"I want my players to really really HATE someone." The one villain in the long-running campaign I'm playing in that really meets this criteria was an assassin who, funny enough, pulls the "I'm actually a good person" schtick to everyone *in-universe* BUT the PCs - i.e. we the PCs know he's an evil sadist but all other NPCs only see him for the competent, just, authoritative public figure that he presents... and that frustrates the PCs to no end because they've on occasion even had to work WITH this villain to not get into trouble by other NPCs. We can't wait to have the chance to kill that POS. : )
That's a really clever villain actually, I've played in campaigns where the noble appears really good and helpful, but behind the scenes are power hungry and destructive to get it. It can make an amazing dynamic between worshiping them in front of NPC's and scheming to stop their plan in private. Good job to your dm.
@@GaminGuy_ Unfortunately he's still at large (this is a big part of why we have no faith in the city's authorities, and why the party on the whole is chaotic); even now the party is begrudgingly working for his cause (and that of fellow authority figures). I showed my GM your reply and he said "Eventually". The hard part would be catching him in the act/have enough evidence to convict him, but that game is currently on hold while I run mine. If we get to duke it out with him I'll for sure let you know.
I feel compelled to point out that you can have villains with deep complex motivations, who think they're the good guy, and they can still be very clearly wrong.
@@oz_jones There is such a thing as people who know they're just in it to hurt someone, though. Shitty people exist. Sometimes someone doesn't have some overarching plan for how this will make the world a better place in the long run. Sometimes they just wanna hurt someone (or a lot of people)
I also do like the twist of "oh yeh... the guy never actually did anything evil", just alot of non-violent crimes in persuit of a similar goal to the NPC's when it comes to a villain they haven't actually met and are just following leads on. The former villain can be turned into an (unreliable, but possibly life-saving) ally. definitely Not for a BBEG villain but possibly for a red herring or minor villain.
Jacob makes a good point on how the dm should feel about their villain. You can’t love it to the point where you won’t let it die or feel anguish when it does. But, I’ve had experience with not caring about my villains enough and the players kill them a little anticlimacticly
In my opinion, you should love your villain, just make sure your players CAN kill it. It makes it feel earned if your dm has put every trap imaginable to protect the villain out of their love for them, and you SOMEHOW conquer the odds and win... But that beings said, it feels really sucky when the bbeg is like, two hits away from death, only to "mysteriously teleport" away cause you can't let your stupid creation due cause of how much time you put into them. (Yeah, I'm not speaking from personal experience at all...)
@@bye1551 yeah i dont really like teleportation for that reason its just so untrack able and such. Its why ive added that dentity reveals the location that the teleportation ended at. Helps the party know the area where the bad guy went and can track that area for them
Poor. Nihiloor, I knew him well. He didn’t deserve to die, he was still young, still had spots on his mouth tentacles. Alas- it was my fault for starting the party at level 3 because low levels are boring.
@@ianbrown1810 I've had villains teleport to a hidden room further in the dungeon that the players can find but I never have them run away entirely, also, If they use dimension door to teleport it leaves behind a fading image of wherever they teleported to, hinting to the players where they may be
@@ianbrown1810 I just don't use teleportation, usually I'll have the bbeg call their flying familiar a round or two before I think they need to get away, and when the familiar arrives, they ride it to safety. That being said, the players will have chance to kill him before he can even call his familiar, it takes his turn, so they can kill him whilst the familiar is coming, and then they get like 2 rounds to kill it in the sky. If they fail, (it's always on critical health when it tries to call it's familiar, and sometimes if they're not a magic user, I'll only give it a percent chance to work) then the players feel bad that they let him get away, they don't feel cheated out of a victory.
Some concepts I like The Palpatine: A villain of manipulation and extreme power that just has absolute fun with villainy, LOVES his job, believes morality doesn't exist and is a complete sociopath, but can out-do philosophy with the best of them and argue that there is no such thing as good and evil. Yes of course it needs to be adjusted for the setting, but you can do similar things with someone who's just blatantly enjoying the villainy. The Conquering Rebel: I came to this concept from my interpretation of Ganondorf. He is absolutely unapologetic in what he does. He knows what he is, and he does it primarily for himself. What he believes is simple - will without power is no will at all, thus one must conquer all that would oppose him to truly be independent. He's someone who would rule hell and see the heavens fall. Got a bit of Paradise Lost's Devil in there, where it is better to rule over Hell than to serve anything else, a complete refusal to obey anything but his own will, with maybe some personal twisted up code, basically an Oath of Conquest Paladin taken to its most extreme with no god, but rather in opposition to all the gods. It's got a bit of that sympathy, but it's still absolutely clear he's someone that needs to be stopped from the perspective of the party, especially if you have Clerics, Paladins, Warlocks, etc. he makes an excellent enemy to. A being born to fate he doesn't agree with, but is willing to tear everything, everyone else down for his own selfish desires and beliefs, no matter how understandable that selfishness may be, can make a good villain, but it has to be done right. Sympathetic Villain: It runs into the problems you mentioned, but I think there's a way to deal with it. When you do this, it should be up to the party to investigate. If they don't he just gets killed, don't pull the rug but give room for them to understand well ahead of time what the exact position of the villain is. One concept I've been wanting to run forever is basically taking Vlad Tepes and making him the current target. He's a brutal dictator that appears vampiric, tortures people, displays the slowly suffering, dying impaled convicted around his castle, but the people accept his rule, why? Because there's a Hobgoblin empire on the edge of their territory and the only way to stop them currently is to show superior brutality to the hobgoblins. It's not hard to figure this out, it is pretty easy in fact if you just investigate a little bit. This still leaves you with choices and some clear cut villains, while not saying Tepes is a good guy. If that makes sense. The Bad Ending is if you kill Tepes and just leave, because then the hobgoblins invade and destroy the country, best ending you deal with the hobgoblins first then get back around to dealing with Tepes. The Dracula: Classic, domineering, just a bully but bigger and fancier. How I would like to run my games is more building a world with characters in them and events happening around you, your characters have a clear impact, but the world exists outside of them and will constantly be changing and having things happen, that dark necromancer's tower will rise if you don't spend the time to stop him, the wars will happen whether you join them or not, cities rise and fall, things change, but your characters will be recognized and have significant impact on how they change. I haven't gotten to DM yet, but these are things I play around with. Villains are often my favorite part of a story so I think about these things quite a bit.
My favorite kind of villain is one who is not only honorable, but right for their circumstances. The only thing that makes the heroes fight them is the side their on. My all time favorite was a sci fi villain who ordered his forces to conquer Earth. He was still the antagonist as of course he’s trying to end all life on our world. Turns out however that’s because the villain’s home planet was dying and he needed somewhere to move his people. Earth just happened to be the worst defended planet within range of his fleet.
I totally agree with you and have DMed a campaign like that. What i learned is that the players will love it, but there's so much happening, everything is so organic that the characters WILL part ways sooner or later. Dealing with that is an entire discussion in and of itself Spoiler: that game broke down after 6 months as the players were too invested in their 3 characters each(total of 15 characters) and i couldn't possibly narrate all of them and still be a functional human being
My favourite way to make a villain is figuring out what personal flaw is the cause of their villany. Greed -> king who over taxes his subjects and mismanages his kingdom so that he can live in the lap of luxury while everyone else starves. Or the tyrant that enslaves everyone and anyone to mine riches for them. Ambition -> the wizard who aspires to take on the gods themselves. Or the noble who will do anything to take the throne from the current ruler. Makes for great understandable villains that the party loves to kill. The problem with villains of circumstance is that the best solution is to negotiate a compromise or to work together with the villain to fix their problem in a less destructive way, which doesn't make for a very fun D&D game for most people.
“It can all be done with a rock and 20 hit points” Me, planning a campaign involving a warlock of Karsus, who takes the form of a really big rock: *sweating nervously*
I like that Jacob addresses that he’s not the only one making these videos and cites other people’s points not to shit on them but to say “they make a good point but I disagree for these reasons” I think it’s a cool video structure
I literally had a chaos god who was gonna destroy everything as my BBEG, the player motivation wasn't really, "I don't agree with what your doing" but rather, "I want to exist to see my 9th birthday" in the case of one of my players
I honestly like villains that aren't that strong, but are very smart, so they manage to flee before getting killed (Although these are REALLY hard to write)
If well done they can be pretty fun but there will always be those DMs who never want them to get caught. (Because they're just too smart for you) So it can be really aggravating when they run away for the 37th time because they activated trap on you right before you kill them even though the wizards cast detect Magic and traps 3 times in that room alone
While fighting with wits and/or influence creates a fun villain, you still have a bunch of players who are definitly will think of something you didn't expect. Smart players can be the bane of this type of villain.
To be honest, an escaping enemy can be pretty frustrating for the players. Unless it's indicated that they are attempting to flee from the beginning of the combat. But if I walk up to a cloud giant's castle, encounter their queen and then she just misty steps out the window near the end of the combat I feel like "B**ch this is YOUR castle, get back in here and defend it until I kill you!" (Obviously it makes sense for them to flee but from a gaming perspective it's seriously frustrating >
The problem with escaping villains is that at any reasonable power level they are effectively impossible for the players to catch unless you make the villain stupid. One Amulet of Proof from Detection, and some teleportation spell or a fast mount a invisibility spell and any intelligent but weak villain is essentially uncatchable because they wouldn't even bother to try to fight the party, and can easily escape long before the party even lays eyes on them.
I actually did that in my campaign lol, he was named Augustus Hitelerus, he was kicked out of wizard school and became a powerful necromancer, killed the archimage that kicked him out, slaved all the other mages and burned the school. In the final battle, he brought back to life the barbarian's father, and he had to kill his father lol, that was cool
oh yeah that would be a great idea and they could make camps enslaving the elven people and torturing the elves (i'm sorry if this offends you it's just a joke)
It could actually, imagine a villain who was absconded from making art, banished even, whether it due to its horriblness or the ideas it portrayed that went against the status quo. But they loved it more than anything. So... In order to make art again, they decided to paint a new world in their image, truly a poetic vengeance. (This was one of my villains if you couldn't tell, I'm actually really happy with it, and my players loved him.)
Something which a lot of people designing villains who are the heroes of their own story overlook is that different people can have fundamentally different outlooks on life and the world around them A villain can genuinely believe that they're doing nothing wrong, while the PCs are utterly disgusted by their actions. Matt Coville's videos on Diplomacy (of all things) were a real eye-opener regarding this
"Morally grey villains are not fun" well I have you know my morally grey bbeg in Eberron currently has my party having to decide between mass genocide or restarting the last war and they h̶a̶t̶e̶ love it.
