Not a Decepticon
Hero
I recal seeing this claim in discussion abotu who is the true Big Bad of D&D, attributted to Matt Collville - "Vecna is Ultimate Lich villain, Tiamat is ultimate Dragon villain, Orcus is ultimate Demon villain". Which is an interesting idea - let's take every type of villain or enemy in D&D history and try to assign which character embodies the "ultimate" ideal of this type of villain.
What does it mean:
What does it mean:
- The enemy must embody a creature you can fight in D&D. It can embody multiple types but can only qualify for one. You can also include character class or get more speciffic with the definition of creature type. Embodying can also have its definition streched if you want to say, argue Baphometh and Yennoghu embody Minotaur and Orc.
- Must be powerful enough to be the final boss of a campaign, thought it doesn't necessairly mean the most pwoerful being of this caliber
- Must be a well-known villain, while also being popular with the GMs to use.
- Death Knight: Lord Soth of Dragonlance, who argurably redefined the Death Knight and made them all based off himself (when previously theiy were a bit different)
- Demon: Orcus, Demon Prince of Undeath. One of oldest villains, and also getting really popular since his return in 3rd edition, to the point of suffering some backlash. Yet even today you will see edgelord invoke Orcus at times when other demon lord would be better suited.
- Dragon: Tiamat/Takhisis, who may or may not be the same entity, depending on the edition. Either way, thanks to both classic and modern campaigns, Queen of the Dragons became something everyone thinks, whenever trying to think of a biggest, nastiest dragon for PCs to fight.
- Lich: Vecna, the Archlich, first and greatest of Liches, Vecna has been in four big adventures, in each embodying what a proper lich should be like - trying to upheve the fundamental rules of the world in pursuit of his twisted, undead ambition, a perfect example of wizard ambition gone horribly wrong.
- Vampire: Strahd von Zarovich, created directly to flesh out the vampires and give them more than just being a random encounter, he argurably did such a good job, it changed the way we potray or play vampires overall.