10 Traits All TTRPG Villains Have | What Makes a Good D&D Villain? 

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"What makes me a good villain?" "If I were a bad villain, I wouldn't be sittin' here, discussin' it with you now would I?!" - Strahd, probably

I saw a great thing the other day. Villains and heroes often have the same events that shaped them, the difference is the villain was hurt by the world and wants to hurt it back. The hero wants to stop others getting hurt in that way.

Number 10, make it personal. One of my players had his backstory that his native town was massacred by some monsters, he doesn't remember, he has PTSD. Well, it turns out it was him himself who murdered the entire village under the vampires charm. He hates Strahd now.

During the last campaign I ended, the players gave me very detailed backstories. Somehow, I managed to intertwine them with the villain's macabre plans. It wasn't that the guy did it on purpose, it was just collateral damage in his quest for power. During most of the campaign, they were lifting curses and solving other similar problems around the kingdom, until they met the actual villain. He sacrificed a whole city to gain power, so they naturally wanted to destroy him before he did it again, but the actual hatred started when they realized he had done the same things in the past, ruining the PC's lives. It was super cheesy, but it just worked lol. He gaslighted a city into thinking one PC killed his own mother, cursed another one's whole clan and imprisoned the prince the last one served. They wrote the backstories and I just thought “it would be funny if the same guy did all of that". Long backstories can be very useful 😂

Ironically, the best villain I’ve ever run was also the biggest pushover I’ve ever run. I made, just, the most odious man, basing his villainous qualities in perfectly mundane shitty behavior and only bringing the supernatural in to augment his ability to achieve his goals. My players absolutely despised this worm of a person, all the more so as it took several sessions just to hunt him down. When the time came, they came up with a very good plan, executed it perfectly, and the dice really backed them up (I guess the dice hated this man as well); the combat itself was over in a couple of rounds minus mopping up a few minions. They still rave about how satisfying that massacre was. I don’t *always* want a fight that ends that perfunctorily, but in this case, it worked out. This guy was an absolute monster, but his actions were all based in arrogance, cowardice, and a sense of entitlement, and seeing him brought low (literally as well as figuratively; the battle ended with his spine getting accordioned) in embarrassing fashion was probably more satisfying to my players than an epic battle with a worthy combatant would have been.

A good idea for a villain is to make them sympathetic, while still needing to be stopped. I had a red wizard of thay who's parents had been killed by servants of Shar. He sought to end the church of shar by killing the goddess herself. Unfortunately, doing so would cause the collapse of the weave (due to Shar controlling the shadow weave) and lead to the deaths of millions. He had to be stopped, but the pcs still felt sorry for him.

My advice for a better villain is generally have them interact with the party before the finale of a campaign; this need not be face to face. A letter, a vision, the dream spell or sending are all perfect ways of achieving this; alternatively they might encounter echoes of their past giving them an idea of who they were once (a paladin of virtue), and how they became the antagonist (a warrior who will stop at nothing to defeat those he swore revenge on, at the expense of the world).

I recently got the marvel RPG book, and I'm preparing to run a campaign, and the section on running and making villains actually helped me so much. It asks you to answer these four questions: 1. What is the villain after? It should be something they can't get through ethical means. 2. What are they willing to do to get it? The easy answer is "anything," but think about the particulars in this case. Are they ready to infect a city with an illness? Rob elderly folks? Harm children? Kill innocents? Punch a hold into another universe? 3. Who is in their way? Is it the law? Their rivals? The heroes? Reality itself? 4. Why now? What happened that mde the villain need to do this now? If they weren't committing these crimes last week, what changed? Is this a new opportunity that presented itself - perhaps an unforeseen result of the heroes' previous actions? Or was the villain planning this for a long time, and now they're finally ready? There are a few other things it gives, but those are the four main things it laid out and it really helped me.

I've spent a lot of time mapping out my villain's future actions on an in-game calendar, with minions running all over the place doing his bidding. Every now and then my players bump into one of those threads in their travels, often not realizing that there's a broader connection. This is setting things up so that when more is revealed down the road, things will click into place, creating those wonderful "ah-hah!" and "OMG!" moments.

