Eclavdra was great. Iuz and Vecna aren't shabby either!
I'll also put in a write-in vote for the evil dwarf Obmi from G3!
As far as home-brew:
My players once discovered the Cult of the Silver Dagger, group associated with the worship of Erythnul. A casual encounter with what was supposed to be quickly-killed cleric instead led to the cleric's getting the better of them and escaping (to my surprise, as DM, as well).
This fellow -- one Selyular, but soon thereafter simply called "the evil cleric" by everyone including me -- became a hideous thorn in their side, continually foiling their plans, causing the death of an allied NPC, and once even throwing the captured, disarmed PCs into a cave complex infested with carrion crawlers. No less than three times he escaped their clutches and yet the players never felt that I as DM cheated them over. The PCs finally followed the cleric in a running battle on horseback and the players declared that he *would* die, even if it meant death for their characters. That was the last ride of Selyular.
Now, a good 10 years later, the players still talk about him and I've retired the metal figure forever associated with "the evil cleric." I got a lot of millage out of a 5th(!)-level cleric!
There have been some great discussions on villains here but what I've really been impressed with is the great descriptions of home brewed villains.
It never ceases to amaze me just how creative us DM's can be when we really put our minds to the task of screwing with our players.
Bune(pronounced Boo-Nay)from Green Ronin's Book of Fiends. There is somthing about being the Celestial blamed by all the others for their fall that just seems so groovy to me.
There have been some great discussions on villains here but what I've really been impressed with is the great descriptions of home brewed villains.
It never ceases to amaze me just how creative us DM's can be when we really put our minds to the task of screwing with our players.
here's a thought: I'm sure there are a lot of home brew villains out there that people have wanted to borrow with the permission of thier creators. How about anyone who wants to list the stats, etc, for others to use, so that these homebrews may take on a life of thier own in other campaigns. With permission from the creators, that is. just a thought.
Markessa from the old slave lords series has always been a favorite of mine. I just love all those surgically modified doubles of her that were running around after her passing?
Rary is cool as well, just because he managed to kill two of the members of the Circle of Eight and runs his own desert kingdom. What a guy!
One more Greyhawk baddie that no one has mentioned is Evard. He has his own spells for starters, plus his stats have appeared in Dungeon (though perhpas he could heve been higher level).
Speaking of which, some of the recent critical threats have been pretty good.
As for the bad guys I've created. I can't give away trade secrets as you never know who might be watching.
I've always liked the idea of the fallen hero. A hero that becomes too overzealous, too conflicted, too misguided, or too insane and thinks that they're still working for good.
In one campaign I had a player leave but we still wanted his paladin to be a part of the campaign. As an NPC he truly began to lose his mind and fell from Tyr's grace. He then became so stubborn that he felt that no one was worthy of his healing so he never truly knew that he had fallen. All the right saves and he never got diseased or fearful...
The denial at the final confrontation was exquisite.
No arguments about any of the ones here, but i did want to mention one that always stood out for me from one of the sources that we tend not to mention anymore....
Lord Soth. With a perfectly tragic backstory, and incredible presentation, this death knight was one of the best recurrent villains in the 'first two' trilogies, for me. Not quite in the league of Vecna or a Demon Prince, but up with Strahd anmd Eclavdra for longevity and nastiness.
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Has to be the Master of the Desert Nomads from X4/X5 fame! With good role playing he can be a real rat-bastard. :)
--Ray.
Uhh, if my memory is right, that was the one with the buths (spelling?) appearing in that monastery, wasn't it?! They gave me the creeps back then!
One of my favorites is this huge Aboleth in NIGHT BELOW. I can't remember how many times we came back to his cave to finish him. That was a tough one!
Anther one was Bazim-Gorag, the Firebringer from Dungeon issue #101: "Prison of the Firebringer". That thing is so cool! I think it was Richard Bakers invention, but I am not quite sure. Anyway, this is a hell (indeed) of a villain.
