1001 Villain of the Week Ideas


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Sczarni

80. A grippli antipaladin has been hiding in the town's well for the past few days, befouling the water supply and engineering the spread of a plague.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
MagusJanus wrote:


79. 79 explosions and counting are all traceable back to a goblin baker who makes his bread with a little extra kick.

You mean kinda like this guy?

Liberty's Edge

81. A gang of forty well-armed and bloodthirsty thieves seize control of a village, set themselves up like lords and begin demanding tribute from passing merchants and travelers. They possess a fearsome reputation and always appear in overwhelming numbers but promise to spare the lives of their victims in exchange for peaceful surrender. In reality they are astoundingly incompetent and legitimately dangerous only to themselves when holding sharp weaponry, keeping power by show of strength alone. They will believe any bluff, slaughter each other with little provocation and build giant bleeding ziggurats with their own corpses at the feet of even low-level PC's.

Liberty's Edge

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82. A madman with a silvery voice wanders the narrow streets of the city each night, singing an achingly-beautiful dirge. He passes harmlessly until someone throws open a window or door to yell at him to be quiet, whereupon he slays every living thing within that home before the sun rises.

Liberty's Edge

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83. A rival adventuring party comprised of competent, greedy, non-evil persons routinely out-maneuvers the PC's in financially harmful ways; beating them to the treasure, cleaning out the dungeon before they arrive, being chosen for the lucrative contracts, acquiring the king's favor and so forth. Everything is above board and perfectly legal.

Liberty's Edge

84. A spurned and jilted lover exacts revenge upon the object of their affection, a party ally or philandering PC, by murdering that person's new friends and acquaintances in suspicious ways and framing them for the crimes.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

85. A very cruella fur enthusiast who intends to corner the magic fur market by making coats of blink dogs with white fur and black spots.

86. A proud rakshasa lords over the jungle. A fey creature snake sorcerer (NE, fey bloodline) with a hypnotic gaze serves as the rakshasa lord's second in command. After he is defeated, the rakshasa lord inexplicably follows the party back to civilization where he kills a local business tycoon and assumes his identity, creating a powerful commercial (but corrupt) empire that will last for "generations" if not dismantled before then.

87. A giant octopus/human hybrid (use the manimal template from Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary if you so choose) witch acts much like a contract devil for the merfolk and other denizens of the sea. She always gives exactly what's on the contract, but always takes more than her clients would ever think they'd give up.

88. A ruthless pirate lord with a prosthetic hand. He has a particular hatred for children and fey but a phobia of crocodiles.

89. An efreeti noble bound to a lamp with a grudge against the current rulers of a desert city state. He claims to have to not only have been human once but also a powerful sorcerer and vizier (he grumbles something about his parrot familiar betraying him.) The efreet states that when he raised concerns about the decadent ways of how the city was being ruled, he was transformed and bound to the lamp for all eternity. He grants wishes for those who hold the lamp, but to benefit himself and steer the lampbearer towards enacting the efreet's revenge upon the city and its royal family.

90. An evil queen (NE middle-aged human witch x/aristocrat1) is obsessed with her fading good looks and jealous of any potential rivals. She uses an intelligent mirror of scrying (functions as a crystal ball imbued as an intelligent item) looking around for those who are fairer than she. She uses magic to ward herself as but a simple ugly old woman selling fruit and delivers Apples of Eternal Sleep to her victims. (A fan of the classic witch tropes, apparently.)

91. A socially influential clergyman (LE human male cloistered cleric of Abadar) and judge takes up the charge to break up the local Sczarni crime ring. Unfortunately, he takes this to disperse any Varisians that happen to be nearby. The clergyman comes from a particularly unusual and obscure monastic tradition of Abadar that demands celibacy and the absolute avoidance of sins, else the dedication of the disciplines will wane (or so it is said.) The clergyman judge holds hidden lustful desires but uses alchemy (or even possibly dark magic) to hold his latent lustful desires at bay. However, he has a lustful desire for Varisian women that clashes with both his vows of celibacy and his self-imposed mission of driving out the Scarni (through driving out the Varisians.)


@Dreaming Psion

Wanna add a verminoid grasshopper, an animated bag of bugs, an evil plush soulbound toy, a foreign conqueror (make that 2 if you know both), a prideful hunter (make that 2 if you know both), a rejected deity of the Lower Planes, an evil queen obsessed with the color red, a greedy manimal lion prince with his manimal wolf sheriff, a ratfolk criminal mastermind, a jealous and envious awakened lion, a Numerian alien commander in search of a test subject, a greedy cook with a prosthetic arm and eye, a gunslinger/cavalier with a bull mount, a shady and shadowy harrower, a fallen hero with deadly robots, a menacing and evergrowing AI and a cursed undead pirate while you're at it XD ?

and that's ONLY from one company XDD


Anyway, my turn:

92. A female skinwalker (Witchwolf) Brawler (Wild Child) and her arctic wolf companion travels from town to town, issueing challenges to those she deems worthy... and defeats them in bloody ways.