Every villain must threaten the party, their house, the town, and the pet kobold

Number 10: They have names that the players can't easily twist to be a joke or something stupid. One of my major villains in the past was a Half-fiendish hobgoblin. I foolishly gave him the name Onik. As you can probably guess, he quickly became foreverafter known as 'Oink', which killed much of his threat in their minds. Even after he eviscerated one of the PCs with a briliant energy bastard sword, it didn't nudge the needle. In the end I did some plotweaving to make him a lieutenant of the *real* BBEG who was weaving and manipulating behind the scenes so I could send 'Oink' off to the slaughterhouse.

I managed to somehow stumble into creating one of the most memorable villains of my group campaigns with my first stint in dm’ing pathfinder. Although not the main bad guy of the campaign, I had an evil rakshasa that basically manipulated the majority of the pc’s to do his bidding for a little side story. He never directly fought any of the pc’s, had no minions, and basically showed up out of nowhere, but every time he showed up after that first encounter, my players were on guard for some form of shenanigans. Still love the time that I revealed to the group that he never lied to the party once and still got them to do his bidding.

One thing I love to do in my campaigns is have an overarching story villain who the party never or rarely meets until the end who they may or may not learn about early on, but then include a returning minion that the players meet and fight several times. This returning minion will usually reveal or gain new abilities with each encounter and end up as the penultimate encounter if the players never manage to take them down in earlier encounters. In my current campaign I revealed the final villain in session 1, a cosmic entity that's trying to consume the universe, but I didn't reveal until level 6 what kind of forces he has at his command. And last session I revealed the returning minion who is not currently aligned with the main villain but as the party beats him and he looks for more power he'll turn to this cosmic entity

These are amazing advices and truly listed, so I’ll share my own dm story. The villain I had for the campaign of nearly two years lead the plot for the characters to mature, feel discomforts in dark places. They would give chase while my villain spoke with beasts to test their resolves and even still gained more influence across the forgotten realm. The finale was of course at the base of a mountain near inferno’s very layer in which his silver tongue would persuade the ancient red dragon to destroy the region by sharing weakness in return for the golds each kingdom held since my villain had no need of riches. It took about ten rounds for everyone to finally best him but the cost of victory sadly already costed the lives of the nearest kings lands and people, for inferno was already spoken to. The dragon still resides in the ruins in my campaign

I never did Foreshadowing for the BBEG for my first campaign. Instead, I had my players bare witness to his influence in several occasions; a siege of a city (where they first meet him leading a coup among the defenders during an armastice), another is when he led an attack on a sanctuary tower where the PCs thought they were safe, and another one where they fought off his elite guards but he defeated a strong DMPC that had been helping the Players. This gave rapport and sort of dread to my players for every confrontation he won. His name was General Glacier, and he was a menace to the PCs because they knew what he was capable of. The final fight of the campaign was the PCs finally fighting him at his weak point (they fought him near a God Gate where he had summoned a God to kill and subjugate the power for his own) and they eventually defeated him.

Sometimes the best villains aren't planned, they just happen organically. A random encounter where the PCs meet some bandits and are forced to run for their lives (or one of the bandits might survive and flee) could lead to a recurring villain for the campaign.

I've always liked when the Big Bad is actually just a puppet to even BIGGER BIG BAD

My favorite type of villain is one that truly believes in what they are doing and that it's RIGHT (not necessarily good) creating moral tension in the players as a few wrestle with whether they should be stopped or helped. Thanos is my inspiration - if his solution wasn't so over the top, his reasons behind what he believes were logical, but flawed. You could tell that he persuaded the army that followed him to believe in (or at least trust) his judgement. He is doubly compelling in that it wasn't his WISDOM nor INTELLIGENCE that made him dangerous, it was his WILL (charisma).

