Summary
Being a Dungeon Master is not easy. You have to create many places and people for your players to interact with, a basic premise for them to follow while also adapting its consequences for their decisions, and balancing encounters, among many other things. One of these many things is to create a despicable person your players will want to defeat.
While there are many ways to make your villain powerful and memorable inDungeons & Dragons,you also have to ensure the players are adequately motivated to fight them, meaning their first encounter with the baddy can be tricky to prepare or improvise. How can you introduce your players to the person who’ll make their lives miserable?
10Create A Friendly Encounter
From A ‘Nobody’ To An Ally
If you want to have more interaction possibilities for your villain or maybe do a fun plot twist later, you can always have the villain introduced as a friendly face,and there are many ways to do that, from someone who hangs out at the tavern to the quest giver who’s manipulating the group, or even someone who fights alongside the party.
Regardless of how exactly this introduction will be, the betrayal later on can hit the party very hard. Or, if the villain isn’t that bad, their relationship with the group can even end in a redemption arc.
You can also have a genuine ally who becomes evil just to make things more complicated. It can be from a genuine clash of motivations between them and the party or something like a curse, such as vampirism, that forces the ally to fight the party now.
9Cause Utter Destruction
Destroy Everything
If your goal is to make someone truly terrible, then mass murder is an efficient plot device. Whether that’s a place relevant to the players or just a new location they’re heading toward, seeing the whole place destroyed is a tremendous show of power.
It also creates a dreadful situation where the party tries to diminish the damage as much as possible or just do their best not to die during the villain’s attack.
8Kill A Beloved NPC
Hit Where It Hurts
Throughout the adventure, your party will eventually run into an NPC they’ll enjoy, thus becoming friends. That relationship may even become a high point of the adventure. Therefore, you’re able to make them hate your villain by killing this friendship.
This is a simple way to both introduce the villain and immediately make the situation between them and the party personal. Plus, if this NPC ally is powerful, showing that your baddy can kill them is a nice way to show how dangerous they are.
7Show The Consequences Of The Baddy’s Actions
Like The Ones Above, But Less Chaotic
Whether you’re using one of the ideas above or something else, the players don’t necessarily need to see the villain causing chaos. Instead, the villain will be introduced through their reputation, and the players will see what happens to those who oppose the baddy.
This is also useful for more manipulative villains who won’t go on massive killing sprees without a good reason. For instance, the party can talk to NPCs who were badly affected by the situation but are all still alive.
6Create A Mystery That Leads To Them
Perfect For An Investigation Plot
This is also similar to the previous idea, but instead of making the person responsible for all atrocities known right away, you’re able to use a persona or something and leave clues as towho killed the beloved NPC,destroyed the village, or whatever else that happened.
Creating a mystery villain - or even showing them, but in a way, the players can’t see who they are right away - is perfect for making the party nervous, as any NPC can be the villain in disguise.
5Beat Them Up
Just Don’t Kill Them
You know, most people don’t like getting their butts kicked. So, a good way to introduce your villain in D&D is through its main mechanic: combat. Get in there, beat them, and leave.
If the baddy is way too strong for them, that’s even better since they’ll feel helpless and get angrier at the villain. You just need to make sure the villain won’t kill them right then and there: Putting the party in an unwinnable encounter and killing them is a game-killer.
4Use A Minor Villain As Lackey
Raise The Stakes
Whether you’ve used the tactics here or something else, let’s say you already have a villain perfectly introduced. The party is ready to defeat them, but you don’t want the story to end. Thus, this villain can be the gateway to introduce their boss, an even worse villain.
You can have this new villain be the one truly responsible for everything that has happened in your story so far; they can fight and defeat the party, or they can kill the lackey villain for failure, among other things. In other words, now that the players are capable of fighting Darth Vader, you show them the Emperor.
3Create A Scenario They Can’t Fight
Great For Political Dramas
A perfect way to make more complicated stories is to introduce the villain in a situation where no one can fight. The party’s intentions and opinions towards the baddy and vice versa are clear as day, but they just can’t fight right now due to plot reasons.
It can go from a more political story, where their fight can lead to potential wars against nations, or they can be talking from afar through magic, so the villain and the party literally can’t fight at the moment.
2Get The Baddy Involved In Someone’s Backstory
Raise The Stakes, Part Two
An important thing for every DM is to use their players' backstories in the adventure. So, if you are doing that anyway, why not also use it to introduce the villain? The place they just attacked can be someone’s hometown, for instance.
This is also a fun way to re-introduce anantagonist figure from the player’s backstory,making things even more personal. This will likely put the highlight on a particular player, but still. Or you’re able to make a baddy who’s responsible for all the players' misfortunes in their backstories - just make sure that won’t feel forced.
1Make Them Helpless
The Only Moment Taking Agency Can Benefit A Game
You’re probably aware that a DM should never take players' agency, and that is true. However, there’s a weird paradox here because a powerful villain should at least try to take the heroes' agency.
Take the ‘Kill a Beloved NPC’ example. If the villain can do that in front of the heroes while they can’t do anything to stop it, it’ll make things a lot more dramatic. Taking their agency in these moments can be fun.
However, that doesn’t mean you should just start narrating and let them do nothing. If they have any weird ideas, they can try a desperate rescue attempt. It’ll either be a memorable rescue mission or a memorable attempt that failed and resulted in the NPC’s death. Either way, memorable.
As we said, you’re not taking the players' agency; the villain is trying to take the heroes' agency - there’s a line there.
