D&D 5E (2014) Villain Strategy: How Ruthless Are You?

[Umbran]

Do you ever run master villain NPCs - humanoid or otherwise - as taking strategic measures to prevent heroes from foiling their plans, and as specifically targeting PCs who have become a hindrance?

Not D&D specific...

In my Deadlands game, one of the PCs had a villainous brother NPC, who happened to be the head of a munitions manufacturer. Said brother sent a large, angry, reanimated/fossilized fire-breathing carnivorous dinosaur to the party as a wedding present. It had to rampage through Dodge City to get to the church on time....

Does that count?

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I once sent an assassin to kill the PCs, doing what an evil genius would likely do. He hid in the inn and because he was a no-name NPC no one attempted a check to see through his disguise, and because he was a professional he didn't draw attention to himself. He waited until the PCs were asleep in the inn. They had no watch because they were in an inn. So he crept up and coup de grace-ed one of the PCs, before the rest of the party noticed. And a lucky roll was involved.
It would have been super easy to TPK everyone, especially if he poisoned them.

PCs need to be treated like the protagonists of major fiction, be it a movie or book. If there's an assassin after them they should be warned by some ally. Or someone should get the wrong soup and die. Or there should be an unfortunate noise during the assassination attempt.
The villain should try to be smart and efficient in his villainy, but fate should conspire to save the PCs from an unfair and dickish death.

I tend to agree. Ubervillains need to be played with kid gloves by the DM. They need to be a credible & memorable threat but not unassailable. The PCs should feel that there are options for victory. DMs who harry their players with constant attacks from Asmodeus without a strategy for resolving the issue bring more stress than tension to the game for most players.

 

[steeldragons]

Yeah. I don't really see how this differs from the "Monsters: ruthlessness" thread. A [the] "Villain" is, for all intents & purposes, a monster. i.e. They are not a PC. So, yeah, the villain gets played as intelligent and capable as their character allows. They have their missions/schemes/goals (which presumably the PCs are acting against/interfering -even unwittingly- with). They want to achieve those goals.

As for "ruthless", you mean as in the other thread do I fudge rolls or "go in for the kill" with the dice? It depends. Some might just be happy to create some distraction/give the party some more appealing/"Bigger fish" adventure/treasure/goal. Some might just want to throw them off their trail, not really desiring to hurt anyone [dead bodies just cause more problems than they avoid };P ]. Some might try to simply buy the PCs off. Some might only be interested in (or want nothing more) seeing the PCs strewn across the battlefield in pools of their own blood and various states of dismemberment and decay. Some might not even notice/be aware of the PCs sniffing around their "master plan" until the final climactic confrontation.

Just depends on the villain.

The subordinates -the "captains/lieutenants/champions/2nd or 3rd tier folk" in the villain's hierarchy [if such exists] who are out for all the praise/attention/power/position by their master are more apt to seek a full on massacre/no loose ends/that kinda thing for the villain/keep the villain happy/make the villain -specifically- happy with them.

[Word to the wise, they didn't become "the villain" by being stupid/careless/inattentive to detail. So caution, more often than not, is warranted. ]

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

Not D&D specific...

In my Deadlands game, one of the PCs had a villainous brother NPC, who happened to be the head of a munitions manufacturer. Said brother sent a large, angry, reanimated/fossilized fire-breathing carnivorous dinosaur to the party as a wedding present. It had to rampage through Dodge City to get to the church on time....

Does that count?

These kinds of acts are more common from the PCs than from the villain at my table. So I'd only count it if the offender didn't have enough influence in the town to get away with it.

 

[Umbran]

Yeah. I don't really see how this differs from the "Monsters: ruthlessness" thread. A [the] "Villain" is, for all intents & purposes, a monster. i.e. They are not a PC.

There is usually one small difference. The actions of a monster are constrained by what it has within a given encounter. It has a very fixed set of resources and time in which to be a badass.

The Villain has downtime. Lots of it. And usually unspecified resources. The GM can and will often make up new stuff for the villain to do out of whole cloth, without constraint except perhaps by genre tropes and a general idea of appropriateness. If a villain needs a new center of operations, *poof*, there's a dungeon for him. If she needs a lieutenant to toss at the PCs, *poof*, there's a lieutenant, all armed and kitted out and ready to try to kick some PC's behind. If the villain needs to partner up with another villain, *poof* there is an unholy alliance without all the mucking about with charisma checks.

There is much more of a culture of "you shouldn't break the rules" with a monster in an encounter than there is with a villain and an overall plot.

 

[Eirikrautha]

Why not just say, "Rocks fall; you die"? It would be much quicker and serve the same purpose?

In real life, we have the ability to carefully observe our surroundings and a mind built to notice change. A character only has what is described to him. So if you want an assassin to blend in, just don't mention him (or do so in an ordinary way). Without all of the clues that real human beings have, the players are sure to miss him, unless they slow the game to a crawl asking questions about everything and everyone the meet in detail. Ever played with the party that checks for traps every 5 feet? Welcome to that times a thousand. What fun!

So, you, the DM, with infinite power at your fingertips and the ability to do anything you so desire, can manage to trick your players. Congratulations. No, really. It sounds so easy. But not necessarily fun...

