|
| 16 people marked this as a favorite. |
We've had campsite and urban events, we've even had inheritance events. Now let's build up some stock bad guys to fill things up until players get to the really BBEG.
Need your players to get one more level before you unleash the level 19 half-fiend ogre and his Drow Noble Lich buddy pulling in 18 levels of sorcerer? Have your players gotten way too involved with an off-hand detail of the quest? Time for a Villain of the Week.
1. A vivisectionist has been awakening the city's rats to create their own fiefdom in the sewers.
2. An ogre has had a summoner slave bringing him "entertainment" for years. Face off against against both celestial and fiendish ogres.
3. A local bandit leader that used to just rob caravans has taken up worship of Father Skinsaw, and now regularly murders those that fall to his raids.
4. A bugbear has taken control of a goblin tribe, which has made their arsonists more bold and daring in their choice of targets.
5. A slaver has kidnapped several noblemen's children, but investigation soon reveals their regular clients come from Cheliax.
6. The undead plague turns out to be from a little girl's wish, and she doesn't realize what she's done.
7. An insane alchemist has been trying to find the perfect elixir of immortality and is testing it out on gelatinous cubes that he promptly fires into the city via catapult.
8. In the many different schools of magic, each school has their own tower. Each tower climbs into the sky with each new floor containing more and more precious materials and items. The tower levels also go as deep as many floors that go upwards. Each tower is controlled by the headmaster of the school, a powerful wizard. One headmaster seeks power and thus must be stopped. His tower, however, is rigged with traps of different sorts (some levels containing very powerful monsters in lieu of a conventional trap). Good luck.
9: A master Illusionist gnome is a foot. turns out half the city you are in really doesn't exist at all....
10: His duo partner, A master mesmerizer, has the other half of the city completely duped in regards to the rest of the city... good luck explaining it to the locals...
@8. but couldn't I just knock the tower down and loot the fallen structure? im pretty handy with sunder and a large hammer ^_^
11) A heretical druid circle has learned the blasphemy of necromancy and unlocked the gates of ebirth.
12: A reclusive but charismatic and cultured merchant with bags of money who's really a skilled dhampir slayer. Who also has it in for an ally of the party. Further complicated by having a small cohort of (tough) followers who are fanatically loyal because of the cushy jobs the dhampir slayer gave them.
13. A kindly old man gives the children in the city wrapped presents to be opened on a popular holiday when they are all in church. The old man is a necromancer and the presents when unwrapped trigger powerful spells to awaken all nearby dead (as undead of course).
Morag
I need to watch this thread.
14. A convincing hypnotist is throwing all manner of unexpected and indirect attacks at the local council members in an effort to keep them too distracted to realize that he is also preparing to open a magical gatewAy into his master's dimension...
15. A 20th level character is spl inched by a gods curse and he is leaking off distorted previous selves, who he was at third level, 9th level etc... But is reliving great battles of his past and thinks the player characters are his vanquished foes reborn also...
16. A wealthy philanthropist is sworn to avenge his parents. Murdered by thugs, and he is bringing all his resources to bear on anything suspicious, he is taking it all just a little far however...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
17) A hag is searching for her changeling child, and kidnapping to do it. Unfortunately, she's hiding her true nature and using the cook people hex to hide her crimes... by giving the cookies and cakes out to her next targets.
Dotting
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
18. A dance troupe that is accidentally unleashing supernatural plagues upon every town they visit by performing a ritual to an ancient, forgotten god of disease that they mistake for an ancient celebratory dance.
19. A house cat with 20 levels of sorcerer that is tired of humans not giving it the fish it wants!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
19. A house cat with 20 levels of sorcerer that is tired of humans not giving it the fish it wants!
Addition: the housecat got its first level upon killing and devouring the first first-level commoner that refused to give it fish.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
21. A cadre of rebel Thassilonian rune specialists whose heterdox views of which sin matched with which school of magic caused them to be exiled from Thassilonian society (and hence survive its destruction.)
22. A Thassilonian specialist mage who has reputedly mastered Divination and to go with it the previously unknown eighth and ultimate sin.
Dotting.
23. A mysterious force from the far reaches of the universe has been possesing all of the stone statues in the city, which are granted the ability to send people back in time so that the moment they are touched, they die...
24. After a series of time-affecting experiments by a powerful mage, culminating in a city-wide time stop, a group of mysterious beings that no one can remember has invaded, attracted by the energy, manipulating the city to serve their own sinister purposes...
25. A dying trade prince from Qadira is using Numerian science to transplant the minds of humanoids into emotionless machines, hoping to bring about the "Age of Steel" in which that sentientkind will be in an age of no change...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
26. An (highly) intelligent magic weapon that can cast Magic Aura to disguise its magical nature and has no clues giving it away as magic. It can detect alignment and makes itself known only to creatures that might have similar agendas. From there, it chooses wielders it can manipulate or dominate to become its pawns. Effectively, it is the power behind the throne (or the weapon behind the wielder) of a string of villains the characters defeat time and time again. And with every defeat, the weapon comes to know the PCs better (and hate them more).
