Honorable Mention goes to... VENGER! kzread.info/dash/bejne/aJh_2MWOiNWyebQ.html 🙂

@JamiesonHorton

2 жыл бұрын

He was cool. How would you stat him in 5e D&D? Horned Devil, maybe?

@ymeynot0405

2 жыл бұрын

I'm a little disappointed that there is no one from Dragonlance. It had villains like Strad where they were personalities, with flaws. They weren't bigger than life. Even the gods like Takhisis were grounded and did more through people than pure power. Yes, Lord Soth, who could be played in DragonLance or Ravenloft. I can't think of another character in Ravenloft who actually starred in another campaign setting before becoming apart of Ravenloft. Kitiara, and the blue dragon armies. Raistlin Majere, the mage who you are never quite sure who's side he's on. All of them were well rounded personalities to play. You have flaws to exploit and it doesn't take a party of lvl 20 characters to win. I'm just sad now. Well I have to hope that we agree more on the top 10 NPC's to aid your party. ;P (Nice pull with the lord of blades though. I often solo healed through his raid on Dungeon & Dragons online when the lvl cap was 20.)

@Darkwintre

2 жыл бұрын

I would have gone with half dragon Sorceror and reveal Tiamat is his mother explaining her "mothering" him and why she doesn't kill those kids as she finds them a handy way to get through to her son. Who constantly runs away when she pops over for a chat...

@stephenalley5177

2 жыл бұрын

No Asmodeus on the list? Easily my favorite villain I've run in a game. The whole, I am a necessary evil, I'm the one that does the work the gods don't want to get their hands dirty on, idk maybe I just love rp-ing devils.

@IansMentalOmega

2 жыл бұрын

Acererak made the Tomb of Horrors because, as a great immortal once said "Eternity is beyond boring"

I've found that sometimes the most evil villians are the players themselves 🤣

@WorgenGrrl

2 жыл бұрын

Murderhobos

@jamesmichael5

2 жыл бұрын

Sometimes=Everytime🤣🤣

@pitchforksdragon1252

2 жыл бұрын

This is the most accurate and relatable comment ever.

@maohpeach1425

2 жыл бұрын

Yep, i try so hard to be good aligned... Maybe XD

@hallking7441

2 жыл бұрын

It's funny how a few levels does that. Power corrupts...

I would like this vid for 'villains below CR 10' since most campaigns don't go above that level. Yes, some of these villains can work as the big bad behind the curtain, but I'd love to see what mustache twirler you think is best and slightly lower scale for the players?

@thekkidd3d

Жыл бұрын

Great idea for a video @Jorphdan

Asmodeus and Grazzt are also incredible villains. Asmodeus ascension to godhood is such a bizarre cool story, but he's so far up the totem pole and so inscrutable I don't know of any games where you can actually face off against him.

The greatest villain is Robert the Chef, who was tied up in the monk’s closet for several weeks after the party tried to sneak into a party at the local guard barracks and promptly forgot about him until several adventures later. However the monk was also hiding the Book of Vile Darkness in his closet, which resulted in Sul Katesh, Overlord of Dark Magic granting Robert Warlock Magic allowing him to escape, and now Robert leads an evil cult with the goal of getting revenge on his captors.

@ProffessorYellow

10 ай бұрын

I'm surprised Archduchess Zariel wasn't on your list! I enjoyed playing her in "Descent into Avernus." She's an infernal villain... but she believes that she didn't fall into temptation and damnation, but rather, she ROSE to more effectively challenge the unending legions of the Abyss. Great stuff!

@Inevitibility23

2 жыл бұрын

Amen. Zariel > all other dnd villains.

@user-jq9iz3do1o

Жыл бұрын

She is only there because wotc wanted a empowered female devil other than a brat and a bypolar suductress. according to insiders anyways.

I was a player in a campaign where my character was given the Hand of Vecna (involuntarily), corrupted by it and then turned on and killed my party. Which led to a bunch of stuff including the party killing Vecna and installing my character as the "new Vecna". So iconic was that campaign that do this day they are multiple groups in our local group who use my character instead of Vecna.

I was always a fan of Lord Soth and absolutely loved the match up between him and Strahd

I always pronounce Kyuss to rhyme with "eye" and "us", but that's just because that's how the band of the same name pronounced it.

