Check out Humblewood's Kickstarter here: bit.ly/HumbleWoodKSLive Watching the video from the future and you missed the KS? Check out Deck of Many here: Deck of Many: bit.ly/DeckofManyT20 Animated Spell Cards: bit.ly/AnimatedSpellsDoM Video reference links: Geoff Johns Green Lantern Run starts with 'Rebirth': amzn.to/2U1w3nn (video) Creating better villains: th-cam.com/video/oz3fivnKHKc/w-d-xo.html GHOSTS OF SALTMARSH IS ON SALE (42% off)!!! Check it out here: amzn.to/2H69sit
Hey Taking, how do you feel about that wizards/d&d are being more harsh and cracking down harder on websites/bots that used to provide information of all classes, races, monsters, spells from the books for free such as dnd5e.fandom.com and bots from the d&d discord chats? Seems like no d&d youtubers are talking about it.
It's their content and work. They spent man hours and money to create it, and people are giving it away free AFTER WotC already put out an SRD with 86% of their content for free anyway. Any author/company giving away 86% of their product for free who wants to stop people from giving away the last 14% so they don't get paid (and thus have the ability to make more), is well within their rights as far as I'm concerned. People (or programmers) who spent time developing their apps just to get a C&D to see it washed away were always stealing in the first place, so I can't really feel bad for them.
@@Taking20 do you think they'll release any thing in the future like a code in the book for proof of purchases on sites like d&d beyond for future people who are gonna collect all the books? (I know it's a bit too late for people like myself who already have all the books) Edit: Also thanks for the reply, i love your channel man!!!
@@Taking20 completely agree with you, no one enjoys their work being essentially pirated. Do you think they'll ever release more supplementary books (such as Xanathar's) like they did in 3.5? They gave us so many options and ways to do different things whereas anymore they're just adventure modules.
just so u know, as I know a good deal about thanos and the marvel comics lore, thanos is minorly, yet significantly different from his self in the comics, especially back during the story the film was using as source material, he is much stronger than the mcu version, is equally smart as he is strong, being able to normally go blow for blow with the hulk when in his savage ie normal state and basically overpower him when he was in his professor hulk persona, and his motivation in the comics was not do to any sort of greater good, it is because he is, or was given now currently his mind set is a bit different in the comics, it is because he is trying to win the effection of mistress death, who is the physical manifestation of the very concept of death itself and literally is death, who he was madly in love with, only reason he lost in the end of that story was cuz subconsciously he sabotaged himself and wanted to lose, also he is immortal now a days as he was barred from the realm of mistress death, meaning he CAN NOT DIE, though is kinda up in the air once he got decapitated and seemed to die in the recent infinity wars event
Actually you need to spend an 11th level spell-slot, and use summatic and metiral component. Though the mateiral components are not consumed by the spell, they are ultra rare! Only 6 in the universe, and you need all 6 to cast the spell, plus an archane focus!
The Greek gods could bleed. They could even be killed. Yet people still believed in them and worshipped them. No matter what you do, it is never only 1 action that makes someone lose faith in a diety. But if you prove someone wrong enough times, there is a tipping point. And that is where you nees to shine the most.
This definitely planted some seeds in my head. A knight in black is hunting down nobles and removing their hearts. The PC's get on the trail of this murderer only to find villages that laud him for his good deeds - freeing them from a tyrannical lord, destroying a beast that had plagued the town, using powerful magics to bring rain to dying crops, etc. Slowly it's revealed that the nobles he's killing are all descendants of a group of heroes, who once sealed away a great evil. The knight wishes to unleash this evil, but only so it can be destroyed once and for all, for it's very essence is twisting his homeland. Only the blood of the long dead heroes can save his people, and so, he does what he must.
Love the idea of a bbeg who commits random acts of kindness. That would be a great way to confuse the players and potentially steer them toward identifying with the villain’s motives.
Current day drug cartel bosses are revered in their towns because they take very good care of them. Many of them are major celebrities among the locals. To take this to DnD what happens after your party takes out the big bad who was keeping the yearly monsoon from wiping out the farms?
Villian: *sees an old lady trying to cross the street* Heroes: *sees the villain* oh gosh he's going to kill that old lady Villain: *helps old lady cross the street* Heroes: *confused* Villain: *while trying to help old lady* hahaha your still going to die from my mega laser anyways
Thanos is the perfect example of one of the most important rules that I follow when I make scenarios for any TTRPG: "Put the Villain in Motion." An active villain makes the story so much more dramatic and dynamic. It also completely obviates the need for any kind of "railroading" of your PCs -- you don't have to ever worry what the players will do in your game because if the PCs want to stop the villain they have to go where the villain is, and since, as the GM, you have full control over where your NPCs will be, you therefore always know where the PCs are going to be. It doesn't surprise me that Thanos is the epitome of the "Put the Villain in Motion" idea since I learned that from a talk that the great TV screenwriter, Stephen J. Cannell once gave at my school. It's what he used whenever he was writing a script and he didn't know what to do next. As soon as I heard him say that I knew it was going to change how I made my D&D games.
I did the Thanos villain thing during the A&D 2e era in the '90 , with the gems and gauntlet macguffin . It ended into a big ''rpga'' style event with almost 40 players in our local hobby store . It was awesome . :)
@@emmarod8746 indeed , inspired by Avengers: Infinity War from the 1991 six issue special Infinity Gauntlet limited series . Well this one en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Infinity_Gauntlet
@@relint12 We were 4 DMs , we use the AD&D 2e gods rules , so the mutlipe actions was coverd . He duplicated himself with ''mini avatars'' during the fight , it split the powers/habilities of the gems to give players a chance .
"The dragon must die." "If it dies, the wyverns will return." "The dragon steals our cattle." "The wyverns steal our children!" "The wyverns are gone."
@@christopherbravo1813 It's a joke on how humans focus on the present then the past...as stated The Wyverns stole children and we're driven away by the dragon...now the humans want to kill the dragon whom is stealing the caddle...however this would allow the Wyverns to return and take more children...and this guy isn't learning from the past...and still insists that killing the dragon is best
Somehow my players hated my villain so much more after he told them "I find your courage admirable, it is however,unfortunate that you cannot comprehend the larger forces at play."
In a game I recently played we entered a kingdom where the local lord would have his forces go out into the countryside to kidnap men and women and take them to the mines, never to be seen from again. The mines were guarded by a massive garrison so they couldn't fight their way in, and instead they teamed up with a local rebel group to take out the king and allow the young prince who was sympathetic to their cause take the throne. So they laid an ambush for the king and his retinue to try and assassinate them. Turns out the king was an 17th level Fighter with a retinue of ~15th level characters (the party was around lv 10). They were taken captive and sent to the mines, which is when they learned that the people who were kidnapped were being liquified and fed to a sleeping tarrasque. If they destroyed the mines the tarrasque would go hungry and eventually wake up, going on a rampage that would destroy the kingdom and its neighbors. They managed to break out and flee, sending word to the king that they would leave him in peace until they had gathered enough power and allies to come back and deal with the monster. The game fell apart before we came back, but it was a pretty cool reveal from out perspective.
Fakjbf had a similar circumstance in a game I am playing now. It’s a dark fantasy setting where the far realm has all but taken over and one of the only things stopping an invasion from the hells (which have been take over by far realm devils) is a city of devils that harnesses the power of torturing souls to stabilize reality and prevent portals from opening up.
@@Berserk_Knight Reminds me of the original Ogre Battle. All the players know is that Queen Xenobia (?) takes over all the surrounding kingdoms and unites them under her rule. Turns out that she had originally gone to the other kingdoms and asked for an alliance because of an outside threat that would take their combined military might to fend off and the other kingdoms had ignored her and continued their petty squabbles. So she conquered them all so she can put their full might and resources on the ready for the outside attack. Unfortunately, the heroes are a bunch of resistance fighters that topple the empire right before the attack comes.
@@Seoulwanderer In the Star Wars extended universe (no longer canon) the Yuuzhan Vong are an extragalactic species that invaded the galaxy about twenty years after the original trilogy. It's implied that Emperor Palpatine had seen the future invasion coming and that's why he took over the galaxy and put it under martial law. Once the New Republic takes control they start relaxing the military build up just in time for the invading armies to come it and topple them.
Perhaps, but I think he's trying to focus on the ROlE-PLAY aspects of the Thanos as a TabbleTopRolePlayGame BigBadEvilEndGameBoss, NOT so much the MECHANICS.
When we first saw Infinity War at the cinema, at the point when he bicep curled a freaking moon and threw it at Tony Stark, I just leaned over to my friend (who is also DMing our current campaign) and whispered "Dude. That's a 9th level spell."
"I can't wait for season 8 of GoT" probably didn't age well :P. Also its a pretty cool idea for a villain that I didn't think much on when watching but its a pretty neat idea.
I have a story of a game I ran based on this very thing: A little background - The big bad evil guy (BBEG) was a character I originally played in D&D 2nd Ed, but when I needed a villain, I transferred him over to 3rd Edition. I ran this game in 2005, but it literally had a Thanos type character as the villain. It was a Human cleric of St. Cuthbert who, at level 15 left his adventuring group (I added five more levels when making him the BBEG) after nearly a decade together. He had literally started out as an Acolyte of St. Cuthbert, and when they stopped was essentially a high priest. There were reports that he traveled the Sword Coast assisting everyone he could from Neverwinter to Amn and back again before he disappeared. Decades passed, and bandit raids swelled. The majority of his companions had retired from the life, settled down, and one or two had children who were now of age to start adventuring. During the party's initial gaming (Levels 1 to 5) they discovered that some of the bandits sported a medallion that none could identify, but they determined that it wasn't meant as currency. It was during one attack that the group found themselves facing off against a warrior in gleaming full plate armor, wielding a magical mace, and an equally powerful shield. They fought valiantly, but he knocked them down to only one hit point each with little effort. Recovering the medallion, the warrior turned to leave. Quickly surrounded by bandits, the warrior ordered the fledgling adventurers returned to the main road, and instructed them to care for their wounded. They left without so much as one of the adventurers dying. It was only then that the group found out who the armored warrior was. Over the course of the group's next seven levels they found out that the cleric had seen corruption at the level of the nobility in almost every single city on the Sword Coast, and was creating an army to overthrow the unjust governments in order to supplant them with a group that would think more about the poor than their own wealth. He was taking the poor and starving into his army, feeding, clothing, and training them so that they could take their homes back. It was then that they found out over the course of his years traveling the coastway, he had tried debating with each noble, calling on them to understand the plight of those they were stepping on or over with each coin that was added to their coffers. The wealthy, however, didn't want to let go of any of their power, and his initial suggestions were dismissed as easily as he was from the intrigues of the various courts. He was doing all of this as a last ditch effort to change the corrupt politicians with people who genuinely cared about those on the streets. The group that I was playing with asked themselves whether they could be considered the "heroes" of the story when they noted that the nobles who hired them were literally eating the richest foods while the poor were literally starving unless they joined this bandit group.
I once ran a short campaign in the late 90's or early 2000's where the premise was that the player characters were all the children of nobles who had been sent to the palace of the king to attend a special school where they would be taught diplomacy and etiquette and so on. At least, that's what they believed. They eventually uncovered that the nobles were plotting a rebellion, and the king had forced the nobles to send them his children under the guise of this school, but they were, essentially, hostages against their parents' intention to rebel. So when the rebellion did start, the player characters had to decide whether to betray their parents and side with the king, or be thrown in prison for treason. It was further complicated by the fact that neither the king nor the nobles were blatantly "in the right." It was just politics, with each side having legitimate points-of-view. One of the player characters was actually trained to assassinate the king, and died in the attempt. One of the others sided with the king, and one of the others refused to side with the king. It was a hot mess and I loved it. I originally found the scenario online. I wish I could find it again and give the author some positive feedback because it was one of the most enjoyable scenarios I ever ran.
If you want a compassionate villain, my favorite thing to do is to have them cross paths with the villain early on and here and there in the campaign. Perceived as some conspicuous traveler who has these philosophical thoughts and ideas. This villain or villains would take interest in the party, and ask them their thoughts and inputs on said philosophies they would present the party. Your party would be inadvertently fueling and shaping the villain based on their answers and giving the villain (you the DM) insight into their personalities, goals, and tragedies. Thereby giving the villain ways to justify their overall goals to the party in a way they might understand.
Great concept for a villain, as to the fairness of dropping a CR 15-20 villain on a low level party, rule 0 at my table is :"there's a lot going on in my world, not everything is going to be your level."
Agreed... also, rule 0.5: "Git gud". In my campaign, I actually have about nine BBEG's. When the campaign started with the players at Level 1, all the BBEG were Level 5. In the first scenario, two of them put the beat-down on the party, captured them, tortured them, and left them crucified. (That's when one of my players decided, "I don't like those guys.") I'm now having the BBEG's level up when the main party levels up, so eventually the players will be strong enough to face them as a team (but never strong enough to face them one-on-one).
I love your video, and it's giving me great ideas, but I have to disagree with you on one point: Thanos DID taunt Tony, albeit briefly and not in a truly villainous way. When Ironman actually managed to hurt him, he said, "All that for a drop of blood." That was definitely a taunt.