Number 10: Good villains score victories on their road to defeat When playing in a campaign or reading/watching a story as it plays out, I've always found that tension goes down the more that a villain loses leading up to the climactic push to defeat them. If an action of theirs can be entirely stonewalled by a level 5 party, that same party at level 15 might not see the villain being as threatening as they're intended to be. If the villain is given off-screen successes, goals furthered by player actions, or just outright victories where the party only escapes by the skin of their teeth, they will feel much more imposing to players. In the campaign I run for my party, I've made sure to allow them to witness the destructive power of the mind-bending alien invasion of the Eldrazi. They TPK'd from the explosion that set them free after the cultist manipulated the instincts of the party members to distract them from the ritual they could all see was ongoing (they were then revived by a goddess), they witnessed a raid of corrupted elementals on a city they loved with a few named NPCs dying in the attack, they've had to combat the oppressive mental influence of Emrakul, and they even lost a party member to her side through manipulation and unfortunate dice rolls. This series of events over a campaign set up the Eldrazi to be a multi-faceted and overbearing threat that requires physical and mental strength to overcome, leading to now a third act where the party must find a creative plan to destroy them once and for all. This isn't to say to not let your players win. They should absolutely have victories of their own along the way and feel like they are progressing toward the end goal of defeating your villain. But just as there should be progress throughout the campaign, there should also be setbacks that force them to change course in unexpected ways. That's how a villain goes from a Saturday morning cartoon character to an imposing and unforgettable threat.

Great advice. I did this years ago with a villain and his lieutenants and the second story arc lieutenant's foreshadowing and twist is what my group still talks about.

My tip for your villain: Don’t just reveal him right out You want the mystery to be even as deep as to what they look like. Our villain, only one party member has seen in their backstory. The others haven’t seen him. Even in a museum exhibit that would normally have a portrait of him, a future ally of the party has vandalized anything that shows his face. This was an intentional design choice to add just an inch more of suspense to this guy

My favourite villains aren't people but systems. My players, I've learned, don't like stories where you take out a BBEG and everything is saved. They've worked on changing or dismantling systems, organisations, etc. or set politicians up in positions favourable to them (while opponents may do the same), or end up trying to resolve structures in order to make things better for people. The conflict comes from the environment, the systems set in place, and the "status quo" of the world they're in. They're usually not fighting to restore the status quo, but they're the ones disrupting it. They have had some absolutely memorable enemies (and some allies they're even more scared of than enemies), but they've also had situations where they're against people they like and respect and that breeds a different level of conflict that can't just be solved by weapons or spells.

I put Gary the intern in my campaign early in the campaign, and to foreshadow the villain's worst ability late in the campaign, I had the villain show up and kill him... With her Vorpal Sword...

Good tips Hit squads are good ideas I try to make it personal somehow

I like my real villain (A) to be unknown. And the perceived villain (B) is actually fighting the unknown villain but doing collateral damage... hence the players by opposing (B) are helping (A) without realizing it. Or You have 2 Villains at the same time in the same area competing to achieve their goals that aren't compatible... creating dynamics options for the players: Are they to side with one villain to defeat the most dangerous one? Will they try to push them more into direct confrontation, etc. / In one of my game a Villain joined the PC team to fight another Villain... Evils aren't all on same side.

The best villains ive ever known were in The prsim pentad series in the dark sun setting. So many amazing villains. The skullduggery, plotting murder it made me truly hate them and feared for the heros as quite a few died. Im about 30 but ive enjoy the older stuff.

Great points! perfect for my game.

Number 10: i think is music. My players fear the fact that some music plays when they enter its layer.

The 10th tip that I have come up with is don’t make the BBEG just a threat for the party. Have them be a ranger to NPCs in the way they are living. It could be that he treats some of his minions horribly, destroyed towns NPCs live in, or hurts NPCs the players care about as a way to show they are not messing around. It gives the party more ways to interact with NPCs and it helps make the BBEG seem more dangerous.

Number 10 : Make them promise something and then under deliver. Like for example a certain quantity of things, let's say 10, and then only deliver 9.

I think #10 is something that distinguishes them physically. It is ok to have a regular person be the bbeg, but not very interesting. Have them have a limp, or an eyepatch, or long greasy pitch black hair, or something that will imprint their appearance (or even a distinguishing smell or voice) on your players. Thanks Luke, great vid!

Lord Paxton fought a Terminator, a Xenomorph, and a Predator. In that order.

