Evil Abides
For those of you keeping track, this is the second ventriloquism-based punchline in Handbook history. There’s a bounty of 3,260 XP for the first person to track down the original.
While you’re busy with your quest, Handbook-World reporters have been busy with our own. Our intrepid investigative journalists caught up with Miss Gestalt at the Crumbling Ruins Condominium Complex. Judging by the blood-soaked notes our editorial staff managed to piece back together, they even got a few questions in with the famously reclusive Half-Vampire Half-Werewolf. The following has been lightly edited for clarity and Aughhhh.
HoH: You and your dark master have kept a low profile ever since that fight at the Evil Chapel of Evil. What have you been up to?
Miss Gestalt: First of all, let’s be clear on one thing. ‘Your dark master’ is outdated terminology in the modern workplace. He’s my boss, and our relationship is purely professional. As for your question, my daily routine revolves around polishing BBEG’s skull and doing his nefarious bidding.
HoH: Why isn’t BBEG polishing his own skull?
Miss Gestalt: Frankly, he cannot. BBEG lost most of his corporeal form when the Hell Portal collapsed. Hard to perform personal hygiene without any hands.
HoH: You mean to say that BBEG has been reduced to some sort of disembodied lich-skull, preserved only by the fierce loyalty of his undying lieutenant?
Miss Gestalt: I see what you’re implying. He may have the gemstone eyes of a demilich, but I have never seen him flense the flesh from his enemies with an unearthly howl, or drain the life from their still-twitching forms. In truth, I am unsure if he even possesses a 30 ft. fly speed.
HoH: Sounds like things went poorly for your side during that last encounter with the Heroes.
Miss Gestalt: It does, doesn’t it? But then again, even though BBEG is little more than my clutch purse these days, he keeps saying things like, “All according to plan,” and, “Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it.”
HoH: That reads as standard villain talk to me.
Miss Gestalt: Perhaps. Who can say what fell purpose my dark m…erm…my boss might harbor? But come now. You have not waylaid me on my secretive errands to discuss BBEG. What would you know of Miss Gestalt’s personal life?
HoH: Well, I confess that I’m intrigued by the phrase “secretive errands.” What brings you out of the lair?
Miss Gestalt: How could one such as myself stay locked away? The days grow shorter. Portents of doom hang in the darkling sky. As the world itself grows cold as tombs, and as the coward folk of Plotsville gather close about their hearth fires, I stalk unseen amongst the human kine, driven to seek the one thing that can ease my affliction.
HoH: That’s a wire pet brush.
Miss Gestalt: Jawohl. I shed like crazy this time of year! My whole summer coat blows out the second the weather begins to turn.
HoH: *Snerk*
Miss Gestalt: You find my lycanthropic curse to be a source of amusement.
HoH: Well I mean… Do you have flea and tick shampoo in that bag as well?
Miss Gestalt: Goodbye, Ms. Reporter.
HoH: Aughhhh!
Oof. We lose more reporters that way. On the bright side, at least we managed to snag a look at the inner lives of our villains. No doubt they’ll remain safely sidelined for the foreseeable future. >_>
Like the lady said though, the days grow shorter and the world grows cold. That makes it the perfect season to talk about old enemies climbing back out of the tomb! For today’s discussion, what do you say we revisit the theme of favorite recurring villains? In your own campaign, how were they defeated the first time? How did they manage to make a comeback? And what does a villain have to do to earn the right to recur? Shout out all your favorite vampires, most relentless creepers, and assorted nemesisen down in the comments!
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“Stand-in”
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/stand-in
…I may have just googled handbookofheroes.com plus various ventriloquist-adjacent words.
