>Liches
>Dragons
>Demons
Done to death. How about some antagonists that come from rarely used backgrounds? Any kraken overlords? Corrupt treants? Rat kings with a bone to pick? A man-high stack of tiny elephants that argue over how to conquer the world?
How about illiths?
Using aboleth right now as well as a mindflyer wizard and a "mutant" transmutation wizard.
My last BBEG was the very king that hired the party, after the party destroyed every single threat and brought him a few parchments from the enemies as proof of their destruction, the king planned to unleash the magical energies tied to these enemies and absorb them to basically become a god.
Hold my beer
>Pain cultists who seek enlightenment through rusty shanks and tetanus.
>Draw the ire of the PCs soley so they can have their ass beat again and again
>Perform increasingly ridiculous acts that become more and more apparent that they just want to suffer more
>Early on they might kidnap peasants and threaten to sacrifice them
>Later one they might steal a herd of sheep then set up camp in a forest of brambles where the thorns dig into them at every step.
>The PCs being mostly armoured wouldnt be all that affected, but the cultists just want to be hurt
>Cult master is actually an avatar of the god of misery who actually just want to die, but can't kill himself directly because of mystical reasons and can't order his followers to do so because they worship him.
>The only way for the PCs to really fuck them is to deal with them through non-painful means: instant death-dealing blows, sleep spells, etc, etc
My setting has the big "Antagonist" race of Cyclopian humanoids who want to take over several realms because there current home is being ravaged by a horrible plague.
My last BBEG was a member of a group of justice fanatics. No matter what he did he believed he was in the right, and that the PCs, who stood against him, were in the wrong.
He was just an average schmoe fighter otherwise who just wanted to make his city a better place.
use pigmen
>Pain cultists
so Cenobites from Hellraiser
Current bbeg is a shapeshifting satyr using disguises and plotting to start a worldwide war to allow the god of war to enter the physical realm and rule all.
Demonic Dracolich
Lately I've taken a liking to Hags as antagonists, with their weird magic and interesting lairs. I've written one up called the Matron of the Mire who lives in a shack supported by 5 crab legs arranged like fingers on a hand which creeps around. She abducts fisherman and those who seek her help, turning them into half-fish servants.
There is a magical plague of people turning into rhinoceri.
Or Kytons
Figure out how to stop them feeling pain anymore.
Let them live like that.
...
I've ran one before. 8yr old magical girl destabilizing governments and converting the masses from their island gods to a her cult because her patron has convinced her it's to create world peace under his betentacled, hadalpelagic rule.
>sentient, highly intelligent air
>exist trapped beneath the sea in bubbles because if they rise to the surface they'll dissipate into the surrounding air and die
>when they come to the surface they'll put themselves in metal spheres, but they don't like doing this because it's stifling and difficult to maneuver without technological aid
>the more skilled can even possess living creatures, but in doing so they often sacrifice a part of themselves because they must sustain that creature's vital systems using its own body in lieu of breathing (which would kill it)
>want to convert all matter on the plane/t into water so that they can move about freely without having to worry about being destroyed by air
>tsunamis and shit everywhere
>killing people and stealing their water
>enslaving sentient races and forcing them to build water factories
>genetic engineering to create mermaid races to be their slaves
How about baby-stealing kobolds?
Kobalds dressed as dingos, set in Oz.
Because they are less dense than the water that surrounds them, they are constantly pulled up towards oblivion in a way as we would be constantly threatened with a cliff that leads to an endless abyss should we fall off. Because of this, they have built structures that in many ways resemble our own, but upside-down, where the ceiling is their floor. If you were to journey to a lack and find a solid, flat rock formation covering its entirety, you had better run!, for you have found one of their cities.
This is another reason why surface travel is so disorienting for them, suddenly their "up" becomes "down" and their "down" becomes "up", as if "gravity" (not actual gravity, of course) reversed itself.
As part of their plan to convert the planet into an entirely watery place, they also want to cover its entire surface in a shell, save for a few ventilation spots where starlight can be received for energy production, so that they're not threatened with the prospect of "falling up", dying and becoming its airy atmosphere.
To submerge yourself into one of their buildings is like living in an escher painting. You are on the floor while all of the sentient air people travel on the ceiling with a sense of complete normality.
They also do not touch each other except when consummating marriage or breeding, for when they do they immediately merge into a single entity. Often they will do this, then split off to birth a child. Or they will split off without merging, although this is taxing to both "parent" and "child" because both have their mass and volume reduced.
*journey to a lake
not a lack
Their race was birthed when a little girl, a very magical girl, blew a soap bubble, which then drifted towards a pond. At that very moment, a piece of debris from a war that was going on fell upon it, submerging it into the pond and, unfortunately, killed the young wizardess. The bubble absorbed the dying child's magic and her anger at having been destroyed by a world in turmoil. There it lay for decades, trapped in the confines of its debris prison. It learned how to turn the surrounding water into more of itself, and then split itself into copies of itself. From there, the new race began to take pieces of the machinery that had trapped it and build suits of steel that allowed them to traverse to other bodies of water and spread like a disease. Their vision was clear: create a perfect world of peace, and eliminate all of the air-breathers who killed their goddess (despite her being one herself, a fact which they stubbornly ignore). When a few accidental breaches of these metal suits killed some of their kind, their anger at the air-breathers' world intensified, it was as if they had murdered through collective intention.