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
27. A merchant that invested heavily in the construction of the city has been pressed with criminal charges. Deciding that the ungrateful municipality doesn't deserve the time and effort he put into it, he puts into action a plan to destroy every building he paid for the construction of. That's almost a third of the city's most heavily populated district.
dot
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
28. A powerful Ogre has killed a bandit lord and then claimed to be the new ruler of the land. He wants the villages he is now ruling to pay him tribute with children. So each village is now stealing children to the others in order to avoid giving theirs.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
29. Inspired by the path taken in his deepest meditation, an Asurendra has unlocked the final secret of the multiverse: how to exists in each plane simultaneously. So far, he was able to extend his existence to the Materia, Ethereal, Shadow and Astral Planes. Given time, he will expand to all the Planes, one at a time, and when he completes the process, he will be able to unmake reality. To be dfeated, he must be killed within a very short time-span in all the Planes he's currently existing.
|
|
30. A local self-proclaimed "prophet" is claiming that a recent crop failure is because the village has not given tribute to a spirit of great power in a nearby cave. It's all a con job, and the prophet has a small troupe of bandits taking the tributes in the dead of night until they decide to move on.
|
31. A local crazed 'hero' who does save peoples' lives (adventurer style). In his mind though, those lives now belong to him, and when he gets bored he sometimes goes out to 'collect' in a variety of obscure ways. The locals think that Death is simply getting his due. (The locals basically think that Final Destination is going down.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
32. A formerly virtuous Paladin whose crusades are revered throughout the local villages and hamlets. His family is murdered by vengeful dark cultists, and in throes of grief he becomes paranoid and cruel. He starts persecuting innocent people suspected of aiding those responsible for killing loved ones, leading a campaign of McCarthy-esque suspicion culminating into charging the PCs with the murder.
|
33. A mage has launched a series of minor attacks on the city by teleporting in various magical beats set to run amok in crowded areas. The city guard has had no luck determining who's doing it or how to stop them. It's actually a local summoner who lives in the city with training in Stealth, who hides in crowded areas and summons them in. He's upset at the failings of the city guard, and is doing all this to prove a point.
34. A local merchant caravan returned a few weeks ago with a wagonload of cheaply-obtained magical items, from everflame candelabras to self-pushing brooms to shoes that triple your running speed and let you kick harder than a mule. They're all cursed, in various horrible and/or hilarious ways, and the PCs must save the villagers from their new toys.. and the merchant from his dissatisfied customers.
35. The local blacksmith has been dabbling in conjuration, hoping to summon a fire elemental to heat his forge. He accidentally got a Hesperian (accomplice devil) instead.
36.) A big monster is attacking a city? Why? Who cares? Go kill it.
37.) You learn of a troll living under a bridge who eats people who cross over it.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
38. The king has spent the past four years setting up a chain of events to humiliate and strip of power a noble family that has always opposed his plan to set up permanent charity organizations to aid the poor. Now that the family has been disgraced, he is hiring adventuring parties through intermediaries to dispose of his accomplices and various evil groups he has manipulated as part of his plot.
39. The mother of one of the PCs has an ex-boyfriend she dated before marrying the PC's father. That ex has returned and is manipulating things so as to try to steal the woman away from her husband. However, as the PCs investigate, they discover evidence implicating the PC's father of being an evil sorcerer who has used mind-controlling magic on his wife. The PCs need to figure out which set of events is true, and fast.
40. A red dragon has manipulated a big monster into attacking the city, purely to get the monster killed for no particular reason.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
41. An Ogre who's sire was killed by an adventuring party forms a band of like minded m Monsters to ambush teams of adventurers in vengence. They are the OPFOR maulers.
42. A group of fey are pushed out of their ancestral forest by over eager woodsmen, start a gang and beat woodsmen senseless with ax handles.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
43. A mysterious knight wanders the outskirts of a small city, where unprotected farms are plagued by the raids of Ogres and their kidnapping people. This knight is said to have eldritch powers and invariably saves children, if they are involved, but doesn't care the least for the safety of adults (either ignoring Ogre threats of killing them or wrapping them up in flames along with the brutes), unless they're a child's parents. And if only adults are involved, he doesn't intervene at all.
He is in truth a Grave Knight risen from his own mausoleum in the area. He is following the steps of an ancient prophecy he obtained before he died as mortal, when he was a cruel conqueror, and by that prophecy he must save the life of twenty-three children, gain their trust and return them back to their life. Then, in a single night, he must ask each of them to come with him, bring them all to his mausoleum and sacrifice them to resurrect his army, which this time will be unliving... and undying.
46. A powerful necromancer has been kidnapping children in the region. Investigation leads the party to a kindly old man who reads as neutral good if alignment is checked. In truth he is the necromancer but suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder and isn't aware of his other side.
|
|
51. The local village idiot has discovered a Cursed Headband of Vast Intellect +6 that is unfortunately turning him evil as well allowing him to function as an average independent individual (INT 10 with headband). He now seeks to kill all the people who mocked him in previous years. Can the PCs match wits with this completely-average-amount-of-cunning fiend?
