The main villain is so powerful they break the rules of the system

The main villain is so powerful they break the rules of the system.

Is there any way to do this well?

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Probably, but I've never seen it done well. Pic related.

>Act out of turn-based combat
>If using figures on a playmat, ignores the mats boundaries
>If the dice roll near him, he can move them

In 5e, powerful baddies can act outside of their turns with legendary and lair actions.

I recall Exalted having a bullshit power where you challenge some guy to a metaphorical fight, where you can use whatever contest you want. You can literally stop playing a RPG combat round and instead challenge the DM to a game of 40K and the outcome of it determines who dies back in the RPG. It's really fucking stupid but shit did it get me hyped.

>The DM rolls to hit the character and punches the player

I don't mean doing things outside of their turn, I mean doing things out of turns in general, acting and fighting in real time

That's actually pretty fucking rad. Adding that to the list of ideas for "OH SHIT OH FUCK" form big bad.
Some other ideas I had:
-Using a completely different system's magic. Vancian casting? Fuck outta here, we /dbz/ now.
-Completely reversing cause-effect relationships. Use damage dice for to-hit, and to-hit dice for damage.

I have this shitty selfmade system where people use pools of d6s, with 1,2 and 3 as failures and 4,5 and 6 successes (before modifiers and stuff). Except for divine and otherwise "special" beings, who get to use d10s instead, treating all dice 4+ as successes.

That moment when you suddenly burst out the d10s for the stramge new antagonist, heh

>instead of acting in his turn he gets to act as a reaction to every single move you make

Set a timer, every time x amount of minutes pass in real time he gets an action

I've got a fun one for the penultimate villain of the Jojo campaign I'm running.

His power is to retroactively edit himself out of a span of up to six seconds, at the end of which he resets time to six seconds prior, and the scene replays as if he was never there. He's pretty minor on the scale of outside-of-ruleset bullshittery, but frankly in practice he plays like Cuil Theory became a person, in an example like this.
>This guy walks into the room. One party member shoots him.
>This guy walks into the room. The party member looks down confused at his gun, which has recently fired a round and then shoots him.
>This guy walks into the room. The party member is out of ammo. Another party member charges him and cuts his head off.
>This guy walks into the room.

Also his characters is written explicitly as Kanye West with superpowers. I can't wait.

...

Real deal though, the stand came about from me literally trying to figure out what an Inverse King Crimson would do.

Sure it can be done well. Not even necessarily with main villains.

Example: the stat system is made to represent mortals: humans, elves, dwarfs, whatever. Players meet an Angel (let's say it's not a high fantasy game and it is really a big fucking deal) - his strenght would be far above the maximum 10 or whatever.

Back in Warhammer Fantasy 1 edition, as a GM I used to give Ogres, powerful Chaos Warriors or other op walking killer tanks illegal stats, damage output or whatever, to represent w two and a half meter magic steel clad vikings from hell better.

Or, it's like giving THE most powerful mage in the seeting a special rule that he doesn't need mana - he is always assumed to have enough.

When you homerule something to represent it better, you are technically breaking the rules of the system.

The entire premise of D&D edition changes have revolved around this.

Absolutely.

So wait is there any way to kill this dude short of trapping him in a loop?

Couldn't he keep looping until the dude chopping his head off is near-dead from exhaustion, or the elaborate head-chopping machine is turning to rust?

Does time outside his area of influence continue while he does this?

Didn't Undertale have two boss fights that did this?

What's his Stand name?
Dark Fantasy?

I mean isn't it kinda obvious? Just don't bother with mechanics for the villain. Cheat. Re-roll dice that fail and be as obvious about it as possible with no justification. Spontaneously open up books from completely different games and use abilities from those with no adjustment.
A million ways to do this. It's not the way to do this that's either good or bad, it's your reasons.

...

The important thing to understand about its time looping is that to everyone that's not him, time is moving forward completely as normal. He's the only one who interacts with the missing time, by removing himself from it. To everyone else, time continues as normal except for all the weird things they find themselves doing, as if someone vanished.

Originally I had been calling it Power, but I'm currently deciding between Black Skinhead and Yeezus for the excuse to use this as its fight music youtube.com/watch?v=QF7_tsKaRx8

>so powerful they break the 4th wall
>not even main antagonist

Make BBEG a dimension hopping wizard, every time you defeat him he travels to another tabletop game universe to escape. When he comes back he has items or allies that have that games stats. Like a 40k bolter and power armor.

Fuck off

Truly, you are disciple of the godking Yeezus.

The best way I've seen it done is to never let the PCs face the OP villain directly, just let the PCs see the indirect effects of his powers, as well as frightening accounts of his victories from an eyewitness or third party.
The point of the quest would be to find his weakness and deliver that to the good guys, or to escape to safety.

