How to Make a Good D&D Villain
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- Опубліковано 3 сер 2024
- Having a villain in your D&D campaign creates a powerful call to action for your players. But what makes a good D&D villain?
00:00 - Intro
00:46 - Qualities of Villains
01:50 - Types of Villains
02:46 - Why do people follow Villains?
03:14 - Grey areas of villainy
03:37 - Multi-Dimensional Antagonists
05:10 - Creating a mental image of your villain for your players
05:48 - Avoiding cliches
06:35 - Villains are not henchmen
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I feel like this video is really good for making sympathic villains, but not every D&D party will necessarily want to fight a sympathic villain to begin with.
Don't forget, classic "disney villains" who genuinely are pure evil amd completely irredeemable, are really fun mainly for the joy of watching them fall. Not every villain needs to be a sympathetic and tragic figure.
Easy fodder for these villains are fiends, devils, and evil gods and their followers (cultists & warlocks with evil patrons who are just fine with being evil).
Of course you can also just make a regular human king morally bankrupt and a main villain and nobody will bat an eye.
@@jasonreed7522 yup, and equally you could have your villain be just a big bag of hit points, as long as the adventurers have a good reason to be opposed to them. XP To Level 3 has a video explaining this in more detail. All the advice presented in this video is really good for making a villain generally, but I think in D&D it can be much less complex, and the villain you make should depend on what your players want from the game. The most important thing for a D&D villain is only that the party is motivated to beat/stop them, and certain tables won’t want to wrangle with moral greyness.
epic tip: if you want your villain to directly deal with the party or make them death proof until the right time make them an illusionist. not only can illusionists be very foreboding since they sow loads of fear and uncertainty just by being known to the party but they literally have a built in death protection that rivals or in some cases is even better than a necromancer. a necromancer dies and just comes back. an illusionist ends up not even being in the room in the first place while still being able to directly fuck with the players.
True remember simulacrum is a thing but so is clone both spells can grant the villain time with the party but simulacrum doesn't leave items behind where as a clone can
I *ALWAYS* USE THIS!
It got to the point where I nearly simulated Mr. House (FNV) as my BBEG, since the gal was an insanely old and fragile lady who could barely remain alive with the use of technology, but was a ridiculously powerful Wizard, being able to control illusions of herself from thousands of miles away. Whenever the party tried to touch her, she just dissolved in a black water, with the group always thinking she was a coward who ran away, but never even thinking of the possibility of her being an illusion.
I even had a second illusionist who was the actual BBEG. He was actually a friend of the group in disguise, the guy actually giving them the quests, directly or indirectly, rarely showing up in his "Maestre" persona just to fuck with the party and make them scared. It was a known fact that he was working with the previously mentioned villain just to betray her, but no one could guess when and how he would do that.
The best part is: I gave the group an item made specifically to destroy magical effects, so they could basically dissolve those illusions, and yet they barely even considered the possibility. They didn't know the lady was an illusion, so they though that using the item would just make her "punchable", and they were too afraid to try using it in the Maestre, who was actually challenging them to do so, and because of his disguise, they weren't too far from just giving the item to the BBEG without knowing.
Remembering that just makes me sad I had to cancel that game, it was probably the best campaign I've ever ran.
Another option instead of making them not show up and stay in the distance, is to have them show up but be wayyyy more powerful than the party i.e. green dragon vs. lvl 1 party. The heroes are beneath the dragons notice right now, so it's likely that they will let them run away.
Nah. In my experience, players will 100% of the time TPK against bosses that are too hard. They have no sense of self preservation once Initiative is rolled.
@@Cybermaul yeah things went south for my party up against a higher level beholder, and they doubled down instead of running. Didn't heal, didn't use potions, kept punching and dying. I started a roleplay dialogue because I felt bad for them
@@Cybermaul the villain doesn’t need to kill them. They can knock them out and capture them. Maybe the villain thought their display was so ballsy they aren’t going to kill them simply because no one has challenged them in too long. They are the party as so insignificant they won’t even take the time out of their day to kill them.
@@jedbex7070 That is true, and prison breaks can be fun. They also give players a whole new outlook on life, being that of "vengeance." That being said, clear signposting of villain power levels, and sending lieutenants first certainly go a long way to preventing players from getting in over their heads as frequently.
Unless one of them is an Elf.
One of my best villains were just a bunch of Moon Rats trying to take over the town.
It took the players forever to figure out who were causing their problems.
That sounds like a great campaign
Swords of Lankhmar?
I don't know what a Moon Rat is but I want one.
I've actually written up a whole minor villan who is a crime lord known only as "The Rat man" because he has pet rat and his office is at the top of an abandoned clocktower with a bit of a rat problem.
Plot twist: the man is actually being mind controled by a giant swarm of cranium rats that live in the tower (for those who don't know each rat is as inteligent as a normal one but they form a single super inteligent mind once there is enough of them)
Its a great minor villain imo because you have to consider making a deal with it since can't kill a giant hive of rats with anything short of burning the whole tower, and even then i can just say the party sees a few rats running from the burning building and into the sewers. They will be in constant fear of any rat they see now.
@@matheusm.santana6527 This is epic!
