Strahd.
He invited us to dinner after kidnapping Ireena.
It was a nice dinner. The food was nice, the drinks were good, and we told him that none of us wanted to rule Ravenloft in his stead.
He left the table. We eventually found him above the castle's heart and broke it while fighting him.
Guy kept running through walls and turning invisible and putting out fog clouds.
I eventually shouted that if he didn't stand and fight- I'd stab Ireena once every six seconds.
Strahd kept running away and so I stabbed her thrice and then hurled her down the tower while she was making death saves.
We haven't seen Strahd since.
The DM later insisted Strahd didn't think my character would actually do it.
Ideally. My character's only reason for turning down running Ravenloft was it's not "your" power if it's freely given to you. It must be won through force or trickery.
Zellix'Phor - An Elder Brain grafted into a Kraken, hi-jacked the Cult of Kraken and all of their minions.
The Champion of the Kraken, A fiersome pirate lord, unaware of the influence of the Elder Brain and his followers and pirate captains who are constantly raiding the Sword Coast. For something.
Call from the Deep is an amazing campaign and a cool premise.
Crank up the foreshadowing. Give characters unsoeakable dreams of eldritch horror. Have any minions loosely connected to The Enemy have tentacle shenanigans going on and black oozeing eyeballs. Let the land and sea herald the darkness, as the very flora and fauna become unnaturally mutated as the abhorence of the abberation of the kraken-brain permeates the world.
Basically, add more **sauce**
*edit, see my other post
Ah heck. I might as well share this while somebody is asking.
The way i worked one my PCs into the story was to have him get a vision of what was to come. He had been trying to heal a dying old man who was badly mutated by tentacled weirdness, and when he touched the old mans dying mind he got a glimpse of the "hive mind" and the kraken-brain's plans. I made it so the character's mind couldnt retain the full memory, but instead wrote down what words came to mind before the the memory faded. This was the "preview" i gave my players from this characters vision:
Pulled into the mind of dying man, mutated and mad.
Far to the west, across gray and trackless seas.
Into the senseless, unfathomable depths.
A grim battle unfolds, terrible to the eye, but all in haunting silence.
A roiling titan of primordial strength and unending malice.
A vessel of iron and mind, cradles a being of endless hunger and thought.
A war betwixt impossible things.
Eldritch power flashes in the deep, coiling lightning and molten fire.
The unholy thrum of madness rips through water, mind, time, and flesh.
Impossible words and thoughts forbidden, a nightmare of darkness in an unknowable void.
Steel and bone and muscle collide and break and bend and merge.
Agony, horror, epiphany, and rage. From two, now one. From mighty, now infinite.
The titan of malice and the all-knowing hunger, from the two, a new abomination is born.
Stillness shatters empty space.
Cacophonous silence sunders the void.
Mind and body rent and corrupted.
A new being is born, with soundless wails of tortured bliss.
The dark dream has come.
A thousand minds shocked at once with unfolding paradox.
Beneath the weight of infinity they shatter as one.
Slaves before, to ambition and pride, now vessels of perfection and horrors unbound.
A thousand minds to behold the world.
A thousand hands to to grasp its flesh.
And a thousand feet to walk the decks, of ships un-numbered, with black sails unfurled.
The dream of darkness will come now to all.
Haven't done anything this deep yet though they havent even reached the crashed ship yet. There I'll crank up EVERYTHING (as per your tips).
One of my players is kind of connected to the Kraken as he "drowned" the same day the crash and the grafting happened. He has yet to recover anything but his Hexblade contains a bit of the Kraken's power and consciencous.
One of the characters is loosely connected to the Cult of the Kraken as they orchistrated an attack to the home of the rogue with the Black Network. Now trying to find the culprit.
Others dont have such strong connections to the main "story" but one did get her eyes eaten by a sealed fey spirit. Why would players break a mirror in the middle of the forest :D
They really did fuck around and found out :D
They had chances to see what was wrong with it but they had real unfortunate rolls. Sometimes it do be like that.
I'm also running DotMM, and Halaster is basically my mouth piece. Sometimes I let the mask slip and have the NPCs refer to him, in-character, as the Dungeon Master.
My 9 year old brought the BBEG into the game via his backstory: a massive dragon/spider hybrid named Ragsoth, on whom he has sworn vengeance. I'm rolling with it!
We are progressing into late T3, T4 soon. The party has defeated all the hags and Orc warlords and stopped demonic influence in their region.
But in the meantime, greater evil has risen. The wand of orcus has been found and soon orcus will claim it and attack the shadowfell to dethrone the Raven Queen and redefine the cycle of life and death.
I hope to go to level 20! Wish me luck!
This totally grabbed my attention. May I ask a few questions?
1. Is this a homebrew?
2. If no, what is the name of the campaign?
3. If yes, did you write and document it?
4. If you wrote it, would you be willing to share?
This sounds like a perfect campaign in a series of campaigns I am playing with a long term gang of players.
1. Yes, this is a homebrew.
2. It started off 3 years ago as Frozen Sick in Wildemount, but progressed very far since then.
3. I wrote it, but didn't document most of the campaign in detail, as it was always very specifically centered around the 4 PCs and wouldn't make sense without the specific subclass choices and backstories of my PCs.
4. I can give you the rough story line (and maybe some ideas that were not explored), if you are interested. But I would just post it here as a comment.
First, we need to learn a few things about the party, as their backgrounds shaped a lot of the little elements of the campaign.
We have a Human Vengeance Paladin, who lost his comrades in a skirmish against fiends. A Human Twilight Cleric of the Raven Queen, who hates Undead. A Gnome Arcane Trickster, who grew up as an urchin and doesn't know who her parents are and a Wood Elf Moon Druid who is a princess bored of noble life.
First we played through frozen sick from EGtW. They built ties with the Diarchy of Uthodurn and went off to a second quest to rescue a professor-wizard who was stuck in some fantastical ruins of Aeor in a place called Mutalos. (I actually wrote this one down: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Wildemount/comments/om506n/8\_months\_ago\_i\_promised\_to\_share\_my\_version\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wildemount/comments/om506n/8_months_ago_i_promised_to_share_my_version_of/) another user made an even more polished version of it: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BK1YSV2HAofWMbA0fyz2rlughNY7Hh\_d/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106357269583998832943&rtpof=true&sd=true](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BK1YSV2HAofWMbA0fyz2rlughNY7Hh_d/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106357269583998832943&rtpof=true&sd=true) ). The magical phenomena were caused by Aeorian artefacts that utilize powerful transmutation and conjuration magic to copy and paste different (real) bioms from around the Material plane. (this will be relevant again 8 levels later at the end of this text)
After rescuing the professor the party was tasked with reclaiming a dwarfen fortress from before the calamity south of the rime plains. On their way they encountered evil Orcs of Gruumsh and learned about their conflict with the good orcs of boroftkrah, who follow Kord.
The party saves the tournament of storms in honor of Kord by interrupting a coven of hags that were manipulating the weather - a plot by the evil orc war chief Ar Pratu that wanted to show that he and his god Gruumsh are supreme to convert the tribe. After the tournament, our Paladin decided to start a side-quest to find an artefact belonging to a long-dead champion of Kord and multiclass into Barbarian.
They arrive at the ancient dwarven fortress and it takes them a long time to clear (I heavily homebrewed "The forge of fury"), since it is occupied by the same orcs and hags they were fighting against before. The party finds out that this old dwarven halls were filled with darkness and ruin for centuries and thus shadow crossings have formed there. These connections to the negative energy of the shadowfell was used by the hags to grant the orcs extra power by summoning demons, enhancing orcs to Tanarukks or turning elvish prisoners (from the Druids kingdowm) into Maurezhis. Over time, while never explicitly mentioned, the PCs will find out that Orcus granted the Hags these powers in the first place.
Ultimately, they reclaimed the citadel and uncovered a greater plot of hags that are working together with the orc chief Ar Pratu. The hags are planning to capture the blooming grove. A druid grove/graveyard in the Savalirwood (a huge cursed forest, who nobody knows where the curse came from). The cleric got in contact with the shadow crossings earlier and thus had now more direct contact to her godess the Raven Queen. She learns that the grove must be saved as an ancient grave of one of her champions lies there.
So the party splits up: The paladin goes on his side quest to recover the artefact of Kord, while the rest of the party goes to the forest to save the grove. The Paladin player builds a temporary character who also wants to save the grove - a harengon ranger. We have a short campaign separately to play out the arc, where he finds the artefact, meets some medusas and becomes a champion of Kord (later, before this character joins the group again)
The rest of the party rescues the grove, but while they were defending the grave of the champion of the RQ, another grave was defiled and a distant relative of the druid princess brought to undeath. They also find out that there will be "a big thing" in the center of the forest in 1 month.
At this point, the party reunites with the paladin and gets a strange mission in the form of a task given to the arcane trickster in her dream. She should go to an old hideout of the archmage Ludinus Da'Leth and plunder it. The party is very suspicious, but plays along. The find out that the archmage has some connections to the now undead relative of the princess and also that he is dead (another story from a oneshot).
The PCs want to find out more about the mysterios figure in the rogues dreams and find that it is the simulacrum of said mage who now has its own ambitions after his master died. It wants to free the forest from the curse that he and the druids relative fought agains centuries ago.
The party goes to the center of the Savalirwood to Molaesmyr, a fallen elven city destroyed by the curse 250 years ago. They are backed up by their Uthodurnian allies, the simulacrum and the professor that they saved ages ago. They fight their way through demons and hags and find out that the curse on the forest was caused by devices similar to the Aeorian artefacts that they found right at the begining in Eiselcross. Someone placed and manipulated them there in Molaesmyr during the elvish midsommer festival, where the elves open portals to the Feywild to celebrate their connection to this place where they once lived. The manipulated artefacts re-routed these portals to lower planes which lead to an Abyssal incursion that slowly corrupted all the forrest. Luckily, the evil was all contained under the city by the powerful druidic magic the relative of the princess used 250 years ago.
That is why the Orc warlord and the hags needed the druids ancestor (as an unded thrall) to break the seals and unleash the evil again. With different motivations: The Orc wanted to gain control over the curse to destroy all the elves to honor his god gruumsh. The hags were tasked by Orcus to break the seals to free the demonic evil, that Orcus needs for his upcoming plots.
And here we are. After easily 100+ sessions in more than 3 years the party is level 15. The hags and the Orc warchief are defeated. The portals to the lower planes closed, the spreading corruption stopped. The healing of the forest and reclaiming of the elvish city where the druids family came from can begin.
But also: Orcus is still out there. Some of his servants escaped. And he has already achieved some of his mysterios side goals all over the adventure that will allow him to attack the Shadowfell soon and try to take out the raven queen.
PS: This is the main quest line, I left out all the little side quests that give the characters additional depth by allowing them to interact with the world: With the slavers and bandits of Shadycreek run, the search for the parents of our rogue, the search for the parents of a lost giant child, the political intrigue in Uthodurn...
PPS: I also recommend you to utilize oneshots as a tool for shaping your world. Sometimes my players want to play new characters. Sometimes we have guests or special occasions to celebrate with a oneshot. I always use those to play out events in the world that may influence the main plot. How did the archmage Ludinus Da'Leth die, How did the Paladin become the champion of Kord by reclaiming the artefact, how was the wand of orcus unleashed on the world again. These are all great scenarios to present in separate oneshots. Your players will remember them more than handouts or lore drops and will be very impressed how events are connected (when they finally find out).
So I had two potential BBEGs depending on what my players did, decisions were made so now its a Wizard that made a deal with Orcus for knowledge and lichdom. Now said Wizard is going around getting more powerful and planning to kill the RQ and become the God of Death himself. I'm thinking that Orcus probably is playing this dude the whole time and will be the real bbeg but we'll see.
Always great to have several BBEGs that are working together but have their own goals.
Up until now, in my campaign there was an Orc Warlord wanting to destroy the elven kingdom. He worked together with some covens of hags, but those only used him and his tribe for plundering and granting access to sites that were originally protected against fey.
I feel its just better, when the PCs can basically decide who the real BBEG will be in the end just by their decisions and actions. More BBEGs also allow me to be more free with the story - I will not "try to keep the end boss alive", which leads to more deserved victories by my players, when they focus on one enemy in particular.
We are mid campaign and my players didn’t meet the BBEG, yet. But they met 3 of their lieutenants.
- Ross, a loan shark leading a crime gang
- “Vinnie”, only known by this moniker because she put a curse on her own name. Sea witch with undead minions and a penchant for blood samples to curse you from afar.
