A horrifying invincible creature is after the party

Yeah, this is why in the games I run I let everyone know from the start that monsters and NPCs do not follow the same rules as players, so don't try to tell me the necromancer raising a dead guy has to spend a minute to do so.

Have him pop up in places he otherwise shouldn't be able to get to, and regardless of his speed. Like a slasher movie villain.

>Irrelivant, because your players are idiots and will charge in swinging their weapons, with no regard to the fact that they aren't having any effect, until they all die.
>You may have to pause the game occasionally as your players remind you of all the buffs and special effects that their characters have active, and flip through rulebooks to show you the passages that say those abilities negate or overcome whatever defensive ability they've concluded the monster has.
Then just flat out tell them it's invincible by having it constantly scream I'M FUKIN INVINCIBLE because players are memsters who can only communicate in memes.

>How do you make this kind of bbeg intimidating when the party realizes how easily they can outwalk it?

Fortunately, that will never happen with at least 4/5 of all parties.

This. and this Slasher movie villains. Also, another option akin to that archetype: at the end reveal there was more than one the whole time, thus explaining its sudden jump in speed or ability to be somewhere it shouldn't.

I think that's more of a cop out than just not explaining it at all.

...

>It turns away and begins walking to the nuclear power plant
Oh I'm sorry we're you going to use this city for something?

Looks like it's time for an ESCORT MISSION!

Have them be responsible for guiding and protecting the refugees from the city that it just finished wrecking.

They have to try to keep them supplied until they can find sanctuary and come up with a plan to defeat the BBEG.

Refugees don't move fast. You can have sickness, natural hazards like roads being washed out, having the opportunity to either harvest some natural resource or get farther away from the BBEG. Or make them able to supplement their food stores by travelling slower.

You can still have them go and do other stuff for combat and more traditional questing, but the problem is you've essentially just put them on a timer and that sucks.

Or have it be travelling to a goal that isn't chasing the party.

What said, but also make sure he's tireless. Undead, construct, some other thing that let's him not need to stop for food, for shelter, for bedding. Don't make them fear the beast, make them fear their own mortality. Make them turn every argument of "We need to rest, we need to recuperate X" turn into a massive party infighting because some characters don't want to sit still for 8 hours while that...THING catches up to them.

Watch pic related
>never stops ever
>probably chasing them for some cursed axe or some shit they picked up
>they can pass it on to other people but eventually it will kill those people and chase the original curse-ee
>a statless force of nature that will literally rape your PCs to death if it is ever allowed to catch them
DU-DUN DU-DUN DU-DUN every time it's getting close
youtube.com/watch?v=7dwvCkaTBz0

Not really, so long as there is a valid reason for there to be more than one.

not to mention
>can look like anyone but will always be moving towards the victim at a steady, incessant pace
>is clever enough to detect and walk around traps and environmental hazards
>WAY TOO FUCKING TALL if you've seen it you understand

>How do you make this kind of bbeg intimidating when the party realizes how easily they can outwalk it?

You turn their confidence into paranoia.
It has allies, or at least connections. They feed it info on the party, though imperfectly, and they provide it long range transportation, though not at a moment's notice.
They party's own allies are also imperfect; sometimes they can say he's in this city or not, sometimes they're silent for a while and you find out a group got wiped out.
It has a life of its own, so sometimes it just shows up randomly at a weird time. (if you REALLY want to freak them out, a steamy bathhouse. right when they're nude and unarmed.) It has an agenda. It does things when they aren't around. Things they might feel the need to oppose; and yet, since it's connected, it might be there when they show up to do something.

Any time the PCs are distracted and haven't seen him in a while, he might show up then. Bad times, like during a complex fight that is running a bit long.

It escalates over time. The PCs try to discover a weakness, but it plants false rumors and leads them into traps.

At the very least, the players should begin to fear areas that obscure their senses, rough terrain that slows them down, places where the exits are hard to reach. Times where the party is split up or pinned down. Jobs that require them to stay in the same general area for a long time.
Because some day it will catch them in one of those places. Some day.
At the very least, they should feel threatened enough that when they escape, it's more like "we're badass, that was close" than "lol he's so slow".

Also it can camouflage itself as other people, so its victims don't notice it till it's very near.
If you want to go full It Follows, only it's intended victims can see It

>You've got all the time in the world to prepare one
Not necessarily. It would depend on the level of containment. It would also require the threat to have a very predictable path for you to lure it into a sufficient trap. Even Jason Voorhees knew how to use a window instead of Cool Aid manning through everything.

Give it friends with fast cars.

>It Follows
I really like that films concept but hated the ending.

