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My main advice would be to not concern yourself with the rules PCs would have to achieve to get the same results. You could make it something special for the villain, and determine how it would be canceled out when they do figure how to give the villain a final death.
Else, as mentioned, clones/simulacra/reincarnation are the paths to extra lives. Or just having a cult that resurrects you from one of the scraps of you. Of course, they could also wise up and capture him without execution, then he's screwed unless he can spontaneously combust.
The old school way of doing this is to use a lich. You destroy it's body, and it just reforms near it's phylactory from the closest available corpse.
And remember, a lich or even a zombie does not need to appear decayed.
Have the lich store a backup body by it's phylactory with gentle repose on it. Nice fresh body with no rot means they can come back looking fresh as a daisy.
Why not go full Dr.Doom style and every villain thinks he is the real villain but is just a robot, a clone, a clone robot, or something else.
My advice would be clones that all think they are the original, that way the PCs are always surprised when another villain shows up.
Have the original be hiding somewhere with a Giant Artifact machine that can pump out clones of any level up to -1 of the original. That way the villain can seemingly grow more powerful as the adventures continue.
Make the final battle a battle verses all of the Villainous Variants up to that point in his secret villain cave with the machine.
Reincarnated Druid that researched Deathward.
You could do it the easy way and just give it the Eternal Template.
No fancy classes or tactics neccesary.
You can have your baddie be part of a cult who has followers whose job is to come collect his remains and throw them into some sort of Lazarus Pit ala Ras Al Ghul and ressurrect him as a lich or something to that effect. You could have a lot of fun planning out his evolution as the campaign moves on.
Ok, it's more about the kind of story you have.
If you what an unkillabe villain already established, aim at a nazgul like figure: your players shall know it is nasty and that the victory is only for a while.
If you want a villain that becomes unkillable, i suggest the devilbound template! it grants your evil guy regeneration, so that only a good weapon can permakill him. Have him be killed, going down, and then buried! then he's send back by a devil agent under the devilbound template to avenge himself (while doing his current master biddings)
Also, another possibility is avoid templates and such. have your villain be a "faceless" being, a role played by many others. this is better if it's the agent of an organization, like "zankou the death shadow", an assassin that, in truth, as been always the "best" of the organization that have in the years contribued to build up the fame of the character ...
If none of those idea can go, use a rakshasa. very nasty to put down, able to have "thousand faces". only one guy could potentially be a lot of different enemies.
Similar to the lich route is to use a graveknight, an evil warrior resurrected as an undead menace, with his soul bound to his armor. The best way to do this, IMO, is for this foe not to start as a graveknight. Rather, he can be an evil warlord that the players fight and defeat ... and THEN he comes back later, with his soul bound to his armor.
I have a similar villain in my homebrew campaign. He isn't a graveknight (the Bestiary hadn't come out yet) but uses a similar mechanic. Basically, he wears a cursed set of armor that regenerates his fallen form should he be defeated much like a lich's phylactery does. The curse is that he never gets to go to his final rest and must serve the creator of the armor (in my case, Orcus).
I like many of the other ideas in this thread, though. The clone suggestion reminds me of Manshoon in the Forgotten Realms. I always thought that was a neat idea.
You could have an evil mastermind that the party does not know about yet (and, therefor, his/her level doesn't matter yet). This mastermind could send operatives (clones, automatons, etc.) that the party thinks is the BBEG (maybe only one per region). (Think along the lines of the Vorta in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.)
The "bad guy" could be a member of a larger group that have hidden identities (and may be mistaken as the same individual). (This is along the same lines as Hot Fuzz, the Borg from Star Trek, or, loosely, Razmirren priests.)
One word of caution. Beware over-using the "He just comes back a few months after we kill him!" bit, because smart players aren't going to fall for it for long.
Instead of killing him, they'll catch and imprison him. If you know he's going to reform later, you don't kill him, you slap him in a force cage or something like that, chain 'em up, and throw 'em in an anti-magic zoned prison somewhere.
Make him 3rd level with 9 mythic tiers. That way the bad guy would be immortal only able to be permanently killed by mythic or non mythic creature with mythic weapon creature on coup de grace or critical hit. At 9th tier of trickster and 1st level the Villian would CR 8.
There are a practically endless number of ways to make a Lich the worst villain your PCs will ever face. There's a reason they are an old staple of fantasy gaming.
Do a few site searches for lich related things. There's a lot of adventure-idea gold out there.
Have a beast bonded witch. At lvl 10 they can go bodysnatching.
Same villain, different body. Just make sure that your familiar never dies by keeping it out of sight or no more button that says [continue].
There are a practically endless number of ways to make a Lich the worst villain your PCs will ever face. There's a reason they are an old staple of fantasy gaming.
Do a few site searches for lich related things. There's a lot of adventure-idea gold out there.
Oh yeah, I remember the good old days on the WotC boards where we'd have discussions on the best way to hide your phylactery so no one could find it (either as a PC, or as a DM to keep the PCs from finding it).
Because, hey, Wizard levels out the wazzoo, anyone preparing to become a lich would have plenty of time and resources to come up with an awesome hiding place.