I have an NPC that although not the BBEG, does kinda fit the Thanos archetype. He’s a Lich that decided that knowledge and magic are cool and all, the how and why people and societies use them is far more interesting. Magic doesn’t really change much and is kinda predictable especially from the viewpoint of an ancient immortal. But people and their affairs do nothing but change, mortals get up to all kinds of shenanigans, who knows what they’ll do next!? So he “switched majors” from Arcane Studies to Sociology/Cultural Anthropology. Side note: I run PF in the standard PF setting and in that setting there’s this region ‘Varisia’, a barely civilized frontier aka perfect adventuring territory. The Lich is running a great(ly unhinged), centuries long sociological experiment to see if it is possible to civilize/colonize a region without efforts/guidance by powerful external (state) actors but instead by prolonged decentralized, low intensity/low cost means. AKA: adventurers and local settlements. In order to gather primary sources, observe the main subjects as close as possible and to guide and adjust the course of the experiment (only weak minded fools adhere to academic rigors like impartial observation, non-involvement or proper methodology) he runs ‘Archibald’s Emporium’, a premier magic item shop/adventurer academy. This “Archibald” is his main disguise, old and powerful wizards are inherently mysterious and capable of Gods know what, so nobody questions how this gaunt geriatric human man has been running the place for over two centuries. He even ‘adopted’ a local family at the start as a distant uncle to improve his cover and has grown quite attached by now. Of course he’s also responsible for about half the dangers besetting the region, stirring up all sorts of trouble to test his subjects. Goading rampaging monsters, getting aggressive tribal chiefs in the saddle, sponsoring bandit gangs, undermining peaceful diplomacy between the local cities, even triggering the neighboring Orc tribes to invade and redirecting settlement efforts closer to dragon lairs. Gotta keep those adventurers sharp and busy spreading civilization somehow. Fun fact: my players love him and trust him implicitly despite multiple of his ‘errands’ and advice getting them in way more danger than they bargained for. Maybe it’s the “special price, just for you my friend” discount he gives them sometimes on made-to-order magic items. Or maybe they just like the ‘kindly old man voice’ I do when roleplaying him, I dunno.
I actually already used a character like thanos as a BBEG in a campaign. This was before I knew about characters like thanos or the god emperor of mankind. His objective was to bring an end to finite nature of the universe and prevent the innevitable death of everything and everyone that has ever lived. Instead of snapping his fingers, he was going to wipe out every living creature that couldn't "ascend" into a higher form of existence. He only needed 2 mcguffins instead of 6. There was no possible way for anyone that wasn't ascended to even put a scratch on this character. The players ended up needing to become what the BBEG wanted everyone to be by ascending themselves in order to take him on in a direct confrontation. In the end, the BBEG only saw the players as an enemy once they wanted to initiate a fight on somewhat even grounds while the players spent somewhere around half the campaign with this looming fear that the BBEG could just come by and stop them from doing what they're trying to accomplish, since they knew they couldn't do anything besides attempt to talk him down. I think it left a lasting impression on the players and their characters because they couldn't try to complete their objectives without considering what the BBEG would do in response. Even though he only put forth a half assed attempt at stopping them before the final encounter, they still feared and dreaded having to meet him.
You could improve on this character by make him not bother with hindering the PC's because he sees the clear attempt of the PC to accend as something worth of respect. If they show promise of becoming something as strong as him perhaps he thinks it is worth letting them do so, since keeping only "accencion able" creatures alive is his goal in the end. So he only directly confronts the PCs once they have accended and also disapointed him for not sharing his "noble" view of the world. I already can imagine the scene of the BBEG beating them to a pulp on their first encounter, and just as he is about to deliver the final blow saying something like "I see the potential in you, come find me once you are stronger, perchaps you will come to understand my point of view" and leaving them broken and pissed as hell.
@@sandropazdg8106 The way I read it was that BBEG was going to wipe out everyone who didn't ascend by a certain time. I didn't read it as he was going to wipe out everyone except those that had the capability to ascend.
I'd say it's fine to curbstomp your players with a boss encounter as long as it's planned to set up a future encounter they can win and you have a good reason for them to survive.
Our DM did a Thanos-type villain once. The 'bad guy' wanted to wipe out most of the sentient population 'trim the fat of sentient life' as he put it. A massive demon attack was happening in a few years and the world would have been doomed with so many 'weak people' occupying the world. He set out to save the world by killing all the weak people in the world so the strong people wouldn't be so focussed on protecting them. He knew our group (solid level 20's) would be an incredible asset so he deliberately spared us so he could try to convince us to join him mopping floor with us every single time every time we fought. Towards the end, when we knew the demon threat was real, there was honest discussion about joining him. Best. Campaign. Ever.
My tip would be to create the villain by building them as a player character you run through your world the entire path, take their adventures, interactions, and even failures become things noted in history, lore, or the connections to his followers/enemies. Make sure that you have people whom have already faced them before or other such connections, turn them into a living breathing character Before you cause The Snap (mental, though funny coincidence) that makes them go past what the world views as right and into whatever twisted version they have afterward.
Corvus Glaive, Ebony Maw, Supergiant and Black Dwarf are the epitome of awesome henchmen, and equal to the horsemen of Apocalypse in the X-Men universe. A big part of the villain's strength is how formidable their henchmen are, and makes them more intimidating to be pulling their strings.
I have an idea for a campaign where the "big bad" is an angel who has essentially gone rouge, and has put into motion a plan to tear magic out of the world to prevent the cycle of destruction it causes. Obviously a noble goal, but it carries the steep price of the lives of millions of people, as all who are touched by magical influences will perish as the result of this course. Tieflings, spellcasters, even those whose who were resurrected by Clerics or Paladins or what have you will all be destroyed in the process of achieving his goals.
Something I also think is interesting about Thanos is that because he’s collecting Infinity Stones, it gives the audience and the heroes a chance to see his abilities build up from the beginning, and to work out strategies for the next encounter. It’s also fun to see a brand new ability nobody’s seen before that keeps him one step ahead of everyone else. I just thought I’d point it out for anyone designing these sort of ultimate magical items for the heroes and the villain to fight over.
The campaign I’m currently running has a Thanos type villain. It’s based around a series of prophecies that “unlock” a gate summoning the god Incabulos. He was a struggling wizard attending a wizarding school. He discovered the prophecies and begun to receive messages from Incabulos. Rather than face further ridicule from classmates, he left the school. He’s using Incabulos to hit the reset button on humanity, and to have a purpose as his right-hand man. I didn’t realize it before, but he surrounds himself with equally broken individuals. I don’t think he necessarily sees them as inferior, just as their leader. An early minion was a dishonored soldier. Another was a wizard who had grown tired of the slow, tedious process of learning spells and craved power. He used them to fulfill some prophecies, while he fulfilled others. I don’t think he ever mocked the heroes either. The one encounter the had with him, he referred to them as obstacles. But he never gloated or talked down to them. He even tried recruiting the party’s cleric (seeing her both as a formidable warrior and to heal the world once the destruction was over) through a dream. And he’s planning on offering the party’s druid the same deal. I think I’ll throw in a scene of remorse for killing an NPC bard too. Thanks for giving me some food for thought with this video.
I'm actually currently running a campaign like this. My main villain is a Lich and my players are currently 6th level. He hates death and worked his entire life to try to stop it. But when he neared the end of that life without success, he turned himself into a lich so that he may continue his work. Currently, he believes the only true way to prevent death is through undeath. The lich runs a faction called the Eternal Order and their main goal is gather magical items, powerful allies, and every secret they can. He's creating a massive hoard of undead servants and spreading their control across the realm.
I have a villain idea I've had in the hopper, still working on it, maybe some of you out there can use it. I've not got a game going yet but have offered to dungeon master for friends. ________________________________________ The villain was at one point in their life a normal wizard, they had long given up adventure & was dedicated to spell research within a large city - they were well-known & well-regarded. Their partner, a human, began to die simply from old age & despite all they did to aide them with their magic, they were on the cusp of death. Fearful of what was to come, the wizard placed their partner under an Imprisonment (Slumber) spell & sealed them away in their tower. They began to pour over books in the hopes that they'd find some non-necromantic means to give them life again. The players if they were to go through their tower would find books on their research into positive & negative energy & the planes therein, the forces of life & unlife - as a hint about what's to come. It was soon noticed that the grief-stricken wizard had left & upon this curious disappearance the towns guard searched the tower to find the wizard's partner suspended. Believing the wizard to have cursed them, the guards took the wizard's partner to the clerics & none were powerful enough to break the supposed curse. For their protection they were placed under watchful guard in the king's castle. The wizard, out of the public & out in the wilds once more searched for ancient knowledge, or powerful items, in the hopes that magic beyond theirs could save their partner. Within a fallen temple to a forgotten god, there lay thousands of books, dusty & worn & they talked about all manner of forgotten lore & magic. Soon, a book was found that seemed to talk to the wizard, it would write his very thoughts & respond to them, with incredible knowledge & understanding. The wizard became lost in this book & soon the book had taught them more within this time in this temple than they had learned in a lifetime. The book offered a way to let them & their partner live forever & the wizard hurriedly took to preparing. The book wished them to open a portal to the positive energy plane, from which they could use old magic to distil a fragment of positive energy which could be used to fend off death. The book however had lied & the ritual the wizard had unknowingly prepared was one that would turn them into an ancient lich. The book revealed itself to be the fabled & accursed Book of Vile Darkness. They'd bound their soul to ancient gods of death that would use them to unleash a wave of death unto the material plane. In an instant, the temple fell silent, as a wave of negative energy radiated out from the wizard. Rats & flies dropped dead & then rose as undead. The very air grew still & stagnant as even micro-organisms died. The books withered & turned to pulp. Their flesh grew tight against the bone, but remained clean. The wizard, realising they had been deceived tried to put an end to it, they tried to kill themselves - but to not avail. The pain caused their muscles to swell again, the pain felt good. To put a stop to their life & the death they would cause, they had to find a method of travelling to the positive plane. As they pulled themselves from this forgotten temple, they clutched this tome, vowing that it will fall with them. Birds dropped dead & then in undeath flew on ahead as their eyes. Bodies of people who fell in the desert rose up, clasping at their ankles, binding them to crawl along at a walk. A looming, cloud of death, slowly passing over. As they approached near a local desert town, several guardsmen were dispatched to combat the ensuing undead horde & the wizard pleaded with the guard to run - but the guardsmen fell in the aura of death & started to march alongside him. The wizard from then on, tried to avoid life. Everywhere they went however, there was life & soon, they had fallen into a deeper despair than one could imagine, as rivers went stagnant, forests crumbled & died as the wood rotted. Their form had swelled with pain that felt good, but their mortal mind knew that it was horror. Every time they tried to divine the truth, kill themselves in a new way, reach out to other powers, try & send life away, or so much as run, their attempts were folly & the god's of death laughed at them. They had given up, they sat in decay & death, deep beneath the world for fear of destroying, all the while taunted by their failure & the voices of god's of death. Until, a light appeared, they turned to flee the light when all of a sudden, searing pain overtook them. The light was that of a 7ft. long draconic serpent, a Ravid. In its limbs it carried a clutch of objects that danced to life under it's positive energy. The wizard fought against the pain, opening their eyes they looked upon the scene. As the Ravid floated there, an odd puppet showed played out before it. A sleeping doll guarded by a doll that wore a crown, the crowned doll walked away to what seemed like a well within an underground chamber. As the wizard looked into the well, a bright light flashed within it, blinding the wizard. The wizard could see for the first time in a long time the goal that they had forgotten & set about to complete it, with the knowledge that where the one with the crown watched over his partner, they would find the answer. _______________________________________________________________ This lich would be set-up like a villain, the party would hear of this lich after the previous story had taken place, they'd hear of places dying as this lich allegedly "tears a path" to his goal. In reality, the lich is of course pleading that people avoid it & yet again grief-stricken at the pain they cause. Mechanically, if the PCs went anywhere near this "villain" without protection from negative energy, they would die almost immediately & simply be resurrected at the wizard's side. Arrows would crumble, swords would rust, light would be snuffed, many spells would fail but even one that would hit would only serve to bolster the wizards power. If the wizard were to die by some means other than positive energy, with no location for phylactery because one doesn't exist, they'd re-awake & continue on their path. The fight then becomes, if they hear out the lich - are they lying about their true motives? How do they convince a populace to evacuate at the whims of a lich? What is the king hiding the lich wants? What has the king been using this for? Is the king who they claim to be? Does the lich entrust care of their partner to the party? Is the lich convinced they can save their partner & themselves? etc. Some moral quandaries to play around with & I was thinking of foreshadowing it with the party early-game stopping a "necromancer" who used necromantic magic to revive a lost loved one (who they might find out died due to this lich's initial movements, before they went silent). The destruction of so many areas at a late point in the game might mean that the party also has a lot of emotional ties to NPCs or even players in the area & they might have a lot of hatred for this lich they didn't know, but now have to contend with it. The destruction would shape global politics & change more than just the landscape. If anyone ends up using this idea or adapting it into something different, let me know how it goes. If you like this idea, you can hit me up for more villain ideas, I've got a fair few kicking around my head, some that are straight-on & some that are more morally grey, from either the "villain" or player perspective. Some high-level, some low, some mid, etc.
I'm glad I found this video because my BBEG is like Thanos, and pretty similar to the Necromancer-turned-Lich example he gave. Mine is a king turned lich, who is corrupting paladins, clerics, and gathering all able-bodied fighters into his undead horde to wipe out the world, but it is in an effort to cleanse the world from all its evils, like a giant, undead flood. He has seen all the evil in the world, and he even founded an organization to help fight against the evils, but things happened, and he wants to start the world over and rule as its king. Forever.
"I shall not insult your honour by asking you to turn back or join my side. You are doing what you believe is right the same as I am." - Emperor Cassius Necromancer Supreme
@@sandropazdg8106 I actually have an urban campaign set up where two parties of two are given a sandbox, with almost a dozen organizations vying for power. With leveling up requiring getting their hands on a finite resource, encouraging heists, take downs, etc. The goal is to essentially set them up to eventually be thwarting each other, never telling them there's another party, until finally an actual physical showdown is inevitable. At which point, all 4 players finally sit down face to face, and have to duke it out, or sort out their differences.
@@Tmanowns That sounds sweet. When it all comes to a head, if it turns out interesting at all, post a story of this somewhere so that I can hear how it turns out. Amazing idea.
