My players are interested in the idea of having a few recurring villains in an upcoming game -- nemesis-type NPCs that are encountered on more than one occasion. I'm up for doing this storywise, and have a couple figures in mind for this, but I'm not sure exactly how to pull it off in the game.
By the time the players have access to the Raise Dead spell, I have no problems giving it to NPCs, so even if the PCs take down Recurring Nemesis 1 and 3, if 2 escapes, the whole Recurring Nemesis party could come back to life. This is fine for me.
The part that is less fine is ... are the PCs really going to loot these dudes every time they show up? :/ Do I have to give them like 1/10th the equipment so they won't make the PCs absurdly wealthy when they get taken down? Can they not regain equipment without it inevitably getting taken off of them by the PCs again?
What are some things I can do to make this situation more viable? How can I let the PCs defeat them without having the PCs lift everything they own from their bodies?
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A nemesis is no good if he gets killed every time he shows up. You have to make him (or them) at least as strong and smart as the PCs if you want to make a compelling nemesis. Give him an escape route (potions of fly, a silent image, invisibility, expeditious retreat, a mount, trap door that leads to mine cart, a crowd to disappear into, he's a vampire/lich/ghost, etc.). There will probably be dead goons for the party to loot, and whatever is left of the foiled plan of the bad guys so they don't feel completely gypped, but nothing stops the surviving bad guys to take their friend's body with them.
You don't have to make these guys obvious enemies of the party either. They can just be competition. There's a king offering a hefty reward for a kidnapped princess? These guys follow the PCs and swoop in at an opportune time to rescue the princess and make it back to town before the party. Most groups won't kill someone without them showing hostility first, but nothing angers a party like depriving them of their loot.
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Well, you could put a lot of time making recurring villains from the start, but improvising is usually a lot more fun. That one bandit that got away, you can bet your ass he's coming back to haunt you. A ghost would be nice too, especially if the party killed him. (Or caused him enough grief to commit suicide)
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You can also make it an enemy they can't kill.
No, I'm not talking about an invulnerable something. I mean someone who has enough social standing that the party would get a lot of grief from killing him outright. A beloved noble or high priest that gets in their way whenever he can (and with his connections, that's quite often). He never does anything that would turn the public against him, or is outright illegal, but he does enough that every time he shows up you can hear the PCs grinding their teeth.
When he finally DOES slip up, bringing him down can be a very satisfying revenge.
Waffle_Neutral, that's all very true. I don't want to run a game where ALL the enemies are fighting to the death. At the same time, a lot of parties really don't like to let enemies get away, and will go to extraordinary lengths to prevent it from happening.
In a Curse of the Crimson Throne game I played in, my fighter and a wizard expended a fair deal of time and resources to follow and kill a particular enemy that was attempting to flee.
The other half of the party refused to assist on this, which is part of why it became so difficult and resource-intensive, especially for the wizard who threw more-or-less his entire spells for the day at trying to make that thing stop. It had become a matter of pride, sort of.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is, I feel like there's a high chance that the party will make it their mission to find and murder anyone who gets away from them? I know what two of the characters are going to be so far, and one of them is CN. The other is CE. So, recurring enemies and "nemeses" and such are primarily going to be ... paladins, and their ilk. Good clerics. The kinds of individuals who may be more hesitant to flee, as they're fighting under some code, or for the betterment of the world, etc etc.
The David, I agree, that can be some memorable stuff. This game is a bit weird, though, in that some of the PCs and a lot of the NPCs will be cameos from previous games. The "recurring villains" that my players want in the game are, like, memorable paladins from past games that they want to try and stop them.
Quite frankly, if your party is ASKING for a recurring villain, that typically means they are tired of being able to kill everything they come across.
So, resources be damned. Thats half the point. Let the PCs expend resources tracking down their foe. Remember that their foe should be just as strong as they are, if not a bit stronger, so the foe has similar resources that will work to foil your party.
Druids honestly make amazing villains for this. Wild shaping to a bird and flying away, plus being unable to be tracked through the wilderness, plus if they are evil, having animal companion after animal companion to throw at the party to slow em down.
Give your druid a gator companion, let it grapple whomever is most likely to be able to follow the druid, and boom, druids gone.
This is just an example. Any class can be a nemesis, but remember they they have resources too. Give them escape routes, redundant ones. And dont make them prideful to attack the party 1 on 4.
it IS a matter of pride. The campaign will end up revolving around finding the villains and killing them. WHICH IT SHOULD. This is what your party is asking for.
I will second good escape routs and loading up on singe use items. Some of the most tense and fun moments in my games have been the attempts to stop the bad guys from escaping. (i.e. frantic pursuit up a tower to stop a guy from flying out the window) I would say if you plan on them to die the gear can be pretty good, but the second time around not as much.
P.S.
If your players are at all like mine, if badguy 1, and 2 get slain, and number 3 escapes....there is no way those bodies are going to be in any shape to get a simple raise dead on them, so might want to take that into consideration. =(
I had an idea for a recurring villain Alchemist who could fight to the death every time. Using Alchemical Simulacrum and its variants to create "clones" of himself only (a bit of a narcissist if you will), you can easily bring in various level and numbers of alchemists in at particular times.
The extracts and mutagens and their formulae book they use will not be useful to anyone else, unless there is an alchemist in the party, so they can be resourceful without pumping up WBL too much.
Of course, you don't have to use him to fight to the death every time, but if they get lucky, you aren't out a recurring villain.
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The best way to have recurring villains is to have functioning law enforcement.
If PCs can stack bodies to the sky like serial killers, then it is way tougher. If murder is actually illegal, then it is tough.
And NOTHING will make them hate an NPC more than showing up with the cops "yes, officer, that is my armor and weapons. Those are the men who assaulted and robbed me"
make a lich they were made to be recurring villains.
Make an antipaladin lich, so they have no idea why that 'death knight' keeps coming back from destruction. :)
Doesn't necessarily have to be a lich, just some kind of undead that is hard to get rid of. Maybe its something that requires certain situations to be destroyed for good, like a ritual or a magic weapon or a confrontation with a symbol of its past life. Ghosts are good for this.
There's a section in the Game Mastery Guide that talks about ways for villains to escape a fight so they can return later, its on the PFSRD. You can also just have the villain's minions fight the PC's and through in references to their master. There's a villain they do this with in the first two books of Curse of the Crimson Throne, yet more evidence that Curse is amazing.
Troll wizard, that can cut his arm off, and make a clone out of the arm.
heh heh...
How about a villain that is responsible for evil goings-on, but that they don't actually fight (until the "final showdown" at least). You could devise some kind of powerful/influential NPC who is the force behind whatever monsters/criminals/etc. the PCs face, but he's always got some kind of plausible cover story to keep him safe from the law (and a headquarters that is sufficiently fortified that a vigilante raid is inadvisable). The PCs would have to focus on slowly gathering evidence against him, or otherwise creating some pretext to get him out of his sanctum.
Or here's another twist: maybe there's a rival adventuring party? They aren't enemies, just competitors - instead of trying to kill the PCs, they try to take all of the good jobs (or steal credit for their completion). Instead of trying to kill them, the PCs are just trying to one-up them.