>BBEG has undead forces up the wazoo and is crushing any and

>>48780618
join him, then betray him

Inspire dissidence in his upper ranks, or rally support among his enemies to form a larger ally of convenience.

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>>48780618
merc the bitch
The end-game for most classes in the og was some kind of private army. A: Because adventurers regularly amass an insane amount of wealth, and B: because the only realistic answer to a giant monster or an evil army is indeed: your own army.

Resistance forces invent some anti-undead magic/technology. Maybe they weaponize a rare variety of beetle that thrives on necrotic flesh and unleash it as a living weapon. Maybe they find away to magically rip control of the undead away from the BBEG, either piece by piece or in one fell swoop. Maybe the magidiplomats finally convince the angels to intervene.

Or maybe they just develop a super weapon. Nukes work against undead too (though the fallout doesn't have nearly the effect).

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>>48780618
>How do you stop a villain like this without falling for the "he got arrogant" meme?
Superior strategy. Think about it: they're undead. Mindless, brainless, only capable of following the most basic orders. The BBEG is only one guy. He cannot be present at multiple locations at the same time and micromanage what every individual undead group does. It should be quite easy for an organized human military to outsmart them.

When the BBEG sees that his retarded undead hordes are failing, you lure him out into the open. He will be there to personally command one of his armies. Which one? Even that can be decided by the humans. Unless the trap is super obvious, he will most likely command the army that faces what appears to be the weakest human opposition (preferably if it's led by a high priority target like a king). That is when you spring the trap on the BBEG and kill or incapacitate him.

It makes the villain look competent, intelligent and pragmatic, but does the same to the heroes. The villain has a great advantage that comes with a great disadvantage (the undead lack any kind of autonomy), and the heroes simply exploit this weakness enough to bring the villain to his knees.

>>48780757
>>48780701
these
don't be a mcguffin faggot

>>48780757
What if he has mindless undead leas by intelligent undead under his control?

>>48780772
hey, you
*psst*
hey...
(you can still out-strat non-brainless people, it's just harder)

>>48780618
Secret weapon

>>48780772
Well, that would make things a bit harder. That means that for the humans, these intelligent undead become high priority targets. The humans will have to entirely adjust the way their military works. They are no longer there to break the enemy, because the mindless enemy is unbreakable. Instead, they need to find a way to target the officers in the army. The officers become the ONLY thing that matter, because with them out of the picture the rest of the army is just meat ripe for the butchering.

You'd probably see some kind of proto-snipers evolving, elite archers, crossbowmen, sneaks etc. whose only goal is to target the intelligent undead. More or less like how Napoleonic Voltigeurs were trained to specifically target low ranking officers, robbing individual batallions of their leadership, except many times more effective.

>>48780826
This too.

>>48780859
I mean, without them the rest of the army are mindless sociopaths capable of killing the average soldier. The only change is they no longer follow tactics.

>>48780922
>The only change is they no longer follow tactics.
Yeah, meat ripe for the slaughter. There's a reason why almost every professional army has abandoned simply charging in and hacking away at the enemy: it doesn't work if your enemy has anything resembling leadership and discipline.

Of course it's not going to be a cakewalk, but if we want the villain to appear halfway competent it SHOULDN'T be a cakewalk. It should be somethign incredibly difficult, incredibly costly (in human lives) but still something that makes victory more likely than defeat even against overwhelming odds. It should be something that forces the BBEG out into the open, where he's vulnerable. It's about sending a message: your armies aren't autonomous enough to function as well as you want them to.

>>48780772

Then you outsmart them as you would any other commander. Figure out undead weaknesses, possibly the formations and strategies each commander prefers, and play to that. Set up a situation where an undead commander would use his preferred tactic, and then deploy countermeasures to that tactic, wiping out his forces.

And if they start getting wise, have a backup plan out of left field and just fucking drop a magical nuke or lace the battlefield with gunpowder and oil (can undead still smell?) and razorwire to tear them to shreds or something. Or maybe the armies he was coming to fight are an illusion created by magic, and you didn't really need his army routed, just conveniently not where your real target was. Still, you don't need to fool the whole army, just the commander, which might make it harder to get to, but easier to pull off.

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>>48780618
TURN UNDEAD

>>48781004
Don't forget, intelligence implies personal desires. These separate leaders have their own agendas. You may be able to play them against each other, maybe even against BBEG, depending.

>>48780618
Undead troops don't get more experienced. The soldiers who survive do.

The undead kill 90% of your forces but the 10 % who survive can basically solo armies.

>>48780618
Like all dark sorcerer BBEGs, he inevitably has a evil qt3.14 martial-class lieutenant.

Defeat her but spare her life and turn her against her master with the old "he was going to let you die" routine. Then let her go back and assassinate him. Of course, she's shit at being a dark overlord because the BBEG would never have actually shared his secret to power, so the threat is basically neutralized.

>>48780634
Like a fantasy Valkyrie plot