I may have said this before, but my group hates the idea of recurring villains. They hate it so much that they get annoyed when an enemy spellcaster teleports away from a losing fight, whether or not there’s any chance the spellcaster would ever have a reason to return or seek revenge. So…closest thing I have to a recurring villain story is one time we switched DMs mid-campaign and I threw together a “getting into the swing of things” one-shot where the PCs fought an extremely powerful evil outsider that the prior DM assumed would be freed if the PCs opened the wrong door. (There was a magic circle which the fiend was supposed to use magic to compel people to enter. DM didn’t read the module ahead of time, so…it was a bit of a losing battle.)
Well damn. That didn’t take long. +3,260 XP to GreatWyrmGold!
> my group hates the idea of recurring villains
Why is that? Do they not like allocating resources to “anti-escaping villain” measures? Do they fear a “villain always gets away” railroad? What about it don’t they like?
Insomnia came at the right time.
I’m not 100% sure, actually. We talked about it at some point, but that was years ago; all I remember for certain. I vaguely remember something about not wanting to worry about old enemies returning from around every corner? Maybe?
Huh. Sounds like an extension of the old “let’s check every door, I don’t want to get flanked” mindset. I guess they just don’t want to feel like they’re getting outmaneuvered at every turn.
I see Gestalt’s wardrobe looks a bit worse for wear. Doesn’t she know/imprison/raise a tailor or two?
Well I mean… If you’ve been laying low for a full year, its hard to pop by the local tailor’s shop.
I personally find the inept villain to be the best recurring villain.
They come in, talk loud (and probably long), monologuing each time you encounter them, threatening all the usual threats, then when the combat hits the initiative order, they throw all their minions and hench-goons at you, you encounter their traps, but they themselves are terrible and before they have even taken half their HP, they are running for the escape hatch yelling about getting you another day [Insert Hero Name Here].
And each time you encounter them, they only get worse until by the “last time” you have a meeting with them again, they are so pitifully terrible, you actually feel sorry for them (and either let them go, probably with threats to never return, or you kill them, putting them out of their misery once and for all).
And if played right, it is not a sad situation for the players to keep encountering these idiot villains, but a hilarious one that lightens a mood during a possibly more serious otherwise campaign.
I gather you have an example of the archetype in mind. What are you thinking here?
Alternatively, they villain that proves how powerful the group is getting is also nice.
In our first encounter with the “main” blue dragon villain of our campaign, we got very handily defeated. Two of our party KO, one dead, the group running for our lives.
In the second encounter with the same dragon, it was a stalemate, tho the situation proved overall to be too much for the dragon and she fled the scene (we had help that time tho, it wasn’t expressly us she was running from)
Our third encounter we would have defeated her, but again she ran. Our power level just wasn’t quite there, but we did “remove her threat” from the general campaign at that point.
Our fourth and final encounter, she tried to run, but now we had the upper hand and no matter what she did (dash action fly, teleport, etc) she couldn’t get away from us this time and we defeated her in a triumphant scene that none of us have forgotten to this day.
She was a major threat, a minor threat, a lesser threat, and finally not a threat at all. From our perspective, we just kept growing in power and she was the proof of that growth… and it felt good to finally defeat her.
I kinda despise games like these in my old age. Okay, ‘despise’ is a bit strong, but it carries the right emotional direction. The enemies (and world by extension) remain static, never growing or changing as the “heroes” grow in power.
This is one reason I prefer GURPS, it has a flatter power-curve for PC growth, but also why, even outside of GURPS, when I run I have the world change, grow, stagnate, etc. Repeated encounters with an enemy force will not see that enemy acting the same every time with the exact same threat level. They vary tactics if they been defeated before, they’ll have grown or weakened, replaced followers, changed situations, etc.
Sometimes an enemy will remain stagnant, unvarying in routine and threat, but those are relegated to being more ‘environmental hazards’, the “demon cursed to haunt the lands always returning within a set time period after being slain” kinda deal.
More akin to the raging river you build a bridge over, or the seasonal rat plague you simply deal with, less a BBEG (though it may feel like a BBEG to the PCs at first), and I no present that as the main thrust of the campaign.