Manshoon in the FR is great as well!
My personal favorites:
FR: the Crystal Shard, because It one upos the One Ring.
Ravenloft: Azalin Rex: the only Darklord my players liked working for despite knowing full well he is absolutely evil.
Pathfinder: Xanthir Vang: The players hated this guy mostly because he did the maniacal super villian thing and laid trap after trap for them while they hunted his ass down, only to learn that he was in their castle killing their friends.
Ebberon: Lord of Blades, because not only is he a Warforged Nazi, but he is partially justified.
Greyhawk: Warduke. He is the reason that people fear high level fighters.
Personal: Coldcore. A Warforged Zelot of the Lord of Bladrs who lost anarm and was taken to Ravenloft and strongarms Mordenhiem into grafting on a temporary human arm. However as he healed wounds the human arm devours the Warforged base and slowly turned him human. It was the only villian my players Healed to defeat.
Since this is in the Dungeon section, I'll emphasize Dungeon villains
Viktor Saint-Demaine is the quintessential champagne villain. All of his nasty tricks really suckerpunched my players in the trilogy of Dungeon adventures he appears in. Plus it was great hamming things up in his dialogues with the PCs.
The trio of hags from
The bitter, old
Vecna and his cult. Such iconic imagery, yet so versatile. Plus secrets also lends itself to manipulation and intrigue.
Bargle. 'Nuff said.
Rise rise, oh forum thread and take on the form of Necrothread!!!
The Greyhawk version of Lolth would be my answer. She plagued our old group like no other. Lolth was our DM's BBEG in the background of every major module that we played whether it was the Temple of Elemental Evil or the directly related Queen of the Demonweb Pits. All of the characters that died during the campaign were offered a chance to be resurrected as a drow by Lolth. At the end battle, she took control of everyone she had resurrected and turned them to her side.
Vanthus Vanderboren from the Savage Tide (slightly-more-badass version than as-written). Sorry for this being so long, I love this dude and want to tell his story again >:D
Savage Tide spoilers!
In addition to fixing his stat block so it wasn't...so bad...during various encounters, I changed some details about him to make him more badass and tragic (and vile). As written, he kind of bumbled his way around a lot at first, then spent the entire rest of the campaign reacting passively to what the PCs were doing. I wrote some original stuff for him and followed the advice of various people on these messageboards.
At the beginning of the campaign (we had just finished the Age of Worms) the party was starting out in Sasserine when Kyuss awoke. They battled through a bunch of zombies and saved one nobleman from a Kyuss spawn. That was Vanthus, although they didn't know how much they would regret it...
The party found an intelligent magic item named Fleur in the Vanderboren vault that he had befriended years ago, manipulated into falling in love with him, and abandoned once she had served her purpose.
I changed his backstory slightly so that when his parents split him and Lavinia up, they took him with them to Farshore and left him there to grow up. He ended up very bitter due to his enforced exile and also badass enough to kill monsters (which is where he got Fleur). He used her to find out where Uncle Ventrue's secret lab was, broke in, and used Ventrue's Book of Infinite Spells to cast Gate, summoning Pazuzu, who he had heard granted wishes, and not really understanding what he was doing. Pazuzu came, gruesomely murdered Ventrue, and intro'd Vanthus to the Crimson Fleet as a way of granting his wish to escape back to Sasserine.
Vanthus made his way back to Sasserine, got in with the Lotus Dragons, murdered his parents, and robbed his sister blind. Then he ended up in Kraken Cove when the Shadow Pearl went off and disappeared for awhile. (After that, he realized that whatever the Crimson Fleet was up to, he wanted part of it.) So he made his way to Scuttlecove and murdered his way up the ranks of the pirates, earning his Lemorian half-fiend transformation.