The long story: A baby was left in the cold by her mother due to the infant being a skinwalker, while the mother was human. Fearing heavy prejudices and backlash, she tearfully abandons the child in the cold... only to be found by a pack of winter wolves. The pack leader, sensing a kindred spirit in the child, decided to raise her as his own daughter. As such, the witchwolf grew with the pack in both a savage and cunning way, developping both her human and animalistic natures. At a younger age, she also found an arctic wolf pup, which she adopted as her pet. As she matured into a young woman, the leader finally explained to her how he found her. Shocked, curious and enraged by it, she decided to find her real mother... but to punish her from abandonning her, not to forgive her. Mounting her now Dire pet, she seeked her mother, feingned happiness to see her again... and murdered her in her sleep as well as giving her dead body for her wolf as a meal. After the kill, the then-child realized her own powers... and decided to it for her own and her pet's gain.

More info:
- According to The Shackle Hut (AP #68, Reign of Winter), winter wolves see natural werewolves as kindred spirits, so technically speaking, a skinwalker descended directly from a werewolf makes a perfect ally.
- Winter wolves often use or work it humanoids, since they can manipulate objects better than them.
- Witchwolf + wolf companion (thanks to the Wild Child archetype) = flavorful combo

Sczarni

93. The local candle-maker has just taken a wife a few months ago. Since the wedding, the once-waifish woman has put on an astounding amount of weight, far more than even an expectant mother ought to in such a short time. The candle-maker's two great-uncles, now deceased, had been exposed as cultists of Urgathoa shortly before their deaths. The candle-maker himself has been nothing but an upstanding citizen and is well-liked in town, but neither he nor his wife will acknowledge the woman's drastic change in physique as unusual, and rumors are starting to spread.


94. Every night, on a different street in a different town, a masked bard plays a tune on his magic flute that causes all the people in the townhouses to flood the street in a fascinated daze. His mooks then ransack the unguarded homes, but have yet to steal anything. What in the world are they looking for?

The Exchange

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95. Two ratlings, one a diviner wizard, the other a bard, with their plans to take over the world.


96. A free eidolon that takes a liking to one of the party members, follows the party, and often mocks the party member behind their back. When not with the party, the eidolon is someone summoning creatures with unlimited duration, which then proceed to wreak havoc and, due to sometimes opposing alignments, attack each other. Unknown to the PCs, the eidolon is trying to figure out how it got free of its summoner so it can return home.

Grand Lodge

97. The ghost of a gnome has been following the group around, foiling their attempts at stealth at every opportunity by knocking around pieces of furniture.


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98. a group of out-of-the-Coffin Vampire bards form a band (Children of the night) that has a growing popularity with the youth. up to having fans volenteer to feed them.
are they dominating the croud. or is it realy hard core fan-service?.

99. one by one the poeple of the town are loosing their shadows. and any who does cant' seem to exit town. the last one to loose his shadow is a party memeber. the party need to find out what is going on before the rest of them are victims too.(a lich is gaining control of the town.turning it slowly to it's demiplane.once every soul in town looses it's shadow he can ifnaly finish his ritual).

100. for a smaller party. a stone starts to stalk a party member(prefering a caster without a familier). it shows up in his soup bowl. on the top of the stairs in his house. inside his poket etc. no metter how far he trow it. or how many pieces he crushes it. the moment he takes his eyes away from it it reforms and restalk him. for each day the stone stalks him. he gains a comultive -1 bad luck to all his rolls. (stone has been made awakened by said character power and has actuly a slice of his soul ,that usaly is placed in a familier. character need to do major research+ side quests to distroy\change the power of the stone or his own powers)


101. A wanna be super evil villain is just starting out. She was raised in a very positive and nurturing home and her idea of devious evil is at the level of intentionally interrupting another speaker or secluding herself in a quiet room and whispering the word bottom. She glories in the sheer naughtiness of it all living on the edge, plotting to drop a handful of mud in farmer Jemmy's water ditch when she can get up the nerve to do it slyly on the way home from meeting for worship.
But she has accidentally summoned a very patient demon who is beginning her transformation, but the demon is frustrated by her slow progress so he is sneaking into the next town to get a fix of darkness himself. ...

Grand Lodge

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102. Something at the bottom of the village well is stealing every bucket used to try and draw water from the well.

Sczarni

103. A local family's young son has been replaced with a derro. The derro claims to BE the missing son, right down to knowing things only the son should know and even having a faint facial resemblance.


