How do I make a villain my players will truly hate and/or fear? 🅿️2 #dnd

Kickstarter link, thanks for checking it out!

How do I make a villain my players will truly hate and/or fear? 2

Put your stories in the comments below they could be in our next video! If you have your own video ideas submit them to us on Reddit at r/MrRipper
Stay tuned for more awesome DnD content!

Song: Betrayal - Destiny: TTK

Stay tuned for more awesome DnD content!

*Please ignore YT God's feeding zone down below!
#mrripper #dungeons and dragons #dnd stories #reddit stories #please sub for nat 20s #how to play dnd #one dnd #one d&d #how to play dungeons and dragons #dnd character creation #dnd 5e #asmr #reddit stories compilation #reddit stories funny #dnd story #ask reddit videos #family friendly gaming #dungeons and dragons how to play #dungeon master screen #tabletop simulator d&d #player character #dnd encounters #dnd campaigns

DND players, what was your funniest “nat 20” moment? (r/askreddit)
What stunt did your D&D players pull that completely derailed the campaign?
DND players, what was your funniest “rolled a 1” moment? (r/askreddit)
DnD players: What is the most creative character you've seen someone play as?
DND players, what was your funniest “nat 20” moment? Part 2 (r/askreddit)
What’s the DUMBEST thing a player rolled for and Succeeded?
D&D players, what was the NAT20 that made your DM facepalm?
What's the funniest thing PC's latched onto? #1 (r/dndstories)

[RedasurcsGamers]

One of my most successful villains had the party furious beyond compare. They had journeyed into the Tabaxian deserts on a mission from the human empress to secure this shipment of magic crystals meant for the war effort. Upon arrival, they met the city leader, a Tabaxi named Clever Jewel, who was supposed to help them get the crystals. She agreed to help them, and even offered them lodgings in the city. Fast forward a few sessions and their now on the run, having discovered Clever Jewel was not only the city leader, but the head of the crime family that ruled that part of the desert, and she was the reason the crystals hadn't arrived in the first place. Out of desperation, they took up with a rival crime leader who wants to see Clever Jewel dethroned. Now, they obviously wanted my villain gone at this point, but its what happened next that had them fuming. They Journeyed to a town called Hessina Crossroads, that was in the grips of a new plague, in order to help the people and recruit the doctor aiding the locals. While there, they discovered that Clever Jewel was behind the plague, having sent these artificer designed plague constructs (flumstructs they were called) to secretly infect the people. None of the parties healing magic worked on the infected, in fact it actively made it worse, and the doctor had failed to find a cure thus far. While they desperately tried to find a solution, a caravan - guarded by the Clever Jewels personal guard - arrived in town, carrying a cure for the plague. The caravan leader made a big speech about how they were here to help, and how her magnificence - Lady Clever Jewel - would never abandon her people. The party realized that this was all one big PR stunt, and even worse, their was nothing they could do about it. They had no actual proof that Clever Jewel had caused the plague, so if they attacked the caravan they would look like monsters, and if they left, they were admitting defeat. The party was forced to head back to their hideout, knowing that my villain of the arc had poisoned and killed hundreds of her own people, just to make herself look good, and had gotten away clean. Most of the time, it's just the players characters that have an issue with the villain, but if you can make the actual players want to kill your Villain, then you've done your job well.

[destructor]

" I'm with the department of the Treasury... You have unreported earnings that need to be settled "

[funnyblog]

I think it’s a fun idea for the villain to actually see the party as friends rather than enemies.

This actually makes them more terrifying because while they might act friendly they can be a true psychopath whose idea of friendship is utterly warped.

The party might start receiving increasingly disturbing gifts a such as a freshly cut out heart as a token of their twisted affection.

[aeryngoodspeed]

"where are all the other bones"
"what do you think my castle is made of"

[scorch]

I actually did this for my Fallout game.

One of the players asked me to make an enemy NPC for his background, he's my GM so he left his back story interesting but not having a lot of things as he wants the other players to shine but wanted something as well. He's a prewar ghoul who was a mechanic for the Chinese army in Alaska who was "saved" from execution at the hand sof the US military by the end of the world.

