What have you done to REALLY make your players hate an NPC?

[Corbert]

Three of my PCs "gave lip" to a group of 6 NPC adventurers that were a few levels higher than them, got knocked out, stripped naked, shaved, and their gear put in a sack and hung over the cave entrance of a bear. Since the PCs were only about 3rd level, their gear wasn't considered valuable enough to bother stealing . Those PCs have been on the lookout for that adventuring group for a looong time now .

 

[Herobizkit]

One campaign I ran a long time ago had a high level Illusionist take an interest in the party. He was a minor villain, but the most hated of the villain's posse. I gave him the ability to project his image and voice to the party's location, and he was able to communicate with them as well. Picture the image of the man you're trying to kill follow you around and make fun of you, berate you, and (just to throw you off) offer helpful advice, only to have it ignored bcause he's the bad guy and he's only trying to get you killed. Makes for a great time.

 

[pogre]

An NPC the players had to constantly touch base with in a mystery adventure spoke completely in rhymes. Annoying, poorly done couplets, were all he ever spoke. Even after the adventure he kept popping up in adventures and the players hated this NPC more than any villain I ever threw at them.

 

[ForceUser]

Having an evil, incredibly-powerful entity hanging around "helping" the party seems to work.

Right, guys?

 

[Testament]

Balabar Smenk, from the Age of Worms, has leapt to the top of my PC's hate list owing mainly to his obnoxious, condescending, Jabba the Hutt like manner. He invited them to his place for dinner, and took every opportunity to lord it over the PCs with shows of wealth and reminders of his power. They managed to restrain themselves from leaping over the table and beating him to death with their spoons only though supernatural willpower. They know they're being used, they know that he knows that they know (wtf?!), and there's pretty much squat they can do about it, since this pig owns the freakin' town.

The absolute highlight though, was Ralph (Kobold Rogue) treating the party to a seven-minute string of Kol profanities after they left, triggered mainly by Smenk assuming that he was the Cleric's servant.

 

[hagor]

The guy my players want "to deal with" above everything else, is Vacros, a roguish Easterling from Palantir Quest (MERP).
He stole the object they were after (oh yes, and some of their valuable possessions as well) and left them to die. At the end of the quest I let him escape.

Now, the mere mention of the name of a ship, which was once linked with Vacros, has caused my players to drop everything and race to the place the ship was last sighted!

Of course, they will meet him again in the not so far future, but the circumstances will not be what they now expect...

Hagor

 

[Tarangil]

What can you do to get your players to really hate an NPC?

The way I've found quite useful is have them become friends and companions for a few adventures before the NPC's colors eventually show through and he/she screws them over.


My example is that my players had to hire some NPC's as guards as they took an elderly sage to an archaeological site to study out in the wilderness. They chose 4 NPC's and one of them had a military background and was a straight foreward hands on guy. However he was more or less a mercenary with an alignment of LE, but they paid well and he stuck with them through many adventures, including a jaunt through hell. There were your occasional differences of opinion but everyone worked well. But The NPC's old employer had found him and had a much better offer, which unfortunately was conflicting with what the players were doing. So in the end he covinced another NPC in the group to go with him, and they beat up one of the players when caught alone and took some important stuff.

I 've never seen players with such a hate on for something before!

 

[diaglo]

told the PCs all about the NPC. his tactics. his use of magic. his shapechanging. etc...

and then when the PCs encounter him...

well it was exactly as they were told. and still they(the players) were frustrated as heck.

 

[Dalamar]

My players hated Garrow, the vampire priest from Shadows of the Last War, oh so much. The first time they encountered him, they had just ran out of most of their resources due to fighting some of his underlings and some zombies. They fled as fast as they could, and I played up to it, describing how they could see red dots in the doorway and a gravely voice calling for the minions (that they had interrogated, and thus knew of Garrow).

Man were they pissed when later in the adventure he stole the schema they had almost died getting, and then rode away as his last flunkies held them off. And their pissed-offness just increased when they found out that *spoilerage*

Spoiler

Garrow is a changeling, not a real vampire

*spoilerage*.

 

[Storyteller01]

I have two:

First one was a pilot in a Dragonstar campaign. A player created his 'we were a privateer ship for the Empire, until my brother sold us out' story, so I ran with it. The player started running a drunken pilot then, for reasons of his own, started sobering him up (never found out why. Great story hook though).His brother, on the other hand, started taking a drug that improved his flying while destroying his mind. As long as he did what the BBEG said, he got all he wanted. To the player, it was like looking into a twisted mirror.

That wasn't the clicher though. The party REALLY hated him after he infected the gnome's home planet with a virus that turns normal folks into anti-psionic ragers. The gnome just happened to be a psion. No was hurt, injured, or killed... so long as he never, EVER goes home again.



The second wasn't any one NPC per se. The campaign was running heavy espionage tactics, with doppelgangers as the BBEG's main spy network. I house ruled that target's of their Detect Thoughts ability didn't get a save unless they believed they had a reason for it (similar to disbelieveing an illusion). Nothing ticked the players off more than dealing with bad guys that knew their moves before they did. Completely threw off their sense of safety and control...