My favorite was to go to the nearest kingdom's capitol city, and find someone who works in the castle as part of the cleaning crew, or the cook, etc. Kill them, cast Flesh to Stone on the body, and then Shrink Item on the statue. Put the body in your pocket, cast Disguise Self to duplicate them, and go into the castle. Go intangible and delve straight down through the castle to the bedrock underneath, cast Disintegrate to hollow out a chamber. Bring the corpse statue back to full size, cast Stone to Flesh to make it a body again, and stick a hat of gentle repose on it. Now it'll never decompose. Put your phylactery, the body, and some scrolls of teleport in there, put some anti-divination wards up, then teleport out yourself. Every time you die, you reform from the warded corpse, and use a scroll to teleport back out. Replace the body as needed (or keep multiple bodies in there).
Bam, even if the PCs did somehow find the chamber, they'd have to convince the king to let them dig to it underneath his castle, or else risk setting an entire nation against them. Which would cause more than enough commotion for you to get wind of it and move your phylactery.
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I have made great use out of a Clone Master Alchemist.
Between the Simulacra and his clones, the guy remained a menace all the way to level 20. Took them raising an army (everybody took Leadership) to forge simultaneous strikes against each of his strongholds they could find to finally put an end to him.
By that point, they trusted nothing and no one. They barely even trusted themselves thanks to the simulacra made of them.
So wish I still had my notes for that campaign, but they got totally ruined during spring cleaning. Use a laptop for the notes, get a virus and wipe the harddrive. Use notebooks, they get soaked with coffee and thrown out with the rest of the trash.... Just can't win.
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Reincarnation druid is interesting due to the fact that they get a random replacement body, rather than bringing their old form back.
That means that they will look completely different from before. Which means they can easily pass as a different person to the party.
That is how you make your players paranoid- only people they meet in the week after killing the villain (again) can be trusted. Everyone else could potentially be the villain in disguise, just waiting to go "Ahah! I fool you again!".
And heck, since the villain can wildshape, they can even do attacks without giving away their current form. Throw in a few key tricks (earth elemental form for escape, for example), and you can make murder mysteries with a reoccurring antagonist.
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what about a villain that is a living illusion trying to prove that he/she/it is real? Dispel magic only removes it for a short time, The Illusion could react to attacks and damage as if it was real, but ultimately once people believe it's dead get back up thinking it only fell unconscious and starts 'treating' it's wounds with 'magic' that only affects it. I think it was in the old 3.0 Ravenloft monster book but something like that could be remade, heck might even be partnered with a wax golem or two.
Or my other favorite villain
A Doppelganger Illusionist, not only will the party question what they're facing but the very enemies abilities as well. Leaving behind Seemlings to fight for him or even Wax Golem's. Was another Ravenloft Villain the only way to permanently kill off this Illusionist was to find the Doppelganger pod plant that was spawning them, since it held an illusionist with a ring of Regeneration that prevented the illusionist from digesting, but allowed the pod plant to keep making Doppelgangers with his magical knowledge
How about an intelligent item with a huge ego score that just hides as a perfectly normal piece of loot?
It keeps on being sold off by the party and finding a new patsy in order to try to plot against them once again?
A gold coin would be the perfect form for this- you find it in the enemy's pockets, and you just end up spending it at the local tavern. And you never even realized it was important at all.
For a high-level game, I once used a CR20 monster from the 3.5 Sandstorm book -- but added the twist that every time it was killed, the dust of its body sank into the ground... and sometime later, TWO of the monsters would come out. Killing it only made the threat worse.
After a couple of doublings, the PCs figured out a way to shove the things into the Negative Material Plane.
Spells raise dead, breath of life, reincarnation, ressurection, true ressurection, or contingency with any of those. A cleric friend or minion.
Or you could just do what we did for my unluckiest character ever.
You see, once upon a time I had a character that died. A lot. Like every damned fight. Not through my own fault, nor the party, nor the DM's. The dice just utterly hated him. If there was going to be a max damage crit, three guesses who the dice put it on.
After the second or third time, I simply stated that the character painted his armor orange and changed his name to Kenneth. Who could not die. Every time he died, he'd come back to life again and nobody would remember that he ever died to start with.
"Oh my God, you killed Kenneth!" became a running joke that game.
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Raise Dead Tattoo might work quite well. Triggers on death (or perhaps the casting time after death) only affects the person with the tattoo, maybe a 1 per day activation so that the villain never has to worry about about replacing it, but then again could make it cheaper to have it as a single charge tattoo.
The tattoo Raise Dead of a once per day (Self Only) Costs 216,000 GP
Or
Single use, Activation Tattoo Raise Dead (Still self only) Costs 5,400 GP
Granted one needs to be replaced every time after death, but so would they need to restore their levels and abilities after each death as well.
Only down side is they would come back 60 Seconds after death, the group might still be looting them, so maybe comes back after 24 hours.
more powerful Tattoos for this exist as well with these rules. Raise Dead was just the fastest one to do :-)
An idea comes to mind, borrowing something from the old PC games Alone In The Dark 2 and 3. (And not the awful modern remake from a few years ago.)