@@Rawnblade13, what is really needed is a mix of villains. Perhaps compliment your beast of a villain with a lackey who used to be a hero. Maybe the evil scientist has a life debt to a nemisis of a party character
I think there’s a difference between “morally grey” and “realistic” villains. Honestly, I think more people should take notes from The Witcher games. Spoilers ahead, obviously. TW1: Jacques de Aldersberg believes he can save the world by essentially creating a cult and genetically engineering super-soldiers to lead humanity into the promised land. It’s important to note that his fears about the end of intelligent life are entirely valid, so he’s not completely insane. Right diagnosis, wrong treatments. TW2: Letho of Gulet (another witcher) basically wants to rebuild his home (reestablish the Viper School), so he allies himself with Nilfgaard and starts assassinating the kings of the Northern Realms. TW2: The Lodge of Sorceresses wants to build a kingdom “of the mages, by the mages, for the mages,” partly because these mages view themselves as an oppressed minority (not entirely false) and because they want to regain the influence they once had. TW3: The Wild Hunt’s home world is being destroyed by The White Frost (basically entropy / “magical heat death of the universe”), so Eredin wants to invade/conquer other planets for his race’s survival. He’s basically a nationalist colonizing space elf. TW3: Gaunter O’Dimm is basically the Devil (though interestingly his initials are G.O.D.). He’s the series’s only “inhuman”/dark lord villain, but he’s not interested in ruling the world. He just wants to make Faustian bargains and play games with mortals. TW3: Dettlaff’s love, Syanna, manipulates him into murdering her enemies. After he discovers that he was tricked, Dettlaff decides to summon a ton of vampires and take his anger out on the entire country (it sounds dumb when you simplify it as much as I have here; it’s way more impactful to play it for yourself). These are seriously great villains, and I think the common thread is that even when their actions are clearly wrong, they have realistic motives. Not even necessarily good motives but motives that real people can have or have had throughout history. The only exception here is G.O.D., but I still think he’s one of the my favorite “dark lord” villains. His dialogue is just so well written, and he’s super mysterious and creepy.
i will say this much youve gotten much better over the years and upon watching this half way through id like to just say your doing a great job establishing when your joking and i find your style funny and light hearted and maybe even witty have a good one homie
For my party's villain he killed the one he loved, and attempted to destroy the world to save himself, believing that once it was done he could resurrect her
Exactly, it's not that hard to make a sympathetic villain that the players still are motivated to kill. Frankly i feel like this video over simplifies the concept of just being "sympathetic villain bad because players don't wanna think" really misses the ball imo.
Probably the best advice I was ever given for villains, is making the villain the embodiment of a particular vice or sin, or the fundamental opposite of the PCs. Envy? The villain is a rival bard who gets twisted and jealous of the PCs' accomplishments and starts spreading malicious rumours in towns ahead of them. Wrath? Fighter, classic sociopath soldier type, perhaps scarred by the horrors of war and now determined to win by any means fair or foul (especially foul). Gluttony? Cannibal or insane chef. Pride? Maybe your villain was a hero once, but their reputation got to their head and now they extort people because they believe they are entitled to it. Party of mages, put up against a "magic luddite" who decries magic as a tool for the weak and wicked (and may or may not use it himself); party of rebellious types, up against a ruthless paladin with a control freak streak; party of mostly non-humans, up against a racist tyrant. Good example of this mentioned in the video is putting a party that runs on the sixth commandment up against a villain with a literal death wish. The good guys have to break their number one rule to beat him, but he's never going to stop.
I tried to make a four horseman campaign using alternate interpretations of the Book of Revelation, rather than Hollywood as the baseline (Conquest, Strife, Justice and Death, instead of Pestilence, War, Famine and Death). Ended up with villains being good enough that I ditched the religious symbolism completely, and made each the centrepiece of separate stories, rather than a single adventure (kept the original concept as a one-shot, but ditched the overstuffed campaign). As an example, Justice is the leader of cult-like terrorist group seeking to overthrow the merchant's guild and carve out a socialist city-state from the existing monarchy. Favoured tactics include public executions of nobles and dressing up as royal soldiers to spread rumours of the Crown raiding it's own citizens, using propaganda and distrust of authority to weaponize the public against the nobles.
So I haven’t been watching these channels for super long but I think I know what each channel is like for me. Runesmith feels like that educated friend teaching you what you need to know in a very relaxed setting. Davychappy teaches through meme language. And honestly Jacob (or at least this video) feels like I just encountered a mad man go on a ten minute rant about what he knows and I’m too speechless at the time to respond but when I get home he actually makes a lot of sense. I love all three of these guys
For me it is important that the villain is hated for his actions but that he has a motive for what they do, just so they are not evil for the sake of being evil. It could be something as simple as wanting to fight strong opponents, wanting that adrenaline rush and therefor they are bringing chaos to the world to try and force strong opponents out to fight them.
Having a "force of nature" hit point bag for a main villain can really open up interesting options. How do different people in the world react to their approaching, semi-inevitable doom? Maybe some of them feel like more drastic measures are justified to stop it. Maybe others believe that all options should be exhausted before sacrificing innocent lives. The fun part of a faceless force of destruction isn't the monster itself, it's exploring how different characters come into conflict over methods, despite everyone genuinely wanting to solve the problem. The Reapers over in Mass Effect demonstrate this beautifully.
The best advice I can give for making sympathetic villains is that just cuz their actions can be justified doesn’t make them right. A great example of this is Dracula vs Alucard in castlevania. They were both impacted heavily by the death of Lisa, but the reason Dracula’s the villain and Alucard is the hero is that Dracula’s doing horrible things. This can make your villain still compelling and someone that can be empathized with, but not someone you can just forgive. I think the most important factor of villain vs hero design is that a hero is gonna be the one who’s making hard decisions to help others, and if tasked with the same decisions, the villain wouldn’t.
Honestly I love being a player with a morally gray villain. The questions it makes my character raise are always interesting and will always be different because every character will approach it at a different angle. One of my groups dms likes to do this villains and they have been my favorite stories.
One campaign my group had actually had the main "villain" be a player character from our last campaign (that player became the new DM). See, their character was a paladin who sorta...lost their mind...in the previous campaign. He lost some friends...a village was blown up by one of our party members...and then flung miles away...anyway, not important. Then the paladin got possessed by an otherworldly sword that fed his worst impulses and...well, you get the picture. Periodically, this paladin would show up as our party dealt with this otherworldly threat, and every time it happened, it was a treat.... We'd hear the slow metallic clank of his armor...his mutterings of how the "law" was flawed and he was the solution...his beastly griffin... Oh, and he had a sack of severed heads from people who "broke" the law. Real nightmarish stuff. And he just couldn't be STOPPED...he'd become a Conquest Paladin, and every fight with him gradually became more and more difficult...and he would always pursue us somehow (one of us had something he wanted)... He dropped poisonous gas on our fortress gates...so our party had to scatter away from the fumes...then our Fighter got hurled through the Void with the freaky sword...and while our Cleric and Rogue tried to attack him in melee, the paladin froze the Rogue in fear and the Cleric kept taking psychic damage (because goddam Conquest Paladins punish you for hitting them!) to the point where the paladin had the Cleric questioning their own god...the Bard got wrecked... ...it wasn't about winning, or wiping us out...it was fun just trying to survive against this unstoppable force.
Case in point. Keep balancing the sympathetic part until you reach a point of having players question themselves. Then throw off that balance by next time they encounter the villain, by having them help him unknowingly. Solidifying how far gone he is. Now in witch direction of how far gone you want him is up to you. You could have that moment where you step up to him, him, being the evil guy he is, could have placed tripwires that unleashed a poison into the nearby village waterbed. Making each passing minute ever so slightly pressing. Or you could stick to an senseless anger theme. Having the villain already be in a village, that your party gave the coordinates to. You could then describe this raid by pointing out how the villain is just hacking and slashing with furious blows. The blood gushing and spattering in to the air, as another guy's head get's mercilessly split while running past the villain. Or you could go with a different approach like having it simply be for a greater "good" Meaning he will happily kill himself for a bigger BBEG. Use tropes as a building block, not an obstacle.
I honestly think the best way, especially for a long running campaign, is to have multiple villains. Each with a different villain archetype, with their own arc that intersects with the adventure several times. You really can have the best of both worlds. The big absolute evil punching bag shows up when the game needs some action, the misguided rival shows up when you want an interesting narrative.
I personally agree with your sentiments about tragic villains, and I find it's far more interesting to present shades of grey by presenting a villain that can be helpful to your players but is still unapologetically evil. That makes it feel like the moral complications are coming from the players, rather than the DM. THEY become the ones that have to decide whether to accept the help of evil to perform good, rather than the villain doing it. I do not recommend it if there is hostility at your table, though, it's a been a week and two people are still mad at the other three killing some monsters that were potential allies. Still really interesting though!
Word of advice: instead of having a bad guy that's trying to do a thing and whom the heroes are typing to stop, it's also valid to have the heroes try to do a thing and have the bad guys try to stop them.
Way harder to pull off. Players tend to be reactive thanks to todays assumptions about dnd. In the old days, you adventured for treasure. What this treasure allows you to do is up to you, but the adventure is mostly there to provide gold and magic items to further players goal. Nowdays people expect more cinematic approach to stories in dnd. The heroes do what they do because what else would they do? The bad guy is over there doing bad guy things and we should stop it otherwise no game.
Palpatine's another one. An unapologetic sociopath who genuinely believes that there is no such thing as good or evil, and uses his extreme power and influence to its fullest extent with no regard to morality or a higher cause. This is a really straightforward way to transform a stereotypical BBEG into a more believable character. *Everyone* does what they think is right, but what is "right" doesn't necessarily relate to good or evil, or even any particular end goal. The Major and Palpatine are villains that are fully aware that their actions are unjustifiable from anything but a selfish perspective, and are completely and genuinely okay with that.
I’m saving this video not for its own value, but because it’s easier than saving all the other videos you linked in the description and making a legitimate playlist for them
I think the key is sympathetic villains who are ultimately wrong. Honestly any villain trope I think can work so it’s kinda weird to rail so hard against sympathetic villains. I like some ambiguity like why not question your and their motivations?
@@justineberlein5916 No, Thanos is just an idiot, a clever and good aligned PC / player would just sit down and explain to him all the ways that his plan is just completely stupid and pointless and convince him to stop rather than kill him.
Agilemind Thanos has noble intentions but yes his plan doesn’t and wouldn’t work. He isn’t a noble man who just goes about things wrong he is a madman with delusions that he is doing the right thing. Honestly I don’t think explaining the drawbacks of his plan would even make him change his mind but just switch to an equally brutal alternative.