Ok, so, I worked out a new villain based on my previous one while watchig this; There are mcguffins that are located in towers/castles/dungeons/etc. The villain is a demon, who sends a groub of his elite to gather the mcguffins while he gathers some himself, moving slower, but eventually facing off with the heroes at a mcguffin location. The demon's goal is to use the mcguffins to turn every human into a demon, and thus ending the demon/human conflict. He spares all he can, as he sees every human as "soon to be demons" and thus "one of his own". When he faces the heroes, he wipes them out as while heroes have gathered some mcguffins of power, Demon has more, and decimates the playground with them. In the final battle, he needs to place the mcguffins on some altars, which means he cant use them in fight, heroes need to disturb the magical sequence by removing the mcguffins or by destroying the altars. Upon doing so the mcguffins are destroyed due to attempting ritual without proper magical order. After the mcguffins shatter/destroyed/etc the demon faces the heroes without the help of the mcguffins, and loses the final battle, ending the game.
As in D&D actions not intentions determine alignment, chaotic evil. The act of killing half the population alone would be enough to push him into that alignment. (Enslaving half the population on the other hand would have been lawful evil)
Interesting take on Thanos as a D&D villain. You could even tie in the Infinity Stones as plot threads, or a Maguffin to protect/collect. Great video Cody keep it up ❤️
"All that for a drop of blood" - Thanos to Tony Stark. That was most certainly a taunt. Now to support he did see them as heroes. "I hope they remember you" - Thanos. Just wanted to point out he did provide that one taunt but you are correct in he didn't taunt them normally.
in one of my campaigns i had a villain which was creating terror and causing a lot of strife because he was trying to amas tools which would allow him to kill an evil god his ultimate goal was the (very missguided) aim to rid the world of servitude to gods he actually had fairly little interaction with the player himself, the main "present" villain was the "avatar" of a god of chaos that wasactually helping him the avater was a spirit that was enslaved against his will and bound to a large number of different manaquins, meaning he could be in a lot of different places at once and carry out different goals at the same time BUT being unwilling while he had to carry out the gods wishes he was perfectly capable of talking to the party and explaining the whole previous point of "break free of the servitude of gods" he also functioned as both a villain that could be faught to satisfy the murder hobos, but at the same time one they knew stabbing wouldnt beat, destroy one manaquin and youv stopped him at the moment right there, but to really beat him they would need to find some way to stop him just going into one of his countless others elsewhere in the world
Best villian I ever made was the father of 2 of the players, and evil acts not only saved the players lives but the ones they loved. However, if they let him continue millions others would die.
I did a villain like 2 years ago and still playing the campaign. He is a Cleric that wants to banish magic from the world, wiping the chords of mana and life. He wants to prevent magic being used to chaos, and several plagues already had reached civilization from magic sources. This is a great deal, he wants to wipe what has dizimated a lot of beings, but in doing so, he was creating an artifact that would destroy everything and everyone touched to magic, including himself. The players loved it.
A really good way to introduce a villain like this would be to actually have the party work with him. Let's say the party is prepping to go into a particularly scary dungeon delve when an imposing figure notes that they also have business in that dungeon and offers to travel with them. On the adventure he proves to be quite powerful in comparison to the PCs (But don't let him steal the PC's thunder or make the adventure a cakewalk, you're still trying to have a fun campaign after all and being second banana is never all that fun.). Let him interact with the party on even footing, speak his case and generally present the face of a heroic individual. The party eventually reach his objective, to which he takes it (and demands no other compensation for his time, letting the party keep everything else they found) and leaves. Then, maybe during the next adventure or sometime after let the party know that they helped Thanos get the reality stone and now have to do something to stop him. I particularly like this sort of introduction for a number of reasons: It lets the party have a chance to learn the character's goals and motives before they automatically paint a target on him. It gives the party an idea of how powerful he is and the specific tactics he uses when it comes time to have a real showdown with him. It also creates an emotional attachment to the plot, knowing that they actually helped the villain achieve his goals. It can be a little dangerous though. If you make your villain's motivation too convincing then you run the risk of the party joining him... which could be an interesting campaign turn to be sure but most DM's probably won't be prepared for the party suddenly doing a 180 and going in a completely different direction with your campaign.
This video was incredibly helpful. For almost a year now, I've been planning a campaign that uses a lot of these themes. But, the main idea of it is that 500 years ago Tyllus Urien, a Drow, rallied all the elven forces in Fearune to conquer the human kingdoms. He did this because the human king was practicing cult magics and trying to bring an Eldritch god to the mortal plane. Tyllus conquered the lands and subjected it to elvish rule because, in his mind, almost every major calamity happened at a non elf race. This has created some race/social hierarchies in the newly magic governed continent. Tyllus is lauded as a god-king (think imperium of man in Warhammer 40k) by the people. The story involves the heroes discovering that this utopian society is actually a lie nurtured by generations of illusion/enchantment magic, habitual servility, and a big brother-esque magic totalitarian king. Throughout the campaign, they come across many evil acts committed by the king, but there's always some element of it that seems to hint that the King isn't evil, even if his actions are. It will appear as though he's trying to summon the same eldritch god the last king did, but they'll discover that he's actually doing it to become strong enough to defeat the entity that threatens the plane. Here's a link to a reddit post I did that goes into a lot more detail, if anyone is interested. www.reddit.com/r/mattcolville/comments/a0m5vh/im_wanting_to_dm_my_first_campaign_the_false/?
Agreed 100%. I feel like Strahd has many (though not all) of these traits in Curse of Strahd and it's what makes him such a great villain. In my playthrough, I'm playing up Rahadin as more of the powerful ally character and it's working really well with my players so far. Great video and I want to incorporate some of these ideas into my homebrew campaign going forward.
a rapidly evolving plague that currently is only mild. the big bad wants to use an ancient artifact to kill the plague but this will also kill the infected. the campaign can be about stopping him and hopping the healers can cure it. searching for a artifact capable of stopping the plague. or making as many people avoid the infection by helping to evacuate and contain the disase, just a bunch of small quests. based in this setting the villain could be a savior, a back up, a time bomb and a chaotic good villain
I once had a Monk villain who after being driven mad by despair over the suffering inflicted on the innocents of the world and enraged by the aloof indifference of the powerful sought to link sapient creatures to one another via pain, specifically he wanted to make it so that when any one person felt pain everyone else in the world would suffer just as keenly and personally. Thus he sought to coerce all creatures into creating a world that might not be a paradise but as lacking in suffering as possible, where failure to protect the least of the world meant an inescapable rebuke no matter how wealthy or mighty one is. There was much debate on that one, especially when the BBEG and his followers were going around helping people and uplifting the poor and wretched.
This was actually pretty surprising. Very similar to how I made a D&D villain for my campaign with 70 in Str and Con, and had a massive hit pool, about 840 HP, and his intro was grabbing a Storm Giant's fist that tried to punch him, and yeeting it over half the continent away. All because of a prophecy of a great power coming that would destroy everything, and the villain thought he had to be the one to stop it, so he tried to get the magical legendary sword, but couldn't, and so he set out on a quest to get a similar power by gathering certain other items in hopes that he could use them to be able to get the sword.
You would like the BBEG of Wild Arms 2. It was an encroaching parallel universe. Half the game was about giving it a physical form to be able to fight it.
The Collection trope sounds like RuneScape's Demon Slayer quest. Impossible fight without the key item/blessing/ally becomes doable. The meat of the campaign turns into item collection. I think that's one example of striking the right balance between sandbox and railroad: urgency concerning an epic endpoint (which can be thoroughly planned), but great freedom for the players in the body of the story. Bane (The Dark Knight Rises) and Ra's al Ghul also fit the Indomitable Zealot Archetype. Heath Ledger's Joker, "Scarecrow" Dr. Crane and Two-Face (Madman archetype) secure their immunity through plot devices like politics and terrorism. These supplanted the Falcone mafia, an excellent example of tier transition.
I started complex concept campaign. Players got stuck in the material plane, inhabiting their characters’ bodies. They later find the DM in game as well. They learn that the in game DM is no longer in control of the world. Later on, they learned that the DM was controlled by the BBEG. They have yet to figure out his goal.
I run my games on the weekend and I've been toying around with ideas in my head for my villain in the future. The group of players initially met some of the villains "cultists" as most of the locals knew them back when they were level 6. 12 members who seemingly were just killing people after attacking a town, Though the group found that they hadn't stole anything & was seemingly trying to avoid damaging the actual structure of the town itself. In a quick confrontation they killed maybe 2 members of that 12 group and had a 3rd almost at deaths door. some of the other members of the enemies actually decided to grab to groups druid & hold them hostage in exchange for the 3rd member of their group. saying that they will end their assault here if they are returned and allowed to leave. Though I'm still toying with ideas of how to introduce the main group in total, the main villain is mostly dealing with his minions not going about things exactly as he wants most of the time. But his main goal with his personal group that follows him is trying to go about removing godly worship, believing that gods cause more problems for mortal folk and races than they do help. He wants people to revere people and not higher entities that cause so many problems & through one way or another wants to remove religion country by country. The leader currently is struggling with dealing with the members who don't always go about things the way he wants, he also wants more attention from the countries to his actions to spread his word. Along with trying to do things himself & being very preoccupied with trying to grow his forces in ways that aren't just general recruitment or prepare for a battle to come ahead when they make a bigger move. Sorry for going on but if anyone has any tips or anything I'd like to hear em :)
I think that one way to make your villain more compelling is if he or she had a backstory involving one or more of the gods seriously messing up. Maybe he's from another plane, one that fell apart due to reliance on the gods and he doesn't want the same to happen to this one?
I do have an idea for an undead druid (can't use the term lich because those are exclusively wizards) who's goal is to see the entire world become intelligent undead because he sees undeath as the final stage of evolution. In his eyes, he is noble because there is no pain when one is undead. There is no need to fight over land for shelter or for farming when one is undead. There is no sickness when one is undead. In fact, the mere classification of "undead" must mean that one is still alive in some way. The druid's method of converting the world to undeath is quite fantastic, though not as much as Thanos and his infinity stones. The druid plans to infect the Yggdrasil with his organic phylactery as a means to turn the very life source of the multiverse into a font of undeath, hopefully providing a painless, or at least very quick, transition to undeath while preserving the intelligence of those affected.
I really appreciate all the video's on making good villains, Cody. I've been crafting this really interesting villain for a group I just started running recently and your videos have given me some really good ideas on how to build up this character. To answer your question: I think using a 15 to 20 CR main villain/antagonist on a relatively low level party is perfectly fine as long as you are careful about how you use them. The one I'm making will probably be up there quite a ways also. It's my belief that good role playing can balance any situation out.
Here’s The 2nd To Last Final Boss For my Last Campaign Tarkoth Barituza Half-Blue-Dragon Paladin, Oath Of Conquest, Lawful Evil. Tarkoth is Head Of The Cult Of The Dragon (My Last Campaign Is Loosely Based On Rise Of Tiamat). He has the Blue & Black Mask Fragments As He Is Already Allied With The Black Wyrmspeaker (He’s Blue) The Party Has 2 Options For Which Mask Fragment To Go After Next, Green Or White He Sends The Black Wyrmspeaker After The One The Party Goes After And Goes After The One They Don’t. Either Way, They’ll Both Arrive At The Mountain Where The Red Wyrmspeaker Reside. He’ll Incapacitate The Party (KO Them) While He Leaves With 4-5/5 (The One The Party Went After Will Most Likely Be Dead) Leave To Hell’s Cauldron (Deep Pit In The Middle Of The Sea In My World). He Very obviously plans to release Tiamat. His goal is to eliminate Chaos Using Tiamat. Even When They Do Kill Him (Especially If They Do) Tiamat Will Rise
My version of a "Thanos" villain was a campaign where the players could choose their own villain. There was a Drow Necromancer that pursued Necromancy only to truly revive her little sister (Ressurection magic didn't exist in that world), an Information Broker that seeked to mke everyone equal due to her impoverished upbringing at the hands of the upper classes stealing all money in her land and the King, whom seeked to create world-wide peace by installing incredibly powerful warriors everywhere that acted on act of violence (think Mantle of Responsibility from Halo). To do this, they seeked the 5 macguffins that served as sentient keys to lock a Magic Amplifier away that would allow spells to be incredibly more powerful than their original. For example, Animate Dead would truly Ressurect, Summon Monster would become Gate, and so on. I made sure to have each villain have a personality and flaws that reflected their background and upbringing. Most interesting part of the campaign was the Dwarf finding a sword that had a soul of a legendary Warlord bound to it, retraining to Bloodrager to be more like the soul in the sword and attempting to revive her through Soul Transposition forcibly into a slave he bought.
"Never once taunted or belittled Tony and the rest." Thanos: "All that for a drop of blood..." Eh... a little shade was thrown. But he definitely gave more respect throughout.
I love the idea of actually trying to set the players AS a Thanos type villain. Here's an idea: the players come across a village where a lone ranger has been just imprisoned for trying to kill one of the locals. She is raving about a zombie plague. The next day, a zombie plague breaks out. It turns out a that a swarm of insects has passed through the village. Anyone who experienced a red bite will turn into a zombie in a week, as the incurable infection takes hold. The only way to wipe it out is to kill those infected... The other thought of how to set up a Thanos type villain would be to leak them little bits of information that someone is collecting the materials to release a deadly plague. The main villain turned out to be the Kings Doctor, well loved and respected and in charge of the doctors of the realm. He has the idea to tailor a plague to wipe out a certain segment of the population for a very good reason...
Every time I notice your sign-off spiel, I remember that the way I got into D&D was I wanted to reconnect with some friends who I hadn't seen in several years who live several states away from me who I care very deeply for. The campaign has been rad as hell, and I'm glad I reconnected with them.