@markcampbell4080

2 жыл бұрын

Same, I always pronounced it Kai-oos. But I like the flavor text. :)

@enricorix

2 жыл бұрын

Me too as the Band's Name, named because of The Worm that Walks.

@josephbenson4413

2 жыл бұрын

I always understood it to be one syllable. A 'K' sound at the beginning and then 'use' pronounced as in, "Of what use is walking worm.". (The 's' is an 's, not a 'z'.) Kewwws

Larloch is an exceptional FR book villain, and Jon Irenicus is an exceptional FR video game villain, neither of which get the tabletop love they deserve. At least we got Jon Irenicus stats in Minsc's book.

@cmleibenguth

Жыл бұрын

Baldur's Gate 2 Shadows of Amn is the best of the series

You forgot to mention Venger from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. He was a D&D villain as well.

@Nasko_Nikolov

17 күн бұрын

He was in the thumbnail, so that's odd.

When this popped up I was in the middle of reading about the Elder Evils, trying to decide who to add to my campaign. (I think I'm going to use Pandorym, I like the idea of the mind getting loose and trying to rejoin the body.) Anyway, I'm pretty excited because I normally DM but starting in late May I'm going to get to play through Strahd because a friend wants to run it.

@Jorphdan

2 жыл бұрын

ooo fun! That'll be fun to play in a Strahd game!

Love that the Lord of Blades could be a Dread Pirate Roberts. Also, I'd love it to just be an AI. Skynet or Durandel in D&D

I love the idea of using Vecnas hand and eye against him, or at least trying to and probably failing. Especially if that failure was part of his plan all along and now you've brought to him exactly what he needed for ascension.

It's interesting that you mention the comparison between the hand and eye of vecna and the One Ring because the only reason Sauron lost was because he couldn't fathom that somebody would not use the ring. He assumed that the ring would be used against him and us when it was put on at Mount Doom and eventually destroyed he was shocked.

Very sad that Lord Soth didn't make the list but was happy that he got an honorable mention.

I find it interesting that at least half of your favorites have a strong affinity or background for necromancy. Kyuss, Orcus, Zuggtmoy, Acererak, Vecna,

The thing with Tiamat that makes her a good villain that you forgot to point out is that she's really the main antagonist of the entire Dragonlance setting and I feel that it goes to show that she's pretty great. Okay, I know technically it's Takhesis and she's really just an aspect of Tiamat but let's be real here, her and Paladin are basically just Tiamat and Bahamut.

My first homebrew campaign revolved around The Second Manshoon War. In essence, every Manshoon gained an inhuman skill in some school of magic and all Manshoons were starting to prepare something big. My players got involved after they broke plans of Manshoon in Waterdeep (a conjurer) and after getting revived (with a proper working clone jar), that clone sent them magical rant that could be summed up in words "Good job guys, now we're all screwed!". It turned out that on a faraway island, in a country built by former Nethereese lower class (the home nation of three of my players), there were two other Manshoons. One (a transmuter) became a shadow puppeteer of that country, while another was a mad hermit (a diviner) slowly becoming a god (a clone aware of being a clone, due to being "defective", decided to be something more than just a clone of a dead guy). They ended up allying with the diviner, as the strings of fate started pulling other Manshoons towards the island for the grand finale of their war.

Currently binge watching loads of your stuff and since the last time I watched this I've dm'ed 2 Eberron games where the lord of blades became an important figure, one as a mystery to solve for a warforged pc and the other as a main villain. The first ended with the players discovering that the lord of blades had been dead for years but the beacon calling them was still active, it was this super sad story beat where the fabled home for warforged doesn't exist and the beacon is leading to them dying in the mist. I gave the player a note after that session of some ideas for what they could do Stop this beacon, it's killing warforged Leave it running, the hope is worth so much to the warforged Or, leave the group, become the lord of blades, make this place as safe as you can. They wanted to stop the beacon. Still running this campaign and so far we've been doing some fun khyber related stuff and slowly this character wants to set up a facility to restore warforged, even dead ones. The lord of blades as a villain, I took this sort of body horror approach, a warforged went a bit crazy from being at the center of the event that caused the war to end. When the warforge reach the lord of blades they become melded into this growing metallic body with oozing fleshy joints, doesn't really have any motivation but became this obstacle that needed to be overcome, they crashed a building on it, it ripped itself in half and inside was this pulsating mass where a warforged was being turned into a human. Then we never came back to it. Sorry for the info dump, just wanted to talk about it tbh 😂

I would add The Mad Mage Halaster Blackcloak to the list. Undermountain has become such an iconic campaign setting. The villain of Undermountain needs to be somewhere on the list.