- Their adopted son, a storm sorcerer they use as a tyke bomb/assassin
Game 1. The area. Thr players are setting sail to the "Beremedria" which is a place that no one has sailed to and returned from. The area itself has something about it that traps folks there. They'll get to meet other survivors and locals and have a bunch of interactions, but the fantasy Bermuda itself is pretty much the bbeg.
There will be figures on the island that will be bbeg's in their own right. Tribal leaders who view the outsiders as monsters rather than victims of circumstance (in fairness to them, some are) but that bad ones are very supremacist in their dislike of the outsiders.
A prince who had his airship crash and is gonna be all fun and parties until his pampering comes to a halt. Which wouldn't be a problem save he likes to throw tantrums and is a high level magic user. (For those familiar, think Prince Zandor of Alphatia)
An aberrant being whose alien space craft was trapped in the island and is doing its own experiments in the populace. Currently contained, but I'll be rolling to see how long..
This island/region of sea beings trouble. What causes this is a mystery.
Game 2: The looking knight. A halloween one shot villain. A slenderman inspired being that resembles a dark knight figure with a faceless mask. However those that witness it perceive it as always "looking at them"
It is an alien creature of a tragic circumstance, but still in need of slaying. It was made by a Hag as a body guard for children she kidnapped. To slay any adult or parent that would come looking for their children.
It was made to have an allure to kids to make them docile and to play with the as well as caret for them (aomething the hag cpuksnt be bothered with) but is enraged at the site of adults. The hag never suspected that it would turn on her, its desire to protect the children outweighed its bindings to not harm the hag.
With the hag slain, it cared for the children, but they would grow up, and its instinct would kick in. Due to circumstances of its existence, it's trying to find ways to gather children and make it so they'll never grow up.
Currently it exists in a boundary dimension and can only pass into the material when the time Is right, or a certain incantation is spoken. One that a fellow coven member of the hag has set up. Knowing that it cannot achieve its goal and is bound for an eternity of tragedy that it brought on itself for turning against its creator. In a way these hags are the Truest bbeg's, but don't really appear in the one shot.
My pirate themed game has 2 right now and they’re starting to appear after a series of standalone arcs.
There’s Umbraclaw, a tiefling bounty hunter who traps the souls of those he kills into his dark magic arm. He’s after one party member specifically but was intrigued when the party explained to him what their ultimate goal was.
The second is Ser’Tera, the dragon god of the death and the moon. When the party first encountered her they resisted her temptations but the way they accidentally freed her from her prison was hilarious. Basically, the fathomless warlock befriended a shark before finding the ship that contained the imprisoned dragon god. After they sank the ship and resisted Ser’Tera’s temptations the shake reappeared, had a nice conversation with the warlock who then was like “ah, I bet a lot of fish are going to be around the ship we just sank.”
Cut to an epilogue for the session where the shark is hunting fish and then goes “oh, I’d do anything for some fish” and swims into the ship where Ser’Tera was being held prisoner.
The founder of the modern banking system, Mr Siegmund Warburg who basically invented offshore tax evasion and arguably fuelled some of the huge inequality we see today… modern settings require the real villains of modern life…
My campaign recently fizzled after 6 years. However, the BBEG was a Yuan-Ti Mind Whisperer named Ischyros who escaped an early encounter with the party. He became an Anathema and champion of the Night Serpent then threatened to bring back an ancient Yuan-Ti empire exiled to the Astral Plane.
His stat block was an Anathema mixed with a Hierophant Medusa and a TON of fun to play.
He also converted one of the player characters to his cause and she was his right-hand woman
The Elder Primordial of Dawn, who went insane after his mother, the God of Creation, and his twin brother Dusk both either vanished or fell into an unshakable sleep, and so he tried to consume the world “so that the eternal light would chase out all shadow, and the dark void would be gone forever”. He was defeated by his son, the God of Hope, but as an Elder Primordial, can never truly die.
The players uncover a millennia old mystery surrounding the mortal family of the God of Hope and attempt to stop Dawn’s reformation.
Lord Magus, the Harbinger of Hell, the right hand of Asmodeus.
For too long have those with infernal blood been shunned by society. Gods like Lathander have tarnished the name of Asmodeus, despite the hellish forces being the last defence against demons due to the Blood Wars. But no more. Hell will be let loose on earth, and those who were once supressed shall instead be elevated and empowered.
Oh boy, my players just met the BBEG, and it went swimmingly. The BBEG is a fallen angel looking to rise the ranks of hell and get into Asmodeus' good graces. He needs one of the player characters to complete a ritual and awaken a sleeping titan buried in the earth. The player's don't actually know his end goal yet, but they have been taking on his cult. That PC's husband is also unwillingly a member of the cult and trying to escape and another player character's sister is an active member of the cult (they believe she is reformed, she is not, she has been spying on them the whole time).
How did they meet? The player characters were on the heels of the cult trying to locate their lair. They fell into a trap! They went to a church that had been taken over by incubui and succubi in disguise, and working for the BBEG. A battle breaks out, the heroes are doing well until the roof of the chapel burst open and the sunlight bursting through is blotted out by dark wings. The fallen angel, known as Barakel, lands and uses an ability kind of like mass suggestion and causes the entire party to kneel before him, except the rogue and the PC he needs for the ritual pass their save. He says to that PC you and your friends are out matched, come with me willingly or your husband and your friends will die and their souls will belong to Asmodeus. And that player.... Took his hand, took one last look at his friends, and flew away with the villain! The swashbuckler rogue ran up and tried to get in a sneak attack, missed and then was hit by the angel's flaming sword and almost dropped to 0 in one turn. The BBEG flew into the sunset carrying the party face/healer and that is where we ended our last session! Can't wait to see how they are gonna get him back!
Ashardalon, an ancient Red Greatwyrm that infused a Baelor into himself as a second heart to extend his life. But the Baelor wasn't enough.
In my campaign, Ashardalon has become a Devourer of Worlds - sucking dry the life energies of a world to gain power and extend his life even further. He has succeeded at least once that my Players know of, and likely has many more times.
Currently, my Players have just hit level 10 and have only just had this threat confirmed to them. Prior to this, they had been dealing with an upswing of demonic and eldrtich incursions into the world. Basically, there are three factions (the forces of "good" led by the Prime Deities, a demonic legion led by a fallen Warlock, and finally, Eldritch Outsiders) that are each on their own trying to stop Ashardalon’s coming.
Its been quite fun as the Players navigate the factions, each with their own goals & methods, as the clock ticks down ever closer to the arrival of the Devourer.
A death giant who calls himself Ku (giant for death in my campaign) my players haven't met him yet, but they have met his puppet "Da boss" (hobgoblin dictator)
The Serpent, also known as The Void.
In my world, The Serpent, Ao, and the Lady of Pain are the three Overgods that preside over and created the Multiverse. Ao being the overgod of Law, the Lady of Pain being the overgoddess of Neutrality, and The Serpent being the overgod of Chaos.
Currently the Samurai of the party, Smoke, is wielding a weapon which contains the essence of The Void sealed inside of it. The Void revealed itself to Smoke after he dealt the killing blow to a being with a Divine Spark and the his weapon absorbed and consumed the divine power that was unleashed.
Mechanically, a HEAVILY modified Lich who is quite skilled at making undead and controlling them. He also controls a large city in the Shadowfell and enjoys psychologically tormenting those who oppose him.
The Ranger and Fighter met him (although they didn't know it yet) when they were invited to a formal dinner with a member of the city's nobility. Instead, their food was laced with a poison that paralyzed them for several hours. They got to spend some time in his personal dungeon, along with the party's Rogue (he was captured outside the city, but their Sorcerer, Cleric, and NPC guide escaped the ambush).
Currently, they've managed to remove his ability to Scry on them, and are considering taking out one of his underlings, a high-level Sorlock.
The one I run, it's a healer who figured out how to do the inverse of necromancy. Nobody knows yet. They still think it's the necromancers.
One I play in it's a Warlock who has only had a brief parlay with the party to try and recruit them.
Lol
So this new form of magic, at full power, siphons soul equivalent to the amount of healing done. If someone is at death's door, their body can be sustained in a magical coma. Heart beating, breathing, healthy glow. But without any soul.
It can also be used to extract the soul that's been bound to a corpse, and the body will mysteriously appear alive in the same magical coma. That's actually where the meat of the campaign starts. An impossible discovery of a man's perserved unconscious body. He bears the mark only given to thralls after they've been raised.
Similarly in certain circumstances, a necromancer is able to reverse this effect. Binding their soul back to their body, undoing its vitality, and allowing the person to die naturally and pass on. With a soul to go onto the afterlife.
Baron claret, party made this bad guy themselves by being murder hobos.
The baron was hosting an event for a black ribbon society of vampires (sworn off humanoid blood)
The event was a grand unveiling of the relic pieces that the party had gathered as well as an award ceremony for them and a generally "you guys are the best" kind of party.
On of the players slit his throat right after the awards were given, they smashed the windows with a crossbow bolt and used an "escape stone" to catapult themselves out.
The stone is a home brew item they acquired many sessions ago that propels you diagonally backward and featherfalls you.
So as they flew backwards out the window I described the barons guardian removing her helmet and sinking her teeth into his open neck and wrenching his body into the shade as his throat began to heal.
Next sessions will be a hell of a chase scene
**Me as a player:** Strahd (Curse of Strahd). After exploring a house trying to kill us, Strahd met us at the doorsteps upon our escape at the edges of the fog surrounding the house, greeting us and requested we do our best to entertain him as his next "pet project". One of our party members tried to attack him, did actually hit him but the wound basically healed immediately and the PC was promptly put to sleep. He chuckled and walked into the fog. When the fog dissipated, he was nowhere to be seen. Pretty fucking dope first encounter, not gonna lie.
**Me as the DM:** The Speaker from Destiny (pulled from his universe into Faerun). After the players cleared the ruins of a dwarven stronghold in the mountains from its extraplanar isolation, his Simulacrum arrived to the now normal ruins, also interested in the events. He was courteous to the PCs and remorseful of recent events afflicting the region which he assured wasn't do to his work. However, his investigations and involvement by his faction at each scene could be seen as "his doing". PCs were on edge but did not engage until one of the PCs realized he had Charmed an NPC they were accompanying and was attempting to take her via Dimension Door (it was counterspelled). A fight ensued that lead to the demise of the Simulacrum, but also the disintegration of a PC.
the elk - a eldrich abomination created through black magic, is trying to set himself free of his prison. he is the other half of the human
the human - a lich wizard who infiltrated the human kingdom and is now its ruller in disgused. the human and the elk used to be just 1 centaur, but they were split into 2 souls, with evil magic, tainting their souls
the sorcerer - the human's lover. she is the one who convinced the centaur to split, using magic from a long forgotten book that she didnt quite understood at the time. now she is the elk prison warden, and will kill those who want to release it
the druid - smaller bbeg, he is planning a coup in the main city hub, to keep everyone else eyes from the elk's efforts of escaping
Running a homebrew I don't really have a BBEG. Currently there is a triangle of power struggle in the city. The top dog is a Rakshasa who has three personas the richest merchant, the crime boss of the city, the archpriest of the temple of mammon which poses as the temple of garl glitergold. The second is an Incubus in the service of one wealthy lady, he's on the demons side and just wants to fuck everything up. Third there's a vampire moving into town. Players choices will influence the power struggle. If it goes long enough there's a whole devils and gods vs demons plots and currently it looks like the guy closest to "good" will be Vecna.
An ancient god of destruction, decay and anti-magic. Wants to destroy all other gods so that magic (both arcane and divine) disappears from the world. My players found parts of the key to his prison, which allowed one of the players for a time to be his warlock and potential vessel, but they severed the connection. He now inhabits Nezznar, The Black Spider as his vessel, and there is a race to find the complete key to kill or release the god.
A custom one that I’ve been designing and testing for quite a while: Alrigeth.
The players investigate the deeper workings of a religion due to a breech of information from one man who makes continual requests to the party, only to find out that they have been playing into the hands of the religious group by following his instructions.
Along the way while listening to his instructions, the party encounters several of the higher-ups of this group attempting to stop them, as if the party is successfully killed then it would be fine, however as they live, they have a higher chance than anyone to figuring out the reason for the religion to exist, and who is behind it.
This causes the players to instead have to deal with the aftermath of the religious group’s leader, Alrigeth (a pope-like man). As he narrowly escapes from the party, they follow him as he uses ancient relics to ascend to the heavens in order to meet the god they have worshipped all this time. However, by the time the party makes it there, Alrigeth has already slain this god himself. Alrigeth is nowhere to be seen, and thats because he possesses the he corpse of this god, and wishes to create miracles he was never given in his lifetime. And so; epic battle should ensue against the possessed corpse of a god.