This is more or less the structure of “Curse of Strahd.” That one always struck me as an example of the archetype done right. Because you’ve got a scheming “I will hunt you for my amusement” antagonist, it makes sense for them to beat up the party without going for the kill. That makes the standard “fight to a stalemate” second encounter and the “now we have the upper hand” third encounter more satisfying.
“… what does a villain have to do to earn the right to recur?”
Survive. If the villain can survive, they can recur. Sometimes survival isn’t even necessary with the right world their minions or the PCs enemies can bring back a defeated foe, or pretend to be the defeated foe to lull the PCs in a false scenario.
But I understand the real thrust of your question, beyond mere survival, the enemy had to stand out in some way, had to have something that makes fighting them again fun or //meaningful//.
We had a “lord of the flies” type demon named Czarzem in our ongoing megadungeon. Dude had commandeered the level of Dragon’s Delve dedicated to the missing moon goddess, desecrating her temple and hosting imp fights for his own amusement. He could only be killed if 100% of the damage dealt was fire or acid, as at least one of the flies that made up his body would get away and reform.
That made it all manner of satisfying when I finally ruled that restoring the “lost sacraments” to the temple caused their damage temporarily “count” against Czarzem’s immunities. It marked progress on a quest, and provided a fitting end to his many “I’ll get you next time” schemes.
Honestly though, without some kind of custom ability like this, it can be awfully hard to build a recurring villain intentionally. In that sense, I think the formula might be: Survivability + Low Offense + Vengeful. Harassing the party out of spite turned out to be a solid motivator to finally kill the jerk.
Screw the villains, the mouseover text started the ‘bad hallowe’en jokes’ thread !!!
Why doesn’t Frankenstein have any children ?
Because his nuts are in his neck 🙂
What’s a vampire’s favorite ice cream flavor?
Vein-illa.
What did Dracula say when the witch and the warlock started kissing? Get a broom!
Adam, Frankenstein’s monster: “What am I, chopped liver?”
Dr. Victor Frankenstein: “I think he meant you.”
Adam: “I don’t have nuts in my neck, though.”
Victor: “Neither do I, you buffoon!” (slapstick face-smack)
(studio audience laughs)
V: “So they want some Halloween jokes. I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”
A: “I’ve got a couple ideas, but they’re all about my least favorite Halloween monster.”
V: “Which is?”
A: “Exactly.”
(studio audience laughter plays in a glitchy loop)
Q: What do you call BBEG when he goes out in the snow?
A: Numb-skull.
Why do I get the feeling BBEG has been missing so long is because Gestalt couldn’t resist her werewolf instincts and had buried him (only recently digging him up.)
That’s one hell of a Hide check.
The only recurring villain I’ve ever gotten to successfully use was a random zombie mook. It was Palladium, and if you know nothing about Palladium, all you really need to know is that hitting your target involves their opposed roll to your defense.
This zombie. This ONE zombie? Rolled a N20 every time he rolled anything. I don’t know what the stats are on that, but it happened live, in front of real living players in a living room. All rolls rolled in The Bowl of Truth.
…after the 5th? 7th N20, I gave him on the spot promotion to a Top Class Ninja Zombie with a cutscene where he put on a metal plated ninja headband. Ever since then, this lone zombie shows up as a random encounter, ambushing parties. When his HP is depleted, he simply does a ninja vanish Dimension Door.
He knows that one weird trick that kills off the party rogue! Players hate him!
I once had a random ghoul in a big boss fight that got brought down to single-digit HP and proceeded to last like FIVE rounds against two Level 6 PCs because they just COULD. NOT. ROLL against him.
We christened him “the Invincible Ghoul.” Then he died. But his nickname shall live on in legend. (We never found out his actual name.)
> He knows that one weird trick that kills off the party rogue! Players hate him!
I’m pretty sure this technique was revealed in a documentary I saw. I believe it’s called “consecutive normal punches.” Rogues do indeed hate it.
yeah, after out group aborted the War for the Crown AP the DM told us what was about to unfold:
The worst recurring villain story I ever heard probably.