Why not All Day? I think this instrumental is pretty fucking JoJo: youtu.be/kBBA_n5lqUc

Ideally I would go with Power for his first introduction, All Day for the pre-fight drama and pose off, Black Skinhead for the first fight, then break. The next encounter would probably have Stronger as its actually opening/fight music, with maybe N**as in Paris or Clique as combat music, and the finale would use that Saturday Night Live version of Power where he gets super gaspy and out of breath.

Really the best part about Kanye as a villain is you can lift half his dialogue from his interviews and still work entirely as a crazy megalomaniacal supervillain.Can't you just picture him, with a completely straight face calling himself the 「Motherfucking Glitch?」

I remember when that was first made

Goddamn do I feel old

Also Vyran was a douche. I hope he`s dead

*Teleporrs behind you*
>NANI?
"Nothing in life is promised except death."
>UAGH

"When you’re the absolute best, you get hated on the most"
Holy shit, he is a JoJo villain

Fuck on

Just Fuck already

>Is there any way to do this well?
Not really. They just have new rules that say "Do x." to give them rules outside of the norm even if they involve the meta-game.

I actually had this idea as the final boss for my campaign. After I describe the apocolypse god beginning to shatter reality, I'd ask to see the player's character sheets and rip them in half. Then I'd see how they'd role play this situation with the rules removed.

Do you think this is too drastic?

>sire: God
Surely that should be Adam?

I'm stealing this concept for an NPC I had who was already a dimension hopping wizard

Sire means "the one who made you vampire". Since Caine was cursed by God, it could be said that his sire is God.

Each round 1D3 investigators are scooped up in Cthulhu's flabby claws to die hideously

>Sans
>1 HP, 1 ATK
>unlike all other enemies, dodges everything
>does 1 damage each hit... per frame
>attacks while not his turn
>occasionally cuts from one attack to another, rearranging the battlefield

Thinking D&D because I'm used to it.
1 HP and 1 ATK are pretty easy to do.
>has literally 1 HP and probably also 1 AC
>on a successful attack, does exactly 1 damage
Being dodgy is easy, being the ONLY dodgy enemy means introducing a new ability, maybe like:
>Trigger: would take damage from an attack
>Effect: switch places with enemy of choice, who must defend vs attack
>Recharge: roll 2d12. On 3 or greater, this ability recharges immediately. Otherwise recharges after 2 turns. (he'll fall asleep eventually...)
>Effect (Passive): Sans does not provoke nor gain Attacks of Opportunity, and moves without having to pass through intermediate squares
One damage per frame could be:
>on hit, inflict Bad Time
>Bad Time: after the end of any action by any character, take 1 damage, unavoidable. Ends after moving your full move speed or at the end of Sans's turn if he doesn't hit you
>this affliction cannot be removed by other means, aside from Sans's or your death
This also takes care of "attacks while not his turn," though you could also set an additional attack on an IRL timer, possibly an hourglass filled with sans.
For the last one, every so often, move everyone to a random square. This happens pretty much whenever, just between anyone's actions.

Aside from that, Sans doesn't really break the rules. Give him some tough attacks that do no damage but all inflict Bad Time.

Mario unrelated

That's supposed to be 2d6. 2d12 is far too tedious. Could swing 2d8 or 2d10 if the party does a lot of attacks per turn.
Also, I'm sure the numbers are pretty off, which is why I don't homebrew, and mostly stick to worldbuilding threads here.

>character dies
>DM murders you

Oh man that sounds hella stressful

I plan to do this. In Gamma World.

PSA to my players: I know you lurk. Don't look unless you want to spoil a future campaign. See my freakin' user name.

It turns out the "villains" are actually The Auditors of Reality, really fucking pissy about imagination and games making new worlds for them to manage, so they decide to collapse everything into a pile in a single reality and then rebuild them in nice, non-living, perfect order. They wouldn't have rules. They MAKE the rules. To beat them, the players HAVE to cheat.

The final boss of the "neutral route," the one players always see the first time through, is able to save and reload in-universe. He spent an untold amount of time going around helping everyone, then going around trying everything with everyone, then going around killing everyone, and every combination of basically everything. He got a little jaded. Then you the player come along, with your ability to save and reload, and he follows you around and tries to manipulate you into helping him do... something? He eventually becomes a god and remakes reality but the power source that let him do it decide to turn against him, and he loses his power. Then you either kill him or spare him - it doesn't matter because either way the game is over and the only thing left to do is reset and start over and try something different... the same thing he had been doing all along. On future playthroughs he remembers you and leans on the fourth wall, acknowledging the fact that you two have gone through all this before.

