Sir you are writing the kinds of campaigns I long to be in ಥ_ಥ. Btw used your phantom rogue character idea for Belinda as my PC in Icewind Dale. I kept the cinnamon role aspect but amped up the creepy cute factor (think Sadako from The Ring but super friendly lol). She's been so fun to play!
My first reaction to end of this video was gonna be "you forgot the most crucial part of rivals..... ROMANCE".... but then you post this banger of a response and now im beat 👀
I like the idea of the cleric/healer that doesn't have a rival in the rival team, and when the parties fight the two clerics just sit on the same rock healing their party while complaining to the other about all the stupid stuff they had to fix.
Hardly a fortnight ago, the orc sired moron drank a bottle of alchemists fire Thinking it was ale. By the gods, it would be easier to train a displacer beast to use a litter box...
In our Call of the Netherdeep campaign, the pre-made cleric ended up becoming a solo version of that. Our PC party was oddly-numbered and perfectly paired off with the rest of the pre-mades EXCEPT for their cleric, who had no foil on our side. So every time we interacted, their cleric ended up playing the third wheel / beleaguered parent chasing after both parties to mitigate the gas-fire the rest of us would inevitably become. It honestly made the odd-man-out cleric somehow a foil of the whole of the rest of us, and made the rivalry interactions that much more entertaining. That experience and watching this video is making me want to deliberately add odd-man-out characters for the rival party in future games of my own.
Another cool idea is to have a conflict triangle involving the hero(es), the villain(s) and the rival(s), bonus points for having the "enemy of my enemy" moment, give your players one or two chances to temporarily join forces with their rivals to defeat the villain, depending on how the players treat their rivals have the rivals join the Villain or the Heroes
I was thinking even in this video, using the example characters, that the villain team could be like: Cyrilla's personal villain is an eldritch knight/warlock who used his force of will (and some backroom deals) to bind the other Dwarven nobles to his ambition, and is so corrupt that he allows his nobles to wreak havoc on the kingdom - the same kind of havoc as her father. Alois' personal villain could be the right hand of this tyrant, a knight whose sense of honor has him do everything the king demands to the letter, even if it's fucked up; He never refuses an order, and has made himself a loyal ally. Turmeric's could be an assassin who, like Turmeric, never knew his parents and was born in a gutter, but the Usurper saw potential in him and raised him as his own son like an adoptive father. He now serves the Usurper loyally, feeling like he owes him his life for raising him from poverty. Uses the same model as Pointy Hat proposed (an opposite, a mirror, and a mix) but they're just straight up villains that the rival party would *also* have a reason to hate. Alois and Fornata would hate the deeds that the right hand of the Usuper would do because they'd be so fucked up, Cyrilla and Dario would hate the Usurper because, in Cyrilla's mind, he'd be destroying her father's legacy, but in Dario's mind, he'd be another tyrant but worse. For Turmeric and Moira, Turmeric would hate that the Assassin got the opportunity that he never had, to have a parent, and Moira would hate that the Assassin just *listened to* and *obeyed* their parents and would be confused by the sense of duty that he feels to the Usurper. Also @Pointy Hat, followup video about creating good villains? I liked this one a lot.
I think another triangle that could be fun is like the Pokémon rival method. You have one you counter, one that counters you. Maybe a more antagonistic force and a more friendly competition. Like one team will buy you a drink and swap stories with you. After a successful dungeon crawl, challenging you to drinking competitions, or “which team can catch the most bounties, winner gets half the losers earnings” The other might be like Gary muddafuggin oak and challenge you to duels right after a dungeon. Then call you a “edit for TH-cam” for losing.
Oh totally. Even had the rivals become a lot stronger during a period of time the party was missing or they were far away on an adventure. When my party went to the feywild, they returned only to hear how strong they became, and they tried to challenge the Campaign villain, and one member of them died and their leader lost an arm. Later on during another Villain's arc, that villain encountered the rivals, and that gave time the players to escape the scene with the npc they were trying to rescue from a public execution, and my players stopped halfway through and said; "wait. We still don't want to leave. We want to know what happens, and who wins!" I will never forget that session, they were truly hooks and for many sessions, I left the mystery of who won that fight and my players were trying to investigate what happened
Can't believe this, I was building the rivals and planned to introduce them in 4 or 5 sessions, I'm adapting them to appear sonner now I had material to work with.
One of my favorite rival teams was the first I created. It was entirely to prevent a TPK in a low-level dungeon. The PCs were pretty deep in the dungeon and after a few bad rolls they were ALL making death saves as the monsters loomed over them. Then another adventuring party showed up at full health (because most of the dungeon was already cleared!). The players HATED that they had to be rescued so THEY made this adventuring party their rivals!
@@Zaprozhan indeed infact sometimes theres just in party rivals who will GUTTERISE eachother into problems and then if it gets the entire party into a mess they will have to unfuck the situation
This is one of the options created by the existance of a Rival team, a "Don't kill the party move" that offers more roleplaying options going forward, as long as not overused. But if these sort of things are creating too much vitrol in the party, one opposite trick would be an adventure hook in the form of a half dead Rival team member stumbling up to the party and after some back and forth swallowing their pride to ask for help because the rest of their team were taken prisoner and the PC's are the best chance they can see to save them.
I thought of a funny rival being a necromancer wizard who is jealous that one of the PC's has such a large group of friends so the necromancer summons and takes control over undead to have their own friends. The further you progress in the game the more powerful undead they have like at the start they have a skeleton or zombie for each PC -1their idle. Then they slowly turn some them into stronger undead such as wights, ghouls and vampires.
Remember, you don't have to make rivals for the group ahead of time. You can turn an npc that a player has interacted with into a rival. This way you can see what basic premise the players respond to, then build from there.
Especially in a new champaign where you haven't gotten a handle on how the PC's will be running their character. If you find that one of your NPC's is making sparks fly with one PC, that's a good foundation, to expand from.
Yeah that's probably a better way of doing it, naturally there's gonna be NPC's the players dislike and it's fun to make the players hate those NPC's even more.
Yeah but its also fun to make an idea of a rical group before hand and shape their personality, background, races, amount etc or whatever you want once you have your players.
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, inspires more murderous hatred in my players than me trying to set up a rival team for them to face. Like, I don't know why they always jump straight to "we must slit their throats in the night" mode... but they do. Always. It's kinda frustrating....
Some DMs adopt the rival team so much that they switch to a DM Vs player mindset, backing the rivals over the development of story (together, not the DM alone). I'm not saying it's what you're doing but perhaps consider it. If players who play for freedom feel like they're being restrained they'll often lash out as murder hobos.
Rival players can be very dangerous narratively, as their very existence questions protagonists in ways not every player wants to deal with. For example, the player behind the dwarven princess in the video may not have any desire to explore what her rival brings to the table, opting instead to just goad them into combat and kill the perceived 'disruption' to their character's planned arc. It's a good idea to let rivals occur naturally, or at least broach the subject with a player before trying to give them one.
Antonio, you’re so creative and hard-working, it blows my mind. I’m so happy that you make videos for people to tune into to enhance their roleplaying experiences. You should be so proud of yourself
I feel called out by the Wizard Apos'Trophee Hyphen-Name, and I am here for it. I need a Wheel of Goals for villains to let the players spin for what is happening.
Not actually confirmed in any Tolkien work. Only implied as a joke in the Jackson films, which itself was possibly based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld books in which (as part of the satire of Tolkien) all dwarves do indeed have beards. No really, it’s an assumption based on a parody of the original work. I used to get this wrong too.
@@intergalactic92 Appendix A: "Indeed this strangeness they have that no Man nor Elf has ever seen a beardless Dwarf - unless he were shaven in mockery, and would then be more like to die of shame than of many other hurts that to us would seem more deadly. For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike; nor indeed can their womenkind be discerned by those of other race, be it in feature or in gait or in voice, nor in any wise save this: that they go not to war, and seldom save at direst need issue from their deep bowers and halls."
@@jonttopiait was something unique to their race that a lot of people apparently liked, in a fantasy setting people tend to like the things that edge more towards fantasy rather than just normal humans, it added a sense of humor or intrigue to the dwarves that was stripped away. I dont personally care, im just saying i understand why some do, I mean it was the 1st female dwarf pictured on screen and they willingly chose to subvert everyones expectation without replacing it or justifying it. I mean we could all just pretend she does in fact have a beard comparable to malw dwarves its just not on her face to preserve the humor at least.