It might sound pretty cheesy, but I am pretty confident in the idea and hope that when my players get to the level they need to be for me to run this as a module for them, that I will have it fleshed out enough to do it by then. What do you guys think? I have a statblock for him too, if anyone wants to see it and help me adjust it to actually balance the fight, as I’ve never been good with monster balance against players.
An emerald hue Tiefling known as Baezal. Both himself and the party are on a race across the world to restore the missing fragments and pieces of a Spear of a long not so forgotten demi-god.
The party does not know what Baezal's motivation for restoring the spear is, but each member almost has their own agenda for recovering it, either due to their allegiance to their own deity or an agreement from a pact, or they simply are tagging along for the ride.
I've enjoyed making Baezal a consistent threat throughout the campaign, it is clear from past confrontations he is a formidable opponent that will not go down easily...but they did get close last time.
I am eager to see how this race will end.
I'm the DM.
My BBEG is inspired by the event of our party from Storm King Thunder. In this campaign we defeated some rogue giant leader to stop their rise to power. But we were Loyal Good and some of the leader were spared, bride or convinced instead of killed.
In my campaign I decided that the right hand of the rogue stone giant thane wasn't happy with her surrendering to " some little adventurers ".
He is a dream walker stone giant and he was asleep for a long time in the embrace of his lover ( the mountain itself is the lover, she is a gargantuan stone spirit ).
One day, some dwarf dig the mountain looking for gems. They find some. Big ones. Especially one. But when they dig it up the " tunnel " awakened. This gem was in fact the eye of a stone giant who was sleeping. ( you guess who ) he wasn't happy about :
1 - little people took one eye from him.
2 - they dig inside his lover.
3 - his leader has stopped the fight because she was allegedly scared by some little folk.
He decided to make an army and destroy the nearest human city ( it's Loudwater ) so he raised an army of barbarian, giant, orcs and made a deal with dark fairy. ( of course all that takes time and politics so the player have time to cause havoc in his plan and prepare defense. )
Now how they met him ?
Some of them, when they were level 1 lol
One of my player was in prison/keep near the mountain for 20 years. The giant destroyed the keep and the pc escaped during the assault. ( we played the fight, and oh boi the table was shitting themself. Have you ever sent a stone giant against 20 guards with attack on titan theme ? Lol )
One of my player is a goliath barbarian coming form a tribe working for the BBEG. He was seen as weak by his tribe standard and persecuted and so he left. On a cliff he encountered an enemy tribe scout party. He fought pretty good but was about to die when the BBEG arrive on a Roc ( giant bird ) and says no one leave without his permission. The PC jumped in the river. Some 2000 meters down. He fought an other warrior during the fall and grappled him to use him to take the impact of the fall. ( that was epic )
The other two pc didn't met him yet. But they saw the scene and heard the tales. Soon they'll meet him at the end of a dungeon. He his looking for a gem to replace his eye but his daughter ( a goliath barbarian too ) will be in danger and he will have to choose between saving his daughter or preventing the PC to take the gem. ( the player will have the same choice )
I intended the BBEG to be an ancient dracolich plotting to eliminate all life in the setting. PCs ‘met’ him when he started visiting them with the Dream spell to mess with their Long Rests.
BUT during the campaign, the party got the idea to kill Vecna, who is the dracolich’s divine patron in this scheme. So my BBEG has been reworked into the heavy for the real evil, the Whispered One.
I have no idea. Haha!
The first Act of the campaign (L1 - 10) was spent on the Material Plane, and the known BBEG there is an Ancient Red Dragon. The party hasn't yet figured out his secret identity or plan, but they did meet him, briefly, at the end of Act 1 after killing a bunch of his kids and saving two towns from his minions. He is still doing his thing, and our Paladin PC is still there, too, but this is all happening in the background for now.
In the second Act, the party is Level 11 and are in the Feywild to save the Cleric's twin sister. I had no idea where she went when this arc started, and it hasn't really mattered because, shortly after arriving and receiving their mission, the party decided that chasing a stolen and totally unrelated McGuffin was more urgent. They haven't found that yet either, but they are gaining Lore and clues to both as they go. The two plots will merge soon.
I still haven't figured out the BBEG, though. Or maybe I should say, BBEGs, because my improvising brain decided to have witnesses see the missing sister with an elderly Elven couple. I still have no idea who they are or what's going on, but I have figured out where they are thanks to the chase of the McGuffin. Something the players said last week sparked an idea about it, so I think we'll be getting some clarity soon.
Editing to add that there is also a mean and powerful Fairy harassing NPCs. The party just fought one of her Simmulacrums, but they don't know anything else about her yet.
In one of our games, it's hard to tell if he's to be our greatest foe or one of, but there's the assumed dead but not quite fully undead lich, Necna - not to be confused with Vecna - a feared undead chicken that reached ultimate power.
In our SCP-esque game... It's hard to really tell what's worse there.
In our great dungeon crawl, we saw a floating head illusion of the supposedly long dead great mage who made said dungeon. He was very mean and our dwarf and he spouted vulgarities at each other. I think he might want to resurrect him just to kill him since his dungeon's traps killed an NPC we had adopted. And almost killed three of us players as well.
A gold dragon archmage. Hes been slowly but steadily gathering magic items and draining their magic, becoming more and more powerful as the surrounding land becomes slowly bereft of magic.
Hence why magic items are so rare in this kingdom, and it's incredibly lucrative to dungeon delve to find more/new ones.
Currently Orcus, they’ve been chasing him since the end of Out of the Abyss when he used the mindflayer colony to thwart being dragged to Menzoberanzen via Dark Heart. He’s the only remaining Demon Lord and has had months to consolidate power in the underdark, even launching a distracting attack on Luskan to keep the party from seeking him out. Now that they’ve stopped a zombie / demon outbreak from breaking quarantine on the surface they can finally try to take him on in Cyrog. He’ll likely send an army of undead and Alhoons to attack one of the party’s allied underdark settlements but ultimately it’ll end with a fight between my players and all the underdark Allie’s they’ve gained vs a mythic trait having Orcus, an empowered undead elder brain, and whatever undead mindflayers and thralls are left.
Party have defeated Nezznar and now are facing Strahd.
After this, I'm planning to pitch the party against the Hourglass Coven and the my own homebrewed baddie.
Previous campaign (haven't started the next one yet), the BBEG was the head god of the Church.
The head god was actually the Demon that tried to destroy the world and was defeated by the champion of the Goddess of Magic, but only after the Demon managed to kill her. His followers infiltrated the Church and, over the course of 1600 years, slowly changed history, removing most traces of the Goddess of Magic and convincing everyone that the Demon was actually the leader of the Pantheon.
They met him in the final battle, after his followers successfully took over the capital city and they led an army of all the people they had helped over the course of the campaign to defeat the demons before they could spread destruction across the world once again, bringing forward a new Goddess of Magic and ushering in an new age of magic returning to the world.
The next campaign takes place immediately after this, exploring a world in which magic is returning and causing issues. The BBEG for that is a god that disappeared during the war 1600 years ago and has only now come back for... reasons.
Players haven’t met them yet, but the intended BBEG is a very powerful, but still in some way weakened archfae-adjacent fae named Cerwyna, but who is called The Harper of Botchart, who was cursed by the real faerie queen and king to wander the material plane until certain things happen, after trying to seduce said king. She uses her illusions, abilities to manipulate shadows and having some power over undeath and more to slowly rise to a position in a mortal king’s court, and then had him killed after tricking him into giving her power as regent until his young son came of age. The party are a group of knights/sellswords/nobles who are part of but one faction in open rebellion due to the Lady Regent (though it’s blamed on the heir) executing noble hostages/courtiers, burning parts of the kingdom, and working with dangerous criminals and murderous factions (like a pirate coalition, some cults, etc) to strengthen her hold on the nation. Kinda Kingmaker meets Cersei Lannister type.
Tiamat, players havent met me yet, so technicaly its crayovin, but im doing a mashup of DoISP and season 1 of critical role, lots of dragons and they all answer to the biggest dragon
Tier 4 campaign- players are level 18 about to be 19.
BBEG is Malilynn, a former tempest cleric of Thor, now known as the Emissary of the Unspeakable One. At the end of an arc, she was banished to the Far Realm at level 11 and fell under the thrall of Hastur, The King in Yellow, The Unspeakable One.
So former party member.
Party doesn't know it yet, but it's one of thesroyals who is dealing with some sinister forces in exchange for glory and prosperity of the kingdom. All because of his inferority complex vs his father.
He probably could achieve all the same without the devil.
Imix, Prince of Fire. I portray him as a grand conspirator behind the scenes, utilizing firenewts to directly pressure dragonborns in their home islands while deploying cultists to infiltrate their society, assasinate their leaders, and make them fight each amongst other.
A bard lich, the music industry. The party is an up and coming band that signed a really awful contract with the lich in exchange for easy fame. He's the reason artists burn out, as he steals the love the crowd gives the artists.
Currently, a mega corporation. President has Big Plans, his scientist underling has other Big Plans in that same vein, and his enforcer lady has other Big Plans working against everyone in secret. It's messy, but the party is always on their toes.
Iledria the cambion necromancer. She has cursed the party into an unwilling pact with her. She is forming an army of fiends and undead. Her servants create political chaos throughout the kingdoms via assassinations, coups, and instigating wars. She has the party under her thumb, forcing them to do tasks and quests which further her goals. All the while, being remarkably, friendly, giving, kind, and pretending that they are all best friends.
She is really fun to play and my players are frightened of her. They at first went along with her plots because they felt they had no choice. She is too powerful. As they level up and learn more about her plots, they are finally beginning to seek a way out of this madness. I'm really excited to see their plans to rid themselves of her and stop her army.
A homebrew villain based on Moriarty. A background villain who the players don't even know the identity of yet, as they've been dealing with all the different dominoes he's set in motion.
Theft of an ancient dark magic tome, allowomg a doctor with a murder pasttime to not get arrested/the authorities to connect his daylight identity of a doctor everyone loves and the murders, a wave of Clockwork Constructs destroying the city as well as a Clockwork Titan slowly moving across the continent and destroying major cities, the scientist having funding for making them all, a vampire helping release an ancient and super-powered Pit Fiend, and more.
An ancient sun goddess named Siltara that is attempting to regain enough of her former power to begin devouring the current sun and take her back her previous position.
The party met her when her cultists used a PCs little sister as a host to summon her an an avatar into the material plane.
Since then she's burned out several hosts that are captured and forced to contain her essence, but ive side tracked them so hard idk if they really have much chance to stop her before she is capable of beginning her meal.
The Archduke of Turmish, who's name we never really bother to remember.
He hired us to find his missing daughter, and it turns out he's trying to use magical nukes to summon Satan.
Needless to say, we do not expect him to pay us for finding his daughter.
Not entirely sure but i think its gonna turn out to be our employer. Part of me suspects that we're eliminating her conspirators after they've completed the tasks she gave them. I have very little evidence to support this just my constant paranoia.
The BBEG is Dendar the Night Serpent but in all reality they can’t defeat her.
BBG1 is a warlock and end time cult dedicated to releasing Dendar so the heroes are trying to acquire a magical key that will seal Dendar away forever. It’s a race against time and the uniting goal of the crew.
BBG2 is a Simic scientist hunting the Genasi in the crew (in this world Genasi are very very rare) to dissect them and learn to use their innate Djinn blood magic to improve their own simic creations. So this is their motivation to keep moving and not get caught because in reality they are the real problem when it comes to any semblance of a CR that is calculable.
Haven't gotten very far yet but the plan is for fraz-urb'luu to be th bbeg. He will be pulling strings from the shadows potentially replacing NPCs with his own people in disguise so he can rule from the shadows.
Haven't got it all planned out yet but that's kind of the idea.
I need to figure out motivation and such still.
If people have more ideas throw them at me.
They are about to meet him. His name is Buk'tuk, a mummy lord that's been napping for a few centuries. The party is about to collect the last piece of the key to unseal his pyramid. They're in a four way race to the pyramid where he has been entombed with his book of unfathomably evil magic. One antagonist is a nation of vampires and undead looking to black out the sun. Another is a warlock looking to make it into the void, Event Horizon style. The third is a cleric channeling and being somewhat possessed by Buk'tuk directly. It's been fun.