104. A Summoner whose Eidolon is basically their id. The Summoner is shy and tends to let Eidolon be in charge.


105. A master of assassins, who honestly thinks he is just a humble downtown butcher, is leading a split life. He is actually a quiet and charitable neighbour who tutors the local kids on math and basic business skills. But he is also actually a highly skilled and completely mercenary contract killer who is hired through contacting the local librarian by leaving money and requests in copies of misfiled reference books. The librarian keeps a cut and is taking as many jobs as he can possibly squeeze in. The butcher/assassin is oblivious to his other self and both are getting worn down from sleep deprivation, the librarian is handing him missions in the books he is borrowing.

The librarian is storing his money in the basement, and the assassin spends it on the very best equipment and the rest gets hidden in the sun dried bricks which are being used to make the secret lair under some butcher's shop. But the librarian is killed in a cart accident and now the assassin in interpreting his customer's orders as his contract jobs...and gossip said while waiting for a tenderloin might be getting local neighbours in some very unexpected trouble...but the tutored students feel they are fortunate because the meanest teacher was just found at the abutment of the local bridge.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

106. A tax collector comes to shake down the tax-evading PCs for what they owe to the crown. Naturally, the tax collector makes a living by how much additional money he can squeeze out of them.


Cam James wrote:

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 ^_^

No, sir. It's not your grandma's tower. It's a massive tower that has a radius of 50ft at the bottom and finally tapers to a 20ft radius at the top. Depending how profitable the specific school of magic was in that region the tower will vary in width and size (should be between 150ft and 250ft given 10ft per floor though some rooms may be taller than others to house a guard dragon)

Grand Lodge

107. A recluse has convinced a band of goblins that they are the incarnation of a goblin god, and are now using the goblins to amass a small fortune of stolen goods.

The Exchange

108. An evil eldritch knight piloting an annihilator robot is coming to blast the town to smithereens!

109. An alchemist has been working on prosthetic limbs to help the disabled. Unfortunately something went wrong, and during the research, the prosthetic tentacles with a mind of their own have now fused with the alchemist and taken control over him.


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110. An anarchist sorcerer spreads chaos by sending out fire trapped gift boxes and scattering eye catching posters etched with explosive runes through the city.

111. An evil coven of witches seeks to turn the local population against peaceful druids guarding a coveted place of power by blighting crops, faking animal attacks and messing with the weather.


112. Wounded by an unrequited love, a murderous assassin sets aside death as a mission goal and instead focuses on making happily loving couple hate each other, distrust each other and compete with each other. The side results are a town in growing dysfunction and the proper Confucian order is in disarray!

Liberty's Edge

113.A Troubled and Mentally Unstable Wizard/Alchemist who creates a race of Tiny/small half constructs through use of a shrinking potion and small scale clockwork. His intention was originally to create more life-like dolls but resulted in a downward spiral into abduction, brutal experimentation and to some degrees murder to keep creating these small doll-like half-constructs.Think Mad father but with shrinking potion and more experimental.

114.The Creations, Having lost their creator but also not wanting to be lost forever, turn to using a similar method as used on them to continue their variants existence. Many of them are insane or deranged from their treatment by the Doctor and have come to see that their only means of survival is to kidnap,shrink,experiment-on other races and create and repair more of their kind.


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115. An odd bald, noseless sorcerer in a robe is running around killing Potters and destroying their goods.

The Exchange

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Points if that sorc has serpentine bloodline and a viper(probaby should be snake) familiar!


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

116. A low templar who is rounding up rival knights and putting them on trial for consorting with demons. The charges are completely baseless, but the low templar is an expert con-man with friends in low places. Note that whereas the low templar is a scumbag, he does not consort with demons himself (a possibly interesting plot point if demons offer him aid later on.)


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117. An army of clockworks have been discovered deep under a major city, and a large brass hourglass held by four clockwork dragons slowly empties.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

118. An exiled Hermean alchemist (or transmuter wizard) is trying to prove he was right by deliberately creating the perfect person. As such, he is clandestinely kidnapping what he deems suitable subjects for his experiments from the local city.

119. A team of Rahadoumi scholars and mages claim to have discovered a way of draining the divine power from a servant of the gods. Little do they know they are being manipulated by a Razmiran Ur-Priest (PrC from 3.5, see BoVD or Complete Divine) who wants the stolen divine power for himself.

120. A powerful daemon seeks to unlock and feed upon the souls contained in one of the Final Blades. It uses a host of its half-fiend doppelganger spawn to work its influence upon Galtan society.

121. A man who claims to be a servant of Razmir is upsetting society by actually demonstrating divine powers. Who is he in reality, and where is he drawing his power from?


