The world of Golarion has some memorable villains. From god-like wizards to mad queens to pirate kings, there is an incredibly rich roster of BBEGs to choose from. Out of all the APs (or modules), who is your favorite BBEG?
Hmm, i'll agree that paizo has some pretty memorable villains.
I think my two favorites overall were Illeosa and Nyrissa.
CoCT:
Jade Regent:
Carrion Crown
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Reign of Winter
My favorite?
The Skinsaw Man from RotRL
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Thuldrin Kreed (Falcon's Hollow modules/A Guide to Darkmoon Vale) Maaaaaannnn, there is nobody able make players hate worse than a sadistic jerk with the backing of a major industrial institution so that you can't just off him without getting into trouble. And even then, you know you've made it when normally good and law-abiding PCs consider plots to assassinate him.
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Ileosa gets my vote for best BBEG.
She got the most screen-time and was highly-involved in things from the beginning to the end of the campaign. She had numerous memorable groups working for her: the plague doctors, the Gray Maidens, the Red Mantis, her devil associates. She also had the benefit of her campaign containing what I consider Paizo's best AP adventure (Seven Days to the Grave) and its best dungeon-crawl (Castle Scarwall). Edge of Anarchy, Seven Days to the Grave, and Escape from Old Korvosa helped cement her overall role and had the proper buildup of her as a villain, and Crown of Fangs managed to deliver on being a satisfying conclusion against her.
There's several other villains, Nyrissa for instance, that I think *could* have been contenders for the title if they'd been more integrated with their respective campaigns, but Ileosa takes the cake with her combination of high campaign-integration and consistently high quality.
I like Jhavhul of Legacy of Fire, because he's not the MWAHAHAH WORLD DOMINATION kind of villain. He's just really in love, and doesn't really care about Golarion.
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For pure character backstory and RP value when facing off against the characters, I liked Nualia quite a bit. She is hateful, but a character that garners quite a bit of
For pure unadulterated fun to RP vs the players as a GM, I nominate the world's most annoying human, Grigori from Kingmaker.
Jhuvaal of Legacy of Fire. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a love story.
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Ileosa gets my vote for best BBEG.
** CotCT spoiler omitted **
Man, I really friggin' want them to do an Anniversary Edition of that after reading your summary. I would love to run that for my group.
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Justice Ironbriar, With Queen Ileosa being a close second.
I think a lot of DMs recognize the wasted potential of Ironbriar as written in RotRL and have used him as a more nefarious and politically cunning opponent. I did, and he made for an awesome foil, constantly forcing the PCs to doubt their motives, their allies and the depths of the conspiracy in Magnimar.
He and Ileosa are the best kinds of villains, powerful and well connected in ways that make the PCs seem like dangerous vigilantes at best, degenerate murders at worst, if they treat them like hack n' slack enemies.
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Not really a Pathfinder villain, but I have always had a soft spot for Filge from The Whispering Cairn (Age of Worms).
Savage Tide
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Add another vote for
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Curse of the crimson throne
Legacy of Fire
Not Golarion, but still Paizo. Age of worms.
Grigori from Kingmaker!
Also, Vanthus from Savage Tide. Hated that guy.
Aww man, my players hated Vanthus too! Rowyn survived her first encounter and she and Vanthus became a dynamic villainous duo throughout the adventure path. Good times!
Nualia. Once my players learned everything about he back-story they were not to happy with some villagers.
The Giant Owlbear in Kingmaker
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I haven't ran any Adventure paths yet, and Dragon's Demand didn't have any really memorable villains in it for my group except for some poor Nameless straight from the Bestiary Kobold that the party barbarian could never hit and decided to leave After following the party for 2 more rooms and being ignored while trying to stab them, it walked away disappointed...
Now in PFS I've had more memorable villains. My party spent most of Season 5 believing Temel Passad was the main villain of the Pathfinder Society. I can't really explain why they thought this but nothing ruffled their feathers more than someone they considered a mortal enemy that they couldn't actually attack. And in one case they actually tried taking the face off one of their main villains convinced it was Passad in a rubber mask...