Dormant for millenia, three truly monolithic magitech golems arise from ancient runes, communicating only in ominous, garbled chirps and impossibly loud, earth-shakingly low drones, and set forth on an interminable march to destinations unknown, their uncompromising trajectory taking them crashing through a major population center, killing hundreds without so much as a blink.
There are three more cities in their path, the final of which contains a priceless temple of cultural importance, losing the cities would be disastrous but the temple irreplaceable. They absolutely must be stopped before then, whatever the cost.
>weak against pokeballs
It is sad that the races which litter these vast and ancient lands will not come to realize this until it is far, far too late... or will they?
This nigga better draw smut or imma be mad goddamn.
demons and the undeed will never get old because they have such range... you can play the undead like cackling villains or go full Dark Souls
The only good thing is the smut, the story is sadly shite given then pretty cool setting.
Formians.
That is a valid strategy. Imagine a campaign based around the party trying to discover and perform a ritual to curse the pain cult with leprosy. I'd play in that.
Well, I'd avoid making them directly related to kytons because that would mean they're a demon cult.
Maybe they reject kytons because they view pain caused by them as somehow illegitimate.
In my buddies campaign, theres a civil war going on in the Plane of Air, so a lot of the action revolves around the fallout from that. Having the otherworldly force be elements rather than demons or Lovecraft rip offs sounds refreshing to me.
Nifty.
My party is going against aboleth right now, backed by a lich playing at being the countess of the island being attacked by the aboleth. Party is only just realizing how tangled a web they fell into. They are terrified of Manchurian candidates everywhere now.
Like the Tarrasque, you can only knock it out, not kill it. So you have to seal it away in pocket-sized gem/ball. Trigger object method means no saves or spell resistance. Just throw.
I like thos
What kind of fungus creatures are there in D&D?
Because I was thinking of a "rot" that infests the land that is being spread by them
Myconids
Vegepygmies
Also the nonsentient kind like shriekers, and violet fungus.
>Liches
The highest form of the undead, those who defy both death and life.
>Dragons
Great, powerful and highly intelligent superlizards that spit fire.
>Demons
Literally evil incarnate.
>Kraken overlords
Giant squids, generally confined to water (and naval campaigns suck because most systems weren't designed to meaningfully support them)
>Corrupt treants
Walking trees
>Rat kings with a bone to pick
FUCKING. GIANT. SIZED. RODENTS.
>A man-high stack of tiny elephants
FUCKING. RODENT. SIZED. GIANTS.
Your proposals are shit, and the classics are classics because they're good and intimidating. It's that simple. Don't be one of those retards who subverts tropes purely for the sake of subverting them rather than trying to understand why those tropes exist in the first place before subverting them in a meaningful manner.
>BBEG
ugh.
Can I hold your penis instead?
It's like you're intentionally misreading OP's post in some piss-poor attempt at trolling.
What next, morally gray areas are an abomination and more insults?
The elephants is the only shit one IMO. The others can actually be really cool if you use some creativity.
Kraken overlord is massive and highly intelligent. It can run a pirate fleet. It can be a legendary sea god. It can be fought on the shore, live in a lake, live underground. It can live for millions of years and every time its eggs hatch it's basically an extinction event.event.
Corrupt treant is the corruption of some sort of massive world tree. It's fundamentally connected to all life on the planet so as it's dying everything is dying. It can be taller than a skyscraper. It can carry all sorts of broken powerful magic. It can turn all plants it passes by into moving guardians. It can create new life forms with its sap.
Rat kings are the name for when conditions are so vile that rats get hopelessly tangled within eachother. The rat king can be some sort of horrendous abomination. Some sort of primal god of decay or some shit like that. Even better it can just be a regular sized talking rat that's the king of thieves or some shit. Some insanely clever tiny little fucker who's difficult to corner and easy to underestimate. Not even "lol the rats holding a knife and it's so fast that it can actually beat you" it's just a regular rat that has entrenched itself so physically and politically that defeating it is like removing cancer with a feather pillow.
This is just the first shit that comes to mind. Subverting just to subvert is retarded but originality will always be important. You can't mentally limit yourself to stories that have already been told when you're trying to create something new.
Crustaceans that use illusion magic to impersonate strategically valuable individuals.
Imitation Crabs
I've done the Treant one before, kinda. Long story short, the defenses of a long vanished civilization is discovered and corrupted by an insane druid, suddenly giant trees, Stone Men and dark fairy tales start attacking towns and villages along the forest border and expanding the woods towards large cities.
Star Vamps... thank me later.
kys
No.
I wanted user to say that.
Just as planned.