I gave my players a Cambion Rival, he fought them 1v5 at like level 2 (he had no armor) with no magic items. Quite close, and they won. He escaped with his superior flying speed. They met him a few times after, mainly doing his own thing. Any he made his own little party that is doing many quests the party ignores, they even worked together once. To keep up with the party, he also gained levels at Barberian (his AC is made from DEX+CON+CHA ;)) He mainly focuses on gainning political influence and getting in with the important tribe leaders
one very important thing, a "devil is in the details" kind of thing, is that it is VERY important thing actually know your players characters before even considering a rival. i'll say to give your characters a session, or two, or half the campaing ok maybe not that much, to get to know yout players, what they actually do what they actually think how do the actually react, it's never easy to get any of that on the character sheet the first time without some experience precisely because characters are always iterating upong themselfs while playing. your paladin may have syad that he is the shining face of honor and piaty but maybe the player themself isn't actually aware of sayd details and missed an oportunity to help someone or an insult to the crown simply flew over their head whem they heard it idk, a very important and specific detail that informs that a rival atacking sayd desire may not be able to fully succed in their objective but a ruval constructed in other direction upon the same character might have a bigger impact. but still, rivals are their own people even if the narrative role they have isn't "as strong" as it can be, and it can also be worked arround in the same self iteration and improvement the character they are reflecting is going throw. be careful and have fun, after all that's always the goal
I ran a rival group delving into the Underdark alongside my party once. At first, tensions were very high. They travelled together for the majority of the time, but they weren't as high levelled. Instead, I built them to be perfectly working together while the party still had a few issues with communication. Instead, they were proactive and had strong opinions, as the rival teams were all basic copycats of the party, with classes switched. The rogue-sorcerer became the bard, both being the heart. The Coffeelock became a cleric. The cleric and bard had a small fling, where as the Coffeelock and rogue-sorcerer were an active thing. They spoke about relationship stuff during downtime. The ranger became the... ranger... Different subclass. Planeswalker to horizon Walker, and from skeleton to aasimar. Lastly, our cleric, which became the eldritch Knight. Firbolg to Goliath. They had similar backstories to the party, but they were all based around a prominent location the party was exploring, where an elder Evil had touched the earth and permanently scarred the land. Had a lot of fun making new aberations for Y'chak. Anyways, the party had a lot of fun bouncing off these NPCs, and without prodding, they gravitated to their counterpart, as well as the party's leader, the dwarf cleric. When they had to split up, I swapped a character out for a doppleganger, and that doppleganger was caught within minutes. The problem was the doppelganger was hunting the party and had his own group of baddies actively hunting the party down for main plot reasons. Long story. However, because they got caught early, the rest of the enemy party wasn't ready, leading to a 7 v 2 against a monk and hexblade. The monk and hexblade where higher leveled than the party. Level 14 to the party's level 9, and the rivals' level 7. With the numbers advantage, the doppelganger monk fled, covered by the revenant hexblade, who perished for the 4th time. Suicides, killing the rival ranger. One revivify later, and the only question was what happened to the eldritch Knight.... He was killed hours before, body lost in a river. He was revived via clever use of a homebrew item that summoned a Coatl to aid the party, and brought back to life later by the party's cleric, his foil.
I'm going to introduce a rival to my party's warlock: and it's his older brother. This video gave me everything I need to make this rivalry dynamic and fun!
ooh that’s cool i’m using a warlock and i want to ask my dungeon master if my character can meet his older brother which is a paladin it would be really cool because my character is kind of a demonic version of a paladin!👍 also my character grew up in a rich family of monster hunters and he is the only one that is weak and have no special powers and his goal is to somehow defeat lots of monsters and prove his worth to his family and his big brother is an extremely talented and powerful paladin i definetely think that he would be in the middle of the spectrum.
I’ve got a character whose main flaw is he’s overprotective and doesn’t really believe others can take care of themselves. He constantly worries about everyone, even one of his siblings who’s got a really safe job as a baker. A sibling just existing in another party would be a great rival
Gosh Darn It, you constantly impress me. Rivals, Angels, and pop singers (burlesque bards with fan blades). I'm not surprised that your views are getting close to the 100k, because every aspect impresses me: Animation (Love your aviator btw), voice (made for voice over - figure you either L.A. or Miami), and number one...your creativity. Gosh, that's where it gets hard to quantify. Creativity. You have it and your whole production shows it in spades. Keep up the great work, your steady growth in subscribes, shows that you've got "it". Now, get sponsors.
I dm’d a campaign with two parties in the same storyline, one week party 1 had a session, the next week party 2 had a session and one week, both parties came and it turns out I collected party 2 to be rivals, so it was team vs team, and the parties loved it.
It’s cool to see that I’ve had the same idea of giving my characters rivals! I’m going to play a warforged bard who decided to abandon his life of violence to pursue his newfound passion: music. But his foil is his former commander who zealously believes it’s the purpose of a warforged to live and die as a soldier (and begins hunting his former comrade because in his eyes “you serve no purpose”).
I actually recently played in a campaign with a "perfect mirror" rival group. The general idea the DM went with was "What if the PCs always rolled nat 20s (at least when they weren't "on screen") The Paladin, a literal Prince Charming. The Wizard, basically Merlin,. The rouge was the perfect gentleman thief and the bard basically David Bowie. We first learned of their existence at level 2 where we arrived at merchant to try and get some healing potions and they'd just sold their entire stock to another party at a huge discount. At level 4 we arrived at a village we'd heard was under siege by Gnoll bandits only to learn they'd already been cleared out and their stash of magical weapons looted. At level 5 we met them in a dungeon where they did basically made us look like clowns, ultimately provoking our Barbarian to challenge them to a non-lethal test of strength. The challenge was accepted, but of course they wanted us all to take a long rest to makes sure all of us were in peak condition. With perfect coordination they destroyed us. For the next few levels we'd hear about their exploits mirroring our own (if we took too long getting to an objective, when we'd get there, it was already done. Of course we ran into a city at level 10 where a tournament was happening with a powerful flame brand as the grand prize. Of course they were there... and we won. We soundly beat them in the semi-finals. They were gracious in defeat and wished us the best... those bastards. But that's where things started changing. After beating them, when we'd get to a city they had already been to there were rumors floating around about us. "We were incompetent. A group of clowns. Not worth the trouble to hire us for anything." They were spreading the rumors. There were a few more encounters, they beat us once more. We beat them to a few high profile campaign beats. They... beat us again. The Big Bad showed up, the pressure of two bands of adventurers foiling all their minions finally forcing them to show their hand. In character our rouge questioned if we shouldn't just let them have this one. The dude was too powerful. Our paladin reluctantly agreed, but pushed us to move anyways to back them up. We didn't like it, but "greater good and all that nonsense". About halfway into the dungeon we found 3 very fresh corpses and David Bowie hiding in fear.
My favourite kinds of foils are the mirror foils. There’s something incredibly cool about seeing all the cool tricks of your hero in the hands of someone he who may not share your protagonist’s morality.
My DM did this after I gave him the sob backstory of my character; basically a character my Tiefling Paladin thought was dead, wasn't...I really love him for it...
This is INCREDIBLE material. I'd honestly never thought of non-villain antagonists in D&D, and I absolutely love this concept and how you approached it. Thanks for this video!
You are quickly becoming one of my favorite dnd creators. You are amazingly creative ane put so much love into your work. Your energy and passion is honestly contagious, thank you for your work.
Dude, I cannot believe your timing. I was preparing a rival team (with a really silly name gimmick) but was having trouble figuring out their personalities. Now I have a good source to do so, I'll probably play that card a little earlier than I had planned, to give my gang more time to expend with them. Big thank you, great material as always. pd: I'm also using the Dragontouched idea, plan to have my gang taking part in their revolution. Huge thanks for that too.
I've always thought it'd be fun to have a rival party who while not particularly effective in combat, are a band of talented acrobats and illusionists who constantly try to upstage the party with elaborate staged battles and performances.
In my experience, rivals are a lot like pets; great to have, if occasionally disruptive, but a terrible surprise present. Always ask before showing up to a session with one.
In my own personal Exandria game, I made a 'mirror' team of rivals that reflects a lot to my players' characters. Just making them was so fun, thinking of arcs to intertwine with theirs and personalities to 'mirror' them. I absolutely love what you made and love within this video of what are rivals, how to use them and how to make them in ones own game. We are going to celebrate hard when we reach 100K and rightfully deserved for the amazing content ya make. The characters and rivals you made, GOD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH AND THE ART IS ADORABLE! I relate so hard to the Royal Knight and Blacksmith Revolutionary, also just an absolute sucker for a run away rich Pirate gal! Mi pana eres el mejor! Y mucho suerte con todo! 💛
This video is an absolute goddamn gold mine of DMing advice. You, sir, are awesome and you should feel awesome. I inadvertently already came up with a rival character for one of the players in my upcoming campaign before I watched this, now I'ma make up one for everybody else.
