D&D General What makes for good antagonists?

[Tonguez]

My opinion is is the best villains are the quasi-anti-villains, those with some positive traits, or with no-evil reasons. For example the classic dr.Doom from classic marvel comics believes himself to be the future savior, and then he has to controll everything to void world destroys itself. Magneto wants a better future for the mutants, but the chose the wrong way. The Technocracy from "Mage: the Ascension" sincerly believe thanks their efforts the humanity will can enjoy a better future.

Rembember the players usually don't know the background of the enemy when this appears the first time. The TTRPGs aren't like the movies, series or animes where thanks a flashback we know the past of the characters.

Dr Doom is a Hero, that misguided scheming fool Richards has corrupted the world to paint of false picture of Dooms true glorious mercy

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Dr Doom is a Hero, that misguided scheming fool Richards has corrupted the world to paint of false picture of Dooms true glorious mercy

The best villains believe they are the true hero. I mean, even looking at Ozymandius in Watchmen.

 

[Richards]

...that misguided scheming fool Richards...

Hey, now!

Johnathan

 

[Davinshe]

One path is what I'll call the "smug bastard" villain. The kind who is just so...so...punchable, y'know? Someone you get a perverse joy out of hating, and are filled with the most delicious schadenfreude when they get (proverbially or literally) kicked in the teeth. Developing this kind of antagonist doesn't take a ton of effort, but it does require you to at least preserve their veneer of calm, collected villainy for a while so that the players messing up the villain's plans feels sufficiently weighty. A villain that exploits social dynamics to protect themselves, taunts the PCs with how untouchable they are, gets irritatingly successful in ways the PCs can't just easily take away--that's how you make this person both memorable and oh-so-hateworthy.

One of my most successful villains was a high-level cleric known as "father Matthis". Father Matthis was a cleric of Pelor god of light, and was in many ways a fairly typical cleric that hated the same forces of evil that the group did. So when the party's swordmage died, they went to him to seek resurrection. However, while Mathis recognized the heroes had done many good acts and treated them politely, he ultimately saw the heroes as anarchic forces of chaos that would eventually destroy his beloved city. So he decided to fake that the resurrection had somehow failed. He apologized to the group, and sent them on their way. The group however immediately guessed what had really happened.

Matthis became thereafter one of the most hated villains in the campaign despite never being a direct antagonist and the party and he waged a passive aggressive war on each other. As a high ranking cleric of a good god, they could not readily retaliate against him, but as their hostility grew Matthis would pressure local merchants to not sell potions or rations to the party, for town officials to be uncooperative, and other such measures. He made sure that the players were never in favor with the local lords and on one occasion even orchestrated another group of adventurers that he found more to his liking to get the credit and reward for deeds that the party had actually done. Every time they had no recourse but to suck it up and move on. They almost foamed at the mouth whenever his name came up, which was often, as the Pelorites eventually became the exclusive temple in the city thanks to Matthis' machinations.

At the end of that campaign, the city was being invaded by a dragon-led army of drow. At this critical and desperate moment the party assassin left the group to find Matthis (who was at this moment fighting against the same foes as the party), and kill him so that his death could be blamed on the drow. Their whole world was on fire, and the PC's collectively felt it was worth running a man short if they could finally settle the score with the campaign's most hated figure. It took them almost 16 levels, but they finally got their revenge.