52. It's the New Year's Celebration in the city, but fire elementals are released by the night's fireworks, and a local Asmodean cleric is responsible!
53. To fight boredom, an imp who is the familiar of a powerful wizard created a false demonist cult, abusing the gullibility of local children to trade his commune SLA for food. Problem is one of the oldest children totally fall for the cult and stole a toddler for a human sacrifice, and the imp is completely forbidden by his master to cause hurt to anyone in town.
So now he needs to find a band of PCs to save the toddler, and a scapegoat to charge for the cult.
54. An unstable semi-permanent summoning spell keeps unleashing random creatures into the town, where they rampage unchecked until killed. It is tied to an unruly goat that ate a just-completed experimental magic item.
55. Mermaids have kidnapped several people to random and are ransacking ships. The mermaids are doing so because their queen is being held hostage by a group of sailors who are demanding ever-increasing amounts of treasure from the mermaids.
56. A group of halflings, tired of their people being mocked for being short, have formed a gang and are stabbing people in the knees. The halflings are being manipulated by a bored demon that is waiting for its summoner to dismiss it.
58. Two villains are getting married, pooling their might, wealth, and domains. The word on the street is that the love is genuine, despite many skeptics (who marries for love?). A local King is worried because their marriage will tip the balance of power in the region towards the Villains. He will pay handsomely (and discreetly) if the party or an NPC party can disrupt or stop the wedding. If the villains are tipped off about the plot, it will further entrench their desire to be married and to lash out at the local king, possibly by rallying the King's foes who find the ruse distasteful.
|
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
59. A local man has been cursed with deadly flatulence by a hag that lives in the nearby hills.
60. A savage barbarian has been harassing a Dwarven village by entering in the dead of night, grabbing its inhabitants, and then tossing them recklessly about.
61. An Otyugh has been wandering from the sewers to prowl the streets of the city at night.
62. A new brothel has opened up in town. While most of the time the upstanding citizens would turn their noses up and ignore the development, a large number of the town's sons and daughters have been going to the establishment and taking up employment there. As it turns out, the brothel is being run by an enchantment wizard who has gone completely mad, and offers up the ruined innocence of the youth's debauched acts as a sacrifice to his obscure god.
63. A local snake-oil merchant has skipped town after one of his offered "curatives" changed its imbiber into the opposite sex.
64. A drow alchemist has poisoned a town's water supply with chemicals that fleshwarp humans into grothluts.
65. An inquisitor of Calistria has come to town, sworn to enact vengeance on six men who forced themselves on her sister ten years ago.
66. A druid has been casting "Awaken" on farm animals in the area, and soon the regions entire animal husbandry industry could be ruined.
67. A local changeling woman stands trial after every person she has healed over the past five years suddenly and inexplicably had all the injuries she healed return at the same time.
68. A bodak has come to a small town at the same time as the PCs, cue a slowly escalating undead apocalypse as more victims are turned.
69. An ogre family moves into the foothills outside a village.
70. A local celebrity bard is using his influence in town to ruin the lives of people who mocked them as a child.
71. A wererat is trying to expand its warren with the aid of some forcefully-turned locals.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
66. A druid has been casting "Awaken" on farm animals in the area, and soon the regions entire animal husbandry industry could be ruined.
I'm thinking this could quickly turn into an Animal Farm-like situation.
72. A succubus (or incubus) who is faithful to Lamashtu but with a particularly heterodox interpretation of the Lamashtan doctrine of ugliness. She believes that ugliness in physical appearance is merely "skin deep" when compared to the ugliness of a twisted and bitter mind and soul. As such, she uses her powers of allure (mixed with the clerical abilities bestowed upon her) to tear down her victims' lives and thus break their spirit. Ultimately she hopes to lead everyone to hate everything beautiful they once loved and then lost- thus leading them to the worship of Lamashtu.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
75.) A local baker who murdered a fey Brownie for stealing decided to hide the evidence by putting the creature's flesh into the next batch of meat-pies. The townsfolk become nearly addicted to the amazing flavor of his meat-pies, and so the baker decides to search out more Brownies to feed the town's desire.
|
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
75.) A local baker who murdered a fey Brownie for stealing decided to hide the evidence by putting the creature's flesh into the next batch of meat-pies. The townsfolk become nearly addicted to the amazing flavor of his meat-pies, and so the baker decides to search out more Brownies to feed the town's desire.
"Soylent Brown is made out of fey."
76. A Ru-Shi Dhampir is murdering people in a pattern connected to the Fibonacci Sequence.
77. A water mephit is luring children to a watery grave with promises of sweets and baloons. "Oh yes, they float! They all float!"
78. A gnome who goes door to door, offering to sell sweets. The houses that refuse are later robbed of everything valuable.
79. 79 explosions and counting are all traceable back to a goblin baker who makes his bread with a little extra kick.