But my personal favorite villain was:
Vengeance at the Sundered Crag
When they finally got their chance to go after him, they were told to bring him back alive. Half the party wasn't going to let that be an option.... They wanted blood and Tancred didn't have enough to spill as far as they were concerned. But when they made it to the watch tower, they decided to try and fiddle with the inside doors and the party's Tengu cleric that managed to speak almost every language needed this season, turned out not to be able to speak Dwarven and activated the tower's self destruct.
When the tower starting to rumble a little, Tancred yells from the top of the tower "What the heck did you do!" Thus began a very memorable fight. Combat on multiple levels, a powerful wizard and minions, a dungeon that was in the middle of self-destructing, and a long overdue moment of vengeance. In the end I sort of avoided using some of his spells since we were well past the 5.5 hour mark. But it was the perfect fight on so many levels and it wasn't just some random villain you come across, the players knew who they were after, they were tried of his stuff and it was personnel. I do hope to try and set something up again like that
Grigori from Kingmaker definitely will live on in my players memories long after the details of the combats with many villains have faded.
Sheila Heidmarch
Wait. What?
Sheila HeidmarchWait. What?
I\ would make an interesting twist, that she's actually getting the PCs to do her dirty work of gathering all 7 Shards for her. Note that her pathfinderwiki.com entry has her down as Lawful Neutral, not Good.
(*) This AP, like Wrath of the Righteous, seems to be cursed, thus requiring multiple attempts to get one that can be followed for more than a short time, but it does amplify the circumstantial evidence that she knows way more than she's letting on.
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Chalfon Dalsine
Gaedren Lamb
Harsk
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She wasn't so much a BBEG, but jeez I had a lot of fun running the Pale Stranger in the Black Keep of the Asylum Stone in Shattered Star Adventure Path.
Spoiler
When the party originally encountered her in the stables she accused them of stealing her horse 'Buckeye' and started blasting away at them with her pistols.
During the battle the Dwarven warrior made his DC 30 Diplomacy check and convinced her that 'Buckeye' had wandered away, so she sheathed her guns and strode out into the Black Forrest to find her beloved horse.
Not long afterwards the party retreated out of the Black Keep and headed back to Kaer Maga to rest and replenish. When they came back a couple of days later, they made their way through the Keep to a room with 3 Morghs in it. I'd also decided that the Pale Stranger, upon not finder her horse, had returned to the Keep and was wallowing in the undead healing waters that the Morghs were frolicking in.
The party lured the Morghs out of the pool and into the main hall beyond. As the fight raged, to their horror they heard a raspy voice call out 'BUCKEYE!'
As the last of the Morghs fell the same Dwarven warrior decided to rush into the room with the Pale Stranger, only to be hit by a Ruinous Shot, which became a confirmed critical (times 4 modifier and 3 critical cards). Only the hapless Dwarf's high constitution saved him from certain death (he was well into the negatives).
Eventually the rest of the party was able to overcame the Pale Stranger and the Dwarf survived, but it was certainly a near run thing and, more importantly, it was an encounter that was enjoyed by all.
Prux
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Contributor
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IT'S TIME.
I haven't run these adventures yet, so these villains are mentioned more for their potential.
Karzoug - the OG BBEG.
The Kreeg ogres - so memorably depraved.
Queen Ileosa - I love her so much. Not that "spoiled girl drunk on tyrannical power" speaks to me or my GMing at all...
The Jade Regent - I really like his backstory and the mechanics of having to break up the alliances between the Regent and his allies.
First-King Xin - I like the aesthetic of a villain who's as much victim as menace. That, and Thassilon. I like Thassilon. I just wish I liked Shattered Star more...
Unity - the idea of a divine AI had me from the start, and one with the aesthetic of a "benevolent" angel is too much to ignore.
Chammady Drovenge - It's so nice to be able to set up a villain in the early books. She might seem sweet... until the knives come out. My campaign took a turn for the villainous itself, and Chammady is currently romancing one of the PCs (in a "seduced minion" kind of way). I also like the eleventh-hour change of allegiance that the Path provides.
Ilnerik Sivanshin - Ilnerik has one of my favorite traits in a villain: attention-seeking. His story (told in Book 3's flashbacks) shows him craving recognition, to the extent that he steals the Totemrix and flees the city. Between this and his bardic training, as well as my performer-heavy party, I played him up as slightly divaish. As a villain with a blend of recognition-seeking and hubris, he could appear to PCs, monologue, and believably let them escape.