Oh how I love a good villain dnd video. Always looking to make them better. In my world, I have a villain who won't even be seen for several campaigns. Some of the main villains of other campaigns have been in league with him or in other games references to this being will be found. All the main villains will be important and memorable, but one day I hope to deliver on all this build up and finally make this one godly villain take the stage, threaten the world, and have an epic boss battle for the fate of mortal-kind.

My number 10? Make the villain sympathic for the player (ofc this doesn't work with every villain) but in the campaign I'm currently running the villain and party have a few of the same morals and genuinely sympathic for each other however due to opposing perspectives have to fight. And both sides are far to stubborn to give in to the other. (Now this sort of villain does require a good party who can role play such a scenario) And another thing that makes a good villain. Allow the party to join that villain if for some reason they want. Now of course this doesn't work for every campaign but it can lead to some very intriguing dynamics basically swapping whom you had planned as the enemies Like the villain in my current campaign is walking a very fine line between morally good and morally bad to be honest he is more of a anti villain then anything

A good villain never fights the party alone

#10- A good villain is well-equipped (and possibly its minion, too). Is the party expected to have multiple magic items by the time they fight the BBEG? The villain should have something magical to work with, too. Maybe one of those items is unique to that villain, found nowhere is in the game world. This rule also applies to resources, such as wealth. How else is the BBEG going to afford those bribes of public officials, maintain a mercenary force, or just pay assassins to hunt down the PCs? They also might have such resources as mines, alchemy labs, smithies, quarries, granneries, breweries, or masons at their disposal. Means to feed and outfit their mooks, while providing outposts or strongholds are hallmarks of highly competent villains. To an extent this also applies to allies of the BBEG. PCs are not the only characters that can use diplomacy to get what they want, and the villain is certainly capable of securing some help from a third party. Whether that is a guild (trade, thief, assassin, etc.), mercenaries, some malevolent entity, or just a nation rival to the one the PCs are protecting, alliances and accords of convenience give the BBEG more power while limiting risks to their own evil infrastructure. Although, not all allies will fight to the bitter end, and may only provide occasional support against the BBEG's enemies. Does the villain want to command an unstoppable army of the undead? Maybe they should equip them with something better than the torn rags that they had on them when they were raised to serve. Zombies wearing chain shirts and outfitted with viciously-clawed gauntlets are much more terrifying than what appears to be a tottering, half-rotten serf. And nothing says "abandon all hope, mortals" quite like skeletal horses with barding, pulling chariots manned by armored wight archers using magical shortbows that deal cold damage. Traps, false rumors, escape tunnels out of the their lair, siege weapons, and possibly even other (unwitting) adventurers may all be available for the villain to use in persuit of their goals. Resources, equipment, and specialized lackeys all provide various opportunities for the BBEG to cause mayhem, and sometimes one of the smartest things a party of PCs can do is prevent the villain from gaining some of these in the first place (if the chance presents itself).

6:44 I actually tried to flip this idea on it’s head for my dnd campaign, the players think they’re fighting the evil cronies leading up to the final boss, but in reality, they ARE the evil cronies, they just don’t realize it. The whole plot is setup as a very basic “the evil king wizard doing a ritual that will stop time and you need to kill the 7 out of the 8 evil sages that still serve him before killing him!” But I reality the king and his sages are pretty cool guys and would never attempt such a ritual, the remaining sage, who is the one who told them that the king and his sages are evil is just gaslighting them and using them to get rid of the opposition more easily and do said evil ritual himself. Each step of the way the actual evil sage is preceding them and telling the good sages that a group of killers is coming to get them which is why they always look to be evil to my players, since they try to kill them on sight to defend themselves.