Given this I created not just an NOC that was hostile, but a straight up Nemesis who is actively hunting him in the form of Sgt. Delco a member of the 31s Army Regiment who on the days the bombs fell he defended his position from the "communist agents" attacking it, see terrified civilians trying to get to safety and run straight down the barrles of his minigun.

He is a what I'd assumed to be a ghoul trapped within his t-60 power armor who is no longer anything thst can be considered human as all he is is the embodiment of prewar propaganda and he will do anything to defend America unable to process that the nation is long gone.

He transcended from a mere soldier into a force of nature viewing the wasteland through the lens of prewar indoctrination and he will not stop till till the communist threat has been his suit running out of power didn't stop him as he forced it to move on sheer force of will.

The players described him as "A Roaming Raid Boss" when they learned exactly what Sgt. Delco had become and they already have a plan for when theu encounter him.

Run.

[nPhlames]

12:15 that pronunciation of simulacrum is killing me

[whitefox]

Give them a cute pet, then have the villain brutally kill it. Watch as your players become John Wicks.

[Skywarp]

One of my favorite villain archetypes is better described as "the force of nature." Think of it as an impending doom whose victory is all but ensured, unless... I love the idea that the party can look the evil force in the eye, and it does nothing to them out of sheer hubris, so they spit in its eyes to thumb their disdain towards it (metaphorically). One of my favorite stories (minus the ending) is Mass Effect because the enemy has this exact feel to it. How do you overcome an enemy that can brute force you to death? It's a matter of survival, wits, tactics, and everything that makes a TTRPG great if DMs can pull it off. I've created a Mass Effect inspired campaign out of the Star Jammers scenario, and by the end of the campaign the players had such contempt for the Reaper proxy that it warmed my cold, nearly dead heart. They wanted these things SO DEAD that they even risked unleashing the Celestial plane and the denizens of the Hells upon the multiverse to slap the $h!t out of the BBEG. Be big, be bold, use scope, and don't confine the antagonists to doing evil things for the sake of being evil. The dread they inspire should mean something horrendous on a macro level, and only your players stand between them and annihilation. Remember, the story's for them, not for you. Let them shine and the villain will look like a badass.

[thetwojohns]

C'lo C'hlu. She started out as one of them, briefly. Kidnapped their runaway noble charge. Raided a village they had recently saved and razed it. In fact, she made it her mission to not only advance her goals but to go behind the players and undo good they did. They rescued orphans, she would come in and begin warping the children to Cthulhu worshippers.
She always presented to the world as a good friend of theirs, and she knew them very well. She always found a way to stay one step ahead and one step behind at every turn. She even attended their retirement party.
The constant thorn in their side, they never found a way to completely defeat her. She retired with them, never finding another worthy hero(es) to replace them. No villain was ever as hated as she.

[lucid]

My most successful villains have been ones built with the mindset of "the ends, if good, justify the means, if necessary."

[rpgincorporated]

I guess I did make my players hate my villains once, but what I did was pretty tame. One of the players was playing his first necromancer and made him pass himself off as just a creepy item salesman with a pet rat to the commoners.
No one came even near to his stall, despite the the surplus of people there. Well, no one, until a pristine elf who would soon become the first miniboss.

The exchange between them went something like as follows:
Elf: "What all do you have here?"
Necromancer: "oh, all sorts of alchemical tools and remedies. Are you looking for something in particular?"
Elf: "Are you familiar with 'antiplagues?'"
Necromancer, excited: "Why, yes! I am."
Elf, clearly disgusted: "Perhaps you should try one."
Necromancer: 😮😡

From there, the elf explained that he was working for the old man that the rest of the party was either hired to protect or was old war buddies with, and offered him a job tending to the needs of the old man. Y'know, passing him off as a quest giver with clear plot-happens-this-way flags.
Player begrudgingly came along.
During the wagon ride to the next location, I had this elf show interest in the necromancer's spellbook, dirty and grimy as it may be. The player and the player's wife (fighter PC) were happy he was going to have to get off of his high horse to appreciate his talents and accept the offering of borrowing the dirty spellbook.
My GM heart actually sank a little hearing how excited they were for this, because I was just about to describe that he got out his handkerchief to accept. The party was going to have to kill this guy later anyway, so I followed through on this and watched as these two got even more offended.