My friend has a good villain, not sure if it's a great villain like Thanos, but a quick tldr is that his species was wiped out by the gods of the universe (Starfinder I should mention) because they had the power to overwhelm and destroy them. So the gods wiped out the species, all but one who managed to escape. This villain now is on a crusade of revenge to eliminate said God's and in fact us the players are aligning ourselves with him after hearing him out (and cause as players we wanted to stay gods, sue us)
Wow, my gm hit almost every point mentioned with the villain in or last campaign. He was overwhelmingly powerfull with a following of powerfull and interesting individuals. His goal was to collect several fonts of power in order to restore/avenge his clan that was whiped out by an evil witch thanks to the betrayal of the clan elder. He was always polite unles provoked and didn´t go out of his way to hurt us.
this gave me a really cool idea for a villain, a massive lv20+ pure blood orc who is destroying schools and colleges. the thing is his underlings and the "mini bosses" leading up to him are ether mixed bloods {half elf, half orcs, and so on} or are tieflings and drow that worship Eilistraee. after some games and fights they find out that this is not a normal orc but one that is kinda smart and kind. they learn things like how he saved a village from a drought by having hsi men bring the village water, or how he reunited slaves and their families after freeing them. not only this but they learned during a battle that before destroying any school they will take the scrolls and books for some unknown reason. the reason for all this is that him and those under him were once slaves and he is the first orc in his family that learned how to read. that he saved those that were slaves in a city and would teach them things, like how to use magic, how to fight with a sword, or even how to heal each other. the entire idea is he sees schools and collages as a way for those in power to keep information to them selves and away from those that truly need it. he also sees this withholding of information as a form of slavery and is willing to do anything {even kill nobles, teachers, and guards} to end slavery once and for all.
@Dicelord N yes and even people he thinks that dose so like nobles, priests, and the like. he would even attack churches, temples and marketplaces not because he hates them. he dose so because he seems them twisting and lying to others to control them and this alone is filled with plot hooks. have a cleric/ paladin? have some of his men wipe her temple off the map. wizard or monk have him destroy their school. warlock {if evil} have the patron see him as a threat {if good} have the patron see his evil acts as something that can not stand. for the druid it could be that all those cities burning is harming the forest, and so on and so on i mean the plot hooks write themselves after a wile. the important thing is two fold. one : have the bosses and generals of his army talk along the lines of "we are to free your minds and bodys from servitude" or "we are liberators not conquerors", and two: have the main bbeg show his ideology not just speak it. there is a reason why i said lv20+ in that he is a lv 20 in at lest three classes that do not contradict. this is so the barbarian can not rage kill him, or the ranger can not crit him, and can defend against all the spell caster has. he is not "a game boss".no he is the end game boss that spent most of his short orc life training and learning to be a weapon to free all races. with that said he should act like it, he dose not talk down to the heroes. he gives them pointers seeing them as those that might carry on his mission when he dies if they are willing to learn. he dose not taunt or intimidate them, he enjoys the fight as what it really is, a test of the mind and body.
One my favorite campaigns I was apart of finished about a year ago and we never actually beat the “big bad” we ended up taking a deal he offered us but man did I love playing in that campaign and I never really could put my finger on why but after watching this I feels like my dm has seen this video 3-4 years ago when he created his big bad like damn it’s insane
WOW! We’re so similar, I never expected that! When you said how you liked Marvel, but are more of a DC guy, and that you like Sinestro, not just bc you’re a Green Lantern fan, I just realized that everything you said there is identical to my own views!
My Teifling character Corath, would definitely wanna kill Thanos because not only would it feed his symbiotic worm to make him stronger, but with how powerful he is, thanos could cause my character’s throne world (a pocket demintion that increases in size with killing more strong opponents, and allow him to escape death) increase to the size of a fucking solar system.
This is great for anyone trying to use The Blood War as a central tension. The big bad can be someone trying to amass enough power to overpower both sides. “To end the eternity long war? Anything.”
Why not? It would definitely make for an interesting story. Maybe after the PCs "join the dark side" there are other groups trying to stop the BBEG and the players fight them. Maybe they'll see that they made a mistake at some point and betray the BBEG. Maybe they won't^^
It is a role playing game, let the players choose the roles they want to play. If they choose to switch sides and fight for the BBEG then they are now enemies with their former allies, employer, society, etc. That gives plenty of oppurtunity for new rivals or BBEG to replace the old one and is a story they might not get to play very often.
I'm finishing the naruto anime and I like the Madara Uchiha villain... he seek to make peace through genjutsu. Magical ninja hypnotism... it places everyone in a world were everyone is happy and there is no war. However he basically enslaves the entire population of earth to feed himself power because this method also drains people of chakra (the magic fule for ninja).
For one of my games my villain is trying to find a home for his people, the people of the silver angel. In the process he's attempting to stop another 100 year war from happening preemptively by eliminating the cities than vampires and damphir are living in in the game. His ultimate goal is to make everyone safer and to bring his people to a promised home land. One of his subordinates i following him because this goal will ultimately allow him to rebuild his lost homeland. Sympathetic villains really do make for more interesting characters
17:45 ish: it depends on what you and the players agree fair means. Curse of Strahd is a module where the big bad could regularly pop in and then monologue and maybe kick ass if the party needs a backhand or two when they are level 3 or 4. If that was or is up your alley and you enjoy having to work to overcome the power difference, then its great. Maybe have a CR 10 version for low levels and through the story he gains new power and abilities and becomes CR 15-20 later on. But some people and some parties don't want to have that struggle. They want to kick ass and take names, and knock down their problems as efficiently as they can. Both are fine.
This was super helpful! I'm currently in the process of trying to write a villain and the cause that he fights for, and Thanos was partial inspiration. Being able to zero in on what exactly made Thanos such a great villain really helped!
In my campaign I set up the villain as a typical tyrant-style ruler. He killed the old king and took over. But I also slipped in that he had organized clerics to go from village to village to alleviate famine. No of them picked up on it, but after they beat him and found out he wasn't really the bad guy, those clerics were the first thing that popped into their heads. Very satisfying DM moment.
This could also be useful if your a DM, and working with a team of DM’s, with multiple player groups playing the same, but slightly different, campaign. And they can make it a secret McGuffin, or hide it in a magic item, so when you want to use this plot they will say, “did you know you were carrying around the one thing that can kill us all, and that you were using it as a accessory, or sell it for 3 copper coins.” Just something funny to think about. Using the Infinity Stone as a reference. You can have one group who has one of the stone and another who has one of the other stones. Then when you are ready to introduce your big bad Thanos villain, you can have the groups fight one or more of his minions fighting to take the stone. Then around the end, or when the groups are smaller because you kill some of the players, you can bring the groups together for the final fight, or make it into a two part fight as he goes to collect the last of the stones. You can work out the plot later, like The Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why? That’s just how I think you can play it out.
This got me thinking. Instead of a singular "big bad" the enemy could be another party of high level adventurers who are enacting the kind of high level influence on the world that strong parties have.
I have an adventure seed that i've been cultivating forever: an empire vs the fey. The players are caught in the middle. The empire has a seriously scary paladin running their war, and the fey are fighting for survival. Both sides of the conflict aren't bad. They're just fighting to make the world one they want to live in.
my campaign is gonna revolve around trying to stop what is essentially an alien invasion... doing a home-brew where dark heresy characters get caught in a warp storm and sent into the dnd setting... so a few other factions like orcs and chaos also get caught up in it and basically will be trying to build a portal to that world for them to invade... meanwhile they will be unaware for a portion of the campaign with a few hints that there is some chaos abound... like first mission they will be investigating a run down abbey where people have been disappearing and when they get there the find bodies with blackened tongues and blackened fingers. this is being caused by a book that was brought into the world a few years ago that belongs to khrone the blood god. the players will not know this at first but if they touch the book they will have to make a pretty challenging wisdom save and if they fail then they will be cursed with bloodlust... thier first boss will be up against an aaxte that got corrupted from sed book.
This is definitely helping me to shape my BBEG. He's an aberrant being made from a fraction of an elder God, and has the final goal of opening a portal so that this elder God can come in and absorb all life, trapping each creature's consciousness in a dream of a perfect life, assimilating them onto itself. His main motivations are that 1-he sees the way things are as inherently flawed and beyond fixing through other means and 2-a constant, overwhelming feeling of emptiness due to being but a fragment of the true being (a safeguard from his creator to ensure he'd accomplish his goal in order to return to its creator), which results in an inherent compulsion to feed on the brains and psychic energy of humanoids.
I am pretty sure they had a thanos esc villian for Lady Vol? she has a few powerful allies and a backstory made most people not only agree with her motive but made them feel bad to?
i know i am a yea rlate, but i want to share my villan. its an archfey, who has the ability to see the future. but not a fixed future, but one possibility of it. every decision anyone makes changees it. its like a tree and she follows a brach at the time. what she sees is our world in present time. citys and technik everywhere. nature is put in cages and chains, suppresd to only grow as far as humanity aloows it to. and not only on the primematerial plane. but also on the feywild. and she fights that future with everything she has. the party has by now just heard of her. not encounterd her yet.
In a campaign i made characters for every one to play except for one player ton use. We used a high cr party to introduce everyone to the campaign. In prologue introduction. The villan was many levels higher than the party. It beat them down and abused them. I killed off many but the for the one player that made his own character for the campaign. As the campaign began. Everyone now with player made characters, including the player made character from the prologue. Started the campaign like any other. As things went on they once again meet the op cr villains. They now have clues to what the villains are able to do to them. I had 2 was to build the villains. Start the villains close in level, allowing the to gain levels as a pc dose. Give the pc's the feeling they might be able to beat the villian now. I went with start the villain out as super powered op villain off the start. So the pc's qould have to meet the villain over and over again and again.
I made a villain recently called the revolutionary. He was an adventurer that came to believe that the bureaucracy of the outer planes, the very concept of gods and the alignment system, was a secret, insidious agent of tyranny. He believed that the enforcement of good, bad, chaotic, or lawful intent upon people of the world was inherently a infringement upon their free will. He had also come to believe over the years that slavery was worse than death. So, he erased as many records of his existence as possible and infiltrated the divine bureaucracy, slowly but surely controlling and manipulating it. He slowly gathers the necessary power and equipment to tear a hole in the side of the universe, merging us with the far realm and resetting reality. He can only take a few hundred through, and he is taking the souls of everyone else alive for power. Doing this will kill him and everyone he loves and countless others. But give me liberty or give me death.
I ran a campaign a few years ago, where a local lord was revealed to be a vampire and he was conquering other lands. The party defeated him, but were unable to find his coffin to ensure total defeat. The vampire later came back and confronted the players multiple times, but not to fight them. It was revealed that he did not become a vampire by choice, but was manipulated by a succubus and had been forced to serve her and he was actually remorseful. The party's paladin ended up being the only member of the party who not only accepted it, but befriended the vampire. Of course, still being under the control of the succubus, he did have to fight them again, but he gave the party some important information regarding her plans which eventually led to her downfall.
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Video reference links:
Geoff Johns Green Lantern Run starts with 'Rebirth': amzn.to/2U1w3nn
(video) Creating better villains: th-cam.com/video/oz3fivnKHKc/w-d-xo.html
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Hey Taking, how do you feel about that wizards/d&d are being more harsh and cracking down harder on websites/bots that used to provide information of all classes, races, monsters, spells from the books for free such as dnd5e.fandom.com and bots from the d&d discord chats? Seems like no d&d youtubers are talking about it.
It's their content and work. They spent man hours and money to create it, and people are giving it away free AFTER WotC already put out an SRD with 86% of their content for free anyway. Any author/company giving away 86% of their product for free who wants to stop people from giving away the last 14% so they don't get paid (and thus have the ability to make more), is well within their rights as far as I'm concerned. People (or programmers) who spent time developing their apps just to get a C&D to see it washed away were always stealing in the first place, so I can't really feel bad for them.
@@Taking20 do you think they'll release any thing in the future like a code in the book for proof of purchases on sites like d&d beyond for future people who are gonna collect all the books? (I know it's a bit too late for people like myself who already have all the books)
Edit: Also thanks for the reply, i love your channel man!!!
@@Taking20 completely agree with you, no one enjoys their work being essentially pirated. Do you think they'll ever release more supplementary books (such as Xanathar's) like they did in 3.5? They gave us so many options and ways to do different things whereas anymore they're just adventure modules.
just so u know, as I know a good deal about thanos and the marvel comics lore, thanos is minorly, yet significantly different from his self in the comics, especially back during the story the film was using as source material, he is much stronger than the mcu version, is equally smart as he is strong, being able to normally go blow for blow with the hulk when in his savage ie normal state and basically overpower him when he was in his professor hulk persona, and his motivation in the comics was not do to any sort of greater good, it is because he is, or was given now currently his mind set is a bit different in the comics, it is because he is trying to win the effection of mistress death, who is the physical manifestation of the very concept of death itself and literally is death, who he was madly in love with, only reason he lost in the end of that story was cuz subconsciously he sabotaged himself and wanted to lose, also he is immortal now a days as he was barred from the realm of mistress death, meaning he CAN NOT DIE, though is kinda up in the air once he got decapitated and seemed to die in the recent infinity wars event
"What did it cost?"
"A 9th level spell slot and a verbal component"
Actually you need to spend an 11th level spell-slot, and use summatic and metiral component.
Though the mateiral components are not consumed by the spell, they are ultra rare! Only 6 in the universe, and you need all 6 to cast the spell, plus an archane focus!
Makes me think of Vax and Scanlan.
@@SokiHime Did you not realize they were joking? Also, metiral.
Guys it was all three
M - The Gauntlet And Stones
V - "You should of gone for the head"
S - *Snap*
PepicWalrus
1) it’s “should have”
2) “you should’ve gone for the head” was completely separate from the snap.