10. A villain that you like

I prefer villains that cannot be defeated directly. To defeat them, you need to weaken their power, cut their logistics lines, to muster your own forces, reduce their influence. Maybe work to defamate them. Oppose their IDEAS rather than powers. Or have a threat instead of a villain. Think of lotr where they never fight Sauron and even Saruman directly. Think of Asoiaf where Others don't have this "night king" from the show. Think of First Law by Abercrombie where there IS struggle between two great mages, but we never see one, and the other who is our ally is just lesser evil. There also can be a group of villains/rivals like in Witcher or Dark Souls. There are SO many facets)

I did the lore drops to tease a lieutenant or the bbeg in my last campaign to drum up excitement, but idk if they were all that good xD

I created a villain out of a Lord from Athkatla that is evil, conniving, intelligent, and best of all, has connections. A good villain doesn't just create enemies wherever they go, they create beneficial alliances too! My villain Lord has deep ties to the Shadow Thieves, and is able to call upon them in certain scenarios. Being that the players had attempted to execute a heist on this Lord, and the Lord is powerful in the community, the players weren't going to get far just trying to fight him, and appear on the right in the eyes of the community. This Lord even had them go complete a task as reparations for breaking into his estate. This Lord villain isn't even the main villain of my campaign, but he rubbed one of my players so wrong, that he is still looking for a way to get back at that Lord from Athkatla. Bottom line of what I'm trying to say is that a good villain has allies, be they temporary or not. And they are often mutually beneficial to the villain in one way or another.

One of the villains I've written as part of a characters backstory (which is basically is the story of Jinx and Silco in Arcane), turned out to be quite interesting as of now, I didn't really get to use him yet apart from one session in a game I had to cancel unfortunately. Anyways, he's based off of the Lore of Pathfinder. Aroden took the Aeon stones from the Darklands to place them around Absalom, now said villain wants to take them back. But just brute forcing it doesn't work, so he slowly indoctrinates society, drugs people so they depend on him and his people, has people assassinated and so on. His whole network is city wide and below, mostly working from the shadows.

my Number 10: I want the players to know that he knows. At some point in my Campaign, the players become a thread to his plans. The Villain therefore trys to find out who they are and what their weaknesses are. Maybe he sabotages their business , kidnaps someone important to warn them not to mess with him an further. Or maybe he directly confronts them. For my upcomming Campaing, my Villain is a politician and he invites the Players to his big Ball in his Manor , cause he knows that at that point , players cant do anything against him and wants them to feel, that they cant.

Last time I was this early I had rolled a 20 on init.

Brilliant vlog ♥️

If I could make a villain, try to make their plans both compelling and complex. What better way to have a villain than to have their plans be as convoluted and complex so their true goals can be hidden?

I think a good number 10 would be to have the villian impact, or at least threaten to impact, the pc's on a personal level- beyond their broad plan. This adds emotional investment in their defeat beyond the need to save the world or region, and creates the expectation towarda the catharsis of rhe villians defeat. (Curse of strahd spoilers below) As an example, COS becomes infinitly better if the pc's care about and become invested in Ireena or other npc's in the module (but especiaaly her). All of a sudden, they not only want to escape barovia, but also want to save someone beyond themselves. And, should Strahd get and turn her, defeatung him becomes a personal vendeta - rather than "only" a fight to escape.

I know that the youtube algorithm be what it be, buuuut. As a long time listener of the channel I honestly think that taking plenty of time to unpack fewer bullet points in more detail would be great. I like watching these list videos, but they alwats end with me going to look up other videos that deep dive into the topics.

Had a character who wanted to be best blacksmith and craft a unique legendary artifact. So ya being a black Smith can creat its own journey. He wanted to learn from the dwarves and elves ect. how they craft so that was the reason his PC traveled. This was pathfinder so skills mattered a bit more than d&d

"That's it." Was the response my party had to Strahd. God help 5e.... Great video! Really awesome plot ideas too!

How do i run unseen servent in a battle? My idea is the villians hench men uses unseen servent to steal a key item that the heros have thats a major plot point. Should i have them roll perception checks every round or something?

Thank you

You make the villain super attractive. Because as we all know, evil+hot=morally grey.

Is it okay if you foreshadow your big villain in the first session, but without them knowing you're doing that?

Thank you Luke, you're so cool

A good villain has to have a story that makes the players think "hey, maybe it's we who are the villains here?".

