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Tell me the villains you have come up with to face your player characters?

How do you keep ther personalities of each one different from the other?

Do you have different levels of Villains?

I personally use media models a lot, this helps me deal with such things quickly and defines the Villian sharply without worring about huge personality detail.

Here is and Article I did for another game about using media Models

Jeez. I have so many different villains, each one very different from the others. A master vampire who in life was a necromancer and figured out a way to increase his knowledge of death magic as an undead. A True Atlantean who came to Palladium as a mercenary and is only evil if the money is right. Problem is, most of the heroes don't trust him for this fact, so he is most often working for the bad guys. A High Orc Savage Warrior (barbarian) who is immortal (a special sub-class I created, loosely based off of the immortals in Highlander, very loosely) Then there's the God of the Shadow Realm, held in an alternate reality prison where he was placed by the Gods of Light, released by one of his avatars, accidentally awakened by the heroes. Those are just some of the more memorable ones. There are truly dozens of others, each one pretty unique. Not sure how I manage to keep each one individual, but it works out that way. Mostly it's their motivations, I guess.

I've used Wash Darb from the Dyval book in more then one game. They never really now if he is on their side or not. The fun thing about using a NPC like that is Deevils fit in perfect on the Palladium world but if pressed too far Wash will pull out a gun and shoot the place up.

One of my greatest Villains of all time was Nogrustru, the wolfen on the cover of the Northern wilderness book. The blurb about the art print gives some hint as to his powers and I just used it and expanded from there. He was literally a major, recurring villian for several years.

I also like scarecrows.

I also have Nogrustro as a villain.

He's is the son of a Wolfen PC and Rabdos the Strnagler. As a demi god of hades he stole the PC's Crystal skull he found in the Enry and Axel's Island pyramid (it was in two parts) and used it to link to the Splugorth whilst at the haeds pyramid. He is now using its power to entice his father to join him "and we will rule the megaverse as father and son."

Personally, I tend to go with the "best" (depending on your view...) villians were once the good guys. Something happened, that switch got flipped, and now, he's out to control/destroy the world.

My FAVORITE, was a priest of Thoth (level 4) wizard (level 15). He had started life as a wiz, devout worshipper of Thoth, and eventually became a priest.

Then, his entire party got wiped out in a blink of an eye. (IOW, The GM decided to remind us that there is ALWAYS someone bigger, badder, and a LOT more powerful out there!).

Being the student of magic that he was, he began studying all the evil he could find, starting with the bigger stuff, then slowly working into the "basics" of evil. Yes, that meant he started targetting the lowly thief, the con man, etc etc, and tried to find the "center" of their evil- literally. Brains, hearts, blood.. he searched everywhere to see if he could find what made a person evil.

Of course, this eventually caught the eye of some "do-gooders", who had to hunt him down....

bradshaw wrote:I've used Wash Darb from the Dyval book in more then one game. They never really now if he is on their side or not. The fun thing about using a NPC like that is Deevils fit in perfect on the Palladium world but if pressed too far Wash will pull out a gun and shoot the place up.

Yes, I bet you have.

Soldier of Od wrote:

bradshaw wrote:I've used Wash Darb from the Dyval book in more then one game. They never really now if he is on their side or not. The fun thing about using a NPC like that is Deevils fit in perfect on the Palladium world but if pressed too far Wash will pull out a gun and shoot the place up.

Yes, I bet you have.

Youre too quick, I hadnt even noticed.

Doogyrev!

1) I randomly generate them so I don't get stuck in ruts and it produces unique characters
2) I know what the know and what they don't. I know what they want, love fear etc. Knowing who they are lets me know how and where they might make mistakes, or where they might be vulnerable. Whether or not the PCs are ever able to discover this or take advantage of it is immaterial.

Well to me ther different level of Villains my player group face,lowest are bandits.

I have my PCg face a Night Stalker,the Dragon was a Gambler he made a bet,with the leader of the group,if he wins he gets to eat all of them,if the leader wins he joins the group,he lost.

My favorite was and elf witch name Malekithe, who through this followers gave my players hell for over a year or two. He was biabolical, and pure evil.

However I've had other ones too, including a PC gladiator's mother (The PCs back story was he was a good for nothing lazy kid, so his mother threatend to sell him if he didn't shape up. He didn't so she sold him to a roving gladiatoral band.) who got ahold of a magical item that granted her magical power. It's best when they never see it comming, the look on their faces...

My latest one was an ex-General from some forces they defeated years ago in a campaign arc... Cause and effect, power vacuums, greed, it's great for setting up more villany. Some 'villans' are actually more like good guys, depending on your point of view, in my past campaign as well. Like pirates sinking Timiro ships and freeing slaves, or wolfen protecting hunting grounds from poachers...

Well Villains in my game is a ill suited term (plenty of times players are selfish or evil themselves, so their antagonists might be paladins or simily rivals without a real morality indicator in the game).

But some of my more memorable right now come from my primary play test game (At this point, the characters are rather nutsy powered, thus the bad guys are similarly in quasi-godlike stature). Among my personal favorites is the now dead Berserker (actual name no longer used), the former leading member of the top assassins guild, who a decade ago found the remains of a being known as an Aryan (think Chaos Lord General, each old one has 4, most imprisoned due to their qusi-immortal status, this particular one, Sebathia, ended up dead due to a twist of fate), found its remains, and (being a necromancer) bonded himself with the remains, already evil mind corrupting further and just becoming a blood thirsty, gleeful killing machine, at best able to restrain himself between assassinations, and strong enough to murder an entire guard town (His degrading metal stability led to his imprisonment by the remainder of the council, let loose only for high profile targets demanding direct fights).

Another is De-Theed, an Aryan from the same game, The Brothers of Darkness and the First Minatur, it's a split soul occupying two bodies, but only one can be in reality at any given time (and one must be in). They basically phase in and out of reality in close proximity of each other, taking 5-10 second turns in the physical realm, but share much of their mind and stay aware of the other surroundings and actions while they're out. In combat they share a single rune axe, and phase between grabbing and hefting it around (when someone takes a swing, they phase out, causing the attack to miss, the other phasing in behind the aggressor, snatching the axe and countering). In time the party befriended him, and though his particular old one is awake, he has taken up the cause to help the mortal races (and his chosen people, the Good Minatuar found in Baalgor Wastelands (found and pulled from the desert by the players).

The last is Lictalon (It's a bit of a personal spin on the character), at the moment frustrated and displeased with the players (In my take, he was the 3rd Aryan of Xy, after Kym-Nark-Mar and Lokum, and the first of the Elven race). His attempts to use the player party ended in their negative response (they're not exactly bad guys or anything, but there's been a lot of conspiracy against both them and Lictalon that ended them on very bad terms, like one mistakenly awakening Agu, and one intetinally awakening Aryans of Netosa, eventually awakening him), He had since ordered them to submit, and allow his reformed Army of Light to absorb the forces they tirelessly collected, and angered when they refused, is now launching an attack against them to get through to the Chaos Lord Holdings in the Citadel. While not a 'bad guy' per si, he's a fun frustrated straight man to pit against the often drunkard, emotionally unstable and semi-self centered personalities of the party (but undeniably powerful).