Thanos snaps his fingers. Everybody roll percentiles.
What's the most you've ever lost on a coin toss?
JT 671 Today I lost more than you could ever know
"All this for a d4 of damage"
If you make a god take 1d4 damage people cease to believe in him.
WE CAN HURT HIM, WE CAN KILL HIM!
Which, I believe, is also Tony's thinking now.
@@squishymada "If you make a god bleed people will stop believing in him" -Quote from Whiplash in IromMan 2
When you constantly miss with your pole arm only to hit him with your other end.
The Greek gods could bleed. They could even be killed. Yet people still believed in them and worshipped them.
No matter what you do, it is never only 1 action that makes someone lose faith in a diety. But if you prove someone wrong enough times, there is a tipping point. And that is where you nees to shine the most.
Lol whoever was RPing Starlord in this hypothetical campaign would’ve been HATED at the table; I honestly feel bad for him
I as the forever GM would have loved and applauded the character play.
Again the bard dorked it up(I play one so it is a self-burn :P )
Especially if your character was the one who got ashed.
He may have been hated, but it was entirely in his character
But the GM would have given him inspiration for favoring role-play over strategy.
This definitely planted some seeds in my head. A knight in black is hunting down nobles and removing their hearts. The PC's get on the trail of this murderer only to find villages that laud him for his good deeds - freeing them from a tyrannical lord, destroying a beast that had plagued the town, using powerful magics to bring rain to dying crops, etc. Slowly it's revealed that the nobles he's killing are all descendants of a group of heroes, who once sealed away a great evil. The knight wishes to unleash this evil, but only so it can be destroyed once and for all, for it's very essence is twisting his homeland. Only the blood of the long dead heroes can save his people, and so, he does what he must.
OMG I LOVE LOVE LOVE this!
I'm taking this! Good idea!
I am totally going to use this as well, great campaign premise!
this is fantastic.
If i be the knight, i'll be asking for blood donation from this descendants instead. You write blood, not soul
Love the idea of a bbeg who commits random acts of kindness. That would be a great way to confuse the players and potentially steer them toward identifying with the villain’s motives.
That's what i did for my campaign and IT WORKS SO WELL. They think BBEG is someone else completely. They're gonna be devastated.
Current day drug cartel bosses are revered in their towns because they take very good care of them. Many of them are major celebrities among the locals. To take this to DnD what happens after your party takes out the big bad who was keeping the yearly monsoon from wiping out the farms?
Villian: *sees an old lady trying to cross the street*
Heroes: *sees the villain* oh gosh he's going to kill that old lady
Villain: *helps old lady cross the street*
Heroes: *confused*
Villain: *while trying to help old lady* hahaha your still going to die from my mega laser anyways
Thanos is the perfect example of one of the most important rules that I follow when I make scenarios for any TTRPG: "Put the Villain in Motion."
An active villain makes the story so much more dramatic and dynamic.
It also completely obviates the need for any kind of "railroading" of your PCs -- you don't have to ever worry what the players will do in your game because if the PCs want to stop the villain they have to go where the villain is, and since, as the GM, you have full control over where your NPCs will be, you therefore always know where the PCs are going to be.
It doesn't surprise me that Thanos is the epitome of the "Put the Villain in Motion" idea since I learned that from a talk that the great TV screenwriter, Stephen J. Cannell once gave at my school. It's what he used whenever he was writing a script and he didn't know what to do next. As soon as I heard him say that I knew it was going to change how I made my D&D games.
+1
That's awesome, super great advice.
I did the Thanos villain thing during the A&D 2e era in the '90 , with the gems and gauntlet macguffin . It ended into a big ''rpga'' style event with almost 40 players in our local hobby store . It was awesome . :)
D&D Infinity War?
@@emmarod8746 indeed , inspired by Avengers: Infinity War from the 1991 six issue special Infinity Gauntlet limited series . Well this one en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Infinity_Gauntlet
So was this 40 players fighting one mega villain with 1 DM?
@@relint12 We were 4 DMs , we use the AD&D 2e gods rules , so the mutlipe actions was coverd . He duplicated himself with ''mini avatars'' during the fight , it split the powers/habilities of the gems to give players a chance .
I am super curious. Please do tell.
"The dragon must die."
"If it dies, the wyverns will return."
"The dragon steals our cattle."
"The wyverns steal our children!"
"The wyverns are gone."
Aren't wyverns related to dragons?
i don't get it.
@@christopherbravo1813 It's a joke on how humans focus on the present then the past...as stated The Wyverns stole children and we're driven away by the dragon...now the humans want to kill the dragon whom is stealing the caddle...however this would allow the Wyverns to return and take more children...and this guy isn't learning from the past...and still insists that killing the dragon is best
Oh.
@bryan diaz varela
Unfortunately, it is here in America.
Thanos in the MCU: Perfectly balanced as all things should be.
Thanos in the Comics: IMA GO TO THE BONEZONE.
Somehow my players hated my villain so much more after he told them "I find your courage admirable, it is however,unfortunate that you cannot comprehend the larger forces at play."
Maybe they thought he was extremely arrogant and snobish
@@Darknight4434 That's exactly what I was going for
So I would hate him too probably
In a game I recently played we entered a kingdom where the local lord would have his forces go out into the countryside to kidnap men and women and take them to the mines, never to be seen from again. The mines were guarded by a massive garrison so they couldn't fight their way in, and instead they teamed up with a local rebel group to take out the king and allow the young prince who was sympathetic to their cause take the throne. So they laid an ambush for the king and his retinue to try and assassinate them. Turns out the king was an 17th level Fighter with a retinue of ~15th level characters (the party was around lv 10). They were taken captive and sent to the mines, which is when they learned that the people who were kidnapped were being liquified and fed to a sleeping tarrasque. If they destroyed the mines the tarrasque would go hungry and eventually wake up, going on a rampage that would destroy the kingdom and its neighbors. They managed to break out and flee, sending word to the king that they would leave him in peace until they had gathered enough power and allies to come back and deal with the monster. The game fell apart before we came back, but it was a pretty cool reveal from out perspective.
Fakjbf had a similar circumstance in a game I am playing now. It’s a dark fantasy setting where the far realm has all but taken over and one of the only things stopping an invasion from the hells (which have been take over by far realm devils) is a city of devils that harnesses the power of torturing souls to stabilize reality and prevent portals from opening up.
Reminds me of Fable 3. Take down the tyrannical king, only to find out the king needed to do that to fund defenses against a world ending threat.
@@Berserk_Knight Reminds me of the original Ogre Battle. All the players know is that Queen Xenobia (?) takes over all the surrounding kingdoms and unites them under her rule. Turns out that she had originally gone to the other kingdoms and asked for an alliance because of an outside threat that would take their combined military might to fend off and the other kingdoms had ignored her and continued their petty squabbles. So she conquered them all so she can put their full might and resources on the ready for the outside attack. Unfortunately, the heroes are a bunch of resistance fighters that topple the empire right before the attack comes.
@@Seoulwanderer In the Star Wars extended universe (no longer canon) the Yuuzhan Vong are an extragalactic species that invaded the galaxy about twenty years after the original trilogy. It's implied that Emperor Palpatine had seen the future invasion coming and that's why he took over the galaxy and put it under martial law. Once the New Republic takes control they start relaxing the military build up just in time for the invading armies to come it and topple them.
@@fakjbf3129 That's awesome. I love morally ambiguous antagonists.
plus, Thanos can cast Meteor Swarm
And Wish!
And Time Stop. Plus the secret 11th level spell: Mass Power Word Kill.
Perhaps, but I think he's trying to focus on the ROlE-PLAY aspects of the Thanos as a TabbleTopRolePlayGame BigBadEvilEndGameBoss, NOT so much the MECHANICS.
When we first saw Infinity War at the cinema, at the point when he bicep curled a freaking moon and threw it at Tony Stark, I just leaned over to my friend (who is also DMing our current campaign) and whispered "Dude. That's a 9th level spell."
I have Counterspell.
"I can't wait for season 8 of GoT" probably didn't age well :P. Also its a pretty cool idea for a villain that I didn't think much on when watching but its a pretty neat idea.
I have a story of a game I ran based on this very thing:
A little background - The big bad evil guy (BBEG) was a character I originally played in D&D 2nd Ed, but when I needed a villain, I transferred him over to 3rd Edition. I ran this game in 2005, but it literally had a Thanos type character as the villain. It was a Human cleric of St. Cuthbert who, at level 15 left his adventuring group (I added five more levels when making him the BBEG) after nearly a decade together. He had literally started out as an Acolyte of St. Cuthbert, and when they stopped was essentially a high priest. There were reports that he traveled the Sword Coast assisting everyone he could from Neverwinter to Amn and back again before he disappeared. Decades passed, and bandit raids swelled. The majority of his companions had retired from the life, settled down, and one or two had children who were now of age to start adventuring. During the party's initial gaming (Levels 1 to 5) they discovered that some of the bandits sported a medallion that none could identify, but they determined that it wasn't meant as currency. It was during one attack that the group found themselves facing off against a warrior in gleaming full plate armor, wielding a magical mace, and an equally powerful shield. They fought valiantly, but he knocked them down to only one hit point each with little effort. Recovering the medallion, the warrior turned to leave.
Quickly surrounded by bandits, the warrior ordered the fledgling adventurers returned to the main road, and instructed them to care for their wounded. They left without so much as one of the adventurers dying. It was only then that the group found out who the armored warrior was. Over the course of the group's next seven levels they found out that the cleric had seen corruption at the level of the nobility in almost every single city on the Sword Coast, and was creating an army to overthrow the unjust governments in order to supplant them with a group that would think more about the poor than their own wealth. He was taking the poor and starving into his army, feeding, clothing, and training them so that they could take their homes back. It was then that they found out over the course of his years traveling the coastway, he had tried debating with each noble, calling on them to understand the plight of those they were stepping on or over with each coin that was added to their coffers.
The wealthy, however, didn't want to let go of any of their power, and his initial suggestions were dismissed as easily as he was from the intrigues of the various courts. He was doing all of this as a last ditch effort to change the corrupt politicians with people who genuinely cared about those on the streets. The group that I was playing with asked themselves whether they could be considered the "heroes" of the story when they noted that the nobles who hired them were literally eating the richest foods while the poor were literally starving unless they joined this bandit group.
I once ran a short campaign in the late 90's or early 2000's where the premise was that the player characters were all the children of nobles who had been sent to the palace of the king to attend a special school where they would be taught diplomacy and etiquette and so on. At least, that's what they believed. They eventually uncovered that the nobles were plotting a rebellion, and the king had forced the nobles to send them his children under the guise of this school, but they were, essentially, hostages against their parents' intention to rebel. So when the rebellion did start, the player characters had to decide whether to betray their parents and side with the king, or be thrown in prison for treason. It was further complicated by the fact that neither the king nor the nobles were blatantly "in the right." It was just politics, with each side having legitimate points-of-view. One of the player characters was actually trained to assassinate the king, and died in the attempt. One of the others sided with the king, and one of the others refused to side with the king. It was a hot mess and I loved it.
I originally found the scenario online. I wish I could find it again and give the author some positive feedback because it was one of the most enjoyable scenarios I ever ran.
you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.
If you want a compassionate villain, my favorite thing to do is to have them cross paths with the villain early on and here and there in the campaign. Perceived as some conspicuous traveler who has these philosophical thoughts and ideas. This villain or villains would take interest in the party, and ask them their thoughts and inputs on said philosophies they would present the party. Your party would be inadvertently fueling and shaping the villain based on their answers and giving the villain (you the DM) insight into their personalities, goals, and tragedies. Thereby giving the villain ways to justify their overall goals to the party in a way they might understand.
Great concept for a villain, as to the fairness of dropping a CR 15-20 villain on a low level party, rule 0 at my table is :"there's a lot going on in my world, not everything is going to be your level."
Agreed... also, rule 0.5: "Git gud".
In my campaign, I actually have about nine BBEG's. When the campaign started with the players at Level 1, all the BBEG were Level 5. In the first scenario, two of them put the beat-down on the party, captured them, tortured them, and left them crucified. (That's when one of my players decided, "I don't like those guys.") I'm now having the BBEG's level up when the main party levels up, so eventually the players will be strong enough to face them as a team (but never strong enough to face them one-on-one).
Gamora: You promissed.
Star-lord: *casts Power Word Kill*
Thanos: *dispel magic* I like you.
Aaron Floyd *counterspell
I love your video, and it's giving me great ideas, but I have to disagree with you on one point:
Thanos DID taunt Tony, albeit briefly and not in a truly villainous way. When Ironman actually managed to hurt him, he said, "All that for a drop of blood." That was definitely a taunt.
I have an NPC that although not the BBEG, does kinda fit the Thanos archetype.
He’s a Lich that decided that knowledge and magic are cool and all, the how and why people and societies use them is far more interesting. Magic doesn’t really change much and is kinda predictable especially from the viewpoint of an ancient immortal. But people and their affairs do nothing but change, mortals get up to all kinds of shenanigans, who knows what they’ll do next!?
So he “switched majors” from Arcane Studies to Sociology/Cultural Anthropology.
Side note: I run PF in the standard PF setting and in that setting there’s this region ‘Varisia’, a barely civilized frontier aka perfect adventuring territory.
The Lich is running a great(ly unhinged), centuries long sociological experiment to see if it is possible to civilize/colonize a region without efforts/guidance by powerful external (state) actors but instead by prolonged decentralized, low intensity/low cost means. AKA: adventurers and local settlements.
