Villain Pen Pal Thread

>he learns that his family has been replaced by replicas.

same guy who responded to OP's. I don't feel like I'm much help, but as a player I'll ask you what I'd be asking my gm.

Why would his family have been replaced? Was he a very important nobleman? If so, his family's execution would've been made public, wouldn't it? Aside from that, if he was a rich boy, you now have your personality: afflicted by a sin he can never atone for, even though he didn't commit it, he becomes A) a very devout religious dude or B) a very bitter yet cunning man. But then back to the questions, why the church? How has his past been afflicted, to make him turn to the church? After answering, we can go to plot hooks. If he's on the upper echelon, make it about how the organized church is having some very secretive scandals, that build up to the players finding out about this guy, and then, after you answer the questions, you could already have the next villain (aka, the one responsible for the previous guy's fall). About uniqueness, I'd go for making him a very unstable man, dishing punishment to both sides in a way stronger way than needed.
Good luck, user.

Thanks for the tips. I should probably give more background info actually. His family and many people in their village were killed by an enemy attack during a war. The enemy country felt bad about killing civilians and decided to replace the people they killed. The villain also wanted to join the church because he knew that he if he committed any atrocities himself, not many people would suspect him do to his position. Considering the religious organization is a respected organization and is known to raise kindred souls, not many people would suspect a member to be pulling the strings (kinda funny I mention that since he has powers similar to puppetry) behind a massive conspiracy

not really related, but are we talking about magical constructs when we say replicas?

Also, if a country would, in a post war economic scenario, invest in replacing dead enemy civilians, you can have a pretty nice "crazy king" overarching plot after the party wipes the floor with/forgives and give a new begging to the BBEG

Magical constructs in a sense. They are created by magic to emulate actual humans, down to even temperature and breathing. I like the whole crazy king idea as well but I would have to implement that later into the story

Regardless, I really appreciate the help. Thank you!

I need a plan for a Fae Lord who has the ambition to be controlling through Pacts, which means being the Patron and also eliminating other Fae Lords. Currently there is a threat of a Shipping Company making Cold Iron weapons, competition among Fae Lords, and limited access to applicants. Also plot hooks and uniqueness.

>extension of his life
>hates humans

center something around him dicking over humans to extent his own life somehow sustain-ably and get out underneath deaths thumb. sacrifice party or needing some cursed artifcats.

Do you mean anything specifically by sacrificing party or needing some curse artifacts?

I've found that if you want to have a villain who's compelling, you do one of the following:

1. They do terrible things for a good reason.
(Conquering the surrounding kingdoms and imposing a dictatorship.... because these nations have been at war for 1000 years and it needs to stop.)

2. Doing the right thing for a terrible reason.
(Uses slavery, undead, and dangerous occult stuff to make life better for his people)

By this means, you can make a villain who will, at the very least, be compelling. From there decide what they want and how they'll get it. Have them want different things from different PCs, even. (A bandit lord is owed money by the Rogue, but wants to hire on the Fighter as muscle.)

Villains who do more than sit on their throne with their thumb up their ass until the heroes conveniently show up tend to be more fun.

I think the hardest part of DMing for me is purposefully taking on flaws when I KNOW they can be doing things better.

I mean in terms of plot hooks some kind of necromancer tier thing where the villain needs to mass murder some towns folk sort of thing in some sort of ritual. If he hates humans he shouldn't have a problem with it. He could even pass freely in non-human towns and be not a murder hobo in those instances if you want the party to know he hates humans specifically. Maybe villagers keep going missing or some dangerous artifacts are being kept guard somewhere that can give him back control over his own life.

The general thing where bad guy wants some things to further his goals but they're in the possession of others who want to keep it out of the hands of people who would use it for the wrong reasons.

OP here again. I've got a question on the amount of villains there should be for a sandbox game on rails. Currently there is the Half-Orc Warlock, a Human Construct Inventor who seeks sole power, and a Fae Lord who wishes to extend his influence and do illogical Fae things. The campaign is set on small islands after an apocalypse of planes colliding and I'm attempting to merge the tones of the Black Company with sprinkling the tone of Wind Waker carefully. I feel overambitious with making villains where I think if I continue I'll have 19 villains in the back stage while the party is pursuing 1.

