Villains who do foolish things?

[shilsen]

All the time. It makes NPC villains believeable and the players like them. And I like to see villains carrying the seed to their own destruction in their own corrupted or tainted soul

Agreed. Sometimes I have villains make the wrong tactical or strategic choices because of pride, over-confidence, fear, a lack of information, and various other reasons. The errors are sometimes clear to the PCs and sometimes are not. In the last 5 sessions in my campaign, the PCs have benefited at least twice in combat and once out of combat from an NPC enemy making an error because of the NPC's personality and nature.

 

[Zzyzx]

As DM, I definitely did a sub-optimal thing when I had a mighty orc chief hack at the tanglefoot goop that stuck him to the ground instead of hacking at the PCs.

But this is exactly what I thought someone who is first interested in personal freedom ("chaotic") might do if they were caught up in the moment (in a rage).

Characters went for him first, and took out most of his HPs before he escaped from the tanglefoot goop. Bad tactical choice, but I can't expect a raging orc, even an 11-12 level orc, to plan foolproof tactics all the time?

 

[VirgilCaine]

As DM, I definitely did a sub-optimal thing when I had a mighty orc chief hack at the tanglefoot goop that stuck him to the ground instead of hacking at the PCs.

But this is exactly what I thought someone who is first interested in personal freedom ("chaotic") might do if they were caught up in the moment (in a rage).

Characters went for him first, and took out most of his HPs before he escaped from the tanglefoot goop. Bad tactical choice, but I can't expect a raging orc, even an 11-12 level orc, to plan foolproof tactics all the time?

That's actually the smart thing to do, IMO. It would be hard to imagine a scenario where you could stand still and still fight the PCs and achieve your goals. Tanglefoot bags are powerful nasty and the PCs could stand ten feet away and kill him with arrows and spells if he doesn't have a bow or something. If I was the PCs, I wouldn't be sitting in melee with him while he's tanglefooted, that's the entire point of a tanglefoot bag.

 

[GwydapLlew]

A cookie-cutter NPC doesn't interest the players. A cookie-cutter NPC doesn't interest me. My BBEG all have backstories and motivations because, without those, it's just another 9th level CE necromancer, yannow?

None of my NPCs are perfect, and they all have weaknesses built into their personalities. If the PCs are intuitive enough to notice them, or diligent enough to research them, I reward them by allowing them to take advantage of the weakness.

As an example, in my latest game, there is a black dragon whose 'hook' is breeding half-dragons. Digging a little deeper, the reason for this is that there is a family of extremely powerful red dragons in the region, and the black has come to the conclusion that breeding a family of half-dragons loyal to himself will allow him to wipe out the reds. Dig a little bit deeper, and the reason the black uses these tactics is because he is afraid of direct confrontation.

Voila! A cowardly black dragon with a small band of half-dragon children. When the PCs encounter the black, I have everything I need to know about his goals and personality. Since the black has been around for a while, PCs can research his tendencies and plan accordingly. This gives them an edge when they want to kill the beastie.

 

[pawsplay]

You don't become a 13th level master villain by acting like a kid who's had too much sugar. Darth Vader may kill off an incompetent general here and there, but he knows how to apply just the right amount of threat to a construction supervisor to maximize production. In general, when a villain does something impulsive and destructive... it's because they can and get away with it.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Some villains do.

The stupid ones aren't put in a leadership position. Lots of BBEGs have had stupid lackeys - like Jaws from that James Bond movie.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

Perhaps I overstated my examples here. I never meant to say that higher-level villains aren't often capable and competent; what I meant to point out was that even high-level villains aren't immune to making mistakes and letting their ego or their emotions sometimes dictate their reactions. What annoyed me about Williams' writings was his apparent assumption that villains would always have a cool head and would always have the necessary magic items and resources to do everything they want. GwydapLlew, Darklone, and Shilsen got what I was trying to say.

And besides, some of the most notorious villains of the 20th century did some really stupid things. Hitler wasted tremendous resources going after Stalingrad in World War II, and refused to allow the general leading the invasion to withdraw, for no greater reason than his own personal prestige and pride. The invasion turned into a debacle, with no real military gain, and it cost the Nazis dearly.

