What in your meaning makes a good villain? >Pic unrelated

>>51666746

Make them actually a villain.

Give them motivations which make sense even if we can't sympathize with them.

As in ruthless, ambitious, proactive, and largely unapologetic about what they do.

You can make them sympathetic or understandable or likable. In fact you should. But you shouldn't use every opportunity you have to bog down the players/reader with some long angsty monologue about how the villain is really just a persecuted, misunderstood good guy.

>>51666746
Not having a topknot

>>51666789
This

At least this time you didn't post le ebin armless meme

>>51666746
A good reason why they're a capable threat besides plot armor.

Most parts this
>>51666789

with a little bit of this
>>51667654
There's more appeal to a villain that's competent through their actions than a guy that stays evil because he is the Huge Bad Ebul Antagonist.

>>51666746
They need to be threatening, menacing and competent. But most important of all, they need to be achieving their goal/vision/mission. Whatever it is they set out to do, they must be on a path that seems to be accomplishing it. For example, if they're a conqueror, cities have already been sacked, villages pillaged, hamlets plundered, and a lot of them put to the fire. Knees have been bent and oaths from once-allies sworn.

Victory, for the 'good guys', shouldn't just be some magic reset switch that gets flipped when the villain is slain. Tackling the aftermath of their folly, hubris and ambition should be almost as hard as taking them on was.

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>>51666789
If you need any more examples, go look at a book series like Redwall. The villains are almost always bullies and cruel, but they have good traits and you can see why they could possibly succeed every time.

>>51666746
Subtlety.
Any fool with power can go rampaging across the countryside but the truly evil one's will worm there way into a system and poison it slow enough that nobody notices the changes and entrench themselfs hard enough in that they cannot be removed; to make the hero's dance to there tune and do all there dirty work without anything looking amiss and then pin the blame all on them when things start blowing up.

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>>51671634

>>51666746
Nothing. There are no villains. There are just different perspectives. What would be called a villain is basically someone who is doing something you, and probably a group of other people, don't enjoy and can't relate to.

Guy starts out a nobody, just trying to survive in a brutal world. Gets a chance in a criminal organisation, forced to kill somebody as an initiation rite. Starts doing drugs and selling them. Still feels unfulfilled, starts climbing the ladder. Had to kill more people, backstab a few, lie and cheat and all that.

Gets to the top. Have to fend off traitors every day. Never trusts anybody. Executes lieutenants as quickly as he murders his rivals.

One day, gets a chance to go legit. Takes it. Does business and goes into charity to pay back his sins. Starts cutting ties to the criminal past. Takes on the families of people he once killed and funds their children to college and stuff. Tries for a political position, fails, and focuses on more charity stuff. Known as a local hero.

Sees an opportunity to change the community he now cares about. Tries to do it legit, but fails. Have to turn to illegal means to eliminate the scourge in the community.

Then one day, somebody exposes his criminal past. His loved ones turn against him. People who once worshipped him now looks at him as some sort of a demon in angel's guise. He starts asking himself, why care for these people and do good when the pact with the devil is eternal?

He goes back to his criminal roots, and doubles it up. Because he believes if he can't be good, then he'd rather rule hell and make it a less shitty place.

Then a bunch of heroes come in and blows his shit up.

There, a villain.

>>51672295
I agree with this anon in some ways.

What this anon did not say is that perspectives are very subjective.

Not everyone believes in the perspective of justice that a police cheif or guard captain dispenses, especially not the criminals they apprehend. But, in the mind of that NPC, that is what must be done.

In the same way, not everyone agrees in the way the cult leader sacrifices captives to appease their god, how a wealthy arms dealer sells munitions to both sides of a conflict by warning each side of the ways they can destroy eachother, or even the method King John used to tax the subjects of England.

But the beauty of it is when the PCs think its a worthy cause. The promise of power is not to be taken lightly.

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One of my favorite examples of making a villain is that one old anime which has an emotionless terminator style muscle killing machine. He doesnt really do much aside from killing but one day he is offered wine by his employer and he says that he doesn´t drink alcohol and would rather have a glass of orange juice. It´s such a small thing but made him so much more relatable

>>51672295
Subjective definition of villain is more than enough for PCs to act. They don't need semantics - they need a character to fight against.

>>51666746

Why do you even need a ''villain'' though?

>>51673071
>why care for these people and do good when the pact with the devil is eternal?

What horrible motivation. 0/10 would eliminate like a common street thug.

I Think the important part of a villain that people sometimes forget is that you have to make the players want to stop them. Make them charismatic, make them stoic but make the players care about them. Villains who do evil things are fine, but villains who do evil things to the party are better.