@@woodstock5952 If he's just a mad man then he isn't sympathetic anymore. Hitler, Stalin, Gadaffi, etc... all fervently believed they were doing the right thing but to anyone sensible they are clearly self-deluded monsters. Good villains can be self-righteous (falsely believe they are doing good things), vengeful (falsely believe they are justified in doing bad things), narcissistic (only care that what they are doing is good for them), or sadistic (enjoy doing things that harm others). But not sympathetic, an antagonist that is sympathetic can be talked down and saved/redeemed rather than killed which works great in TV etc... but isn't that fun in D&D.
Massive props for putting this up to help DM's. To many videos & I've been waiting for years to find one video that sums it all up. Good to see the tabletop D&D community doing what has even hit video games years ago. Table top D&D is still by far better then ANY game ever.
I remember my party thought Straud was just a sad old crazy man mourning over the loss of his soulmate until they found his diary and it was such a good moment everybody immediately went into murder mode
To use a wrestling analogy, it’s like the booking philosophy between WWF and WCW where one is driven by dominant good guys and the other is driven by dominant bad guys. Both had high points and low points and have an overlapping audience but there are people that prefer one over the other
I’ve only recently found that I really enjoy both kinds of villains. I used to be someone to definitely favor more complex villains, and while I still do because I’m heavily a role player, our last game has had a lot of morally complex characters which has led to me, a fighting type character with strong morals, having to miss out on a lot of opportunities to do cool fights for role-play reasons, which are very valid and interesting, but it’s also nice to just have a mindless monster to fight sometimes (and when this actually happened, my DM had never seen my character fight fallout, so it was accidentally really easy kill lol)
4:54-5:17 this could actually work just if you do the inverse. Perhaps a sacred hero on his *glorious destiny to defeat the BBEG* fell from grace and turned evil. Either through his own vices and sins, or being corrupted from the inside out by a wicked spell turning him into the bad guy. So now the players have to follow in his footsteps to complete his journey and kill the anti-hero as well as the BBEG. And there’s a lot of different ways you could go about this. Perhaps the BBEG and Anti-Hero are working together. Maybe Anti-Hero still wants to kill the BBEG but he’ll do whatever it takes to defeat him, like killing an entire town of civilians to use their souls to make him more powerful or to complete some sort of ritual. And one great thing you could use to your advantage is that Anti-Hero is the complete opposite of what he once was: The good guy. So by the party filling in that now vacant spot they all in a way will become heroes, so even if one guy kills all the super bad peoples, a DM with a little experience could help use this symbolism to bring the party together. Or in laymen’s terms: Don’t make a bad guy that’s secretly good (unless you’re doing an evil campaign), make a bad guy that *was* good so that way he becomes understandable, compelling, and a complete badass that could use his heroic powers in new and ruthless ways to really test the party.
Or maybe villains shouldnt have rules of "this shouldnt be a good guy" like my best villain to date was a hobgoblin mercenary captain that had amassed a massive goblin army and he planned to sacrifice the capital of the country theyre in to supplant the goblin god to give his people freedom and protection to not be hunted by farm folk and the like.
I love this video, and I think it's a great take. It reminds me of Sid Meier's #1 rule of gaming - "The player should feel like the coolest person in the room." I take that to heart when I DM. I love my super cool OC villains, but ultimately the spotlight is on the players, and the villains are nothing without the heroes.
I really like that this video takes a stab at the perceived "right way to play dnd". This idea that has come around from the fact that a lot (but not all) of the famous and influential dnd players seem to play in a very similar way even though it's not even close to the only way. Especially how it tackles the "big bag of hit points villain". More people need to start recognizing that playing the game for the mechanics is a perfectly valid way to play if everyone is having fun and not every character in the world needs a five page essay on why they did this apparently evil thing and not every villain needs a twist. After the 500th "this guy was doing it to save what HE loves" it stops becoming a twist and becomes a trope. Really well made video.
Your neighbor owns a business and you own the same kind of business. The DM wants you two to have a fun competition. Necklace of Fireball has entered the chat...
I think it's a very fine line that CAN be walked to make a villain simultaneously sympathetic and irredeemably evil. While Thanos is a movie villain, he's the quintessential example of this trope: he demonstrates emotion and depth to his plan, pursuing it with unwavering conviction and reverence for his enemies, even attempting to justify his actions. The key difference between him being an anti-hero or even a protagonist is that both the heroes and the audience know that he is irredeemably wrong in his convictions. I somewhat agree with Logan, but with one difference: good and evil aren't subjective, they're *relative* to who witnesses or experiences the actions. To his followers, Thanos is relatively good, whereas to humanity and the Avengers, he is relatively bad. So yeah. Villains can have depth and can by sympathetic, but they must be wrong in the end.
Heard you were making this and have been looking forwards to it! My party is going to meet their next BBEG soon, so the timing on this video's release was convenient. :)
In the campaign im currently writing there are actually (depending on how you want to count) 3 or 4 different bbegs. (Also its not d&d, its fate core so not exactly the same but still a ttrpg) we have the 'main villain' who is what you first described, essentially a misguided pc. He is the strongest thing in the world by a long shot, and is backed by bbeg #2 aka the big government guy (ooo so scary) he himself is incredibly weak since hes just a human (not like the d&d race, i mean just literally powerless) but his danger comes from the fact that he controls all the "good guys." The third bbeg is the leader of the Villain faction (though there are many seperate evil factions he is the strongest and is the only one with a faction motivation that isnt money good) he constantly tries to find a moral highground where there simply isnt one. His intelligence and bravado is all because he feels humiliated that there is someone stronger than him in the world. The fourth bbeg is from the "Monster" faction. The monsters want nothing else other than to exist and procreate, and humans are a big danger to that so they want to wipe them out. They are the only faction that have a clear goal of human extinction. The party will have to deal with all 4 through ANY means.that is, if they really care enough. They may decide they actually want human extinction, or maybe they want to work with the main villain to destroy the heroes, i can't say. All i know is that it will be very fun for me to decide what happens in the background while the players do their thing
I think its great to make a villain like the lich from Adventure time. You can make a simple concept but as long as they are calculated and a terrifying force whenever they are shown/spoken about.
Literally ended the video at what seemed as early to get us to go and check out another video about the topic. Ngl, thumbs up cus of that ending. It's wasn't an advertisement, but it was.
THIS! This is a GREAT way to make a great villain! The players saw (even better, caused) its motivation. Feels natural, the players are moving the story forward, and not just listening to a DM telling the story that he wrote even before all the players existed and would happened exactly the same with a totally different party
In our very first session the bbeg was raising dead in the village cemetery. He left and we started killing the zombies but were all just about dead so we left one zombie to go recover. My paladin is still pretty broken up about it haha
"why am i making this video" literally had me lying on my desk laughing my face off XD jacob, i love your videos, because you have some great insights/ideas/advice but also because sometimes they are just fucking hysterical XD
I had a villain that was a night possessed by an evil force but the twist was he actually killed the evil but his queen died and so he began slaughtering everyone
This kinda feels like a video excuse on why Jacob likes simple villains the most and doesn't like complex villains. Great vid as usual, but I wholeheartedly disagree.
I also kinda feel its gonna cause people that play dnd to react negatively when the dm makes a complex villain just bc "well guy on internet say it bad"
I agree with you. Most D&D villains aren't special because they all turn out to be the same. Following Jacob's advice of making simple, clearly evil villains creates the Marvel effect, where 95% of your villains are interchangeable. So many iconic villains or villainous factions can just be swapped out between campaigns. For example, how are the Cult of the Dragon, Cult of the Dead Three, and Cult of Talos any different aside from just the amount of resources they have? All consist entirely of crazy evil stormtroopers who are bad guys because they're bad guys and that's it. Or evil wizards. How does a villainous archmage differ from a lich? Well, one's stronger, but generally their personalities and goals can pretty much be swapped out. "I'm crazy and evil and power hungry and want x magic macguffin that will make me all-powerful." Fought one, fought em all. Complex villains add dimension. They change the game up and make it fresh. Zariel is a fantastic villain; easily my favorite in D&D because as evil as she can be, it's pretty damn hard to fault her logic. She was abandoned by her brothers in arms and now she fights on the front lines of arguably the most important war in the universe. Demons are a plague, and at times it's like she's the only one who takes thst seriously. That being said, slavery, soul entrapment, and STEALING A CITY TO DROWN IT FOR SOLDIERS are all pretty fucked-up. So the party's gotta question how to deal with her. Do they kill her? Side with her? Can she still be redeemed? Whereas if I make yet another 2-dimensional mustache-twirling villain, who's gonna care? That's why they're called BBEGs (Big Bad Evil Guys), because their names or goals or personalities aren't important, they're just all generic cackling maniacs who want to "bring darkness" or "spread corruption" or "get the magic thingie of whosits that makes them immortal." Dungeons and Dragons is about telling a story. So why not tell one worth telling?
@@Inevitibility23 well for one that resources point shouldn't be swept under the rug. If I see a member of a dragon cult, then I expect to see some freaking dragons. Half-Dragons, Demons with strange draconic features, people being sacrificed to horrifics gaping mawed beasts and cromatics everywhere. Yeah yeah, I get what point you're trying to make, but the Marvel Effect isn't because villains are simple, hell Marvel's best villains I'd argue are still simple, the so called Marvel effect is because of reliance on similar visual language and similar situations for our heroes. There is nothing about any of your cults that means they should play into the same niche outside of them all being secret organizations. The god or monster they worship should flavor things as much as anything else and from there outward you should be building the organizations, how they get their members, how powerful and influential said members are, the tone you've set for the world, so on and so forth. Even down to the types of spells and items the cult uses or does not use. Everyone being evil doesn't make them similar, because at its heart D&D evil is self-interested. As for the enemy types, again, that's less about them having interchangable personalities and more about the DM's language. Sure an Archmage wants power and so does a Lich, but a Lich actually has power. A lich is an immortal being, he's sat in his tower and watched civilizations rise and fall. Why would that thing react like a human at all? Why would its plans even have to make sense to a human mind? Inversely your evil wizard is a person, they've lived a human life and while evil. In D&D speak that just means maliciously selfish. There could be dozens of motivations in that very wheelhouse and all of them don't need to be "I was a good guy." Indeed some of them might be as simple as "I myself am being manipulated." Heck, you could have your Archmage and Lich team up and have the mage think they're the same, only for him to realize the Lich was controlling him all along, because fleshy mortal creatures are driven by their desires and a lich is only driven by its own unknowable purposes. Or the inverse, the Lich assumes he's superior, but humans are adaptable and clever. He's stopped adapting, stopped evolving and like so many other creatures, this makes him easy pickings. Cackling maniac is an archetype, sure. But like the brooding edgelord, or well intentioned monster, they're all just different shapes to release from the marble so to speak. Your cackling guy could be generic, but the issue is that he doesn't have to be.