I would like to point out there are some one dimensional villains that can be exceedingly memorable. I made a sadistic psychopath who's power lead to them basically treating the game world as a sandbox video game. Including murdering one of the players hometowns, because to them the whole world, including the PCs, were NPCs in *their* sandbox.
It was a lot of fun and ended in some very interesting interactions, especially since they let the group live for the same reason someone playing skyrim might decide, somewhat arbitrarily, they liked one of the NPCs. (Also making the BBEG functionally a murder hobo caused a couple of the group to reevaluate their priorities in an amusing way.)
A great example of a pure evil villain is the Joker, he's insane and only cares about olayimg his games with Batman and will gladly kill everyone on earth to do so. (I just realized the the Joker is infact a murderhobo, or atleast a form of murderhobo)
Concept for my next villain: you hear all the time about “remake the universe in their image,” but what if they already won? A BBEG who presents themself as a god, but got that position through already doing horrible things.
A similar idea was explored in early Christian theology, called the malevolent demiurge
While not a dnd campaign, I am writing a story in which the villain overthrew the current king in hope of improving living conditions for himself and his comrades. In his quest to take over, he became exactly what he hated: a power-hungry tyrant.
Sounds like the IDW comics version of Megatron, AKA the best version of Megatron.
Wealth and power aren't goals, they're ways of achieving goals. A villain who's driven to accumulate wealth and/or power is likely motivated by insecurity (they never feel safe so they have to be ready for anything) or self-righteousness (might makes right/wealth implies virtue)
Of course they might simply be motivated to do evil things just to flex on people and prove to themselves that they are still in control....
Here is an idea- feel free to steal it. In my campaign the BBEG is a Necromancer that believes since the afterlife is shown to be a paradise much better that mortal life, he is doing the world a service by trying to annihilate everything that lives. Why suffer this realm when the outer planes are so much better? He actively questions why people are trying to stop him when they should be helping. Also, the players have found out he became this way via a blood fever that he barely survived as a child but it killed off numerous relatives. They met the BBEG's Mom who insisted he is (or was) "a good boy, just sick and needs to come home". The party wisely decided not to enumerate his crimes, which included mass murder, ritual sacrifice, and so on. Now there is a little bit of debate on whether to capture the BBEG or just kill him...
I had a DAD King BBEG. He wanted his beautiful daughter to be revived, but the gods wouldn't allow it. His actions later was causing trade routes to be completly haulted with the other kingdoms. So when the players confronted him, that kingdom's exclusive important export was what was needed to revive the princess. Despite the kindom falling into ruin, the entire kingdom agreed with the king. My players decided to see what happened, so the princess was revived and the routes started up again. The PC's left, but the princess became the NEW BBEG since it wasn't her soul, but an evil sorceress that came back in her body.
Sometimes dead is better.
My current campaign villain is a wizard that is advisor to the king. The king is often ignoring his advice and causing the kingdom to begin to collapse, and the advisor is sending the party to try and do missions to mitigate the loss of life from the Kings poor decisions.
He's yet to reveal himself as the villain, and is just trying to do what's best.
My superhero campaign has a villain that's life was ruined by a group of super heroes who betrayed him when he was also a hero to try and push him out the spotlight and gain fame of their own (think Blizzard Group from one punch man). They made him a quadriplegic and he used his vast intellect and metal control powers to build a meta suit out of scraps when he was released home for care. He killed the heroes responsible and turned himself in, but has recently broken out of prison and is plotting to have the whole hero organization torn down by leaking info on the tons of cover ups they've done over the years.
Or make the villian alien and completely unrelatable. The lich that has been playing proverbial chess Vs dragons for centuries and has as much reguard for you as you have for a shovel found alongside the road, or beings from the far realms who don't recognize life as being separated from the earth. These can be very fun but are hard to write.
Lovecraftian horrors who have alien psyches and goals. The Beholder that is collecting adventurers like Pokemon. The Elder Brain that sees your mind as something to be read and recycled like a pamphlet.
Personally, in a world with cosmic alignments, I like villains who actively choose to be evil for the sake of being evil. After all, being Evil/Good/Neutral are specific moral and philosophical positions in stock standard D&D worlds. I like getting in the heads of villains like those, people who think inexplicably or - maybe - no so inexplicably.
Sometimes, more often than not, a game benefits when the villain is someone unequivocally detestable who everyone, players and DM alike, wants to see lose.
A lot of people already pointed that purely evil villains can be fun too, but one thing I like to do is the little "in-between".
A villain who seems purely evil, then they see he has a defined motivation that makes a lot of sense, but when they look deeper into the guy they're fighting... they realise he was really evil and his motivations were just an excuse his evil actions.
I'll give one example from the same campaign, I was going to mention the ACTUAL BBEG too, but it would take too long.
