Huh? Oh, sorry about the intentionally misleading title. I'm not here to tell you who the greatest villain is. I want to know what you think. In all of the campaigns that you've either run or played in, who was the coolest villain ever?
Huh? Oh, sorry about the intentionally misleading title. I'm not here to tell you who the greatest villain is. I want to know what you think. In all of the campaigns that you've either run or played in, who was the coolest villain ever?
Lavidius-A vampire monk that is actually a cohort of another villain I created. I might use him again this weekend so I can't post too much right now.
I have never played in or ran a campaign where the party got to know the villain before. I beleive it can add another element to a story, even if he is always known as the bad guy. That is why I think
We played d20 Modern where we were a bunch of demon hunters for the Vatican. Anyways, we got teamed up with another team to transport this big bad evil artifact from the US to Italy in a private jet. They betrayed us, killed the flight crew, and we some how got un-handcuffed and started a fight in a 1 square by 9 square space--including the cockpit. They had guns--we didn't. So it was basically a really tough fight in tight quarters, with lots of disarming, grappling, and shooting going on. Eventually, they bailed and left us with almost enough parachutes for us. They got the artifact too.
So we tracked them down to some docks, so there was a lot of bull rushing and swimming....then they called in their helicopter gunship. Bad times. They escaped again, but not before forcing one of the PCs from USING the big bad evil artifact.
The baddies were a big Strong/Tough woman (REALLY hated her), some kind of Smart tactician, and some kind of Fast/Charismatic con-man type.
I played a Dedicated surgeon (I kept Uzis in my medical bags), we had a Tough/Acolyte, and a Strong/Fast swordsman.
I had a gold dragon who invented communist socialism and established himself as the premier of a worker's utopia (initially of goblins, because he wanted to start with those who were most in need of guidance; also they were the easiest to convince). Then, in pursuit of the greater good, he sought to expand this perfect nation to the inclusion of all.
Naturally, those who could not be illuminated by reason had to be coerced by baser methods.
I had a gold dragon who invented communist socialism and established himself as the premier of a worker's utopia (initially of goblins, because he wanted to start with those who were most in need of guidance; also they were the easiest to convince). Then, in pursuit of the greater good, he sought to expand this perfect nation to the inclusion of all.
Naturally, those who could not be illuminated by reason had to be coerced by baser methods.
~laughter~ I love this one. Thus we see how a LG being can turn to evil.
I just had my players go up against a Vomit Elemental. I can't say it was my favorite, but it was pretty disgusting.
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know vomit can't be an elemental, I just didn't bother to think up a better term).
The best, most hated villain in my campaign was a sorcerer known as the Red Mage. He was a reincarnation of a dead dragon demigod and was the most powerful thing in the world short of the gods themselves. I first introduced him to the PCs when they were only 2nd level - their challenge was just to get the hell away from him. It took about a year and a half of game time to discover his true identity - before that, he was just this spooky sorcerer in red robes. The players seemed to love to hate him, to the point where even in my current game they seem to think that the Red Mage is behind the ultimate plot. I've got no idea what exactly made him such a successful villain, but I'm planning on bringing him back in the future. Good bad guys are hard to find.
I just had my players go up against a Vomit Elemental. I can't say it was my favorite, but it was pretty disgusting.
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know vomit can't be an elemental, I just didn't bother to think up a better term).
Hey, you don't need to protest like that. When you're the GM, it's YOUR world. If you can imagine a elemental plane of vomit, why not?
For that matter, you could make Ham Elementals or Titanium Elementals.
I'm playing up the Faceless One in my AoW campaign. The players hate him already.
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I Ran a Vampire Dark Ages game once set between Constantinople and Venice.
The main Villain, a Lasombra, Archbishop Narses of Venice *6th Gen*, tricked the PCs in causing the sacking of Constantinople during the 4th Crusade, and the rise of the short lived Venetian empire and the riches that came from that. The whole time they Thought Narses was their friend until it was too late and they realized they were tricked.
It was one of the best political intrigue games I ever ran, and to this day the best game I was ever involved in and had the privilege to storytell.
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...who was the coolest villain ever?
