Your favorite "villain" race and why?

[Pants]

Elves - I've used Elves as the primary villains in at least 3 campaigns. Not Drow, but evil High Elves. Vicious buggers they are.
Sarkrith - I really dig them as Villains. Lawful Evil, Strong, Intelligent, and magic haters. What's not to love?
Yuan-ti - I love the idea of Yuan-ti, but I've just never been able to use them much.
Demons/Devils/Yugs/Demodands - When evil is your nature...
Undead - Primarily Liches and Deathknights, but I also like Vampires as well.
Ethergaunts - Very cool. Ditto what Tarrasque Wrangler said.
Hobgoblins - Romans, what's not to love?

 

[paulewaug]

Well let's see...
Of course Orcs and Goblins are good, er..bad that is, anyhow they are a decent choice as they are the basic "foot-soldier" of EeviiL
(although In my current campaign I was going to drop orcs and only use Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Bugbears. But one of my players _Dwarf PC_ really wanted to hate orcs as part of his background so...)

Gnolls are cool and to get more use out of them I break them down to subtypes:
(Wolf type for the northern reaches and Hyena type for the southern areas.)

Ogres because they are big and bad


One race I feel makes a really nasty evil bad guy group is..
Troglodytes
Their listing in the MM states they are "as evil as the foulest demons." (Although it lists their alignment as Usually chaotic evil, but whatever)
They rock as bad guys, they have longer darkvision than the standard pc races, a nice Natural armor bonus, a set of attacks, Hide very well so you can ambush the heck out of them and best of all...the Stench!~~~good times!
Favored class cleric is helpful too...bwah hah hah!

The current BadEvilGuy IMC is a Barghest-

 

[Psiblade]

I tend to favor the alien mind set qualities in my monsters. I really like intelligent monsters too. So my favorites are Illithids, Ethergaunts, Aboleths, and Kaorti.


-Psiblade

 

[Ricochet]

I really like Beholders in all sorts and shapes, they are intelligent, monstrous and often have cult-followers (or they could just charm a lot of people/other monsters).


I also like dragons, but most often I find myself using Illithids, Humans and to a lesse extent Demons/Devils.

 

[Orius]

Humans. People may say drow, and illithid and fiends and such make great bad guys, but those races are obvious. But with a human, alignment isn't easy to guess. Humans can be any alignment, and they run the gamut. I think humans make great bad guys because there are many different options, evil warlord, evil cleric, evil wizard, having any favored class is a definite boost to human villains. Plus humans can also play the role of non-evil villains as well.

Another favorite villain race of mine is hobgoblin. I too am going with the fascist hobgoblin kingdom in my campaign. It'll be a great threat for the elves to confront. The nearby human kingdoms will have to deal with it, and the evil theocracy will form an alliance of sorts with the hobgoblins.

For cannon fodder I enjoy using goblins and kobolds. Gnoll can sometimes work in smaller numbers too.

 

[hunter1828]

I like Drow (which I've liked and used since the old 1e Fiend Folio and the D1-D3 series).

I also like gnolls. Gnolls are very underused. Of course, one of my players keeps asking if it's a grassy gnoll...

hunter1828

 

[Dirigible]

Best D&D monster race? Nazis.

I tend not to go for whole races of villains. The more notable BBEGs in the past have been individuals, such as a vengeance crazed Liche, a multiple-personality-disordered Ulitharid, Strahd, the Gorgon, the entire Negative Energy Plane...

Although I plan to use a few cities full o' Drow in the near future, an Orc + Hobgoblin + Fiend + Undead invasion, a race of ghoulish, homocidal dwarves that have been sealed underground for millenia...

 

[nimisgod]

Long walks in the Park...

Oh wait, villains?

I've four favorite villain types:

Demon: cuz' they've got so many flavors
Undead: because, they rock. and because I'm a Myth player
Humans: 'nuff said
Godlings: Nothing to challenge mortals like Immortals.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Kobold and Goblinoid Empires, Mind Flayer Conspiracies, Formian Invasions, Human Space Nazis, and a Gnome Madman - that is what I used in my "Space Experiences" Campaign (at least in the background - the invasion didn`t take place until now, at least not the main force).

After playing at least two longer modules with Drow as the main race, I can say I do not want to use or see them used again in a while. They become boring, and I really wonder why such a chaotic evil race always tries to conquer the world, when they fail at the first intelligent surface dwelling characters.
What do they want overground, anyway? They don`t even like daylight!

I still like Mind Flayers, though I and the others in my group used them in their adventures. I would like to see (or create myself) an evil Dragon or Demon/Devil plotting a great plan to conquer the world, that doesn`t reveal himself to easy.

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Dark Jezter]

Githyanki: Know why these make such great villains? Because nobody expects to be assaulted by a psionic race from the astral plane that fight with liquid metal swords.

Mind Flayers: Few monsters are better capable of inspiring fear in a party of low-to-mid level PCs than the good old illithids.

Beholders: The party wizard getting a little too egotistical? Throw one of these critters at him and watch how quickly he'll ask the party warriors for help.