>Villain completely disconnected from the main story
>Party keeps going on after defeating it
>Villain keeps coming back, defying death or being revived in a different form alltogether
>Villain starts suave and confident
>Slowly becomes seething with rage and revenge as the party continues to defeat him
>Villain that constantly loses to the party but only needs to win once to completely wreck everyone and everything
>killing the villain just makes things worse
My favorite has to be Manshoon, because when he got killed, all his stasis clones simultaneously awoke and started to wage war on each other.
I'm a really big fan of villains that think they're in the right and that they're doing stuff for the right reasons, despite clearly being fucked up.
Alternatively it's fun to just play someone who's utterly evil and revels in it.
I'm a fan of what I call the Ambitious Nostalgic Mourning Immortal. A character, usually immortal, that has suffered a loss and will do ANYTHING to bring it back. Often they'll do anything to bring Them back.
>wizard turned lich to bring back a loved one
>the inventor and their clockwork child
>vampire pining for a bygone era
>intelligent golem with no master
>former human wants to be human
The part that separates them from heroes is the "anything" bit, with a side order of obsession and delusion. Everything will be okay again. It has to be.
>villain is a slut
Never fails to rustle the jimmies of the virgins at my table.
It's not that interesting unless it's scaled up.
20 minutes
>play session 0 as hijinks-filled bar encounter or similar
>session 1 takes place years later
>villain is a random dude from session 0 who either has a bone to pick with the party or is legitimately trying to improve society after seeing what the party has done, but by questionable means
In short, I love it when the party is responsible for creating their own villains.
Villains shares details of life with a hero, and thinks if the hero was a more virtuous man or if they had experienced a specific moment of revelation they'd be more like villain. Maybe this only increases their rage at the hero, or maybe this makes them kinder to them and try to get the hero to change their side.
As either an npc or secondary villain I'm a fan of guy who lost control of something he created or manipulated. They can either be in denial, remorseful, or enraged by the thing they were the master of.
Mostly heroic character serves villain due to something they care about being held hostage, or due to a strange code of honour.
They can either plead to the heroes to just run away, or be silent and stoic.
Or mostly heroic character who is actually planning to betray the villain, but still needs to keep the act up for now.
Good shit right here
That's very broad.
There's 4 main categories of villains I think.
Guy who's an evil motherfucker. Loves things like death and torture for their own sake.
Wild animal / non-sentient machine
Guy who has a reasonable goal, but their method of achieving it is too extreme. (first thing you mentioned)
Guy who's actually entirely in the right. Either it's always known they're the good guy, or it's a reveal later on.
>I'm a really big fan of villains that think they're in the right and that they're doing stuff for the right reasons, despite clearly being fucked up.
I'm a fan of the opposite: villains who have extremely selfish goals and are completely aware of how fucked up they are but just don't care.
Bonus points if they are extremely pragmatic and avoid pontless evilness that has nothing to do with their goal.
That's where the Ambitious part comes in.
I'm a sucker for villains who never lose their cool no matter what.
I love that first one. Zagi from Tales of Vesperia is a favorite example. Two bit assassin that gets thwarted by the protag. Decides to repeatedly augment himself with Magitek and ambush him an inconvenient times, including right before the final boss in a flying city that's supposed to be unreachable.
>Villain that refuses to acknowledge the PCs as anything more than a boring distraction, right up until it kills them
I already have a vague idea about the villain I want to run.
He's already gained immortality by binding his soul to a very powerful magical artifact. Whenever he dies, he just keeps coming back. After living for centuries he's gotten tired of life but is unable to off himself. So he sets out to find the artifact (which has probably gone missing over the years or some shit) and destroy both it and his wretched existence.
The kicker: the artifact is a seal of sorts for evil shenanigans (malevolent demi-god, spell plague..; hence the item being so magically powerful in the first place).
Any pointers on how I might further flesh this out?
Also just noticed this is villain tropes not villains general, please ignore, will see myself out.
>Villain get name-dropped early, never physically appears until the tail-end of the game/story/adventure, but their presence hangs over everything like an ominous cloud
Making this work in my current campaign with two different villains and it rules.
>villian goes out of their way to fuck over the protagonists
>get fucked right over three or four times, but spring an ambush eventually and grievously wound them, setting the scene for the chase or the final conflict.
>Villain is a petty motherfucker.
>Gets tons of little revenge plans instead of big ones, just small enough so who question him sound like idiots.
>Despite their initial suspicions, the villain successfully convinces the party that he ISN'T the villain, and is a part of their planning process from then on out as they work to untangle his plots and discover who's behind what's going on.
I pulled this off in my last campaign and it was amazing.
A GM did this in a campaign I played a couple of years ago. It was pretty stale, to be honest. It was pretty obvious he was protecting his precious revolutionary who dindu nuffing.