My favorite (even though my character died when...I'll get to that later) a Villains & Vigilantes campaign (pre-second edition, so it goes back a ways). The villain was an AI, created to operate a large telecommunications corporation in such a way as to maximize profitability. So she'd throw androids and such at us, typically very covert, right up until the end. Oh--that's right; "she." Yep, we were fighting Ma Bell. I died when she set off a nuke in NYC to cover her escape. She got caught in the EMP, though, and didn't make it either.
So many stories...so little time!
My first "long-term" campaign in the Forgotten Realms saw the party of heroes squaring off against a high priest of Bane named "Hammer." The heroes kept thwarting his plans to grow his power base until he took matters into his own hands and laid a trap for them. He summoned the hugest elemental he possibly could (back when summoned elementals were of random size, I flubbed the roll) only to watch the party's medium level cleric dismiss his uber monstrosity back to its home plane with a natural 20 roll. Then, the party's wizard hit him with a polymorph other spell and turned him into a tortoise. They carried him in a bag tied to the side of their wagon for months and months. Afterwards, the band of heroes began calling themselves the Company of the Tortoise and did so for the remainder of the campaign.
My longest ever campaign (also set in the Forgotten Realms) had an archmage illithid named Van'ma who was one member of the heroes' nemeses. He was the most interesting of the evil band because he always had multiple plots going, and not always in the interests of his own set of comrades. I used to scare the bejeezus out of the PCs with him, until they finally defeated him and the others in the climactic battle to end all battles at the end of the campaign.
When playing a brick in a superhero roleplaying game, there was one villain who struck fear in the hearts of all do-gooders everywhere. He was a lethal force using melee bada$$ who was hard as heck to hit (think Wolverine gone bad, really bad) and he was a solo villain used to knock around super teams. Our super team came upon him on one mission and we were having a tough time doing anything to him and had been lucky he wasn't taking us out. The battle was not going well until my brick finally managed to grab him in my vicelike grip. After that, it was lights out for him. *grin*
I could go on...and on...and on hehe.
From Gygax: Demogorgon, prince of demons. Been running P.C.s against this guy since the 80's. Mmmmm. All that self-conflicted deviousness (incidentally, I've had his two heads hate one another since well before I heard about it anywhere "official.")
As DM: Dred14. An artificially created "superbeing" dominated by a chaotic neutral intelligent weapon ... it's a long, odd story.
As a PC: Barlge. Gotta hate that mutha.
Allokai'ir, a lich from my homebrew campaign who terrorized various parties of characters for years before becoming a god...sort of.
To this day I can look at one of my players and say his tagline: "Just take the money and walk away," and they never fail to flip me the bird or make some other gesture of their appreciation of his villainy.
As DM: Dred14. An artificially created "superbeing" dominated by a chaotic neutral intelligent weapon ... it's a long, odd story.
do tell. :-)
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Vuel - Mother of Demons and the Endbringer.
To give you an idea, this demon was the corrupted Avatar of the God Sintyre, a god who created the world in several days, then decided to sleep. When he woke up, magic had infested the world, and he sought to destroy it to heal the "corruption" before he would remake the world anew. A pantheon had developed in his absence, and the gods of this pantheon opposed him mightily. The end result was that, while they couldn't KILL Sintyre, they could seal him away in another realm, and put him to sleep until he amassed enough power in the world of Okarthel to reawaken.
Vuel, was his general, and when Sintyre's dreams created the avatar, the demon then gave birth to the stuff of nightmares.
Every demon in this game, was a direct descendant of Vuel, and they knew better than to **** with mommy. These demons sought to break the seal enough to allow Mommy to step through, and reenter the world. THe PC's got to see the first attempt at this. At first Vuel herself stepped through, and changed into a mortal guise. It took the party swordsage throwing her back int he portal she came out of to allow them the time to escape with a Cleric, who later proved instrumental.
From that point on, the relationship between Vuel and the "Children" who sought to stop her was almost a respectful relationship. The PC's were always a step behind the Avatar, and would catch her at the tale end of things going down. In the end they witnessed several things, and many plot devastating occurrences happened because of this vile woman.
They absolutely loved Vuel.
