What do you think makes for a compelling and memorable villain?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Silver Crusade

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For those who say that for the "evluz" makes a forgettable villian.
Might I point out that the "iconic" antipaladin (Sir Pig Kicker) has quite the fan following and he only has pictures.
There are many ways to have a good villian.
If you have a CE baddy-bad-baddy who is totally in it for the evluz but is LOVING every damn second of it and is well portrayed by the GM I think they would be more memorable than a righteous prick who isn't as well portrayed.

Spoilers for Strange Aeons

Spoiler:

I think that the Count will be a great and memorable villian, and not because of his goals or anything but because there was a very good job of making people HATE him.
That and we carry around a bust of him we stole from his home.
Everyone responds with "THAT A%+#%*#!" or something similar.
My character is carrying it so she can cave his face in with his face when we find his sorry ass

The Exchange

For me, the best villains are ones that I can see myself becoming. Bar none, the motivations must be grounded in hard truths and terrible abuses that compel one to feel trespassed and ultimately called to action. Good people can do bad things to other bad people who do bad things, STAY OUT OF THE WAY!


Tim Emrick wrote:
Sometimes the most memorable villains are the ones that the heroes can't defeat through fighting--not because the NPC is a major badass, but because doing so would make life far, far harder for the PCs.

As a counter-note, a good or neutral NPC with not so dissimilar a sour attitude and a reason to distrust and dislike the players can be even more frustrating and make them honestly want to fix the relationship despite the repeated blunders that caused it to be troublesome. This alone can be a fun way to distract from the real villain, a relatively nice and unobtrusive person who hangs around with the more vocally engaging and socially important character.


The villains I've had that were most successful were those that were fighting some other war that didn't involve the PCs or their world, but often did lots of collateral damage. You get to use the morality of scale concept to take a "naked evil" character up through a sympathetic character, and then advance the scope to a point where the heroes are once again fighting him but because he was short sighted or narrow minded.

The classic version of this is the time traveler killing babies who grow up to be supernaturally evil. At first he's a serial killer with a sporadic pattern. Then the players learn about the future somehow and know why he has to do what he's doing, he needs to be stopped but the players get it. Then the players discover that there are so many supernaturally evil people born in this area because some event leaves a power vacuum allowing one person to become this supernatural evil and the baby killing is only making that vacuum more intense.

It works even better with people who start out good then the players get to a scale where that characters actions seem evil, then the scale changes again and the player realize that character was good.


djdust wrote:

A compelling villain is one who thinks they are the hero.

A 'for the evulz' sort of villain is not compelling. A realistically rendered villain is absolutely certain of their righteousness.

A compelling villain is, by definition, in at least some, slight way, relatable. --And this requires "dialogue scenes". (Just being strong is meaningless; a powerful monster is merely tomorrow's forgotten corpse.)

The best villains usually aren't the boss, but rather their lieutenants, whom the PCs can face as a reoccurring adversary, whereas the main boss is typically not encountered more than once. (He should be a shadowy figure who orchestrates everything.)

Darth Vader (pre-prequels) was a compelling villain trapped in his own inescapable predicament; i.e., relatable. General Hux, otoh, is a laughingstock one-dimensional cartoon even though he commands a million-man army and also gets kicked around by his alpha BBEG boss.


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Enchantment spells and SLAs that mimic them tend to be a pretty good way to make a compelling villain.


^I see what you did there.


The best villains see themselves as the hero.


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The difficult bit isn't the characterisation. It's making the villain enough of a presence in the PC's lives that the players have the time to form an opinion. Too many Adventure Path villains feel like this:
Villain: "Aha! I ambush you! Make reflex saves!"
Cleric PC: "Channel energy! Get him!"
Villain: "I have an elaborate backstory, you know! I was rejected by my parents and raised by an Irrisen hermit-witch who plays no other part in this campaign!"
Fighter PC: "Full attack! 46 damage!"
Barbarian PC: "Full attack! 57 damage!"
Villain: "Argh... I die..."
Rogue PC: "Cool. We loot the monster's body."


I find the best villains to be the ones who have their own plans, independent of the PCs or their actions or desires.

The villain should have their own agenda and goals they wish to meet. It's when those plans crossover with the interfering PCs, then the villain should come to hate them as well. The heroes become a thorn in the side of the villain, who may have to work harder to circumvent them. Which then makes the PCs have to work harder to try and stop him. Then, that's when it all becomes personal and you now have a True Villain that you just love to hate.


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Complex and memorable villains have minion issues.

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