The first major villain on my D&d campaign was the "Red Sentinel", a group of ritualistic scientists who used advanced technology and deals with demons and devils to cause chaos. At first they seemed like just a bunch of a-holes, doing bad stuff just because, but they slowly realised that they probably had other reasons to do that shit, since no one seemed to be enjoying that chaos, and not even the BBEGs (the 6 leaders of the Red Sentinel) really wanted to be there. Turns out that they had a reasonable motive, since the world was a wasteland because of people abusing magic and going to war, and they were basically everyone who survived that war, and wanted to wipe the remaining survivors because the factions who caused that destruction were still alive and causing trouble. They wanted to rebuild the world so that a large majority of people who survived underground could finally see the sun again, but that would mean the death of nearly 30-40% of the population. Seemed reasonable, untill you realised they were really just a bunch of xenophobic reclusives who refused to interact with the larger factions outta fear and wanted to wipe them so that they could have the world entirely for themselves. Most of the people in power were there either because of awful deals or because they were trying to backstab each other and use the Sentinel's forces for their own reasons. That makes the party think about how to achieve the villain's goals in a less genocidal way, while also being a good way to justify why it was wrong and why the party should absolutely kick their asses into oblivion as bad as they can.
This was another great and insightful video, thanks MTD! But personally I don't think the villain always needs to be a charismatic overlord, or even a lord at all. While I totally agree that developing their motivations is vital, having status or a legion, though it might certainly help them with their objective, isn't mandatory in my opinion. Especially depending on the type or scope of a story, I think a villain who for example has a small group at most, is an enigma for a large part of the plot, or is even lone but resourceful, can be compelling too.
Lets be totally fair. If your manager has to tell you not to forget the cover sheet on your TPS report more than once, you are the problem.
Plot twist when the party find they're the real bbeg
A manager wrote this be careful
7:09 Yeah, we did a small campaign where the first two-thirds of the adventure had us continually coming across these. A magical forest slowly (but almost completely) being consumed by a blight, two dead armies cursed to re-enact their final battle for eternity so their souls may never find rest, a (secret) Bronze Dragon powerless to intervene because her hatchling had been kidnapped and would be killed if she did so. Definitely put into scope the level of power and contingencies the Warlock Maldred had in play.
You villain is actually an Elder Brain that has been puppeting the ruling power of a kingdom for generations as it tries to figure out how to return to it's home, the same kingdom your heroes have been fighting to protect the whole campaign, with the person the player's thought was the villain actually being a group trying to free the kingdom from the elder brain's grasp. the party's greatest ally was ultimately their final boss since the elder brain comes to the conclusion that their ritual to open a portal home will require the lives of countless and results in alien hoards flooding the land.
hoards?
I see some great potential on this channel in the future. Keep up the awesome work, you got a new fan!!
I know this is 2 years old but stilli I think it's worth posting.
Personally I feel that relying on tragic backstories to garner sympathy or bombastic personalities is placing your focus on the wrong thing. (for a book Yeah, that’s great. but we're not writing a book). Instead I think DMs should focus on _the structure of a villain_. That is to say, how the villain interacts with the campaign world and the campaign itself.
to figure this out I ask 5 questions:
*What does the villain want?*
what is his goal, his objective. What is it he's trying to accomplish?
*What does the villian need to do?*
What does the villain need to do to accomplish his goal?
*what resources does he have available to him to accomplish his goal?*
How many henchmen does he have, how many dark rituals does he know? Figure out what he can do and how often he can do it.
*what is his plan*
This is where the top three come together. A villain needs a plan to get what he wants. How does the villain use his resources to get what he needs to accomplish what he wants? It’s important to figure this out because it’s the very basis of any D&D campaign. You as the Dm need to have at least the basics of your villain’s plan figured out (and preferably written down so you don’t forget it). His plan doesn’t have to be perfect or even very good, it could have a glaring hole in it he’s overlooking. This will make the players feel smart when they figure it out. It also gives the players a far reaching goal to accomplish.
*what is his morality*
This plays into the villain’s personality and helps you figure out what your villain is willing to do to accomplish his goals. This is probably the least important on the list but it’s still useful information to figure out as it helps mold and shape the villain’s actions. Does your sorceress hate undead and refuses to use them or deal with them? Your villain may not make an honest buck; But he’s 100% american and doesn’t work for no twobit nazi.
With this method you can create just about any sort of villain. From the most terrifying dark lords to the lowest of thieves.
The sounds in this animatic really made this one super cool. Would love to see sounds in other videos!
The movie references in this video are terrific!
I personally like the option of making a villain without any relatable or sympathetic trait. You cannot create deep hatred for the tyrant who financially supports orphanages because its background includes traumatic childhood, while it can be satisfying to take down an absolute monster for everyone's good
Right? I mean I GET that it's unrealistic but sometimes it just feels fun to beat on something that's flat-out evil without any "Well, maybe" guilt tripping.
@@MattBrown-hp5dp actually it's not even too unrealistic, history presents a lot of pretty evil people. Monkey DM did a short on it with Carl Panzram as an example
Thanks for the content.
Sympathy really isn't important.
Someone the players really want to beat the sh*t out of can be just as, if not more fun.
If this character has been screwing them over for the last 20 sessions and then they find a "tragic backstory, morally grey, hero in their own right" it can create a sort of dissonance, where they still need to kill him but now the wind has been taken out of their sails.
Agreed. Sometimes a villain's motivation is not necessarily relatable. Sometimes they are only seeking betterment of themselves (and have a big reason to) and the players wanna kick their shit in
@@erusean8492 I think you need a solid reason for them to be willing to throw their morality away though.
@@an8strengthkobold360 of course. Of you want them to be memorable they do need a good motivation and backstory.
