Who are the BBEGs of your World?
- Thread starter Nyaricus
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Three_Haligonians
First Post
Where to start?
In terms of "World" BBEG's, as in ones the characters have heard of but have never interacted with, my homebrew has a few - such as Castle Mor, a terribly cursed and haunted island fortress that no one ever goes to.
The most famous though, is the Wizard King of Dumar. He is a despot who rules a small kingdom with an iron fist. He, under his fascist state has outlawed all magic use; wizardry is forbidden and practitioners are sent into slavery, sorcerers are executed outright and all churches are banned. The only exception to this law is, of course, himself and his "secret police" style enforcers. My players hate this guy and always talk about someday soon, going in and overthrowing him despite the fact that they have never, ever, crossed paths. Weird...
As far as long-term campaign villains go,
I have your standard "evil noble". You know the type, on the surface is great and respected, a real philanthropist - but really is up to no good and they'd love to just kill him, but he's got all the power and influence needed to make that a non-viable option. Heh, I even took the cliche so far as to have the PC's work for him first before finding out the true nature of who they were helping and why.
Speaking of cliche's, I have a great and powerful devil straight out of "Needful Things" - roaming the world under the guise of a travelling salesman who always has what you need, so long as you agree to the debt of a "favour" that may be called later. He always arrived and left whistling the same tune - to the point where the Players would recognize his arrival when I started to whistle it myself.
There is also a powerful Diabolist/Summoning specialist Wizard that, for some reason, despite being the enemy, my players seem to empathize with and rather than stop his nefarious schemes and kill him, they would like to try and stop his schemes and then talk him down - to this day, I don't know what I did during their interactions that made my players chose this.. it certainly wasn't my intention.
(Actually, these three were the main antagonists of the first large scale adventure in my campaign so they don't see that much use now, 3 years later).
I don't know if this is overdone or not ( I hope not, cause the above Hat Trick of cliche is enough I think), but I have, over years of gameplay, developed a "Bizzaro" of each of my player's characters. Not bizzaro in the sense of opposite, but rather, I've taken what I saw as the core themes of their characters and created an evil version of the same theme, then put them at odds with one another. For example, for the zany but brilliant fire wizard I created a psion - based also on fire and who was also brilliant but to the point of being certifiable. For the fey-blooded, enchantment based sorceress who focused on social skills and other non-violent measures, I created a pure fey bard, who was a complete user of other people and creatures.
Lastly, as far as BBEG's of adventures go I have too many to list - A Dwarven Cleric of Earth and Stone who controlled a petrifying mist to her advantage, the "loyal" Vizier of the Grand Sultan of all Efreet (there's that cliche problem again..), A Sargasso (giant floating bed of seaweed) that was actually a Genus Loci from the Epic Level Handbook, and more.
The BBEG of the current game is (spoiler tag is for player protection)
[sblock] A Colossal Kraken that is also a 30th lvl Wizard, who goes by the title The Lord of the Deep. Turns out that the father of one of the character's did not die at sea but was rather captured and made a slave so they are off to the rescue! [/sblock]
So is that enough? I can add more (if only to prove they aren't all contrived!
)
J from Three Haligonians
In terms of "World" BBEG's, as in ones the characters have heard of but have never interacted with, my homebrew has a few - such as Castle Mor, a terribly cursed and haunted island fortress that no one ever goes to.
The most famous though, is the Wizard King of Dumar. He is a despot who rules a small kingdom with an iron fist. He, under his fascist state has outlawed all magic use; wizardry is forbidden and practitioners are sent into slavery, sorcerers are executed outright and all churches are banned. The only exception to this law is, of course, himself and his "secret police" style enforcers. My players hate this guy and always talk about someday soon, going in and overthrowing him despite the fact that they have never, ever, crossed paths. Weird...
As far as long-term campaign villains go,
I have your standard "evil noble". You know the type, on the surface is great and respected, a real philanthropist - but really is up to no good and they'd love to just kill him, but he's got all the power and influence needed to make that a non-viable option. Heh, I even took the cliche so far as to have the PC's work for him first before finding out the true nature of who they were helping and why.
Speaking of cliche's, I have a great and powerful devil straight out of "Needful Things" - roaming the world under the guise of a travelling salesman who always has what you need, so long as you agree to the debt of a "favour" that may be called later. He always arrived and left whistling the same tune - to the point where the Players would recognize his arrival when I started to whistle it myself.
There is also a powerful Diabolist/Summoning specialist Wizard that, for some reason, despite being the enemy, my players seem to empathize with and rather than stop his nefarious schemes and kill him, they would like to try and stop his schemes and then talk him down - to this day, I don't know what I did during their interactions that made my players chose this.. it certainly wasn't my intention.
(Actually, these three were the main antagonists of the first large scale adventure in my campaign so they don't see that much use now, 3 years later).
I don't know if this is overdone or not ( I hope not, cause the above Hat Trick of cliche is enough I think), but I have, over years of gameplay, developed a "Bizzaro" of each of my player's characters. Not bizzaro in the sense of opposite, but rather, I've taken what I saw as the core themes of their characters and created an evil version of the same theme, then put them at odds with one another. For example, for the zany but brilliant fire wizard I created a psion - based also on fire and who was also brilliant but to the point of being certifiable. For the fey-blooded, enchantment based sorceress who focused on social skills and other non-violent measures, I created a pure fey bard, who was a complete user of other people and creatures.
Lastly, as far as BBEG's of adventures go I have too many to list - A Dwarven Cleric of Earth and Stone who controlled a petrifying mist to her advantage, the "loyal" Vizier of the Grand Sultan of all Efreet (there's that cliche problem again..), A Sargasso (giant floating bed of seaweed) that was actually a Genus Loci from the Epic Level Handbook, and more.
The BBEG of the current game is (spoiler tag is for player protection)
[sblock] A Colossal Kraken that is also a 30th lvl Wizard, who goes by the title The Lord of the Deep. Turns out that the father of one of the character's did not die at sea but was rather captured and made a slave so they are off to the rescue! [/sblock]
So is that enough? I can add more (if only to prove they aren't all contrived!
)J from Three Haligonians
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Tinker Gnome
Adventurer
"Emperor" Thrandus who lives in the Sunken Palace of the Gods at the Center of the World. Emperor Thrandus is not actually an emperor, but he is manipulating events in the world from the Palace using the power of the palace itself to reach the outside world. So he can become the Emperor of the world. He is a Human male, who appears to be middle-aged, while he is in the palace he is effectively immortal. He wears ornate platemail armor and is also possessed of magic that even the gods fear. His power is actually linked to the palace, and to kill him you must destroy the palace, but the palace is also the source of all magic in the world...
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