Venger will always be #1 in my heart

@Jorphdan

2 жыл бұрын

🖤 😂

Larloch was always one of my favorites. I love the part of the lore where he was known to trade artifacts with Szass Tam. It would be cool to create a campaign around the two of them plotting something together and the party having to choose which one they were going after. Since they are on opposite sides of Faerun from each other, you could even run it as two parallel campaigns, with two different groups of adventurers, with one group going after Larloch and one going after Szass Tam. Have the players creating two characters, with one being a part of each group or if you happen to be a DM that ran multiple groups, you could have each group of players going in different directions and maybe even have events from one group that may affect what happens to the other group.

Casually steals the "Manshoon for president of Neverwinter" plot cause thats just pure awesomeness!

@Jorphdan

2 жыл бұрын

A vote for Manshoon is a vote for Manshoons everywhere!

@kc2086

2 жыл бұрын

Manshoonian Candidate, it was right there people...

@jonathancampbell5231

2 жыл бұрын

@@Jorphdan Since they hate each other wouldn't it be "Vote for Manshoon or Manshoon will win!"?

Glaysa....who doesn't like a hot devil that plays all sides ...

Love Kyuss as a Baddie. Imo one of the best in DnD and VERY surprised he hasn't been used yet in one of main adventures. Maybe he will be in a flagship adventure for 5.5....though I suspect it will be the Red Wizards instead to tie into the movie.

What an absolutely great channel! Thank you for all of this detailed content.

When I ran Tomb of Annihilation, I roleplayed Acererak as Borderlands' Handsome Jack. Someone shot him while he was monologing... "You SHOT me, while I was having a CONVERSATION...tsk tsk."

Personal number one fave will always be Jarlaxle for me :)

I would add the Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre, her greed for power and control over Menzoberranzan (and other parts of the realms) is so huge that she can and will do everything to hold the city under her grasp. I really like the idea of having her as villain in a campaign.

The clone spell is supposed to summon your soul to the clone body so you are, in fact, literally the same person. What happened to Manshoon is a freak accident (might have been caused by the Spellplague, which hadn't happened yet but it's effects rippled through time) and it's quite possible that each Manshoon is RIGHT about being the "real" Manshoon and his soul has just been split into multiple pieces or something. If it only made a clone that "thought" it was the real person then it wouldn't be very attractive to powerful spellcasters (plus that would ruin a lot of games), surely?

Glad to see the Lord of Blades on this one. Tons of versatility when building a campaign, and like the best of villains it isn't just about him.... It's about what he represents.

The Black Dice Society does a good job with Strahd and his backstory with Azalin Rex. Just a fun podcast for dread domain D&D.

So, Lolth has a bunch of Xanatos Gambits running around the world? If you're unfamiliar with the Xanatos Gambit, it's a reference to the plans made by David Xanatos from the Disney series Gargoyles. Go check out the description of the Xanatos Gambit on TV Tropes, and also go watch the Disney series Gargoyles to see how his plans operate in execution.

if you havent heard of him, Memnarch is one villain i would like to see redone in a campaign. He is a golem who was driven insane by boredom and ingenuity. he explored the artificial plane he was assigned to long enough to find the pattern in the hexagon tiles, he could basically see over the horizon and the other side of the plane. Memnarch eventually made other golems to try to interact with someone other that blink moths in the sky. eventually they rebelled and made constructs of their own littering the landscape with automatic factories that churn out glitchy automotons. memnarch then brought ensouled creatures to the plane in a hope to break out of the plane to speak to his creator through a planeswalker spark transfer to himself.