The villain of my actual campaign isn't really a villain, he is doing really bad things but that's because he wants to help his people. For his people he isn't the bad guy but the good guy trying to bring peace and prosperity for them while wants to take everything that was his property. Obviously, party doesn't knows his PoV yet.

10. Good villains have one or more weaknesses that can be exploited. It may not have the results the party expects, but it impacts the villain. Trying to enlist the villain's ex may just piss him off, but now it's personal for the BBEG. Weaknesses lets you make them even nastier than before, but the right exploitation balances that.

The problem in dnd by 'personal' usually just one PC, and not the entire party. Because in dnd is bad to assign one PC as protagonist. So its kind hard for me, especially seeing my background as a writer. Any advice?

My suggestion, is that the villain need to inflict some kind of attention to the players. Exemple: The party helped to reconstruct a village by giving resources and money. When they left, the village get rebuild and then 6 months in game later. The village is prospering. It feels rewarding, the people love them and even give them free stuff and discount on rare items. They even make statues of the party and are respected as heroes. But, the villain exterminate the village and when the party come back one last time to see how the village is going.. There is only a crater at the location.

A good villain believes he's the good guy.

mm yes.... RN my PC is face to face with Strahd.... in magical darkness.... in a tower 250 ft above the ground.... I don't think she will get out alive

Make it personal. A villain only cares about their goals, not who they have to sweep aside to reach them. Adventurers getting in the way? Hit ‘em where it hurts most. Their resources, their loved ones, the things they care about. Drive those PCs into blind hatred for the villain…

Why is (Lord) Bill Paxton your villain?

But who or what was Lord Paxton?

Ive just started my campaign based in the Boundless Blue, so I've been developing a Sylph pirate lord (Yan-C-Bin inspired) to be the villainous force. At least for now...

I'd disagree with "The villain has to be the hero of their own story" - watch Overly Sarcastic Productions' Trope Talk on Pure Evil for a discussion on that. "Why do you think we keep getting sad think pieces on why we don't have proper Disney villains any more? It's because people miss the Ursulas and the Maleficents and the Jafars! They have their place in fiction and I'm tired of people pretending they don't!"

My main campaign has a villain that has a horrific plan. He's trying to get an entire city to sacrifice their first born children to a blood ritual to prevent the blood war from coming to their city. Truth is he's a raskshasa that just wants to eat the children. To get this it happen he's been using dreams to manipulate the entire city and surrounding area. His minions are doing things like giving away honeycakes made with honey corrupted by chain devils. Honeycakes that make the people who eat them powerless to the dream suggestions. It's ok to send your children to this ritual. You can always make another child. But a blood war will kill everybody. Go ahead, you don't want grandma to be eaten by a demon do you? I'm using inspiration from how our government has been abusing people since 2020.

For some villains, it doesn't matter what happens to everyone else. Hero of their own story? Pah! Why would they be such a sucker. They're not a Hero because dreaming about Heros is for the poor and powerless

Number 10: have the villain kill a dog

A good villain need not to be charismatic or natural born leaders. Many evil tyrants inherited or were awarded their position of authority, not out of merit but by status or birth. GoT-villain King Geoffrey is good example, and he's even more 'hatable' because of it. To wield power that isn't really deserved or justified is a good trait to make the players hate the villain even more.

Don't assign the BBEG a number of HP... They survive at least 2 rounds and/or 6 strong hits.

...Now I have the idea for a BBEG who works to overthrow the Nobility and end poverty by erasing social differences, motivated by growing up in poverty and not wanting that for anyone else - but a lot of people are bound to take issue with nobles and merchants being deprived of their wealth and seeing some form of Communism installed in its stead. But the initial efforts of helping the poor might well entice the party to help him at first... until the party has hoarded enough wealth and magical items to become a target instead of an asset...

Music makes a better villain! Use Cinematic Soundtracks.

#10 - They don't finish their lists.

Number 10 I don't

There's no such thing as a Good Villian - only good people - because they're good. Duh!

So first off all this guy is doing is trying to pimp and sell his own product. And I'm not even sure how good of a DM he actually is lol. From the sound of his videos, if I was in one of his campaigns I think I would grow rather bored very quickly. He seems a little annoying and juvenile.