When this guy later did his traitor reveal (he was disguising the fact that he was a drow until then), he tried to recruit the necromancer to his true goal of killing the old man during the artificial blood moon the rest of his faction was getting ready for, and it became clear that he actually understood what he was reading in the spellbook, but also implied that the only reason he hired him to take care of the old man was because he had absolutely NO faith in him to keep the old man alive.
Necromancer respond with Piercing Scream. By this time, the other players were really fond of the old man he was attacking and really didn't like this drow, so they were really happy to kill him.

Flashforward to just about every other dark elf they hear talk and they are JUST as rude. (There's a small exception, but that's another story, and she still had a little bit of a mouth on her.)

Yeah, the party wanted to stop the drow before they break the world beyond repair, but even more than that, they wanted to kill these people who were so rude to the entire being of this character that a player was excited to play.
The only drow that successfully left the carnage was the only one who was polite and helpful to them; all others involved were hunted down.
Looking back, I'm really glad I was able to give them enemies they were able to hate so much.

[tsukuneaono]

I once ran a campaign where the players were part of a crew that they were close to. The crew all had motives for traveling the world and the players were in for seeing those motives happen. One day the ship went into dangerous territory and were attacked. Almost all of the crew was cut down, the ship was burning and sinking as they saw the bbeg. It turned out that the bbeg sought revenge on someone and accidentally attacked their ship instead of her nemesis. The players were seething with anger as she apologized and left them for dead. That was the introduction to their arch enemy.

[johntheherbalistg]

So, it wasn't a villain, per se (villainous af, but not against the party). Nana was a neutral-ish helpful-esque NPC, mostly for exposition and a giving a quest or two. She was an old witch (night hag) living in the woods (spawn camping a fey crossing) that really liked the children in town. Absolutely nothing nefarious about it, she liked mortal children. None of the adults in town acknowledged her existence in any way, even when she was in sight. After the PCs met her in her human form in town, they were all immediately like "look, out of character, can we do this, right now?" I told them that they stood zero chance at their level, but they were, of course, welcome to do what they wanted. Later, they went to her house and met the real Nana. They developed a very healthy fear, and never did try to put the hag down, though she was always around, peripherally (I was allowing them the chance). She appears from time to time in games I've run since then, always off the main quest line, but available if they want to. Nobody has 😂😂😂

[Thundarr]

As mentioned previously, the key to making the BBEG truly hated by the PCs is to give them a personal connection to one or more of the PCs. Look at Vox Machina for example. The Briarwoods were the ones who murdered Percy's family and took over rulership of Whitestone. The Cinder King was the dragon that killed Vex and Vax's mother. Grog's uncle Kevdak used the Titan Stone Knuckles to beat Grog nearly to death. They all had reasons to hate one BBEG or another during the campaign. If it weren't for goblins short lifespans compared to gnomes, they might have even had a quest where Scanlan were to hunt down the goblin that murdered his mother and avenge her. Unless he did that much earlier in his adventuring career.


Imagine a campaign set in a reimagined Age Of Conan setting, based on the hypothetical shared Hyborian Cinematic Universe of Conan The Barbarian, The Beastmaster, Deathstalker, Red Sonja, and The Barbarians.

Story Arc 1: Team Conan tracks down and defeats the BBEG Thulsa Doom, but in the process find a clue that he was simply a lieutenant of an unknown, much more powerful enemy.

Story Arc 2: Team Conan tracks down and defeats the BBEG, High Priest of Set, Maax and defends the city of Aruk against the Jun Horde. But in the process they discover a clue that Maax was just a lieutenant of a much more powerful and mysterious BBEG.

Story Arc 3: Team Conan tracks down and defeats the BBEG, Queen Gedryn, and destroys The World Maker Talisman, only to find clues that she was only a lieutenant to a much more powerful BBEG.

Story Arc 4: Team Conan journey to the kingdom of the wizard Munkar, where they enter a gladiatorial tournament to the death where Deathstalker collects the Three Items Of Power (Sword, Amulet, and Goblet). Before the members of Team Conan can be made to fight each other in the tournament, they defeat Mulkar, but learn that he's a lieutenant to a much greater BBEG.