@@Inevitibility23 Thank you for summing up my feelings on all this. Last time I checked D&D is about roleplay, immersion, story and the characters that are involved in such. Sorry, I can't really.. get immersed in something that's about generic crazy evil bad guy.. It's just not realistic.
Its honestly astounding how few villains are not just, super greedy assholes. They have positive aspects sure but sapient creatures always do. They don't need to be committing a genocide they just need to not be good people overall
Thanks for boiling all this down and you're recommendations on the other video really helped me out with Strahd as I've often had my own questions if I am running him right.
I've run 1 dnd campaign and how it went is this: DM character named earl, a drow paladin raised by the wealthy to be physically strong but mentally meek. He has hard time killing the goblins that have knives to his throat showing him the hole they're gonna bury him in and the pike for his head. His solution to not break his moral compass: get some adventuring buddies to do it for him by breaking them out of a jail underneath a tavern, because adventure start tropes are good and great. Earl wanted to start an adventurer company that followed the rules of all kingdoms and was present in all of them to help out everyone he can. He finds 4 adventurers: Jest, Mysty, Knuggey, and Drimathyl After a while of taking adventurer requests, they begin to start uncovering a conspiracy of Councilmen, Politicians, and the Royal are all participating in a large crime ring lead by The Great Cult, who in turn is led by Moldoveanu Lafite-Rothschild, a fanatic of the nine hells. They don't know who it's led by at that point of course, as Moldoveanu was my BBEG. After uncovering the conspiracy, they set out a new goal: stop that conspiracy and set up company afterwards. During this time, Earl even developed a relationship with Mysty, whom he found out she's not a high elf but rather a changeling. After stopping the Child-Slave trade, and busted a drug trade in one of the cities, they got arrested for having a changeling in the party, as the country they were in were racist. After being taken to an out of country prison that laid outside of all kingdoms borders, they were introduced to Moldoveanu who was impressed at their work in stopping his business, but he didn't need them anymore anyhow, and mocks them for it. Moldo then asks for Earl specifically to be taken elsewhere, and the DM character everyone adored for being an innocent kind creature is now missing, taken by the BBEG. Prison break ensues and they're first goal was to find and rescue Earl. They found him in a dungeon underneath one of the kingdoms capitols, in a room with a bunch of machinery that earl was tied up to that was constantly skinning him in places or even gutting him, then injecting strong health potions to keep him alive. The room was labeled the "Spare Parts Room". After they inched closer to the machine, there was a glass barrier between them and Earl. Drimathyl, our parties Barbarian, decides the best way to get earl is to smash the glass, so he does so. Alarms sound throughout the hallway the machine starts clinking in parts that weren't active Earl convulses in pain, letting out an agonizing scream Tearing is heard as his fingers and toes are torn off, as more of the machine spurs to life blood drips on the floor as more tearing, and crackling from bones is heard his feet and hands ripped from their place on the body, as large metallic spikes pierce his stomach form behind as blood pools on the floor Earls screams echo through the hall louder than the alarm, as blood soaked tears rain from his agonized face his forearms are torn, along with the rest of his legs, and the screaming stops. all that's left is the whiring of the machine, the cracking of more borns and ripping of flesh as the rest of his arms are torn off, and the siren which seemed so much louder moments ago earls head falls forward, before being lifted up by a chain attached to a metal collar he was placed in and a few more cracks and the sirens stop his torso falls to the floor and his head with it. An echoey voice comes through the halls, almost as is if it was in their head a familiar cackle fills the air "I want you to know, that you're the ones who did that" said Moldoveanu, as his laughter trails off. And that really gave my players motivation and boy oh boy did they have a good time killing good ol' Moldo, giving him the same treatment he gave earl without the machine after relentlessly beating him.
THANK GOD SOMEBODY SAID IT. I'm so sick and tired of these *deep, philosophical villians* that is _secretly the good guy!!_ Spice is fun every once and a while, but if I'm eating a burrito, and there's no meat, its only spice - that isn't a burrito. I'm just shoveling chili paste into my mouth.
@@DabroodThompson a hyperbolic example used for comedy? _Gasp!_ Jokes aside, when every dnd campaign you've played in the past 5 month has the same ask reddit thread/4chan greentext shaped villian it gets very tiring very fast. Did I have fun those campaigns? Of course! But I wouldn't be lying if I wanted some variety the "sympathetic villain, trying to save the world, are we the bad guys" formula. It feels like a stylistic pitfall, almost to the point of cliched overly edgy PCs. You can still have a hoot with 'em! But when every group has one, there aren't many other ways you can spin the idea.
I'm currently spiraling because I've run out of my planning buffer and desperately trying to write the next bit of the campaign because my players want to play soon so really great timing on this excellent video Jacob
What I'm doing largely in my game is having my BBEG be a sympathetic villain, and having most of her minions being unapologetically evil, and it's worked out so far. I haven't fully introduced my BBEG yet however
You are absolutly right. Thing is that people without a satisfying "moral to the story" that are too much in love with their villain can still be entertaining at the table especally for streaming and fans watching. You have to care about the game to be annoyed by GMNPC villians.
So, a villan that's actually an item possessing a character's family member, may be a bad idea? Since the "villan" isnt the body, but the weapon attached to them.
Okay, I'm gonna admit it. I was skeptical the whole time because I've been crafting a really cool villain for a few years (even did a set-up interlude campaign that introduced the villain before the main campaign), but you made a lot of really convincing points. I need to focus on player agency and fun more than just throwing a cool thing at them.
My favorite type of D&D villain is the one that forces the heroes to change something about themselves to defeat them. It connects the characters' internal conflicts to the external conflict of the campaign, which helps the players show off the depths of their characters and have a satisfying arc without slowing down the central plot.
Insult me like this again and it will mean war.
My hatred is beyond your understanding
And so begins the great Dnd wars.
XP to Level 3 1v1 me, any outer plane, bards only, no items
We need to stop the apocalypse from happening
I don’t even know who you are.
Great video, but a lot of it is unnecessary, cause the only tip you need for making a great villain is to give them a twirly mustache.
Even if it’s a girl. Or a Tarrasque.
Yup. I remember imagining a group of magical gals with huge beards and it was fabulous.
The legendary Twigo agrees
Or a goatee.
Never trust someone with a goatee.
And a hat.
Jacob sounds like he’s angered some god and is rushing to get this video finished.
He has, you see it in how to play paladin in which he broke the oath because of his shitty videos
(Even though he has great videos)
He said on Twitter that he had a great idea for a video and was full sprinting toward completing it.
He probably made a villain so good that he started believing in it and made this video on a rush to appease this imaginary (?) wrongdoer.
@@NothingXemnas Hmmm, seems like the cat's out of the bag on this...
That’s some hardcore roleplaying
"I want my players to really really HATE someone."
The one villain in the long-running campaign I'm playing in that really meets this criteria was an assassin who, funny enough, pulls the "I'm actually a good person" schtick to everyone *in-universe* BUT the PCs - i.e. we the PCs know he's an evil sadist but all other NPCs only see him for the competent, just, authoritative public figure that he presents... and that frustrates the PCs to no end because they've on occasion even had to work WITH this villain to not get into trouble by other NPCs.
We can't wait to have the chance to kill that POS. : )
That's a really clever villain actually, I've played in campaigns where the noble appears really good and helpful, but behind the scenes are power hungry and destructive to get it. It can make an amazing dynamic between worshiping them in front of NPC's and scheming to stop their plan in private. Good job to your dm.
You hear that? I think that was the sound of stealing someone's idea. No, no, that wasn't me. Definitely. No idea why you'd think that.
please reply to give us the satisfying ending to this guy i don’t even know your your campaign but i hate him already
@@GaminGuy_ Unfortunately he's still at large (this is a big part of why we have no faith in the city's authorities, and why the party on the whole is chaotic); even now the party is begrudgingly working for his cause (and that of fellow authority figures). I showed my GM your reply and he said "Eventually".
The hard part would be catching him in the act/have enough evidence to convict him, but that game is currently on hold while I run mine. If we get to duke it out with him I'll for sure let you know.
Ophelion I'll be holding you to that.
I feel compelled to point out that you can have villains with deep complex motivations, who think they're the good guy, and they can still be very clearly wrong.
Nobody thinks they're evil, unless they're mentally ill
@@oz_jones Or if they exist in a fictional setting which literally has evil as a tangible force in the multiverse, such as most D&D settings
@@oz_jones There is such a thing as people who know they're just in it to hurt someone, though. Shitty people exist. Sometimes someone doesn't have some overarching plan for how this will make the world a better place in the long run. Sometimes they just wanna hurt someone (or a lot of people)
A chaotic good player could kill what they deem as “Evil”
What do they consider evil and why? That is the key
I also do like the twist of "oh yeh... the guy never actually did anything evil", just alot of non-violent crimes in persuit of a similar goal to the NPC's when it comes to a villain they haven't actually met and are just following leads on. The former villain can be turned into an (unreliable, but possibly life-saving) ally. definitely Not for a BBEG villain but possibly for a red herring or minor villain.
"But I don't want to cure cancer, I want to turn people into dinosaurs!"
_Amazing Spider-Man_ burn! 🔥
Turn people into cancer-proof dinosaurs, best of both worlds there :)
@@l0stndamned I mean, I’m kinda attached to my human body
Step One: Watch Online Campaigns.
Step Two: Profit. That’s it. Just take those.
Yeah i often used Critical Role for that
Step 3: read the 2e DnD "complete guide to Villians, and follow the steps in that.
Take PC's.
@@MrWerwoolf Have the villains be a bunch of murderhobo's? Who is gonna believe that? :P
GENIUS!
Jacob makes a good point on how the dm should feel about their villain. You can’t love it to the point where you won’t let it die or feel anguish when it does. But, I’ve had experience with not caring about my villains enough and the players kill them a little anticlimacticly
In my opinion, you should love your villain, just make sure your players CAN kill it. It makes it feel earned if your dm has put every trap imaginable to protect the villain out of their love for them, and you SOMEHOW conquer the odds and win...
But that beings said, it feels really sucky when the bbeg is like, two hits away from death, only to "mysteriously teleport" away cause you can't let your stupid creation due cause of how much time you put into them. (Yeah, I'm not speaking from personal experience at all...)