Ilnerik's children - Much like their master, I did a little customization on the vampires. I set up the Mazeflesh Man as a serial killer who vanished from prison 30 years ago, having him stalk an armiger PC on occasion to menace her. Since I had a PC with ties to the cult of the Skinsaw Man, Father Jair became that PC's lost father, thought lost to Hellknights. And Jerusen became a tiefling from a surviving Jistkan cult - the rest of whom became the enslaved tunnel rats in the Spiral. Jerusen in particular (thanks to a set of siccatite gauntlets) had a nasty tactic for a vampire - if you won't let her into your home, she'll burn it down and wait you out.
The Splatter Man - I started running Carrion Crown the week I received Book 1 on the strength of the Five Prisoners (although the campaign outline cinched it - see below). The Splatter Man's madness and bizarre aesthetic made him especially impressive.
Radvir Giovanni - I have a fondness for cute vampire boys, apparently. Don't judge me. Oh, and scout rogues with Spring Attack. Also that. I went whole hog on the Vampire Underground, including generating several additional vampires and a few red herrings to compensate for the party's divination strength. I played up Radvir as an only-feed-when-necessary type who plyed the group with gifts, and since the party had both a traditional Varisian priestess of Desna and an (NPC) paladin with a fondness for cute Varisian boys, played up his innocent facade and his former faith of Desna. Of course, the old holy symbol he gave the priestess was a polymorphed tyrant's mark for the Way to scry on, and he ended up abducting and draining the paladin out at the abbey, but... nobody's perfect.
Adivion Adrissant - For all that I've praised everyone else, I knew from the moment I read the outline for Carrion Crown that I had to run it. To quote:
"He’s this bored genius who had everything and could have been anything—a revolutionary, an archmage, a king—but nothing interested him. The whole world bored him because he was good at everything. He’s that kind of guy everyone hates, both because he acts self-superior, and worse, because he might be right to act that way. He’s this arrogant bastard who’s so confident in his own genius that he thinks the only person who might even be able to understand him is a megalomaniacal undead archmage with delusions of godhood. And so he gets an idea."
He already knows your plan, because he's smarter than you. He can hold you off while sipping wine and looking disinterested, because he's a better fighter than you. He has a counter for your spell already prepared, because he's more magically skilled than you. Adivion Adrissant is better than you.
(Fortunately, despite their awesome theme and fanatic drive, the majority of the Whispering Way are both cartoonishly villainous and marginally competent. And since nobody else wants a new Whispering Tyrant, Adrissant has to rely on them. Good for Golarion, bad for him.)
King Merlokrep from Crown of the Kobold King.
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WotR: Xanthir Vang
X (Seipa Snake Sigil) V (Explosive Runes)
S&S : Barnabas Herrigan
Early Osirion Modules: Her Magistrix's Expeditionary
Which made it really awkward when they returned as allies of convenience in the Pact Stone Pyramid, and ended up turning on them at the last second and killing the party's wizard and monk in the process and escaping with a fair amount of the treasure themselves. It was nice to see my players humbled by a party of resourceful NPCs for a change.
Homebrew game, CHR: Ehrimun
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THREADNOMANCER STRIKES AGAIN!
Also to add an amendment to my previous post, Karzoug, because his evil and depravity is what started Pathfinderz great Adventure Paths series.
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Mokmurian from RotRL. I expanded his role greatly and wrote some cut scenes that revealed something of his nature, the end result being my PCs feared and hated him. It made assaulting his fortress all the more memorable.
+1 more for
Also a couple votes, because of back story if not screen time,for Kingmaker's
Bloody
[Shattered Star spoiler]
Jade Regent:
Somewhat tangentially related to Shattered Star, but in Magnimar: Aeryn Darvengian. GM worked not one, but two side-quest incidents involving him into our Shattered Star game. He gave the entire party crawly unpleasant feelings in their stomachs. 20 game years later, the memory of that guy STILL haunts the mystic theurge who finally killed him. The whole party hated him with the fire of a thousand suns (though as a player, it was great).