All I'm saying is that it doesn't need to be necessarily relatable.
also a simple way to create an antagonist is to make a rival group who directly wants what the players wants in a way that can not be given to both groups. it isn't really a bbeg or even a villain but a rival group of adventurers who want the same artifacts or fame or whatever the party wants will have a VERY large chance of getting your party's hate.
@@someepicnerd7821 I brought in another 4 person adventuring group to my players in a tavern recently, early on in the campaign, and it instantly turned into an arm wrestling contest and they all want to see them dead rofl
Or you can do what my brother and I did and came up with the most redicualase villain you can think of. We came up with a BBEG whose name is just Johny and his goal is to defeat the sun. He doesn't explain how or why he's going to do this just that he is. He's totally insane and is not meant to be taken seriously... until the later half of the adventure when he starts making serouse progress towards achieving his goal, and again it's the most insane hairbraind solution you could think of. Obveously you may need other assumed BBEGs to keep the players engaged until your joke BBEG starts becoming a legitamet threat, but I think it's still an interesting concept.
Was having trouble making my villain, I got some good inspiration as I listened
Edit: Also this was typed on my phone so mistakes are likely to be a bit jarring.
Terra (name negotiable) is a young woman who’s father Roland ran an exceptional merchant business. Roland surprisingly focused on maintains low prices and manipulating the market not for profit, but for the common man as he suffered as a child through starvation until luck provided him a new means of production (early ideas of production lines and conveyer-belts)
He sold the idea and built his own merchant empire into his mid 50’s
He had Terra in his late 30’s and she is barley a teenager when Roland’s compatriots decided profits would be better without Roland limiting their margins. Assassinating Roland and his entire family Terra survives through a combination of luck stealth and prayer. She desires revenge and allows the god of pain and suffering into her heart granting her powerful cleric and warlock abilities. The Terror of Rudan’s legend is born as the merchant empire crumbles to nothing as almost all employees and head staff who deposed Roland were savagely murdered in gruesome displays of cruelty. Terra remembers little of that night, but she devotes herself to giving pain to those how have wronged others, to those who have caused pain. After several years the legend remains, but there has grown a secret following of the lady of pain. Initially it is a lawful organization that kills only those who genuinely caused too much pain to let live, such as murderers and r*****. However as a few more years passed the following grows into a decent size that separates Terra from her hunters. These hunters begin to kidnap people who have caused barely any pain, until some kidnap women or men who have rejected them and “caused them great pain”. Terra does not investigate her e I curious trusting the following to maintain integrity.
Eventually the party tracks her down and either kills her or learns of her lawful mentality and might even spare her as she would realize she needs to cull her own following as they caused too much pain.
In the end the god of pain is revealed to have twisted the minds of her followers to empower himself with the pain of hundreds of thousands. If she was killed by the party her soul is caged in the gods realm and shines with a lawful divinity that surprises the players, but is starting to be cut rooted. She will assist the party in slaying the god and tearing his spark of divinity. The spark is of pain and suffering and any who attempt to use it fall from greatness, but Terra (if allowed) will take it and mold it to become the maiden of pain. She will proclaimed in an grand announcement her promise to support people in pain from partners or physical/emotional torturers.
She can twist the spark to be a lawful neutral god spark.
---
Of course a lot has to happen in between beginning and end but she should appear as a passionate if not fanatical bringer of vengeance and justice to those who deserve “an eye for and eye” treatment.
I have more notes but I am to lazy to type it all out but I would love to hear anyone else’s ideas on how the party can interact with the cultish following for a good while as they interact with the world learning more and more about these missing persons cases that keep popping up in the kingdom.
Also any tidbits in how to build her abilities/character sheet would be appreciated
To any who read all of this thank you
I will say, having a villain show up more and be mentioned more makes the connection towards them feel so much realer. And if they wind up dead, then I think its a skill issue on the DMs end. I think more interactions forces creativity on both ends
played a game where bbeg was a group of cannibalistic serial killers, the description of the house with body parts cooking still haunts me
Nice Office Space reference lol. I love these videos 😂
Good advice.
I had a bbeg that the party met early on... They somehow accidentally got rid of him without meaning to/knowing he was (original plan was bbeg was someone the party kinda trusted but with subtle character flaw and hints to not have the wool pulled over the players eyes
) ... And I just kinda went with it, going for the the main villain is dead, but what were his followers either believe him a martyr and go harder towards goal, or some of them split and became more powerful than average brigand bands and bandits
My current favorite villain of my party (out of two) is an elf that goes by Laimë. He's a Shadow Sorcerer from a kingdom ruled by an Archmage despot that has made it law that all persons with natural-born magicks be turned over for the safety of the country. Unfortunately, this despot has an unhealthy relationship with the Shadowfell, by which I mean he is obsessed with it and anything vaguely related to it, even seeking to become a Shade in order to become an undying creature. After fleeing captivity into the forests that protect the country from invasion of liberators, the elf located the portal to the Shadowfell that damned his people to retreat to those lands in the first place so many centuries ago. There, he hatched a plan of poetic irony. He figured out a way to siphon the portal's energy into his own body, as well as infuse his shadows into creatures to control them. He decided that as a Shadow Dragon was what damned his people to servitude, so too would it be a Shadow Dragon that brings them to self-governance once more. He kidnapped a Green Dragon Wyrmling and performed the process. He intimidated the local Goblin and Orc tribes to cease warring with each other so that his creature may have time to grow. In time, the Dragon would become older and more powerful, he could drain the portal to make him just as powerful as the Archmage, and then seek his revenge.
