We are the Best D&D Monsters

When you think of Dungeons and Dragons arch-nemeses and monsters you probably think of Raistlin Majere, Tiamat, or the numerous enemies of Drizzt Do’Urden. Maybe you think of a few you’ve played against in your own campaigns. Big bad evil guys (BBEG) come in many forms. This is my take on them.

What if I told you the best monsters in D&D are to be found in the player characters?

Your party is likely responsible for the most destruction and most deaths in any given campaign. If you are a DM it can grate to have built this incredible world, a tight storyline, and then have your players systematically destroy it by killing off the major party members.

It can be exhausting trying to keep up with them. You also have to build a compelling enough evil that it overcomes the destructive wake of your players.

In my experience as a DM, over thousands of hours of gaming, I’ve found the best enemies are the ones that you introduce with subtlety and guile. You don’t necessarily dangle the enemy in front of them by offering a reward of gold. Instead, you take them to a town and introduce them to a few NPCs. Give them options, let them see a dwarf smith who sneezes when near elves. Have them talk to the local farmer and have his two young children playing with a wooden hoop nearby. Introduce them to Glenda the tavern wench who’s raising a family of six on tips. Have them meet Kenneth Maldona, the local gleeman who rhymes every sentence. Then have these NPCs brutally murdered or kidnapped by your BBEG. Yup, read that again… build a sense of community and then snatch it away. Trample on it. Wreck it. Make the players angry at the actions of the BBEG.

When you introduce and arch-nemesis to your party, you get a chance to create a multi-story arc. This can change the entire feeling of the campaign, from an episodic, adventure-driven campaign to a story arc that pulls at the heartstrings and sets your players imaginations on fire(sometimes your players on fire.)

To create the best BBEG, you must have a few elements which are obvious.

1. They must be strong. Physically, magically, militarily, they must represent a clear and present danger to the party. You cannot allow them to be smote easily.
2. They must be evil. Have the evil guy act like an evil guy should. Burn homes, loot villages, ruin the NPCs lives. Destroy the environment, rob people, do what evil does best and sow fear and chaos. Okay, this isn’t strictly speaking true, if you are running an evil campaign the BBEG might be the good king. Most of us run campaigns with good characters or neutral characters.
3. The must be compelling. The best BBEGs are not one-dimensional monsters like Theseus’s Minotaur or a single Medusa. They are not a nameless hungry beast. They are the guy who created the nameless hungry beast, or the one that feeds people to the Minotaur. They have reasons for living and doing what they are doing.

If you follow these three rules, you end up with bad guys like these: Desmond Mox, Risler Hildenberg, Cant.

1. Desmond Mox is a consummate experimenter. He hungers after the Empire and the throne. He’s powerful nobility with a long lineage. Yet, he’s tired of chafing under imperial rule. He wants to create and doesn’t mind the ethics of taking living subjects and altering them against their will. He is driven to seek new knowledge at the cost of anything and seeks power to allow him to do this unimpeded.
2. Risler Hildenberg is a lich. One of those wizards who creates a way to live forever at the cost of his immortal soul. He sacrifices those around him to sate the pain he feels at being apart. He has sold himself to the pursuit of immortality at any cost and the cost has been great. His henchman kill, torture and maim the innocents and revival in it. It is his design to bring whole nations under his control through campaigns of terror.
3. Cant is the chaotic, evil god of death. His is an undead army and his thinking and motivations are literally out of this world. He seeks to complete his dominion by slaying all living creatures. As he kills, as his forces advance, he recruits through necromancy. He works with hundreds of evil wizards, power-hungry nobles, and psychopaths. The world he seeks is dead.