@@bye1551 yeah i dont really like teleportation for that reason its just so untrack able and such. Its why ive added that dentity reveals the location that the teleportation ended at. Helps the party know the area where the bad guy went and can track that area for them
Poor. Nihiloor, I knew him well. He didn’t deserve to die, he was still young, still had spots on his mouth tentacles. Alas- it was my fault for starting the party at level 3 because low levels are boring.
@@ianbrown1810 I've had villains teleport to a hidden room further in the dungeon that the players can find but I never have them run away entirely, also, If they use dimension door to teleport it leaves behind a fading image of wherever they teleported to, hinting to the players where they may be
@@ianbrown1810 I just don't use teleportation, usually I'll have the bbeg call their flying familiar a round or two before I think they need to get away, and when the familiar arrives, they ride it to safety. That being said, the players will have chance to kill him before he can even call his familiar, it takes his turn, so they can kill him whilst the familiar is coming, and then they get like 2 rounds to kill it in the sky. If they fail, (it's always on critical health when it tries to call it's familiar, and sometimes if they're not a magic user, I'll only give it a percent chance to work) then the players feel bad that they let him get away, they don't feel cheated out of a victory.
Pretty sure you're more of an expert than anyone else on D&D Villains.
The fact that the Mad Wizard King Jacob exists is proof of this.
Fireball
:)
@@BigDickWizard6969
YOU'RE BACK!
@@ge789
D I S P E L M A G I C
@@BigDickWizard6969 i cast zhe fiureball
Some concepts I like
The Palpatine: A villain of manipulation and extreme power that just has absolute fun with villainy, LOVES his job, believes morality doesn't exist and is a complete sociopath, but can out-do philosophy with the best of them and argue that there is no such thing as good and evil. Yes of course it needs to be adjusted for the setting, but you can do similar things with someone who's just blatantly enjoying the villainy.
The Conquering Rebel: I came to this concept from my interpretation of Ganondorf. He is absolutely unapologetic in what he does. He knows what he is, and he does it primarily for himself. What he believes is simple - will without power is no will at all, thus one must conquer all that would oppose him to truly be independent. He's someone who would rule hell and see the heavens fall. Got a bit of Paradise Lost's Devil in there, where it is better to rule over Hell than to serve anything else, a complete refusal to obey anything but his own will, with maybe some personal twisted up code, basically an Oath of Conquest Paladin taken to its most extreme with no god, but rather in opposition to all the gods. It's got a bit of that sympathy, but it's still absolutely clear he's someone that needs to be stopped from the perspective of the party, especially if you have Clerics, Paladins, Warlocks, etc. he makes an excellent enemy to. A being born to fate he doesn't agree with, but is willing to tear everything, everyone else down for his own selfish desires and beliefs, no matter how understandable that selfishness may be, can make a good villain, but it has to be done right.
Sympathetic Villain: It runs into the problems you mentioned, but I think there's a way to deal with it. When you do this, it should be up to the party to investigate. If they don't he just gets killed, don't pull the rug but give room for them to understand well ahead of time what the exact position of the villain is. One concept I've been wanting to run forever is basically taking Vlad Tepes and making him the current target. He's a brutal dictator that appears vampiric, tortures people, displays the slowly suffering, dying impaled convicted around his castle, but the people accept his rule, why? Because there's a Hobgoblin empire on the edge of their territory and the only way to stop them currently is to show superior brutality to the hobgoblins. It's not hard to figure this out, it is pretty easy in fact if you just investigate a little bit. This still leaves you with choices and some clear cut villains, while not saying Tepes is a good guy. If that makes sense. The Bad Ending is if you kill Tepes and just leave, because then the hobgoblins invade and destroy the country, best ending you deal with the hobgoblins first then get back around to dealing with Tepes.
The Dracula: Classic, domineering, just a bully but bigger and fancier.
How I would like to run my games is more building a world with characters in them and events happening around you, your characters have a clear impact, but the world exists outside of them and will constantly be changing and having things happen, that dark necromancer's tower will rise if you don't spend the time to stop him, the wars will happen whether you join them or not, cities rise and fall, things change, but your characters will be recognized and have significant impact on how they change.
I haven't gotten to DM yet, but these are things I play around with. Villains are often my favorite part of a story so I think about these things quite a bit.
My favorite kind of villain is one who is not only honorable, but right for their circumstances. The only thing that makes the heroes fight them is the side their on. My all time favorite was a sci fi villain who ordered his forces to conquer Earth. He was still the antagonist as of course he’s trying to end all life on our world. Turns out however that’s because the villain’s home planet was dying and he needed somewhere to move his people. Earth just happened to be the worst defended planet within range of his fleet.
I totally agree with you and have DMed a campaign like that. What i learned is that the players will love it, but there's so much happening, everything is so organic that the characters WILL part ways sooner or later. Dealing with that is an entire discussion in and of itself
Spoiler: that game broke down after 6 months as the players were too invested in their 3 characters each(total of 15 characters) and i couldn't possibly narrate all of them and still be a functional human being
I'll save this comment for later if you don't mind hahaha
My favourite way to make a villain is figuring out what personal flaw is the cause of their villany.
Greed -> king who over taxes his subjects and mismanages his kingdom so that he can live in the lap of luxury while everyone else starves. Or the tyrant that enslaves everyone and anyone to mine riches for them.
Ambition -> the wizard who aspires to take on the gods themselves. Or the noble who will do anything to take the throne from the current ruler.
Makes for great understandable villains that the party loves to kill. The problem with villains of circumstance is that the best solution is to negotiate a compromise or to work together with the villain to fix their problem in a less destructive way, which doesn't make for a very fun D&D game for most people.
@@agilemind6241 but for other ppl like me it does sound like an amazing game
Next: How to Make DnD Animal Companions Good
yes please!!
Step 1: Buy Logan's book
Step 2: Profit (for them)
Step 3: Profit (for you)
YES! I need this for my Loxodon with Elephant mount
The best way to use pets in d&d is to not use pets in d&d
@@The_Sharktocrab a sad truth
“It can all be done with a rock and 20 hit points”
Me, planning a campaign involving a warlock of Karsus, who takes the form of a really big rock: *sweating nervously*
War-rock
''Recurring villains are the worst"
*The Rise of Skywalker flashbacks intensify*
"Somehow, Palpatine is back"
Alternatively you can have somewhat comedic reoccurring villains.
"CURSE YOU PERRY THE PALADIN!"
@@crimsonwizahd2358 That sounds like my pumpkinmancer i constantly brought him back as either an npc or as a villain.
Palpatine is the best part of the sequels tho 😝
This is actually the ONE aspect where it isn’t ironically enough
I like that Jacob addresses that he’s not the only one making these videos and cites other people’s points not to shit on them but to say “they make a good point but I disagree for these reasons” I think it’s a cool video structure
I literally had a chaos god who was gonna destroy everything as my BBEG, the player motivation wasn't really, "I don't agree with what your doing" but rather, "I want to exist to see my 9th birthday" in the case of one of my players
Good enough for motivation. Reminds me of This War of Mine and Darkest Dungeon
Motivation by shoving problems in your face is always great motivation
I honestly like villains that aren't that strong, but are very smart, so they manage to flee before getting killed (Although these are REALLY hard to write)
If well done they can be pretty fun but there will always be those DMs who never want them to get caught. (Because they're just too smart for you) So it can be really aggravating when they run away for the 37th time because they activated trap on you right before you kill them even though the wizards cast detect Magic and traps 3 times in that room alone
While fighting with wits and/or influence creates a fun villain, you still have a bunch of players who are definitly will think of something you didn't expect. Smart players can be the bane of this type of villain.
To be honest, an escaping enemy can be pretty frustrating for the players. Unless it's indicated that they are attempting to flee from the beginning of the combat.
But if I walk up to a cloud giant's castle, encounter their queen and then she just misty steps out the window near the end of the combat I feel like "B**ch this is YOUR castle, get back in here and defend it until I kill you!"
(Obviously it makes sense for them to flee but from a gaming perspective it's seriously frustrating >
You'd love beholders then.
The problem with escaping villains is that at any reasonable power level they are effectively impossible for the players to catch unless you make the villain stupid. One Amulet of Proof from Detection, and some teleportation spell or a fast mount a invisibility spell and any intelligent but weak villain is essentially uncatchable because they wouldn't even bother to try to fight the party, and can easily escape long before the party even lays eyes on them.
"And that can be done with a rock and 20HP."
_takes a note_
Boulder von Chist III
A boulder, 20 hp and the dark souls boss music.
I dont know about you guys, but an angry, failed artist could make a good villian.
I actually did that in my campaign lol, he was named Augustus Hitelerus, he was kicked out of wizard school and became a powerful necromancer, killed the archimage that kicked him out, slaved all the other mages and burned the school. In the final battle, he brought back to life the barbarian's father, and he had to kill his father lol, that was cool
damn, lowkey, this is kinda a roast...
The person you are thinking about is Adolf hitler
oh yeah that would be a great idea
and they could make camps enslaving the elven people
and torturing the elves
(i'm sorry if this offends you it's just a joke)
It could actually, imagine a villain who was absconded from making art, banished even, whether it due to its horriblness or the ideas it portrayed that went against the status quo. But they loved it more than anything. So... In order to make art again, they decided to paint a new world in their image, truly a poetic vengeance. (This was one of my villains if you couldn't tell, I'm actually really happy with it, and my players loved him.)
Video Title: How to make good DnD Villains (imo)
Actual Title: JACOB ROASTS NEARLY EVERY DND CONTENT CREATOR AND DASHES AWAY
Oops, forgot to Disengage. Now they all get an attack of opportunity.
@@ATinyWaffle Nah, he's good. He's a level 4 rogue.
Sneak Attack, Run Away, he can dash, it's okay!
@@DawnfireGalinndan is that a reference to something
Something which a lot of people designing villains who are the heroes of their own story overlook is that different people can have fundamentally different outlooks on life and the world around them
A villain can genuinely believe that they're doing nothing wrong, while the PCs are utterly disgusted by their actions. Matt Coville's videos on Diplomacy (of all things) were a real eye-opener regarding this
"Morally grey villains are not fun" well I have you know my morally grey bbeg in Eberron currently has my party having to decide between mass genocide or restarting the last war and they h̶a̶t̶e̶ love it.
Haha magic nukes go brr
I agree! I'm all for a classic dark lord guy as much as the next person but...those guys are a dime a dozen in fantasy stories. Gets old.
@@Rawnblade13, what is really needed is a mix of villains. Perhaps compliment your beast of a villain with a lackey who used to be a hero. Maybe the evil scientist has a life debt to a nemisis of a party character
I think there’s a difference between “morally grey” and “realistic” villains. Honestly, I think more people should take notes from The Witcher games. Spoilers ahead, obviously.