In order to gather primary sources, observe the main subjects as close as possible and to guide and adjust the course of the experiment (only weak minded fools adhere to academic rigors like impartial observation, non-involvement or proper methodology) he runs ‘Archibald’s Emporium’, a premier magic item shop/adventurer academy. This “Archibald” is his main disguise, old and powerful wizards are inherently mysterious and capable of Gods know what, so nobody questions how this gaunt geriatric human man has been running the place for over two centuries. He even ‘adopted’ a local family at the start as a distant uncle to improve his cover and has grown quite attached by now.
Of course he’s also responsible for about half the dangers besetting the region, stirring up all sorts of trouble to test his subjects. Goading rampaging monsters, getting aggressive tribal chiefs in the saddle, sponsoring bandit gangs, undermining peaceful diplomacy between the local cities, even triggering the neighboring Orc tribes to invade and redirecting settlement efforts closer to dragon lairs.
Gotta keep those adventurers sharp and busy spreading civilization somehow.
Fun fact: my players love him and trust him implicitly despite multiple of his ‘errands’ and advice getting them in way more danger than they bargained for. Maybe it’s the “special price, just for you my friend” discount he gives them sometimes on made-to-order magic items. Or maybe they just like the ‘kindly old man voice’ I do when roleplaying him, I dunno.
Okay, this guy is hilarious. Hats off to you!
I actually already used a character like thanos as a BBEG in a campaign. This was before I knew about characters like thanos or the god emperor of mankind. His objective was to bring an end to finite nature of the universe and prevent the innevitable death of everything and everyone that has ever lived. Instead of snapping his fingers, he was going to wipe out every living creature that couldn't "ascend" into a higher form of existence. He only needed 2 mcguffins instead of 6. There was no possible way for anyone that wasn't ascended to even put a scratch on this character. The players ended up needing to become what the BBEG wanted everyone to be by ascending themselves in order to take him on in a direct confrontation.
In the end, the BBEG only saw the players as an enemy once they wanted to initiate a fight on somewhat even grounds while the players spent somewhere around half the campaign with this looming fear that the BBEG could just come by and stop them from doing what they're trying to accomplish, since they knew they couldn't do anything besides attempt to talk him down. I think it left a lasting impression on the players and their characters because they couldn't try to complete their objectives without considering what the BBEG would do in response. Even though he only put forth a half assed attempt at stopping them before the final encounter, they still feared and dreaded having to meet him.
You could improve on this character by make him not bother with hindering the PC's because he sees the clear attempt of the PC to accend as something worth of respect. If they show promise of becoming something as strong as him perhaps he thinks it is worth letting them do so, since keeping only "accencion able" creatures alive is his goal in the end. So he only directly confronts the PCs once they have accended and also disapointed him for not sharing his "noble" view of the world.
I already can imagine the scene of the BBEG beating them to a pulp on their first encounter, and just as he is about to deliver the final blow saying something like "I see the potential in you, come find me once you are stronger, perchaps you will come to understand my point of view" and leaving them broken and pissed as hell.
@@sandropazdg8106 The way I read it was that BBEG was going to wipe out everyone who didn't ascend by a certain time. I didn't read it as he was going to wipe out everyone except those that had the capability to ascend.
Gues only OP knows for sure. Still I think the idea can go both ways.
I'd say it's fine to curbstomp your players with a boss encounter as long as it's planned to set up a future encounter they can win and you have a good reason for them to survive.
Our DM did a Thanos-type villain once.
The 'bad guy' wanted to wipe out most of the sentient population 'trim the fat of sentient life' as he put it.
A massive demon attack was happening in a few years and the world would have been doomed with so many 'weak people' occupying the world.
He set out to save the world by killing all the weak people in the world so the strong people wouldn't be so focussed on protecting them.
He knew our group (solid level 20's) would be an incredible asset so he deliberately spared us so he could try to convince us to join him mopping floor with us every single time every time we fought.
Towards the end, when we knew the demon threat was real, there was honest discussion about joining him.
Best. Campaign. Ever.
My tip would be to create the villain by building them as a player character you run through your world the entire path, take their adventures, interactions, and even failures become things noted in history, lore, or the connections to his followers/enemies. Make sure that you have people whom have already faced them before or other such connections, turn them into a living breathing character Before you cause The Snap (mental, though funny coincidence) that makes them go past what the world views as right and into whatever twisted version they have afterward.
I've tried to do that with one of my character ideas, but the campaigns I use him in always get cancelled.
Corvus Glaive, Ebony Maw, Supergiant and Black Dwarf are the epitome of awesome henchmen, and equal to the horsemen of Apocalypse in the X-Men universe. A big part of the villain's strength is how formidable their henchmen are, and makes them more intimidating to be pulling their strings.
when you say black dwarf do you mean proxima midnight?
@@gregsmw oh you're right, I got her mixed up with supergiant.
I have an idea for a campaign where the "big bad" is an angel who has essentially gone rouge, and has put into motion a plan to tear magic out of the world to prevent the cycle of destruction it causes. Obviously a noble goal, but it carries the steep price of the lives of millions of people, as all who are touched by magical influences will perish as the result of this course. Tieflings, spellcasters, even those whose who were resurrected by Clerics or Paladins or what have you will all be destroyed in the process of achieving his goals.
That sounds really interesting. Could you elaborate on this plan?
Something I also think is interesting about Thanos is that because he’s collecting Infinity Stones, it gives the audience and the heroes a chance to see his abilities build up from the beginning, and to work out strategies for the next encounter. It’s also fun to see a brand new ability nobody’s seen before that keeps him one step ahead of everyone else. I just thought I’d point it out for anyone designing these sort of ultimate magical items for the heroes and the villain to fight over.
The campaign I’m currently running has a Thanos type villain. It’s based around a series of prophecies that “unlock” a gate summoning the god Incabulos. He was a struggling wizard attending a wizarding school. He discovered the prophecies and begun to receive messages from Incabulos. Rather than face further ridicule from classmates, he left the school. He’s using Incabulos to hit the reset button on humanity, and to have a purpose as his right-hand man.
I didn’t realize it before, but he surrounds himself with equally broken individuals. I don’t think he necessarily sees them as inferior, just as their leader. An early minion was a dishonored soldier. Another was a wizard who had grown tired of the slow, tedious process of learning spells and craved power. He used them to fulfill some prophecies, while he fulfilled others.
I don’t think he ever mocked the heroes either. The one encounter the had with him, he referred to them as obstacles. But he never gloated or talked down to them. He even tried recruiting the party’s cleric (seeing her both as a formidable warrior and to heal the world once the destruction was over) through a dream. And he’s planning on offering the party’s druid the same deal. I think I’ll throw in a scene of remorse for killing an NPC bard too. Thanks for giving me some food for thought with this video.
Wow. Sounds like a really cool villain.
Wow. Sounds like a really cool villain.
I'm actually currently running a campaign like this. My main villain is a Lich and my players are currently 6th level. He hates death and worked his entire life to try to stop it. But when he neared the end of that life without success, he turned himself into a lich so that he may continue his work. Currently, he believes the only true way to prevent death is through undeath. The lich runs a faction called the Eternal Order and their main goal is gather magical items, powerful allies, and every secret they can. He's creating a massive hoard of undead servants and spreading their control across the realm.
Yoink.
Stealing this
Maybe i need this. So, how'd it turn out?
Perfectly balanced as all things should be
Not to mention perfectly made
I have a villain idea I've had in the hopper, still working on it, maybe some of you out there can use it. I've not got a game going yet but have offered to dungeon master for friends.
________________________________________
The villain was at one point in their life a normal wizard, they had long given up adventure & was dedicated to spell research within a large city - they were well-known & well-regarded. Their partner, a human, began to die simply from old age & despite all they did to aide them with their magic, they were on the cusp of death.
Fearful of what was to come, the wizard placed their partner under an Imprisonment (Slumber) spell & sealed them away in their tower. They began to pour over books in the hopes that they'd find some non-necromantic means to give them life again. The players if they were to go through their tower would find books on their research into positive & negative energy & the planes therein, the forces of life & unlife - as a hint about what's to come.
It was soon noticed that the grief-stricken wizard had left & upon this curious disappearance the towns guard searched the tower to find the wizard's partner suspended. Believing the wizard to have cursed them, the guards took the wizard's partner to the clerics & none were powerful enough to break the supposed curse. For their protection they were placed under watchful guard in the king's castle.
The wizard, out of the public & out in the wilds once more searched for ancient knowledge, or powerful items, in the hopes that magic beyond theirs could save their partner. Within a fallen temple to a forgotten god, there lay thousands of books, dusty & worn & they talked about all manner of forgotten lore & magic.
Soon, a book was found that seemed to talk to the wizard, it would write his very thoughts & respond to them, with incredible knowledge & understanding. The wizard became lost in this book & soon the book had taught them more within this time in this temple than they had learned in a lifetime.
The book offered a way to let them & their partner live forever & the wizard hurriedly took to preparing. The book wished them to open a portal to the positive energy plane, from which they could use old magic to distil a fragment of positive energy which could be used to fend off death.
The book however had lied & the ritual the wizard had unknowingly prepared was one that would turn them into an ancient lich. The book revealed itself to be the fabled & accursed Book of Vile Darkness. They'd bound their soul to ancient gods of death that would use them to unleash a wave of death unto the material plane.
In an instant, the temple fell silent, as a wave of negative energy radiated out from the wizard. Rats & flies dropped dead & then rose as undead. The very air grew still & stagnant as even micro-organisms died. The books withered & turned to pulp. Their flesh grew tight against the bone, but remained clean.
The wizard, realising they had been deceived tried to put an end to it, they tried to kill themselves - but to not avail. The pain caused their muscles to swell again, the pain felt good. To put a stop to their life & the death they would cause, they had to find a method of travelling to the positive plane.
As they pulled themselves from this forgotten temple, they clutched this tome, vowing that it will fall with them. Birds dropped dead & then in undeath flew on ahead as their eyes. Bodies of people who fell in the desert rose up, clasping at their ankles, binding them to crawl along at a walk. A looming, cloud of death, slowly passing over.
As they approached near a local desert town, several guardsmen were dispatched to combat the ensuing undead horde & the wizard pleaded with the guard to run - but the guardsmen fell in the aura of death & started to march alongside him. The wizard from then on, tried to avoid life.
Everywhere they went however, there was life & soon, they had fallen into a deeper despair than one could imagine, as rivers went stagnant, forests crumbled & died as the wood rotted. Their form had swelled with pain that felt good, but their mortal mind knew that it was horror.
Every time they tried to divine the truth, kill themselves in a new way, reach out to other powers, try & send life away, or so much as run, their attempts were folly & the god's of death laughed at them.
They had given up, they sat in decay & death, deep beneath the world for fear of destroying, all the while taunted by their failure & the voices of god's of death. Until, a light appeared, they turned to flee the light when all of a sudden, searing pain overtook them.
The light was that of a 7ft. long draconic serpent, a Ravid. In its limbs it carried a clutch of objects that danced to life under it's positive energy. The wizard fought against the pain, opening their eyes they looked upon the scene.
As the Ravid floated there, an odd puppet showed played out before it. A sleeping doll guarded by a doll that wore a crown, the crowned doll walked away to what seemed like a well within an underground chamber. As the wizard looked into the well, a bright light flashed within it, blinding the wizard.
The wizard could see for the first time in a long time the goal that they had forgotten & set about to complete it, with the knowledge that where the one with the crown watched over his partner, they would find the answer.
_______________________________________________________________
This lich would be set-up like a villain, the party would hear of this lich after the previous story had taken place, they'd hear of places dying as this lich allegedly "tears a path" to his goal. In reality, the lich is of course pleading that people avoid it & yet again grief-stricken at the pain they cause.
Mechanically, if the PCs went anywhere near this "villain" without protection from negative energy, they would die almost immediately & simply be resurrected at the wizard's side. Arrows would crumble, swords would rust, light would be snuffed, many spells would fail but even one that would hit would only serve to bolster the wizards power.
If the wizard were to die by some means other than positive energy, with no location for phylactery because one doesn't exist, they'd re-awake & continue on their path.
The fight then becomes, if they hear out the lich - are they lying about their true motives? How do they convince a populace to evacuate at the whims of a lich? What is the king hiding the lich wants? What has the king been using this for? Is the king who they claim to be? Does the lich entrust care of their partner to the party? Is the lich convinced they can save their partner & themselves? etc.
Some moral quandaries to play around with & I was thinking of foreshadowing it with the party early-game stopping a "necromancer" who used necromantic magic to revive a lost loved one (who they might find out died due to this lich's initial movements, before they went silent). The destruction of so many areas at a late point in the game might mean that the party also has a lot of emotional ties to NPCs or even players in the area & they might have a lot of hatred for this lich they didn't know, but now have to contend with it. The destruction would shape global politics & change more than just the landscape.
If anyone ends up using this idea or adapting it into something different, let me know how it goes. If you like this idea, you can hit me up for more villain ideas, I've got a fair few kicking around my head, some that are straight-on & some that are more morally grey, from either the "villain" or player perspective. Some high-level, some low, some mid, etc.
I'm glad I found this video because my BBEG is like Thanos, and pretty similar to the Necromancer-turned-Lich example he gave.
Mine is a king turned lich, who is corrupting paladins, clerics, and gathering all able-bodied fighters into his undead horde to wipe out the world, but it is in an effort to cleanse the world from all its evils, like a giant, undead flood. He has seen all the evil in the world, and he even founded an organization to help fight against the evils, but things happened, and he wants to start the world over and rule as its king. Forever.
"I shall not insult your honour by asking you to turn back or join my side. You are doing what you believe is right the same as I am." - Emperor Cassius Necromancer Supreme
In most campaings I've played the players end up just as evil as the villains so it's more like a yakuza style take down of another evil organization.
plot twist the bbeg's where just another party you had been DMing and they also went full murder hobbo
@@sandropazdg8106 I actually have an urban campaign set up where two parties of two are given a sandbox, with almost a dozen organizations vying for power. With leveling up requiring getting their hands on a finite resource, encouraging heists, take downs, etc. The goal is to essentially set them up to eventually be thwarting each other, never telling them there's another party, until finally an actual physical showdown is inevitable. At which point, all 4 players finally sit down face to face, and have to duke it out, or sort out their differences.