I adore all of these characters you made so much!!! Their designs are so good, especially Darios, Cerella (not sure how to spell those names XD), and Turmeric. I especially appreciate Cerella having a small beard and Turmeric being non-binary and how naturally those things are presented. The names are great too, my favorites being Cerella sounding almost like a condensed version of Cinderella and Turmeric just straight up being a spice and presumably a name they chose themself.
I don’t like that the princess gives up being queen that easily. She seems more like the type to become a benevolent monarch in order to right her fathers wrongs
I'm currently running Call of the Netherdeep for my players and the rivals have been a pretty good aspect of the campaign. My players are on friendly terms with them so it's less of an antagonistic scenario (my players tend to play friendly characters so it just happens) but just having them in the game has added more opportunities for RP and a sense of urgency because the rival party are also trying to accomplish what the party's goal is. They've been working with the party so far but, later on, they're going to be joining a rival faction and there's a couple more things I'm going to do to make it more adversarial.
I never make comments on videos but I was extremely impressed by the quality of this video and decided I HAD to leave a comment. I was already impressed by the first half of the video, then came the stunningly illustrated example characters and I was blown away. Bravo!!
What a generous, entertaining and entirely charismatic content creator I have stumbled upon. Thank you for the tips and guidance, you're certainly helping a new DM!
He explained how much I love frozen unironucalky because of how its two mcs are antagonist to each other. (plus idina & Kristen) I like it a lot when I look back at it.
Yes. It is perfect to highlight the difference between an antagonist and a villain. Hans is the villain, but he never gets in Anna's way until the very end.
This is fantastic advice for systems besides D&D. A rival gang of edgerunners would add a lot to a Cyberpunk campaign, adding so much to the "always watch your back" tone that makes Cyberpunk. Plus, it gives you a great resource for jobs to go sideways. Your PC crew's rivals got hired by someone else for the same job the PC are working, or are working the other side, or just heard the PC's are taking a score and decided to try and take it for themselves, or both crews got hired together and now have to keep their rivalry in check long enough to finish the job and get paid.
the problem with the Rival system is that PCs die. will that make the rival just keep living & declare victory? will the DM have to make another NPC to rival the new PC?
The Rivals have their own lives and struggles. So if a PC dies, maybe their Rival dies as well. Maybe they're crippled and have to find a replacement for themselves in the group. The same thing your party has to do, their party also has to do. They aren't magically better than you with infinite resources, they have to work like you have to work. In fact if a PC dies, maybe their new character could be their rival and so they have a complete history for their new character, including leaving the Rival Group to join the PCs.
@@LupineShadowOmega I think it'd be good if the rival PC left the rival group, opening up a spot for the rival of the new PC. That way you still have the old rival you can keep in your back pocket for later. Just because they aren't a rival anymore doesn't mean they won't pop back in eventually! Hell, if you do it right you could tug at some heart strings as the characters are reminded of their fallen comrade whenever they show up.
@@seasnaill2589 Also an option. In fact you could have it both ways and have the rival leave to join the PCs in tribute to their fallen rival. Maybe they say yes, maybe they say no. It could lead to a bad end for them, or it might be a point of contention with said character later. The possibilities are as endless as the group's imagination. Which is why I feel like worrying about if someone dies is sort of missing the point. Because sometimes someone dying is just another story to be told.
The rivals don’t have to be a direct 1 to 1 mirror. It might be an idea to kill a couple of rivals in advance to show that PC death is possible. You have limitless power as the DM. Use it.
I don't know why it's so cathartic to see these dynamics. Probably because I love character creation that is based on simple conceot but grows complex due to relationships and their dynamics. Good stuff
That's exactly what i thought. The players don't know anything about their destined rivals, they don't have their backstories and it doesn't really make sense for those self proclaimed rivals to just show up, monologue and know everything about the heroes. Basically i am asking the same question, how do you integrate them organically? how do you get to the point where the players know about the rivals and vice versa?
As I said, the rivals are not a one off encounter. Ideally, the players should be seeing these rivals pretty regularly. There are many occasions to convey the gist of a character in one or several of those.
Have them working behind the scenes, perhaps doing quests that the party dont do? Or maybe as a group that is trying to earn fame in ways your party isnt whether its fame or deeds. Or even, the bbeg hires them on without revealing himself, using manipulation or a vast network of contacts to basically paint the pc’s as “not as good as they act” so they have conflict throughout the game.?
One of my DMs went a step further with this! He's given the party itself a main rival, a villain that's sort of a benchmark for us to compare ourselves to and ultimately surpass. But for each of our characters individually, he's given us a friendly rival, and a bitter rival. For example, as a friendly rival, my character has his formed childhood bully turned love interest, and for his bitter rival, he has his half brother from an enemy nation. It gives all of us a common enemy, while letting everyone also have their own little rivarlies EDIT: It's actually funny that shonen is brought up often in the video, because it's actually a campaign set in the Naruto universe. And a lot of tropes you see in Shonen oddly work REALLY well in a D&D campaign. Nearly every fight has been extremely engaging, because we're rarely just fighting some wizard or some goblins: we're often fighting against friends, comrades, enemies, rivals. My character doesn't just want to fight his friendly rival because she's his rival, he wants to beat her to prove that he has worth to both the Village and to himself. The party doesn't just want to beat an enemy Team to save the Village, they want to do it because that team in particular scarred each of them in their own way and keep popping up. I want MORE rivals in my campaigns because of that
A villain is almost always an antagonist. It’s just that not all antagonists are villains. An antagonist is just someone opposing the protagonist/main characters, so they’re usually villains
I love how half the clips are of Adora and Catra because they are literally rivals done perfectly. They both grew up together and care for each other a lot but always have completely opposite goals and are trying to undermine each other at every turn. It's such a good show.
Most recent campaign had a team of npc mercenaries also going after the same villain target. Wanting the fame/ recognition/ reward for themselves of taking down the big bad so from time to time they show up just long enough to try and throw a wrench in the players plan. It was great. The main hatred was still directed at the final boss, but the excitement of the players throwing the rivals off course or beating them to a quest objective was real. And nothing stoked the fires more than the players reaching the end of a dungeon only to find the objective already gone and a snarky note left behind for them.
Rivals in D&D, reminds me of a relatively old web comic called "Order of the Stick," a D&D 3.5 web comic with a secondary antagonist group trying very hard to be opposite to the heroes with varying success. Note any one wanting to read it, it is done in a stick figure style to compound the comedy.
I think its fun to get the players involved to some extent in the creation of the rivals. Depending on the campaign/setting/themes, having insight into player’s ideas on what would make for good growth-inducing conflict could take the rivals a step above
I made a campaign where the main quest is searching for exotic ingredients for the king's birthday feast. I made it a point to make the antagonists be competing guilds. My players really liked that concept and how those other guilds had optimized teams that they may or may not have the synergy to compete with.
This video is great! I was reading Eberron rising from the last war and there was a bit about "creating an enemy that the player meets a lot" and hearing you explaining your point of view really helped!
I confess part of the reason I read pre-written adventures is to sort of do this in reverse: who are the antagonists, and how can my character be a foil to one of them? I find it heightens the drama and makes my own character feel more like they fit in the story instead of being some rando who just wandered into a plot because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Something that didn't get mentioned that I'd like to bring up- make it so the rivals also have their abilities be foils. This example isn't from DND but in one game there's a character called Feng. Big shark pirate captain with a cannon and summons her ghost crew to support her. If I were to make a rival, they'd probably be a high priestess of Atlantis. At her call is a legendary beast, the leviathan. Where as Feng is a powerhouse that can call support, the princess is a meek and very squishy support that calls on a massive monster to do her heavy lifting.
I have kind of a similar thing going on in my campaign right now. One of my players is a Dark Knight (FFXIV Homebrew) and their rival is a Samurai (more FFXIV Homebrew). Their abilities are similar in function but the focus on their fighting styles are very different. What’s even funnier is that the Samurai is the Dark Knight’s long lost brother but they don’t know it yet 🤭
I had questions about how you actually set up rivals but this man explained everything in detail, even with examples to help out. This video will help out so many of us, thank you for making it❤
It is really nice to see a good version of rivals! I was in a campaign once where a guy designed his own rival before the campaign even started, but he designed the guy in a way that he would very easily lose to his homebrew subclass
I’m currently running a mafia/gang campaign a la Peaky Blinders, and watching this has awoken all kinds of ideas to introduce a rival gang while the iron is hot and the campaign is still early. After all, a good campaign needs not one vampire cleric of the goddess of life, but two! Thank you for the inspiration!
