OK, something that's come up a couple times in a couple threads is the sheer complexity of some of the characters we use. By this point, how many of us haven't seen a half-orc paladin, or a vampire half-dragon kobold fighter/wizard, or other crazy combination of things, right? So what I'm wondering is... are we overusing these kinds of characters? Obviously PCs are going to be bizarre, and most players have more fun playing something really bizarre rather than "level 3 human cleric" or whatever. But what about our villains? As DMs, we're always trying to come up with interesting and memorable villains, that's the whole point of the thing. But do any of you overdo it? Or can it even be overdone?
My thinking here (sorry, I'm prolly not very coherent at the moment, I'm typing between other things and I'm a bit distracted) is that if all of our villains are really super-memorable because of the number of templates or the juxtaposition of race/class or whatever, perhaps none of the villains are really all that memorable? If every bad guy is really bizarre and unique, then no-one really stands out. At least that's what I'm wondering about. :-) Would it maybe be better to have most villains (particularly the main villain's minions, unless you have big plans for them in the future) be a little more vanilla in flavour? So instead of having the big baddie's trusted lieutenant be a Paladin/Blackguard half-dragon or some goofiness like that, perhaps it's enough to have the guy simply be a high-level evil human fighter, perhaps with a distinctive scar or something to give him a little character. That way, the big baddie really stands out as being truly exceptional. The PCs also stand out -- instead of being yet another unusual person, they're true wonders.
Yeah, sorry, this is less coherent than it should be. So for anyone who understands what I've been trying to say... ;-) Do you try to make all of your characters really unique and special, or do you reserve that level of interest and detail for the main characters and let the less important characters be more straight-forward?
I think that you have to pick and choose. No doubt that if every main villain and minion that the PCs come across has to have 10 different flaws, and personality quirks, it would get predictable. Sometimes, it's nice to go up against a "cookie-cutter" type villain who is just plain evil. This is probably why World War II video games are always popular. Nazi's are evil, period. Nothing outrageous about that. However, for impact on a campaign world, I do try to insert truly unique characters who do become memorable. I have a pair of brigands in my game world who continuously show up. They're complete tools. They keep trying to rob the PC's but are so woefully clumsy, have absolutely no intimidation, and have become more of a comedic addition to the backdrop of my game. I find this breaks the tension.
I have, from time to time, inserted characters who do have odd combinations. I had one character who had a curse placed upon him. He would turn into a Red Dragon, however he had no control on when it would happen, and would receive no warning as to when the next transition would take place. This would really muck up a lot of encounters in the city. Sometimes, he would keep one form or another for weeks on end, while others would switch back and forth from minute to minute. It's great unpredictacble fun.
But to finally answer one of your questions, I think yes, you can over do it. I mean, not everyone can be that memorable.
My group just finished Tears for Twilight Hollow, an excellent, long dungeon crawl from an older Dungeon magazine. One of the antagonists is Harular, a Half Green Dragon / Half Halfling Fighter - one of those wacky templates you mentioned. In the battle, the little green guy was firing arrows with a mighty composite bow, using its strength to hurt the party from afar. The ranger in my group charged in to face Harular in melee, and the little guy doused him in a cone of corrosive gas, killing him. Sometimes those mixed template surprises are great. My guys thought he was a small lizard man or kobold, then whoosh, corroded ranger.
That being said, the two main antagonists in the ongoing campaign are a simple, straight-forward human rogue, and an evil human cleric. Those two bad guys allied with a humanoid army and orchestrated attacks on 3 of the characters' villages, killing almost everyone, to start this campaign. The first few adventures were spent trying to track down the rogue. When they caught him, it was not an epic, stat-filled battle. The fight itself was slightly anti-climactic, but the buildup and payoff were huge because of the history.
Now they are going from place to place, trying to undo the schemings of the evil cleric, knowing that he is aiding the same humanoid army in an upcoming siege of the characters' new home city.
They can't wait to get their hands on this guy, but it's the story, not necessarily the stats and templates, that build incredible antagonist tension.
Of course, the general of the humanoid army is a half black dragon, half fire-giant fiendish vampiric dire were-shark ranger/blackguard/assassin.
Of course, the general of the humanoid army is a half black dragon, half fire-giant fiendish vampiric dire were-shark ranger/blackguard/assassin.
Yeah, but who isn't really....
