What classes do we not see enough BBEGs of? What is one you want

Rangers.

>>44722155
BBEG of Crimson Throne is bard.

>>44722155
>I was thinking of how I don't have any examples of Bard BBEGs.

Bards mainly buff other people, so rarely are they main villains.

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>What classes do we not see enough BBEGs of?

Commoners.

>>44722155
Bard is the first one to spring to mind.
However I've always wanted to face off against an Alchemist BBEG.

Artificer, I mean usually it's just straight up wizard when the BBEG is a magic user. But Artificer makes more sense for things like massive magical structures and armies of magical creations. Plus you could do a kind of neat reveal/multi part fight, where you start by fighting an oversized warforged, that at the end of the fight breaks open to reveal the artificer within.

>>44722155
>he's never run a bard/assassin
Bro

>>44722303
How would that even work?

>>44722155
Fighter/noble.
Swarms of hirelings. Old money. Lots of it.

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>>44722155
>Bard BBEGs.
Bro.

>>44722702
Rebel rouser?

>>44722155
Abjurers. There are a lot of BBEG necromancers or evokers or enchanters, but not many abjuration school specialists.

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>>44722303
...do we need to map out a level progression system for a commoner class so we can have a commoner bbeg?

Level 3, choose archetype
>Potato farmer
>Livestock rancher
>Lumberjack
>Baby factory

I think pic related could do "commoner" well.

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>bard BBEG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZibrMKEWb8

>>44722271
Bard BBEG who's buffs all of his henchmen from far away, empowers his entire army just by being present, and can cause some serious mental damage to enemies?

Do want.

>Bard BBEG
>NTRs the party

>>44722919
R u kidding or are you a player who has only opened the DMG for magic items

>>check your privilege kid

Expert npc class, minmaxed for every possible bonus to basket weaving.

>>44722271
I had a plan for a Bard main villain that would buff his minions.

He got turned into a Blackguard though since I needed him to be able to fight by himself when the party eventually starts fighting multiples of him and his clones.

>>44722919
This DM. Please, be this DM.

>>44723160
sure, you think it's funny now, but how about when your entire party ends up arms tied under the floor of a giant basket, the only thing keeping you from falling to your fiery deaths in the middle of a volcano? of course, the reeds won't hold too long against the flying blazes, so it's only a matter of time...

all the while the villainous frail old lady weaver screams at you for not stopping by her shop that fateful morning

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>>44723160
>literally weaves PCs into a giant adamantine basket on his first turn

I like this plan

>>44723308
The candle maker shows up to seal the PCs in wax.
>light spells and torches eh?
>well fuck you candle-haters

>>44722400
Definitely not enough fantasy mad scientist BBEG.

>>44722155
I'm gonna go illusionist or diviner. Normally it's a classic wizard or crazy experimenter wizard. If somebody's a string-puller type BBEG, they're often a noble, or still just a normal wizard/vizier sort..
I want to see a completely mad type that enjoys making everyone doubt their sanity; or a complete magical chessmaster wizard that fills up their spell roster with all the divination spells those schrodinger's wizard wankers talk about all the time (but which don't actually fit any extant spell).

I also feel like we haven't seen enough of the classic melee warlord BBEG recently.

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Come on OP, are you even trying?

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A paladin BBEG? They usually don't fit the usual mold of a villain, so they're usually not the boss at the end of a dungeon.

But one I would like to see is a monk, probably buffed up with some cool enchanted equipment. Imagine an evil version of Jackie Chan who is nearly impossible to hit and just knocking you over and against each other, and telling you all sorts of wise things throughout the fight.

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>>44722155
The Inquisition who see all the deeds that your party has done over the campaign to be an affront to the church they serve. It could be that the party's actions have directly gone against the religion or has sown seeds of doubt in the hearts of its devotees and now they're gonna kick some heretic ass, or maybe they just singled out that party to use as scapegoats for all the shady shit the Inquisition have done.
Singing is a must
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ysOYG_7TEE

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>>44722155
I've always felt that the Joker is a good example of a bard BBEG.