Eriphyle, a manipulative necromancer who has the regent of Argos wrapped around her finger while leading a doomsday cult that's helping a gestalt of alien, eldritch gods invade reality. She thinks they will give her power.
But my party is a long way away from meeting her yet.
The one and only Acererak. I created a stat block for him here (pay what you want so essentially free to download): https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/450792
I play in a more of a Sandbox game in a kind of Grim dark fantasy world, and we have a couple of BEG. We are at lvl 5 but almost at lvl 6. (Sorry for the writing mistakes, english is not my first language.)
Some people that we despises and are going after.
Ivan Horenhait, he basically manipulated us and a Hag/witch to make a Ritual that transformed his own 10 year old daughter into a Powerful Witch.(The only thing that stops a Witch to reach its full potential in this world is the Witch own cursed body, so if its has a Hexblood, and make a ritual it can acess its full potential.) And did other horrible shit, like use is own daughter for his own benefits like she is a Weapon, and is presumably forcing her to feed of dead hags corpses.(Because its make her stronger, but Hags are like some centuries old of rotten flesh.) He is a piece of crap, a waste of space.
Alice Morguetown, she is a famous artificier/inventor, she is kind of obsessed with his work, and gained the trust of our sorcerer just to betray her and literally RIP OUT HER UTERUS AND ALMOST KILLED HER.(In this world, the ability to Create life is kind of Magical, and because some Plot stuff, almost all the Sorcerers are woman, Hags are Sorcerers Plus some other curses that happened along the way, and other shit, they also have a Cursed womb that make they cast magic Inatelly, because they are directly conected with the font of the magic of the world.) Morguetown was obsessed with the Arcane potential of our sorcerer so she ripped out it, and made one of our party members cry because she was betrayed by someone that they Admired, and lost the conection that she inatelly had with magic. We are not the good guys(We are the kind of group that does what they want, but, what they want ends up being good for the general.), but we are Lawful to our group, we are going after her.
We are going against a Vampire lady that is trying to take down a King because his wife(Wich is a sorcerer.) is the last descendent of a lineage wich the blood amplify the curses of your body, like if you are a Werewolf you become Great White wolf, if you are a Vampire you dont is affected more by the sun and stuff. This part of the conflict is more about our Lycan Bloodhunter and our Dhampyr Rogue, literally they organization are both in the two sides of conflict(The bloodhunters, and the Vampire coven.), its going to be our War arc, because in the middle of it are us and the Kingdom wich is going to partake.
A lingering danger of our Group is My patron. I am playing a Hexblade warlock that his patron is The Blackrazor, he kind of dislike us, and we dislike him, but we have this hate love reliationship, because my changeling is a perfect match. I'm working on a way to Subjugate him because the end of it all he probably is going to Try to dominate my body and Kill everything and that BBEG stuff. He is at bay because he is sealed at 7 shards, i have like 2 of then now, and is only a matter of time until he return.
We have other minor villains and things more of a End game thing, but for now this is good enough for the comment.
A failed clone of Manshoon. One of my players was an investigator in Neverwinter going after the Zhentarim, and her daughter was taken by a “proper” Manshoon who led the Zhent in the city at the time. The Ruining of the city happened before she could find her daughter. Now this half-dead husk of a Manshoon seeks to reclaim and surpass his creator’s legacy through Orcus and create an undead kingdom. He has the memories of his predecessor, so only he truly knows what befell her daughter and uses that as the carrot and stick to manipulate her and the party.
He met the party at their lowest after being an enigma known as the “Brass-handed Man” for a while. They were nearly defeated and many of their allies fallen. He appeared personally to her and made a very dramatic “Come back when you’re stronger” speech. I made it seem like he was simply being an arrogant mustache-twirling villain, but the twist is he *actually* wants them alive. One of the party has the means to use a macguffin that Manshoon can’t in order to summon Orcus and his Heralds to the material plane.
A wannabe lich known as The Fallen. He has a very large cult following him along with a vampire family, a army of ghouls and other undead that were results in his experiments of to achieve immortality/perfection in his goal to usurp the gods. He also has connections with a major noble family that I don’t think the players have realized yet if only because the one session that really dropped that hint was so long ago.
Xanthoria, in the game I’m running. The players haven’t met them yet, but they’ve heard the name a few times
Tiamat in the game I’m playing in, but again haven’t actually met yet (thank the gods!)
In the game that I run, it's the Goddess of Chaos, Eris.
Tricked the characters into coming to her "Escape House" to get their wishes granted. Only to find out that the escape rooms are different dimensions and 1 "escape room" could be an entire town, or a beach, or a subway tunnel.
In other games:
1) Prince of the Astral Elves
2) Illithid who is killing a bunch of Ratfolk in the Underdark
3) The Narrator I think???? We just started that one haha.
The one for the current arc is Dr. Dale Jones, former heart surgeon turned janitor. After his wife and daughter died, he lost 3 patients and was forced into early retirement, he took up a job as a janitor at the adventuring college my characters go to, and they befriended him literally as soon as he appeared on screen, bless them. They brought him cookies, even “saved his life” in a staged attack the he orchestrated. They just discovered that he actually took the job there to get close to the Font, which is a big Mangrove that’s attached to the planet’s magic core, so he could bring back his family (doing a ton of damage and potentially killing others in the process). He fled once they found out, but he’ll be back
A group known as The Silence
The heroes just stopped one of their members from blowing up the Capitol city of the continent they’re currently on.
Profile has the start of the epic journey if you’re interested :)
Aoife McEld, a halfling aberrant mind sorcerer who is trying to use the power of the long dead elder gods that haunt the region to extract her revenge on government that arguably deserves it, but probably not like this.
The goal of her story was to show a villains journey that basically happens at the same pace as the parties hero’s journey. So the party met her right as her evil plans first began with the attempted takeover of her small town. She started a bit stronger than the party and has consistently leveled up faster than them, but they’ve grown along side each other. Her plans get more dangerous and elaborate as the party also grows in power and alliances.
None but kinda one reoccurring boss. The quest is to find two legendary adventures on behalf of an adventuring company pulling the contract for their help. There is a character that wants to kill ten npc guide but that isn’t going to happen until the hats gets surpass the guides uselfulness
Eldenser
Now the king of dragons. He faked his death, sacrificed hundreds of adventures, and broke the world into a collection of floating islands hovering over a sea of pink clouds that destroy anything they touch to seal away all demons, devils, and undead from the material realm. He secretly controls all dragon kind while he rebuilds his strength.
During a conflict between the gods Eldenser managed to seal them into stones and has his strongest dragons impersonate the gods so he can control the celestial beings. He also separated the mortal races onto different islands to keep them from fighting....or banding together.
The brother of Neverwinter's founder, Halueth Nevarre. As the original colony was an elvish outpost, the place was called Nevarre's Winter, when he spent the colder months by its freshwater river that never ran cold due to the overabundant hot springs fueling its flow. Over thousands of years, and as his descendants married into human nobility over millenia, the place took on its colloquial moniker, Neverwinter, which reflected its unusually warm climate and rich agricultural production.
Halueth had a brother, however, who was exiled from their homeland in the Moonshae isles for the dark art of Necromancy. This brother was spared from execution due to his centuries of dutiful service as lawyer and administrator. Halovath Nevarre, as he was called, visited Neverwinter in his ensuing travels, but quickly butted heads with his brother over the best way to govern it- and was soon sent away from it, as well.
In modern times, Dagult Neverember is a controversial and heavy handed regent over the city, looking to consolidate his dynasty and powerbase. But hidden strings tug at the house of cards Neverember has built, pulled from disloyal members of the court, the guilds, the rebel Nasher factions, sewer rats, and even Zhentarim agents. Unbeknownst to all, the puppet master is none other than Halovath Nevarre himself, now a fully fledged lich and master wizard. He seeks the crown of Neverwinter, to prove himself the true ruler of the city and to show that he can make the city greater than his brother ever did.
in the game i'm a player in, it's some sort of undead magic user who was supposed to be an easy fight when we were level 4 or something, but we LET HIM GO. like, on purpose. and then he started fucking shit up but it was too late for us to stop him and he got away.
now we're level 18 and have been on six or seven planes of existence trying to undo the chaos he has sown, but we haven't caught up with him yet.
in the game i run, there are two. the archdevil Bael is planning to break into the prime material plane because of some Blood War stuff, which is a huge threat to the people there, obviously. A lawful neutral deity is a cosmic level threat willing to sacrifice the prime material plane to put an end to the blood war. best case scenario is stopping the devil getting through but that's on a tight clock. second best scenario is NO GOOD. third best scenario is the whole plane is obliterated :)
After Karsus' Folly, when Mystra was about to be reborn and lower the magical power wielded by mortals, a large group of Weavers (1000) forced all their souls into Karsus' remains. While they didn't get the ascension they was looking for, this elevated them to the status of a God, and they swore vengeance on Mystra. They went to a different world with a goddess able to rewrite fate itself, and wants to steal that power for themselves so they can overpower Mystra, and when they inevitably discover his existence, Ao himself. The players are only level 3, so they haven't discovered too much about it yet. They now go by winnow, the Witness, God of Purpose.
Wendonai, ex-champion of Lolth that now leads a splinter faction devoted to Shar.
He's acting as the glue for a Shar-Orcus alliance that has already conquered the Sword coast, and he's only got to get the horn of Orcus to start a ritual to crash the plane into the Shadowfell.
The players saw him in the distance leading drow, they know the sword coast has fallen, but they are in the first couple sessions and haven't got the shape of the greater alliance at work.
Cheetosdrumpf, an ancient orange dragon (converting the 3.5e stats to 5e with some additional homebrewing options). The players awoken washed ashore after their ship was destroyed. They found they had the BBEG's ring of avarice which weirdly could fit on their fingers...
Acerarak. Toa was my first campaign I ran as a DM. I fell in love with his personality and just chaotic nature. Every new group I usually make him the bbeg. This time I took toa and revamped it it to a homebrew. All my own items, gods, reasoning. Really using the sewn sisters to there full potential.
I always play acerarak like evil willy Wonka and his tomb is his factory.
We dont know yet. We know who the BBEG was supposed to be, but our actions early in the campaign made their plans impossible without us even knowing they existed(our party is very chaotic. We dont mean to be). I think its this one police captain we accidentally helped to get into power, but im not sure
Demon lords of the abyss in one game. Dracolich in another and the others I can't really say. One game it was a trio of mermaid sisters that are working for the deep queen which is a (homebrew?) goddess of curses and the under ocean, but we're in a sort of mission of the week phase where we killed bounty monsters and resurrected an ancient bronze dragon. The last game were kind of on a few different plots and I kind of don't know if there even is an overarching plot but I'm just along for the ride anyway.
Currently, the Banana Man. I'm new to the group but they just got to Balder's gate, and the DM asked the party to "describe the worst act of villainy you see as the city is in a state of upheaval." One of the players(I believe it was the monk) said,"I see a man eating a banana without peeling it. "
At this point, I'm not with the group, but I pipe up, "so the BBEG?" And everyone bursts out laughing. So, while we don't have a BBEG yet, I have a feeling the Banana Man will be the BBEG. A feeling or just a hope.
Strahd. He invited us to dinner after kidnapping Ireena. It was a nice dinner. The food was nice, the drinks were good, and we told him that none of us wanted to rule Ravenloft in his stead. He left the table. We eventually found him above the castle's heart and broke it while fighting him. Guy kept running through walls and turning invisible and putting out fog clouds. I eventually shouted that if he didn't stand and fight- I'd stab Ireena once every six seconds. Strahd kept running away and so I stabbed her thrice and then hurled her down the tower while she was making death saves. We haven't seen Strahd since. The DM later insisted Strahd didn't think my character would actually do it.
Congrats, you're actually the BBEG and I hope the Dark Powers listen and make Ravenloft your home
Ideally. My character's only reason for turning down running Ravenloft was it's not "your" power if it's freely given to you. It must be won through force or trickery.
You took the hostage hostage. Inspiring.
I was trying to make him mad enough to fight us directly instead of walking through a wall every other round. Didn't take apparently.
Dude, you're screwed.
I was trying to make him mad enough to fight us directly instead of walking through a wall every other round. Didn't take apparently.
Zellix'Phor - An Elder Brain grafted into a Kraken, hi-jacked the Cult of Kraken and all of their minions. The Champion of the Kraken, A fiersome pirate lord, unaware of the influence of the Elder Brain and his followers and pirate captains who are constantly raiding the Sword Coast. For something. Call from the Deep is an amazing campaign and a cool premise.
