Who is the favourite villain you've ever run or crossed swords with?
Friday, October 31, 2008 at 12:11PM I'm thrilled (again) to announce that the Geek Emporium chose my Unliving Caretaker (or rather, the backstory I wrote about the first Unliving Caretaker) as the best villain for their Villainous Contest. Thanks, Tomcat!
Judging by the many comments (ha ha), you all obviously enjoyed yesterday's post about horror and why I think I'm so great. Let's skip that this time. Instead, I'd really like to know about your favourite villain, regardless of what side of the screen you were on when you met her.
I regret that I'm having trouble coming up with a favourite villain of my own. Not because I have too many to choose from, but too few (in my games, or in others). Based on that alone I could probably use some help in this aspect of running RPGs.
So, what makes your favourite villain so memorable?
Does he fight the PCs with his brains, with martial skill, or with kindness? Is she manipulative, or simply honorable and on the wrong side of the conflict? Among thousands of dice rolls and hundreds of dead goblins, liches, dragons, and giants, why does your favourite villain stand out?
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Reader Comments (4)
As a DM, my favorite was a 1/2 red dragon 1/2 erinyes Ranger/Fighter named Charnel.
My players HATED that guy! I remember when they seriously dicked over one of his big "projects". He was missing for about 4 sessions, then pops up POOF sitting on a chair made of freshly flensed bones. He was wearing Yule clothes and gave a jolly HO HO HO before tossing them a gunny sack and teleporting away.
In the sack was the heads of each party member's closest (ex) living relative. The rogue, who han no family, got a stocking with a note in it warning him not to ever get too friendly with anyone, cuz the yulefather is always watching!
That was one of my most evil DM moments of all time! Talk about pissed off characters! They were Fracking batshit pissed!
As a player? Hmmm...thats a bit tougher...probably Halaster Blackcloak. In the old 2E ruins of the undermountain, he would pop up and blast my character randomly, telling me I looked like his father, and he HATED his father.
Ahhhh...for the good old days!
Those are some pretty awesome stories, especially the one about Charnel. Wow, you're mean, but in a good way. ;)
Both of your villains have a tonne of power, and with it the ability to pop in and out trouble whenever they want. Have you ever fought or controlled a strong, memorable villain that was low-level?
As a DM, my favorite would have to be the artificer/incarnate NPC who's name now escapes me. She only fought the PCs once, but they were very annoyed. She had Craft Contingent Spell and loaded up on them, had two loads of magic bling, and attacked with wands loaded with metamagic. Just when the PCs thought they had her down, contingent heal brought her right back up, along with contingent dispel magics set for whenever she was being dispelled against, they'd fire counterspelling dispel magics as well to prevent her items being taken down (I know it doesn't work this way in 3.5, but I did it just to be more challenging).
As a player, it'd have to be the extremely distasteful changeling assassin from a game I played in a long time ago. The character was memorable because the DM had a very fuzzy idea of how to make a character the player's hated, so during our first encounter with him, he made the extremely offputtingly hilarious comment that he had raped a female Paladin NPC friend of our until she squealed like a whore (and as we found out later, he actually did rape her, the fiend). This came out when we had just busted into a room he was in, swords about to swing, and he was alone and caught off-guard. Of all the things he could have said at that moment, he chose to say that. After we laughed, we beat the living crap out of him. Then he escaped. And next time around, he was saying much the same things. Rather than evil, he was just stupidly hilarious and a bit cringe-inducing whenever the word "rape" came out of his Chaotic Moron mouth. But he was certainly memorable. Right until my pacifist Warblade gave up on his beliefs for just long enough to splatter him.
The best I ever wrote was named Jalil, and designed for an Exalted game I was running.
It wasn't that he was a particularly good fighter--okay, perhaps it was, but not entirely. It was more that he was clever, and downright infuriating, and that he tended to show up while possessing people so you could never be quite clear if it was safe to kill him or not. He managed to abduct one of the group's favorite NPCs early in the plotline--an event which surprised me as much as it did the players. And then they didn't really see much of him, not face to face, though he was implicated in a few other incidents, and though there was a rather nasty run in with his eldest daughter and her slightly younger siblings. This didn't keep them from going into all caps any time his name was mentioned, or one of the PCs from being intrigued enough to try to negotiate long-distance with him during said run in.
And he didn't let being dead stop him. Slow him down, yes, but not stop him. They met another NPC later--and soon discovered that Jalil was said NPC's five dots of Throwback. This discovery could have been (and early on was) met with panic, or pointy objects--but for some reason, they decided they liked having him around. Now they even occasionally go to him for information, since he's off the "take over the world" kick, and cheerfully deal with the fact that they have to pay for every little bit of it in the pointed insults and derogatory comments he intermixes with their answers. They respect him, somehow--one of them even somewhat looks up to him.
I'd call that a success.