I fucking forgot the best part, yeah. Your other PCs think the victim is batshit crazy while you're passing notes of "You make out a figure you've never seen before seemingly walking towards you with unknown intent"
Watch them fucking SWEAT

It could probably sprint after it's victims if it wanted too
It just doesn't bother, because it knows it'll catch up to you eventually

youtube.com/watch?v=9VDvgL58h_Y

Well the first problem is you've essentially put the party on a timer and that's fucking gay.

So you're not only going to have to give them some agency to affect the timer, but force them to decide between exercising that or doing other things.

IE go full faggot and make it an escorts mission. The BBEG destroyed their home town, and now they have to help guide and protect the survivors as they travel through hostile/wild/unexplored territory and terrain. The party has to choose between traveling faster or slowing down to hunt. Stopping if people start getting sick, or abandoning them. Negotiating or fighting with nomadic tribes and such encountered along the way. If they can't spend the time, then they have to fight the BBEG for a while to delay it.

Alternatively it's not chasing the party, but is proceeding to some other goal. The party can travel faster, but they have to get macguffins and complete tasks to get past the barriers around the place.

Gotta make it feel like it's not just a timer yo.

Maybe it poisons the world around it, and slowly word gets around that it's following the party. So people start to refuse them entry to cities or try to chase them off. Survivors that have lost their homes at first come to help the party, but if they don't see any progress or effort put towards fighting it they'll start to leave to do it on their own and when they fail, everyone starts to chase the party down to force them to face it so it stops fucking shit up.

I get the discworld reference

my thoughts exactly

The pool bit?
Or the super ambiguous bit at the end?
[spoiler}Cause I think that the thing that saved them for a short while was your man fucking a prostitute, who would have quickly passed it on. The shooting only slowed It down for an hour or two at most[/spoiler]

>Or the super ambiguous bit at the end?
This it the movie just kind of fizzled out and ended abruptly to me.

>yo

Aye, I feel you there. Ain't that just the way with most horror flicks though?

So the BBEG is just some guy?

For some reason I imagine a teenager living out the edgelord fantasy. He's coming at you slowly because he thinks it makes him look cool, but then he remembers he forgot to go buy milk so he sprints off.

I remember finding this years ago. One of my favorite things on the internet.

I grew up in the 90s dude. So sue me.

Give it over the horizon targeting with spells.

Sounds like you have shitty players.

...

First of all, make it extremely clear that your monster is fucking invincible, and give a good plot reason for that and plan for in-contingencies (for instance, maybe the player CAN beat it, but it will always come back somehow. You can still fight and beat Nemesis, after all.)

>But it's slow as shit. Walking with a limp levels of slow.

Make it move at the speed of plot. Think Jason.

Every time it's not on camera, have the monster move at an arbitrary speed depending on your needs. If your party is fucking around doing nothing, have the monster appear right in the middle of it.

If they are in a dungeon, make it so the monster can easily teleport in-and-out of every dark corner of the dungeon, so it always feels like it's giving chase but not actually getting too close to your characters to give them an incentive to move forward.

Needles to say, you shouldn't include any sort of puzzle in this shit whatsoever, because players are fucking retarded and they will get stuck over the tiniest things, no matter how "clever" or "simple" you think your puzzles are.

That said, if you DO add a puzzle, it would make for a nerve wrecking experience as they scramble for an answer and you make it clear through roars and foot-steps that the monster is nearby.

PROTIP: The monster won't actually attack them until they solve the puzzle, but only you know that, right?

PRO-PROTIP: If the assholes are still stuck on the puzzle, have the monster burst through a passage and solve the riddle for them, at the cost of having to outmaneuver the monster now.

Avatar: the last Airbender season 2 episode 8

Seriously, that's how you do it right. How has this not been mentioned yet?

>If the assholes are still stuck on the puzzle, have the monster burst through a passage and solve the riddle for them, at the cost of having to outmaneuver the monster now.
So it got triggered, sat down, and solved the sliding picture puzzle for them before proceeding to try and beat the crap out of them?

You just gave me the darnedest mental picture.

>At that point the party realizes the truth.
>The "monster" is actually that angry neck-beard they beat in a game of chance at the tavern all those nights ago.
>He wants a rematch.

This is essentially the premise of the horror movie 'It Follows'. A supernatural creature is slowly walking towards the protagonist, and when it reaches her it will tear her limb from limb with supernatural strength. It can look like anyone, it seemingly cannot be harmed, nobody else can see it, and no obstacle can slow it down for long. The only way to get rid of it is to have sex, then it follows that person instead, functioning like a transmitted curse. When it kills its target (or I presume its target dies of any means), it moves on to the previous target, thus sex is only a temporary escape from the creature.

Why is it intimidating? Because it's unstoppable, and there's no practical way to know that the 'cure' is still in effect. Even if you get rid of it by sending it after someone else, all it takes is their death and you're its target again. It's the Sword of Damocles, forcing you into a life of constant running and fear, never knowing who to trust or when your end will come.