Mid-late game big bad is a Dracolich that wants to wipe out all of the chromatic dragons (which act as borderline-gods in this Homebrew setting) because they killed off his people. He was a purple dragon (which I'm giving a minor mind-rewrite breath weapon) that became a dracolich (while the rest of his people were forced into the shadowfell) so he could keep his abilities, not get converted into a shadow dragon, and avenge his people. All of the purple dragons let out the minor mind rewrite breath before getting forced into the shadowfell. The world has no memory of their existence, "rather never to have existed than to admit defeat" mentality. I need personality, possible player introduction, etc.

Tldr; Dracolich w/ memory alter breath wants to kill all the other dragons to avenge his people and/or revert his people from shadow dragons back to purple chromatic dragons.

I usually scale the number of villains with the level of the PC's. So 1-5 have your lower level boss of the day, then 5-10 bring in the higher ups that link the players to the big bad. That could take 3-5 sessions each to get to & resolve. Then levels 10+ focus on pursuing the main story threat. This usually leads to about 20+ significant villains

It can certainly irritate the Internal Optimizer so many of us have, but honestly these guys don't have the rulebook in front of them.

(AND, low level villains tend to be low level for good reason.)

Perhaps a hook could be local chromatic dragonBORN are getting worried and want the help of the party / make a favorable NPC that is chromatic dragonborn go missing. Another good tie in is something with Bahamut since I BELIEVE he wants an equal amount of good and evil dragons, and the disappearance of evil dragons would mean an unbalance.

What comes to mind for personality is, although I hate the game, Comstock from Bioshock Infinite.

Running my first campaign, took basically my favorite villain, Magneto's story for this but tried to give it a fantasy twist. 5e btw

A young Tiefling sorcerer is cast out by his family for his mothers misdeeds, with no where to turn but others like him he starts a revolution beginning in the lower rings of a city, gathering followers and power in order to at first create a place for his people. That's the beginning and it will eventually turn into world take over style plot after he makes a deal with his demon father to grant him and his followers extra power.

It's pretty cliche but I think having a villain start out small as just trying to take over a city and slowly move up to taking over countries and continents will be fun being able to interact with the villain on multiple different levels. The only thing I'm having trouble figuring out is how to incorporate some variety in enemies my group would fight, as fighting buffed up cultists over and over again could get kind of boring. Was thinking that I could have the villain start to use the demons blessing on other animals and other monsters as well tying in that they are beasts of burden or beasts of war for his ever growing army. What do you guys think?

How about you go full X-Men and add mutants to the man's arsenal?

That's what I was thinking with the demons blessing, giving them all an assortment of powers.

On top: Eldritch horror personified, an entire dimension of flesh hell poised to consume our world

Below that: it's children, Princes of darkness, Demons of flesh and magic. Residing in the magical realm just above us. Would like to rule the world, but know their master will consume it one day.

Below that: Our world, the cultists who worship the demons, and the main current villain, a wizardly sort come warlock sort. They've all got nifty powers granted by the Princes, and are often vessels for them

What I need is some cool demonic princes, I think. I'm running out of ideas after "fire and rage" or "shadows and knives"

Flesh out your list if demons. Didn't people get different powers based company in what demon thier parent did the nasty with.

A filthy tiefling should be different than an Avarice demon who sold be don't than one based on pride or envy.

An old demonic war horse
Master tactician
Charismatic risktaker who doesn't plan
Subtle manipulator who is hiring the top gladiators
Artificer from another realm

Yeah right now it was planned to just be one demon but I hadn't thought of their being multiple benefactors for this. Thanks!

I think I'm gonna need some help with my villain as well.

The campaign is set in your typical "Monster Island"-type of setting. Rich half-elf landowner wants to turn an old family estate into a hunting residence. However, a number of specific monsters must be eliminated to do so, so he and has hired the Players as gamekeepers. While the monsters in question are particularly tough, the Players have in-depth knowledge about them and their behaviours, which should allow them to defeat their marks with a little beforehand planning, all while dodging other beasts on the residence, poachers and their traps.

