Recurring Villains
At last our mysterious band of bounty hunters are revealed in all their glory! Or at least some of their glory anyway. Hard to be too glorious with all that gauze.
The new girls are Inquisitor (drow), Ranger (half-orc), and Magus (catfolk). Like the Heroes, you should expect to see more of them in the coming months.
Anywho, what say we talk about recurring villains? They are all over the place in fiction, from Team Rocket to Jaws (and also Jaws) to Aku to Jason Voorhees (who apparently has his own Pathfinder template). The one thing that all these jerks have in common is an annoying habit of coming back from the dead. Whether it’s the power of toon force or simple overparenting, there’s always some kind of plot device that can bring ’em back for another round. This can be a great way to get PCs invested in hating a villain, but you also run the risk of frustrating your players.
If you want to use the device, I suggest checking out this extremely on-point article over at the Run a Game blog. I stumbled onto it when I was researching for this post, and I can’t say it better than that.
I’ve got to wonder though… Is a recurring villain even something that ought to exist in a TRPG? With so much potential for unexpected player hijinks, I’ve got to wonder whether the recurring villain should be left to occur naturally. By that I mean that GMs could go ahead and prep escape tactics like instant walls, teleportation, or turning into a pile of worms and slithering away, but maybe whether or not a villain “gets to recur” should be left to the dice rather than planned.
What do you guys think? Have you seen recurring villains used effectively, or are indestructible baddies an invitation to railroading? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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I think once or twice is a good number of time to cheat death. If it was inherently bad, there wouldn’t be monsters like liches in the game. As long as there is a plausable explanation (contingent Revivify, minion disguised as big bad, etc.) it’s ok. Also bear in mind that villains don’t need to fight to the death…or even to serious injury.
A favourite “recurring villain” is an orgaization or force. It effectively acts as a single entity, and even if it might have someone leading it, like the hydra, destroying its head only gives room for another to take its place. https://media.gq.com/photos/57472e64be0def8773815381/3:2/w_800/CAPTAIN%20AMERICA%20HYDRA.jpg
So if I’m hearing you right, the problem I’m worried about isn’t with recurring villains themselves, but with implausible plot devices for bringing them back. “He just escapes” is clearly BS on the GM’s part. But if the recurring villain has a good reason to recur, then everything is groovy. Seems fair.
Pretty much, yea…
The problem isn’t a villain per se, it’s that the party feels like they didn’t accomplish anything. If a GM reeeeeally wants the villain to survive by way of plot armour, said baddy should not get away unscathed. A missing limb or two could be a nod to the party’s victory.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1gSm.jpg
I love recurring villains! Besides the BBEG, they are the NPCs with some of the strongest personalities you’ll meet.
They are fun for the DM because they can and should be fleshed out as full characters. Plus, when the players know to be scared of something, you can have fun chase scenes and other fun non-standard combat encounters.
As a player, I like to win over our recurring enemies. If this were my campaign, i’d be trying to hook Fighter up with Ranger or Inquisitor. He needs a strong woman in his life who can put up with his shit, but only so much of it.
Fighter: “Wow. You’re a big girl. I like that. The underbite isn’t doing you any favors though.”
Ranger: “…”
Fighter: “Still, I could always use more NPCs. You know how to cook, right? What am I saying? Of course you do, being a woman and all. Commoner would appreciate an assistant.”
Ranger: “…”
Fighter: “So are we just going to stare longingly at each other, or…?”
Ranger: “…”
Fighter: “Ow! Stop! My hit points! My permeable skin! How can I possibly contain this much blood?”
Ranger: 🙂
And this is why simulacron is so fun for GMs. It let’s the good guys face and “defeat” the villain, gives them a chance to interact and banter with the villain, explains why they can beat him now but might still have trouble later, and avoids you having to come up with a justification for how the villain implausibly survived. Of course, as usual, it’s best not to overdue it lest the players get a “princess is in another castle” vibe.