For those interested, the party went from level 5 to 23. They finally tackled Vuel by herself who was a 30HD aspect of Pale Ghost. I kid you not, when I opened up my Hordes of the Abyss, I took one look at Pale Ghost and said "THAT'S VUEL!"
The fight went down like this...Vuel began as a Lilitu, as most of her power was cut off by her god. That lasted until she nearly killed one of the pantheist gods she had freed from his position in holding the seal intact. The God then turned and banished her from the realm, giving the PC's a bit of a chance to recover from running across the world for over a year.
The next incarnation was to Malcanthet, who served as a good form up until they actually stormed the realm Sintyre slept in. She returned after a spectacularly effective summoning ritual using a few red mages (I figured it fit the flavor I was going for) circle cast the spell to gate her in. Another Avatar got involved in the fight, only to be dominated by the vile creature, and subsequently rolled a 1 on the save. (Was only a 20th level cleric, had not yet stepped beyond into the epicness, and had little to no divine power outside of being favored by her god.) The havoc that caused...ahhh. She was as I said, a step ahead but she was somewhat manageable unless they did something stupid.
My next incarnation was what I called her physical form, that of an aspect of Obox-Ob. Using the ability to dimension door around at will, then attack with impunity caused more than a few problems.
After they killed that form, I finally revealed her true nature, set free by the party's efforts.
The 30HD Pale Ghost lasted awhile, and finally went down, after killing two PC's within two rounds of starting. Granted someone was able to start wishing them back, but it certainly caused it's fair share of problems. The campaign took well over a year, but in that time I learned a lot about DMing (no spellpoints!) and the players got a fun villain to fight against.
Hey, you don't need to protest like that. When you're the GM, it's YOUR world. If you can imagine a elemental plane of vomit, why not?
Ok, the vomit elemental has my vote for coolest villain ever.
Just wanted to say that I'm really enjoying reading these.
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A few villains of note at my table (in no particular order):
1) Mordenkainen - I know, he isn't technically evil but he is certainly villainous at times. I love the opportunity to use him any time we play in Greyhawk. If the party ever gets too big for its britches, Mordenkainen takes some of the starch out.
2) My homebrew campaign Otari Lin featured a slew of villains all competing with each-other for various ends:
3) Heinrich von Reichstag. A paladin PC who made the unfortunate choice of participating in an arcane ritual involving an ancient artifact belonging to the Elder Elemental Eye. Instantly driven insane, he started a campaign of covert terror on the party; first murdering their wizard guide, then robbing his shop when his daughter attended the funeral, and finally placing the blame for the robbery on the rogue PC. Also planned on murdering the sorcerers familiar and turning it into a puppet, and enjoyed etching Hextor's name into anything he could find. Was finally driven off in a climactic tavern brawl in Thrommel in which he murdered a dozen civilians and was chased to an orc encampment where the party fought orcs, the paladin, and the town guard in a deadly 4 way battle.
4) A few others of note that my players hated: Strahd, Acererak, Lloth.
Valanus (bard/rogue/assassin).
The king has been poisoned with dragon blood poison. It'll slowly burn the monarch up, defies all healing magic, and renders the victim unressurectable. The party, in the king's army, set out to track the assailant. They find the cabal in old ruins two dozen miles from the capital. As they infiltrate the dungeon they hear the pleas of a man being dragged to the torturer/executioner.
Rule number 1 in assassination: Kill the assassin. Valanus's bosses are getting rid of any links to them. PC's save Valanus, who claims to be a wandering minstrel who's in the wrong place at the wrong time. (As DM, its good to know that your players don't esteem Sense Motive) They buy Valanus' story hook, line, and sinker and go on to rid the complex of Valanus' bosses.
The main adventure of finding the uber-rare components to the remedy for the poison begins . . . with Valanus along to help out. As the campaign continues and Valanus sees how close the party is, not just with each other, but also with him; the way they save each other time and again, he starts to regret his decision.
By the time they've gathered the components and save the king, Valanus is fully part of the group and remorseful of his terrible secret. When the king's eyes flutter open and he scans the room, his first action is to point a trebbling finger at Valanus and say, "That's him."
The PC's fought their way out of the castle to save Valanus. And helped him atone and eventually smoothed things over with the king by proving just how much he'd done to save the king himself.