If we hadn’t aborted when we did, I‘m sure we would have then.
Hit me with those spoilers!
first book: Cult gets mentioned by name, looks irrelevant
second book: no mention whatsoever.
third book: Cult used forbidden knowledge to fake-resurrect an heir to the throne, for reasons totally unrelated to the main plot.
Cult gets defeated, heir gets killed later by NPC who nearly TPKs the PCs who try to defend heir.
fourth book: such a shitty railroad that we quit, no mention of Cult.
fifth book: Cult just creates another fake.
Yikes. This is the problem with villain plots. It’s not enough to have ’em off doing villain things behind the scenes. You need a way to foreshadow that mess, but not so much that the PCs decide to go and stop ’em “right now” rather than waiting for the scripted conflict. That’s a tough tightrope to walk for an adventure path.
those where all scripted conflicts done at the scripted place and time. That NPC basically hired us to stop the cult (even though he was powerful enough to deal with it himself)
The main problem with Paizo APs is that they are 6 parts written by 6 different authors in order to publish part 1 before part 2 is finished.
So the development probably looks like this:
Author 1 added the hint to a Cult,
Author 2 didn’t know about the hint to the Cult,
Author 3 featured the Cult,
Author 4 didn’t know the Cult was a thing,
Author 5 thought is was a good idea to dig the Cult up again.
I wonder if there’s research in this for the academic side of my brain? My jam is “narrative co-creation,” and this version of it sounds mildly dysfunctional. I wonder if stronger outlining up front yield better results? Or if a “lead narrative designer” tasked with wrangling the overall arc could help with keeping these threats consistent? But mostly, I wonder what those early concept conversations look like, and if there are differences between this one and other APs.
should mention: the NPC who nearly killed us is a very powerful servant of Pharasma and has the means to just wipe the cult out when they create the second abomination to Pharasma.
BBEG seems to be a-head of everything that happens 😛
Hey Collin, tried Lichdom and i like it 😀
> Hey Collin
Are you suggesting that a deadname is the path to lichdom? That’s… actually kind of a cool concept for a Thirsty Sword Lesbians game.
Masterful response. Faith in humanity increased today.
https://media0.giphy.com/media/ycfNOox5D1rPH71egi/200.gif
I can’t remember if I have shared this story before, but it’s seasonal nonetheless.
One of my PCs is currently being stalked by a dullahan ( https://www.aonprd.com/MonsterDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Dullahan ), a headless horse-riding undead (though this one actually rides a deer). Every night while this PC is on watch, it rides up to the edge of the firelight, points at the PC and says the name that the cult that raised the PC gave her, forcing her to make a mind-affecting Fortitude save or be cursed for the next 24 hours, with all enemy critical threats automatically confirming against her and her automatically failing saves to stabilize if she goes down. The dullahan then rides off before the party can really try to fight it.
The party has tried to figure out what weird cult vengeance spell this is. What they have not yet considered is that a few days ago, they interrogated a cult member who kept using the cursed PC’s cult name (having noticed that it irritated her) before the party murdered her in cold blood by having the Urgathoa (goddess of undead)-worshipping, necromancy-dabbling Spiritualist cut her head off with the scythe he uses to suck lifeforce out of things. So yeah. That’s why the cult member came back as a dullahan, a thing that I did not set up in the slightest. After a couple of more nights of this, the dullahan will attack openly, but for now it is content to menace from a distance.
What has been funny is that the dullahan nightly curses have occasionally been to the party’s benefit. One night they were surrounded by an ambush force of another enemy faction, only for the dullahan to ride up for its scheduled curse. The enemy faction didn’t know what was going on and started shooting at the dullahan, thus breaking their cover early and costing them the element of surprise against the party.
Nicely done on a number of levels.
1. The party’s choices bring about natural consequences.
2. The curse is character-specific rather than generic.
3. You played multiple elements (ambushers and dullahan) off against each other in a novel way.
All good stuff.
