Tell us about your Favorite Table top Roleplaying Villain

aavarius

As inspired by this thread, and in an attempt not to clutter the neat stories there, comes the more antagonistic counterpart...the villain thread.

Tell us about your favorite villain you've either faced down as a player or created to thwart as a DM. Tell us about the dastardly plans for world domination. Tell us about their ignoble defeat. Tell us what really made them worth hating. After all, without villains there are no heroes.

I'll start this off...

I wish I could claim credit for this because you can't really get a more ignoble (not to mention thorough) defeat. A friend of mine played in a campaign run by a DM that was pretty unfair. A reoccurring villain was this lich that always seemed to have the exact counter for every single thing the players tried. Even when they managed to defeat him he always had an infallible escape plan. This wasn't so much a well prepared villain as it was a DM without a sense of fair play. By a stroke of luck and some clever planning the players managed to get this lich turned to stone. But the players were fed up with this NPC and weren't going to let him get away. So what did they do?

The Wizard and the Druid cast Stone to Mud, then Mud to Water. Then the party split the aquafied lich up, drank their portion of the water, then each journeyed to a separate plane of existence and waited around a while until their biology processed, absorbed, and/or scattered the water for them before returning home.

The DM then conceded he probably couldn't justify bringing that villain back anymore.

lordeeto

Awesome thread, I ended up playing a villain in many a campaign, but i would have to say my favourite was a rouge named Kaars he started off as a shade and ended up a vampire/shade template, he was a dual wielding keen kukri specialist, the poor hero's I killed on a regular weekend session made it quite enjoyable. In the end it didn't have a great deal combat because the gm got sick of the backstab crit's killing things so fast but it was still really fun to be evil! At one point I remember killing Manshoon (or one of his clones) because the Khentarim crossed me in some fashion.

sentrickvoluptua

The ultimate villain I've known in D&D is definitely pastor Quinn. He was involved in three and a half campaigns set in the same world. Very long campaigns with 500-600 hours in each. Yes, we kept "minutes" of our gaming sessions. This was 2 years of virtual non stop D&D...
Anyways, he recurred in each one, at different times and places. He's on the surface a nice guy, easily having many "followers" with him in whichever city he is planting a church in. Friendly but a little holier than thou.

The problem was he was a cult leader doing anything to get more domination in the world. And under his constant, annoying smile was this manipulative sociopath skumbag. His followers would love him to the point that they'd start to think he was an apostle and would start to do anything for him, and it often made our quests far more complicated. Then he wanted this rare powerful artifact we were after and things got even more complicated.

We almost never directly fought him. It would almost be something or someone else he had manipulated or left us to deal with. And we often had opportunities to straight kill the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, but couldn't because we needed him or he was in the company of powerful "good" people that we needed on our side, or something like that. And he had this damn smile... And this laugh, and condescending attitude, and you wanted to wring his neck but you never could!

We once saved "sacrifices" his followers were making, we had to keep him from the Gato artifact, he trapped us in a mine with a bunch of undead, his followers thought we were devils and hunted us, he stole stuff from us, and ultimately he gained control of something powerful and was making us battle each other and such, before we out-willed him and Wenturborne stabbed him to death. And kept stabbing. Over and over and over. That was a good day.

His catch phrase whenever he'd meet us in a town or church or something, "Hey! How's it going buddy?"
If we'd get upset with him, "Hey, why you gotta be like that? Why don't we all settle down? We're all friends here. M'kay."
Et cetera.
ARG.

hamete

I'm actually building a villain for my players to come across in my campaign.. Who feels like helping me create a crazy thing for them to uncover?... think Quantum of Solace type organization.

doctorcomics

Back when I got to play instead of just GM all the time, we played a lot of Champions. One of our GMs used Professor Muerte a lot. Now, in anyone else's hands, Muerte was just sort a cheap Dr. Doom. He's a Spanish scientist who got his face melted and wears battle armor.

But James did him with this great Ricardo Montalban voice, and Muerte got a crush on one of the PCs, sending her flowers and coded messages and stuff. And once he got her alone and took off his glove ... And tried to touch her with his melted stump of a hand...

Which just goes to show that a good GM can put lipstick on a pig, and make the most boring cliche into a memorable moment.

toadoflicking

Our currently-on-hiatus Star Wars campaign (we'll probably pick up the next chapter here in a couple of months or so) had our characters, every member of the crew of a light freighter during the time of the Jedi Civil War (the events of KOTOR, for the uninitiated), wake up in a cell. We fought our way back to our ship. Running for the bridge, we were met by someone sitting there.

In my chair.

His name was Jerek Vym. And he had a business proposal: smuggle for him, and he'd make us rich. Now, Jacen Hallis is no fool. And Jacen Hallis will smuggle anything, but never spice or slaves. Vym was known for both. He gave us the night to think it over, even going so far as to install a concussion missile launcher on the ship as a "signing bonus." he made it clear, however, that we were under no obligation to accept his offer, and, should we refuse, we'd be free to go on our way and never hear from him again.

As I said, Jacen Hallis is no fool. He knew that saying no to Jerek Vym was to invite the man to attempt to kill him and his crew. So, in the wee hours of the morning, the Star Scream took off, sending Jerek Vym a very thankful and politely worded refusal.

The DM was visibly surprised at this turn of events. And, I still believe he was a bit perturbed at how things played out, because that's when the bounty hunters started showing up. We were hounded from one system to the next, the entire time trying to keep the ledger in the black. We even picked up a couple of Jedi passengers. They had credits; we needed credits. Of course, the Sith were after the Jedi. So we had bounty hunters and Revan's Sith chasing us.

We finally killed enough bounty hunters (and a couple of low-level Sith lords) that apparently, the bounty hunter guild found us to be a bad target, and the hunters stopped popping up everywhere. Then, Revan "died," and Malak took over. The first major news story was the destruction of Taris. Taris, the planet on which Jacen's parents had gone for a vacation. Rushing to Taris, Jacen finds and buries his parents, then leaves. He decides that the best use of his ship is to smuggle supplies to worlds behind the battle lines to Republic resistance groups on Sith-held worlds. Doing this, he finds that one of Corellia's finest citizens has been playing the other side. Jerek Vym, that humanitarian, had been supplying information to the Sith and serving as a courier to deliver weapons and infiltration teams to Republic worlds.

Finally, after eight levels, we had enough evidence to take Vym down. We got into his headquarters, and Jacen decided not to leave justice up to a flawed system. Frontier justice. Corellian justice. Jacen Hallis is a damned good shot, and he took Jerek Vym down like he was a Boondock Saint. Not the part where they make a plan and screw up the execution. The part where they finally have their man, kneeling before them, weeping and pleading to be left alive. It felt good. To Jacen, and to me and the group. We all hated Jerek Vym. Out of character. He pissed us all off that much.

Jerek Vym was an ***hole of the highest order. But, every crime boss eventually finds the exact wrong person to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> off. Such was the life of Jerek Vym. May he burn in the fires of Hell for all eternity.

aavarius

Nice!

Best villains are the ones that you have a personal conflict with.