While this is happening, they ought to stumble on bits and pieces of information regarding the island's previous function as a site for summoning Outsiders during a not-too-ancient war. However, after a failed summoning ritual that cost the faction the war, the Half-elf's ancestors were cursed into losing their ability to summon, stripping them of their status and livelihoods. The villain in question for this campaign would be one of said elven ancestors, still living in the catacombs below the estate. There he is experimenting with the body of a barely-living Balor, using its flesh and blood as alternatives to the standard summoning rituals, with mixed results.

Problem is, it feels a bit underwhelming to have the final boss be just some elderly wizard, especially after all those previous bombastic fights on the island's surface. How do I make such a villain interesting and challenging, possibly without resorting to having the players fight the Balor at full strength or pulling a dumb "the quest giver was actually the villain" twist?

maybe he fused himself with the balor and he has to choose what to do with his actions spells or attacks

maybe give him a cool legendary reaction
maybe when he drops to half hp

I really like this idea, have him fuse with one of his spawns increasing his threat level by a ton, maybe when he gets down to Low health and this fusion being his "last resort" kinda deal.

Take a look at Darkest Dungeon and the Crimson Court

Maybe you could play up the cursed elf aspect

it can be some minor thing but imagine living with a limp forever or however long elves live in the setting

a little psycho edge, a raspy voice of someone who ignores eating, drinking, sleeping to get back what he lost

and then at half health his blood dripping onto the floor onto the circles he had been working on he grabs the corpse and takes his blood and powers up

I need villains for a campaign set around the theme of exploration, things like opposing exploration parties from different kingdoms, types of natives, and the various monsters in the sea. Has anyone tips for making villains in an exploration game as opposed to a more dungeon related one?

Crib the latest release of magic the gathering

No really

I just looked at Kaladesh, am I right to understand it's steampunk? I don't think that's QUITE what I'm going for; something more high middle ages high seas.

Ixalan.
Vampire conquistadors, dinosaur worshipping Aztecs, and Merfolk Mayans.

For the final leg of my campaign, I'm going to have a doomsday cult revealed to have been the ones orchestrating all the sandbox plots going on throughout the continent, attempting to destabilize any opposition for when they open up their dimensional rift to revert the world to its pre-creation state. How can I hint at this without obviously tipping my hand, since my players are good at spotting cults. If it helps, two of the plots I've come up with so far are reigniting old tensions between two rival nations that were forced to merge in order to survive, and a heavily armed and well organized bandit clan surging out from the mountains in the players' homeland and razing well fortified cities like they're farming villages.

Any (villain) resources for a campaign that resolves around the survival of a decadent mercenary company?

Are your players the mercs? If so how decadent are we talking?

Players are part of the mercenary company that is basically the Black Company if you've read it. An old honorable company that holds true to its contracts, but recently has had to open its application pool to maintain number, and there's a lack of job. Maybe the right word is "on the decline" financially rather than culturally, but then again the party is a sniper duo, a lustful Aasimar Paladin, and a slothful Lunar Devil Ranger.

Stole the River Heralds

On a personal level for your party, fanatics that discover your party's vices and decide it's their mission to punish them, and by extension maybe the rest of their company. On a larger level, one of the group's more unsavory contracts gains them the ire of a powerful crime lord who disagrees with the idea that what they did was just business. Maybe a governor or nobleman who considers mercenaries worse than bandits for whatever reason and uses his/her resources to complicate their jobs. For example, he might learn the party need to hunt down a group of criminals in a city he controls and orders that non-citizens are no longer allowed to possess weapons.

Ok, so perhaps a Sphinx that complicates the dungeons that the mercenaries might be hired to clear out because she finds testing these particular people enjoyable to them? Or how could I make having rival adventuring companies interesting? I want to get the next few sessions to really define the players' places in the mercenary company and how it acts as compared to the world around it, and I'm terribly uncreative.