The final boss of the "genocide route," the one players usually see last, is also aware of timelines being reset, starting and stopping and jumping all around as you reload saves. He leans pretty heavily on the fourth wall because he's been the comic relief character up to this point, but he doesn't have the ability to save or reload like you and the other guy do - he's only aware that it happens. So when you get to him at the end of the game, after killing EVERY OTHER NPC, BOSS, MINIBOSS, AND RANDOM ENCOUNTER IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING GAME, and hitting the level cap in the process, he knows full well that even if he beats you, you can just reload and try again until you eventually kill him - and you will, because his attacks are all pattern based and anyone can beat him if they keep trying. So he fights dirty. He asks you nicely to quit. He appeals to your humanity. He talks shit. He openly mocks you when you die and try again. He auto-dodges all attacks, making your attacks useless. He damages you WHILE YOU'RE IN THE MENU. His attacks ignore post-hit invincibility. He's not trying to kill you, the player character - he's trying to get you, the player to ragequit.

Holy shit now I want the final grand ultimate boss of my long-running campaign to start off with ripping up my players' sheets

I have no idea what this ultimate boss would even be or why the sheet destruction would be justified but the fucking impact man

I'm fucking doing this before I'm done. I swear it.

If the villain simply breaks the rules, then he can only be defeated by GM the saying so. Which can easily make it all seem rather arbitrary, and the victory a very hollow one. The entire thing will also easily devolve into "guess what I'm thinking".

Now making up new, special rules for him, that's something completely different.

the impression i got from dialogue was that he isn't *actually* aware of the saves and loads happening, he's just incredibly perceptive of how you act, and can read how many times you've faced him based off emotional cues.

that said, that interpretation has always felt stupid and meme-y to me so i prefer thinking he is just aware of the saves and can't do anything about it.

I think winning (or losing) would be really unsatisfying unless you've setup a situation where the entire party (not just one player) has a really really great "aha!" moment.

What did you have in mind for them when they have to just "role play with the rules removed" to beat the final baddie?

The way i undersood it, is that he doesn't know about the save/load mechanic. He instead sees and understands it as you using time travel in-game.
To be fair, this is how in-game characters of every game would understand saving and loading,

Call it runaway. Cause hes like "running away" from 6 seconds of time, or something.

What about Roundabout? since he creates loops in time. Like roundabouts in a road. Also Jojo.

I don't know if this fits in your question, but i've working on a /v/idya boss that breaks the basic rules of a game.

If you try to open your inventory during the fight, he will seize control of it, taking all your items, and freely using your weapons/healing items.

He will pause the game, and turn the brightness of the screen to 0, so you can't see anything.

When you defeat him, the game will, literally, crash, and the next time you open it, you'll be in a TV show, similar to "Who want to be a millionaire", where you'll have to answer questions about the fight ( how much damage you did on your first hit? how many arms the statue in the corner has?, etc).

Levaliant Green from Maze of the Blue Medusa does it well.

Haven't given it too much thought since its still miles out. So far my only plan is "have faith in myself and my players"

Yeah, you're both right. sans understands saving/loading as the player time traveling and is aware that it's been going on for a while, but can't do shit about it yet. And he reads the characters face to tell how many times they've lost fighting him to a point

You don't seem to get the basics of conveying a meaningful sense of threat or stakes.

Try and think more in terms of lore and getting your players to care about the world their characters live in by encouraging them to build connections to it. The games where the stakes were most real were the ones where our characters had a clear place; homes, lives, goals, friends, and contacts who we interacted with regularly and socially. We had real characters that existed in a particular context instead of rootless marauders perpetually meandering in search of blood and death.

It makes the world a lot more real, and even non-existential threats to parts of it more pressing, when the players actually have roots there. Like helping an actual friend NPC get out of debt, or rescuing someone who a PC's love-interest cares about, as opposed to just being paid to do these things for random strangers before moving on to the next town.

Let the players go through the fight as normal, but make it clear he is breaking the rules. Let the players struggle, and have them come to their own conclusions that they are letting themselves and thus their characters be restricted by the games rules. The moment they realize and state an attack out of turn or anything else out of line, allow it. It should be a mindfuck.

Pic Related is basically all this
>attacks based on real time that has passed rather than the turn system every other character uses
>halfway through the fight, fakes opening the title screen and deleting your save
>will sometimes use the turn system anyway for extra attacks if you input too fast
>can deal more than the damage cap in a single attack

>>halfway through the fight, fakes opening the title screen and deleting your save
>not actually deleting your saves
sometimes random VN gets more hardcore than your RPG

>he then laughs it off and has the villain cast Resurrection on the player

>player comes back to life

>villain then rips up the DMs sheet and creates a new one

OP here, loving all the ideas y'all have been throwing around. It's much appreciated and I'll definitely be deploying some of them in my campaign eventually.
villain assumes direct control over the GM