>>44722303
Best commoner BBEG

Outdoes Lenin

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>>44723491
But he's going up against a monk/rogue multiclass.

>>44723496
Then he spends the remainder of his life as a disembodied brain in a pain amplifier. Some people were ticked off.

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Noncombat Politician/Noble

>>44723491
This got me thinking, would you allow a bard to use perform(clown) for his bardic music?

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>>44722155
>Implying that antagonists should be describable using PC classes
>Implying anything other than PC protagonists should be describable using PC classes
PFFF, way to undermine the uniqueness of PC heroism, while simultaneously making your game feel like some computer game that literally runs on its mechanics rather than using the mechanics to model a fantasy-action world

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>>44722702
Give him the Chicken Infested "flaw", a Commoner-only flaw which gives him a 50% chance of spawning a chicken whenever he pulls something out of his backpack.

Then make him a farmer so dedicated to his work he has learned to communicate with the chickens.

GO FORTH MY CHICKEN MINIONS, AND PECK THE EYES OF ALL WHO OPPOSE ME

>>44723645
Removing the possibility of NPCs describable using PC classes would be kind of disappointing to me even as a player. I like the idea of playing characters who come from organizations of people with similar abilities that they got their cool training from, like orders of holy knights or circles of warlocks or whatever.

>>44723618
Most dangerous adversary ever.

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>>44723517

In the end it was mankind that had become the true monsters.

>>44723725
isn't there something or other that lets people draw items out of inventories as a free action in basically every edition of D&D? Have him get that. Then he infinitely draws specks of sand from a bag until the desired number of them come out as chickens instead.

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>>44723744
It's what I do in my own system and game, in that the players each have a singular class with a powerful spread of abilities they get over time. All NPCs, however, are mixed classes with a few powers here and there to make them a weaker but identifiable mixture.

Then when it comes to the BIG Bads, I toss on normal classes on par with the PCs, sometimes reflavored or reskinned with a few tweaks to make them unpredictable.

It basically follows a strong Final Fantasy Tactics style of design.

>>44722719
rest in peace.

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>>44723878
>chickens are almost universally slaughtered and eaten by the millions
>likely all across reality
>his final power is to tear open a rift in time to summon out every dead enraged chicken ghost, undead, skeleton, or enraged bloodied feral to ever exist across any timeline

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>>44723918
>Lich Bowie Bard

>>44723618
Underrated post.
No one can defeat an entrenched noble without a huge effort.
Kill him? He's already paid for a clone/jar/resrecution.
Attack him? An army of guards, plus you now have a huge bounty.
>accuse him? Good luck. See many US senators go to jail?
Money buys great protection. Title buys more protection.
Plus he could have the PCs declared outlaws/killers / rapists etc. With little effort.
His "level"? Lv 0.

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>>44723967
That's easy. Get a really greedy, powerful dragon pissed off at him. The trick, of course, is to be a minimum of 4 continents away when the shit goes down.

This is why Rogues and Witches and the type exist, to knock those fucks down a few hundred pegs when their waistline oversteps their dangerously stunted common sense.

>>44723474
>make like the reed and bow, for I am the wind.
>Flow like a river; Swift as an arrow and as hard as stone.
>Stick and stone will not break my bones
>Fly as the butterfly and strike swift as the mantis

>>44722155
Bards. Paladins that haven't fallen. Rangers. Ninjas. Druids.

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>>44724190
Got a Druid for my BBEG. Let me tell you, when you push them to Shub-Niggurath levels and let them start to violently terrascape places, their mystery starts to dry up awful fast.

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>>44724108
>To be the mountain is to give up the power of the stonecutter
>A small fire is quickly quenched by a raging storm
>a blade of grass is merely the smallest weapon of nature, I am the hammer
>the one who makes trouble can resolve the trouble - through submission
>a monkey can reach as much with his tail as his hand, but he must not grasp outside his reach
>to avoid unnecessary pain is the enterprise of all life - those who bring it upon themselves are nothing more than fools

I want to make this BBEG now. Too bad I can't find shit for evil monk pics.