As a side note, I’m planning on introducing a recurring villain in a game I’m running. It’s an evil party and some PvP resulted in the death of one of the PCs. It was in good fun and there are no hard feelings IRL, but in game that character had a brother with a “frenemy” relationship with him. It was in the PC’s backstory and he hasn’t shown up in game yet (I was going to introduce him a bit later) but now I have the fun opportunity for a recurring villain who swears revenge on the PCs for killing another player. Should be fun.
Ha! That’s a great setup. What if you have this avenging antagonist target somebody other than the PC that actually killed his brother? You know, so that the PvPing player has to, “Watch somebody they care about suffer.” Nevermind the fact that the evil characters probably don’t actually like or care about each other. That’s not the point. The point is intraparty drama!
“Wait a tick. You killed Bob, and now I’m being targeted for assassination? Dude, clean up your mess!”
I suspect my best recurring villain was a Barbarian Griffon who was realistically being suckered by his manipulative Uncle. The Party loathed him because they turned him into a recurring villain by letting him live after one of the players tried to set him on fire.
The second best set was a warrior ‘adventurer’ that the party unintentionally directed him and his friends into an ambush by wights. He teamed up with a sorcerer/cleric duo that had also been competing with the party for a job to rescue the girl from the team of highly skilled kobolds. The three of them have ended up either chasing or being forced to chase the party for 3 in game months across a country of Paladins.
Aha! Your best recurring villain was a result of player decisions rather than your own planning! Points in favor of my theory!
You’ve got me curious now… How did those kobolds acquire their very particular set of skills?
I have a certain fondness for Inquisitors at the moment. That group seems very Skirmishy, which is kind of neat and I can see them being able to justify hit-and-run very easily with their skillsets. This makes for handy recurring villains, when you can’t get a good chunk of their HP down at once because the fight doesn’t ever last long enough (or there is no fight, in the case of the traps they were setting up just before the nat 1s happened).
I still think Barbarian is the best partner for Fighter, though. He knows better than to talk down to her when she can swap his arms and his helmet around if he gets snarky.
Fun story about Inquisitor. In Laurel’s original concept sketch she had included a badass drow inquisitor with the standard Inquisitor hat. When I showed her Paizo’s iconic for a little additional reference…
http://www.pathfindercommunity.net/iconic-characters/imrijka—iconic-inquisitor
…She wound up taking the hat out for this comic, saying that she didn’t want to get too close to the iconic design. Needless to say, I was horrified. I hurriedly Googled up the requisite literature on Inquisitor hats…
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/2hwrpy/serious_inquisitor_hat_question/
…And Laurel realized her faux pas. Thus Inquisitor’s hat reappeared, and the comic was made safe from the derision of inquisitor fanboys. 😛
My guy has a hat, I only realized 2 games in after sketching him. http://orig14.deviantart.net/cd2c/f/2016/366/4/a/kuu_profile_by_dormninja-datp9vo.png
It’s 100% a rule of Inquisitors. Good choice, Laurel!
I’m thinking I need to add a feather in the next time Inquisitor appears–feathers seem pretty mandatory, now that I’ve given it some thought.
Well, the feathers are actually on the character…what’s on his hat is a holy symbol of Erastil.
It does sort of look like a little feather, though.
My view is that recurring villains are fine…. sort of. The GM should totally prepare means for them to escape, but if they can’t manage them then the GM probably shouldn’t cheat for it to happen. Unless it’s something they’re sure it’s going to wind up more enjoyable for the players. And in TRGS it’s pretty hard to be THAT sure about players enjoying anything in particular at all.
I had an odd experience with Ravenloft and Strahd the other week. Minor spoilers I guess, but we had our first combat encounter with Mr. Vampire Lord, and he actually brought along an opera singer so that he could have a musical soundtrack to accompany his fight. (What an arrogant jerk!)
Of course, being dumb players, we assumed this opera singer was some kind of banshee or bard, so we wound up trying to take her out first. As I described my rogue/paladin leaping up to the chamber’s mezzanine to clock the singer over the back of the head, Strahd interrupted my turn to leap up and block the way.
