Some Villain Ideas

[TheIronGiant6]

Creating some villains for future campaigns and came up with a few. I'd like to share some of my favorites. As well, do you guys have any interesting villains?

1. A bard that levels with the party, squaring off at several points in the campaign, before actually teaming up with the huge BBEG that I'll talk about soon. He throws low level mercenaries or creatures at the party, and constantly buffs them up. He would be a dirge bard, forcing the party to kill every enemy twice.

2. A group of good guys hypnotized to fight the party. This will teach the party to ask questions first. If they kill the enemies straight away, it will be revealed that they were helping you along, and the BBEG will rub their noses in it constantly.

3. The BBEG and my favorite of the three, a wizard beyond level 20, likely mythic tier 10. He is super, incredibly powerful and can do basically whatever he wishes. Though he is immortal, and has been for a long while, he isn't undead. He is, however, super evil. The only thing stopping him from killing basically everybody is his goal, which is to rule the world. In his eyes, he is above random murder, and he cannot order around piles of bones. (He's also not a necromancer) He may actually, at the very, VERY end of the campaign, help the party when some ancient world-eater is unleashed.

[Scott Wilhelm]

Giant ants infesting a city sewer system, but if the party eradicates them, they will discover that they were farming special fungi and insects that had been keeping a huge Black Pudding in check, and now it's devouring the whole city.

A red dragon, or maybe a blue dragon who has been using his hoard to make capital investments in surrounding towns and villages. And through predatory lending practices, owns substantial amounts of real estate. The locals are very afraid of what will happen to their economy if the dragon were slain, and they don't want the party involved.

The Golem of Kalashnikov. I don't know how to put it in game terms. In the real world, Mikhail Kalashnikov refers to his assault rifle design, the AK-47, as his Golem, a monster that escaped his control decades ago and has been ravaging the world ever since.

At a wizard symposium, the magical professors all titter, whisper, and giggle about the liches who attend, "He hasn't produced any meaningful work in a thousand years! Why doesn't he retire?" And "I feel so sorry for his grad students. They'll be liches themselves before he lets them get their PhDs."

Ersatz the Wizard and his army of MDF Golems.

A powerful witch who is chasing after a series of powerful artifacts, which she then swallows to gain their magic power. There's the Fly, the Spider, the Bird, the Cat.... The only way to defeat her will be to get her to swallow the Horse.

[Boomerang Nebula]

The villain is a criminal mastermind (perhaps a powerful mind flayer wizard in disguise) who employs the PCs to conduct a series of missions to destroy his rivals and potential rivals. As the PCs grow in power he begins to see them as a threat to his power and starts sending them on suicide missions. Eventually the PCs figure out what is going on and confront him at the end of the campaign.

[FedoraFerret]

In Skull and Shackles, I will soon be introducing a pirate hunter, a witch who's patron is opposed to the patron of the party captain (also a witch), and her crew, a Psycho Ranger team to the party.

[Azten]

This thread has some good ideas too.

[lemeres]

At higher levels, I think kineticists might be interesting, if only for the fact that their mechanics seem well suited for personally murdering hundreds of people one by one (more of a background thing from their mechanics than anything that adds to the game's style of combat)

They have consistant at will ranged attacks, as well as a number of nice things like ride the blast (which can allow them to move around 500' in a round), earth glide, various AoE options, etc. They would be well suited for slowly wiping out units with guerilla tactics, particularly earth users. Much more of the terrifying personal touch than a wizard with a long ranged nuke, at least when you see the hundreds of dead bodies bearing his handiwork.

So I like this image:
A cold eyed king, sitting on a stone throne, surrounded with the bodies of those that fell before him.

As you approach, the throne begins to move (it is a flavorful description of kinetic form)

"This land belongs to me by the divine right in my master over it. Bow your heads to the ground, or they shall rest beneath the ground".

As another, additional option- overwhelming soul is considered a bad archetype because it uses cha instead of con for your blast stuff, and it cannot accept burn. But it is actually the best archetype if you are using an undead character. So that could also be an option for the above- the descicated remains of a man who could control the earth, but refused to return to the earth. He sits upon a throne of stone and continues to follow his ambitions unabated.