The end of the movie heavily implies that the protagonists fail to defeat the creature and it's moments from killing them. So, yeah, you can make it even scarier by presenting a possible method of defeating the creature, only to reveal later that they failed and the creature kills (or severely injures) a party member.

It can't be trapped. It can't be slowed down. Trying to take the high ground just means you'll die from the fall.

Give the PCs an initial "safe zone" against it, and if they hide there, have it destroy everything around the safe spot.

that would be hilarious and terrifying.
>How many steps are in that puzzle again?
>ten
>which step is he on?
>I think the fifth...
>Okay at this rate he's going to get through in... 2 minutes
>shit

nigga did you read the thread

I had to do something mid-reply, by the time I got back someone else had already mentioned the movie. No need to get upset.

>upset

>would it even be able to climb up a properly made pitfall
Low speed does not necessarily mean low dexterity.

I'm imagining Solomon Grundy with the personality of the demons from the Hush episode of Buffy.
Perhaps it could run, skip, jump, or dance.
But it doesn't.
It only slowly steps forward towards it's goal.
It ignores every distraction, and steps forward.
It shrugs off every attack, and steps forward.
It calmly slides the rubble of the building you dropped on it, and steps forward.
It silently rips apart the walls you raise in defense, and steps forward.
It effortlessly digs free of every pitfall you place before it, and steps forward.

It relentlessly pursues, with an equally relentlessly silent calm.
It knows this pursuit is just a moment of the inevitable stretch towards eternity.
It knows it will reach it's target.
It does not rest.
It does not fear.
It does not struggle.
It steps forward.

Absolutely anything can be lost forever by throwing it into a supermassive black hole.
>But won't it die by tidal forces before it becomes trapped inside the event horizon?
If the black hole is really, really, really large the tidal forces will become quite small.

So simply cast a Wish to teleport the creature into a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

youtube.com/watch?v=gHdDxKy2QW0

Put a proximity sensor on that makes the players have to bring it close to the door to open it, like arms reach close to it.

Make it have ranged grasping attacks? dc13 to struggle out or something? The more you fail the more graspers hold you down, allowing the thing to catch up to you.

...

Are you saying...It Follows?

forgot pic

update your images user

>Yeah, this is why in the games I run I let everyone know from the start that monsters and NPCs do not follow the same rules as players, so don't try to tell me the necromancer raising a dead guy has to spend a minute to do so.
Good for you. There are too many players who would lose their shit over this.

give it a missile launcher

But if I geek the necromancer and grab his spell book I can learn the spell of "Fast Animate Dead" for myself right?

That's assuming that your medieval PCs know what a black hole is IC.

>the party is stuck on a puzzle
>discussing the puzzle and how to solve it when the unstoppable monster busts through the door to the previous room, screaming at them
>party screams, getting ready to make a break for it
>"AAAAAAAAAH YOU FAGGOTS CAN'T EVEN SOLVE THIS BABY SHIT?"
>Monster angrily gets down and solves the puzzle while angrily screaming the solution at them
>Goes back to screaming and chasing the party afterwards

It can walk through the loading screen doors.

AKA that thing that it's got no right being able to do to get at your party? Something that they take for granted as impossible? Have it do that.

I'm actually deeply disappointed we've gotten so far into this thread without anyone saying "STAAAAARS!"

I find it bit amusing that Nemesis is the OP picture, given that the fucker was one of the scariest bosses in RE because the fucker ran after you AND had a gun.

I never made it past outside the police station because camera and that motherfucker giving me ZERO time to align properly to open the fucking door or try to gun him down.

Make the terrain difficult/deadly for the players but not the monster

I watched this to get an idea of what you meant user. I don't know why I watched two hours of anachronistic hipsters playing sex-tag to hide from the murderrape ghost. That movie was silly.

If you're going to have an enemy like this, you need to consider that slowness does not make the entirety of the monster. What else can it do? Is it strong, can it shoot a gun, does it know magic?
The real way to make an enemy scary, at least in my experience, is making it inconsistent. If it's slow as shit until it gets really close to you, or if it seemingly teleports when you can't see it, or some other BS which is just there to make sure it's dead on their heels, then they're gonna be paranoid.

Alternatively, have something they need to protect. Have it unable to move. Give them no choice but to: A) Protect it to the death, or B) Leave it.

By locking then in with it in a place it knows better than they do.

It also helps to have additional dangers that the players are able to overcome. If for no other reason than to have the monster show up during one of these smaller skirmishes.

Years ago a friend of mine had me draft him a map of a massive mansion (ended up using it to get a decent grade in drafting) and then he added secrets to it and used it. Trapping us in a locked mansion with some fuckhuge monster and a crazy fuck armed with a AK.