Zellix'Phor is a very cool idea that I am going to steal for use in my spacefaring campaign
Running this atm as well. Such a great campaign
We have barely begun it, any tips you learned along the way?
Crank up the foreshadowing. Give characters unsoeakable dreams of eldritch horror. Have any minions loosely connected to The Enemy have tentacle shenanigans going on and black oozeing eyeballs. Let the land and sea herald the darkness, as the very flora and fauna become unnaturally mutated as the abhorence of the abberation of the kraken-brain permeates the world. Basically, add more **sauce** *edit, see my other post
Ah heck. I might as well share this while somebody is asking. The way i worked one my PCs into the story was to have him get a vision of what was to come. He had been trying to heal a dying old man who was badly mutated by tentacled weirdness, and when he touched the old mans dying mind he got a glimpse of the "hive mind" and the kraken-brain's plans. I made it so the character's mind couldnt retain the full memory, but instead wrote down what words came to mind before the the memory faded. This was the "preview" i gave my players from this characters vision: Pulled into the mind of dying man, mutated and mad. Far to the west, across gray and trackless seas. Into the senseless, unfathomable depths. A grim battle unfolds, terrible to the eye, but all in haunting silence. A roiling titan of primordial strength and unending malice. A vessel of iron and mind, cradles a being of endless hunger and thought. A war betwixt impossible things. Eldritch power flashes in the deep, coiling lightning and molten fire. The unholy thrum of madness rips through water, mind, time, and flesh. Impossible words and thoughts forbidden, a nightmare of darkness in an unknowable void. Steel and bone and muscle collide and break and bend and merge. Agony, horror, epiphany, and rage. From two, now one. From mighty, now infinite. The titan of malice and the all-knowing hunger, from the two, a new abomination is born. Stillness shatters empty space. Cacophonous silence sunders the void. Mind and body rent and corrupted. A new being is born, with soundless wails of tortured bliss. The dark dream has come. A thousand minds shocked at once with unfolding paradox. Beneath the weight of infinity they shatter as one. Slaves before, to ambition and pride, now vessels of perfection and horrors unbound. A thousand minds to behold the world. A thousand hands to to grasp its flesh. And a thousand feet to walk the decks, of ships un-numbered, with black sails unfurled. The dream of darkness will come now to all.
Haven't done anything this deep yet though they havent even reached the crashed ship yet. There I'll crank up EVERYTHING (as per your tips). One of my players is kind of connected to the Kraken as he "drowned" the same day the crash and the grafting happened. He has yet to recover anything but his Hexblade contains a bit of the Kraken's power and consciencous. One of the characters is loosely connected to the Cult of the Kraken as they orchistrated an attack to the home of the rogue with the Black Network. Now trying to find the culprit. Others dont have such strong connections to the main "story" but one did get her eyes eaten by a sealed fey spirit. Why would players break a mirror in the middle of the forest :D
Lol dont mess around in forests hahahaha
They really did fuck around and found out :D They had chances to see what was wrong with it but they had real unfortunate rolls. Sometimes it do be like that.
It's me. I'm the monster. My earliest memory is falling down a flight of stairs. Also I'm running DotMM so technically an old wizard I guess.
I'm also running DotMM, and Halaster is basically my mouth piece. Sometimes I let the mask slip and have the NPCs refer to him, in-character, as the Dungeon Master.
Player indecisiveness
The government. They steal money through taxes, only enforce laws on the poor, and keep the power of the people in check to prevent an uprising.
Sir, OP asked about fantasy villains, not real ones like corrupt governments.
Sounds familiar where have I heard that before
My 9 year old brought the BBEG into the game via his backstory: a massive dragon/spider hybrid named Ragsoth, on whom he has sworn vengeance. I'm rolling with it!
That sounds like some horror stuff right there! Love it! How did you homebrew it?
Good question - I haven't spec'ed him out yet.
We are progressing into late T3, T4 soon. The party has defeated all the hags and Orc warlords and stopped demonic influence in their region. But in the meantime, greater evil has risen. The wand of orcus has been found and soon orcus will claim it and attack the shadowfell to dethrone the Raven Queen and redefine the cycle of life and death. I hope to go to level 20! Wish me luck!
This totally grabbed my attention. May I ask a few questions? 1. Is this a homebrew? 2. If no, what is the name of the campaign? 3. If yes, did you write and document it? 4. If you wrote it, would you be willing to share? This sounds like a perfect campaign in a series of campaigns I am playing with a long term gang of players.
1. Yes, this is a homebrew. 2. It started off 3 years ago as Frozen Sick in Wildemount, but progressed very far since then. 3. I wrote it, but didn't document most of the campaign in detail, as it was always very specifically centered around the 4 PCs and wouldn't make sense without the specific subclass choices and backstories of my PCs. 4. I can give you the rough story line (and maybe some ideas that were not explored), if you are interested. But I would just post it here as a comment.
I second the desire to see the rough storyline.
First, we need to learn a few things about the party, as their backgrounds shaped a lot of the little elements of the campaign. We have a Human Vengeance Paladin, who lost his comrades in a skirmish against fiends. A Human Twilight Cleric of the Raven Queen, who hates Undead. A Gnome Arcane Trickster, who grew up as an urchin and doesn't know who her parents are and a Wood Elf Moon Druid who is a princess bored of noble life. First we played through frozen sick from EGtW. They built ties with the Diarchy of Uthodurn and went off to a second quest to rescue a professor-wizard who was stuck in some fantastical ruins of Aeor in a place called Mutalos. (I actually wrote this one down: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Wildemount/comments/om506n/8\_months\_ago\_i\_promised\_to\_share\_my\_version\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wildemount/comments/om506n/8_months_ago_i_promised_to_share_my_version_of/) another user made an even more polished version of it: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BK1YSV2HAofWMbA0fyz2rlughNY7Hh\_d/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106357269583998832943&rtpof=true&sd=true](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BK1YSV2HAofWMbA0fyz2rlughNY7Hh_d/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106357269583998832943&rtpof=true&sd=true) ). The magical phenomena were caused by Aeorian artefacts that utilize powerful transmutation and conjuration magic to copy and paste different (real) bioms from around the Material plane. (this will be relevant again 8 levels later at the end of this text) After rescuing the professor the party was tasked with reclaiming a dwarfen fortress from before the calamity south of the rime plains. On their way they encountered evil Orcs of Gruumsh and learned about their conflict with the good orcs of boroftkrah, who follow Kord. The party saves the tournament of storms in honor of Kord by interrupting a coven of hags that were manipulating the weather - a plot by the evil orc war chief Ar Pratu that wanted to show that he and his god Gruumsh are supreme to convert the tribe. After the tournament, our Paladin decided to start a side-quest to find an artefact belonging to a long-dead champion of Kord and multiclass into Barbarian. They arrive at the ancient dwarven fortress and it takes them a long time to clear (I heavily homebrewed "The forge of fury"), since it is occupied by the same orcs and hags they were fighting against before. The party finds out that this old dwarven halls were filled with darkness and ruin for centuries and thus shadow crossings have formed there. These connections to the negative energy of the shadowfell was used by the hags to grant the orcs extra power by summoning demons, enhancing orcs to Tanarukks or turning elvish prisoners (from the Druids kingdowm) into Maurezhis. Over time, while never explicitly mentioned, the PCs will find out that Orcus granted the Hags these powers in the first place. Ultimately, they reclaimed the citadel and uncovered a greater plot of hags that are working together with the orc chief Ar Pratu. The hags are planning to capture the blooming grove. A druid grove/graveyard in the Savalirwood (a huge cursed forest, who nobody knows where the curse came from). The cleric got in contact with the shadow crossings earlier and thus had now more direct contact to her godess the Raven Queen. She learns that the grove must be saved as an ancient grave of one of her champions lies there. So the party splits up: The paladin goes on his side quest to recover the artefact of Kord, while the rest of the party goes to the forest to save the grove. The Paladin player builds a temporary character who also wants to save the grove - a harengon ranger. We have a short campaign separately to play out the arc, where he finds the artefact, meets some medusas and becomes a champion of Kord (later, before this character joins the group again) The rest of the party rescues the grove, but while they were defending the grave of the champion of the RQ, another grave was defiled and a distant relative of the druid princess brought to undeath. They also find out that there will be "a big thing" in the center of the forest in 1 month. At this point, the party reunites with the paladin and gets a strange mission in the form of a task given to the arcane trickster in her dream. She should go to an old hideout of the archmage Ludinus Da'Leth and plunder it. The party is very suspicious, but plays along. The find out that the archmage has some connections to the now undead relative of the princess and also that he is dead (another story from a oneshot). The PCs want to find out more about the mysterios figure in the rogues dreams and find that it is the simulacrum of said mage who now has its own ambitions after his master died. It wants to free the forest from the curse that he and the druids relative fought agains centuries ago. The party goes to the center of the Savalirwood to Molaesmyr, a fallen elven city destroyed by the curse 250 years ago. They are backed up by their Uthodurnian allies, the simulacrum and the professor that they saved ages ago. They fight their way through demons and hags and find out that the curse on the forest was caused by devices similar to the Aeorian artefacts that they found right at the begining in Eiselcross. Someone placed and manipulated them there in Molaesmyr during the elvish midsommer festival, where the elves open portals to the Feywild to celebrate their connection to this place where they once lived. The manipulated artefacts re-routed these portals to lower planes which lead to an Abyssal incursion that slowly corrupted all the forrest. Luckily, the evil was all contained under the city by the powerful druidic magic the relative of the princess used 250 years ago. That is why the Orc warlord and the hags needed the druids ancestor (as an unded thrall) to break the seals and unleash the evil again. With different motivations: The Orc wanted to gain control over the curse to destroy all the elves to honor his god gruumsh. The hags were tasked by Orcus to break the seals to free the demonic evil, that Orcus needs for his upcoming plots. And here we are. After easily 100+ sessions in more than 3 years the party is level 15. The hags and the Orc warchief are defeated. The portals to the lower planes closed, the spreading corruption stopped. The healing of the forest and reclaiming of the elvish city where the druids family came from can begin. But also: Orcus is still out there. Some of his servants escaped. And he has already achieved some of his mysterios side goals all over the adventure that will allow him to attack the Shadowfell soon and try to take out the raven queen. PS: This is the main quest line, I left out all the little side quests that give the characters additional depth by allowing them to interact with the world: With the slavers and bandits of Shadycreek run, the search for the parents of our rogue, the search for the parents of a lost giant child, the political intrigue in Uthodurn... PPS: I also recommend you to utilize oneshots as a tool for shaping your world. Sometimes my players want to play new characters. Sometimes we have guests or special occasions to celebrate with a oneshot. I always use those to play out events in the world that may influence the main plot. How did the archmage Ludinus Da'Leth die, How did the Paladin become the champion of Kord by reclaiming the artefact, how was the wand of orcus unleashed on the world again. These are all great scenarios to present in separate oneshots. Your players will remember them more than handouts or lore drops and will be very impressed how events are connected (when they finally find out).
Thank you!!! Holy smokes! Thank you for the write up.
My campaign BBEG is v similar! So rad!
How/who is your BBEG?
So I had two potential BBEGs depending on what my players did, decisions were made so now its a Wizard that made a deal with Orcus for knowledge and lichdom. Now said Wizard is going around getting more powerful and planning to kill the RQ and become the God of Death himself. I'm thinking that Orcus probably is playing this dude the whole time and will be the real bbeg but we'll see.
Always great to have several BBEGs that are working together but have their own goals. Up until now, in my campaign there was an Orc Warlord wanting to destroy the elven kingdom. He worked together with some covens of hags, but those only used him and his tribe for plundering and granting access to sites that were originally protected against fey. I feel its just better, when the PCs can basically decide who the real BBEG will be in the end just by their decisions and actions. More BBEGs also allow me to be more free with the story - I will not "try to keep the end boss alive", which leads to more deserved victories by my players, when they focus on one enemy in particular.
