Recurring Bad Guys

[DrunkonDuty]

Had one once. She was a Cleric/Rogue, always a couple of levels above the party average with a few henchmen mooks.

She was not designed as a stand up fighter. In a one on one brawl with any of the PCs she'd have lost. But she was clever, sneaky and really good at getting away with stuff. What she was was a thief. An extraordinary thief. She escaped from heroes, oh, 3 times I think. And managed to make them look bloody foolish a few more times.

She was caught in the end because one of the players decided they needed to be proactive in capturing her, rather than reactive. Unfortunately, she didn't die in the combat. She stood trial, facing the death penalty, only for one of the great lords of the realm (and the clan lord of 2 of the PCs) to make a move for clemency.

Ya see, she'd stolen all the cash from the clan lord's bank and the clan faced financial ruin. But in return for clemency she was willing to return as much of it as she could. This deal was all worked out behind the scenes and was certainly NOT approved of by the courts. And coincidentally, she made a convert for her god... the Dwarven God of Greed. The players knew what was going on but none of the characters individually had enough information to work out what was going on.

The campaign had to end there, I could no longer travel every month to keep running it. But things were getting interesting.

This is the only recurring villain I've ever managed in a DnD game. Players have too much tendency to be murderous. In fact I suspect in most games my villain in the example above would not have survived capture in order to stand trial.

Waterbob:

Do you think your demon has much chance of surviving the escape plan? It's just that, if it has fewer than 10hp do you think it will be able to disengage, avoid Attacks of Opportunity and get down the hole? Most PCs get down right attached to their enemies in this situation. I know I do.

 

[Hand of Evil]

It is all in the nature of the bad guy, don't think evil...think just against the players. Some examples of this:

• The Law Man - you have a lawful good lawman that is just doing their job, the players always seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, this guy would spend a good bit of time after the characters. This could even be a bounty humter.
  
• The Cover Up - this person is out to keep something quite, the players and he may like each other but he is against their way of doing things. This is great for in Guild stories.
  
• The Noble - lots of henchmen but he is above the law, bother to the king or such and as long as he does not cross a line (treason) he walks.

Some times you have to think of adventures as a race, with no rules and the out come is the win. That outcome can be different things, players prevent a war or the Duke gets a war. Each group is working to an end. The Three Muskteers was this way, they knew who was behind the plan and their job was to stop those plans.

 

[amerigoV]

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?

I like 'em. I set up non-combat situations where the PCs interact with them to get to know them - be it just to give the BG some depth or to illustrate his evilness (maybe he is in a position of power that cannot be moved against right now and he does something Rat Bastard). Making the BG more of a puppetter helps keep them alive as well "kill them all my minions, I am off to do more Evil things to the innocent townfolks".

But hey, in games with wishes, raise dead, and undead - its not hard to being them back with an extra dose of eeeevil in them.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

I like having recurring villains, but the ability of the villain to escape the PCs (or avoid combat entirely) is the single most important part of the recurring villain. In my experience, that's the only think that needs a lot of planning and forethought -- in the interaction with the PCs, there will be things you can riff off of to make the NPC memorable.

In the past couple of weeks in my home game I've had two minor recurring opponents that make decent examples. Neither would probably satisfy Quickleaf, but they've been fun.

Setup: the Pcs are fighting a sort of skirmish war on the side of elves and eladrin in the ruins of an elven city, trying to force out drow and their allies. (this is a 4e conversion of the 3rd adventure in Paizo's Second Darkness AP).

Recurring Opponent #1. The Dragon. The Drow have a dragon ally who flies over the ruins and creates havok when he can. In each encounter there's a chance that the dragon will appear for a small part of the battle. He shows up one round, flies in and attacks the next (spending an action point), then makes his escape the next round.

As a complication for another encounter, he does a bunch of damage, usually uses his dragonfear to stun the PCs and really mess up their plans, but with solo HP he never sticks around long enough to get more than scratched.

In the first session where they encounter the dragon's hit and run tactics, he caught the party's shifter ranger exposed and alone, and spent his time in the scene savaging the lone shifter -- who was rescued by the party but had a very close call.

Then, while the PCs were sleeping that night, the dragon flew over their camp and dropped a dead wolf with a note tied into it's mouth -- asking the "dogman" to come out and play.

That pretty much sealed the deal, although the PCs have been "visited" in combat by the dragon once or twice more (and will again), it's become personal.

Recurring Opponent #2 Off-stage Ballista

So, in the same skirmish war, the PCs keep finding themselves fighting while they're in the crosshairs of a ballista that attacks them at the start of every round, targeting a random PC with an attack. As long as they're on the encounter map, they're subject to the attack (the attack's bonus is sort of low for their level, so it only hits about one time in three, but those big bolts flying in from off-screen make a nice mess).