Story Arc 5: Team Conan must acquire The Magic Ruby of the Ragniks, free Queen Canary from the clutches of the evil warlord Kadar, and defeat Kadar and his army. After defeating him they find clues that Kadar was a lieutenant of an even more powerful BBEG.

Story Arc 6: When the clues of the above five story arcs are put together, it's learned that the BBEG that all of the other BBEGs were working for was in fact the evil wizard Toth-Amon (who, unlike in Conan The Destroyer, was an incredibly powerful wizard capable of doing much more than just turning himself into a bird of smoke and a mirror monster).

So each story arc allows for one or more characters to face a personal BBEG (Thulsa Doom for Conan, Maax for Dar The Beastmaster, Queen Gedryn for Red Sonja, Munkar for Deathstalker, Kadar for the barbarian twins, Kutchek and Gore). Then, each clue found should build up Toth-Amon to be a bigger, badder, and more powerful BBEG than any of his lieutenants. That should generate the fear.

[ERBanmech]

Easy. Make your BBEG either impersonally personal (like it seems like he doesn’t even care about the parties response, yet his actions personally effect the party) or make him obsessively personal to the point of being an extremely threatening annoyance.

[justinnakaDrPokemon]

This only works if your party is mid-level(6-12). Make him do a bunch of of petty acts to random npcs. Then make your party fight him . Have the villain not care for them. Just let the villain fight them long enough for the party to know not to mess with him. Doesn't matter if it risk a TPK or to deal enough damage to them to get their point across. Then make the villain feel powerful because the party is beneath him and he doesn't care enough about them to beat them.

[ArshikaTowers]

I had a billion that the party barely defeated. Every time they told somebody that they had defeated the villian, they were either laughed at or told they were lying.

The party pieces it together that this guy had been a big deal and his death was something that most people that knew him did not believe happened.

Then they learned that the real villian, the one they had known about the whole time had bested the one they defeated in one on one combat. The party went silent for a second and they started to talk about just fleeing and letting the story play out.

[Maholix]

One of my personal favorites was called the doopleganger king. Basically, early on the king they served was replaced by a changeling.

Now this changeling didn't do anything directly to the party per say. He acted normally, sending them on the same missions etc.

But he slowly stole bits from each party member. A strain of hair, a document and so on.

By the time they realized it was him stealing from them, he had cast a ritual to clone them and had sent these clones off to replace them as his new soldiers "were superior" to them.

The party would soon get somewhere just to learn another party had already beat them to the task and left. Since they wore armor that covered their faces, the party just assumed they were a rival group.. until the truth came out.

Turns out several of the fakes had been living with their families whilst the party had been traveling. The GM made them have to figure out if the party wete actually the clones themselves by uncovering the plot to replace them.

Once it came out that the fakes had been around actually being them the whole time, they were livid at this king, who had basically been using the royal coffers to distract them.

I should mention that what made the villian so fearsome is the unknown element. While he never confronted the party, it was the implications.

Was he holding loved ones hostage? Were all the players real? Were there more fakes? What else was he planning? And so on.

But in reality, this false king couldn't be bothered. He knew he had legitimately better versions of the players and had actually replaced an ineffectual king.

He was just keeping the players around because both he and they needed to be alive for the spell to keep working.

[calebbraun]

You could make some of the characters that are meant to be an important part of your PCs backstories a part of a bigger, more intricate web. Was their village wiped out by a bandit clan, you could reveal that the bandits were actually soldiers, sent by corrupt general/evil king, trying to stir up trouble and spread the kingdom's standing army thin.
Was your rogue Bruce Wayned? That thief was actually a hitman, working for the BBEG, and their parents were a potential threat to their ascension.

[blackhole.]

I did it by having a lot of NPC hype up one particular NPC. Talking about how strong they are, how they are almost a god and having that power be showcased in someway. Then having the big bad come in and kill said hyped up NPC quite quickly and easily in a slightly brutal way.

When I did it my players said they were actually scared in real life, like heart pounding. And it was the best session we’ve had