This hierarchical approach to villainy—often described through tropes such as the "Sorting Algorithm of Evil"—provides a necessary framework for maintaining narrative momentum across the four tiers of play established in Dungeons & Dragons 2024. By treating evil as a corporate entity with subsidiaries, middle managers, and back-up plans, a Dungeon Master can create a world that feels lived-in, persistent, and increasingly dangerous without succumbing to the mechanical fatigue of simple power creep.
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The progression of player characters from local ne'er-do-wells to multiversal legends is intrinsically linked to the scale of the organizations they dismantle. The Sorting Algorithm of Evil mandates that these threats appear in strictly ascending order of menace to avoid an early anti-climax, ensuring that the heroes level grind appropriately before facing the regional directors of the abyss.- Tier 1 (Levels 1–4 - Local Heroes): Characters are apprentices or novices. They tackle threats to villages, local cults, or bandit gangs.
- Tier 2 (Levels 5–10 - Heroes of the Realm): Characters are experienced adventurers known across cities or kingdoms. Threats include regional monsters and giants.
- Tier 3 (Levels 11–16 - Masters of the Realm): Characters are elite, known across nations. They tackle threats to entire nations or continents, including beholder tyrants and evil archmages.
- Tier 4 (Levels 17–20 - Masters of the World): Iconic heroes handling threats to the world or multiverse, including ancient dragons, liches, or demon lords
Tier 1: Doing Their Best
Let's start with the front line workers. In the earliest stages of play, levels one through four, the local heroes are essentially dealing with low level minions within the hierarchy of evil. At the top of the hierarchy in my campaign is Voynich, an eldritch plant demon lord, attempting to return to feed unending growth through bloodshed. The entire campaign revolved around his slow, creepy influence, as he tainted pumpkins with a fungus (the Voynich Rot) that mutated everything that ate it (Leaking Can of Evil).Combatants at the lower level, at the most basic, don't even have agency. These are beasts or featureless troops that probably share a stat block. Those are the first level and out of necessity, there's a lot of them. But they are often managed by someone else, a bigger and nastier monster. Often it's "like them only larger." In my campaign the feral wolves were led by a horse-sized alpha, the swarm of crows were led by a two-headed man-sized crow monster, the swarm of rats were led by a six-headed rat king. These were all first level antagonists.
The next level up tend to be magic wielders. In my campaign, a jilted lover decided to steal an evil tome from a hag to cast a charm person spell...and inadvertently ended up inviting possession by an eldritch god. As a result, her villainy was incidental -- she was desperately trying to cover her tracks. Subsequent plant-related monster attacks escalated to the invasions of smaller monsters led by bigger ones, with the culmination eventually leading to the hag herself, Haggis. This was our second level antagonists.
By third level, things started to get serious. Conversely, monsters started coming at the PCs that were physically more powerful and required teamwork. Giant tree monsters known as katari led rolling, cackling jack-o'-lanterns known as grinners in waves, with PCs having to battle it out over chasms and rushing rivers. It all culminated in a battle against the hag herself, who wasn't on her own that much of a threat -- but her invisibile tactics let her infect NPCs and PCs alike, who slowly began to turn into plant zombies on their own.
She wasn't the only threat though, and her death wasn't the end of the battle.
Meet the New Boss...
Throughout, I hinted there was a roaring, evil spirit that was invisible and intangible but quite capable of tearing things apart. It chased the party's paladin through the woods, then animated a bunch of pumpkins into grinners in pursuit of a stagecoach. At one point it tored apart half a dwarven-made iron drawbridge. This was the unbodied Voynich (Residual Evil Entity), waiting for his avatar to arrive. He just needed a vessel. And that vessel was -- unbeknownst to the hag -- her corpse.When the PCs killed the hag, the disebomdied spirit returned, smashing doors open and tossing heroes aside to grab the corpse. In their confusion they were glad she was gone...only to have the Sealed Evil in a Can (in this case, a corpse) released as a giant flailing tentacle monster with five gnashing jack-o'-lantern heads.
This battle was brutal, an epic boss-level fight that tore the cabin down around them, downed three PCs, and ended with several PCs with single digit hit points before finally defeating Voynich's Avatar once and for all...or had they? Voynich had a backup plan.
...Worse Than the Old Boss
The PCs had tangled with a vampire known as Abhar before. Abhar, the Thrice-Born, was prophecized to return stronger each time. On his third incarnation he was convinced he was invincible. But the PCs defeated him twice before when he was weaker (and conveniently, lower level). With the PCs gone, Voynich backed his final play: forget plant monsters, Voynich planned to replace the authority in the dwarven town in Hammersmith with his own pawn, Abhar, posing as the local Captain Savage.Abhar immediately set about removing any credible threats, including ordering the execution of a druid who knew how to bury him permanently. PCs returned conquering heroes ... only to discover a strangely subdued town that wasn't interested in their triumph.
In the end, the PCs rescued the NPC druid, the real Captain Savage showed up, and they buried the vampire (alive) upside-down in a well at the center of town. He's still in there. A testament that for some bad guys can suffer a fate worse than death.
Making Your Way Up the Evil Ladder
Ultimately, the goal of this hierarchical villainy is to provide a narrative framework for tactical combat. Each villain isn't just more powerful, they FEEL more powerful, clearly telegraphing to the party that they're a more dangerous threat and conveniently scaling up to a level that the PCs can still handle them.There's an art to this. D&D's leveling system encourages this sort of "bigger and badder" villainy, but this can put a strain on a cohesive campaign that's supposed to take PCs up to 20th level. Moreover, it implies that narratively a mouse isn't going to be a supervillain capable of inflicting massive damage -- D&D intentionally reduces hit points by size -- so villains tend to literally put the "big" in bigger, facing kaiju-sized dragons by the time they're at tier 4.
As the players climb the "Corporate Ladder of Doom," they are not just gaining experience points; they are uncovering the hidden architecture of their world, ensuring that when they finally reach the C-suite of the abyss, the confrontation feels like the inevitable, hard-earned climax of a lifelong career in heroism. It's possible to create this, but it takes a lot of work for a DM to do it from scratch.
Your Turn: How do you make your villains feel interconnected and still a legitimate threat to your PCs?