I love making parties of adventurers filled with the classes, races and alignments that my players didn't pick and making them sort of rival/parallel adventurers; They are not necessarily against the party, they simply are using different means to reach the same goals. Sometimes my players have antagonized them, other times they've formed relationships, but ultimately they are simply other adventurers trying to reach a goal
I used rivals in my last long term campaign. Seeing as there was a power vacuum after the world's greatest adventures had not returned from their mission. The call went out to any adventurers to investigate their disappearance and compete the quest. So the party was required to come up with their own group name, as they went up against multiple other groups. They found themselves in constant competition with one other likely group, but if course they came out on top. They would pop into each other from time to time but it all came together when the party accidentally stumbled into my big bad plans early and turned to their rivals for help. They worked together and achieved a lot but the accidental death of one of their rivals in a warehouse fire was juicy drama and my friends loved it
I like this, because having people challenging you doesn't mean they're bad people. You vie for things and snipe each other, but that can change. Maybe in competition for something, one of the rivals fails miserably, putting them at risk of life or limb; the PCs could help them out and change perceptions. Later on, a new antagonist comes onto the scene, and maybe the PC and rivals set aside differences to fight a common foe. Also, love your art. Alois's cloak pin looks like a hand clamping his cloak to his chestplate, and Sorella's beard is quite lovely!
I had a situation where multiple players at my table all decided to be monks from the same monastery. I used your method to create some rival monks (from a different monastery) to serve as antagonists with both parties racing to find the same artifact. My players took to it immediately; major Snake Eyes vs. Storm shadow, Gryffindor vs. Slytherin vibes. The "competition" element you introduced was a massive motivator for my players and it was almost shocking to see them slip into that "we can't let them win" mindset. I think they forgot that they weren't actually their characters a few times along the way XD
I love when you say you quickly go to saving the world. Over in BG3 El just said that the threat threatens the whole universe and I'm just staring at him like "Dude the level cap is 12, that puts me in "Master of the Realms," what you're looking for is a "Master of the World" like you, dude, sounds like this is your fight not mine, I'm gunna focus on removing the tadpole"
I've been running Strange Aeons in Pathfinder, and added an encounter late in the game. Canonically to the story, there's a villain who appears early on and isn't that much of a threat the first time, but the party don't have the means of killing them permanently, so they regenerate and harass the party indirectly by sending mercenaries to slow them down for a while before eventually showing up again to fight the party in a much more powerful state. As an addition to that, I had them borrow the power of the Great Old One they follow to resurrect some of other important villains the party had defeated before, and train them up while the party were carrying out their quest, setting up a situation where the risen villains could fight the party as a group of evil counterparts to the heroes.
first part of my own adventure I made a death knight disguised as skeleton butler, as an obstacle/foil/old mentor to most volatile player, chaotic "neutral" sorcerer, who had in his backstory burning down a vilage, like it was something cool. while it did not play out with him as well as I imagined, other players had a reeeeeaaaaally hard time deciding whether to aid in the battle, or just let DK pass judgement on the sorcerer. second most satisfying moment in my career as a dm
Huge trick to making your rivals seem clever, make them use plans the PCs came up with. This is my favorite tool in general, anything the players theorize but go "naaa, thats crazy" is platinum for writing your story. "Is the wife of the tavern keeper the bbeg?" "Naaa." But actually she is now. Same goes with quests that the rivals are also going on. Maybe the PCs have been told to find someone, and now they know they're being held by a faction that isn't strictly evil. Someone in the party jokes that they could just kill everyone and rescue the prisoner after, the party laughs and someone says "but really". As DM your rival wheels should be turning; maybe when the party gets there they go over the wall and sneak past a couple guards, everything seems normal, but suddenly they come across a trail of bodies and the target has already been extracted. Eventually it turns out that their rivals were working for your quest givers rival all along. Then force them to team up to beat a big boss 😂👌
That was well structured, yet felt sufficiently chaotic. And it's great advice! I have been DMing a chronicle with rivals the first time for the last 2 years, since the game world suggested it. Feels kind of awesome, even though I am trying not to use them to much.
One thing I like about rival teams, on the foil aspect, is using them to show how much more effective a team is instead of a group of individuals doing their own thing. I've had far too many group who would rather risk death than consider doing even minor actions to use teamwork.
Hey Pointyhat! I watched this months ago, and I finally wrote rivals for my campaign’s party members. And I’ve gotta say, they have become some of my favorite creations ever! It really does open up so many story possibilities when you have foils to your protagonists. Thank you for the idea!
I am not DMing myself, but I would add that as a DM, do not force your players to like the characters you create for them, or be instantly interested by them. In our previous campaign, i got really attached to an npc who we first met as an ennemy on the battlefield. But the fight took a turn, and we let him flee. We were still ennemies, but i was so happy to see him each time our paths crossed. We ended up saving him during his public execution and adding him to our team. After the end of our campaign, I asked my DM if he had planned this from the beginning. He told me that he threw at us dozens of potential "rivals", but that's the one who worked with me. So he went with him.
All of your videos are amazing. Rival parties are one of my favorite things in games and media, and it makes me happy to see it described and explained so well. I love that you provide specific examples in existing fiction and also provide insight on how to craft new ones custom-made for player characters. Keep up the good work!
What if we had a ship-teasing, thinly-veiled-ridden swordfight duel at midnight over the roofs of the city?
haha just kidding
Unless? 👀
Sir you are writing the kinds of campaigns I long to be in ಥ_ಥ. Btw used your phantom rogue character idea for Belinda as my PC in Icewind Dale. I kept the cinnamon role aspect but amped up the creepy cute factor (think Sadako from The Ring but super friendly lol). She's been so fun to play!
this... is filled with tumblr energy.
Place and time ??
You laugh, but I introunced a narrative foil for my warlock and now he dreams of kissing the guy under the moonlight.
My first reaction to end of this video was gonna be "you forgot the most crucial part of rivals..... ROMANCE".... but then you post this banger of a response and now im beat 👀
I like the idea of the cleric/healer that doesn't have a rival in the rival team, and when the parties fight the two clerics just sit on the same rock healing their party while complaining to the other about all the stupid stuff they had to fix.
Better yet... They are lover
That’s a fun interaction, I love it
Hardly a fortnight ago, the orc sired moron drank a bottle of alchemists fire Thinking it was ale. By the gods, it would be easier to train a displacer beast to use a litter box...
In our Call of the Netherdeep campaign, the pre-made cleric ended up becoming a solo version of that. Our PC party was oddly-numbered and perfectly paired off with the rest of the pre-mades EXCEPT for their cleric, who had no foil on our side. So every time we interacted, their cleric ended up playing the third wheel / beleaguered parent chasing after both parties to mitigate the gas-fire the rest of us would inevitably become.
It honestly made the odd-man-out cleric somehow a foil of the whole of the rest of us, and made the rivalry interactions that much more entertaining. That experience and watching this video is making me want to deliberately add odd-man-out characters for the rival party in future games of my own.
I Love this.
Another cool idea is to have a conflict triangle involving the hero(es), the villain(s) and the rival(s), bonus points for having the "enemy of my enemy" moment, give your players one or two chances to temporarily join forces with their rivals to defeat the villain, depending on how the players treat their rivals have the rivals join the Villain or the Heroes
Yo.. you just saved me from trying to think up this plot hook, holy hell man ty
Came to the comment section to say exactly this. The "this one time..." moment can be so good.
I was thinking even in this video, using the example characters, that the villain team could be like:
Cyrilla's personal villain is an eldritch knight/warlock who used his force of will (and some backroom deals) to bind the other Dwarven nobles to his ambition, and is so corrupt that he allows his nobles to wreak havoc on the kingdom - the same kind of havoc as her father. Alois' personal villain could be the right hand of this tyrant, a knight whose sense of honor has him do everything the king demands to the letter, even if it's fucked up; He never refuses an order, and has made himself a loyal ally. Turmeric's could be an assassin who, like Turmeric, never knew his parents and was born in a gutter, but the Usurper saw potential in him and raised him as his own son like an adoptive father. He now serves the Usurper loyally, feeling like he owes him his life for raising him from poverty.