Curse of Strahd rant incoming, spoilers obv: I find that Strahd’s backstory is much more relatable when you hear it in a narrative form from Strahd’s perspective (not in that he’s LITERALLY telling you, just that you’re seeing out of his eyes. If he tells you he’s gonna lie about a lot of it). It doesn’t negate the fact that Strahd is essentially a creepy entitled incel (as many people have pointed out), but I think the far better angle to play up with that whole situation is Strahd’s resentment of Sergei rather than his fixation on Tatyana. His love of Tatyana is so one-dimensional, coming from his obsession with his youth that he lost in conquest in his parents’ name. His bitterness toward Sergei, on the other hand, is very multi-faceted and doesn’t just break down to “grr me mad at handsome brother who stole pretty lady” even though YES Sergei being engaged to Tatyana was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In the end, Strahd is an undeniable villain, and no amount of knowing his backstory should change the players’ perception of that. However, without an even somewhat sympathetic narrative to understand how he got to this point, he loses all the mystique and presence he had in the players’ eyes. As a player in CoS, our entire party stopped taking Strahd seriously the MOMENT we found the Tome of Strahd. We assumed prior that Tatyana was actually Strahd’s lover (a-la the common trope used with many Dracula renditions), and that gave some semblance of understanding why he would spend so long attempting to pursue her. But after that it just completely polarized us and we all just saw him as a pathetic creep. We didn’t take his monologues seriously, we cut him off and took the piss out of him nearly every time we saw him until the very end. Don’t get me wrong, he was still an intimidating and imposing threat, but he had been reduced to a 2-bit villain

@tylerdavis6389

2 жыл бұрын

If you can get a hold of it the novel I, Strahd is pretty much all that. You see Strahds life wasted for conquests for the sake of his family and then that family just dote on Sergei because he is still young enough to be the face of the family. Then his descent into pure villainy.

@formerctgovernordannelmall1452

2 жыл бұрын

@@tylerdavis6389 I, Strahd is actually where I came to know and fully understand his backstory, I agree it’s a great read

Lolth enters Throws twigs up in the air Declares victory Refuses to elaborate Leaves

Probably one of my Favorite Villains is Mordakhesh the Shadowsword from Eberron. Mordakhesh is one of the Lords of Dust, an Organization of Fiends working towards the release of their Ancient Fiendish Overlords. Mordakhesh is the Chief Representative of Rak Tulkhesh, the Overlord of Rage, War, and Bloodshed, and you’d think that Mordakhesh is some typical barbaric “Blood for the Blood God” type zealot that you see following most evil war gods in other settings, but Mordakhesh isn’t like that, he’s a propaganda master. He secretly owns 5 different Newspapers in Eberron collectively known as The Five Voices, and they are terrible nationalist tabloid rags that contain the most sensationalized articles and conspiracy theories meant to stir up as much hate and vitriol in the population as possible.

@bluebird3281

2 жыл бұрын

So not unlike Earth

Jorphdan: This seems like such a hard video to do, there seems to be so many honorable mentions for each Campaign setting. How about Iuz from Greyhawk ?, or how about his father Graz'zt ? What about Szass Tam ? or maybe Fzoul Chembryl ? or maybe Bane...the list seems large to say the least.

I want to see a video on Lord Soth. When I first got into D&D he was the villain my friends loved and my only exposure to him was the first Dragonlance trilogy. Back then in the mid90s there were no wikis so I was limited in what I learned. I found a video that I had to stop watching because the guy was talking about a past romance and I just really wished for a Jorphdan quality Lord Soth video.

Hope you do a video on the best 10 Heroes in D&D, personally one of my favorites is still Eilistraee🙂

Great video, if anyone wants advice on how to do a Lolth adventure, look up Xanatos gambit on tvtropes. It is exactly what Jorphdan was describing, and has a list of media that used it.

Lord Soth

Great list but the star of the video was that good boy in the background taking a nap!

War, duke. I know he’s not exactly on the level of these are the characters. But he’s great to throw in with low level characters. And someone that can pop up at any time in any adventure to throw a little spice into it

Wonderful video as always, although I'm surprised you didn't say that Lolth had spun a web of intrigue, or something similar. Also, my headcanon for how Vecna entered Sigil is that the Lady of Pain wasn't paying attention to that portal from Ravenloft. I mean, no one escapes Ravenloft, and it doesn't have any deities anyway, so she just became inattentive over the many, many years.

Great choices!

Lord of Blades = Dread Pirate Roberts, excellent idea. Strike him down and he rises again. A secret Warforge factory that makes another Lord whenever the active one is destroyed.

@bluebird3281

2 жыл бұрын

Ultron?

For me, Asmodeus and Rajaat need to be on that list somewhere.

@TrippyTheShroom

Жыл бұрын

Rajaat is often forgotten but easily up in the top 10.

I really enjoyed this! Great food for rounding out my homebrew..... although I DID hope Venger would have made the list.