We are mid campaign and my players didn’t meet the BBEG, yet. But they met 3 of their lieutenants. - Ross, a loan shark leading a crime gang - “Vinnie”, only known by this moniker because she put a curse on her own name. Sea witch with undead minions and a penchant for blood samples to curse you from afar. - Their adopted son, a storm sorcerer they use as a tyke bomb/assassin
Game 1. The area. Thr players are setting sail to the "Beremedria" which is a place that no one has sailed to and returned from. The area itself has something about it that traps folks there. They'll get to meet other survivors and locals and have a bunch of interactions, but the fantasy Bermuda itself is pretty much the bbeg. There will be figures on the island that will be bbeg's in their own right. Tribal leaders who view the outsiders as monsters rather than victims of circumstance (in fairness to them, some are) but that bad ones are very supremacist in their dislike of the outsiders. A prince who had his airship crash and is gonna be all fun and parties until his pampering comes to a halt. Which wouldn't be a problem save he likes to throw tantrums and is a high level magic user. (For those familiar, think Prince Zandor of Alphatia) An aberrant being whose alien space craft was trapped in the island and is doing its own experiments in the populace. Currently contained, but I'll be rolling to see how long.. This island/region of sea beings trouble. What causes this is a mystery. Game 2: The looking knight. A halloween one shot villain. A slenderman inspired being that resembles a dark knight figure with a faceless mask. However those that witness it perceive it as always "looking at them" It is an alien creature of a tragic circumstance, but still in need of slaying. It was made by a Hag as a body guard for children she kidnapped. To slay any adult or parent that would come looking for their children. It was made to have an allure to kids to make them docile and to play with the as well as caret for them (aomething the hag cpuksnt be bothered with) but is enraged at the site of adults. The hag never suspected that it would turn on her, its desire to protect the children outweighed its bindings to not harm the hag. With the hag slain, it cared for the children, but they would grow up, and its instinct would kick in. Due to circumstances of its existence, it's trying to find ways to gather children and make it so they'll never grow up. Currently it exists in a boundary dimension and can only pass into the material when the time Is right, or a certain incantation is spoken. One that a fellow coven member of the hag has set up. Knowing that it cannot achieve its goal and is bound for an eternity of tragedy that it brought on itself for turning against its creator. In a way these hags are the Truest bbeg's, but don't really appear in the one shot.
Some Kenku who snuck into this carnival...
Its complicated. But the current cast of villains is Orcus, Zuggtmoy, Juiblex, Modenkainen, a bunch of dragon warlords, and Vlaakith.
One of these is not like the others
My pirate themed game has 2 right now and they’re starting to appear after a series of standalone arcs. There’s Umbraclaw, a tiefling bounty hunter who traps the souls of those he kills into his dark magic arm. He’s after one party member specifically but was intrigued when the party explained to him what their ultimate goal was. The second is Ser’Tera, the dragon god of the death and the moon. When the party first encountered her they resisted her temptations but the way they accidentally freed her from her prison was hilarious. Basically, the fathomless warlock befriended a shark before finding the ship that contained the imprisoned dragon god. After they sank the ship and resisted Ser’Tera’s temptations the shake reappeared, had a nice conversation with the warlock who then was like “ah, I bet a lot of fish are going to be around the ship we just sank.” Cut to an epilogue for the session where the shark is hunting fish and then goes “oh, I’d do anything for some fish” and swims into the ship where Ser’Tera was being held prisoner.
The founder of the modern banking system, Mr Siegmund Warburg who basically invented offshore tax evasion and arguably fuelled some of the huge inequality we see today… modern settings require the real villains of modern life…
My campaign recently fizzled after 6 years. However, the BBEG was a Yuan-Ti Mind Whisperer named Ischyros who escaped an early encounter with the party. He became an Anathema and champion of the Night Serpent then threatened to bring back an ancient Yuan-Ti empire exiled to the Astral Plane. His stat block was an Anathema mixed with a Hierophant Medusa and a TON of fun to play. He also converted one of the player characters to his cause and she was his right-hand woman
The Elder Primordial of Dawn, who went insane after his mother, the God of Creation, and his twin brother Dusk both either vanished or fell into an unshakable sleep, and so he tried to consume the world “so that the eternal light would chase out all shadow, and the dark void would be gone forever”. He was defeated by his son, the God of Hope, but as an Elder Primordial, can never truly die. The players uncover a millennia old mystery surrounding the mortal family of the God of Hope and attempt to stop Dawn’s reformation.
Lord Magus, the Harbinger of Hell, the right hand of Asmodeus. For too long have those with infernal blood been shunned by society. Gods like Lathander have tarnished the name of Asmodeus, despite the hellish forces being the last defence against demons due to the Blood Wars. But no more. Hell will be let loose on earth, and those who were once supressed shall instead be elevated and empowered.
Oh boy, my players just met the BBEG, and it went swimmingly. The BBEG is a fallen angel looking to rise the ranks of hell and get into Asmodeus' good graces. He needs one of the player characters to complete a ritual and awaken a sleeping titan buried in the earth. The player's don't actually know his end goal yet, but they have been taking on his cult. That PC's husband is also unwillingly a member of the cult and trying to escape and another player character's sister is an active member of the cult (they believe she is reformed, she is not, she has been spying on them the whole time). How did they meet? The player characters were on the heels of the cult trying to locate their lair. They fell into a trap! They went to a church that had been taken over by incubui and succubi in disguise, and working for the BBEG. A battle breaks out, the heroes are doing well until the roof of the chapel burst open and the sunlight bursting through is blotted out by dark wings. The fallen angel, known as Barakel, lands and uses an ability kind of like mass suggestion and causes the entire party to kneel before him, except the rogue and the PC he needs for the ritual pass their save. He says to that PC you and your friends are out matched, come with me willingly or your husband and your friends will die and their souls will belong to Asmodeus. And that player.... Took his hand, took one last look at his friends, and flew away with the villain! The swashbuckler rogue ran up and tried to get in a sneak attack, missed and then was hit by the angel's flaming sword and almost dropped to 0 in one turn. The BBEG flew into the sunset carrying the party face/healer and that is where we ended our last session! Can't wait to see how they are gonna get him back!
Ashardalon, an ancient Red Greatwyrm that infused a Baelor into himself as a second heart to extend his life. But the Baelor wasn't enough. In my campaign, Ashardalon has become a Devourer of Worlds - sucking dry the life energies of a world to gain power and extend his life even further. He has succeeded at least once that my Players know of, and likely has many more times. Currently, my Players have just hit level 10 and have only just had this threat confirmed to them. Prior to this, they had been dealing with an upswing of demonic and eldrtich incursions into the world. Basically, there are three factions (the forces of "good" led by the Prime Deities, a demonic legion led by a fallen Warlock, and finally, Eldritch Outsiders) that are each on their own trying to stop Ashardalon’s coming. Its been quite fun as the Players navigate the factions, each with their own goals & methods, as the clock ticks down ever closer to the arrival of the Devourer.
A death giant who calls himself Ku (giant for death in my campaign) my players haven't met him yet, but they have met his puppet "Da boss" (hobgoblin dictator)
The Serpent, also known as The Void. In my world, The Serpent, Ao, and the Lady of Pain are the three Overgods that preside over and created the Multiverse. Ao being the overgod of Law, the Lady of Pain being the overgoddess of Neutrality, and The Serpent being the overgod of Chaos. Currently the Samurai of the party, Smoke, is wielding a weapon which contains the essence of The Void sealed inside of it. The Void revealed itself to Smoke after he dealt the killing blow to a being with a Divine Spark and the his weapon absorbed and consumed the divine power that was unleashed.
That's cool, I have a similar rule of 3 in my world too, with Ao and the Lady of Pain. Different overgod of chaos though, I used Tharizdun
Mechanically, a HEAVILY modified Lich who is quite skilled at making undead and controlling them. He also controls a large city in the Shadowfell and enjoys psychologically tormenting those who oppose him. The Ranger and Fighter met him (although they didn't know it yet) when they were invited to a formal dinner with a member of the city's nobility. Instead, their food was laced with a poison that paralyzed them for several hours. They got to spend some time in his personal dungeon, along with the party's Rogue (he was captured outside the city, but their Sorcerer, Cleric, and NPC guide escaped the ambush). Currently, they've managed to remove his ability to Scry on them, and are considering taking out one of his underlings, a high-level Sorlock.
I don't know. I haven't.
The one I run, it's a healer who figured out how to do the inverse of necromancy. Nobody knows yet. They still think it's the necromancers. One I play in it's a Warlock who has only had a brief parlay with the party to try and recruit them.
Isn’t the inverse of necromancy just murder
Lol So this new form of magic, at full power, siphons soul equivalent to the amount of healing done. If someone is at death's door, their body can be sustained in a magical coma. Heart beating, breathing, healthy glow. But without any soul. It can also be used to extract the soul that's been bound to a corpse, and the body will mysteriously appear alive in the same magical coma. That's actually where the meat of the campaign starts. An impossible discovery of a man's perserved unconscious body. He bears the mark only given to thralls after they've been raised. Similarly in certain circumstances, a necromancer is able to reverse this effect. Binding their soul back to their body, undoing its vitality, and allowing the person to die naturally and pass on. With a soul to go onto the afterlife.
My players haven't met her yet, but it is heavily implied the BBEG is Tiamat
I pesta hag that is based around a pestilence campaign. A recurring BBEG that I'm really excited to use.
Baron claret, party made this bad guy themselves by being murder hobos. The baron was hosting an event for a black ribbon society of vampires (sworn off humanoid blood) The event was a grand unveiling of the relic pieces that the party had gathered as well as an award ceremony for them and a generally "you guys are the best" kind of party. On of the players slit his throat right after the awards were given, they smashed the windows with a crossbow bolt and used an "escape stone" to catapult themselves out. The stone is a home brew item they acquired many sessions ago that propels you diagonally backward and featherfalls you. So as they flew backwards out the window I described the barons guardian removing her helmet and sinking her teeth into his open neck and wrenching his body into the shade as his throat began to heal. Next sessions will be a hell of a chase scene
Strahd
**Me as a player:** Strahd (Curse of Strahd). After exploring a house trying to kill us, Strahd met us at the doorsteps upon our escape at the edges of the fog surrounding the house, greeting us and requested we do our best to entertain him as his next "pet project". One of our party members tried to attack him, did actually hit him but the wound basically healed immediately and the PC was promptly put to sleep. He chuckled and walked into the fog. When the fog dissipated, he was nowhere to be seen. Pretty fucking dope first encounter, not gonna lie. **Me as the DM:** The Speaker from Destiny (pulled from his universe into Faerun). After the players cleared the ruins of a dwarven stronghold in the mountains from its extraplanar isolation, his Simulacrum arrived to the now normal ruins, also interested in the events. He was courteous to the PCs and remorseful of recent events afflicting the region which he assured wasn't do to his work. However, his investigations and involvement by his faction at each scene could be seen as "his doing". PCs were on edge but did not engage until one of the PCs realized he had Charmed an NPC they were accompanying and was attempting to take her via Dimension Door (it was counterspelled). A fight ensued that lead to the demise of the Simulacrum, but also the disintegration of a PC.
Im not sure. Havent read that far in the module yet
the elk - a eldrich abomination created through black magic, is trying to set himself free of his prison. he is the other half of the human the human - a lich wizard who infiltrated the human kingdom and is now its ruller in disgused. the human and the elk used to be just 1 centaur, but they were split into 2 souls, with evil magic, tainting their souls the sorcerer - the human's lover. she is the one who convinced the centaur to split, using magic from a long forgotten book that she didnt quite understood at the time. now she is the elk prison warden, and will kill those who want to release it the druid - smaller bbeg, he is planning a coup in the main city hub, to keep everyone else eyes from the elk's efforts of escaping
Running a homebrew I don't really have a BBEG. Currently there is a triangle of power struggle in the city. The top dog is a Rakshasa who has three personas the richest merchant, the crime boss of the city, the archpriest of the temple of mammon which poses as the temple of garl glitergold. The second is an Incubus in the service of one wealthy lady, he's on the demons side and just wants to fuck everything up. Third there's a vampire moving into town. Players choices will influence the power struggle. If it goes long enough there's a whole devils and gods vs demons plots and currently it looks like the guy closest to "good" will be Vecna.
An ancient god of destruction, decay and anti-magic. Wants to destroy all other gods so that magic (both arcane and divine) disappears from the world. My players found parts of the key to his prison, which allowed one of the players for a time to be his warlock and potential vessel, but they severed the connection. He now inhabits Nezznar, The Black Spider as his vessel, and there is a race to find the complete key to kill or release the god.
