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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 5314735" data-attributes="member: 99">I think that an excellent villain is a really tricky thing to pull off perfectly.  I've only ever done it a couple times.It requires several things in my opinion:The villain must be hateable:  They've got to do some really dastardly stuff.  And they've got to do it to places and people the PC's care about.The villain must be respectable:  If the bad guy only ever wreaks evil and havoc, he's a menace, but not really a proper villain IMHO.  An excellent villain needs some sort of cause that he's dedicated to that makes sense to him and that the PC's can understand if not agree with.The villain must be encountered:  If all the PC's ever do is encounter the villain's minions and the destruction he has unleashed from afar, they'll probably still hate him.  But only in an abstract sort of way.  The best desire for the bad guy to be destroyed has to come from tangling with him up close and personal.The villain must escape:  A good villain is a good thing.  A recurring villain is a GREAT thing.  Word of caution though - the escape MUST seem plausible and not just a deus ex machina/GM fiat kind of thing.  NOTHING kills the player enthusiasm for going after the BBEG faster than the sense that the GM is just going to hand wave an escape for him whenever he feels like.  So have the villain plan a careful escape.  Have him attempt escape when the battle is obviously lost but while he's still got some minions covering his trail.  And if the players legitimately catch him, let them.Probably my best executed villain ever happened pretty much by accident.  It was a female Ogre Mage named Grella who led an attack on the PC's while they were camped.  I didn't realize at the time how difficult it would be for the PC's to pin her down and kill her thanks to Regeneration, Flight and Invisibility.  They initially thought she was dead but she regenerated and vanished while they were mopping up the rest of the bad guys.Initially I had no strong motivation for her.  But I ended up having her become a devoted follower of the evil deity that the PC's were trying to thwart the return of.  She showed up 2 or 3 more times during the course of their adventures.  Each time she managed to escape, barely, while the PC's were tied up fighting the other forces she led.I could measure their growing hatred of her by the ever lengthening list of spells the Wizard was preparing JUST IN CASE they ran into her.  Anything that would negate her Invisibility and Flight so they could pin her down and kill her was something he went out of his way to acquire.  He had scrolls of this stuff in a special satchel he called "The Grella Pack".Finally, in the penultimate session of the campaign, they got a real showdown with her.  It was not an epic showdown to the final hit point.  She had some good allies helping her that posed a very real danger to the party.  But they hated her so much by that point that they (especially the Wizard) ignored everything else and focused all efforts on destroying her before they did anything else.  And their combo of spells was quite successful and they took her down in about two rounds.  But they were extremely satisfied and spent the rest of the battle with huge grins on their faces.  So I considered the whole thing a big success.</blockquote>

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