Uses the same model as Pointy Hat proposed (an opposite, a mirror, and a mix) but they're just straight up villains that the rival party would *also* have a reason to hate. Alois and Fornata would hate the deeds that the right hand of the Usuper would do because they'd be so fucked up, Cyrilla and Dario would hate the Usurper because, in Cyrilla's mind, he'd be destroying her father's legacy, but in Dario's mind, he'd be another tyrant but worse. For Turmeric and Moira, Turmeric would hate that the Assassin got the opportunity that he never had, to have a parent, and Moira would hate that the Assassin just *listened to* and *obeyed* their parents and would be confused by the sense of duty that he feels to the Usurper.
Also @Pointy Hat, followup video about creating good villains? I liked this one a lot.
I think another triangle that could be fun is like the Pokémon rival method.
You have one you counter, one that counters you.
Maybe a more antagonistic force and a more friendly competition.
Like one team will buy you a drink and swap stories with you. After a successful dungeon crawl, challenging you to drinking competitions, or “which team can catch the most bounties, winner gets half the losers earnings”
The other might be like Gary muddafuggin oak and challenge you to duels right after a dungeon. Then call you a “edit for TH-cam” for losing.
Oh totally. Even had the rivals become a lot stronger during a period of time the party was missing or they were far away on an adventure.
When my party went to the feywild, they returned only to hear how strong they became, and they tried to challenge the Campaign villain, and one member of them died and their leader lost an arm.
Later on during another Villain's arc, that villain encountered the rivals, and that gave time the players to escape the scene with the npc they were trying to rescue from a public execution, and my players stopped halfway through and said; "wait. We still don't want to leave. We want to know what happens, and who wins!"
I will never forget that session, they were truly hooks and for many sessions, I left the mystery of who won that fight and my players were trying to investigate what happened
i literally met my party's rival team in a session today so this is perfect timing... i hate them so much and it's so good ♥
I'm a dm in the process of planning the rival team for my party so I couldn't agree more
Can't believe this, I was building the rivals and planned to introduce them in 4 or 5 sessions, I'm adapting them to appear sonner now I had material to work with.
Ha same! Just made the conceptd of the rivals today 😂
One of my favorite rival teams was the first I created. It was entirely to prevent a TPK in a low-level dungeon. The PCs were pretty deep in the dungeon and after a few bad rolls they were ALL making death saves as the monsters loomed over them. Then another adventuring party showed up at full health (because most of the dungeon was already cleared!). The players HATED that they had to be rescued so THEY made this adventuring party their rivals!
Thats an awesome idea!
ya know thats amusing that things went THAT way as it is but in a world were adventuring is completive as can be i can see this happening
Sometimes the players do the work for you. USE IT SHAMELESSLY!
@@Zaprozhan indeed infact sometimes theres just in party rivals who will GUTTERISE eachother into problems and then if it gets the entire party into a mess they will have to unfuck the situation
This is one of the options created by the existance of a Rival team, a "Don't kill the party move" that offers more roleplaying options going forward, as long as not overused. But if these sort of things are creating too much vitrol in the party, one opposite trick would be an adventure hook in the form of a half dead Rival team member stumbling up to the party and after some back and forth swallowing their pride to ask for help because the rest of their team were taken prisoner and the PC's are the best chance they can see to save them.
I thought of a funny rival being a necromancer wizard who is jealous that one of the PC's has such a large group of friends so the necromancer summons and takes control over undead to have their own friends. The further you progress in the game the more powerful undead they have like at the start they have a skeleton or zombie for each PC -1their idle. Then they slowly turn some them into stronger undead such as wights, ghouls and vampires.
👍
Brilliant
Maybe a more interesting twist on this could be the Necromancer literally wanting the PC's friends. So they kill them and then raise them! Yippy!!
You mean wraiths, right?
@@Victor-um9ce I mean the necromancer could also control wraiths but my typo was meant to be Wights as in the undead that can have 12 zombie servants.
Remember, you don't have to make rivals for the group ahead of time. You can turn an npc that a player has interacted with into a rival. This way you can see what basic premise the players respond to, then build from there.
I think this is a very good approach, as the players start to remember them and have personal grudge.
I think it would be cool to mark off a few NPCs as potential rivals, and have those who the players seemed most interested in show up again as rivals
Especially in a new champaign where you haven't gotten a handle on how the PC's will be running their character. If you find that one of your NPC's is making sparks fly with one PC, that's a good foundation, to expand from.
Yeah that's probably a better way of doing it, naturally there's gonna be NPC's the players dislike and it's fun to make the players hate those NPC's even more.
Yeah but its also fun to make an idea of a rical group before hand and shape their personality, background, races, amount etc or whatever you want once you have your players.
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, inspires more murderous hatred in my players than me trying to set up a rival team for them to face. Like, I don't know why they always jump straight to "we must slit their throats in the night" mode... but they do. Always. It's kinda frustrating....
Aww :(
Have you tried leaning into that expectation and used the rivals to bait your party?
Maybe you could have the local authorities get mad at the party for straight up murdering other adventurers? That might make your players calm down
Some DMs adopt the rival team so much that they switch to a DM Vs player mindset, backing the rivals over the development of story (together, not the DM alone). I'm not saying it's what you're doing but perhaps consider it. If players who play for freedom feel like they're being restrained they'll often lash out as murder hobos.
The villain has been observing this behavior and sets up a team of assassins to cosplay as a foil party
Rival players can be very dangerous narratively, as their very existence questions protagonists in ways not every player wants to deal with. For example, the player behind the dwarven princess in the video may not have any desire to explore what her rival brings to the table, opting instead to just goad them into combat and kill the perceived 'disruption' to their character's planned arc. It's a good idea to let rivals occur naturally, or at least broach the subject with a player before trying to give them one.
I absolutely love how both Moira and Turmeric have round animal companions
and Adaine
Vodar nice profile picture
Turmeric's little buddy came part and parcel with their Urchin background. Moira's familiar? Purchased from a pet store for the aesthetic.
Antonio, you’re so creative and hard-working, it blows my mind. I’m so happy that you make videos for people to tune into to enhance their roleplaying experiences.
You should be so proud of yourself
Right? It’s insane that this level of content is free!
I feel called out by the Wizard Apos'Trophee Hyphen-Name, and I am here for it. I need a Wheel of Goals for villains to let the players spin for what is happening.
Maybe use a different wheel, that wheel had 1 "WW3 analogy" and the rest were "destroy the world".
I appreciate that you've given the dwarven princess a beard. It's a travesty what they did not giving dwarven women beards in rings of power
Of all the things to cry about
@@jonttopia Of all the things to cry about this is by far the greatest offense.
Not actually confirmed in any Tolkien work. Only implied as a joke in the Jackson films, which itself was possibly based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld books in which (as part of the satire of Tolkien) all dwarves do indeed have beards.
No really, it’s an assumption based on a parody of the original work. I used to get this wrong too.
@@intergalactic92 Appendix A: "Indeed this strangeness they have that no Man nor Elf has ever seen a beardless Dwarf - unless he were shaven in mockery, and would then be more like to die of shame than of many other hurts that to us would seem more deadly. For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike; nor indeed can their womenkind be discerned by those of other race, be it in feature or in gait or in voice, nor in any wise save this: that they go not to war, and seldom save at direst need issue from their deep bowers and halls."
@@jonttopiait was something unique to their race that a lot of people apparently liked, in a fantasy setting people tend to like the things that edge more towards fantasy rather than just normal humans, it added a sense of humor or intrigue to the dwarves that was stripped away.
I dont personally care, im just saying i understand why some do, I mean it was the 1st female dwarf pictured on screen and they willingly chose to subvert everyones expectation without replacing it or justifying it. I mean we could all just pretend she does in fact have a beard comparable to malw dwarves its just not on her face to preserve the humor at least.
I appreciate that Dwarven girl's beard quite a lot
This! I almost teared up. More dwarven women with beards!
I assumed it was a joke like she's played by a guy.
Dwarf goatees are very underated 👌
@@vukkulvar9769 Naw dude, classic tolkien. Dwarven Women have beards, which is why people think that dwarves emerge from stone. From the Hobbit.
@@greysonjones5429 Except of course that Amazon fucked that up
I gave my players a Cambion Rival, he fought them 1v5 at like level 2 (he had no armor) with no magic items. Quite close, and they won. He escaped with his superior flying speed.
They met him a few times after, mainly doing his own thing.
Any he made his own little party that is doing many quests the party ignores, they even worked together once.