TW1: Jacques de Aldersberg believes he can save the world by essentially creating a cult and genetically engineering super-soldiers to lead humanity into the promised land. It’s important to note that his fears about the end of intelligent life are entirely valid, so he’s not completely insane. Right diagnosis, wrong treatments.
TW2: Letho of Gulet (another witcher) basically wants to rebuild his home (reestablish the Viper School), so he allies himself with Nilfgaard and starts assassinating the kings of the Northern Realms.
TW2: The Lodge of Sorceresses wants to build a kingdom “of the mages, by the mages, for the mages,” partly because these mages view themselves as an oppressed minority (not entirely false) and because they want to regain the influence they once had.
TW3: The Wild Hunt’s home world is being destroyed by The White Frost (basically entropy / “magical heat death of the universe”), so Eredin wants to invade/conquer other planets for his race’s survival. He’s basically a nationalist colonizing space elf.
TW3: Gaunter O’Dimm is basically the Devil (though interestingly his initials are G.O.D.). He’s the series’s only “inhuman”/dark lord villain, but he’s not interested in ruling the world. He just wants to make Faustian bargains and play games with mortals.
TW3: Dettlaff’s love, Syanna, manipulates him into murdering her enemies. After he discovers that he was tricked, Dettlaff decides to summon a ton of vampires and take his anger out on the entire country (it sounds dumb when you simplify it as much as I have here; it’s way more impactful to play it for yourself).
These are seriously great villains, and I think the common thread is that even when their actions are clearly wrong, they have realistic motives. Not even necessarily good motives but motives that real people can have or have had throughout history. The only exception here is G.O.D., but I still think he’s one of the my favorite “dark lord” villains. His dialogue is just so well written, and he’s super mysterious and creepy.
i will say this much youve gotten much better over the years and upon watching this half way through id like to just say your doing a great job establishing when your joking and i find your style funny and light hearted and maybe even witty have a good one homie
*sympathetic DnD villain:* I did this to save the one I love!
*the Party:* People are dead because of you!
A small price to pay for happiness
Cool motive. Still murder.
For my party's villain he killed the one he loved, and attempted to destroy the world to save himself, believing that once it was done he could resurrect her
@@harperthegoblin Sounds like the Future Diary.
Exactly, it's not that hard to make a sympathetic villain that the players still are motivated to kill. Frankly i feel like this video over simplifies the concept of just being "sympathetic villain bad because players don't wanna think" really misses the ball imo.
How to make a good villain:
Insult everyone else
Now everyone hates you
You are the villain
Then one of my mates of the campaign is the perfect villain haha... he's bard btw
Underrated comment.
Probably the best advice I was ever given for villains, is making the villain the embodiment of a particular vice or sin, or the fundamental opposite of the PCs.
Envy? The villain is a rival bard who gets twisted and jealous of the PCs' accomplishments and starts spreading malicious rumours in towns ahead of them. Wrath? Fighter, classic sociopath soldier type, perhaps scarred by the horrors of war and now determined to win by any means fair or foul (especially foul). Gluttony? Cannibal or insane chef. Pride? Maybe your villain was a hero once, but their reputation got to their head and now they extort people because they believe they are entitled to it.
Party of mages, put up against a "magic luddite" who decries magic as a tool for the weak and wicked (and may or may not use it himself); party of rebellious types, up against a ruthless paladin with a control freak streak; party of mostly non-humans, up against a racist tyrant.
Good example of this mentioned in the video is putting a party that runs on the sixth commandment up against a villain with a literal death wish. The good guys have to break their number one rule to beat him, but he's never going to stop.
This is awesome advice why doesn’t this have more likes?
I tried to make a four horseman campaign using alternate interpretations of the Book of Revelation, rather than Hollywood as the baseline (Conquest, Strife, Justice and Death, instead of Pestilence, War, Famine and Death). Ended up with villains being good enough that I ditched the religious symbolism completely, and made each the centrepiece of separate stories, rather than a single adventure (kept the original concept as a one-shot, but ditched the overstuffed campaign).
As an example, Justice is the leader of cult-like terrorist group seeking to overthrow the merchant's guild and carve out a socialist city-state from the existing monarchy. Favoured tactics include public executions of nobles and dressing up as royal soldiers to spread rumours of the Crown raiding it's own citizens, using propaganda and distrust of authority to weaponize the public against the nobles.
Jacob while making this video: *this is a suicide mission*
Also Jacob while making this video: *ok*
So I haven’t been watching these channels for super long but I think I know what each channel is like for me. Runesmith feels like that educated friend teaching you what you need to know in a very relaxed setting. Davychappy teaches through meme language. And honestly Jacob (or at least this video) feels like I just encountered a mad man go on a ten minute rant about what he knows and I’m too speechless at the time to respond but when I get home he actually makes a lot of sense. I love all three of these guys
A good villain is a villain that kills the party's pet
Can't argue with that!
Strahd killed my player’s familiar on their second encounter and now they all hate him
just do what Araki does with JJBA and have the villain kill a dog, people seem to hate that a lot more than a villain killing a person
John Wick would like to know your location
Cat in time I’m playing a character that had a bear mount. Mind that I said had. Yea, I want to kill every last cultist.
For me it is important that the villain is hated for his actions but that he has a motive for what they do, just so they are not evil for the sake of being evil.
It could be something as simple as wanting to fight strong opponents, wanting that adrenaline rush and therefor they are bringing chaos to the world to try and force strong opponents out to fight them.
Having a "force of nature" hit point bag for a main villain can really open up interesting options. How do different people in the world react to their approaching, semi-inevitable doom? Maybe some of them feel like more drastic measures are justified to stop it. Maybe others believe that all options should be exhausted before sacrificing innocent lives. The fun part of a faceless force of destruction isn't the monster itself, it's exploring how different characters come into conflict over methods, despite everyone genuinely wanting to solve the problem. The Reapers over in Mass Effect demonstrate this beautifully.
Uh oh, looks like someone’s trying to get Cody to make another 20 minute response video 😂
media1.tenor.com/images/9ecdbc8b345d3d0dc37f88f71984eaad/tenor.gif?itemid=3575836
Wait, what?
The best advice I can give for making sympathetic villains is that just cuz their actions can be justified doesn’t make them right. A great example of this is Dracula vs Alucard in castlevania. They were both impacted heavily by the death of Lisa, but the reason Dracula’s the villain and Alucard is the hero is that Dracula’s doing horrible things. This can make your villain still compelling and someone that can be empathized with, but not someone you can just forgive. I think the most important factor of villain vs hero design is that a hero is gonna be the one who’s making hard decisions to help others, and if tasked with the same decisions, the villain wouldn’t.
Honestly I love being a player with a morally gray villain. The questions it makes my character raise are always interesting and will always be different because every character will approach it at a different angle. One of my groups dms likes to do this villains and they have been my favorite stories.
Their neighbour trying to start their business?
*_DINKELBERRRG_*
One campaign my group had actually had the main "villain" be a player character from our last campaign (that player became the new DM).
See, their character was a paladin who sorta...lost their mind...in the previous campaign.
He lost some friends...a village was blown up by one of our party members...and then flung miles away...anyway, not important.
Then the paladin got possessed by an otherworldly sword that fed his worst impulses and...well, you get the picture.
Periodically, this paladin would show up as our party dealt with this otherworldly threat, and every time it happened, it was a treat....
We'd hear the slow metallic clank of his armor...his mutterings of how the "law" was flawed and he was the solution...his beastly griffin...
Oh, and he had a sack of severed heads from people who "broke" the law. Real nightmarish stuff.
And he just couldn't be STOPPED...he'd become a Conquest Paladin, and every fight with him gradually became more and more difficult...and he would always pursue us somehow (one of us had something he wanted)...
He dropped poisonous gas on our fortress gates...so our party had to scatter away from the fumes...then our Fighter got hurled through the Void with the freaky sword...and while our Cleric and Rogue tried to attack him in melee, the paladin froze the Rogue in fear and the Cleric kept taking psychic damage (because goddam Conquest Paladins punish you for hitting them!) to the point where the paladin had the Cleric questioning their own god...the Bard got wrecked...
...it wasn't about winning, or wiping us out...it was fun just trying to survive against this unstoppable force.
Case in point.
Keep balancing the sympathetic part until you reach a point of having players question themselves.
Then throw off that balance by next time they encounter the villain, by having them help him unknowingly.
Solidifying how far gone he is.
Now in witch direction of how far gone you want him is up to you.
You could have that moment where you step up to him, him, being the evil guy he is, could have placed tripwires that unleashed a poison into the nearby village waterbed.
Making each passing minute ever so slightly pressing.
Or you could stick to an senseless anger theme.
Having the villain already be in a village, that your party gave the coordinates to.
You could then describe this raid by pointing out how the villain is just hacking and slashing with furious blows.
The blood gushing and spattering in to the air, as another guy's head get's mercilessly split while running past the villain.
Or you could go with a different approach like having it simply be for a greater "good"
Meaning he will happily kill himself for a bigger BBEG.
Use tropes as a building block, not an obstacle.
So this video is just “sometimes no think, ungabunga hit bad guy, feel good, hit dude”
I honestly think the best way, especially for a long running campaign, is to have multiple villains. Each with a different villain archetype, with their own arc that intersects with the adventure several times.
You really can have the best of both worlds. The big absolute evil punching bag shows up when the game needs some action, the misguided rival shows up when you want an interesting narrative.
I personally agree with your sentiments about tragic villains, and I find it's far more interesting to present shades of grey by presenting a villain that can be helpful to your players but is still unapologetically evil. That makes it feel like the moral complications are coming from the players, rather than the DM. THEY become the ones that have to decide whether to accept the help of evil to perform good, rather than the villain doing it.
I do not recommend it if there is hostility at your table, though, it's a been a week and two people are still mad at the other three killing some monsters that were potential allies. Still really interesting though!
Word of advice: instead of having a bad guy that's trying to do a thing and whom the heroes are typing to stop, it's also valid to have the heroes try to do a thing and have the bad guys try to stop them.
Way harder to pull off. Players tend to be reactive thanks to todays assumptions about dnd.
In the old days, you adventured for treasure. What this treasure allows you to do is up to you, but the adventure is mostly there to provide gold and magic items to further players goal.
Nowdays people expect more cinematic approach to stories in dnd. The heroes do what they do because what else would they do? The bad guy is over there doing bad guy things and we should stop it otherwise no game.
0:45 Jacob, can we please hear this story? I feel like zariel did something either to you or your party.
@@Joe-sr6de thanks, I just haven't watched it
@@Joe-sr6de what exactly happened?