The group was stunned when I revealed that'd they'd been snowed by Valanus forever, but they still couldn't just turn him over to the authorities. It was beautiful.
Mordenkainen - I know, he isn't technically evil but he is certainly villainous at times. I love the opportunity to use him any time we play in Greyhawk. If the party ever gets too big for its britches, Mordenkainen takes some of the starch out.
I would love to hear more. For that matter, I would love to hear ANYONE relate ANY time a DM used, or a party encountered, Mordenkainen as an NPC. Did the party directly battle Mordenkainen? Did he hire the party? Or did he - this is the kind of story I'm REALLY hoping to hear - manipulate the party to his own ends? Or did he manipulate the villains, or other NPCs? How? And why? And did it work?
For my own part, I once had Mordenkainen pose as a befuddled old wizard (think Fizban in Dragonlance) who conveniently showed up to Teleport Without Error the party to rescue a kidnaped noble who was being held far away. Later, he influenced the party to feel that it would be better to leave a certain villain (a crime lord) be, because his successor - or the gangwar for one, or the chaos resulting from the vacuum - might be worse. It seemed to tie in nicely with the whole "balance" philosophy. (Ultimately, the party returned and DID finish off the crime lord, but only after a long delay and detour.)
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Huh? Oh, sorry about the intentionally misleading title. I'm not here to tell you who the greatest villain is. I want to know what you think. In all of the campaigns that you've either run or played in, who was the coolest villain ever?
The DM?
Sure he wasn't the coolest villian, but he controlled a lot of good ones.
I did throw a cannibalistic fighter/butcher at someone once. Surprise round = biting.
I'm also thinking about making an evil cleric who using klar(one as a shield, the other as a weapon).
I would have to say that this would be a little man called Menlo Seccord. He was a character that a DM i was playing with, used against us. Think Grimmer Wormtongue, but with attitude and guts. He originally turned up in an old AD&D adventure called Destiny of Kings, and he reappeared on numerous occasions over the years. The delight we all felt when he finally met his end was a memorable thing.
We were plane jumping when we went through a arch with the words 'Ye who enter through these doors abandon all hope', inside was a huge throne room with a throne made of bones. Siting astride this throne sat a small figure who boldly declaired," I am Earth Pig, ruler of hell, you shall bow down and worship me!"
We ran.
To this day we don't know if that small, pink, pig faced person who's only weapon was a dagger, was the cleaning staff, or the ruller of hell. The figure was too funny. It wasn't the only time we ran into him, either. We never chose to find out the hard way.
all hail earth pig!
Would it be the Dreaded Gazebo? (Or is it the stupidity of the players in that story?)
I wish I had a link to the Gazebo story, to enlighten those who don't know it! :-/
There are many places you can find it. Here's one.
And by the way, running away from perceived danger is NOT necessarily stupid. Yeah, maybe those large dragons are just a Minor Image spell. You go touch them and find out. Then you can laugh at my stupidity and cowardice for being fooled by such a transparent ploy and running away.
I ran a Shadowrun campaign a few years ago set in Chicago right before the Bug Spirits took over, and continuing afterward in a sort of Escape from New York type feel. The main villain was a spider spirit who was manipulating a conflict between a hive of roach spirits and a much smaller group of very aggresive mantis spirits. The PC's played double blind suckers working for her without knowing it. (They had actually originally been hired by one of her other pawns, a corporate defectee who was in love with the cockroach shaman.)
Wow. SO many! Where to start?
OK, long campaign, (at least 3 years playing time real world!)
-our group have discovered over the course of the campaign that we ALL have a group of our (almost) exact opposites running around trying to stop us.
-My personal favorite was the Swashbuckler's opposite (we weren't playing D&D, but that's what he was) He was a famous pirate captain whom we had to meet for one reason, and who 'helped' us with our quest once we did a favor for him,... etc. We went happily along, not realizing that we were being played like a deck of cards! He even gave the swashbuckler a pair of magic gloves to make him a better fighter! (AND, incidentally, make it easy to track us and tell where we were!)