Monsters that have the ability to move in the darkness are common enough. Darkness is scary, you can't see or predict where it'll come from. But what about a monster than can only persist in the light? The party unearths it in some dungeon, tomb, or cave (those abandoned places where they shine the first light in centuries) which activates its metabolism. Before they leave it to the darkness, it disappears, moving to another light source, whether it be the bright surface or something they left behind. Then, after it finishes its business with whoever left it there, it comes back for the players. They can hide in the night, but that opens them to other dangers- and day will always come. So long as there is light, that bastion of hope and awareness, there is the fear that this creature could strike.

Have it be so strong that it can literally punch itself like a projectile, like in those japanese cartoons where a single hit sends people careening at many miles an hour and punching through a mountain, except a little less than that, maybe about a few hundred feet at a time. It always flies about 150ft, so it often overshoots, and while it doesn't actually take damage from punching itself in the face to fly, it doesn't like doing it TOO often because that much force still hurts.

The creature is slow not because it cannot move fast, but because it sees no need to.

Unknown to the party it has a non-linear perception of time, it perceives time as a fixed spatial dimension rather than a series of events, and everything that occurs within it as merely differing coordinates.

It already knows everything the party will throw at it, how fast they will run from it, where they will hide and when it will find them again. And it already knows it has won.

So why rush?

From the party's perspective of course it will seem like an unstoppable force that is always one step ahead of them, no matter how slowly it moves.

>having it constantly scream I AM INVINCIBLE

Pseudo-intellectual players just see that as "oh well anyone who has to keep saying they're invincible is not really invincible lolol I have such deep insights because I watch game of thrones" and try to kill him anyways.

Plus it reminds people of Boris Grishenko

As this one said, and/or have it haunt a location where the party needs to do some other shit, like finding survivors and provisions while fighting minor monsters. They'll have to be on the move and hide often because they know the piece of shit can get at them at any moment.

Also make sure the thing has some sort of ranged attack or power that it may use to prevent the party to just walk away to disengage it. Something like Roadhog's hook could be great, or a cursed aura of weakness that would slow down nearby characters to his same pace.

Nope, if you really want to be evil make the monster solve the puzzle and then move on to loot the dungeon before they can.

What the fuck did I just read?

Not that user, but I'd allow such shit in my games. If you down a super-monster, you can learn it's power (maybe weakened/rebalanced for PC use).
I'd warn you of how nerfed it would be tho, and maybe make some way to reclaim it in full power, eg. maybe the Necromancer was half-lich and that let him fast animate; to you it would've been slightly faster animate until you go down the lichdom path.

Walks slow as shit during the day. Full on superhuman sprints during the night. So when the pcs are sleeping in their nice warm beds, this unspeakable abomination is running in a straight line directly towards the party.

Probably would dig his way out with bare hands

Give it a super long ranged attack, and ability to communicate very precisely with its subordinates.

When treetrunk sized arrows start raining down through the roof the party has to run or shut up the guy who's telling their actions.

They can't outwalk it. They can outrun it. That leads to exhaustion, while the monster never has to take a breather

Learn to run along walls and mash action, nigga.

How would one make this concept viable in space? I'm running a Traveller game soon and would love to implement an enemy like this.

So there's basically no point in planning or strategizing, and battles are won or lost pretty much at your whim?

Not my style, to be honest.

You may not be setting up your monsters properly. If you're doing something your players don't expect to see in a game ever, you're going to have to find some way to introduce the concept.

Idiot.

But if it's super slow, it wouldn't be very hard to stand a distance away, calculate how fast it's moving and how much of a head start you'd need to rest eight hours before it shows up.

With the fact that he can literally burst through a wall when you least expect him
and the fact that you can sink all your piss weak ammo on him and he still keeps coming
it's the looming threat of the possibility of the dude coming at any time that makes him intimidating
all in all i liked nemesis as the main bad guy
>fight
>run
RUN!

>not offering the player characters any chance of finding out that something is up in any case ever
You know, fuck that guy with a cactus sideways.

I play investigative kind of characters so I would have to have incredibly bad luck calling people out on their bullshit and this is definitely full of it.

Fuck this guy and everything he does.

Alien

or

Alien Isolation

(The xenomorph isn't exactly slow, but it's not constantly running after you... although you know it will get you eventually)

whenever eye contact is made , let players roll for willpower. they are paralised if they fail.

or give it some kind of ranged attack , like whipping tentacles with teeth at the party

>Tonberry begins casting Immobilize

Figuring out that something is up would mean the party avoids the entire adventure. I mean, would YOU go into a tomb that's only potentially containing treasure, but definitely contains a horrible monster you have no chance of defeating?

I'm not disagreeing with you by the way. It's a badly designed module in my opinion, but in that way at least it matches its source material.