Say the Big Bad made some sort of unholy contract that ensures his immortality. If he's killed, he will be reformed.
To put him down for good, the PCs have to learn about the contract, discover the nature and wording of said contract, and then find the way to void said contract. Voiding it could involve such things as killing him in a very particular fashion, or destroying an item of importance.
Yeah, it does sound a lot like a lich and his phylactery, but this allows for a bit of mixup, and may throw off players for a bit. And could involve several adventures trying to set things up to kill the bastard for good.
I can't get this idea for a villain who is a reincarnated druid who became a lich out of my head. I'm not sure how viable that even is, but I was thinking of a Samsaran so that the needed spells could be robbed from the cleric spell list. Could be really interesting, but I rarely get to play or run at high level so I doubt it will go anywhere. Cool idea though.
I can't get this idea for a villain who is a reincarnated druid who became a lich out of my head. I'm not sure how viable that even is, but I was thinking of a Samsaran so that the needed spells could be robbed from the cleric spell list. Could be really interesting, but I rarely get to play or run at high level so I doubt it will go anywhere. Cool idea though.
Or how about a siabrae? My mind always labels it as 'lich druid' anyway.
And more appropriately, it is an undead intimately tied with the concept of rebirth. Maybe have a reincarnated druid whose reincarnation became...unstable or unreliable. It thus turned to dark techniques to regains its ability by tying itself to tainted earth.
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Here's an idea. Instead of going with Pathfinder rules, houserule it a bit and have a Demon or Devil be the villian. Houseruled that they can't be killed on the Material plane but they can be killed on their native plane or by a "Devil's Key" sword (From Champions of Purity). Demons and Devils really should be played up as they are supposed to be scarey. After the players identify who/what they are dealing with then they'll know that killing them will only banish them temporarily till they can recover and come back stronger/harder.
You could even go with Devil and have him make use of a disguise and put one or more of the players in a binding contract that works out in the Devil's favor.
Eventually they players will have to travel to the Devil's home turf or use some method that like the Devil's Key longsword that plane shifts to kill the Devil on it's native plane and then plane shifts back.
Here's some of Ander's thoughts on Devils Ander's Video on Devils.
A lot of people are throwing out my personal favorite, Reincarnated Druid. I tried to list off some good reasons in the guide that would give a reincarnated reasons to consider turning to evil, they have a lot in common with Liches, albeit at a different power level.
I do not think the reincarnate druid is good for the big bad villain. They can be dangerous for low level parties but you need bigger evils eventually. Since they are so similar to liches, the only effective long term strategies they have are lich-esque, at which point you should consider why you aren't using a lich in the first place.
However, a Reincarnated Druid makes for an excellent lieutenant. Starscream/dinobot/vegeta/racer-x/protoman/whatever-anti-hero-deuter-antago nist-you-prefer style.
A misunderstood villain works as well since they must maintain some level of neutral. Maybe once the party hits mid levels they see eye to eye and have to work together to defeat a more 'classic' dnd villain, pit fiend, evil god, ancient evil, what have you. After all, the party keeps fighting this guy, but this guy keeps fighting the party. Whats his goals and why can't he accomplish them with the infinite time he has?
Try and make the villain appealing so that your party isn't groaning when he/she returns. THAT is the true route to immortality.
on the fan labs page under "Various archetypes" there is an archetype called "Destined commoner" Which gets reincarnation and race points, could be used in conjunction with a half-drow-half-orc (Flavor your rp and racial heritage as such) for ferocity and spell resist.
I think you can use create undead in conjunction with contingency (upon your death, maybe with no living creatures within charge distance).
You can raise as a bloody skeleton champion -- where there are a few ways to kill you permanently, but they are thematically cool and different from the usual Lich answer.
Similar to the lich route is to use a graveknight, an evil warrior resurrected as an undead menace, with his soul bound to his armor. The best way to do this, IMO, is for this foe not to start as a graveknight. Rather, he can be an evil warlord that the players fight and defeat ... and THEN he comes back later, with his soul bound to his armor.
Beat me to it. Graveknight is a new variation on the well worn lich.
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If you need a level 1 option, Internal Alchemist can fake death very effectively. I'm fond of Tiefling with a trait to boost resistances by 2. Internal Alchemist can hold their breath for hours, and you'll have fire resistance 7, making a first level character immune to being drowned or burned at the stake.
Isn't the Graveknight just a re-tread of the Death Knight from the Dragonlance series back from the 1980's?Edit: Actually, I did a bit of research, and the Death Knight apparently first appeared in a TSR publication in 1981.
It goes way back. But if you want a more melee oriented BBEG and not yet another vampire or liche it works well.
You can even start them off as mortal - an evil fighter can choose to undergo the ritual or he can be "cursed" (i.e. GM fiat).
Imagine the look on the PC's faces after they hunt down and kill the local mercenary leader who is tormenting the townsfolk, only to watch him rise as an undead monster to command his former men. One by one, as they fall in battle, he turns them to undead... pretty soon you have an undead general leading an undead army...