@civilwildman

2 жыл бұрын

Same. Why have him in the thumbnail if he's not on the list? On a side note, I met his voice actor, Peter Cullen. Got him to sign an animation cell of Optimus Prime I got from a Transformers DVD set.

*Light Spoilers for some of the newer Resident Evil games* Zuggutmoy would be a great antagonist for a Resident Evil themed adventure. With the fungus being the cause of a lot of zombification in later games, you can have a village ruled by Mother Miranda, an archdruid who worships Zuggutmoy, and her 4 thrawls.

Lord Soth and Kitiara are fun villains, I ran a Dragonlance campaign a long time ago and had a blast with them.

I gotta put Zariel as my number one. No contest. She's sympathetic, bitter, a hero in her own mind, an amazing leader, one of the best fighters in the universe, she's furious, intelligent, and brutal. Acererak is D&D's version of the Riddler, Vecna and Orcus are both kind of neat but I find them a bit redundant. Strahd is fine, but way overhyped. He's just a competent bad guy. But Zariel. Zariel is d&d's Darth Vader. Brilliant, ruthless, and surprisingly human underneath it all. Go Zariel. Special mention to Larloch. Love that guy.

Venger gets redeemed in the fan made finale to the cartoon. It's on YT, I think it's called Requiem.

Nice list I don’t use too many known villains in my games but I do know them.

Really glad Manshoon made the cut! My party and I went from Dragon Heist to Dungeon of the Mad Mage and I sequed him into becoming the main overarching villain. We're about 75% through the campaign and he just recently took over Waterdeep by force. On the surface it seems like he's making it into a magocracy but in reality he's gathering an army of wizards to assault Halaster to take over Undermountain with my players caught in the middle starting a rebellion in the city and delving deep into Undermountain to find an artifact to restore Laeral Silverhand. :D

My party did use the hand and eye of vecna to attack vecna. It was amazing

My party totally put the hand of vecna on and weilded the sword of Kas. The left Vecna in Sigil tho!

I ran a 3 shot against Lolth. The party had an informant who got them access to a ritual where a Priestess was going through a portal to the Demonweb Pits and meet Lolth personally and receive her blessing. I made deception within deception: The informant was compromised, and the invitation actually was a trap by the Priestess. The Priestess' court was present to celebrate her return, but when the party killed the nobility it was actually the sacrifice to re-open the portal so the Priestess could return from the Demonweb Pits, with the Priestess setting them up to die. Lolth really wanted one of the PC's dead, so she told Priestess she could earn her blessing by luring the Party to the Demonweb Pits, but Lolth knew the Priestess was not loyal enough and set her up to be killed by the Party. When the Party fought Lolth, it was a 2 phase fight, where the first phase was the informant transformed into an avatar of Lolth, with the Party killing their own friend. And to top it all off, Lolth had a back-up plan to return, and used this time to fake her death and escape an invasion from another demon.

Daurgothoth was my fave, Highest CR, Chosen of mystra, Dracolich, and had a save or die spell he made himself that if you save you have a 1/3 of a chance of death. He also had a raise dead breath weapon

Dungeons & DRAGONS. Number 1 is Tiamat. Always. It's right there, in the title.

@Jorphdan

2 жыл бұрын

😅😅😅

boy, was i gonna be so bummed if vecna wasnt #1 lol. i’m running a custom spelljammer campaign setting rn and my party are basically the villains of the campaign (party’s leader/spelljammer is a lich sorlock whose patron is an ancient black dragon native to toril and their reason for cruising the stars is to find lost pages of iggwylv’s demonomicon that will help conduct a ritual to transform said patron into an absurdly powerful dracolich), but the overarching bbeg is obviously vecna, and im so excited for my players to learn more about him and realize that maybe there are people worse than them out there lol.

My list: 1.) Acererak / Gary Gygax's in-game avatar 2.) Strahd 3.) Manshoon 4.) Szas Tam 5.) Vecna 6.) Lolth 7.) Irenicus 8.) Serevok 9.) Dark Queen of Krynn 10.) Beholders in general, but if you need a specific one --- the crazy crime Lord of Waterdeep

So much to think about with all of these villains...

I actually have the Lolth chaos machine game figured out, but my current party is a hack and slash murder hobo group, and they would NEVER come to the realization that the goddess wins no matter what, without some sort of deus ex machina explanation from NPC. I’m not saying that my players are not good, they are just playing this game for a very specific, cathartic reason.