It's probably just because she's the latest villain
Hellsing Ultimate Ova's Villan "The Major
" is the perfect example of a bad guy being bad just because he likes it.
Palpatine's another one. An unapologetic sociopath who genuinely believes that there is no such thing as good or evil, and uses his extreme power and influence to its fullest extent with no regard to morality or a higher cause.
This is a really straightforward way to transform a stereotypical BBEG into a more believable character. *Everyone* does what they think is right, but what is "right" doesn't necessarily relate to good or evil, or even any particular end goal. The Major and Palpatine are villains that are fully aware that their actions are unjustifiable from anything but a selfish perspective, and are completely and genuinely okay with that.
But I don't want a good villain, Jacob from XP to level three, I want an evil villain.
Hey, It's CritCrab!
Aha!
I’m saving this video not for its own value, but because it’s easier than saving all the other videos you linked in the description and making a legitimate playlist for them
I think the key is sympathetic villains who are ultimately wrong. Honestly any villain trope I think can work so it’s kinda weird to rail so hard against sympathetic villains. I like some ambiguity like why not question your and their motivations?
Makes me think of the verdict: "Cool motive! Still murder."
For example, Thanos. Noble intentions, but... the Snap is still evil.
@@justineberlein5916 No, Thanos is just an idiot, a clever and good aligned PC / player would just sit down and explain to him all the ways that his plan is just completely stupid and pointless and convince him to stop rather than kill him.
Agilemind Thanos has noble intentions but yes his plan doesn’t and wouldn’t work. He isn’t a noble man who just goes about things wrong he is a madman with delusions that he is doing the right thing. Honestly I don’t think explaining the drawbacks of his plan would even make him change his mind but just switch to an equally brutal alternative.
@@woodstock5952 If he's just a mad man then he isn't sympathetic anymore. Hitler, Stalin, Gadaffi, etc... all fervently believed they were doing the right thing but to anyone sensible they are clearly self-deluded monsters.
Good villains can be self-righteous (falsely believe they are doing good things), vengeful (falsely believe they are justified in doing bad things), narcissistic (only care that what they are doing is good for them), or sadistic (enjoy doing things that harm others). But not sympathetic, an antagonist that is sympathetic can be talked down and saved/redeemed rather than killed which works great in TV etc... but isn't that fun in D&D.
"... cause I had to adapt to their villain needs." was honestly so good I just had to comment about it. This makes you sound like a good DM. lol :3
I don't want to contemplate the meaning of life in my Imaginary Math Rock Rolling Game
- Jacob, the Big Brain Dough Boi
The mad lad made an 8 minute video, and through out the entire this he did shout outs to other D&D channels. This is awesome.
"Neighbour trying to start his business"
Flashback to Waterdeep part 3.
Massive props for putting this up to help DM's. To many videos & I've been waiting for years to find one video that sums it all up. Good to see the tabletop D&D community doing what has even hit video games years ago. Table top D&D is still by far better then ANY game ever.
I remember my party thought Straud was just a sad old crazy man mourning over the loss of his soulmate until they found his diary and it was such a good moment everybody immediately went into murder mode
To use a wrestling analogy, it’s like the booking philosophy between WWF and WCW where one is driven by dominant good guys and the other is driven by dominant bad guys. Both had high points and low points and have an overlapping audience but there are people that prefer one over the other
This is how Logan becomes a villain to Jacob. Two idealist, at odds.
Compared with other D&D channels, your advice is always mercifully short and relentlessly entertaining. Thanks for the wisdom!
I’ve only recently found that I really enjoy both kinds of villains. I used to be someone to definitely favor more complex villains, and while I still do because I’m heavily a role player, our last game has had a lot of morally complex characters which has led to me, a fighting type character with strong morals, having to miss out on a lot of opportunities to do cool fights for role-play reasons, which are very valid and interesting, but it’s also nice to just have a mindless monster to fight sometimes (and when this actually happened, my DM had never seen my character fight fallout, so it was accidentally really easy kill lol)
This may be your best video. I think it really illustrates your philosophy in a cool way.
4:54-5:17 this could actually work just if you do the inverse. Perhaps a sacred hero on his *glorious destiny to defeat the BBEG* fell from grace and turned evil. Either through his own vices and sins, or being corrupted from the inside out by a wicked spell turning him into the bad guy. So now the players have to follow in his footsteps to complete his journey and kill the anti-hero as well as the BBEG. And there’s a lot of different ways you could go about this. Perhaps the BBEG and Anti-Hero are working together. Maybe Anti-Hero still wants to kill the BBEG but he’ll do whatever it takes to defeat him, like killing an entire town of civilians to use their souls to make him more powerful or to complete some sort of ritual. And one great thing you could use to your advantage is that Anti-Hero is the complete opposite of what he once was: The good guy. So by the party filling in that now vacant spot they all in a way will become heroes, so even if one guy kills all the super bad peoples, a DM with a little experience could help use this symbolism to bring the party together.
Or in laymen’s terms: Don’t make a bad guy that’s secretly good (unless you’re doing an evil campaign), make a bad guy that *was* good so that way he becomes understandable, compelling, and a complete badass that could use his heroic powers in new and ruthless ways to really test the party.
Or maybe villains shouldnt have rules of "this shouldnt be a good guy" like my best villain to date was a hobgoblin mercenary captain that had amassed a massive goblin army and he planned to sacrifice the capital of the country theyre in to supplant the goblin god to give his people freedom and protection to not be hunted by farm folk and the like.
I love this video, and I think it's a great take. It reminds me of Sid Meier's #1 rule of gaming - "The player should feel like the coolest person in the room."
I take that to heart when I DM. I love my super cool OC villains, but ultimately the spotlight is on the players, and the villains are nothing without the heroes.
I really like that this video takes a stab at the perceived "right way to play dnd". This idea that has come around from the fact that a lot (but not all) of the famous and influential dnd players seem to play in a very similar way even though it's not even close to the only way. Especially how it tackles the "big bag of hit points villain". More people need to start recognizing that playing the game for the mechanics is a perfectly valid way to play if everyone is having fun and not every character in the world needs a five page essay on why they did this apparently evil thing and not every villain needs a twist. After the 500th "this guy was doing it to save what HE loves" it stops becoming a twist and becomes a trope. Really well made video.
Your neighbor owns a business and you own the same kind of business.
The DM wants you two to have a fun competition.
Necklace of Fireball has entered the chat...
OMG THIS IS PERFECT TIMING
No joke, i was thinking the same thing 😂👌
I think it's a very fine line that CAN be walked to make a villain simultaneously sympathetic and irredeemably evil. While Thanos is a movie villain, he's the quintessential example of this trope: he demonstrates emotion and depth to his plan, pursuing it with unwavering conviction and reverence for his enemies, even attempting to justify his actions.
The key difference between him being an anti-hero or even a protagonist is that both the heroes and the audience know that he is irredeemably wrong in his convictions. I somewhat agree with Logan, but with one difference: good and evil aren't subjective, they're *relative* to who witnesses or experiences the actions. To his followers, Thanos is relatively good, whereas to humanity and the Avengers, he is relatively bad.
So yeah. Villains can have depth and can by sympathetic, but they must be wrong in the end.
May I just say that Matthew Colville's villains video (all of them really) is a great mainstay to me.
I'm glad you made one too!
*Sitting at home, writing my own campaign come across your video* "Here i go loosing sleep again!"
very well done, thank you.
The descendant of Ben Franklin is in my D&D group... ME
You may be "adding yours to the pile" Jacob, but you're one of my favorite RUclipsrs. It's all good, bro!
7:58
I laughed way too hard when you said “shoof”
Awesome timing for this video, got the notification as I was sitting down to work out the details of the villain for my current campaign
Heard you were making this and have been looking forwards to it! My party is going to meet their next BBEG soon, so the timing on this video's release was convenient. :)
In the campaign im currently writing there are actually (depending on how you want to count) 3 or 4 different bbegs. (Also its not d&d, its fate core so not exactly the same but still a ttrpg) we have the 'main villain' who is what you first described, essentially a misguided pc. He is the strongest thing in the world by a long shot, and is backed by bbeg #2 aka the big government guy (ooo so scary) he himself is incredibly weak since hes just a human (not like the d&d race, i mean just literally powerless) but his danger comes from the fact that he controls all the "good guys." The third bbeg is the leader of the Villain faction (though there are many seperate evil factions he is the strongest and is the only one with a faction motivation that isnt money good) he constantly tries to find a moral highground where there simply isnt one. His intelligence and bravado is all because he feels humiliated that there is someone stronger than him in the world. The fourth bbeg is from the "Monster" faction. The monsters want nothing else other than to exist and procreate, and humans are a big danger to that so they want to wipe them out. They are the only faction that have a clear goal of human extinction. The party will have to deal with all 4 through ANY means.that is, if they really care enough. They may decide they actually want human extinction, or maybe they want to work with the main villain to destroy the heroes, i can't say. All i know is that it will be very fun for me to decide what happens in the background while the players do their thing
I want to hear that example of perfect villinous rock (with 20 hp)
I think its great to make a villain like the lich from Adventure time. You can make a simple concept but as long as they are calculated and a terrifying force whenever they are shown/spoken about.
My goal in a campaign is to orchestrate events so that the party splinters and one of the members becomes my bbeg for me.
Yes, I've seen community too
Literally ended the video at what seemed as early to get us to go and check out another video about the topic.
Ngl, thumbs up cus of that ending.
It's wasn't an advertisement, but it was.
In our very first session, a goblin ran away with a mashed face from the bard’s thunder wave. I suspect he will return as a villain later
THIS! This is a GREAT way to make a great villain! The players saw (even better, caused) its motivation. Feels natural, the players are moving the story forward, and not just listening to a DM telling the story that he wrote even before all the players existed and would happened exactly the same with a totally different party
So, it's the nemesis system from Shadow of Morador
DragonHeart 12 probably not, we all joked about the mashed-face-goblin being the bbeg in the end and I think the dm night roll with it to an extent
@@jabulinatheseal1406 well, I meant the idea of an injured goblin returning for revenge
In our very first session the bbeg was raising dead in the village cemetery. He left and we started killing the zombies but were all just about dead so we left one zombie to go recover. My paladin is still pretty broken up about it haha
"why am i making this video" literally had me lying on my desk laughing my face off XD
jacob, i love your videos, because you have some great insights/ideas/advice but also because sometimes they are just fucking hysterical XD
I had a villain that was a night possessed by an evil force but the twist was he actually killed the evil but his queen died and so he began slaughtering everyone
Double twist i'll stole that
Delighted the Mitchell and Webb 'are we the baddies?' sketch made it across the pond.
