Making PCs Really Hate a Reoccurring Villain

[nijineko]

nijineko - It's worth noting that my comments were geared specifically towards making the player characters hate the NPC, rather than targeting the players.  You're absolutely right that killing a fictitious character won't garner any tears from a min-maxer, but that wasn't the goal of my suggestions, anyway.

It's a question of whether you prefer dealing with the characters or the players.  In my games, people tend to play their characters over their character sheets.  There's nothing wrong with either playstyle, mind you, that's just the one that prevails at our table.  As such, I'll often hear a variation on: "Argh, I want to do X, but it doesn't make sense for the character."

Again, it's a matter of whether you need to motivate the character or the player.  All of my suggestions have tended towards the former, whereas you tend to be dealing with the latter.  There's nothing wrong with that, I just felt like clarifying the difference between our approaches.

i stand course-corrected. thank you.

i recall making just such a comment once. as i recall, it went something along the lines of: "i really don't want to do that, but i know my character would". i wound up having to use fate points to recover from the coma my character wound in as a result of her actions.

i've found that the later works better on certain types of gamers, while the former works on other types. i have two of those (meaning the former you outlined) types in the same group as my min-maxer. which makes for interesting situations. i find myself doing a round-robin with encounter types in order to provide something for everyone over the course of sessions.

[Bloody Initiate]

Nothing makes me hate a villain more like a DM sheltering it. Like when all action stops and you have to watch a cut scene of the villain making a patronizing monologue before ignoring the action economy and time itself to make a dramatic escape.

Mechanical effectiveness (REAL effectiveness) is something I respect.

To make a villain I hated for good reasons would probably require the mechanical equivalent to DM sheltering, cut scenes, etc. The villain who is actually capable of doing all that will probably be way too strong though.

The final option is mindflayers, oozes, and undead, because I hate all those fuckers. I don't like tentacles, slime, shit that wants to eat me or lay eggs in me or any of that other vile fucked up Lovecraft freakshow garbage.

[archangel.arcanis]

Also never, EVER, put them in a situation where the party can harm them. Previous DMs would often have their pet BBEG that was all powerful and they would stand there berating the group, they always seemed to end up dead pretty dambed quick too.

[littha]

If you are going to stand there and monologue at the party at least have the decency to have a wall of force or something in front of you...

[archangel.arcanis]

If you are going to stand there and monologue at the party at least have the decency to have a wall of force or something in front of you...

Seriously that didn't save one of them.

[DonQuixote]

Whenever I really feel the need to monologue at the party, I use Trickery Devotion.

[Bloody Initiate]

Another suggestion (Likely already suggested, but I didn't read through to be sure): Don't make a villain with the intent of having them re-occur. Make a few options and use the one that survives. A re-occurring villain that re-occurs because the GM made sure of it isn't nearly as interesting as one who re-occurs because they actually made it. If more than one survive, use them all, get them together on their own team. Having survivors is a lot easier when you play your villains like you'd play a character: when shit gets heavy, RUN! If you see the character as more of the fight-to-the-death type that's fine, that's just not the type of character who becomes a re-occurring villain though.

Recently a buddy of mine asked for help crafting some re-occurring NPCs for a potential gestalt campaign. He had some rough written sketches of what he wanted them to do and how he wanted them to achieve those things, so I took the tripper/denier. Within a very short time of starting I realized this guy wasn't the type of dude who was going to survive contact with the PCs, he was too stupid and brutish and his abilities just wouldn't keep him going against a group. What he DID have was a very shock & awe-ish potential, which is what I started building toward. He'll have 2-3 rounds of tactics planned, but even my buddy realized he wasn't going to make it much farther and accepted a more "shock trooper" design for him. If he survives to his first round he'll have the potential to make the PCs say "WOW!" and if they're unlucky he'll kill one in the 2nd round, but after that he'll just start back pedaling and taking cheap shots until he escapes or they kill him. The fight should be memorable though. If he re-occurs they'll remember why, if he doesn't they will have earned their loot (He has a sweet weapon).

Really though, some designs just don't back up the "nemesis" concept well, and part of making a good nemesis is realizing what will and won't work for it. That doesn't mean you can't have unconventional re-occurring villains, just that it's easier to stumble onto them than to make it up, you can always say you "meant to do that" afterward.

[nijineko]

the key to memorable villains is presentation.





....and not actually be standing there when the pcs confront you.

[TenaciousJ]

I have a rakshasa sorcerer in my current game that my players seem to hate.  He crafts contingencies on himself, buffs himself to a ridiculous degree that the charger and the crusader can't hit him, and jacks up his caster level and uses various immediate actions to block attempts from the abjurer to dispel him.  He's far from unkillable but he's built against the archetype of each of the PCs so essentially he takes a piss in their Cheerios when he shows up for combat.  They're slowly figuring out what to do to him but every time they make progress, he gets away.  They haven't even realized half the spells he can use.  I never built him to be unkillable, but he will keep coming back until they succeed or he succeeds in manipulating them into accomplishing his goals.

I've learned from the experience that a villain that doesn't want the players dead is a little easier to use as an overpowering force early on that the players can eventually catch up to.

[NunoM]

I second Bloody Initiate on that stuff about the "one who re-occurs because they actually made it.".
As a GM i once threw a necromancer at the party (in the old AD&D days) as a final boss to a low-level adventure. The guy threw everything he had at the PCs, to the point he even started throwing furniture as he ran out the door. He eventually escaped the PCs through a series of secret entrances with a single HP! As the PCs searched and eventually found the escape route, a magic mouth shouted a "thank you for the entertainment" and "see you soon" message to the party...