I love Mask as a great way of getting players out of the Sword Coast. His followers are scary enough as is, and a shadowy god doing big moves can be fun

Not only did I name one party member’s father “Japhdan Baker,” but he’s the last Captain of The Spelljammer, and he and his Cannith wife defeated the Lord of Blades in Eberron’s Final War. Now the Lord of Blades has been reincarnated as that player character’s split personality. The player swaps back and forth between personalities smoothly, but left the mystery behind them blank. And they went a bit mad reading about this in their father’s ancient datapad, hundreds and hundreds of years after Japhdan entrusted his daughter/Lord of Blades to the Astral Gith for safekeeping. As an Artificer who now knows the secrets of the warforged, the South Wind might split her personalities into two bodies. But the Lord of Blades is actually the Good personality right now, while the Cannith/Baker heir is Chaotic Evil due to backstory events. Fun dynamic! It ties in well with some of the other party member backstories, though they haven’t puzzled it all out yet. I’ve run the war against the Lord of Blades in a oneshot where players are summoned by Horns of Valhalla. Was a blast!

You have Venger in the Thumbnail yet you don't mention him, curious. Also a favorite villain of mine that was sadly short lived in his run was Yamun Khahan, aka the Forgotten Realms very own Genghis Khan. The man united all the tribes of the Plain of Horses, conquered many neighboring kingdoms, conquered Shou Lung, the setting's version of China, then almost ran a stampede through Faerun had it not been for a massive alliance forged by King Azoun IV. My man Yamun Khahan gets slept on.

If you ever take a pitstop in Birthright, I'd love to hear about the Gorgon ;)

The thing about Orcus that intrigues me the most is that he has a CHA of 25 (compared to 20 for INT and WIS), which not only implies that he's intelligent, but that he's rather captivating. And yeah, sure, going the "scary and intimidating" route for high Charisma is all well and good, but what about an Orcus who is really good at convincing you that he is right? He has some compelling reasons behind what he does, even if they become less compelling when you think about them for more than a moment... But an Orcus who not only has a purpose, is good at that purpose, but who is able to get people to believe that his goals are actually really what they wanted all along... I'm just saying that playing Orcus as a BBEG where the DM actually gets the players on board with Orcus's plans for part of the game (without them just being evil characters outright) and it's a moment of clarity about what they are doing that causes them to realize they've been on the wrong side of things and then face Orcus (or more likely his cult's leader)....that's interesting.

If I was DMing a Vecna encounter where a player cut off their hand to use the Hand against Vecna id probably have Vecna outreach his stump and from the Hand the player now has a 5th lvl Fireball springs forward aimed at the party. Essentially Vecna has control over the players hand. The Eye would be a similar situation but probably worse as its closer to the brain and would likely be more of a charm effect without a saving throw.

My go-to villains are always the Red Wizards. From there i like to add i little bit of Queen of Chaos, a teespoon of the Twisted Rune and finally, a dash of zhentarim

@failureiscoolrepeatyourmistake

2 жыл бұрын

what are the red wizards?

I am stealing Manshoon for president.

My current 5e campaign has featured Tiamat, and Manshoon clones. It will feature Zuggtmoy.

Honorable mention to Lord Soth (thanks), Raistlin and/or Szass Tam?

I’d probably put Szass Tam on the list over Acererak. Acererak is cool but Szass Tam is the leader of Thay. If I was going to run him as a villain I’d probably stick with the older 3rd edition lore where Thay is still run by the Red Wizards and Szass Tam is the most powerful Zulkir who is secretly a Lich running the whole show. The 5e lore where Thay is taken over entirely by undead and the Red Wizards are just traveling magical salesmen is a little lame.

@kevinbaird6705

2 жыл бұрын

With Szass Tam you can also lean into all those Dr. Doom / leader of a rogue state tropes, as well as exploring morally gray alliances of convenience. Thay is an industrial powerhouse of what Eberron calls "wide magic", and the parallels to petrodictators or the west allying with anti-communist apartheid South Africa during the Cold War in the cause of "freedom" can inspire similar "hold your nose and allow a Thayian embassy" decisions by other political leaders.

I use Zuggtmoy, from the t1-4 toee modules. She still seeks revenge on the players from the abyss

Big Zuggtmoy fan. I worked her into the backstory of my favorite character ever.