To keep up with the party, he also gained levels at Barberian (his AC is made from DEX+CON+CHA ;))
He mainly focuses on gainning political influence and getting in with the important tribe leaders
one very important thing, a "devil is in the details" kind of thing, is that it is VERY important thing actually know your players characters before even considering a rival. i'll say to give your characters a session, or two, or half the campaing ok maybe not that much, to get to know yout players, what they actually do what they actually think how do the actually react, it's never easy to get any of that on the character sheet the first time without some experience precisely because characters are always iterating upong themselfs while playing. your paladin may have syad that he is the shining face of honor and piaty but maybe the player themself isn't actually aware of sayd details and missed an oportunity to help someone or an insult to the crown simply flew over their head whem they heard it idk, a very important and specific detail that informs that a rival atacking sayd desire may not be able to fully succed in their objective but a ruval constructed in other direction upon the same character might have a bigger impact.
but still, rivals are their own people even if the narrative role they have isn't "as strong" as it can be, and it can also be worked arround in the same self iteration and improvement the character they are reflecting is going throw.
be careful and have fun, after all that's always the goal
I ran a rival group delving into the Underdark alongside my party once. At first, tensions were very high. They travelled together for the majority of the time, but they weren't as high levelled. Instead, I built them to be perfectly working together while the party still had a few issues with communication. Instead, they were proactive and had strong opinions, as the rival teams were all basic copycats of the party, with classes switched. The rogue-sorcerer became the bard, both being the heart. The Coffeelock became a cleric. The cleric and bard had a small fling, where as the Coffeelock and rogue-sorcerer were an active thing. They spoke about relationship stuff during downtime. The ranger became the... ranger... Different subclass. Planeswalker to horizon Walker, and from skeleton to aasimar. Lastly, our cleric, which became the eldritch Knight. Firbolg to Goliath. They had similar backstories to the party, but they were all based around a prominent location the party was exploring, where an elder Evil had touched the earth and permanently scarred the land. Had a lot of fun making new aberations for Y'chak.
Anyways, the party had a lot of fun bouncing off these NPCs, and without prodding, they gravitated to their counterpart, as well as the party's leader, the dwarf cleric. When they had to split up, I swapped a character out for a doppleganger, and that doppleganger was caught within minutes. The problem was the doppelganger was hunting the party and had his own group of baddies actively hunting the party down for main plot reasons. Long story. However, because they got caught early, the rest of the enemy party wasn't ready, leading to a 7 v 2 against a monk and hexblade. The monk and hexblade where higher leveled than the party. Level 14 to the party's level 9, and the rivals' level 7. With the numbers advantage, the doppelganger monk fled, covered by the revenant hexblade, who perished for the 4th time. Suicides, killing the rival ranger. One revivify later, and the only question was what happened to the eldritch Knight....
He was killed hours before, body lost in a river.
He was revived via clever use of a homebrew item that summoned a Coatl to aid the party, and brought back to life later by the party's cleric, his foil.
god damn ur pfp goes so hard
Zuko and Aang is a fantastic example of god tier rivals
What if, hear me out, what if we had a Wizard Hat tier list? I honestly believe humanity needs it.
the little chibi illustrations of the party are SO good!!! I love it
I'm going to introduce a rival to my party's warlock: and it's his older brother. This video gave me everything I need to make this rivalry dynamic and fun!
ooh that’s cool i’m using a warlock and i want to ask my dungeon master if my character can meet his older brother which is a paladin it would be really cool because my character is kind of a demonic version of a paladin!👍 also my character grew up in a rich family of monster hunters and he is the only one that is weak and have no special powers and his goal is to somehow defeat lots of monsters and prove his worth to his family and his big brother is an extremely talented and powerful paladin i definetely think that he would be in the middle of the spectrum.
I’ve got a character whose main flaw is he’s overprotective and doesn’t really believe others can take care of themselves. He constantly worries about everyone, even one of his siblings who’s got a really safe job as a baker. A sibling just existing in another party would be a great rival
Gosh Darn It, you constantly impress me. Rivals, Angels, and pop singers (burlesque bards with fan blades). I'm not surprised that your views are getting close to the 100k, because every aspect impresses me: Animation (Love your aviator btw), voice (made for voice over - figure you either L.A. or Miami), and number one...your creativity. Gosh, that's where it gets hard to quantify. Creativity. You have it and your whole production shows it in spades. Keep up the great work, your steady growth in subscribes, shows that you've got "it". Now, get sponsors.
I dm’d a campaign with two parties in the same storyline, one week party 1 had a session, the next week party 2 had a session and one week, both parties came and it turns out I collected party 2 to be rivals, so it was team vs team, and the parties loved it.
It’s cool to see that I’ve had the same idea of giving my characters rivals!
I’m going to play a warforged bard who decided to abandon his life of violence to pursue his newfound passion: music. But his foil is his former commander who zealously believes it’s the purpose of a warforged to live and die as a soldier (and begins hunting his former comrade because in his eyes “you serve no purpose”).
HI! I LIKE SHORTS! THEY'RE COMFY AND EASY TO WEAR!
Had a tough day and this really cheered me up. Thanks pointy hat. Love the vids.
Correction: not all villains are antagonists. Villain protagonists are possible. Which would make the hero, the antagonist.
I adore your art on this episode. Top notch. Also, I used your Hag and Tiefling ideas on my campaign and it's great, you, my dude, are a genius.
I actually recently played in a campaign with a "perfect mirror" rival group. The general idea the DM went with was "What if the PCs always rolled nat 20s (at least when they weren't "on screen") The Paladin, a literal Prince Charming. The Wizard, basically Merlin,. The rouge was the perfect gentleman thief and the bard basically David Bowie.
We first learned of their existence at level 2 where we arrived at merchant to try and get some healing potions and they'd just sold their entire stock to another party at a huge discount. At level 4 we arrived at a village we'd heard was under siege by Gnoll bandits only to learn they'd already been cleared out and their stash of magical weapons looted. At level 5 we met them in a dungeon where they did basically made us look like clowns, ultimately provoking our Barbarian to challenge them to a non-lethal test of strength. The challenge was accepted, but of course they wanted us all to take a long rest to makes sure all of us were in peak condition. With perfect coordination they destroyed us.
For the next few levels we'd hear about their exploits mirroring our own (if we took too long getting to an objective, when we'd get there, it was already done. Of course we ran into a city at level 10 where a tournament was happening with a powerful flame brand as the grand prize. Of course they were there... and we won. We soundly beat them in the semi-finals. They were gracious in defeat and wished us the best... those bastards.
But that's where things started changing. After beating them, when we'd get to a city they had already been to there were rumors floating around about us. "We were incompetent. A group of clowns. Not worth the trouble to hire us for anything." They were spreading the rumors.
There were a few more encounters, they beat us once more. We beat them to a few high profile campaign beats. They... beat us again. The Big Bad showed up, the pressure of two bands of adventurers foiling all their minions finally forcing them to show their hand. In character our rouge questioned if we shouldn't just let them have this one. The dude was too powerful. Our paladin reluctantly agreed, but pushed us to move anyways to back them up. We didn't like it, but "greater good and all that nonsense". About halfway into the dungeon we found 3 very fresh corpses and David Bowie hiding in fear.
Your content is excellent. Thank you.
I would love to see how you portray "Pointy Hat" as: an NPC, a Monster, and a magical item.
I personally have always been an item and a person
Rivals are so fun if you have players that get invested in that sort of thing.
Outstanding content. This series might be even awesomer than your DnD with a twist. They’re both great, actionable, and entertaining. Thank you!
My favourite kinds of foils are the mirror foils. There’s something incredibly cool about seeing all the cool tricks of your hero in the hands of someone he who may not share your protagonist’s morality.
My DM did this after I gave him the sob backstory of my character; basically a character my Tiefling Paladin thought was dead, wasn't...I really love him for it...
Dude, you are awesome, the editing, the drawings, the references, the jokes... You deserve every single subscriber and like
3:30 I love how all the options are "Destroy the world" except the "WWIII allegory"
that's it, those are all the options
This is INCREDIBLE material. I'd honestly never thought of non-villain antagonists in D&D, and I absolutely love this concept and how you approached it. Thanks for this video!
You are quickly becoming one of my favorite dnd creators. You are amazingly creative ane put so much love into your work. Your energy and passion is honestly contagious, thank you for your work.
I'm am so happy your Dwarven princess has facial hair ❤️❤️❤️
Based Pointy Hat with a pro public transportation message
I tend to make the rivals strong counters to certain party members while being neutral, and weak to others to create an interesting dynamic in combat.
You deserve the success you’ve gotten recently look forward to your new videos
The Premanger reference earned my subscription. Marvellous taste.
Dude, I cannot believe your timing. I was preparing a rival team (with a really silly name gimmick) but was having trouble figuring out their personalities. Now I have a good source to do so, I'll probably play that card a little earlier than I had planned, to give my gang more time to expend with them. Big thank you, great material as always.
pd: I'm also using the Dragontouched idea, plan to have my gang taking part in their revolution. Huge thanks for that too.