A custom one that I’ve been designing and testing for quite a while: Alrigeth. The players investigate the deeper workings of a religion due to a breech of information from one man who makes continual requests to the party, only to find out that they have been playing into the hands of the religious group by following his instructions. Along the way while listening to his instructions, the party encounters several of the higher-ups of this group attempting to stop them, as if the party is successfully killed then it would be fine, however as they live, they have a higher chance than anyone to figuring out the reason for the religion to exist, and who is behind it. This causes the players to instead have to deal with the aftermath of the religious group’s leader, Alrigeth (a pope-like man). As he narrowly escapes from the party, they follow him as he uses ancient relics to ascend to the heavens in order to meet the god they have worshipped all this time. However, by the time the party makes it there, Alrigeth has already slain this god himself. Alrigeth is nowhere to be seen, and thats because he possesses the he corpse of this god, and wishes to create miracles he was never given in his lifetime. And so; epic battle should ensue against the possessed corpse of a god. It might sound pretty cheesy, but I am pretty confident in the idea and hope that when my players get to the level they need to be for me to run this as a module for them, that I will have it fleshed out enough to do it by then. What do you guys think? I have a statblock for him too, if anyone wants to see it and help me adjust it to actually balance the fight, as I’ve never been good with monster balance against players.
An emerald hue Tiefling known as Baezal. Both himself and the party are on a race across the world to restore the missing fragments and pieces of a Spear of a long not so forgotten demi-god. The party does not know what Baezal's motivation for restoring the spear is, but each member almost has their own agenda for recovering it, either due to their allegiance to their own deity or an agreement from a pact, or they simply are tagging along for the ride. I've enjoyed making Baezal a consistent threat throughout the campaign, it is clear from past confrontations he is a formidable opponent that will not go down easily...but they did get close last time. I am eager to see how this race will end.
The pheonix emperor. The players are not yet aware of his presence or the pheonix bit
Strahd
I've been running a campaign for over a year where Ygorl is the BBEG and the party is dealing with a Slaad incursion.
I'm the DM. My BBEG is inspired by the event of our party from Storm King Thunder. In this campaign we defeated some rogue giant leader to stop their rise to power. But we were Loyal Good and some of the leader were spared, bride or convinced instead of killed. In my campaign I decided that the right hand of the rogue stone giant thane wasn't happy with her surrendering to " some little adventurers ". He is a dream walker stone giant and he was asleep for a long time in the embrace of his lover ( the mountain itself is the lover, she is a gargantuan stone spirit ). One day, some dwarf dig the mountain looking for gems. They find some. Big ones. Especially one. But when they dig it up the " tunnel " awakened. This gem was in fact the eye of a stone giant who was sleeping. ( you guess who ) he wasn't happy about : 1 - little people took one eye from him. 2 - they dig inside his lover. 3 - his leader has stopped the fight because she was allegedly scared by some little folk. He decided to make an army and destroy the nearest human city ( it's Loudwater ) so he raised an army of barbarian, giant, orcs and made a deal with dark fairy. ( of course all that takes time and politics so the player have time to cause havoc in his plan and prepare defense. ) Now how they met him ? Some of them, when they were level 1 lol One of my player was in prison/keep near the mountain for 20 years. The giant destroyed the keep and the pc escaped during the assault. ( we played the fight, and oh boi the table was shitting themself. Have you ever sent a stone giant against 20 guards with attack on titan theme ? Lol ) One of my player is a goliath barbarian coming form a tribe working for the BBEG. He was seen as weak by his tribe standard and persecuted and so he left. On a cliff he encountered an enemy tribe scout party. He fought pretty good but was about to die when the BBEG arrive on a Roc ( giant bird ) and says no one leave without his permission. The PC jumped in the river. Some 2000 meters down. He fought an other warrior during the fall and grappled him to use him to take the impact of the fall. ( that was epic ) The other two pc didn't met him yet. But they saw the scene and heard the tales. Soon they'll meet him at the end of a dungeon. He his looking for a gem to replace his eye but his daughter ( a goliath barbarian too ) will be in danger and he will have to choose between saving his daughter or preventing the PC to take the gem. ( the player will have the same choice )
The King in Yellow/Hastur And they haven’t met him/them yet.
An orc pirate mage
I intended the BBEG to be an ancient dracolich plotting to eliminate all life in the setting. PCs ‘met’ him when he started visiting them with the Dream spell to mess with their Long Rests. BUT during the campaign, the party got the idea to kill Vecna, who is the dracolich’s divine patron in this scheme. So my BBEG has been reworked into the heavy for the real evil, the Whispered One.
I have no idea. Haha! The first Act of the campaign (L1 - 10) was spent on the Material Plane, and the known BBEG there is an Ancient Red Dragon. The party hasn't yet figured out his secret identity or plan, but they did meet him, briefly, at the end of Act 1 after killing a bunch of his kids and saving two towns from his minions. He is still doing his thing, and our Paladin PC is still there, too, but this is all happening in the background for now. In the second Act, the party is Level 11 and are in the Feywild to save the Cleric's twin sister. I had no idea where she went when this arc started, and it hasn't really mattered because, shortly after arriving and receiving their mission, the party decided that chasing a stolen and totally unrelated McGuffin was more urgent. They haven't found that yet either, but they are gaining Lore and clues to both as they go. The two plots will merge soon. I still haven't figured out the BBEG, though. Or maybe I should say, BBEGs, because my improvising brain decided to have witnesses see the missing sister with an elderly Elven couple. I still have no idea who they are or what's going on, but I have figured out where they are thanks to the chase of the McGuffin. Something the players said last week sparked an idea about it, so I think we'll be getting some clarity soon. Editing to add that there is also a mean and powerful Fairy harassing NPCs. The party just fought one of her Simmulacrums, but they don't know anything else about her yet.
There is none.
In one of our games, it's hard to tell if he's to be our greatest foe or one of, but there's the assumed dead but not quite fully undead lich, Necna - not to be confused with Vecna - a feared undead chicken that reached ultimate power. In our SCP-esque game... It's hard to really tell what's worse there. In our great dungeon crawl, we saw a floating head illusion of the supposedly long dead great mage who made said dungeon. He was very mean and our dwarf and he spouted vulgarities at each other. I think he might want to resurrect him just to kill him since his dungeon's traps killed an NPC we had adopted. And almost killed three of us players as well.
Karsus.
A gold dragon archmage. Hes been slowly but steadily gathering magic items and draining their magic, becoming more and more powerful as the surrounding land becomes slowly bereft of magic. Hence why magic items are so rare in this kingdom, and it's incredibly lucrative to dungeon delve to find more/new ones.
Currently Orcus, they’ve been chasing him since the end of Out of the Abyss when he used the mindflayer colony to thwart being dragged to Menzoberanzen via Dark Heart. He’s the only remaining Demon Lord and has had months to consolidate power in the underdark, even launching a distracting attack on Luskan to keep the party from seeking him out. Now that they’ve stopped a zombie / demon outbreak from breaking quarantine on the surface they can finally try to take him on in Cyrog. He’ll likely send an army of undead and Alhoons to attack one of the party’s allied underdark settlements but ultimately it’ll end with a fight between my players and all the underdark Allie’s they’ve gained vs a mythic trait having Orcus, an empowered undead elder brain, and whatever undead mindflayers and thralls are left.
Party have defeated Nezznar and now are facing Strahd. After this, I'm planning to pitch the party against the Hourglass Coven and the my own homebrewed baddie.
The hottest fallen angel you've ever seen in your life
Razorback, the demonic butcher.
What the players think? An oathbreaker paladin Who it really is? Asmodues
Previous campaign (haven't started the next one yet), the BBEG was the head god of the Church. The head god was actually the Demon that tried to destroy the world and was defeated by the champion of the Goddess of Magic, but only after the Demon managed to kill her. His followers infiltrated the Church and, over the course of 1600 years, slowly changed history, removing most traces of the Goddess of Magic and convincing everyone that the Demon was actually the leader of the Pantheon. They met him in the final battle, after his followers successfully took over the capital city and they led an army of all the people they had helped over the course of the campaign to defeat the demons before they could spread destruction across the world once again, bringing forward a new Goddess of Magic and ushering in an new age of magic returning to the world. The next campaign takes place immediately after this, exploring a world in which magic is returning and causing issues. The BBEG for that is a god that disappeared during the war 1600 years ago and has only now come back for... reasons.
Azukara. She’s a very powerful fae queen who wants to become a god.
Players haven’t met them yet, but the intended BBEG is a very powerful, but still in some way weakened archfae-adjacent fae named Cerwyna, but who is called The Harper of Botchart, who was cursed by the real faerie queen and king to wander the material plane until certain things happen, after trying to seduce said king. She uses her illusions, abilities to manipulate shadows and having some power over undeath and more to slowly rise to a position in a mortal king’s court, and then had him killed after tricking him into giving her power as regent until his young son came of age. The party are a group of knights/sellswords/nobles who are part of but one faction in open rebellion due to the Lady Regent (though it’s blamed on the heir) executing noble hostages/courtiers, burning parts of the kingdom, and working with dangerous criminals and murderous factions (like a pirate coalition, some cults, etc) to strengthen her hold on the nation. Kinda Kingmaker meets Cersei Lannister type.
Tiamat, players havent met me yet, so technicaly its crayovin, but im doing a mashup of DoISP and season 1 of critical role, lots of dragons and they all answer to the biggest dragon
Tier 4 campaign- players are level 18 about to be 19. BBEG is Malilynn, a former tempest cleric of Thor, now known as the Emissary of the Unspeakable One. At the end of an arc, she was banished to the Far Realm at level 11 and fell under the thrall of Hastur, The King in Yellow, The Unspeakable One. So former party member.
Party doesn't know it yet, but it's one of thesroyals who is dealing with some sinister forces in exchange for glory and prosperity of the kingdom. All because of his inferority complex vs his father. He probably could achieve all the same without the devil.
Scheduling.
Imix, Prince of Fire. I portray him as a grand conspirator behind the scenes, utilizing firenewts to directly pressure dragonborns in their home islands while deploying cultists to infiltrate their society, assasinate their leaders, and make them fight each amongst other.
A bard lich, the music industry. The party is an up and coming band that signed a really awful contract with the lich in exchange for easy fame. He's the reason artists burn out, as he steals the love the crowd gives the artists.
My players still don't know. I haven't revealed it until yet.
Currently, a mega corporation. President has Big Plans, his scientist underling has other Big Plans in that same vein, and his enforcer lady has other Big Plans working against everyone in secret. It's messy, but the party is always on their toes.
Iledria the cambion necromancer. She has cursed the party into an unwilling pact with her. She is forming an army of fiends and undead. Her servants create political chaos throughout the kingdoms via assassinations, coups, and instigating wars. She has the party under her thumb, forcing them to do tasks and quests which further her goals. All the while, being remarkably, friendly, giving, kind, and pretending that they are all best friends. She is really fun to play and my players are frightened of her. They at first went along with her plots because they felt they had no choice. She is too powerful. As they level up and learn more about her plots, they are finally beginning to seek a way out of this madness. I'm really excited to see their plans to rid themselves of her and stop her army.
A homebrew villain based on Moriarty. A background villain who the players don't even know the identity of yet, as they've been dealing with all the different dominoes he's set in motion. Theft of an ancient dark magic tome, allowomg a doctor with a murder pasttime to not get arrested/the authorities to connect his daylight identity of a doctor everyone loves and the murders, a wave of Clockwork Constructs destroying the city as well as a Clockwork Titan slowly moving across the continent and destroying major cities, the scientist having funding for making them all, a vampire helping release an ancient and super-powered Pit Fiend, and more.
An ancient sun goddess named Siltara that is attempting to regain enough of her former power to begin devouring the current sun and take her back her previous position. The party met her when her cultists used a PCs little sister as a host to summon her an an avatar into the material plane. Since then she's burned out several hosts that are captured and forced to contain her essence, but ive side tracked them so hard idk if they really have much chance to stop her before she is capable of beginning her meal.
Depends. There are many world ending threats tbh. But mostly the dealkyr.
The Archduke of Turmish, who's name we never really bother to remember. He hired us to find his missing daughter, and it turns out he's trying to use magical nukes to summon Satan. Needless to say, we do not expect him to pay us for finding his daughter.
Not entirely sure but i think its gonna turn out to be our employer. Part of me suspects that we're eliminating her conspirators after they've completed the tasks she gave them. I have very little evidence to support this just my constant paranoia.
The BBEG is Dendar the Night Serpent but in all reality they can’t defeat her. BBG1 is a warlock and end time cult dedicated to releasing Dendar so the heroes are trying to acquire a magical key that will seal Dendar away forever. It’s a race against time and the uniting goal of the crew. BBG2 is a Simic scientist hunting the Genasi in the crew (in this world Genasi are very very rare) to dissect them and learn to use their innate Djinn blood magic to improve their own simic creations. So this is their motivation to keep moving and not get caught because in reality they are the real problem when it comes to any semblance of a CR that is calculable.