I usually like to keep villians at a maximum of two templates, and the occasional class level. However when I don't need to add a template, I don't. I like to have a bunch of simple characters that have no templates, and leave templates for the big bad guy and his assistants, the same thing goes for prestige classes.
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The unofficial guideline I use is that if a creature's race & class take up more than one line of text in a manuscript, it likely needs to simplify. Of course, it's cool once in a while to throw a fiendish half-dragon spellstitched kobold lich sorcerer 12/havoc mage 3/thrall of orcus 4 into the game, I'd rather see an adventure with a plain old 18th level human lich with a cool personality, neat master plan, and memorable lair. If only because it's easier to check the stat blocks!
Of course, I tend to go the exact opposite route for my player characters. My current record is a character with 2 core classes and 2 prestige classes: a bard 12/divine agent 2/fighter 1/dervish 1. Wonder how many more prestige classes I'll be able to cherry pick before my DM smacks me down?
My current record is a character with 2 core classes and 2 prestige classes: a bard 12/divine agent 2/fighter 1/dervish 1. Wonder how many more prestige classes I'll be able to cherry pick before my DM smacks me down?
You have much work to do. ;)
My personal record is 6, done twice: once with 3 core classes and 3 prestige classes (cleric 1/rogue 3/fighter 4 (I think)/Holy Liberator 5/Templar 1/Divine Disciple something (I forget); and also done once with 2 core classes and 4 prestige classes Abjurer 1/fighter 5/arcane archer 1/deepwood sniper 3/order of the bow initiate 5/Peerless Archer 2.
My current record is a character with 2 core classes and 2 prestige classes: a bard 12/divine agent 2/fighter 1/dervish 1. Wonder how many more prestige classes I'll be able to cherry pick before my DM smacks me down?You have much work to do. ;)
My personal record is 6, done twice: once with 3 core classes and 3 prestige classes (cleric 1/rogue 3/fighter 4 (I think)/Holy Liberator 5/Templar 1/Divine Disciple something (I forget); and also done once with 2 core classes and 4 prestige classes Abjurer 1/fighter 5/arcane archer 1/deepwood sniper 3/order of the bow initiate 5/Peerless Archer 2.
LOL! That is awesome! I usually play characters with just one class, but when I am making adventures I find a lot of my coolest bad guys get three (two core and a prestige). I think this is because I myself have always been a jack of all trades so I can envision characters (especially those with long life spans like elves) as dabblers.
To date my favorite character I've played is a jumbled mess, a veritable mutt of the core classes: Mnk2/Ftr4/Rog3/Wiz1. I don't know why it happened that way. I started the campaign as a monk, got booted from my monestary after the second adventure, ended up as a constable in samll village for a few adventures (Ftr levels) and then became a "special" constable who was sent all over the kingdom to investigate particularly difficult to solve crimes, often incognito (Rog levels). Eventually the crimes involved so much magic that he couldn't solve them without a little understanding of the arts arcane so he enrolled at a magic academy in order to bone up on his Knowledge (arcana), and Spellcraft. Besides, being able to detect magic makes him sooooo much more useful as an investigator.
To close this overly long post: I think characters can be overly complicated and this gets overdone, but not if it fits with the PC's (or villians) development. After I have created a prestige/template monstrosity of a villian for a game, I love sitting down and thinking up their background and how they became a half-illithid halfling Rog4/Sor6/Arcane Trickster5/Duelist3/Assassin1. Man that little tentacle-faced guy lived quite a life! ;)
Sorry for adding to a closed post (not overly long... I could read freak-mutant-weirdo options for weeks...) but I do think that many adventures get wrapped up with over-done char.s and something is lost. Esp. not a good idea if your introducing new folks to D&D (I've been DMing since '78 so have seen a few score). Simple is sometimes good..... easier to focus on real core role playing, problem solving, hacking&slashing, etc. without getting too distracted on technicalities.... then bring in 'quirks' gradually at opportune times (lycnathropy, curses, prestige blessing, resurgent DNA strands, etc). "Rare" enemies / creatures should be fairly rare or they lose novelty..... nothing like skewering 'normal' orcs & goblins for a few sessions then having a lone straggler polymorph into something reallllly nasty on the first hit..... really buggers up the party's well laid out "tame the countryside" master plan!!