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>>44724279
Doesn't have to be a Monk. Could be anyone or anything that uses hand to hand.

I once had a Lich who was a Death Hand. Fought with nothing but adamant-hard iron-cracking bones in martial arts mixed with necromantic magic and the usual slew of Evil Monk powers, like tearing out hearts and the like.

>>44723474
>Players enter the monk's dungeon.
>"I don't want no trable".
>Ladder emporium dungeon.

>>44724017

he hires a band of adventurers to stop the 'evil' witches and dragons and thieves.

>>44724245
The bard idea got me thinking it would be fun to have a pied piper BBEG bard who goes through villages playing music and enslaving the populace

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Second on the paladin as BBEG. BBGG?

What *is* Lawful Good anyways? Seems pretty clear, but remember that even your random ISIS soldier's fighting for his God. Nobody who commits the atrocities thinks they're evil. Nazis fought for genetic purity. Al Qaeda fights an immoral and godless West. Torquemada very rationally concluded that torturing possible heretics was preferable to letting them endanger the souls of God's people.

So what about the party? The rogue? Filthy thief, he deserves nothing but punishment and death. The bard? Immoral womanizer who enchants the good people with his sinful rhythms and devious trickery. The wizard? Communes with evil spirts and wields the dark powers of the devils themselves. And the party's paladin? The worst of the lot - she has clearly refused to slay or even bring in her clearly evil so-called "companions". Such treachery and weakness must be made an example of.

The best part? The paladin BBEG hasn't broken a single line of his code. He'll give you a "fair trial", and show "mercy" in a quick death. I can see a lot of BBEG potential there.

>>44723744
More than a few antagonists (big and small) have powers similar to, or even copy-pasted from the PC's, especially when it's narratively appropriate. What I was talking about here >>44723645 is that OGL tendency for the entire world to HAVE to be described under the same mechanical chassis as the PC's, which (to me) made the world feel like an MMO built on an OGL computer code (like how in that Conan MMO, everyone was the chosen one, so noone's the chosen one,) rather than a role-playing game.

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>>44724329

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>>44724366

There's also alternative definitions of "Paladin".

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>>44724445
damn alternate settings, they make everything confusing

>>44722919
You're aware the commoner class already exists, right?

no-one here has done a monk?

I'm doing a D&D campaign for some people where their current main BBEG is a Half-giant monk.

He was another person I knew (the party does not know him)'s CharOp Monk, so he's pretty fucking terrifying in combat.

He's killed 2 party members, and although they didn't take him seriously, they did after he killed those PC's.

There was a drawthread a couple years ago, but I can't find the picture of him.

>>44724438
kawaiiii... :3

>>44724445
did the anon who screenshotted this have adware installed or something?

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>>44723496
>Lenin
>bbeg

>>44722238
Came here to say this.

That and Barbarians.

>>44724445
This is more like 4e's definition of a paladin, which is more like a warrior in service of a god. Which was interesting, since it let you be whatever alignment as long as it was the same as your god, but it changed the paladin a lot.

>>44725838
Not as much as you'd think, since non-LG Paladins have been a thing since 1st edition

Weapon master.

>>44723967
This.
That is a scary bad guy.

>>44725846
But they were lawful in 2nd and 3rd, and in 1st I believe they were restricted to being human.

>>44725938
Correct. 1st required lg.2nd did as well.
Not sure what that anon is talking about.

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>>44725287
I've always liked the idea of the Barbarian warlord coming down from the hills/steppes with a huge army of united clans at his back for the BBEG. Shame it just doesn't translate well into most RPGs

>>44725956

Not that anon, but: Blackguard and Knight of Takhisis are literally Evil reskins of the Paladin class.

>>44726009
3rd ed, aren't they?
Also, not a core paladin.

