How many lieutenants should a BBEG have? About how strong should they be, compared to the party?

How many lieutenants should a BBEG have? About how strong should they be, compared to the party?

what kind of bad guy?
How large a party?

Depends
Depends

>How many lieutenants should a BBEG have
Three. Always three.
>About how strong should they be, compared to the party?
Strong enough to be a boss fight, together with some mooks.

12 lieutenants and x 12

>How many lieutenants should a BBEG have?
As many as he needs, and not one more. Three tends to be the ideal number. Decentralising power is not something a BBEG would want, and lieutenants are by definition ambitious wankers.
Then again, having tons of lieutenants bickering among each other, while impractical and counterproductive, would at least keep their ambitions in check.
>About how strong should they be, compared to the party?
Not enough to threaten their mission, enough to wet their pants.
Now, what style would they adopt? What would they wear to tell people "I'm the toughest bastard in this bloody room, and you better serve me"?

At bare minimum you need four. Hang on...

>The Soundwave
Loyal under every circumstance, never considers overthrowing the leader and actively opposes attempts to overthrow him. Will work with the enemy, but only to help the BBEG. Typically the third-strongest member of the organization after the BBEG.
- Principle Flaw: The BBEG does not necessarily reciprocate this loyalty, although he's unlikely to actively abuse the Soundwave either.

>The Starscream
Openly schemes to take control of the operation, but his bumbling attempts tend to be laughable at best and the BBEG mostly keeps him around so that he never grows complacent. Will work with the enemy happily if it means he'll get to overthrow the BBEG. Typically the second-strongest member of the organization after the BBEG, but cowardice causes him to give up fights he might otherwise win.
- Principle Flaw: Incompetent. He would be worse in every identifiable way than the BBEG at achieving his goals.

>The Shockwave
Thinks the BBEG is a fool who is running the organization into the ground and needs to be replaced, but is taking a slower, more methodical and secret approach than the Starscream. Willing to work with the enemy by presenting himself as a better alternative to the BBEG, though in reality he's much worse. Typically tied with the Soundwave for third-strongest power after the BBEG, but intelligence allows him to sometimes come across as even stronger than the BBEG.
- Principle Flaw: Immense lack of charisma. No one in the organization actually likes him, and his cold calculations tend to result in even higher casualties for his own forces than the BBEG's schemes. Also there's a good bet that he's not as good at his job as he thinks he is.

And number four:

>The Skyfire
Noble bad guy who works for the BBEG out of a sense of personal loyalty and honor, but under any other circumstance would actually be a good guy. Likely chafes at the fact that his honor keeps him bound to working for such an evil person. Prone to acts of mercy and duels of honor with the enemy. Willing to work alongside the enemy in order to achieve noble goals EXCEPT opposing the BBEG. Likely to ultimately switch sides, although it will cost him his life. Usually tied for the second-strongest member of the group with the Starscream, but beats him in fights due to the Starscream's cowardice.
- Principle Flaw: His honor code forces him to act stupidly a lot. He's also probably not a happy person since he's forced to serve the BBEG.

You could also call the archetypes the Skorponok, the Terrorsaur, the Tarantulus, and the Dinobot, if you want.

>lieutenants

One for every 15-30 men (platoon). 1 captain for every 80–150 (company).

Anime pedo scum

THIS

I want to "comfort" these soldiers

>BBEG

*cringe*

At bare minimum 3 is acceptable if the cast is on the smaller side, but 4 is ideal. Lieutenants exist to showcase fun gimmicks you can't give to the bbeg and done well, can even be effective characterization of the bbeg through the lens of those he/she holds worthy of the position. More than 6 starts to dilute that.

Five is the magic number, there's something that's just right about "The big five", lower than that is too strict, bigger than that is too clustered, 3 of them are weaker than the party and need henchmen, the other 2 are strong enough to be a threat to the party alone.

You should be frightened of acronyms, user, they will be your undoing.