Jacob: has dumb brain and likes to roll math rocks
also jacob: makes the best encyclopedia of D&D videos on villains!
I have a hard time watching some of this guy’s videos but this was a piece of art. Well done.
This kinda feels like a video excuse on why Jacob likes simple villains the most and doesn't like complex villains. Great vid as usual, but I wholeheartedly disagree.
I also kinda feel its gonna cause people that play dnd to react negatively when the dm makes a complex villain just bc "well guy on internet say it bad"
@@ianbrown1810 Oh this; I absolutely hate the echoing phenomena of opinions that fans of [insert internet person] do
I agree with you. Most D&D villains aren't special because they all turn out to be the same. Following Jacob's advice of making simple, clearly evil villains creates the Marvel effect, where 95% of your villains are interchangeable. So many iconic villains or villainous factions can just be swapped out between campaigns. For example, how are the Cult of the Dragon, Cult of the Dead Three, and Cult of Talos any different aside from just the amount of resources they have? All consist entirely of crazy evil stormtroopers who are bad guys because they're bad guys and that's it. Or evil wizards. How does a villainous archmage differ from a lich? Well, one's stronger, but generally their personalities and goals can pretty much be swapped out. "I'm crazy and evil and power hungry and want x magic macguffin that will make me all-powerful." Fought one, fought em all. Complex villains add dimension. They change the game up and make it fresh. Zariel is a fantastic villain; easily my favorite in D&D because as evil as she can be, it's pretty damn hard to fault her logic. She was abandoned by her brothers in arms and now she fights on the front lines of arguably the most important war in the universe. Demons are a plague, and at times it's like she's the only one who takes thst seriously. That being said, slavery, soul entrapment, and STEALING A CITY TO DROWN IT FOR SOLDIERS are all pretty fucked-up. So the party's gotta question how to deal with her. Do they kill her? Side with her? Can she still be redeemed? Whereas if I make yet another 2-dimensional mustache-twirling villain, who's gonna care? That's why they're called BBEGs (Big Bad Evil Guys), because their names or goals or personalities aren't important, they're just all generic cackling maniacs who want to "bring darkness" or "spread corruption" or "get the magic thingie of whosits that makes them immortal." Dungeons and Dragons is about telling a story. So why not tell one worth telling?
@@Inevitibility23 well for one that resources point shouldn't be swept under the rug. If I see a member of a dragon cult, then I expect to see some freaking dragons. Half-Dragons, Demons with strange draconic features, people being sacrificed to horrifics gaping mawed beasts and cromatics everywhere. Yeah yeah, I get what point you're trying to make, but the Marvel Effect isn't because villains are simple, hell Marvel's best villains I'd argue are still simple, the so called Marvel effect is because of reliance on similar visual language and similar situations for our heroes. There is nothing about any of your cults that means they should play into the same niche outside of them all being secret organizations.
The god or monster they worship should flavor things as much as anything else and from there outward you should be building the organizations, how they get their members, how powerful and influential said members are, the tone you've set for the world, so on and so forth. Even down to the types of spells and items the cult uses or does not use. Everyone being evil doesn't make them similar, because at its heart D&D evil is self-interested.
As for the enemy types, again, that's less about them having interchangable personalities and more about the DM's language. Sure an Archmage wants power and so does a Lich, but a Lich actually has power. A lich is an immortal being, he's sat in his tower and watched civilizations rise and fall. Why would that thing react like a human at all? Why would its plans even have to make sense to a human mind? Inversely your evil wizard is a person, they've lived a human life and while evil. In D&D speak that just means maliciously selfish. There could be dozens of motivations in that very wheelhouse and all of them don't need to be "I was a good guy." Indeed some of them might be as simple as "I myself am being manipulated." Heck, you could have your Archmage and Lich team up and have the mage think they're the same, only for him to realize the Lich was controlling him all along, because fleshy mortal creatures are driven by their desires and a lich is only driven by its own unknowable purposes. Or the inverse, the Lich assumes he's superior, but humans are adaptable and clever. He's stopped adapting, stopped evolving and like so many other creatures, this makes him easy pickings.
Cackling maniac is an archetype, sure. But like the brooding edgelord, or well intentioned monster, they're all just different shapes to release from the marble so to speak. Your cackling guy could be generic, but the issue is that he doesn't have to be.
@@Inevitibility23 Thank you for summing up my feelings on all this. Last time I checked D&D is about roleplay, immersion, story and the characters that are involved in such. Sorry, I can't really.. get immersed in something that's about generic crazy evil bad guy.. It's just not realistic.
Its honestly astounding how few villains are not just, super greedy assholes. They have positive aspects sure but sapient creatures always do.
They don't need to be committing a genocide they just need to not be good people overall
Jacob be ducking for cover this entire video, lmao.
Thanks for boiling all this down and you're recommendations on the other video really helped me out with Strahd as I've often had my own questions if I am running him right.
I've run 1 dnd campaign and how it went is this:
DM character named earl, a drow paladin raised by the wealthy to be physically strong but mentally meek. He has hard time killing the goblins that have knives to his throat showing him the hole they're gonna bury him in and the pike for his head.
His solution to not break his moral compass: get some adventuring buddies to do it for him by breaking them out of a jail underneath a tavern, because adventure start tropes are good and great.
Earl wanted to start an adventurer company that followed the rules of all kingdoms and was present in all of them to help out everyone he can.
He finds 4 adventurers: Jest, Mysty, Knuggey, and Drimathyl
After a while of taking adventurer requests, they begin to start uncovering a conspiracy of Councilmen, Politicians, and the Royal are all participating in a large crime ring lead by The Great Cult, who in turn is led by Moldoveanu Lafite-Rothschild, a fanatic of the nine hells.
They don't know who it's led by at that point of course, as Moldoveanu was my BBEG.
After uncovering the conspiracy, they set out a new goal: stop that conspiracy and set up company afterwards.
During this time, Earl even developed a relationship with Mysty, whom he found out she's not a high elf but rather a changeling.
After stopping the Child-Slave trade, and busted a drug trade in one of the cities, they got arrested for having a changeling in the party, as the country they were in were racist.
After being taken to an out of country prison that laid outside of all kingdoms borders, they were introduced to Moldoveanu who was impressed at their work in stopping his business, but he didn't need them anymore anyhow, and mocks them for it.
Moldo then asks for Earl specifically to be taken elsewhere, and the DM character everyone adored for being an innocent kind creature is now missing, taken by the BBEG.
Prison break ensues and they're first goal was to find and rescue Earl.
They found him in a dungeon underneath one of the kingdoms capitols, in a room with a bunch of machinery that earl was tied up to that was constantly skinning him in places or even gutting him, then injecting strong health potions to keep him alive.
The room was labeled the "Spare Parts Room".
After they inched closer to the machine, there was a glass barrier between them and Earl.
Drimathyl, our parties Barbarian, decides the best way to get earl is to smash the glass, so he does so.
Alarms sound throughout the hallway
the machine starts clinking in parts that weren't active
Earl convulses in pain, letting out an agonizing scream
Tearing is heard as his fingers and toes are torn off, as more of the machine spurs to life
blood drips on the floor as more tearing, and crackling from bones is heard
his feet and hands ripped from their place on the body, as large metallic spikes pierce his stomach form behind as blood pools on the floor
Earls screams echo through the hall louder than the alarm, as blood soaked tears rain from his agonized face
his forearms are torn, along with the rest of his legs,
and the screaming stops.
all that's left is the whiring of the machine, the cracking of more borns and ripping of flesh as the rest of his arms are torn off, and the siren which seemed so much louder moments ago
earls head falls forward, before being lifted up by a chain attached to a metal collar he was placed in
and a few more cracks
and the sirens stop
his torso falls to the floor
and his head with it.
An echoey voice comes through the halls, almost as is if it was in their head
a familiar cackle fills the air
"I want you to know, that you're the ones who did that"
said Moldoveanu, as his laughter trails off.
And that really gave my players motivation and boy oh boy did they have a good time killing good ol' Moldo, giving him the same treatment he gave earl without the machine after relentlessly beating him.
Your energy, Jacob, is a gift to mankind. I love your videos😅🙏
Gonna make the Lord of Blades invade Sharn in eberron. To give Warforged a Home. The party has drug markets in Sharn. They're gonna fight.
Let them fight. Let them fight.
One of my favourite videos of yours in quite some time, awesome stuff!
THANK GOD SOMEBODY SAID IT.
I'm so sick and tired of these *deep, philosophical villians* that is _secretly the good guy!!_
Spice is fun every once and a while, but if I'm eating a burrito, and there's no meat, its only spice - that isn't a burrito. I'm just shoveling chili paste into my mouth.
@@DabroodThompson a hyperbolic example used for comedy? _Gasp!_
Jokes aside, when every dnd campaign you've played in the past 5 month has the same ask reddit thread/4chan greentext shaped villian it gets very tiring very fast. Did I have fun those campaigns? Of course! But I wouldn't be lying if I wanted some variety the "sympathetic villain, trying to save the world, are we the bad guys" formula.
It feels like a stylistic pitfall, almost to the point of cliched overly edgy PCs. You can still have a hoot with 'em! But when every group has one, there aren't many other ways you can spin the idea.
I'm currently spiraling because I've run out of my planning buffer and desperately trying to write the next bit of the campaign because my players want to play soon so really great timing on this excellent video Jacob
What I'm doing largely in my game is having my BBEG be a sympathetic villain, and having most of her minions being unapologetically evil, and it's worked out so far.
I haven't fully introduced my BBEG yet however
This video is all over the place, but thats what I have come to expect from this channel! XD
I feel like this was an extensive advert for DavvyChappy's video.
You are absolutly right.
Thing is that people without a satisfying "moral to the story" that are too much in love with their villain can still be entertaining at the table especally for streaming and fans watching. You have to care about the game to be annoyed by GMNPC villians.
So, a villan that's actually an item possessing a character's family member, may be a bad idea? Since the "villan" isnt the body, but the weapon attached to them.
Thank you for this video, literally today I was thinking about a villain and general objective for my game, and this helped me out a lot.
4:01 Sun Tzu is their DM
Okay, I'm gonna admit it. I was skeptical the whole time because I've been crafting a really cool villain for a few years (even did a set-up interlude campaign that introduced the villain before the main campaign), but you made a lot of really convincing points. I need to focus on player agency and fun more than just throwing a cool thing at them.
4:53 I didn't expect the music, it caught me off guard. XD
My favorite type of D&D villain is the one that forces the heroes to change something about themselves to defeat them. It connects the characters' internal conflicts to the external conflict of the campaign, which helps the players show off the depths of their characters and have a satisfying arc without slowing down the central plot.