How to Create an EPIC Villain in D&D

You love playing Dungeons and Dragons, but sometimes your villains don't carry quite the punch that you would like them to ? Or your players tend to not pay they attention ? Here are my tips on how to create memorable villains in D&D.
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[@AflacMan13]

#AdditionalBBEGTipIdea "The Proxy Villain." The BBEG exists in the world. But they are hidden behind two layers of secrecy and obfuscation. Layer 1 = An organization of minions and other bad guys. Think Mafia. Layer 2 = The BBEG's Head General. Think Vader and Sidious. The BBEG is the one running everything and is hidden from view, giving commands and orders to the underlings through the General. The General is the one executing ALL of the really nasty and sadistic actions. The players first see The Organization, and work their way up THROUGH the ranks of said organization, to find The Head General. They see The Head General and think that The General is The BBEG. They finally kill off The Head General, thinking it is The BBEG, and the BBEG reveals to them that the BBEG is actually The Head General's BOSS. Classic Mafia style organization structure to a BBEG and its minions, always makes for an enjoyable campaign IF you handle it right, and IF you make the BBEG be STONKINGLY powerful in some massively overpowered way. The Mafia Boss style BBEG requires a small amount of manipulation of your players and the campaign world to make sure they don't accidentally reveal said BBEG too early. The surprise reveal hinges on the players thinking there is ONLY The Head General, and the Head General is the BBEG. It is an ESPECIALLY memorable bad guy if you reveal the BBEG waaaay early on, as some random NPC that pops up maybe once or twice throughout the entire campaign, and ONLY in places such an NPC would NATURALLY be found. If you pull it off... always memorable. Why? Because the players THINK they've defeated the BBEG, then The BBEG who is ACTUALLY The Head General says something super awesome as it perma-dies like "My master... sends his regards." (x_x) **grluhk!** and then dies. Now the players are back to square one, sort of, with trying to find the ACTUAL main boss bad guy, and now all the stuff The Head General has done to that point... shifts to this nameless and faceless entity that they now have to go hunt down. It's a gut punch. All their ire and despisement of the BBEG they had heaped onto The Head General, now shifts to this nebulous nobody, and it just intensifies the more they witness even more horrible atrocities. Just... remember... once your Head General is gone, the BBEG **ABSOLUTELY NEEDS** to be revealed in some way, even if it is small, within 1-3 sessions. Otherwise the players just like to give up on it and move on to another game or campaign. Reveal a small clue in each or maybe every other session or something like that, so they follow the breadcrumb trail to the hidden end of it. :-) Amd then, the BBEG's apparent cowardice just angers the PC's even MORE, and makes them MORE committed to stomping the Big Bad Evil Guy's booty into paste. :-)

[@archlittle6067]

The primary villain should interact with the party in a deliberate way. They receive a vial of liquid with instructions to smash it on the ground. This triggers a Programmed Illusion (PI) of the villain telling them to turn over something or someone. A sort of "We've had our eye on you for some time now..." speech. The liquid is gone and the PI cannot be triggered again, but this event can happen any number of times with a new monologue.

[@psycopuppy3047]

Its so cool to see how far you've come in two years, the little nuggets of wisdom that were hidden behind the socially awkward "im talking to a camera" jitters everyone gets at the beginning. Awesome to see how far you've come since 🎉

[@stuckinhedge2612]

Love the Miss Peregrine books in the background!

[@TheLoraxWithMjolnir]

Thank you so much, this was great, I’m trying to make a really fun campaign for my friends to play and this was really helpful. You have earned a subscriber today.

[@guiinternauta3356]

Nice video, thanks for the tips!

[@NiksKoleva]

I like the video in showing different ways to make the villains more complex than the next target on the to do list. I also like to show that sometimes the consequences of the villain don’t end his death and he/she has made some terrible practices into common daily life thing that everyone is okey with it and will sabotage anyone when they try to fix that broken way of thinking. Also Thanos is not a good villain xd anyone with basic math skills can see his flawed logic, that poor excuse to do his killing spree. But it’s a fact that he is one of the good villains in the mcu.

[@marly1017]

This is a really great video

[@marly1017]

It's a little weird but I think that I will enjoy this video more if you speaked a little bit faster

[@MonkeyDM]

@@marly1017 I'll keep that in mind, glad you like it !

[@marly1017]

@@MonkeyDM thanks I appreciate that

[@IRus-ip5vx]

Awesome!!

[@MonkeyDM]

Thanks!

[@onurs6848]

Ronan is my favorite villain btw...

[@mokane86]

Most of my villains are just bad individuals of various degree and caliber trying to scheme their way to the top of their territory living their own lives, who the party just happens to get in the way of and disrupt. I also like the uncontrolled construct or unreasonable lunatic or untame-able super beast. In my main campaign they already defeated the BBEG Lich in the very first act by stopping his resurrection ritual. I was hoping for a half fail half success that allowed him to return to life weakend and flee... However the master high level mentor character from that time, who now holds the phylactery to "contain and destroy it", might be making some arrogant mistakes in the name of past nostalgic friendship and love lost that will release or create a much bigger problem than if said lich character was able to be resurrected by his original group of cronies in the first place. I don't really like the giant betrayal backstab of "fools, I was evil all along, haha!", so this is somewhat my take on that.

[@VoiceNerd]

My favorite villains are the ones who seem like they are the best of heroes and friends to the party but it turns out to be the biggest lie in the campaign

[@MonkeyDM]

that is quite the backstab indeed!

[@spacepillow]

good stuff. commenting for algorithm

[@TheBittersweetFox]

Your EX is mindflayer?

[@pedramcq]

I mean...as a DM can't we do whatever we want? A friend of mine told me if I want a devil who wants to be good, I just have to find a way to explain/support it and then I can do it

[@AflacMan13]

Eehhhh... kind of. There are some things in D&D that stretch credulity to foolishly silly levels. There are certain monsters, like illythids and denizens of the 9 hells, that should NEVER be taken out of their "we are evil" bubble. Why? Because then you have no bad guys... and the game becomes pointless and boring. Good needs evil to triumph over, and evil needs Good to fight with it to have something to fight against. D&D isn't just spell slinging and murderhoboing for the sake of spell slinging and murderhoboing... it is a game about Good Versus Evil. When you break that... fiction is no longer fiction... it's a useless documentary about pedantic inanity and Political Correctness Culturalisms. It's boring without the violent clash of two opposing forces. That's why there is only ONE book about being a shopkeeper in D&D (Acquisition's Incorporated), and even in THAT you are STILL an Adventurer trying to stop evil in the name of Good. :-)

[@kirilbulgariev]

First?

[@MonkeyDM]

or so it seems ;)