Another thing that actually worked (at least for me as a PC) was seeing the same guy over and over again, but always as a secondary man. English isn't my home language, so i'll try to explain it as best as i can...
In a series of home-brewed adventures, we (the party) were always tasked to search something or hunt someone to bring him to justice (or just "deal" with him). As we strolled to complete the mission, we kept seeing the same NPC, over and over again. In this case it was a sort of fighter, maybe a ranger, wielding two swords and wearing a trademark ivory-colored armor and blue cloak. He kept passing us on the roads riding in the opposite direction, apparently escorting a some noble or speaking to a sargent of the enemy army and riding in haste before we even got there; riding with his gang on a distant hill...

We never got to know who he was, what was his role, if any, in the grand scheme of events, but the "misterious stranger" theme appealed to our party. The simple fact of him being "just beyond reach", made us eager to catch him, question him or whatever...

This isn't exactly a hate thing, but it undoubtly turns the NPC towards "alert mode" or "curious mode" instead of "indiferent" or "let's-just-kill-him mode"...

[Agrippa]

I'd go the Anson Fullerton route and make a villian with little to no personal power in relation to the PCs, but with enough smarts and organization skills to make your PCs lives a living hell.

[darqueseid]

A villian that yhe can't kill is always particularly hate inspiring.  For example if you make the chief advisor to the king of the PC's country the bbeg, such that if they killed him they would be ostracized..  A connected villian is both frustrating and hate-inspiring so you have to walk a delicate line, and you have to ensure that there can never be FULL proof that your connected villan was involved in any wrong-doings.

[BrianTheBrain]

archangel.arcanis already made a good point about repeated direct antagonism causing frustration, and I have two more suggestions:
1. Have the BBEG treat them as a nuisance, make their involvement in  his affairs coincidental.
2. Have him trick them into doing some of his dirty work.  The surest way to inspire hatred for them to know they inadvertently abided or aided him in his atrocities.

[DonQuixote]

2. Have him trick them into doing some of his dirty work.  The surest way to inspire hatred for them to know they inadvertently abided or aided him in his atrocities.

Man, SCREW Ganondorf.  I was so pissed after I had collected the three spiritual stones...

[Necrosnoop110]

2. Have him trick them into doing some of his dirty work.  The surest way to inspire hatred for them to know they inadvertently abided or aided him in his atrocities.

Love this. Got any usable examples?

[Jackinthegreen]

2. Have him trick them into doing some of his dirty work.  The surest way to inspire hatred for them to know they inadvertently abided or aided him in his atrocities.

Love this. Got any usable examples?

One of my first campaigns started off with a PC dying, so we discreetly took her corpse with us into a city and inquired about healers who might be able to resurrect her.  We found one, he rezzed her, but in exchange we had to do errands for him.  Later on it turned out it was the same guy who killed our bard, and his errands eventually implicated us in various crimes instead of him.  Lawful Evil has a way of doing that.

[BrianTheBrain]

2. Have him trick them into doing some of his dirty work.  The surest way to inspire hatred for them to know they inadvertently abided or aided him in his atrocities.

Love this. Got any usable examples?

Well, I once had the party run into an imprisoned necromancer (magic suppressing shackles and all) who had disguised himself as a mortician during his freedom. He had done free lace work for the undead BBEG and was now leaking info to the organization of good guys to gain creature comforts in prison. He had requested that their party go to his hidden lab and retrieve a Vial of the Last Gasp (a magically preserve last breath of a dying individual that provides the user with a boost to abilities and skills) of a person called Lawrence Ansel, stuff about him being small business owner and how he wanted the breath of someone who had hopes and dreams before death. In return he was going to give away BBEG's current location. They failed the knowledge checks on the item and got the vial for him and he tells them where BBEG is. He than escapes that night, leaving a pair of magic suppressing shackles on the nightstand of the party leader that had an inscription that read "Ansel Locksmithing". Later, it turned out that them killing the BBEG made room for his rise to power as the new BBEG.

[NunoM]

2. Have him trick them into doing some of his dirty work.  The surest way to inspire hatred for them to know they inadvertently abided or aided him in his atrocities.

Love this. Got any usable examples?

Another variant on what has been posted already (i'm actually embedding this into a homebrewed adventure in the works, but i still have to try it...):
Have the PCs contracted to do "some herrings" through a contact of an undisclosed client... These herrings may include clearing roads of robbers, dismantling a contraband network, arresting currupt guards, slaying a monster threatening the town... The twist (rather cliché, really...) is that those robbers, smugglers, bad guys, monsters... are really competitors, business rivals and plain nuisances to the BBEG. Not even the contact knows who the guy is and is actually convinced that he's doing a good thing. He's just an honest working guy, so "Detect Evil", "Sense Motive" and stuff like that don't reveal a thing. In the meantime, the BBEG grows in power and influence with the acts of the PCs...

Notice that the PCs aren't exactly being evil. They're acting to benefit the town they're in, so, in fact, they're solving the best of two evils, while the worst is directing them in the background.

You could actually scale this up and have the BBEG not be the BBEG after all. He could just be an emissary from another guy, and even HE doesn't know the whole story...

As read in the oldy (but goody) "Dune" novels: Plans within plans within plans...

When they finally understand what happenned, i bet they'll be pissed!

[BrianTheBrain]

The final option is mindflayers, oozes, and undead, because I hate all those fuckers. I don't like tentacles, slime, shit that wants to eat me or lay eggs in me or any of that other vile fucked up Lovecraft freakshow garbage.

You know? There's an actual psychological reason for fear of invasive or parasitic monsters.

[cattoy]

I think the absolutely most foolproof method for instilling hate in your villain is to have him start out as a DMPC.