I've always thought it'd be fun to have a rival party who while not particularly effective in combat, are a band of talented acrobats and illusionists who constantly try to upstage the party with elaborate staged battles and performances.
I always get excited whenever I see a new pointy hat video. Seriously, I love all of the stuff you make!
1:37 OH GOD YOU JUST GAVE ME PTSD MY SISTER USED TO ALWAYS WATCH THAT GOD AWFUL MOVIE YEARS AGO AND I FORGOT ABOUT IT AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!
0:04 head canon, that's what you look like now :D
In my experience, rivals are a lot like pets; great to have, if occasionally disruptive, but a terrible surprise present.
Always ask before showing up to a session with one.
I love your videos so much! It's not just the very interesting content, but also your edgy humor & superb editing skills.
Love the fact that the autosubtitles changed Palpatine to Papa Putin
In my own personal Exandria game, I made a 'mirror' team of rivals that reflects a lot to my players' characters. Just making them was so fun, thinking of arcs to intertwine with theirs and personalities to 'mirror' them. I absolutely love what you made and love within this video of what are rivals, how to use them and how to make them in ones own game.
We are going to celebrate hard when we reach 100K and rightfully deserved for the amazing content ya make. The characters and rivals you made, GOD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH AND THE ART IS ADORABLE! I relate so hard to the Royal Knight and Blacksmith Revolutionary, also just an absolute sucker for a run away rich Pirate gal! Mi pana eres el mejor! Y mucho suerte con todo! 💛
I love the classic trope with mirror matches. I've been in games with rivals like these, and it's so fun to interact with them!
This was fantastic! Thank you so much. I can't wait to try this out in the campaign I just started running for my friends. Love you, Antonio!
This video is an absolute goddamn gold mine of DMing advice. You, sir, are awesome and you should feel awesome. I inadvertently already came up with a rival character for one of the players in my upcoming campaign before I watched this, now I'ma make up one for everybody else.
ive been doing this and it is honestly so much fun. when in need of inspiration, anime is v helpful!
Not me at the edge of my seat for how the hunt competition turns out only to have my hopes dashed as the video ends
I adore all of these characters you made so much!!! Their designs are so good, especially Darios, Cerella (not sure how to spell those names XD), and Turmeric. I especially appreciate Cerella having a small beard and Turmeric being non-binary and how naturally those things are presented. The names are great too, my favorites being Cerella sounding almost like a condensed version of Cinderella and Turmeric just straight up being a spice and presumably a name they chose themself.
Being non binary actually makes sense in DnD because it's all pretend
I love them too. It felt a bit weird when you described the PCs, because they sounded like the adventuring party in Hidden Fortress.
I don’t like that the princess gives up being queen that easily. She seems more like the type to become a benevolent monarch in order to right her fathers wrongs
pointy hat you are overthinking, sometimes the most mundane things are the strongest rivalry points, for example, what goes first, milk or cereal
I'm currently running Call of the Netherdeep for my players and the rivals have been a pretty good aspect of the campaign. My players are on friendly terms with them so it's less of an antagonistic scenario (my players tend to play friendly characters so it just happens) but just having them in the game has added more opportunities for RP and a sense of urgency because the rival party are also trying to accomplish what the party's goal is. They've been working with the party so far but, later on, they're going to be joining a rival faction and there's a couple more things I'm going to do to make it more adversarial.
Always love your video hat man. I've put some of your stuff in my games!
I never make comments on videos but I was extremely impressed by the quality of this video and decided I HAD to leave a comment. I was already impressed by the first half of the video, then came the stunningly illustrated example characters and I was blown away. Bravo!!
This is one of the few acceptable ways for a DMPC to exist.
What a generous, entertaining and entirely charismatic content creator I have stumbled upon. Thank you for the tips and guidance, you're certainly helping a new DM!
He explained how much I love frozen unironucalky because of how its two mcs are antagonist to each other. (plus idina & Kristen) I like it a lot when I look back at it.
Yes. It is perfect to highlight the difference between an antagonist and a villain. Hans is the villain, but he never gets in Anna's way until the very end.
This is fantastic advice for systems besides D&D. A rival gang of edgerunners would add a lot to a Cyberpunk campaign, adding so much to the "always watch your back" tone that makes Cyberpunk. Plus, it gives you a great resource for jobs to go sideways. Your PC crew's rivals got hired by someone else for the same job the PC are working, or are working the other side, or just heard the PC's are taking a score and decided to try and take it for themselves, or both crews got hired together and now have to keep their rivalry in check long enough to finish the job and get paid.
the problem with the Rival system is that PCs die. will that make the rival just keep living & declare victory? will the DM have to make another NPC to rival the new PC?
The Rivals have their own lives and struggles. So if a PC dies, maybe their Rival dies as well. Maybe they're crippled and have to find a replacement for themselves in the group. The same thing your party has to do, their party also has to do. They aren't magically better than you with infinite resources, they have to work like you have to work. In fact if a PC dies, maybe their new character could be their rival and so they have a complete history for their new character, including leaving the Rival Group to join the PCs.
@@LupineShadowOmega I think it'd be good if the rival PC left the rival group, opening up a spot for the rival of the new PC. That way you still have the old rival you can keep in your back pocket for later. Just because they aren't a rival anymore doesn't mean they won't pop back in eventually! Hell, if you do it right you could tug at some heart strings as the characters are reminded of their fallen comrade whenever they show up.
@@seasnaill2589 Also an option. In fact you could have it both ways and have the rival leave to join the PCs in tribute to their fallen rival. Maybe they say yes, maybe they say no. It could lead to a bad end for them, or it might be a point of contention with said character later.
The possibilities are as endless as the group's imagination. Which is why I feel like worrying about if someone dies is sort of missing the point. Because sometimes someone dying is just another story to be told.
@burneraccount LMAO
The rivals don’t have to be a direct 1 to 1 mirror. It might be an idea to kill a couple of rivals in advance to show that PC death is possible. You have limitless power as the DM. Use it.
I don't know why it's so cathartic to see these dynamics. Probably because I love character creation that is based on simple conceot but grows complex due to relationships and their dynamics.
Good stuff
How do you reveal this very complex and detailed volume of information to the players? Will they sit still for pages of boxed text?
That's exactly what i thought. The players don't know anything about their destined rivals, they don't have their backstories and it doesn't really make sense for those self proclaimed rivals to just show up, monologue and know everything about the heroes. Basically i am asking the same question, how do you integrate them organically? how do you get to the point where the players know about the rivals and vice versa?
As I said, the rivals are not a one off encounter. Ideally, the players should be seeing these rivals pretty regularly. There are many occasions to convey the gist of a character in one or several of those.
Have them working behind the scenes, perhaps doing quests that the party dont do? Or maybe as a group that is trying to earn fame in ways your party isnt whether its fame or deeds. Or even, the bbeg hires them on without revealing himself, using manipulation or a vast network of contacts to basically paint the pc’s as “not as good as they act” so they have conflict throughout the game.?
One of my DMs went a step further with this!
He's given the party itself a main rival, a villain that's sort of a benchmark for us to compare ourselves to and ultimately surpass.
But for each of our characters individually, he's given us a friendly rival, and a bitter rival.
For example, as a friendly rival, my character has his formed childhood bully turned love interest, and for his bitter rival, he has his half brother from an enemy nation.
It gives all of us a common enemy, while letting everyone also have their own little rivarlies
EDIT: It's actually funny that shonen is brought up often in the video, because it's actually a campaign set in the Naruto universe. And a lot of tropes you see in Shonen oddly work REALLY well in a D&D campaign.
Nearly every fight has been extremely engaging, because we're rarely just fighting some wizard or some goblins: we're often fighting against friends, comrades, enemies, rivals. My character doesn't just want to fight his friendly rival because she's his rival, he wants to beat her to prove that he has worth to both the Village and to himself. The party doesn't just want to beat an enemy Team to save the Village, they want to do it because that team in particular scarred each of them in their own way and keep popping up. I want MORE rivals in my campaigns because of that
Seeing Serena joy is weird to me, I see her as a straight up villian not an antagonist. Unless I'm missing something new from the new couple episodes
Nope, you're still right.
A villain is almost always an antagonist. It’s just that not all antagonists are villains. An antagonist is just someone opposing the protagonist/main characters, so they’re usually villains
Kinda love your taste in bearded dwarven women in your videos. It's a good touch.
