Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Korlall 02-02-08, 09:23 PM	Hey all, I'm running a new campaign which includes 6 players. I find it a little hard to get every character wanting to work together for "long term" since every character can different convinctions... Anyway. I want to put an Evil character which they will encount here and there to slow down their quest (or it will be the characters who are chasing the enemy... anyway) The party is Law-based... so I have a plenty of Good and Neutral characters but most of them are Lawful but in the extreme (Cleric of St Cuthbert, Incarnate of Law, Mercenary which is bound to his contracts) plus few good aligned characters like a reformed monk, a wizardress and a cleric of moradin. Now, I want to put that enemy into the campaign. Since the group is Neutral to good alignment, the enemy guy will probaly be evil or maybe neutral.... Since 90% of the group is stricly L-N, the enemy is Chaotic for Sure.... I want to know what you guys can think of for a super villain... I got few ideas but i'm not to sure of them... In the past times, deamons walked the land but they were pushed back to the abyss. I was thinking of maybe a half-fiend character... probaly warrior type so maybe a Fighter, Ranger... maybe with some flavor of magic like a duskblade.... I also thought of a Werecharacter... something like werewolf of something, that lure servants by inflicting them... Party will face werewolves alosmot everytime they are near to the guy. - I want a character that wtill stay for long... - The party will face him in combat many time, taking serious damage but always thinking that they will get him... like the character downed them all to few HP only but he is badly wounded as well... as the fighter in the party is going to slash him to dead, the guy escape by miracle or the like... - I will be a must if the character could be.... "evolutive" i remember in a campaign played with one of my palyer as a DM... the villain was a fighter which them multiclassed as a wizard... then turned into a vampire... each subsequent encounter has something new to the party... - The character has to be able to handle the party. I don't mean they can wipe out the party one handed but he must be able to inflict serious damage and resist alone the entire party for few rounds... - The character should be viewed as an arch enemy, quite powerful without seeming impossible to kill..... a Balor would be a bad choice since everycharacter knows that he will be impossible to kill before reaching REALLY high levels... anyway, the balor could wipe the pary quick if they are not the level... That mean that the character will probably Class-Based and not a monster in the MM.... So... any idea what Villain I could put.. any ideas ??? I'm all open to your suggestions...
The_Wild_King 02-03-08, 12:22 AM	Cleric of Nerull, possibly? Obsessed with sending the party to meet his god, and constantly adjusting himself to make it happen. Maybe in later encounters become a lich or some other undead?
Lord_Varos 02-03-08, 01:29 AM	I simply cannot stress enough what I'm about to tell you, so please pay real, real close attention and try to really absorb it: It's okay to love your villain, but if the PCs kill him fair and square and you use some "ancient magic" deus ex machina to bring him back anyway, your players will not grin and exclaim, "That darn Professor Darkstache! He got us again!" They will leer at you, roll their eyes, and then talk bad about you just loud enough that they know you can hear but quiet enough that they can deny it later. A Contingent Greater Teleport that works even in Antimagic/Dimension Lock will not make the players detest the villain more, it will make them angry at you for cheating them out of their hard work.
Empirate 02-03-08, 07:41 AM	Arch-enemies or recurring villains, as they're also tagged, can make for a really interesting, motivating source of plot trouble... or they can thoroughly get on your players' nerves. I strongly, strongly suggest you read this thread (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=273861)from Regdar's Repository on recurring villains. It contains some good advice by a few very experienced DMs. Some of the advice is by me :) , and I can't be bothered to post it again here. Have a look, it's good stuff.
stealth_monkey 02-03-08, 10:12 AM	Lord Varos is correct, take his advice. If I were playing against such a recurring villain, planned his death to the last detail (drop an amf, dimensional anchor, grapple him, destroy his corpse to prevent resurrection) and you as a dm pulled let him out of it because you liked the character too much the next time he attacked I'd simply let him kill me, hoping that if we started a new campaign with new characters we might actually be allowed to achieve something
Max Octavious Xavier 02-03-08, 11:03 AM	- The party will face him in combat many time, taking serious damage but always thinking that they will get him... like the character downed them all to few HP only but he is badly wounded as well... as the fighter in the party is going to slash him to dead, the guy escape by miracle or the like... I will add my voice to the chorus, listen to Lord_Varos. My :twocents: , do not have him fight the party. I had an npc I wanted to turn into a recurring villian. He had already escaped from 1 battle with the pc's without me planning it, so I thought he would make a great nemisis. I had it all planned out, he would attack once (at range) and then slip away (using a potion of gaseous form). However, with a string of lucky rolls (1 max hit, 2 crits with a great axe and an awesome intitiative roll) on 3 different characters they killed him in 1 blow. The moral of the story, if you have a (supposed to be) recurring villian fight the pc's, he may not be as recurring as you might want. As a side note, this same player has the most incredible luck. He once rolled 20/20 to crit on a villian that he needed a 20 to hit (he had a bestow curse on him). Suggestions - have "copies"(ie minions) around (clones, polymorph, alter self, disguise, plastic surgery...) - give the pc's something to do besides kill him (hostages, traps...) - give the pc's a reason not to attack (in public, overwhelming odds...)
damixmastermike 02-03-08, 11:48 AM	You should have a super-villan named The Monarch and he could fly around inside a giant cocoon. He has these arm bands that shoot various darts that are tipped with various poisons. His henchmen wear black and yellow butterfly costumes (less elaborate then The Monarch's) which have buoys if they fall in the water and all them to fly. The all carry 'wands' of web and magic missile. Did I mention that The Monarch wears a golden crown and has pointed yellow shoes?
Korlall 02-03-08, 06:54 PM	I was not thinking of a enemy that breaks rules using deux ex machina to survive... i jsut wanted about someone that they could possibly chase and probaly encount like 3 or 4 times (maybe with a 2 or 3 different levels everytime) so that each time he gets something new for the party... But i pick ideas here and there is the thread you recommanded me and i think i got want i need.... thank you