Thanks for all the input folks! It just popped into my head because I was thinking about the most memorable villain I've ever come across in a campaign... In one of the earliest adventures of the campaign (might have been the very first adventure, actually) there was a throwaway villain who the characters were expected to kill. (I was a player in this campaign, not a DM.) Since she was a throwaway, she was a 2nd-level human cleric, pretty generic, working for someone else who was supposed to be the eventual lead villain. During the climactic final battle of the adventure, the PCs somehow managed to knock her unconscious without killing her, then decided that they should let her live even though she'd been running around killing people and such. They tied her up and placed her in a big barrel aboard a ship that was heading out to sea and foolishly thought they'd never hear from her again.
Naturally, she returned in later adventures, where through incredible luck she kept barely surviving and escaping. By the time we stopped playing, the mention of her name was enough to send the *players* into a rage, never mind the characters. :-) She was always "just" a human cleric, never multiclassed or with bizarre extra stuff thrown in, but we had so much history of fighting against her (and sometimes barely escaping with our lives) and the DM eventually put so much thought into her motivations and character, that she's still talked about years later. In the meantime, we can't even remember for sure who or what her boss was, and during the campaign that guy was actually raised to godhood. I think he might have been some sort of half-orc cleric type or something, but we never really cared about him. We just wanted to stop his "throwaway" lackey.
I must admit I'm very much in the opposite end of this. I like my villains to be weird and extremely complex. In fact, I kind of picture my bad guys like those in the "G.I. Joe" cartoon -- each of the leaders and lieutenant is amazingly unique and fills a specific niche. It's the low-level troopers who have yet to set themselves apart.
And these strange, mixed class, half-breed characters are fun to design. If I want a regular wizard, I just "order one" from an NPC generator.
I don't think complexity matters, except insofar as the DM enjoys creating and using a villain.
The villain my players hate the most is a simple, neutral evil enchanter. He started out posing as a bard and befriended the heroes before betraying them. It's all in the personality. They still haven't caught him.
In fact, this guy's lackey (war 1/enchanter1, LE) stood down a party of 4th-level characters by himself with sheer charisma.
I think they were victims of their own metagame thinking, my players, probably believing one guy = impressive stats. But hey, metagame thinking usually has similar rewards in my campaigns, though I seldom contrive to make it so.
Back on topic, though, complex or simple, memorable villains always have flair and usually have staying power.
Personally I think that the key to both a good character and villian is to have something "interesting." If the character has something interesting it can often be the "hook" to hang the character's or villian's actions and adventures off of. The character and villian can better come to life, to be either loved or hated for what he or she does.
Many times people think that having some odd combination of classes and races will make their character or villian interesting ... and if they think that the combination is indeed interesting they have succeeded at their mission!
But sometimes it just makes for an overly complex character.
A character can be interesting in ways other than their base clasess or races. A simple human druid who talks to animals and who calls everything as either his brother or sister might be interesting if played right. Quirks don't have to be flaws per se, but ways of playing the character that makes it interesing for the player and interesting for other players.
I second that Tzor.
Back in the red, blue and teal box days, when dwarves were dwarves and humans got to choose between four classes, heroes and villains where interesting based on look, dialogue, motivation and mannerism.
As for villain creation; sure you can have a cool villain who also happened to be a half-red dragon halfling ranger but sometimes you have to ask yourself why bother? Just make her evil. Only the DM ever really gets to see the full extent of the awesome stats and hideous powers. The players maybe only see her for one fight. Make the baddy distinctive in approach first - if she survives then go for the flavor. You can't force the players to hate a villain - but when you find one they do hate make sure she escapes to plague them in the future.
Bwhahaha (evil DM laugh),
-GGG
Templates don't make a good villain. Role-playing and story make a good villain. Many of my best villains have never had even close to complete stats. But if it's a fightin' villain you're after, either borrow a crazy templated monstrosity from someone crazy enough to bother crunching it out or take a regular bad guy and just make sure he has 2-3 unexpected tricks up his sleeve to use in the 3-5 rounds before your PCs kill him.
If you want them to remember him forever, just give him a way to get away. Let him get away from them 3 times and intersperse rumors about him as well. After that, most PCs will walk into the mouth of hell looking for him. Then you can run any adventure you want (sorry, Bob the evil blackguard isn't here but you have just walked in to Orcus's throne room). If they don't find that bad guy, they'll just keep looking. Another good thing to do is let them kill a clone or use some other means of faking a bad guy's death. Then have him do horrible crap to them behind the scenes. They rarely catch on. OR just let him die and have some other bad guy resurrect him. That really burns players, but PCs get resurrected all the time. Why not the bad guys?
