So ... to be a true evil bastard, at least in my group's parlance, you must go above and beyond being a mere villain.  You have to start taking unfair advantage of the heroes, as people.

A necromancer who raises the corpses of dead warriors to form an onslaught of the damned isn't necessarily an evil bastard.  He's a bad guy, yes, but that's to be expected.  We may actually grow rather fond of him.

A necromancer who raises the corpse of the paladin's father (who died in heroic combat and whose reputation has always overshadowed the paladin's deeds) and makes that staggering, rotting mockery the general of his army of perdition ... now that is an evil bastard.

How do your bad guys zero in on the vulnerabilities of the heroes and capitalize?  How do you manipulate and torture the sanctimonious little do-gooders?

The simplest formula is to either a) take what they love and destroy it, or b) take what they revere and pervert it.  Stick with those two, and you should be a speaker at EvilBastardCon '08 in no time.

APaladin invaded a evil wizard's tower to recuse his fair love. When he got to the top where he was keeping her. He found the two of them in each other arms. She spurned and mocked him and said she was going away with the wizard after which he teleported away. The player was truly dumbfounded and shocked at his love's betrayal.

Best damn use of an illusion spell I ever had.

Even after the trick was exposed later, the player burned and I do mean burned with hatred for this particular wizard.


Enjoy
Rob Conley

Quote from: Zachary The FirstThe simplest formula is to either a) take what they love and destroy it, or b) take what they revere and pervert it.  Stick those two, and you should be a speaker at EvilBastardCon '08 in no time.

Sums it up well for me. There is no cure light wounds for a wounded PC ego or worldview, so an evil bstard will attack both with glee.

Quote from: estarEven after the trick was exposed later, the player burned and I do mean burned with hatred for this particular wizard.

Has to be worse after it was revealed as an illusion, right?

I mean ... if I were the paladin and I found out it was an illusion, I'd have to ask myself the hard question:  "Man, why didn't I disbelieve?  What part of me was so ready to mistrust my lady love?"

Yeah, way easier to blame the evil villain than to think too hard about that one.

That's nasty :win:

estar, that was a great one. Tony, you're evil.

Quote from: TonyLBHas to be worse after it was revealed as an illusion, right?

Oh it was, it was. The funniest part of it was it was Bargle from the Red Book. Even though I was using AD&D 1st at the time. I needed a quick dungeon so I swiped the Red Book dungeon and make Bargle the main villain. Then he escaped, and escaped again, and again and again. He turned into my first successful villain. By successful I mean a villain that the players loved to hate and would drop whatever they are doing to "get" him.  

Quote from: TonyLBI mean ... if I were the paladin and I found out it was an illusion, I'd have to ask myself the hard question:  "Man, why didn't I disbelieve?  What part of me was so ready to mistrust my lady love?"

Yeah, way easier to blame the evil villain than to think too hard about that one.

That's nasty :win:

I didn't expect him to try to disbelieve but I was surprised at his whole reaction where where had his paladin drop his knees and cry out "Noooooo!" I was expecting a charge at the wizard figuring that he would think his love was charmed. Even tho it was 20 years ago I remember my ploy for the charge was going to be the wizard to "lighting bolt" the girl and make it look like he disintegrated her. Then he was going to either levitate or fly (I forgot which) and leave the paladin there.

I guess I was a good actor that day. And it worked out better with the "Noooo!"

The most hatred I've managed to evoke from an evil bastard was done not by perverting or destroying anything external (no matter how loved) but by perverting the characters themselves. The NPC in question had joined the group as their wizard and after an adventure or two told them about a gold dragon he'd heard was rampaging the countryside and needed to be put down. Gold dragons in D&D are notoriously good, but when they got to the area they found plenty of first hand accounts of it attacking, so they went off and killed it (looting its corpse, of course).

It wasn't until long afterwards, when the wizard had led them down a couple of other bad roads that he left them and dropped off a copy of his journal so he could gloat. I'd spend almost a year of game time jotting down silly things like musings about the "rumsickle" (aka the group's drunken master who had just been frozen by an ice basilisk).

The kicker though, was that the dragon they had hunted was framed, and the wizard was actually a dragon himself, who spent his time joining adventuring parties for a little revenge because of stuff that had happened in his youth (torture at the hands of the same players with different characters).

I was helped a lot by the players' instant acceptance of any NPC that wanted to join, which was itself fostered by my enjoyment of GMPCs. I don't know if I could pull that same trick on these players ever again.

Most of the PCs in my groups tend to be at least as "evil" as the villains of the story. Things very quickly escalate out of control - we torture and kill one another and one another's loved ones; we break, steal and use up one another's magical loot and items (if the villain has a magic sword and I want it, I'm going to burn his tower down, slaughter his followers as they come fleeing out, and then stride across its embers to rip that fucking sword out of his hands and spit in his mouth); we doublecross, betray and outplot the other side. It's good fun.

my group's almost as bad as pseudo's.  they tend to go balls-out with everything, and if a BBEG or anything close appears, they unload.  i don't think i've ever had a foe survive to become a recurring villain.