“Surely your quarrel is we me?” he said.
At this point I figured that the DM didn’t want us to ruin the cool opera soundtrack he’d brought in to accompany the fight. I mean, if he was going to cheat to preserve the moment, then it must really be window dressing. I could safely ignore the singer.
Anywho, my point is that players are so sensitive to “GM cheating” that we’ll see it even when it’s legit. I thought I was being a super-mature player to accept the situation and not raise a stink about Strahd interrupting my turn. When I mentioned it to my GM a few weeks later, he seemed taken aback.
“What? No. Strahd has legendary actions. That’s exactly what he does.”
In reality the opera singer was just a girl that Strahd had enchanted, the “interrupt your action to take an action” thing turned out to be legit, and I turned out to be an oversensitive player.
So as you say, it’s pretty hard to be sure about players enjoying anything in particular at all. The next guy in the initiative shot the singer and my crestfallen DM stopped the soundtrack that he’d cued up. Sad times.
For some reason that story comes together in a way that just makes me laugh more than have anything intelligent to say about it.
So, I have to ask things of you both.
Laurel: Next time we see Inquisitor, will she be wearing red?
Colin: Next time she shows up, will she be yelling, “NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisiton!”, or something like that?
Are you suggesting we insert Monty Python references into a comic about tabletop gaming? My dear Sir, I sincerely doubt that our audience is familiar with such things, let alone wants them to appear within their hobby. 😛
……..you know how many games I’ve run that I had kids go, “OOH! Is that Monty Python?!” Speak no ill of the Python, suh! Or you will face the wrath of Usidor!
Usidor? I heard that some call him… Tim?
……now I’m upset I didn’t think of that before. Dammit, take a point of Inspiration for that!
Red is a good color for inquisitors…
I hear red is very in this season.
All I know about Ranger is that she’s a Half Orc and that she fell off a bridge. And already, she shows more promise than Harsk the Iconic Pathfinder Ranger.
Ooh… So you’re saying I should tone it down? Maybe give her a crossbow to make sure she’s balanced?
Well, I would never be mean enough to force a PC to use a crossbow that requires a feat just to reload as a move action, all for the privilege of dealing 1d10 damage per round for the rest of their carreer, with a favored enemy that shows up about as often as a Martial/Caster thread that actually produces healthy discussion, and an animal companion with the combat presence of a mildly buffed familiar.
I mean… in 5e resurrection is a thing. And reincarnation.
If a villain is resourceful enough, they could have a druid on standby with the reincarnation spell prepped.
But which is the mercenary, which is the assassin, and which the bounty hunter?
I’ve had enemies in adventure modules confound the players by simply remembering they have teleportation spells when the party kicks their ass. It doesn’t help, they’re still mad.
I actually have something to comment with! Woo!
Anyway, this was one of the campaigns I was in back in college. Among other shenanigans we hit in the group (suddenly turning the game into a planar travel story, because of a couple of lucky rolls and terrible assumptions, within three sessions), we dealt with a group of kobolds. I know, not very exciting on their own out in the open. The DM at the time used dice as tokens, and “Kobold 4” ran from combat and escaped.
Come back the next semester, new campaign, same world. We encounter a kobold vampire by the name of “Lord Patru” as an antagonist. For those of you that aren’t linguists: “Patru” is “four” (can’t remember what language). It was a long return, but the DM kept track and brought back the kobold that survived, powered up and as a real threat. We were thrilled at seeing it happen!
The situation repeated with another monster (can’t remember what) in the second campaign, but there was no third so I never got to see his return as a notable villain
If you’re doing your first read-through, then perhaps you haven’t met Pug yet?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/origin-stories-pugilist
The one you leave alive is always interesting. 🙂
It is my first time through this “Handbook” andI have not gotten to Pug yet! And even with just a quick glance, I now have another character idea to add to the ever-growing list of “need to try this out”
Patru is four in romanian. Your DM probably found out that Dracula is loosely based on a guy who lived on an area inside of where Romania is now, even if the language is in practical terms hundreds of years younger than the guy.