Unfortunately, the Goblins decided that if they're not allowed to fight the Orcs, or intrude on Laimë's territory, then they will head towards civilization. The boonies town that the party was staying at after saving it from a cult decided to hunt them down, and they mentioned a "Lord of Shadows" that would surely avenge them. Crushing them, and then the Orcs, the party used Suggestion to get the Orc Chief to lead them to this guy. The party finds him, living a meager life alone by the riverside, and he's none too enthusiastic about visitors. Nonetheless, he didn't immediately attack them, so after a conversation mentioning a second Dragon, they left him be to find his "brother." He loosed his Dragon and Hound of Ill Omen on them to keep them quiet. Unfortunately, they bested the Dragon, and so after congratulating them on their accomplishment (after playing off his presence as him being curious as to what all the nearby battle sounds were) he left to seek the replacement they told him of.
Fast Forward the party finds him in town asking about the second Dragon. They have an idea where it could be hiding, and so they bring him along to fight the Dragon, and they all kill it before he has the chance to betray everyone. The Wizard, through a nice Arcana roll and INT to remember in-character stuff that happened like five months ago IRL, recognizes the spell he used to give the party some breathing room (the Dragon got Surprise AND won Initiative AND got a turn 1 breath weapon recharge) as being the same as what one of the Goblins described the Lord of Shadows performing. He tried to Sleep him, forgetting he was an Elf, and then tried to kill him with Magic Missiles, getting Shielded, before telling the party. Laimë gets captured, questioned, and almost mutilated, before he is able to convince them that he would willingly be tried by those he wronged. After the transit to the Capitol (a completely unrelated entity in the campaign up to this point, mind you) they realized they don't exactly know what to charge him with. The goblins weren't ordered to raid anyone, seeking to defeat a legendary evil king is actually exactly what the morals of the society encourage, and while mind-controlling a Dragon is horrible, it WAS an Evil Dragon being drafted for a Good cause, and both it and a second Evil Dragon died anyway.
Since then, he's been in the charge of the local church's highest ranking Priestess. The country has had a mage capable of 5th-level spells pulled out of the woods after all, you can't just take him at his word that he won't go crazy. He has since assisted the party in fighting a literal 100s-large battle after they poked villain #1: returned from the dead edition into releasing her army, participated in a Mages Tournament during a downtime tournament arc, and is currently leading them through the woods to kill demons as part of fulfilling a pair of prophetic dreams. He's only moderately warmed up to the party, serving mostly as a character with which to take some wind out of their sails by commenting on their absurd antics, call them out on hypocrisy, and generally be a smug, smarmy, sarcastic jackass. But also he's a second full caster if the party creeps too close to TPK territory, a voice for the DM to give advice through, and a potential sidequest solution to get rid of the Shadowfell portal entirely. The party loves to make a game out of making fun of or outwit him in return, and there's a semblance of respect being built from it.
My villain was a formal Grandmaster of the magic guild, most powerful mage in the kingdom, who one day - seemingly out of the blue - murdered the king and run away. Then - 20 years later - started to show up around the players, messing things around, vanish, then appear again making more troubles.
Turns out he is a father of one of the players (with - I am an orphan backstory). The mage murdered the king to save the life of his son (king tried to make baby sacrifice to gain magical powers that the player have), then run away not to bring stigma of regicide onto his own son. Appeared 20 years later when he realized that his son become adventurer, and his meddling up is a cumulative effect of him trying to help out from a distance, mixed with his horrible paranoia, and misguided attempts to become part of his son's life again.
His first act was to kidnap his son and force rest of the party to rescue him - for players seemingly for no reason - but he was testing loyalty of his son's party, to make sure he can trust them around his son.
I've got a nasty villain cooked up. He's a powerful wizard who survived a worldwide calamity by the hands of the gods. He did this by storing his body in a demiplane and halting time for it while he travels the multiverse in an astral body. For a thousand years, he's been plotting the death of heaven and hell, and he found a way to do it. First, he needs to revive his colleagues (who've been dead too long for even True Res to work), bring literal hell on earth to lure the gods and devils into a vulnerable position, and then cast the most powerful spell to destroy them all together. So be it if the world burns in the process. I may have left out the fact that the PCs were his former colleagues now reincarnated (as part of his plane)
I had the ultimate villain in my questline. After securing a few items from various dungeons, the adventurers eventually make it back to an altar where they need to put some artifacts together in order to create a powerful artifact, however there was just one problem… a massive dragon imposes them… however, here’s the big twist, and the big twist is that the bbeg here (the giant dragon) was actually the main character’s biological mother! Not to mention that they are an even better mother than the mother the main character had initially. The only reason why the dragon wanted to defeat our heroes was because it was cursed to do so by some mind-controlling crystals that were growing all over its body. So after a long and hard battle, the fight was won, and the heroes got the magical artifact… but at what cost…?
great video
The Druid gone mad that once blessed a farming hamlet, but as the hamlet grew and began cutting into the forest for more farming land, the Druid broke and began an uprising of nature to push back against the encroachment of man.