I love that the party is she/her, they/them and cool -definitely not pointy- hat
I love how half the clips are of Adora and Catra because they are literally rivals done perfectly. They both grew up together and care for each other a lot but always have completely opposite goals and are trying to undermine each other at every turn. It's such a good show.
Most recent campaign had a team of npc mercenaries also going after the same villain target. Wanting the fame/ recognition/ reward for themselves of taking down the big bad so from time to time they show up just long enough to try and throw a wrench in the players plan. It was great. The main hatred was still directed at the final boss, but the excitement of the players throwing the rivals off course or beating them to a quest objective was real. And nothing stoked the fires more than the players reaching the end of a dungeon only to find the objective already gone and a snarky note left behind for them.
Rivals in D&D, reminds me of a relatively old web comic called "Order of the Stick," a D&D 3.5 web comic with a secondary antagonist group trying very hard to be opposite to the heroes with varying success. Note any one wanting to read it, it is done in a stick figure style to compound the comedy.
I'm literally GMing a Pokemon campaign and I needed this so badly, thank you Pointy Hat
Steve is the guy that convinces you to play Minecraft for like 2 weeks max and then never touch it for a year
I think its fun to get the players involved to some extent in the creation of the rivals. Depending on the campaign/setting/themes, having insight into player’s ideas on what would make for good growth-inducing conflict could take the rivals a step above
Character foils are so fun. Once a pattern is set up between two PCs, they really help eachother shine.
I made a campaign where the main quest is searching for exotic ingredients for the king's birthday feast. I made it a point to make the antagonists be competing guilds. My players really liked that concept and how those other guilds had optimized teams that they may or may not have the synergy to compete with.
This video is great! I was reading Eberron rising from the last war and there was a bit about "creating an enemy that the player meets a lot" and hearing you explaining your point of view really helped!
I confess part of the reason I read pre-written adventures is to sort of do this in reverse: who are the antagonists, and how can my character be a foil to one of them? I find it heightens the drama and makes my own character feel more like they fit in the story instead of being some rando who just wandered into a plot because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Something that didn't get mentioned that I'd like to bring up- make it so the rivals also have their abilities be foils. This example isn't from DND but in one game there's a character called Feng. Big shark pirate captain with a cannon and summons her ghost crew to support her. If I were to make a rival, they'd probably be a high priestess of Atlantis. At her call is a legendary beast, the leviathan. Where as Feng is a powerhouse that can call support, the princess is a meek and very squishy support that calls on a massive monster to do her heavy lifting.
I have kind of a similar thing going on in my campaign right now. One of my players is a Dark Knight (FFXIV Homebrew) and their rival is a Samurai (more FFXIV Homebrew). Their abilities are similar in function but the focus on their fighting styles are very different. What’s even funnier is that the Samurai is the Dark Knight’s long lost brother but they don’t know it yet 🤭
I had questions about how you actually set up rivals but this man explained everything in detail, even with examples to help out. This video will help out so many of us, thank you for making it❤
It is really nice to see a good version of rivals! I was in a campaign once where a guy designed his own rival before the campaign even started, but he designed the guy in a way that he would very easily lose to his homebrew subclass
I’m currently running a mafia/gang campaign a la Peaky Blinders, and watching this has awoken all kinds of ideas to introduce a rival gang while the iron is hot and the campaign is still early. After all, a good campaign needs not one vampire cleric of the goddess of life, but two!
Thank you for the inspiration!
I love making parties of adventurers filled with the classes, races and alignments that my players didn't pick and making them sort of rival/parallel adventurers; They are not necessarily against the party, they simply are using different means to reach the same goals. Sometimes my players have antagonized them, other times they've formed relationships, but ultimately they are simply other adventurers trying to reach a goal
I used rivals in my last long term campaign.
Seeing as there was a power vacuum after the world's greatest adventures had not returned from their mission. The call went out to any adventurers to investigate their disappearance and compete the quest.
So the party was required to come up with their own group name, as they went up against multiple other groups.
They found themselves in constant competition with one other likely group, but if course they came out on top.
They would pop into each other from time to time but it all came together when the party accidentally stumbled into my big bad plans early and turned to their rivals for help.
They worked together and achieved a lot but the accidental death of one of their rivals in a warehouse fire was juicy drama and my friends loved it
I like this, because having people challenging you doesn't mean they're bad people. You vie for things and snipe each other, but that can change. Maybe in competition for something, one of the rivals fails miserably, putting them at risk of life or limb; the PCs could help them out and change perceptions. Later on, a new antagonist comes onto the scene, and maybe the PC and rivals set aside differences to fight a common foe.
Also, love your art. Alois's cloak pin looks like a hand clamping his cloak to his chestplate, and Sorella's beard is quite lovely!
I had a situation where multiple players at my table all decided to be monks from the same monastery. I used your method to create some rival monks (from a different monastery) to serve as antagonists with both parties racing to find the same artifact.
My players took to it immediately; major Snake Eyes vs. Storm shadow, Gryffindor vs. Slytherin vibes. The "competition" element you introduced was a massive motivator for my players and it was almost shocking to see them slip into that "we can't let them win" mindset. I think they forgot that they weren't actually their characters a few times along the way XD
I love when you say you quickly go to saving the world. Over in BG3 El just said that the threat threatens the whole universe and I'm just staring at him like "Dude the level cap is 12, that puts me in "Master of the Realms," what you're looking for is a "Master of the World" like you, dude, sounds like this is your fight not mine, I'm gunna focus on removing the tadpole"
I've been running Strange Aeons in Pathfinder, and added an encounter late in the game. Canonically to the story, there's a villain who appears early on and isn't that much of a threat the first time, but the party don't have the means of killing them permanently, so they regenerate and harass the party indirectly by sending mercenaries to slow them down for a while before eventually showing up again to fight the party in a much more powerful state.
As an addition to that, I had them borrow the power of the Great Old One they follow to resurrect some of other important villains the party had defeated before, and train them up while the party were carrying out their quest, setting up a situation where the risen villains could fight the party as a group of evil counterparts to the heroes.
first part of my own adventure I made a death knight disguised as skeleton butler, as an obstacle/foil/old mentor to most volatile player, chaotic "neutral" sorcerer, who had in his backstory burning down a vilage, like it was something cool. while it did not play out with him as well as I imagined, other players had a reeeeeaaaaally hard time deciding whether to aid in the battle, or just let DK pass judgement on the sorcerer. second most satisfying moment in my career as a dm
Huge trick to making your rivals seem clever, make them use plans the PCs came up with. This is my favorite tool in general, anything the players theorize but go "naaa, thats crazy" is platinum for writing your story.
"Is the wife of the tavern keeper the bbeg?"
"Naaa." But actually she is now.
Same goes with quests that the rivals are also going on. Maybe the PCs have been told to find someone, and now they know they're being held by a faction that isn't strictly evil. Someone in the party jokes that they could just kill everyone and rescue the prisoner after, the party laughs and someone says "but really". As DM your rival wheels should be turning; maybe when the party gets there they go over the wall and sneak past a couple guards, everything seems normal, but suddenly they come across a trail of bodies and the target has already been extracted. Eventually it turns out that their rivals were working for your quest givers rival all along.
Then force them to team up to beat a big boss 😂👌
That was well structured, yet felt sufficiently chaotic.
And it's great advice!
I have been DMing a chronicle with rivals the first time for the last 2 years, since the game world suggested it. Feels kind of awesome, even though I am trying not to use them to much.
One thing I like about rival teams, on the foil aspect, is using them to show how much more effective a team is instead of a group of individuals doing their own thing. I've had far too many group who would rather risk death than consider doing even minor actions to use teamwork.
Hey Pointyhat! I watched this months ago, and I finally wrote rivals for my campaign’s party members. And I’ve gotta say, they have become some of my favorite creations ever! It really does open up so many story possibilities when you have foils to your protagonists. Thank you for the idea!
I am not DMing myself, but I would add that as a DM, do not force your players to like the characters you create for them, or be instantly interested by them.
In our previous campaign, i got really attached to an npc who we first met as an ennemy on the battlefield. But the fight took a turn, and we let him flee. We were still ennemies, but i was so happy to see him each time our paths crossed.
We ended up saving him during his public execution and adding him to our team.
After the end of our campaign, I asked my DM if he had planned this from the beginning. He told me that he threw at us dozens of potential "rivals", but that's the one who worked with me. So he went with him.
All of your videos are amazing. Rival parties are one of my favorite things in games and media, and it makes me happy to see it described and explained so well.
I love that you provide specific examples in existing fiction and also provide insight on how to craft new ones custom-made for player characters.
Keep up the good work!