D&D General Who's your villain?

[Coroc]

..., Big Pharma, ... something that the PCs know must be opposed ...

Yea like, omg they say they have found a shot vs. the zombie apocalypse, but in reality they only want to inject you an intellect devourer ....

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

At one point, Vicor Sand pointed out that the PCs had assuredly killed more of the citizens of the city-state they're in than he had. One of my favorite moments was when they met face to face at a Masquerade Ball. Some absolutely wonderful role-playing all around, and it was actually a completely improvised scene.

I'm very much looking forward to bringing him back for the campaign endgame in a couple levels.

I like the idea of an evil, very powerful, but non-violent villain. The PCs can't take him down by dumb brute force, but he's also not going to just hunt them down and murder them. Nice dynamic, it encourages strategic thought.

 

[reltastic]

My current villain is a Rakshasa posing as a noble woman in the town of Fallcrest. The players actually ran a job for her during their first adventure, not knowing who or what she was (they recovered a Ring of Mind Shielding for her).

The main gist of the campaign is that the devils have started their final push in the Blood War, and plan to use the Material Plane as their staging ground. A pair of old dwarf wizards discovered the plans and set their own plan in to motion, to completely seal the Material Plane off from the rest of the outer planes.

It requires casting a powerful ritual (using an arcane machine) at the exact right moment to work. The wizard cast the spell and then had to leave to enact another part of the plan, and after he left but before the machine had finished its work, the Rakshasa snuck in and dismantled the machine.

The players now are working to go back to that moment and stop whatever went wrong with the machine. They don't know she's a Rakshasa, and they don't know she was even responsible for the mishap. So it will be fun to build up to that reveal.