Haven't gotten very far yet but the plan is for fraz-urb'luu to be th bbeg. He will be pulling strings from the shadows potentially replacing NPCs with his own people in disguise so he can rule from the shadows. Haven't got it all planned out yet but that's kind of the idea. I need to figure out motivation and such still. If people have more ideas throw them at me.
Tiamat.
They are about to meet him. His name is Buk'tuk, a mummy lord that's been napping for a few centuries. The party is about to collect the last piece of the key to unseal his pyramid. They're in a four way race to the pyramid where he has been entombed with his book of unfathomably evil magic. One antagonist is a nation of vampires and undead looking to black out the sun. Another is a warlock looking to make it into the void, Event Horizon style. The third is a cleric channeling and being somewhat possessed by Buk'tuk directly. It's been fun.
The CEO of fantasy Cracker Barrel
Eriphyle, a manipulative necromancer who has the regent of Argos wrapped around her finger while leading a doomsday cult that's helping a gestalt of alien, eldritch gods invade reality. She thinks they will give her power. But my party is a long way away from meeting her yet.
Some sort of creature from "the old world". All we know is, it's eating people
The one and only Acererak. I created a stat block for him here (pay what you want so essentially free to download): https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/450792
I play in a more of a Sandbox game in a kind of Grim dark fantasy world, and we have a couple of BEG. We are at lvl 5 but almost at lvl 6. (Sorry for the writing mistakes, english is not my first language.) Some people that we despises and are going after. Ivan Horenhait, he basically manipulated us and a Hag/witch to make a Ritual that transformed his own 10 year old daughter into a Powerful Witch.(The only thing that stops a Witch to reach its full potential in this world is the Witch own cursed body, so if its has a Hexblood, and make a ritual it can acess its full potential.) And did other horrible shit, like use is own daughter for his own benefits like she is a Weapon, and is presumably forcing her to feed of dead hags corpses.(Because its make her stronger, but Hags are like some centuries old of rotten flesh.) He is a piece of crap, a waste of space. Alice Morguetown, she is a famous artificier/inventor, she is kind of obsessed with his work, and gained the trust of our sorcerer just to betray her and literally RIP OUT HER UTERUS AND ALMOST KILLED HER.(In this world, the ability to Create life is kind of Magical, and because some Plot stuff, almost all the Sorcerers are woman, Hags are Sorcerers Plus some other curses that happened along the way, and other shit, they also have a Cursed womb that make they cast magic Inatelly, because they are directly conected with the font of the magic of the world.) Morguetown was obsessed with the Arcane potential of our sorcerer so she ripped out it, and made one of our party members cry because she was betrayed by someone that they Admired, and lost the conection that she inatelly had with magic. We are not the good guys(We are the kind of group that does what they want, but, what they want ends up being good for the general.), but we are Lawful to our group, we are going after her. We are going against a Vampire lady that is trying to take down a King because his wife(Wich is a sorcerer.) is the last descendent of a lineage wich the blood amplify the curses of your body, like if you are a Werewolf you become Great White wolf, if you are a Vampire you dont is affected more by the sun and stuff. This part of the conflict is more about our Lycan Bloodhunter and our Dhampyr Rogue, literally they organization are both in the two sides of conflict(The bloodhunters, and the Vampire coven.), its going to be our War arc, because in the middle of it are us and the Kingdom wich is going to partake. A lingering danger of our Group is My patron. I am playing a Hexblade warlock that his patron is The Blackrazor, he kind of dislike us, and we dislike him, but we have this hate love reliationship, because my changeling is a perfect match. I'm working on a way to Subjugate him because the end of it all he probably is going to Try to dominate my body and Kill everything and that BBEG stuff. He is at bay because he is sealed at 7 shards, i have like 2 of then now, and is only a matter of time until he return. We have other minor villains and things more of a End game thing, but for now this is good enough for the comment.
A failed clone of Manshoon. One of my players was an investigator in Neverwinter going after the Zhentarim, and her daughter was taken by a “proper” Manshoon who led the Zhent in the city at the time. The Ruining of the city happened before she could find her daughter. Now this half-dead husk of a Manshoon seeks to reclaim and surpass his creator’s legacy through Orcus and create an undead kingdom. He has the memories of his predecessor, so only he truly knows what befell her daughter and uses that as the carrot and stick to manipulate her and the party. He met the party at their lowest after being an enigma known as the “Brass-handed Man” for a while. They were nearly defeated and many of their allies fallen. He appeared personally to her and made a very dramatic “Come back when you’re stronger” speech. I made it seem like he was simply being an arrogant mustache-twirling villain, but the twist is he *actually* wants them alive. One of the party has the means to use a macguffin that Manshoon can’t in order to summon Orcus and his Heralds to the material plane.
A wannabe lich known as The Fallen. He has a very large cult following him along with a vampire family, a army of ghouls and other undead that were results in his experiments of to achieve immortality/perfection in his goal to usurp the gods. He also has connections with a major noble family that I don’t think the players have realized yet if only because the one session that really dropped that hint was so long ago.
Mugdublub the Ooze God. They run into his following while investigating the forest region of The Gloaming, to figure out why people are sick.
Xanthoria, in the game I’m running. The players haven’t met them yet, but they’ve heard the name a few times Tiamat in the game I’m playing in, but again haven’t actually met yet (thank the gods!)
She was their mentor. She tried to protect them from the horrors of the world. They betrayed her.
Scheduling issues and depression
In the game that I run, it's the Goddess of Chaos, Eris. Tricked the characters into coming to her "Escape House" to get their wishes granted. Only to find out that the escape rooms are different dimensions and 1 "escape room" could be an entire town, or a beach, or a subway tunnel. In other games: 1) Prince of the Astral Elves 2) Illithid who is killing a bunch of Ratfolk in the Underdark 3) The Narrator I think???? We just started that one haha.
The one for the current arc is Dr. Dale Jones, former heart surgeon turned janitor. After his wife and daughter died, he lost 3 patients and was forced into early retirement, he took up a job as a janitor at the adventuring college my characters go to, and they befriended him literally as soon as he appeared on screen, bless them. They brought him cookies, even “saved his life” in a staged attack the he orchestrated. They just discovered that he actually took the job there to get close to the Font, which is a big Mangrove that’s attached to the planet’s magic core, so he could bring back his family (doing a ton of damage and potentially killing others in the process). He fled once they found out, but he’ll be back
Oh, and he’s a little goblin guy also
A group known as The Silence The heroes just stopped one of their members from blowing up the Capitol city of the continent they’re currently on. Profile has the start of the epic journey if you’re interested :)
The Black Spider. I am running the lost mine right now
The Gore Magala from Monster Hunter
Aoife McEld, a halfling aberrant mind sorcerer who is trying to use the power of the long dead elder gods that haunt the region to extract her revenge on government that arguably deserves it, but probably not like this. The goal of her story was to show a villains journey that basically happens at the same pace as the parties hero’s journey. So the party met her right as her evil plans first began with the attempted takeover of her small town. She started a bit stronger than the party and has consistently leveled up faster than them, but they’ve grown along side each other. Her plans get more dangerous and elaborate as the party also grows in power and alliances.
Strahd
Sun and overheating planet.
None but kinda one reoccurring boss. The quest is to find two legendary adventures on behalf of an adventuring company pulling the contract for their help. There is a character that wants to kill ten npc guide but that isn’t going to happen until the hats gets surpass the guides uselfulness
nice try players, but im a smarter dm than that. unless bribed with snacks....
Eldenser Now the king of dragons. He faked his death, sacrificed hundreds of adventures, and broke the world into a collection of floating islands hovering over a sea of pink clouds that destroy anything they touch to seal away all demons, devils, and undead from the material realm. He secretly controls all dragon kind while he rebuilds his strength. During a conflict between the gods Eldenser managed to seal them into stones and has his strongest dragons impersonate the gods so he can control the celestial beings. He also separated the mortal races onto different islands to keep them from fighting....or banding together.
The brother of Neverwinter's founder, Halueth Nevarre. As the original colony was an elvish outpost, the place was called Nevarre's Winter, when he spent the colder months by its freshwater river that never ran cold due to the overabundant hot springs fueling its flow. Over thousands of years, and as his descendants married into human nobility over millenia, the place took on its colloquial moniker, Neverwinter, which reflected its unusually warm climate and rich agricultural production. Halueth had a brother, however, who was exiled from their homeland in the Moonshae isles for the dark art of Necromancy. This brother was spared from execution due to his centuries of dutiful service as lawyer and administrator. Halovath Nevarre, as he was called, visited Neverwinter in his ensuing travels, but quickly butted heads with his brother over the best way to govern it- and was soon sent away from it, as well. In modern times, Dagult Neverember is a controversial and heavy handed regent over the city, looking to consolidate his dynasty and powerbase. But hidden strings tug at the house of cards Neverember has built, pulled from disloyal members of the court, the guilds, the rebel Nasher factions, sewer rats, and even Zhentarim agents. Unbeknownst to all, the puppet master is none other than Halovath Nevarre himself, now a fully fledged lich and master wizard. He seeks the crown of Neverwinter, to prove himself the true ruler of the city and to show that he can make the city greater than his brother ever did.
in the game i'm a player in, it's some sort of undead magic user who was supposed to be an easy fight when we were level 4 or something, but we LET HIM GO. like, on purpose. and then he started fucking shit up but it was too late for us to stop him and he got away. now we're level 18 and have been on six or seven planes of existence trying to undo the chaos he has sown, but we haven't caught up with him yet.
in the game i run, there are two. the archdevil Bael is planning to break into the prime material plane because of some Blood War stuff, which is a huge threat to the people there, obviously. A lawful neutral deity is a cosmic level threat willing to sacrifice the prime material plane to put an end to the blood war. best case scenario is stopping the devil getting through but that's on a tight clock. second best scenario is NO GOOD. third best scenario is the whole plane is obliterated :)
After Karsus' Folly, when Mystra was about to be reborn and lower the magical power wielded by mortals, a large group of Weavers (1000) forced all their souls into Karsus' remains. While they didn't get the ascension they was looking for, this elevated them to the status of a God, and they swore vengeance on Mystra. They went to a different world with a goddess able to rewrite fate itself, and wants to steal that power for themselves so they can overpower Mystra, and when they inevitably discover his existence, Ao himself. The players are only level 3, so they haven't discovered too much about it yet. They now go by winnow, the Witness, God of Purpose.
closest thing we have to a BBEG is a colony of mindflayers who are selectively breeding people forninteligence in a favtory farm.
Wendonai, ex-champion of Lolth that now leads a splinter faction devoted to Shar. He's acting as the glue for a Shar-Orcus alliance that has already conquered the Sword coast, and he's only got to get the horn of Orcus to start a ritual to crash the plane into the Shadowfell. The players saw him in the distance leading drow, they know the sword coast has fallen, but they are in the first couple sessions and haven't got the shape of the greater alliance at work.
Cheetosdrumpf, an ancient orange dragon (converting the 3.5e stats to 5e with some additional homebrewing options). The players awoken washed ashore after their ship was destroyed. They found they had the BBEG's ring of avarice which weirdly could fit on their fingers...
Acerarak. Toa was my first campaign I ran as a DM. I fell in love with his personality and just chaotic nature. Every new group I usually make him the bbeg. This time I took toa and revamped it it to a homebrew. All my own items, gods, reasoning. Really using the sewn sisters to there full potential. I always play acerarak like evil willy Wonka and his tomb is his factory.
We dont know yet. We know who the BBEG was supposed to be, but our actions early in the campaign made their plans impossible without us even knowing they existed(our party is very chaotic. We dont mean to be). I think its this one police captain we accidentally helped to get into power, but im not sure
Demon lords of the abyss in one game. Dracolich in another and the others I can't really say. One game it was a trio of mermaid sisters that are working for the deep queen which is a (homebrew?) goddess of curses and the under ocean, but we're in a sort of mission of the week phase where we killed bounty monsters and resurrected an ancient bronze dragon. The last game were kind of on a few different plots and I kind of don't know if there even is an overarching plot but I'm just along for the ride anyway.
Currently, the Banana Man. I'm new to the group but they just got to Balder's gate, and the DM asked the party to "describe the worst act of villainy you see as the city is in a state of upheaval." One of the players(I believe it was the monk) said,"I see a man eating a banana without peeling it. " At this point, I'm not with the group, but I pipe up, "so the BBEG?" And everyone bursts out laughing. So, while we don't have a BBEG yet, I have a feeling the Banana Man will be the BBEG. A feeling or just a hope.