Once had a villain basically infiltrated the town the party had cobbled together from saved refugees and turned enemies. It was thier only refuge in a strange and increasingly hostile land. whenever the party was gone he'd be the world's best worker, fixing and building things like others couldn't while having a quiet charisma. And slowly, ever so slowly, planting seeds of betrayal. Eventually the party would return to find thier staunchest ally's house destroyed and half the town ready to fight them. He didn't need to fight them, not when he could cut thier roots out from under them.
Funnily enough, that never ended up happening. One of the characters in the group randomly befriended the villain and slowly turned them over. Should that player die he'd be ready to turn the town on its head, but he wound up placated by friendship. So to the party, the reoccurring villian kinda just vanished, and this completely unrelated character who'd been there for most of the game (a family member to one of them) just became more prominent.
Moral ambiguity is definitely a trend in RPG these days. I find it interesting in more of a thinking game vs pizza, beer and hack-n-slash, but some groups might not care to empathize with villains. To each his own.
My favorite villain I've written up starts as an ally they can hire. In this campaign there are going to be three archs to the story: startup, kingdom warfare, and the return.
In Act One, the main goal I'm pushing for is for the party to focus on spreading their names, as the country they reside in has a lot of different guild's and mercenary parties that they can work with. The BBEG at this point is just a mercenary who they will run into a multitude of times. Hey always seems to be on a job and will offer either his services or potential job leads he's come across for a price.
Throughout act one, the BBEG starts our very friendly with the party, especially at lower levels since they'd have more reason to hire his services when they're weaker. As more time passes he starts to seem more and more desperate for work. This desperation becomes so bad that he ends up passing out while on a difficult job and, depending on where the party is at the moment, they can either stumble upon him or a messenger will seek them out and offer them the job of finding him.
After nursing him back to health, he offers a thanks and goes right back to work saying that he's already spent too much time off and that there's more money to be made. He rejects any sort of help, saying that the reward in full is extremely important to him.
Not long after, act two begins. The party is approached with a job offer on a different continent that they'd need to sail to. The job is to help with the rising conflicts between six different kingdoms. The job itself isn't as important as the fact that they're away from home.
Act three begins as soon as they return home. The country is in a state of panic as bandits and thieves have pretty much overrun everything. People are constantly going on about how it seems too organized and how it must have a heart somewhere that needs to be struck. Surprising no one reading this, the heart is the BBEG that once helped them.
Before the actual confrontation he begs them to let him explain over a meal. If they comply and hear him out, he finally explains why he was so desperate for money: a plague broke out in his homeland. It's transmitted through sound and absolutely no information is available on it. He needs not only the funds to prevent the spread of this plague, but also to research it to find some sort of cure.
He ends off by asking for their help, giving them the choice of joining him in raising the money necessary to eradicate this plague before it can spread to any other countries. He even offers them a room in his base of operations to take a night to think over his offer.
If they decide that he needs to be stopped, he asks that they step away from the base for this final battle so that it's a clash of skill and ideals. There's no tricks, no ambush, and no advantage to either side with where the final clash will be. The only thing being tested is the strength of their ideals and the conviction in their actions.
Very cool with such an honorable villain!
@@paulmag91 Why, thank you. I have a streak of asking moral questions and the question here is, doom a country to a magic plague and risk it spreading or curse the country into poverty thanks to bandits being left to raid.
I also had the idea of, no matter what choice the players make, doing a follow-up session, or even an entire campaign, in the future where the players need to deal with the choices of their predecessors.
So many great ideas, but no where to actually run them.
@@lurkerstatus8305 if i was a player i would probably choose to subdue him and turn him over to the courts to stand trial for his crimes. Ending a magic plague is a noble cause but the whole bandits stealing all the wealth from a kingdom (and presumably causing all sorts of worse problems) is not a valid solution.
I think after dealing with the BBEG the appropriate course of action would be to start up an ethical research mission on the plague. (Party raises funds, does research, alerts authorities, ect.) I would say DMs discretion for how successful the research attempts go, presumably adventuring in the affected area could find the source which would let you find the cure. But that is definitely quite the BBEG.
PS: dont forget about villains like the Joker, sometimes they really can be evil for evil's sake and stark raving mad.
@@jasonreed7522 That is a really interesting take on the situation. And yes, I am aware that people can be evil purely for the fun of being evil. Not every villain I've written had a point, but I tend to have more fun writing villains that people can understand and sympathize with.
If I can get you to question whether you're doing the right thing or not, I'm happy.
@@lurkerstatus8305 the whole morally grey area "are we the baddies?" Type villains that you can understand are great and definitely have a place, its just a lot of modern writing advice only advocates for them and forgets about the classic "Disney Villains" who are pure cartoon evil for the benefits of not having to question your own morality. (And pure evil people do exist, serial killers being just 1 example)
An easy way to replicate this is to have a fiend or devil be the BBEG, kinda hard to sympathize with a creature who's sole existance is to torment mortals.
Tldr; nuance is great but sometimes we need to indulge in a little escapism.