Of course most players seem to enjoy beating a bad guy to a pulp at the end of an adventure just like the latest video game, but the recurring villain can still hook them--it just pisses them off. Especially if they have to THINK to beat the guy or something. A lot of players seem to like the simplicity of the world where you just kill people you don't like and that's that. Then again so does the president.
Hey, all you got to do to make a memorable villain is to give him some unique characteristics. Look at the movies: Darth is a vanilla cleric but give him a unique voice, a helmet with a great costume and away you go. Once again (James Earl Jones) Conan the Barbarian's protagonist is a cleric with a very forceful personality and an affection for snakes. Darth Maul (one of the coolest villains ever) a spooky faced assassin with a double bladed lightsaber. Kaiser Sose, a manipulative thief. More?
Great thread Otter.
I agree. It seems that too much attention is spent creating a template, when in editions before was simply just how you played the character.
ex. creating some complex archer based paladin- ranger hybrid.. when they used to just play a fighter who was played with style.
D&D is many thing to many types of people. the role players the min maxers, the rules lawywers, the older genration, the new guys & gals..
just play the game how you want.
I'm on the bandwagon here... I like templated characters on occassion, but nothing substitutes for a well role-played generic character. Paul McCarthy has the right idea here... while it is certainly possible to cast Darth Vader, surely a memorable villian, as some a specialty template, he can also be played just as memorably as a vanilla cleric.
A lot of my favorite optional rules are ones that help the generic classes. New domains for clerics (a radiance domain was presented a number of issues ago in Dragon that was wonderful), new skill uses for rogues (or anyone really), new weapons to add flavor to warriors, new spells for wizards and druids.
Adding a template works best when you need to make a unique group of NPCs, who may not have identical backgrounds. A priesthood where all the warriors and priests also share a template or a prestige class for instance.
Anyways, just my 2 cents.
Overcomplicated NPCs are my bread and butter. I think that multiple classes/prestige classes and templates only enhance the backround of a character and make them more interesting. For example, a reocurring villain in my Eberron campaign is a Female half-elf Necromancer5/Ranger3/Eldeen Ranger of the Children of Winter1/EldritchKnight3/Havoc Mage3 (that's a bit much even for me)but all of her prestige classes are directly tied to her storyline (she trained amongst the rangers of Valenar though she was already a necromancer, it is a natural progression to be an eldritch knight, and the havoc mage was just thrown in because I was getting bored of the vanilla abilities of the knight. She now leads a large cult of the Chiildren of Winter druids and rangers...Most likely they wouldn't except her if she wasn't a Child herself. So there you have it, sometimes you need to have alot of classes to achieve the character you are looking for.
I found the the most memorable villains or NPCs in general where those you'd never thought of. Those NPCs you did for that one session and you really, really believed they wouldnt survive the evening. Then the unthinkable happens and they somehow escape the wrath of the players and they start to take it personally. Bam, you have your dream villain. This happend quite some times also with throw-away NPCs/henchies that were actually meant to die at a certain point and it teached me that all this template stuff is really for nothing except for wasting time that is better spent creating a cool character background and motif for the NPC after he becomes the new most-hated-guy-in-campaign. As someone else already said, templates dont make an interesting NPC, its how you play them. And some scribbles on a notepad is enough to add the odd cool trick they have in combat. No need to stat it all out.
Another problem that the multi-classed, templated villan can cause is the sheer time it takes to make him. The great things about Vanilla write-ups is that they're easy.
Plus, you don't have to spend all of your prep time with a calculator, only to waste the effort on a "boss fight" at teh end. After all, as DMs we only have so much time between sessions to develop the game, so we might as well be lazy about the numbers and tough about the things the PCs are going to remember: story, background, motivations, etc.
A sugesstion for little encounters is to just take a stat block for some creature, add one Extrodinary or Spell-Like ability, raise the CR by one. Then, provide a unique description and social structure for your new creature. It keeps the PCs on their toes, and adds also of quick spice for vanilla encoutners. It's your world, even if it says "Forgotten Realms" in the cover.
After all, if your focus is the PCs, and you're properly sublimating your encounters to add to their heroism/villany, I've found that they'll take care of the rest. After all, it's THEIR actions that they'll remember, not yours. As DMs, we only provide the backdrop, and our villans exist as foils for our PC's characters.