What's interesting about the Lord of Blades, in D&D Online (the MMO based off of 3.5e), if you're a Warforged Favored Soul, Paladin, or Cleric, then you can pick the Lord of Blades as your deity. They even made the Bladeforged, an Iconic Class that's a Paladin of the Lord of Blades. I don't think I've ever seen anyone else do this with the Lord of Blades. I remember sitting down for my first Eberron D&D tabletop campaign and being confused when the DM told me I couldn't pick the Lord of Blades as my deity because the Lord of Blades isn't a god.

I like your friend behind you! 😊

Lolth is the only villain from official D&D products that I have adapted for my campaign world. The rest tend to be just bland unimaginative stereotypes (need a standard demon? Orcus, standard Dracula? Strahd, standard Smaug? Tiamat, standard Thulsa-Doom? Vecna)

Kyuss (Kuh eye - us) Hard "K", two syllables, syllable break between eye and us. Great villain and an even better band. Which took their name from the old D&D module.

@BockwinkleB

2 жыл бұрын

Actually they were "Sons of Kyuss" from FF, but had to change the name to avoid trademark. There actually was no Kyuss yet, so they were able to just shorten their name to Kyuss.

My favorite character I currently run, is a Tiamat zealot….he is looking for the masks to raise her. I am definitely looking forward to my PC becoming a proper villain.

"Somehow... Acererak got us in the Tomb of Horrors"

My favourites are Chardansearavitriol/Ebondeath, Dispater and the Raven Queen.

Asmodeus is easily the number one villain in the entire game. He rules an entire plane, has the Blood War completely in his hands, and plays the role of being exponentially weaker than he is perfectly. He's number one. When I finally get around to DMing a home campaign, I want to have him be the big bad.

You should do a part 2

That the adventure was not called "The Manshoonian Candidate" is a crime.

Graz'zt. Supremely powerful. Punishingly brilliant. Utterly wicked. And more charming than any being has a right to be. Has his own sin city in the Abyss you can visit. And hangs out with Tasha, his on again off again lover/frenemy.

Late to the party here, but probably should have called it "best campaign final boss villains", as there's no way to work almost all of these into anything but the final L20 showdown. Iggwilv (before WotC decided to force the Tasha personality on her full-time) has always been fantastic as a super-powerful villainous being who the party may need to seek help from rather than actually face directly, like in the Savage Tide adventure path in 2006-2007 issues of Dungeon Magazine. Of course, most importantly Venger is statted out in the 3.5e "Animated Series Handbook" (Half-fiend Human Sorcerer 13/Archmage 5). They totally should do this for 5e; unfortunately all of us who remember that show are in our 50s now...

The greatest villains are the friends we make along the way.

I really love Orcus, Strahd and Lolth too. But I think there are some great villains you missed. Grazt. Glasya. Pale Night. Xanathar. Tasha. Raven Queen. Oberon and Titania. Asmodeus. And of course, any adult or older dragon.

I like the Lord of Blades as a title. Very old school kinda style. Surprised Tharizdun didn't make the list.

I a campaign, I had an antagonist for a while who was a cultist of orcus and I played him as the ultimate nihilist: living is useless, as souls and the material plane are used as pawns by the cruel gods in their cosmic war. The gods don't care about you, they care about their army, about wining and destroying the balance. Undeath is the way out: if everything becomes undead, the gods won't have any pull on the souls, no one else to fight their cosmic war and the inhabitant of the material plane will finally be at peace forever.

I remember the teeth of Vechna

Orcas is just the demonic version of the American dream. He started out as a lowly evil wizard and then rose up the ranks (by dying and killing) to then be the sigma male on top

Fungi are like super helpful, there should be a good enemy of Zuggutmoi like maybe Toad from the Mario games 😀

Lord Soth has a marvelous story, but as a villain "currently" he is unfortunately just a super badass deathknight.

I like the title. Because everyone has their own apinan. One question have you ever tried to make your own villain?

Also, if you consider Zuggytmoy as the Demon Queen of things like rot and corruption you have a LOT of story hooks. Consider what mold and mildew can do to an environment, and extending that fungal infections, decay, entropy, etc, you have a greater repertoire of potential tales you can have her in. You can tell environmental, political, social, or magical tales all around corruption, and have Zuggytmoy at its core. For example, I have a major villain in my world of Thöll called The Blight Queen. That villain is tied to Zuggytmoy. Since I have players who watch your videos, that's as far as I can go with that. ;)