I know better than making my villain a kingslayer, my players have organized their own coup several times lol
I've got plans for 2 massive bads, 3 big bads, and 5 small bads.
I'm not a DM but I AM making a graphic novel based on my Curse of Strahd character, and the villain I made for that is decent enough I suppose but the villain I have in mind for the sequel comic is even better: the ex-lover turned arch-nemesis. Some very solid advice here.
To the "Don't let them challange your players to stop them" The Big Bad of this story Arc essentially wants that. He has seen a glimpse of the future and after a failed attempt to mobilize something against the real evil that is about to come, he decidet that he would have to be as evil and vicious as possible in order for someone strong to show up and defete him, so they can go on and defete the real deal.
Instead of a monologue which will inevitably be interrupted by precocious PCs, have your villains MAIL the PCs a long worded and gloating letter. Have it delivered by pigeon, raven or whatever. Take the time to actually write this letter and have the players read it aloud. If you want to see players boil over, watch them read a condescending letter from a well educated villain. Heck, throw in vocabulary they have to look up, or add hints about what this villain might do to something or someone they love. Nothing motivates players like creating a soft spot, then threatening it.
This written approach is great for any villain of intelligence, like wizards, artificers, dragons, intelligent undead, and the like.
You also might consider crating villains that bargain with the PCs. The villain will spare X, but it will cost Y. For example, I have a low level boss that's a Wight, AND a bounty hunter. They WILL get that target for you, but it will cost you a zombie. Either the target or someone they choose. Either way, they get their pound of flesh.
Villains have minions for a reason. These minions will be the mouthpiece, if necessary, for the antagonist. They might LITERALLY be the mouthpiece if they have a Magic Mouth cast on their equipment. Make sure any messages have hints the PCs need too, just to prevent the premature murder of said mouthpiece. You might even want to couple this with the "corpse explosion trap" from earlier, as mouthpiece minions will explode if tampered with.
Just my two copper.
Sometimes I think a good villain can be petty too... Like for instance wanting revenge for not being invited to celebrate the birth of a princess was the motivation for a certain iconic Disney villain....
Or Big Jack Horner being motivated by his petty envy of magical creatures and the attention they get from being magical being the driving force behind his obsession for hoarding magical artifacts and trinkets....
Scar wanting to be King, being motivated by his envy of Mufassa....
Ursala wanting power and probably also revenge against Triton....
Cruella wanting to make a coat out of puppies just to flaunt her power and wealth.....
My favourite villain we had to deal with was just a normal captain. Even after he conquered an entire island, he wasn't any more than the war hero of an enemy nation. What made him special in our hearts was when we tried to mess with him and he captured some of us, and he let us go and USED us as scapegoats for his own political gain.
A villain doesn't need to be epic, strong or overwhelming. What they need to do is hurt something beyond what is physical. All they have to do is hurt your pride.
Cutscene villain monologue can work in video games, in D&D your friendly neighborhood murder hobos aren't likely to just sit and listen.
I have a villain in my homebrew campaign whose driving force is his empathy. He knows what it's like to suffer, and traveling around seeing how many other people suffer as well? He wants to erase it.
(SPOILERS FOR MY PLAYERS BECAUSE I KNOW YOU'RE GONNA LOOK. EVERLAST PLAYERS, LOOK AWAY.)
He's a Warlock traveling with the party from the very beginning. His patron is a homebrew entity but I followed the outline of the Great Old One Warlock for my story, so it's basically a cosmic horror. I plan to have him kill his patron and take its power for himself. The power to envelop entire solar systems in darkness, swallowing it into the void, leaving nothing behind. With this power, he'll have enough energy to ascend to Godhood, and try to remake the world to erase suffering.
He starts out very unsure of himself, but as he travels with the group and levels up, he'll be gaining more confidence. They won't know he's the true final boss until the very end.
A good video, but one thing you need to do is to make the villain fit the tone of the campaign. In one game i'm playing the villain is essentially Skeletor from the 80s, and that works wonderfully because we've got a very goofy tone to the campaign. A tragic villain would be completely out of place in the campaign.
Calling cards! The perfect way to rub your success in people's faces without being physically present.
It's important to be very careful when writing your villain, as there's a big difference between frustrating the player characters and frustrating the _players_. You want to do the former, not the latter. Not long ago, a DM I'd been playing with for some time revealed that one of the party's allies was the final antagonist, and had done a supremely excellent job of making them a compelling and relatable character. Unfortunately, they failed to adequately explain the final goals and results that would follow if that character had succeeded, and in doing so we the party ended up making the wrong choices. This character was supposed to be incredibly smart and calculating, but somehow failed to realize that the party would have allied with them if they'd adequately explained what they were doing, and getting a bad ending from that is just sad for everyone. Sad for the characters, sad for the players, and sad for the DM. Don't make that mistake. Make sure your players understand what's going on before asking them to make the final choice of the game.
Some of the best villains are 1 dimension pure evil irredeemable monsters, like most old Disney Villains or the Joker. Its fun to watch them succeed and even more fun to watch them fall as their world crumbles down around them.
Personally any effective villain who is fun to watch is a good villain, a sympathetic backstory or logical motivations are not required but can be useful in creating the right villain for the story. (MCU Thanos wasn't nearly as good as he should have been because he waffled between being a pure evil monster just trying to impress death herself, and a tortured hero sacrificing himself for the greater good of the universe. The resolution to this conflict is that he's a lieing narcissist who just wanted to be right, and isn't tortured at all by his sins.)
