackboards when trying to use them.

 

[Turtlejay]

My villains often break pieces of chalk into smaller pieces when they find them so that people accidently scrape their fingernails on blackboards when trying to use them.

You guys are sick...