 

[Umbran]

These kinds of acts are more common from the PCs than from the villain at my table. So I'd only count it if the offender didn't have enough influence in the town to get away with it.

Well, the bad guy did get away with it. Enough influence that he could buy people to manage the rampage for him, so he was several states away when it went down. It was nearly a year in game time before the PCs finally got him in a completely different encounter.

Mind you, the trick of reviving fossilized monsters was not a matter of "influence". It involved black magic that the PCs were fundamentally incapable of using - like going to the Dark Side in a Star Wars campaign. You go there, you become an NPC.

 

[DaveDash]

I once sent an assassin to kill the PCs, doing what an evil genius would likely do. He hid in the inn and because he was a no-name NPC no one attempted a check to see through his disguise, and because he was a professional he didn't draw attention to himself. He waited until the PCs were asleep in the inn. They had no watch because they were in an inn. So he crept up and coup de grace-ed one of the PCs, before the rest of the party noticed. And a lucky roll was involved.
It would have been super easy to TPK everyone, especially if he poisoned them.

PCs need to be treated like the protagonists of major fiction, be it a movie or book. If there's an assassin after them they should be warned by some ally. Or someone should get the wrong soup and die. Or there should be an unfortunate noise during the assassination attempt.
The villain should try to be smart and efficient in his villainy, but fate should conspire to save the PCs from an unfair and dickish death.

I would do the same as the first paragraph, however, I'd let them make some rolls. Maybe the Bard can do some sort of Charisma/Local Knowledge check to see if he hears and rumours about an Assassin that has been hired. Maybe an insight check at the inn to know they're being watched. Maybe perception checks while they were asleep to sense someone creeping into their room, etc. If they failed all those, then yeah I would probably kill them. In 5e though there is the further 'fail safe' that you can't really auto Coup De Grace by the rules.

It really depends on your game, but I want my players to know the story won't be there to save them, and this is obviously something I'd have to be upfront about with new players as well.

Of note, I have never done a total TPK in a real D&D campaign. I've killed off some PC's though before they could act (using NPC assassins and such) in 3rd edition. In AD&D I've also had a player survive a finger of death by using his Robe of Archmagi(?) (5% magic resistance) roll and succeeding, otherwise he would have been toast. Those kinds of things create for memorable moments.

One thing to mention is that when your characters start getting high level, killing them probably isn't the best option. Capturing them and holding them indefinitely in an area under a forbiddance spell, or in some extra planar prison using dimensional shackles, is probably what powerful BBEGs will want to do. If they're powerful enough, killing them is more of a speed bump in the D&D world.

 

[MechaPilot]

PCs need to be treated like the protagonists of major fiction, be it a movie or book. If there's an assassin after them they should be warned by some ally. Or someone should get the wrong soup and die. Or there should be an unfortunate noise during the assassination attempt.
The villain should try to be smart and efficient in his villainy, but fate should conspire to save the PCs from an unfair and dickish death.

I agree; that's really the same reason why I telegraph SoD the presence of SoD effects when encounters have them.

 

[Riley37]

Why not just say, "Rocks fall; you die"?

Because that's low-quality storytelling. Establishing that a story element CAN be told badly, is not the same as establishing that a story element can ONLY be told badly. The OP included an explicit caveat about whether a pro-active mastermind villain would be fun for the players; why are you disregarding that?

I provided an example in the OP to clarify my intent. That example (a) was nonlethal, a wild goose chase, it ends whenever the PCs decide they're done; (b) involved an NPC *approaching* the party to tell them about the Sand-Burrowing Fortress and give them a map; (c) included an NPC "rescue" pre-scripted; (d) included a clue for later use (the map; it was drawn by the villain, and now the PCs have a handwriting sample). When an NPC initiates contact, saying "Hm, I look this guy over" or asking some confirmation questions is NOT the same as making Perception and Insight checks for every one of the dozens of NPCs in the tavern's dining room.

Yes, a perfect assassination is like rocks that you can't dodge. A perfect assassination is also only possible AFTER the villain knows who the PCs are, where they stay during downtime, etc. Villains should not just have that info by fiat; NPCs don't automatically know everything the DM knows.

In an RPG, a LETHAL attempt should have both a way for the PCs to spot/avoid it (in which case, they get XP) or a way that it goes awry (no XP, maybe they owe an NPC a favor now, maybe they suffer nonlethal harm... or at worst a reversible death). The attempt should also be an opportunity for clues.

In fiction, sometimes the audience, but not the heroes, sees the beginning of villainous sneaky plot. For example, the assassin in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with a trained monkey. IMO, the moment when Indiana is about to eat a poisoned date is great drama. Tension happens because of the difference between what the audience knows and what the protagonist knows, and is resolved either when the hero discovers the threat by their own actions (yay competent hero), or is saved by good luck or helpful NPCs (as in the previous example). Perhaps one PC gets a clue in time to rescue another; for example, what if the assassin knew about four of the PCs... but not the fifth, who happens to be in the room, when the assassin thinks the target is isolated and alone? Or maybe the target is alone, but the wizard's cat familiar is in the room, sitting by the nice warm fireplace?