122. A bugbear with a Hat of Disguise is terrorising the town. Most of the time he behaves like an innocent and uninteresting human merchant.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

123. A corrupt Druman merchant house sells armaments and magic items to evil villains, barbarians, monsters, and other evil-doers who want no questions asked. Seriously, how do you explain all those inexplicable magic items the bad guys carry that seem perfectly suited to them but that they have themselves no ways of making?

Grand Lodge

124. An arsonist has been striking local businesses by summoning swarms of fire elementals.

125. A man has been going around town, claiming to be a vampire hunter, and that he's tracking one in the city. He's really a con-man, looking to kill a former business partner, while having reasonable cause to have done so. He keeps several scrolls of Disintegrate to make it look like the vampiric burst into ashes when slain.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

126. A wolfwere (posing as a weapons merchant and retired monster hunter) is going around selling silver weapons to the populace. Its ultimate purposes are to
A) get the townsfolk and local adventures to wipe out the local werewolves
B) lure the townsfolk into a false sense of security as the wolfwere's pact sneaks in to exploit the townsfolk.

127. A local band of particularly feral werewolf barbarians and druids have sworn off the use of metal entirely, save for one purpose: feeding their nest of domesticated rust monsters.


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128. Various meat markets/butcheries around the city have had any whole or mostly-whole carcasses awaiting cutting go missing in the last couple of weeks. The culprit is a stealth-trained oracle who just learned the Undeath word of power (either through wordcasting or the experimental spellcaster feat).

The zombie apocalypse will start with cows and chickens if the oracle is not stopped.

Sczarni

129. A group of local vandals have begun backing an anarchist who calls himself "The Anti-Time". He is against the very concept of measuring time, and has instructed his followers to smash any clocks and sundials they come across, while preaching the benefits of a less schedule-driven lifestyle. While several of his followers have committed vandalism at his endorsement, he himself has committed no crime yet, and his philosophy is winning over converts at a surprising rate. The PCs will have to be very delicate about how they handle this one, lest they lose their public support.


Anyone else think that Peter Griffon and The Giant Chicken would be a great random encounter...


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130. A cleric of Ragathiel crusading in the Worldwound has turned from his faith after his superiors failed to send reinforcements to his platoon in their time of need. They were killed to the last man, save for said cleric. The cleric was maimed, tortured, but was ultimately allowed to live to warn others of his kind. The experience left the cleric with even more reason to hate the demons, but now he glows with an inner hatred of the crusaders as well.

It may be the fiendish taint that formerly infested his lord somehow seeping into the cleric, but the cleric turned his back Ragathiel and has instead become a nihilist, spouting a "Pox on both your houses" philosophy. Although he hates the demons most of all, he ultimately wants both sides to perish and die. As such, Ruapceras the daemonic harbinger of cyclical revenge and crusades now answers his prayers.

Liberty's Edge

Might be a bit too powerful or threatening but I'm not exactly sure

131: a collective mind born from millions of cockroaches suddenly unifying their conscious and gaining joint sentience. The mind grows in power as the mass of cockroaches grow in number, eventually reaching the point of being at around 18 int with the capacity to cast spells. The mind is dedicated to forming a large enough power base (of cockroaches) to take over the village of its formation, and then maybe spread across the world.

132: What is more frightening than a sentient mass of cockroaches that has the combined mental power to cast arcane magic spells. A collective consciousness of viruses/bacteria growing in power and dedicated to not only its survival but growing in number at the cost of humanity. Think zombie apocalypse except that every one infected is assimilated into the consciousness and their intellect and knowledge is added to the collective, enabling all infected to use magic and access the skills that belonged to any of the assimilated.


133: An awakened donkey druid is trying to liberate all the local domesticated animals.

Sczarni

134. An inquisitor of Torag has arrived at the local lumber mill town, where most of the citizenry consider themselves devout Torag followers. He's in good standing with the church, but his methods are awfully draconian for most people's liking. He's already accused over a dozen people of "laziness", and has been persecuting anyone he sees praying at the shrine of Gozreh at the edge of the forest.


135. A Litch has imbedded his phylactery in a innocent child so any who may want to destroy him must kill a innocent and this becoming evil themselves.


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keyafay wrote:
135. A Litch has embedded his phylactery in a innocent child so any who may want to destroy him must kill a innocent and this becoming evil themselves.

135b: He turned the kid into a horcrux.


dot

Radiant Oath

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

136. A crazy barbarian is determined to prove to the world that he is "DUNGEONPROOOOOF! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!" by smashing through any walls and doors he comes across, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Archpaladin Zousha wrote:
136. A crazy barbarian is determined to prove to the world that he is "DUNGEONPROOOOOF! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!" by smashing through any walls and doors he comes across, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.

Sounds like he has the Kool Aid Man build. OH YEAH!


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

137. An evil, sadistic dentist who moonlights as a torturer in his free time. Although his favored weapons are light blades and various tortuer implements, he also deploys knockout gas for range weapons.

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