After putting up with being shelled like that in a couple of encounters over the past two sessions, the PCs were, in the last encounter of our session yesterday, able to find one of the ballista towers, fight their way in and silence the damn thing. They were pretty pleased with themselves -- far more than just winning one more fight. Again, not a whole lot of personality, but in both cases the PCs were caught in a place where they had to put up with the abuse without having much chance to do anything about it.

In both cases, the main encounter was something else entirely -- and I'd encourage you to consider that, too. Your take big risks with your villains if you let them go toe to toe with your players. At the VERY LEAST I'd recommend that you have them look for the exit as soon as they're bloodied (or below half, if you're not playing 4e). Don't wait around for the bitter end -- if the PCs are getting the upper hand, get the heck out of there.

In the case of your demon, I don't think he should stick around and fight the PCs much -- he's been waiting for his chance to escape for a long time, he's not going to risk that opportunity just to slug it out with a bunch of dopes who have the drop on him.

I'd look at a way to use that snatch ability to grab on of the PCs and take him away from the part a little ways for a little one-on-one time -- but just a round. Then, the rest of the party comes galumphing in to save the day, hit the road. Don't wait for the beating that's coming. But in that moment of one-on-one time, lay a little lasting harm on the PC who gets grabbed -- a disease, a curse, something (book of vile darkness has a few options).

Even better, get a little meaner and have the demon plant a little part of himself in the PC -- not enough to actually control the PC or anything like that, but maybe the demon can see and talk through the PC whenever the PC is unconscious (until the PCs manage to get the curse lifted). How much fun would it be to lay that on them the first time they take an extended rest? Or the next time that PC drops to 0 in combat? To hear the demon's voice come out of the PC's body, cheering on the PC's opponents?

Do that, and you'll have your excellent recurring NPC, I'll bet.

-rg

 

[NewJeffCT]

With my game, it just happened. I did not plan on it at all. However, it became quite the memorable bad guy, even though though she was just the tool of the eventual BBEG. We usually play a "let the dice fall where they may" type of game, so it's kind of hard to plan for a recurring villain unless they're in the background.

WARNING - LONG WINDED POST FOLLOWS

I had managed to get the fairly rare miniature - Drow Champion of Eilistraee miniature - and thought it was really cool. So, I told myself as a DM, I needed to find a way to get this miniature on the table.

It was not designed to be a recurring villain, however. I just wanted a big change from the orcs, goblins and low level clerics the party had been facing so far. The local duke had been kidnapped and then "sold" to some orc slavers, who were then going to hand the good duke over to the neighboring evil slave-trading theocracy (ESTT).

Thanks to some good tracking rolls, the PCs managed to catch up to the orcs just when they were meeting with the reps of the ESTT. The PCs hid nearby and hoped to nad the duke once the two parties separated. For the ESTT reps, there were a few obvious clerics, plus some low level soldiers and two cloaked & hooded figures. Well, the deal between the orcs & the ESTT went bad and one of the hooded figures was revealed to be the drow miniature, who I had written up as a drow duskblade. She immediately laid waste to the ogre that was with the orcs with her arcane channeling power.

After the orcs were killed/scattered, the PCs moved in and it was still a tough combat. The clerics and low level soldiers were dropped, the Duke was secured, and the duskblade was soon the last bad guy standing. The party elf was dropped by her, but the remaining PCs surrounded her. Seeing that she had no hope, she cast her Swift Expeditious Retreat and did a full withdraw action to avoid any AoOs. The PCs focused on patching the fallen PC elf and ensuring the duke was healed - they let the drow duskblade go.

A few levels later, the reps of the ESTT struck back in revenge. The PCs had to defend a dryad's grove that bordered the kingdom where they lived and the ESTT. It was a huge showdown with several clerics, some soldiers and slaves, some orcs, a hill giant, and our lovable drow duskblade. It was very close to a TPK - the duskblade killed one PC outright and dropped the PC elf to -9 (another PC got killed by a mega crit from the hill giant and a major NPC ally also died). The duskblade got dropped to exactly 0 hit points, but since the battle had moved across the table by the end, the duskblade was nowhere to be found once the battle was finished. (She was saved by fleeing soldiers off camera.)

By this time, they really hated her and we'd get a lot of jokes about how the party elf keeps falling on her sword. He even ended up taking the Champion of Corellon PrC so he could wear heavy armor and still get his DEX bonus.