Oddly enough, the curse is actually just the dullahan’s generic “curse a foe” ability. It just feels thematic, especially since a dullahan gets to raise the save DC if it knows the PC’s name. I am considering starting to layer some more effects onto it, however, since the PC has failed her curse save three times in a row. Maybe the phantom feeling that her head is separating from her body? (Mechanically, that might be STR or WIS damage? Or perhaps a floating AC penalty, as the PC is distracted and death is gaining a tighter hold on her.)
I mean that calling out the old “cult name” of the PC makes the curse feel tailored. The mechanics can remain constant, but they can mean wildly different things depending on how you package it. Same deal with what advantage and disadvantage happens to represent.
In this case, tormenting visions from the PC’s former life as a cultist could work well. Think “American Werewolf in London.”
The Eel, a villain in our Mutants and Masterminds campaign, started out as a complete minion.
Almost every attack rolled against her missed. Those that did hit, she made her roughness save. This single minion drove the heroes back.
The next time we saw her, she’d been promoted, given better armor and a big lightning cannon. She was still a minion, but we still just couldn’t hit her. At least this time we didn’t have to retreat from her. Once we took down her boss, she retreated in order to get said boss to safety. Less embarrassing.
Next time she reappeared, she’d been upgraded to outright right-hand-woman territory. We still couldn’t touch her, and once again took down her boss. This time, her boss had been a real jerk, and perhaps espoused too loudly about how everyone except her and her beloved brother were expendable. The Eel perhaps didn’t like being called expendable, and didn’t save her that time. She simply fled.
It was the fourth time she appeared where she finally got the name “The Eel”. Up to that point, she’d just been that familiar minion. Now she was striking out on her own as a solo villain, and getting started with a weapons deal with another villain. We wound up chasing him instead of her when they split up to escape us, though, so she got away again.
It was in her fifth appearance that we finally actually beat the Eel. It was satisfying.
Was it always a product of the dice, or was your thumb on the “let her escape” scales by the end?
Always a product of the dice. She was exceptionally lucky.
Love it when those math rocks get in on the narrative.
I know I’d be tempted to “let her get away.” There are so many subtle decisions a GM can make that serve a particular outcome (e.g. monster positioning, NPC morale, etc.) I’ve got a tough time letting the dice fall where they may sometimes.
Not a recurring villain, but a recurring random encounter: A fairy dragon flies by, chased by a goblin with a butterfly net and a kobold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlB_tmbiqbM
Well that’s ridiculously cute. Got a laugh out of me during the boat chase.
A certain necromancer from Curse of the Crimson Throne came back repeatedly to torment the party. He dimension doored away from our first fight with him and then continued to torment us throughout the adventure path, though we didn’t see him in person again until nearly two full books later, where he neatly defeated our plan to quickly destroy him with a Wall of Force, but our bloodrager was finally able to get her hands on him and ripped him to pieces (much egregious harm was done to his body after death). Normally, this would be the end, but the fucker came back AGAIN as he had cast Magic Jar on his ring and possessed some poor fucker and came back to annoy us in the final book of the AP.
Another great example of a reoccuring villain is Strahd from Curse of Strahd. I don’t think any other villain I’ve fought against in D&D or Pathfinder has measured up in just how omnipresent and oppressive he comes across in his module. He kicked our asses effortlessly the first time we met him outside Death House as a lesson on who was boss in Barovia. The first time we managed to beat him back in Krezk was a huge turning point in the story. We could feel the change in that we were no longer helpless against the most infamous incel in tabletop RPGs and we had him on the back foot. When I critted (and smited of course) him with my paladin on the battlements of Castle Ravenloft, it was so goddamn cathartic.