>>44726017

Nope. I believe there was a 1ed Blackguard. Both were in 2nd. And quibblers gonna quibble -- they fit the exact same archetype, that of a fighter-divine caster hybrid that adheres strongly to a specific god's ethos.

>>44726046
They're still different classes and different alignments, and with different general characters to them. It'd be like saying a rogue is a ranger, or a cleric is a druid.

>>44726046
Not much of an expert beyond the core books, honestly.
But I recall phb for 1 & 2, had LG, as a req. for pallys.
I'll dig my books out and check tomorrow.

>>44726067
IMO, a paladin should never be anything but LG. Or its not a paladin.

Also, didn't blackguards give bonus lvs for lvs in paladin? That shows a class difference, clearly.

>>44722155
isn't the artist of that pic a rapist though

>>44726100
>blackguards
Prestige class.
Not a paladin anon.

>>44726100
>IMO, a paladin should never be anything but LG. Or its not a paladin.

Oh, you're of the Nine Names school. I'm fine with that. It seems like an arbitrary labeling requirement when "Paladin" (within the context of D&D) is a perfectly functional descriptor, but if it keeps panties unbunched then whatev.

>>44726136
Bill Cosby drew that?

>>44726145
Ah. Gotcha.
I was meaning paladin as a class.
Cheers m8.

>>44722155
Warblade. Watch in horror as they IHS everything to oblivion with their weeaboo fightan magic.

>>44725980
I'd think that translates perfectly well into most RPGs. What problems do you have with it?

>>44726211
It's not so much a quest or adventure as it would be a war.

Unless they had to get some kind of McGuffin to defeat him the party would instead have to be military leaders defending the lands. Which I guess could work, I just haven't seen it done successfully before.

>>44723052
Fuck. Been reading Matul Remrit and that fits the tone perfectly.

>>44722155
>Example of Bard BBEG
Phantom of the Opera?

>>44726237
The obvious way to go here is the shonen anime route - have your PCs focus on subduing(or converting) increasingly tougher lieutenants/sub-commanders while working their way up to the big bad. These lieutenants could be former leaders of the various tribes united under the BBEG, and could potentially be persuaded to turn traitor, or just killed outright to lower morale and create dissension in the ranks. Or maybe they reveal some hidden weakness of the big bad when pressed.

This way, you have the PC removed from mass combat, with them acting more like a small strike force/assassins.

>>44724445
>read the first post
>"this sounds kind of like Tattered Realms"
>get to the second post
>Ilegon
Welp.

>>44726237
it's a barbarian warband, the easy way to deal with this still remains. PCs prove themselves to be powerful warriors by beating up continually stronger opponents, the warlord has to fight them to prove how badass he is, he loses and the warband falls into infighting and chaos.

>>44726150
Just because a person is a rapist doesn't mean he's every rapist.

>>44726406
You shame me. Apologies anon.

>>44726379
And then there's chaos all over. How do you deal with that?

>>44726406
>Bill Cosby, who mantles the archetype of the Rapist and thus becomes All Rapists
Now there's a fucking BBEG.

>>44722155
My current BBEG is a bard that's exploiting the power of fame combined with plenty of mass-suggestion that's spread worldwide through leyline shenanigans to turn into a god through worship.

The party's pretty fucked right now so I think the bard's doing pretty well.

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>>44722155
>I was thinking of how I don't have any examples of Bard BBEGs.
That would just be IRL commentary at that point.

>>44726457
Daily reminder that you will never get an UA game. You're welcome.

>>44725956
Variant paladins, obviously. Like the Paladin of Freedom, which was probably the most popular of all class variants. 4e just unified them into one class.

>>44726445
"chaotic infighting warbands" is a much easier problem to deal with then "gigantic unified army". Just send the army to wipe up the remains.

>>44726517
Daily reminder that you're living a UA game. If you can't tell, that just means you're an NPC. You're welcome.