@@Tmanowns That sounds sweet. When it all comes to a head, if it turns out interesting at all, post a story of this somewhere so that I can hear how it turns out. Amazing idea.
Ok, so, I worked out a new villain based on my previous one while watchig this;
There are mcguffins that are located in towers/castles/dungeons/etc.
The villain is a demon, who sends a groub of his elite to gather the mcguffins while he gathers some himself, moving slower, but eventually facing off with the heroes at a mcguffin location.
The demon's goal is to use the mcguffins to turn every human into a demon, and thus ending the demon/human conflict.
He spares all he can, as he sees every human as "soon to be demons" and thus "one of his own".
When he faces the heroes, he wipes them out as while heroes have gathered some mcguffins of power, Demon has more, and decimates the playground with them.
In the final battle, he needs to place the mcguffins on some altars, which means he cant use them in fight, heroes need to disturb the magical sequence by removing the mcguffins or by destroying the altars.
Upon doing so the mcguffins are destroyed due to attempting ritual without proper magical order.
After the mcguffins shatter/destroyed/etc the demon faces the heroes without the help of the mcguffins, and loses the final battle, ending the game.
Keep wondering if Thanos is a chaotic good or lawful evil
For sure Chaotic Good. He's at the top but he doesn't care about keeping law's.
Shawn Redmon right! Thanks
@@redacted144
It's all good! Also there's a lot of Marvel characters made out in the internet.
As in D&D actions not intentions determine alignment, chaotic evil.
The act of killing half the population alone would be enough to push him into that alignment. (Enslaving half the population on the other hand would have been lawful evil)
Rorschach. CG or LG
Interesting take on Thanos as a D&D villain. You could even tie in the Infinity Stones as plot threads, or a Maguffin to protect/collect. Great video Cody keep it up ❤️
"All that for a drop of blood" - Thanos to Tony Stark. That was most certainly a taunt.
Now to support he did see them as heroes. "I hope they remember you" - Thanos.
Just wanted to point out he did provide that one taunt but you are correct in he didn't taunt them normally.
in one of my campaigns i had a villain which was creating terror and causing a lot of strife because he was trying to amas tools which would allow him to kill an evil god
his ultimate goal was the (very missguided) aim to rid the world of servitude to gods
he actually had fairly little interaction with the player himself, the main "present" villain was the "avatar" of a god of chaos that wasactually helping him
the avater was a spirit that was enslaved against his will and bound to a large number of different manaquins, meaning he could be in a lot of different places at once and carry out different goals at the same time BUT being unwilling while he had to carry out the gods wishes he was perfectly capable of talking to the party and explaining the whole previous point of "break free of the servitude of gods"
he also functioned as both a villain that could be faught to satisfy the murder hobos, but at the same time one they knew stabbing wouldnt beat, destroy one manaquin and youv stopped him at the moment right there, but to really beat him they would need to find some way to stop him just going into one of his countless others elsewhere in the world
Best villian I ever made was the father of 2 of the players, and evil acts not only saved the players lives but the ones they loved. However, if they let him continue millions others would die.
this has actually helped me give a more solid narrative to my big bad, cant wait to see how it goes closer to the end of the campaign
this is a very, very solid take on not just D&D, but storytelling - and the human experience overall.
I did a villain like 2 years ago and still playing the campaign. He is a Cleric that wants to banish magic from the world, wiping the chords of mana and life. He wants to prevent magic being used to chaos, and several plagues already had reached civilization from magic sources. This is a great deal, he wants to wipe what has dizimated a lot of beings, but in doing so, he was creating an artifact that would destroy everything and everyone touched to magic, including himself. The players loved it.
This has given me amazing ideas for tweaks to make to my big bad!!
A really good way to introduce a villain like this would be to actually have the party work with him. Let's say the party is prepping to go into a particularly scary dungeon delve when an imposing figure notes that they also have business in that dungeon and offers to travel with them. On the adventure he proves to be quite powerful in comparison to the PCs (But don't let him steal the PC's thunder or make the adventure a cakewalk, you're still trying to have a fun campaign after all and being second banana is never all that fun.). Let him interact with the party on even footing, speak his case and generally present the face of a heroic individual. The party eventually reach his objective, to which he takes it (and demands no other compensation for his time, letting the party keep everything else they found) and leaves.
Then, maybe during the next adventure or sometime after let the party know that they helped Thanos get the reality stone and now have to do something to stop him.
I particularly like this sort of introduction for a number of reasons: It lets the party have a chance to learn the character's goals and motives before they automatically paint a target on him. It gives the party an idea of how powerful he is and the specific tactics he uses when it comes time to have a real showdown with him. It also creates an emotional attachment to the plot, knowing that they actually helped the villain achieve his goals.
It can be a little dangerous though. If you make your villain's motivation too convincing then you run the risk of the party joining him... which could be an interesting campaign turn to be sure but most DM's probably won't be prepared for the party suddenly doing a 180 and going in a completely different direction with your campaign.
In a campaign like that, you need to prepare for the possibility that the PCs are going to side with him, just in case they actually do!
This video was incredibly helpful. For almost a year now, I've been planning a campaign that uses a lot of these themes.
But, the main idea of it is that 500 years ago Tyllus Urien, a Drow, rallied all the elven forces in Fearune to conquer the human kingdoms. He did this because the human king was practicing cult magics and trying to bring an Eldritch god to the mortal plane. Tyllus conquered the lands and subjected it to elvish rule because, in his mind, almost every major calamity happened at a non elf race. This has created some race/social hierarchies in the newly magic governed continent. Tyllus is lauded as a god-king (think imperium of man in Warhammer 40k) by the people.
The story involves the heroes discovering that this utopian society is actually a lie nurtured by generations of illusion/enchantment magic, habitual servility, and a big brother-esque magic totalitarian king.
Throughout the campaign, they come across many evil acts committed by the king, but there's always some element of it that seems to hint that the King isn't evil, even if his actions are. It will appear as though he's trying to summon the same eldritch god the last king did, but they'll discover that he's actually doing it to become strong enough to defeat the entity that threatens the plane.
Here's a link to a reddit post I did that goes into a lot more detail, if anyone is interested. www.reddit.com/r/mattcolville/comments/a0m5vh/im_wanting_to_dm_my_first_campaign_the_false/?
"No one identifies with the joker, no one roots for him."
You presume too much.
Agreed 100%. I feel like Strahd has many (though not all) of these traits in Curse of Strahd and it's what makes him such a great villain. In my playthrough, I'm playing up Rahadin as more of the powerful ally character and it's working really well with my players so far. Great video and I want to incorporate some of these ideas into my homebrew campaign going forward.
a rapidly evolving plague that currently is only mild. the big bad wants to use an ancient artifact to kill the plague but this will also kill the infected. the campaign can be about stopping him and hopping the healers can cure it. searching for a artifact capable of stopping the plague. or making as many people avoid the infection by helping to evacuate and contain the disase, just a bunch of small quests. based in this setting the villain could be a savior, a back up, a time bomb and a chaotic good villain
Senpai noticed me im so happy
I once had a Monk villain who after being driven mad by despair over the suffering inflicted on the innocents of the world and enraged by the aloof indifference of the powerful sought to link sapient creatures to one another via pain, specifically he wanted to make it so that when any one person felt pain everyone else in the world would suffer just as keenly and personally.
Thus he sought to coerce all creatures into creating a world that might not be a paradise but as lacking in suffering as possible, where failure to protect the least of the world meant an inescapable rebuke no matter how wealthy or mighty one is.
There was much debate on that one, especially when the BBEG and his followers were going around helping people and uplifting the poor and wretched.
I shared this on one of my discord channels. Can't say it enough. This is a solid video man.
This was actually pretty surprising. Very similar to how I made a D&D villain for my campaign with 70 in Str and Con, and had a massive hit pool, about 840 HP, and his intro was grabbing a Storm Giant's fist that tried to punch him, and yeeting it over half the continent away. All because of a prophecy of a great power coming that would destroy everything, and the villain thought he had to be the one to stop it, so he tried to get the magical legendary sword, but couldn't, and so he set out on a quest to get a similar power by gathering certain other items in hopes that he could use them to be able to get the sword.
You would like the BBEG of Wild Arms 2.
It was an encroaching parallel universe.
Half the game was about giving it a physical form to be able to fight it.
The Collection trope sounds like RuneScape's Demon Slayer quest. Impossible fight without the key item/blessing/ally becomes doable. The meat of the campaign turns into item collection. I think that's one example of striking the right balance between sandbox and railroad: urgency concerning an epic endpoint (which can be thoroughly planned), but great freedom for the players in the body of the story.
Bane (The Dark Knight Rises) and Ra's al Ghul also fit the Indomitable Zealot Archetype.
Heath Ledger's Joker, "Scarecrow" Dr. Crane and Two-Face (Madman archetype) secure their immunity through plot devices like politics and terrorism.
These supplanted the Falcone mafia, an excellent example of tier transition.
I started complex concept campaign. Players got stuck in the material plane, inhabiting their characters’ bodies. They later find the DM in game as well. They learn that the in game DM is no longer in control of the world. Later on, they learned that the DM was controlled by the BBEG. They have yet to figure out his goal.
I run my games on the weekend and I've been toying around with ideas in my head for my villain in the future. The group of players initially met some of the villains "cultists" as most of the locals knew them back when they were level 6. 12 members who seemingly were just killing people after attacking a town, Though the group found that they hadn't stole anything & was seemingly trying to avoid damaging the actual structure of the town itself.
In a quick confrontation they killed maybe 2 members of that 12 group and had a 3rd almost at deaths door. some of the other members of the enemies actually decided to grab to groups druid & hold them hostage in exchange for the 3rd member of their group. saying that they will end their assault here if they are returned and allowed to leave.
Though I'm still toying with ideas of how to introduce the main group in total, the main villain is mostly dealing with his minions not going about things exactly as he wants most of the time. But his main goal with his personal group that follows him is trying to go about removing godly worship, believing that gods cause more problems for mortal folk and races than they do help. He wants people to revere people and not higher entities that cause so many problems & through one way or another wants to remove religion country by country. The leader currently is struggling with dealing with the members who don't always go about things the way he wants, he also wants more attention from the countries to his actions to spread his word. Along with trying to do things himself & being very preoccupied with trying to grow his forces in ways that aren't just general recruitment or prepare for a battle to come ahead when they make a bigger move. Sorry for going on but if anyone has any tips or anything I'd like to hear em :)
I think that one way to make your villain more compelling is if he or she had a backstory involving one or more of the gods seriously messing up.
Maybe he's from another plane, one that fell apart due to reliance on the gods and he doesn't want the same to happen to this one?
I do have an idea for an undead druid (can't use the term lich because those are exclusively wizards) who's goal is to see the entire world become intelligent undead because he sees undeath as the final stage of evolution. In his eyes, he is noble because there is no pain when one is undead. There is no need to fight over land for shelter or for farming when one is undead. There is no sickness when one is undead. In fact, the mere classification of "undead" must mean that one is still alive in some way. The druid's method of converting the world to undeath is quite fantastic, though not as much as Thanos and his infinity stones. The druid plans to infect the Yggdrasil with his organic phylactery as a means to turn the very life source of the multiverse into a font of undeath, hopefully providing a painless, or at least very quick, transition to undeath while preserving the intelligence of those affected.
Another similar type of villain, with noble goals and everything, is Ozymandias from the Watchmen. Also great inspiration :)
I really appreciate all the video's on making good villains, Cody. I've been crafting this really interesting villain for a group I just started running recently and your videos have given me some really good ideas on how to build up this character.
To answer your question: I think using a 15 to 20 CR main villain/antagonist on a relatively low level party is perfectly fine as long as you are careful about how you use them. The one I'm making will probably be up there quite a ways also. It's my belief that good role playing can balance any situation out.
Here’s The 2nd To Last Final Boss For my Last Campaign
Tarkoth Barituza
Half-Blue-Dragon Paladin, Oath Of Conquest, Lawful Evil.
Tarkoth is Head Of The Cult Of The Dragon (My Last Campaign Is Loosely Based On Rise Of Tiamat). He has the Blue & Black Mask Fragments As He Is Already Allied With The Black Wyrmspeaker (He’s Blue) The Party Has 2 Options For Which Mask Fragment To Go After Next, Green Or White He Sends The Black Wyrmspeaker After The One The Party Goes After And Goes After The One They Don’t. Either Way, They’ll Both Arrive At The Mountain Where The Red Wyrmspeaker Reside. He’ll Incapacitate The Party (KO Them) While He Leaves With 4-5/5 (The One The Party Went After Will Most Likely Be Dead) Leave To Hell’s Cauldron (Deep Pit In The Middle Of The Sea In My World). He Very obviously plans to release Tiamat. His goal is to eliminate Chaos Using Tiamat. Even When They Do Kill Him (Especially If They Do) Tiamat Will Rise
One of my friends created a campaign where their character basically is Thanos. They never intended for it, but it has a ton of parallels.
My version of a "Thanos" villain was a campaign where the players could choose their own villain. There was a Drow Necromancer that pursued Necromancy only to truly revive her little sister (Ressurection magic didn't exist in that world), an Information Broker that seeked to mke everyone equal due to her impoverished upbringing at the hands of the upper classes stealing all money in her land and the King, whom seeked to create world-wide peace by installing incredibly powerful warriors everywhere that acted on act of violence (think Mantle of Responsibility from Halo). To do this, they seeked the 5 macguffins that served as sentient keys to lock a Magic Amplifier away that would allow spells to be incredibly more powerful than their original. For example, Animate Dead would truly Ressurect, Summon Monster would become Gate, and so on. I made sure to have each villain have a personality and flaws that reflected their background and upbringing.
