One of the recurring villains is a highly malevolent but (due to physical limitations) utterly harmless enemy that...

>One of the recurring villains is a highly malevolent but (due to physical limitations) utterly harmless enemy that constantly tries and fails to thwart the PC's plans
Is this a good way to add some flavor/comic relief to a game, or one of those ideas that sounds better on paper than in practice?

Probably sounds better on paper

Unless you fudge dice rolls hard, I can't see this villain surviving contact with the party.

Nah, you just need to make them really fast and tanky, so they can take a few hits and then run away.

This.

I don't think coming up with a reason why the party can't just put the little shit out of its misery is worth the trouble, and even if they do it's going to be replaced by insane amount of bullying, and whether this is of any help I'm not sure.

I expect it would simply degenerate into players getting frustrated because it keeps getting away.

Still me samefagging, I mean, from the players' perspective, maybe it's just a villain that fudges rolls more than others.

They still want to murderfuck it because it wants to antagonize them, it has nothing to do with succeeding or not, the intention is enough.

During Curse of Strahd, I've had a druid called Ratmir (as is, druid monster from MM) try to kill the party on multiple occasions. Since he was a low level caster, most he could do was gather some dire beasts and werewolves much more dangerous than him, and maybe sling a few spells from afar, before running away when it seems like his side is losing.
They never actually killed him.

Unless your players see what you're going for, and appreciate it for what it is, that villain wouldn't survive their first encounter with the party.

I enjoy the thought, but ultimately it's too "Venture Bros" for my liking.

As a player, it sounds sorta annoying, and judging by your opening picture seems like you're trying to insert a shitty anime gag into the game. You're better off not doing it.

>implying that a villain has to be physically strong to be dangerous

Once in superhero game I had a trio of bad guys with really lame powers. One could use telekinesis to move vegetables, and only vegetables. The second could turn herself into a statue, but then was completely useless because they couldn't move. The last one could bring inanimate objects to life, but was limited to balloon animals.

You have to find a way to make the character more valuable to the party when the party lets them flee than if they would kill him. Maybe they blurt out vital info right before fleeing or drop a Magic item, though if you go that last route you have to make it obvious that the item is the only thing they have so your players don't run them down in plans of awesome loot.

Nice

>One could use telekinesis to move vegetables, and only vegetables
He would make bank as a farmer's aide. What made him turn to a life of crime?

I tried this.

They shot him with an anti-material ridle.

Basically ignored by the players as a non-threat at best, brutally murdered by the players as an annoyance at worst.

His backstory was that he was a failed comedian, and only discovered his powers after the crowd of the club he was preforming at threw tomatoes at him, and he stopped them mid-air, then one thing led to another... a classic revenge story.

Also it became a running joke pointing out the fact that tomatoes are a fruit not a vegetable, which only angered him.

I honestly think that'd be funnier as a one-time thing rather than a recurring villain

>Also it became a running joke pointing out the fact that tomatoes are a fruit not a vegetable, which only angered him.
amazing.

>An anti-material riddle
What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?
The Nine-Legged Demonlord Xarranax

In total they showed up three times. The first two times they were just a total joke, but the final time they had teamed up with an actual super villain, whose power was to supercharge other peoples powers.
The Vege-mancer became sort of like Poison Ivy, Statuesque could actually move and change her form to duplicate any real statue, so she became the Statue of Liberty, and the Balloonatic basically got the same abilities as The Mask in that balloon animal scene.