Assuming you mean their top commanders and closest allies, rather than the military term (in which case is correct, at least for infantry), then I'd definitely say role is more important than overall number, but 3-7 is probably a good rough estimate.
Roles I'd usually want to include:

>The Personal Powerhouse
This guy exists to wreck face and provide a combat challenge to the party. Individually the most powerful lieutenant, and quite possibly more powerful than the BBEG themselves, they should be a real combat test, though they'll likely have a weakness in some area. If there's a question why THEY aren't the BBEG that area might be psychological or related to intelligence - a big monster might work here. Magical power might well replace physical, but either way, they're a huge threat the party will need to work hard to beat.

>The One with the "Thing"
This opponent is focused around a single source of power and threat, which also serves as their weakness - without it, they're pretty useless. Be it a magic weapon, a special power, a super-serum or even just huge funds, the key to beating this guy is to work around their "thing" and cut them off from it. The party should not be able to beat them in a straight-up fight if they are able to use their "thing", so they'll have to be creative. Or at least assassinate them when they're asleep or something.
I'd probably also cheat a bit and put top generals/commanders with a large armed force (army, fleet, fort, etc.) here, if they're not overly powerful themselves.

>The Creep
The strength of this guy is largely irrelevant, as their main job is story/party based - they exist to be unpleasant and make it clear why your party is fighting the BBEG, and to piss off or creep out the party. Creepy doctors, depraved sadists, even just greedy assholes who steal the party's stuff, they all go here.

Gamagori was the best fucking character on that show.

FOUR NAMED WAR, PESTILENCE, FAMINE AND DEATH AND IF YOU DISAGREE YOU ARE A FAGGOT

...

...

Don't forget, you need a fifth guy, who doesn't have anything particularly special about him. He's loyal, but not too loyal. He's powerful, but not excessively so. Just your run-of-the-mill junior executive who happens to be working for the bad guy.

5

Generally strong enough that the party will need to work together to defeat them

>BBEG

Ugh.

>Ugh.
.hgU

>How many lieutenants should a BBEG have?
Four or five.

Don't reply to these inane fucking 1-2 sentemce nonsense question threads, fuck's sake Veeky Forums.

You're being a faggot.
Stop being a faggot. This thread has generated good discussion.

>good discussion

It's pathetic on a try-hard level.
The kind that puts in a lot of effort but still only succeeds in getting a B- average, and winds up working management at McDonald's but feeling proud because they're at least not working the register or fryer.

It's boring, dull, and hasn't said anything that hasn't been said before a hundred times, and the most interesting post out of all of them would actually be

I reiterate:
Stop being a faggot.

>Elite Four theme starts playing in the backround

This

Four, and they should have a theme between them, like the four elements, or four aspects of something, or four whatevers.

And they should be appropriately strong for whenever it is they face the party, except for one of them, who should be gentlemanly and heal the party before the fight, and be a motherfucker to fight.

I once had a dream where I was a lieutenant for a BBEG. I was the normal looking quiet guy that's deceptively strong. My cousin was the big, annoying brute guy and there were two short jester twins that were complete fuck ups. The BBEG was named Lucy and looked like a cross between Lust from FMA and Lulu from FFX. Needless to say, my dick guided me to the dark side.

The number can vary, but a powerful bbeg typically should have a “Dragon”, his most powerful and most trusted lieutenant who acts as an enforcer, the one he personally send when he wants to ensure something gets done. From there it can go to specialized lieutenants like spymasters and commanders (one focuses on subterfuge, charisma, stealth, and assassination while another focuses on commanding, strength, tactics, large scale combat, etc). Of course, this could change depending on the bbeg. If the villain is focused on martial conquest, he might just have sub commanders and lieutenants with no variation, while a wizard ushering in the end might have dozens of spymasters and wizards out the ass.

Now that's a leader to serve

The symbol of ultimate grace and hate, of course

one for each member of the party to have as an opposite number. Each PC should have their moment to shine against each lieutenant, then the whole party teams up against the big bad.
each lieutenant should be a challenge to the PC in question, but if the PC is smart, and uses all the tools they have to work with (that doesn't include the other PCs) they should be able to win.

the answer is always SKELETOR

>BBEG
Ugh.