I hadn't considered it until listening to this, but several 'behind the scenes' villains in each major city would give the cities more depth. The head of the thieves guild in one city who is jealous of the party's wealth. A major magic user who wants a book or magic item he thinks the party has. The local Moriarty with his finger in every pie, who thinks the party are bumbling idiots.....
Doesn't have to the 'big bad' of the end game, but a recurring thorn in their sides, sometimes without them even knowing.
I'm probably being too "on the nose" but my next villain is called Hiro, as in "hero"
I really like these ideas on how to characterise the villain.
I agree that the villain should not appear all the time in person, but if they make it personal against the PCs what do you think would be the best way to reconcile the "personal" with the "the PCs are beneath them"
I think the question comes from these two things often seem to result in villains that come across like assholes, not precisely villainous
I think influence is the easiest way to affect a party without getting directly involved. If a villain has it out for the group but doesn't want to constantly show up, they can: smear their name to influential people, buy up resources the party is looking for, or just come up with alternative options to problems that the party wants to solve with killing.
@@masterthedungeon that way the villain is not interacting directly and he is not coming across as an ass 🤔
Have you heard of the tale of Shane the Shy?
How do I make a good hero if the party I'm DMing are all villains?
Have to say that I disagree with one major point you made: Pure evil villains do NOT have to be one-dimensional. The art of the so-called "Disney" villain is an old one in story telling, and it got popular for a reason. Watching someone bad get what's coming to them is cool, and getting to have a hand in it feels awesome. They don't have to have redeeming qualities, or a sob backstory, or noble intentions gone awry to be an interesting villain. Sometimes unchecked ambition is a villain's only motive, and in the right (or perhaps wrong) hands it's a force to be reckoned with. Sometimes a big loud scary guy with a stick and a penchant for swinging it is all you need.
06:10 "I hate the homeless...-ness problem, that plagues our city."
heyyyyyyy didnt this get posted a while ago? or am i losing it
You may be losing it, but since this is 2020 it's more than acceptable to be losing it.
Relatable, Confident, & Flawed... O.o ALL MY PLAYERS ARE VILLAINS D::::::::
Often the traits that make heroes good are the same that make villains good. Look at classic stories, where the lines between what makes a character a villain and what makes them a hero is thin. In Macbeth, the titular character was a war hero, loyal and proud and he had a moral compass. However, Macbeth's violent ambition coupled with his terrible relationship with his wife, as well as the witch-induced excitement caused him to become essentially a villain protagonist.
the last time i made a "grey area" villain, my players joined him despite his literal killing of others. so... did i do it well i guess?
Well... Did you guys enjoy the story, the game and the outcome?
@@balazszsigmond826 we did have fun, i believe so.
The best villains are the ones the heros would agree with, if only they could accept the cost...
The best heros are sometimes the ones that accept that cost, and make the villain hold to their goal, and not stray further than they need to
I think this video is misguided and limited
My tips:
1. think "antagonist", not villain. In storytelling terms, any character that opposes the main character's goals (even if the hero is a villain) is an antagonist. A gameworld is in theory full of people with various objectives, and any quest of the players (even mundane or personal) is likely to clash with someone else, so a good antagonist can come from anywhere.
2. A good villain is one that pushes the players' buttons. Eg. the classic "kick the puppy" scene in movies plays on the audience's moral outrage, but no need to limit yourself to morals to elicit annoyance and craving for comeuppance. If eg. a character pickpockets the player every time they go to he market, who'll they want dealt with: an obscure big bad or this guy? Motivate players by paying attention to what gives them personal stakes.
3. Difference between PCs and NPCs is that the latter are usually static while heroes can grow and eventually master the static challenge. the scarier the villain the more they can also act like a player, grow, cheat, have off screen development etc. Nothing wrong with static villains, but consider that Big Bads have agency that can feel surprising compared to other challenges.
+ reacting to this video specifically:
Don't overwrite game material and get too invested or it'll steal spotlight from the players. You can't force player reactions like empathy for NPCs, you can only utilize what players naturally latch onto in the gameworld elements you throw at them. (Eg. it is just as likely that players will say, connect with a random goblin street vendor and make sure he succeeds as their mission, and so the random vendor will become the campaign stake.)
You're not obligated to make a villain sympathetic to make them two dimentionnal or fun. Sometimes forces of nature work best
Here's a great way to build antagonists for your game; Make a troop of PCs a few notches above the player characters. Give them the same sorts of greed, mania, random romantic demands that bad players have. Let the players encounter them by reputation, hearing stories of the gross things they do, ripping people off, killing town guards. Let them see how robbing wealthy people in town or going on huge spending sprees causes chaos, leaves widows, destroys businesses, burns down parts of the town. If the players isolate one of the members of the troop and capture or defeat them, let the enemy party take an interest in stopping the players. Allow the players to grow in power but not the enemy party, until there's space for a showdown.
Eh, not all villains have to be sympathetic or relatable. Sympathetic villains just happen to be in favor right now. Sometimes illithids are just there to eat brains.