In another example, as I understand it, Hitler ordered that the most powerful Panzer tanks that the Nazis had in France could only be deployed on his personal orders. Well, when D-Day came, Hitler was asleep and couldn't give the order for the tanks to be deployed-they just sat there as the Allies attacked. Hitler's cronies could have woken him up to give the order, but he hated to be woken up in the middle of the night, and his stooges were too scared of him to go and wake him up. Again, Hitler insisted on hoarding power for himself, and it cost him dearly.

Or look at Stalin. His paranoid purges decimated the ranks of the Red Army, leaving it disorganized when the Nazis attacked, nearly allowing them to win before they managed to reorganize. What good did those purges do, necessarily? They might have done Stalin some good, but how just how much damage did these mistakes do to the Soviet government and army?

Alexander the Great is another example, pushing his army too far and too hard, flying into rages and randomly killing people close to him in paranoid rages, but he still retained his grip on power. He burned cities when there was no need, for no greater reason than to satisfy his ego.

History has plenty of real-life villains who make mistakes that their foes can exploit. No one can deny that Hitler or Stalin were both tremendously evil and tremendously intelligent, and they were not immune to blunders. Why should monsters or RPG villains be any different? If red dragons are egomaniacs, or green dragons enjoy evoking terror in their targets, as the 2E Monstrous Manual pointed out, they might enjoy mixing it up with puny characters, especially if you consider 6th and 7th level to be exceptional, like I do.

As for magic items...anyone who's perused the Canonfire message boards knows my stance on that. Suffice it to say that EGG's warnings about excessive magic items, and his statement that 6th was an "unthinkably high level" ring true for me and were a major influence on my own views of D&D. Kingdoms of Kalamar, for one, gets away with low magic item counts and 8th level and above being an exception, so 3E can still work that way.

I personally think that if every palace guard has a +1 sword or shield, it cheapens what should be something exceptional and worth marvelling at. I can't recall a single fictional character who tossed a magic sword aside because he thought it was too weak. If magic is just another tradeable commodity, I think you lose a potentially interesting storytelling dynamic.

"Another magic sword? Yawn."

How many fictional swords and sorcery characters would say something like that?

 

[ruleslawyer]

Caution is not necessarily a requirement to be a powerful leader. Force of personality, physical or magical power, or the right ancestry can make a powerful villain even if said villain occasionally does rash or stupid things.

IMC, a villain (who's rich, ruthless, gifted with a fair amount of magical ability, and reasonably smart) just made a pretty big mistake that allowed the PCs to go after him, find his lair, and defeat him... he let one of his underlings a bit too far off the leash. That sort of thing happens.

 

[Piratecat]

How often have you as DM done things that might not have been the most tactically sound options, but that still appealed to the PCs' foes anyway for reasons ranging from ego to a warped sense of honor to thinking emotionally instead of rationally?

Fairly often, and it's always fun. Recently the party was forced to work with an evil shapechanger who happened to have some of the same goals that they did, and at one point a PC slapped him to get him to stop mocking their religion.

Hoo boy.

He did nothing at the time, but overreacted with a vengeance. He ruined a female paladin's reputation in her church by impersonating her, sleeping with an acolyte and purposely getting caught. He hired a mercenary army in the name of another PC to sack their home town. And he kidnapped the paladin's parents so that the parents would learn what a trollop their daughter had apparently become. He finally confronts the party, cackling about the depths of his revenge and how he had paid back their insult --

-- and the PCs didn't even remember slapping him. I think the line was, "Who are you, the fiendish lord of overreacting?"

He was crushed.

 

[WayneLigon]

What annoyed me about Williams' writings was his apparent assumption that villains would always have a cool head and would always have the necessary magic items and resources to do everything they want. GwydapLlew, Darklone, and Shilsen got what I was trying to say.

Eh, it was 12 years ago in a minor book at the end of a product line. I wouldn't put too much stock into what it said. I think most writings about villains now assume that they're going to have their own quirks and foibles. Look at Robin Laws book on Gamemastering.

Suffice it to say that EGG's warnings about excessive magic items, and his statement that 6th was an "unthinkably high level" ring true for me and were a major influence on my own views of D&D.

Times have changed.