The AP Hell’s Rebels has a great villain that takes full advantage of the average player’s feelings towards a recurring foe. [SPOILER WARNING FOR THAT AP.] The guy you want to overthrow shows up in literally the first scene of the AP, but he’s way too powerful of an authority figure for Level 1 PCs to take on, so they have to undermine his rule for a good while. He passes petty laws, including a tax whenever anyone crosses the bridge from one side of town to the other. While the tax is miniscule (a few cp to start with), it goes up a bit every book and always demands uneven change like 3 or 7, which forces minor bookkeeping that just irritates players to no end. They party eventually fights him at the end of Book 3, but discovers that that was a body double. They fight him for real in Book 4 (where he is very hard to kill) and if he escapes he comes back to attack them again at the end of that book, where he finally dies. And then in Book 6 they discover that he is haunting the city, and to put an end to that they have to go down to Hell and kill him AGAIN. That’s 3-4 fights (counting the body double) across six books, with plenty of indirect interactions before that (including a scene in Book 2 where he, in person, gives the PCs a medal for something they did). Much better than the standard AP where you barely hear the villain’s name before Book 6 and never meet them before the final fight.
My group are skippping book 2 because they didn’t want to deal with pandemic related shit. Racking my brain trying to come up with ways to properly set that guy up.
I have not read Seven Days to the Grave in detail, but if you want some possible scenarios to use, Books 2 and 3 of the APs Hell’s Rebels (“Turn of the Torrent”, “Dance of the Damned”) and Council of Thieves (“The Sixfold Trial”, “What Lies In Dust”) are both urban rebelliony campaigns with similar levels. Sixfold Trial is probably the most unique one (the PCs have to take part in a decadent play to pull off a heist – maybe the new queen requested the play?). What Lies In Dust also has a wizard the PCs fight in a summoned monster gladiatorial game – while the canon wizard is supposed to attack the PCs in anger if he loses, you could have your necromancer leave in peace and come back later.
Just some ideas.
We went with Book 2 of “Shattered Star” because of its connection to the Gray Maidens. I was more talking about getting the serial killer plot from Crimson Throne back into play in Book 3. Haven’t done much to set it up yet. :/
Yeah… That was a rough bit to deal with when we played it during the beginning of the pandemic. On the other hand, it was kind of cathartic to actually be able to do something about it. GM was upfront in that he wouldn’t have chosen CotCT if he had any idea of what was coming.
Maybe rather than a disease, the main villain uses some other method of causing mass harm to the populace (poisoning the water supply, utterly ruinous taxes, implementing a police state similar to Hell’s Rebels).
Naw. We’re already most of the way past it. The challenge now is figuring out how to play catch up with the plot once they’re back in Korvosa for Book 3.
In one of our 3.5 campaigns, the PCs were harassed for years by an evil wizard and his henchmen (led by a winter-wolf alpha). The wizard and his chief lieutenant shared a variety of immortality: each had a get-out-of-dead-free card.
The wizard crafted a clone of each of them. Then, instead of using Gentle Repose to keep the body from rotting, he used the corpse-copy as the “part of the original” wrapped in snow to create a Simulacrum, thus gaining a decoy/servitor/henchman in addition to having the next best thing to a lich’s phylactery.
The PCs eventually knew that killing the wizard or his wolf enforcer would only grant them a brief respite from the villain’s habits of bullying the populace and bilking unsuspecting rubes with cursed items.
Very clever! Always nice to have a RAW method for returning from the dead. The suspension of disbelief that accompanies a by-the-books resurrection may be the key for an effective recurring villain.
so.. no1 is going to call out the similarities of the BBEG getting his skeleton body destroyed by an exploding portal of sort leaving a skull behind to be tended by his henchmen?
(https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0190.html)
side note. i would have half expected mis Gestlat to bury the bones fore safe-keeping..
And here I thought I was ripping off Hamlet.
Isn’t the the third Ventriloquist Punchline, not second?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/to-catch-a-killer-part-6-an-offer-they-cant-refuse
*Isn’t this
You mean to tell me that GreatWyrmGold’s winning post at the top of the comments was nothing more than a… STRAW MAN argument? 😀