>>44726528
It's a easier to deal with if you have lots of armies. It's a far harder problem if you're a small group, since a big army can be blunted by diplomacy or politics.

>>44726445
At that point you wait for the coalition army of all those various nations the PCs had previously made alliances with, obviously.

>>44726544
>implying the kingdom that hired the PCs for this expected them to kill literally every barbarian in the world
>implying the kingdom's finest strategists are that dumb
>implying your DM is that dumb

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>>44726767
>implying your DM is that dumb

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>>44726767
Kill 6 billion barbarians.

>>44726468
Storytime?

>>44723967
I have something like this going on in my campaign. It's a 14 year old noble and his advisor. Granted it's a low level campaign, but the idea is that the kid is a courtier for the king that everyone works for. He's from the mainland and it's common for nobles to send their sons away to other courts in order to learn and make connections. And in many cases to prove their worth.

He's been harassing the characters from the get go. They clear a dungeon and cant carry all the loot back? If they talk too much in town, word might get back quickly to the young noble and he'll send his men (and enough carts and courtiers to load everything) to carry it all back. It was a blast to see the players get paranoid and start taking measures to prevent theft. Like hiring guards, or preparing their own caravans.

When the party almost uncovered one of the young noble's operations the paladin got charged with rape, and the chaos from sorting that out allowed the young noble to finish up operations there.

The party is finding out the kid is part of a series of pirate and brigand attacks in the area, but they're going to find out just how hard it is to kill a noble who is the son of a major trading partner.

I once had a concept for a bard lich BBEG who was the conductor of an undead orchestra with a vampire tenor and a banshee soprano. His goal was to travel the land and show the world his magnum opus, a 12 hour long epic that was so amazing that it killed any who heard it and raised them as undead who would willingly follow him and insist that you absolutely must hear it.

>>44723621
Certainly.

>>44726196
>Party Psion makes the poor choice of grabbing the Mindsight feat and having a psicrystal.
>Being mentally pinpointed and having his intelligence checked is an effect which is not instantaneous and lasts more than one round.
>Party watches with confusion and terror as their psion blinks out of existence about a mile outside the Warblade's castle.

>>44722155
I made a bars my BBEG. Of course she was also a dragon. That might have been more important. 'Bard' was just a way to use dat charisma and get den necessary skill points. And fit her dabbler/debutante flavor.

>>44722155
Monks

>>44728607
Very nice.

>>44722155
Wasn't there a drow lich bard called the Dancer in White or the like based on Michael Jackson, who would gather information on any potential threats to his plans for months to get as many circumstance bonuses as they could to then go toe to toe with a party? Possibly with a massive group of followers and layered buffs?

>>44724334
Check out the Dying of the Light adventure series for the warhammer fantasy roleplaying game. One of the forms of the bbeg (which is a moon/chaos demon) is a pipper

>>44724430
This is why I really liked the villain classes from iron heroes. The villans use their own rules that are similar to the PCs but give the villain more conceptually appropriate powers. Examples were a demon brute, evil mage, warlord.

>>44722303
Max out TWF and wield a torch and pitchfork. One man mob.

>>44723621
Perform (Comedy) Is already a choice, nothing says it can't be dark comedy.

>>44728675
That is fucking great. I can imagine them having some stealthy smaller types that go ahead of the main group and paste flyers all over towns they're approaching as a way of advertising, just typical flashy concert posters, and the peasants just waking up in the morning and shitting themselves when they see that walls have been covered in the things overnight.

>>44726141
Blackguards are paladins dipshit.

>>44732269
But they're the exact opposite of a paladin. The only reason they're so strongly tied to the class is because they're a darker counterpart that paladins can turn to if they fall.

>>44726445
Use it to become a local warlord, usurping a portion of the old khan's power.

>>44723052
The beast for best BBEG

>>44732218
That was my idea. It'd be interesting to have a BBEG the players hear nothing but amazing things about.

>>44734154
And what would they find when they meet him?

>>44735908
An autistic music nerd who wants to share his century's work to the world.