All of the other character's opposites were pretty much recognized as 'nemesis on site', but THIS guy somehow managed to string us along for a good half of the campaign! Once we finally DID figure it out, the final climatic battle between all of us and our counterparts was epic, (my personal favorite was the rogue/mage using the skyship's cannon to plaster his opposite on the ground! With a Nat 20!) But the swashbuckler player's portrayal of his character's anger at being betrayed by his friend/idol/mentor was bee-yoo-tiful!
From pre-built adventures, I've always had a liking for The Cathezar and Nurn the Slaad Rogue from Bastion of Broken Souls. Cathe's popped up in several campaigns I've run, usually as a sideliner or supporter of whatever craziness is going on, though she tended to jump out when things started going bad for her allies... she's been on the losing end once after all. Nurn's just awesome, I've always seen him as a "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste" sort of guy.
From my own campaigns I think the cake goes to Cheel Vorastrix, a Kobold Sorc/Frost Mage who started out as a PC belonging to a former roommate of mine in a short-lived Evil Campaign set in Frostburn; in actual play he never made it to level 5. However, after the DM left and the campaign died, he and his party mates - Alu'Vien Darkstar, Half-Erinyes Cleric of Auril, and Frostwillow, an Uldra Wizard - rose to prominence as villainous NPCs with the goal of ushering in eternal worldwide Fimbulwinter. That storyline drove players bonkers - Cheel and Vien were extremely fond of constructs and simulacra, and were known for letting "themselves" be caught in ridiculous situations where the PCs could possibly kill them only to reveal it was a fake and had lured the goody-goodies into a trap. The best part is that they even got away in the end, even with their plans foiled they live to plot another day. (I think the players were just annoyed that they were getting shown up by a Kobold; the group had no real "leader" between the three, but Vien was a Half-Fiend Cleric and Frost was a fey mage so I guess getting beaten repeatedly by them wasn't as embarassing as being beaten repeatedly by a Kobold so Cheel got almost all of the flak from the players. :P )
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A 1st level Hireling in 2e.
The party's high-level fighter invested thousands of gold into a "griffon corps" with the dream of starting a mercenary company for hire. However, he didn't bother to screen his applicants. As a concerned DM, I figured not interviewing is a bad idea and worked up on the spot 9 hirelings, each with a different alignment. Over the next year, one of the hirelings (NE) arranged a training "accident" for the good captain and sweet talked the Fighter into promoting him(over time, the evil hireling drummed out others and replaced them with his own hires).
Well, when the corps was finally up and running, it was hired to investigate strange border attacks that left no survivors. Of course, it was the evil hireling robbing caravans and small outposts with the griffon corps and then ironically being hired to investigate the attacks. The Hireling nearly instigated a war between two nations, and when our Fighter finally puzzled it out, he decided to smack this 1st level peon around as any high level PC should do. While he was ranting and threatening, the hireling crawled to a nearby window, leaped out onto the back of a waiting griffon, gave the fighter the bird, and flew off with the Fighter's entire investment and griffon corps.
Following the lengthy silence, the party, having been embarrassed by a 1st level hireling, did the math and figured it wasn't worth the XP to pursue, but I like to think they didn't want anymore damage to their reputations as high-level heroes...
[Strahd, yes, possibly best published villain in the game]
I'd go for Sebastian
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In a long-running homebrew game, our Druid/Monk eventually became the greatest villain (to the party, at least).
While adventuring through Riedra, the Beguiler manages to talk the party into a sit-down with a high level psion. These are the ruling class nobles of the land, so its a big thing.
Now, of course a fight breaks out, and somehow in the scrum the Druid gets Mind-Seeded. None of us realized it, and the only other telepath (the Beguiler) was driven from the party shortly thereafter.
Fast forward about 4-5 levels, and 3-4 months of game play.
The party has just managed to deactivate the bad-day doohickey and has the magical mcguffin we were questing for. The (now NE and with levels of telepath) Druid pounces on the Conjurer (my character), with the intention of taking out the time-manipulating, teleporting character.
Unfortunately for her, she fails, gets trapped in a Wall of Water/Freezing Sphere ice cube for a round, giving us time to regroup and plan our attack.
She falls a few rounds later to concentrated Orbs of Force (had gone ethereal) and Magic Missiles.
The reveal was the best part, as this character had been the NG "voice of reason" for almost the entire game thus far...
-t