Most interesting part of the campaign was the Dwarf finding a sword that had a soul of a legendary Warlord bound to it, retraining to Bloodrager to be more like the soul in the sword and attempting to revive her through Soul Transposition forcibly into a slave he bought.
"Never once taunted or belittled Tony and the rest."
Thanos: "All that for a drop of blood..."
Eh... a little shade was thrown. But he definitely gave more respect throughout.
fantastic video, thanks for taking the time to make this
Great thought exercise - and multiple perspectives hypothetically explained. Very well explained !
I find it pretty funny that my DM did this in the first campaign I was in... even worse, there were two people who basically were Thanos.
Geoff John’s Green Lantern run is a modern day classic. It was the best time to be a GL fan.
Wat too easy to beat. Just cast 'Reduce' on someone and crawl up his butt 🐜
You underestimate the power of Thanos’ booty cheeks
Or teleport inside him wearing heavy armor and make him explode. If it's too big, teleport inside its brain. That's what I did once with an aboleth.
I love the idea of actually trying to set the players AS a Thanos type villain.
Here's an idea: the players come across a village where a lone ranger has been just imprisoned for trying to kill one of the locals. She is raving about a zombie plague. The next day, a zombie plague breaks out. It turns out a that a swarm of insects has passed through the village. Anyone who experienced a red bite will turn into a zombie in a week, as the incurable infection takes hold. The only way to wipe it out is to kill those infected...
The other thought of how to set up a Thanos type villain would be to leak them little bits of information that someone is collecting the materials to release a deadly plague. The main villain turned out to be the Kings Doctor, well loved and respected and in charge of the doctors of the realm. He has the idea to tailor a plague to wipe out a certain segment of the population for a very good reason...
Every time I notice your sign-off spiel, I remember that the way I got into D&D was I wanted to reconnect with some friends who I hadn't seen in several years who live several states away from me who I care very deeply for. The campaign has been rad as hell, and I'm glad I reconnected with them.
My friend has a good villain, not sure if it's a great villain like Thanos, but a quick tldr is that his species was wiped out by the gods of the universe (Starfinder I should mention) because they had the power to overwhelm and destroy them. So the gods wiped out the species, all but one who managed to escape. This villain now is on a crusade of revenge to eliminate said God's and in fact us the players are aligning ourselves with him after hearing him out (and cause as players we wanted to stay gods, sue us)
Your description of a good villain is similar to what made Strahd such a great D&D villain.
That Thanos was capable of running a galactic empire with his philosophy shows that economics in the MCU are about as realistic as it's physics.
Wow, my gm hit almost every point mentioned with the villain in or last campaign. He was overwhelmingly powerfull with a following of powerfull and interesting individuals. His goal was to collect several fonts of power in order to restore/avenge his clan that was whiped out by an evil witch thanks to the betrayal of the clan elder. He was always polite unles provoked and didn´t go out of his way to hurt us.
this gave me a really cool idea for a villain, a massive lv20+ pure blood orc who is destroying schools and colleges. the thing is his underlings and the "mini bosses" leading up to him are ether mixed bloods {half elf, half orcs, and so on} or are tieflings and drow that worship Eilistraee. after some games and fights they find out that this is not a normal orc but one that is kinda smart and kind. they learn things like how he saved a village from a drought by having hsi men bring the village water, or how he reunited slaves and their families after freeing them. not only this but they learned during a battle that before destroying any school they will take the scrolls and books for some unknown reason. the reason for all this is that him and those under him were once slaves and he is the first orc in his family that learned how to read. that he saved those that were slaves in a city and would teach them things, like how to use magic, how to fight with a sword, or even how to heal each other. the entire idea is he sees schools and collages as a way for those in power to keep information to them selves and away from those that truly need it. he also sees this withholding of information as a form of slavery and is willing to do anything {even kill nobles, teachers, and guards} to end slavery once and for all.
@Dicelord N yes and even people he thinks that dose so like nobles, priests, and the like. he would even attack churches, temples and marketplaces not because he hates them. he dose so because he seems them twisting and lying to others to control them and this alone is filled with plot hooks. have a cleric/ paladin? have some of his men wipe her temple off the map. wizard or monk have him destroy their school. warlock {if evil} have the patron see him as a threat {if good} have the patron see his evil acts as something that can not stand. for the druid it could be that all those cities burning is harming the forest, and so on and so on i mean the plot hooks write themselves after a wile. the important thing is two fold. one : have the bosses and generals of his army talk along the lines of "we are to free your minds and bodys from servitude" or "we are liberators not conquerors", and two: have the main bbeg show his ideology not just speak it. there is a reason why i said lv20+ in that he is a lv 20 in at lest three classes that do not contradict. this is so the barbarian can not rage kill him, or the ranger can not crit him, and can defend against all the spell caster has. he is not "a game boss".no he is the end game boss that spent most of his short orc life training and learning to be a weapon to free all races. with that said he should act like it, he dose not talk down to the heroes. he gives them pointers seeing them as those that might carry on his mission when he dies if they are willing to learn. he dose not taunt or intimidate them, he enjoys the fight as what it really is, a test of the mind and body.
"I'm really looking forward to GoT season 8."
That aged like milk.
One my favorite campaigns I was apart of finished about a year ago and we never actually beat the “big bad” we ended up taking a deal he offered us but man did I love playing in that campaign and I never really could put my finger on why but after watching this I feels like my dm has seen this video 3-4 years ago when he created his big bad like damn it’s insane
WOW! We’re so similar, I never expected that! When you said how you liked Marvel, but are more of a DC guy, and that you like Sinestro, not just bc you’re a Green Lantern fan, I just realized that everything you said there is identical to my own views!
My Teifling character Corath, would definitely wanna kill Thanos because not only would it feed his symbiotic worm to make him stronger, but with how powerful he is, thanos could cause my character’s throne world (a pocket demintion that increases in size with killing more strong opponents, and allow him to escape death) increase to the size of a fucking solar system.
This is great for anyone trying to use The Blood War as a central tension. The big bad can be someone trying to amass enough power to overpower both sides. “To end the eternity long war? Anything.”
You would have to be careful at maintaining the balance (
Why not? It would definitely make for an interesting story.
Maybe after the PCs "join the dark side" there are other groups trying to stop the BBEG and the players fight them. Maybe they'll see that they made a mistake at some point and betray the BBEG. Maybe they won't^^
It is a role playing game, let the players choose the roles they want to play. If they choose to switch sides and fight for the BBEG then they are now enemies with their former allies, employer, society, etc. That gives plenty of oppurtunity for new rivals or BBEG to replace the old one and is a story they might not get to play very often.
Love your channel, but this is one of my favorite videos of yours. Great stuff. Thanks for the ideas!
I'm finishing the naruto anime and I like the Madara Uchiha villain... he seek to make peace through genjutsu. Magical ninja hypnotism... it places everyone in a world were everyone is happy and there is no war. However he basically enslaves the entire population of earth to feed himself power because this method also drains people of chakra (the magic fule for ninja).
For one of my games my villain is trying to find a home for his people, the people of the silver angel. In the process he's attempting to stop another 100 year war from happening preemptively by eliminating the cities than vampires and damphir are living in in the game. His ultimate goal is to make everyone safer and to bring his people to a promised home land.
One of his subordinates i following him because this goal will ultimately allow him to rebuild his lost homeland. Sympathetic villains really do make for more interesting characters
17:45 ish: it depends on what you and the players agree fair means. Curse of Strahd is a module where the big bad could regularly pop in and then monologue and maybe kick ass if the party needs a backhand or two when they are level 3 or 4. If that was or is up your alley and you enjoy having to work to overcome the power difference, then its great. Maybe have a CR 10 version for low levels and through the story he gains new power and abilities and becomes CR 15-20 later on. But some people and some parties don't want to have that struggle. They want to kick ass and take names, and knock down their problems as efficiently as they can. Both are fine.
This was super helpful! I'm currently in the process of trying to write a villain and the cause that he fights for, and Thanos was partial inspiration. Being able to zero in on what exactly made Thanos such a great villain really helped!
In my campaign I set up the villain as a typical tyrant-style ruler. He killed the old king and took over. But I also slipped in that he had organized clerics to go from village to village to alleviate famine. No of them picked up on it, but after they beat him and found out he wasn't really the bad guy, those clerics were the first thing that popped into their heads. Very satisfying DM moment.
This could also be useful if your a DM, and working with a team of DM’s, with multiple player groups playing the same, but slightly different, campaign. And they can make it a secret McGuffin, or hide it in a magic item, so when you want to use this plot they will say, “did you know you were carrying around the one thing that can kill us all, and that you were using it as a accessory, or sell it for 3 copper coins.” Just something funny to think about.
Using the Infinity Stone as a reference. You can have one group who has one of the stone and another who has one of the other stones.
Then when you are ready to introduce your big bad Thanos villain, you can have the groups fight one or more of his minions fighting to take the stone.
Then around the end, or when the groups are smaller because you kill some of the players, you can bring the groups together for the final fight, or make it into a two part fight as he goes to collect the last of the stones.
You can work out the plot later, like The Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why? That’s just how I think you can play it out.
This got me thinking. Instead of a singular "big bad" the enemy could be another party of high level adventurers who are enacting the kind of high level influence on the world that strong parties have.
I have an adventure seed that i've been cultivating forever: an empire vs the fey. The players are caught in the middle. The empire has a seriously scary paladin running their war, and the fey are fighting for survival. Both sides of the conflict aren't bad. They're just fighting to make the world one they want to live in.
Thanks for this video. As a new DM, this gave me great points on how to look at my "big bads".
my campaign is gonna revolve around trying to stop what is essentially an alien invasion... doing a home-brew where dark heresy characters get caught in a warp storm and sent into the dnd setting... so a few other factions like orcs and chaos also get caught up in it and basically will be trying to build a portal to that world for them to invade... meanwhile they will be unaware for a portion of the campaign with a few hints that there is some chaos abound... like first mission they will be investigating a run down abbey where people have been disappearing and when they get there the find bodies with blackened tongues and blackened fingers. this is being caused by a book that was brought into the world a few years ago that belongs to khrone the blood god. the players will not know this at first but if they touch the book they will have to make a pretty challenging wisdom save and if they fail then they will be cursed with bloodlust... thier first boss will be up against an aaxte that got corrupted from sed book.
This is definitely helping me to shape my BBEG. He's an aberrant being made from a fraction of an elder God, and has the final goal of opening a portal so that this elder God can come in and absorb all life, trapping each creature's consciousness in a dream of a perfect life, assimilating them onto itself. His main motivations are that 1-he sees the way things are as inherently flawed and beyond fixing through other means and 2-a constant, overwhelming feeling of emptiness due to being but a fragment of the true being (a safeguard from his creator to ensure he'd accomplish his goal in order to return to its creator), which results in an inherent compulsion to feed on the brains and psychic energy of humanoids.
I am pretty sure they had a thanos esc villian for Lady Vol? she has a few powerful allies and a backstory made most people not only agree with her motive but made them feel bad to?
minus the being the hero part, she wants to be the villain lol
i know i am a yea rlate, but i want to share my villan. its an archfey, who has the ability to see the future. but not a fixed future, but one possibility of it. every decision anyone makes changees it. its like a tree and she follows a brach at the time.
what she sees is our world in present time. citys and technik everywhere. nature is put in cages and chains, suppresd to only grow as far as humanity aloows it to. and not only on the primematerial plane. but also on the feywild. and she fights that future with everything she has. the party has by now just heard of her. not encounterd her yet.
In a campaign i made characters for every one to play except for one player ton use. We used a high cr party to introduce everyone to the campaign. In prologue introduction. The villan was many levels higher than the party. It beat them down and abused them. I killed off many but the for the one player that made his own character for the campaign. As the campaign began. Everyone now with player made characters, including the player made character from the prologue. Started the campaign like any other. As things went on they once again meet the op cr villains. They now have clues to what the villains are able to do to them. I had 2 was to build the villains. Start the villains close in level, allowing the to gain levels as a pc dose. Give the pc's the feeling they might be able to beat the villian now. I went with start the villain out as super powered op villain off the start. So the pc's qould have to meet the villain over and over again and again.
I have to say that this was a enjoyable video, and intrestingly enough this applies to one of my PC's more than my villains
I made a villain recently called the revolutionary. He was an adventurer that came to believe that the bureaucracy of the outer planes, the very concept of gods and the alignment system, was a secret, insidious agent of tyranny. He believed that the enforcement of good, bad, chaotic, or lawful intent upon people of the world was inherently a infringement upon their free will. He had also come to believe over the years that slavery was worse than death. So, he erased as many records of his existence as possible and infiltrated the divine bureaucracy, slowly but surely controlling and manipulating it. He slowly gathers the necessary power and equipment to tear a hole in the side of the universe, merging us with the far realm and resetting reality. He can only take a few hundred through, and he is taking the souls of everyone else alive for power. Doing this will kill him and everyone he loves and countless others. But give me liberty or give me death.
I ran a campaign a few years ago, where a local lord was revealed to be a vampire and he was conquering other lands. The party defeated him, but were unable to find his coffin to ensure total defeat. The vampire later came back and confronted the players multiple times, but not to fight them. It was revealed that he did not become a vampire by choice, but was manipulated by a succubus and had been forced to serve her and he was actually remorseful. The party's paladin ended up being the only member of the party who not only accepted it, but befriended the vampire. Of course, still being under the control of the succubus, he did have to fight them again, but he gave the party some important information regarding her plans which eventually led to her downfall.