A few levels later (around level 9), the players encountered a mid level "boss" cleric from the ESTT - they had heard his name for a while now. He was mounted on a wyvern and had a bunch of soldiers at his command. This time, the duskblade was invisible and came at the party from behind to attack the party cleric. It was priceless to see the look on the face of the woman playing the cleric when I said, "and, appearing out of thin air right behind Janayla..." and then I popped the miniature down on the table. The duskblade did a full Power Attack, combined with Arcane Channeling, and did about 60 hit points of damage to her... since, she had only 54 hit points, she immediately went down. It was the first time her cleric had really been seriously damaged the entire campaign (they had mostly fought unintelligent foes that focused on the front line fighters). So, the party had to scramble to save her and had lost their main source of in-combat healing.

But, the players eventually turned the tide and soon, only the lead cleric and the duskblade were left. Seeing that they were outnumbered, the cleric took the duskblade and Plane Shifted out of town, much to the chagrin of the players again.

The cleric came back fairly soon and this time was mounted on a dragon, but the duskblade was gone for a while. (she had something else to do for the ESTT)

Eventually, they had a final showdown with her and a drow war party near an important elven village. The PCs were level 16 or 17 and I think the duskblade was level 18, along with the lead drow cleric. The drow had some hill giant barbarians, as well as some lower level drow clerics and wizards. It was an awesome battle in game, with both sides throwing around powerful spells, both sides getting memorable crits (the party's goliath barbarian annihilated a hill giant barbarian with a 130+ point crit) and both sides using Revivify to heal up "dead" allies, including the drow duskblade. However, when the duskblade was dropped for the second time and had no allies left to heal her, it was high fives around the table. They finally got her!

She ended up being more memorable than the final BBEG at the end, who was only "on stage" for the last two sessions. I think she had four direct battles with the PCs, and then had one off camera one with another PC's family.

 

[Piratecat]

I never stat up my reoccurring bad guys until I absolutely have to, but I make sure they have a really memorable voice and personality. I love either remote communication (such as in visions) or remote possession (such as astral form). The goal is to let the PCs confront and talk to them, without actually putting the villain in any harm's way.

 

[SkidAce]

My best (most hated by players) recurring villain was a fighter illusionist (started him in 1st ed).

His best trick was to cast hold person on the paladin (while hiding), then cast an illusion of himself on the paladin. Who had been standing alone on the prow of the ship, gazing into the wind.

So he started his bad guy monologue, the party wizard and the thief basically said "screw that" and unleashed on the "bad guy". The illusion broke showing a moderately wounded paladin.

Man they hated that guy.

(they actually caught him in person one time and thought it was an illusion so they just taunted him and went about their business, found out by seeing tracks and blood from his injuries in the dirt on the way out of the "lair". So he basically bailed past them to safety with a good bluff. They really hated that guy.)

 

[gamerprinter]

I don't do it often, but when I have needs for a reoccurring bad guy, he never directly fights the PCs, as it's certainly possible that he'll be killed in such a conflict. Dead bad guys tend not to reoccur. As a boss, he directs others to attacking the PCs while he watches long enough to see the combat progressing, then he disappears before the combat is complete - often he disappears after the first round of combat.

Each time he reappears, he has tougher minions to do the combat, but always watching from a distance, before leaving the scene.

If you want someone to 'reoccur', it's never smart to put them into direct combat with the PCs, as there is always a good chance the bad guy will lose the fight. As long as the PCs know that the bad guy is organizing and commanding over the minion force, they'll hate him and recognize him as a primary target. He needn't actually fight with the PCs for the party to know him.

At some point later in the campaign, the opportunity for direct combat will occur, and perhaps the bad guy will even have a planned escape, but this is when chance might get in the way for him to finally be killed. Of course, if successful, he could possibly kill a PC and escape once more, or the PCs win and end him right there.

IOW, prevent direct combat with your reoccurring bad guy, until you're ready for the party to win - even then nothing is for sure, but if you put him in direct combat at the start, as you've discovered in your first attempt, he might not live long enough to reoccur. Avoid combat with the PCs - this is key.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I have had many recurring bad guys in many of my games through the years, but only once really successfully in D&D. It's just something about the nature of D&D that says to the players "Kill. Kill! KILL!" Now, run the same players through some other, less killtastic, genre and it's no problem. I mean, I've had many Shadowy Figures Behind-the-Scenes, but once the PCs confronted them, they were toast.

I forget his name, but he was the Orc henchman to the campaign's BBEG and the only one who knew the BBEG's identity. The PCs needed the information, so they were forced to capture him alive, which they did three times. But he'd always escape, thanks to his mysterious boss.

The PCs HATED that guy.

But the final confrontation with him and his boss, when they were finally able to kill him, had some serious emotional payoff. They were so pleased with themselves.

One of my favorite campaigns ever.

 

[Corathon]

Smart/wise bad guys plan ahead. They will have an escape route in mind before the battle even begins. Of course, clever and/or lucky players may thwart that escape route, and if they do, good for them.