By keepings tabs on Lavinia with divination magic, he learned of her expedition to Farshore and determined to kidnap her and simultaneously destroy their parents' legacy. He showed up with a fleet of ships and was only barely defeated and slain...
(The moment when he transformed, when the party finally thought they had him cornered after five AP installments....ah, the looks on their faces.)
...then Demogorgon raised him as a death knight to end all death knights when the party pissed him off. He arose in the dead of night, slaughtered his way through town, and disappeared with his sister. When the party got back and heard the story...ahhhhhhhh, one of my favorite D&D moments EVER.
In Scuttlecove, the party discovered that he had unknowingly fathered a son on a succubus (Tyralandi's half-sister) while still a human. They got ahold of it and determined to bring him up as a hero.
When the party killed him (again) at Divided's Ire, he came back...as a balor. (A much more satisfying final form than "a larva + flying pile of bones" as written. Blargh.) The party ran into him in the final chamber of Wat Dagon and fought him alongside Demogorgon. When it became clear that the Big D was gonna lose, he stabbed his boss in the back and made his bid to become Prince of Demons.
Throughout the whole campaign, there was a gradually-revealed conspiracy of all the old obyrith (now qlippoth) demon lords (Pale Night, Pazuzu, Dagon, Obox-ob, and Dwiergus being the main conspirators) working through the PCs to destroy Demogorgon and take control of the Abyss back. This all came to a head in "Enemies of My Enemy." Pazuzu helping Vanthus into the Crimson Fleet and into the party's path was part of this, and Dagon's "alliance" with Demogorgon for the past X thousand years was all leading up to this. The plan was for the PCs to kill Demogorgon and trade the Crown to the conspirators in exchange for the Abyssal layer of Androlynne. Vanthus was supposed to be a pawn that would keep the party going in the right direction (discovering Big D's plot with the shadow pearls, heading into the Abyss, etc.). Vanthus getting the jump on EVERYONE and seizing the crown for himself, transforming into the Prince of Demons and being the REAL final boss of the campaign...was not something anyone was expecting. Muwahahaa!
Anyway. My boy Vanthus is the first and last encounter...murdered his parents...stole, lied, cheated, burned down everything he touched...stayed offstage for most of the campaign, with the party perpetually a step behind...harbored incestuous lust for his sister, who the party loves as much as they hate him...showed up at the most dramatic moments, always at the head of an army and with a major surprise up his sleeve...and finally sticking it to his Demon Lord employer, the obyrith/qlippoth conspirators who thought they had him under control, and the PCs (one last time)...
Most importantly, he KEPT COMING BACK. Escape multiple times as a mortal? Check. Return as a half-fiend? Check. Rise as the most horrible kind of undead? Check. Return - again - as a full-blown balor after his final death? Check. My GOD I love this guy.
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It's still Strahd. He's still number one after all these years.
I readily acknowledge that Erik Mona's Balabar Smenk made me reconsider for a moment. But it's still Strahd.
Iuz the Evil and Iggwilv are pretty high up there, as well. I'd easily put them ahead of Eclevdra.
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....For the first time in my gaming life, the Deathknight, Kharl Von Zaard from Chris Perkins' "My Lady's Mirror" -- sequel to Peter Aberg's "Lady of the Mists" -- has become a Serious uber-bad-guy in one of my games. (In the past he never amounted to more than one encounter.)
This guy is a 2nd Ed. Deathknight with some special powers and a Vorpal Sword thrown at relatively low level PCs.
This go around (I put the adventure in Cheliax in a campaign moving to Varisia for the duration.) the PCs were 3rd Lvl when the bumped into an uber Undead they could not roll high enough (on the Knowledge Check) to identify -- with a Vorpal Sword. (They could identify THAT!) They ran away and, from time to time in the campaign, now loooong into Varisia, have learned that he has followed them all the way to Varisia.
They're really into Kharl Von Zaard.
But it's not like he's really famous as an uber-bad-guy in D&D. It's just recently in my home game.