Neck yourself kindly

To be fair, Sans is actually a pretty good example of what I was asking about. He's a cheating, unfair bastard, but he's still beatable. There are still rules, if only odd ones.
i unironically enjoyed undertale and consider it and its soundtrack money well spent desu

Honestly doing that well is based more on group. Like no matter how you pull it, doing it with a group of people who don't like that sort of thing is going to be unsatisfying

Flowey's the one that breaks the game. Sans just munchkins the fuck out of it.
>Flowey does % damage rather than having an ATK
>Sans has an ATK of one, and does one damage
>>he just does it as often as he can
>Flowey can take as many hits as he wants
>Sans can only take one
>>he just doesn't get hit - his opponent doesn't, either, after all
>Flowey attacks you in full color, possibly outside of the "battle mode" thing
>Sans keeps to the black-and-white style, only using color to denote actual different-effect attacks
>>there's just... a lot of it all the time
>Flowey uses save/load to stop you from killing him
>Sans takes his turn
>>it just lasts for a long time
It's not Sans's fault you expect rules that were never present.
Same; I liked the story and event reactions, and even learned to play Dogsong on the piano! It's really fun.

Adam made Caine a man. God cursed Caine to wander for eternity.

But you literally just described King Crimson

Like, there's barely any difference, just instead of time continuing it's wound back

Kanye West is basically black Dio Brando, yes

For one of my boss encounters, I gave everyone new dice I heated so that they would be loaded towards two. It was representative of his ability to change fate.

I guess that's a meta way to represent a villain's in-universe power

You're a dick, user. And I fucking love that idea.

I'm so glad I was blissfully unaware of that cringy fucking fanbase when I played that game. I would never have touched it had I seen a 10th of the fandom.

It is known.

This, by the way, is what it feels like to be a Homestuck fan.

Why do you care about the fanbase of a single player game?

Take away your players dice and give them an edgy set that has been biased towards 1s

you're players have up to one action every 30 IRL seconds, you have to roll low instead of high in order to perform actions properly, and the mana system is replaced by having a limited amount of casts per spell.

Some people enjoy talking about things they like with other people who like that thing.

>MFW we're playing 5E so it's going from vancian casting to mana
i'm ok with this

>still rolling AGAINST the bonuses you've been building all game
you won't be, trust me.

>MFW i'm the GM so i don't fucking care

then you gotta have a timer on ya, make him do a turn after the 30 seconds, tell everyone to make their next move, and reset timer

It's going to be GLORIOUS.

Don't forget to have metamagic be wonky. Oh, you wanted to cast your maximised quickened fireball? Well you do realize it's a minimised slowed fireball now, right?

You want to summon your weightless glowing magic sword that you have because reasons? Those are some nice heavy light-eating boots you have, genius.

I have an idea for a villain kind of like this. He was originally the being who created the universe and cared very little for the beings that lived in it. Eventually, his most powerful creations turned on him and invaded his domain. They had no real chance, since he could literally will them out of existence, but he let them get close because it seemed fun. While taunting one of them by making copies of her and destroying them, he underestimated the combined strength of the copies and they managed to overpower him. She stripped him of his power and divided it among her allies making them the gods of this world. She then cast what was left of him into the deepest pit of the nether world and buried him beneath the souls of the greedy who would drain his power faster than he could restore it.

Now he has escaped the pit into whatever kind of world I set this in and begins reclaiming his powers by either killing or overthrowing the gods. He starts with the ability to manipulate the desires of especially greedy people and every power he regains gives him direct control over some aspect of reality, be it gravity, the elements, or something else.

His end game is to take out the goddess who defeated him, who now controls life and death. With her power he could simply create loyal allies and kill anything that gets in his way unless the players can find a way to beat the one who wrote the rules of reality.

Everything you said was fine up until you described learning to play Dogsong on the piano

I'll be honest, I only put it as a cruel joke, but I've thought of a way to make it even better! They item he drops is a ring described as being extremely powerful, it sets your highest stat to zero when worn
Also, these.

Shit I meant for the second one

In Broodmother Skyfortress, the giants don't have AC, they have Damage Resist. Your attacks always hit the giants, because they're fucking giant. Your attacks don't hurt the giants, because they're fucking giants.

Brethren.
This is true as fuck, though, in all seriousness.

I did this in my recent campaigns
I had a villian who got sucked into the warp in and RT game turn up on innistrad with a bolter

That's what having real world friends are for, something that Veeky Forums is severely lacking in

Time your players during a different boss fight, set it so the boss goes 2 times per average round. Halfway through the fight speed it up to four times.

Stay in character as the villain for the whole fight. Taunt your players while describing their actions. Don't acknowledge them if they try to address you by your real name.

In Knights of Pen and Paper 2 the whole is story is about a group of adventurers using the previous editions rules and being OP because of it. Your party eventually has to track down the errata that will nerf them so they can be defeated.