Uncommon villains

I ran a low level Halloween one-shot last weekend where a wight was the main antagonist, and it got me thinking:

What underused monsters has Veeky Forums used or wanted to use as the villain/BBEG in a campaign?

vampire gnoll would be cool:

In charge of a pack+spawn.
Would be even scarier at night.
AMBUSHES^2

>villain/BBEG

was that necessary

Someone you would never really expect.

Who only kind of gets revealed when the players put REAL effort into finding out.

But user that pic is a Dhampir.

A lower level hunter that uses literally every advantage available based on their terrain, familiar, season, knowledge, traps, and sheer brutality to slaughter the party.
Like the predator meets conan.

>Tucker's Conans

A monk. I don't know if I've ever seen a villainous monk.

Snakeman anyone?
>I never see poison or disease anymore...

Howwabout a Golem thats most threatening asset is that it can learn?

>Starts stupid, ambles into shit.
>Killed, regens a little smarter, can pathfind and make noises.
>Eventually can make full sentences.
>Starts reading.
>Starts building its own golems.
>Understands the whole party.
>Determines its own lofty goals.
>Sways entire factions with its influence and intelligence.

Well, guess that's my next campaign's villain sorted.

We had a recurring villain that was pretty much this during our campaign in high school. He was a ranger and a serial killer.
He should have been a one-off but the monk just HAD to cut his face off and throw it into the magical healing spring to "see what would happen."

I always wanted to do a "dungeon" that was just one really really wide open plane that just had one really accurate goblin archer in it.

Like, every shot would hit HARD
and the battle would be half finding where its coming from based on clues I give out based on the land, direction of the arrow, angle of the sun etc.
He has like 1d4 hp, but skitters from like a few vantages and never loses patience.

This. I had a DM throw a serial-killer at our party who operated like this. He'd kidnap children, make the trail REALLY obvious out into the wilderness, then pick off stragglers when the parties broke off to search. He even went so far as to have fake flares and items enchanted like screams placed around his hunting ground, so when someone WAS getting picked off, it'd be hard to tell which screaming or distress flare was theirs.

Chump was a lower level than everyone in the party and managed to single handedly take 4 of the 5 of us down into dying range before the Barbarian finally got sick of this shit, faked like he was down, and then beat the shit out of the guy when he came to collect the body. It was fucking terrifying though before the barbarian mauled him like a chew toy.

Unfortunately this is because Poison and Disease is cureable by like a level 3 paladin or a level 2 spell slot. If you're playing DnD or one of it's knock-offs.

Old concept, but check dis

What if your BBEG is someone who you absolutley KNOW will become one in like 10 years, but is really innocent now.

>Establish this npc early on
>Actually rp them well and think out their characterization to affect your players personality.
>Maybe name them after a person they like or care about
>Make the reveal harsh and the stakes HIGH
>Everyone wants that person dead, but they trust only you and your party.
>Maybe see you as a parent or sibling

>Maybe that attempt at saving the future is what dooms it.
>Or maybe sparing them and letting them grow leads to BBEG status but also an even greater redemption.

I really really like using spirits that possess people, especially when they're bound to an object or such.

I don't use such things very often though, because players aren't fans of having control of their character taken away, so it always ends up just being some NPC mook they're not really invested in, who happens top have a magic sword or mask or whatever, and that's not really as terrifying.

Actually played an encounter like that. It was in a drop in game. It was basically a long open road surrounded by hills. At the other end an archer would fire at us and had some abilities that let him hide better and deal sneak attack damage. We had a total party wipe, we managed to get over to the archer however the only people left standing had shit perception and couldn't find the fucker.

We could have probably avoided the party wipe by jumping through portal the dude was guarding, but at that point we were taking it personally and had to kill him. It was all good we had backup characters ready and just kept playing.

You can't just have an npc pick up the evil soul possessing sword?

I wrote a scenario/mystery once about a HELLHOUND

The idea was that a lonesome thorp was afflicted with lycanthropy. Like a werewolf was turning people secretly without the people knowing and making them devour and rape babies and their loved ones and mutate into half wolf half man psychopaths.

Eventually, it would be revealed after an ACTUAL benign werewolf hiding in town is prosecuted that the real culprit is revealed to be a spirit called HELLHOUND possessing people and revealing their violent nature.
The fight would be the hellhound possessing innocent people to use as hosts during the final fight, and when you got him out somehow, hed have the stats of your standard hellhound, but rp'd to be really fucking scary and ferocious.

Did you even read the post?

user literally explained it's not as terrifying when NPCs do it.

>players aren't fans of having control of their character taken away, so it always ends up just being some NPC mook they're not really invested in, who happens top have a magic sword or mask or whatever, and that's not really as terrifying.

It can be pretty terrifying if you pick an NPC the players DO care about. But if you execute it wrong, it ends up feeling kind of cheap, like DMs who have their villains go after the player's family offscreen or whatever.