Sup /tg/, let's talk bad guys. Who are your favorite villains to use in your games?For low level, I like kobolds. Annoying little bastards who the whole party loves to hate. At mid levels it becomes yuan-ti, because their genius intellect and psionics make them great foes. Finally it's fiends, especially demons, for high levels. They have a huge amount of abilities that make them really fun to run! Also they have a connection to yuan-ti for thematic overlap.What about you, anon?
>>98348488Based snake appreciator. 5e did them damn dirty.
>>98348488Ninjas, don't care what the setting is I always find some way to shoehorn them in as bad guys.
>levelsyikes!
>>98348634Extremely good taste. Ninjas are just plain cool.
>>98348488What game?
>>98348757...mine? I typically play 3.5, and am currently running a campaign in it. What exactly are you asking?
In Dark Heresy, Slaneeshi enemies offer the most variety and allow for some disturbing shit to be brought to bear that aren't in books. Means faggot players can't read stateblocks.In D&D, I like using orcs and gnolls, along with pets of various sorts. It scales well, and offers variety and tactical flexibility for all manner of presentation.In Star Wars, I have used repurposed droid army remains because they come in batches, do not bring in a bunch of needless bloodshed, and allow the players to get funky when need be.>what do you mean you are all throwing thermal detonators?
>>98348634>>98348801A religious faction with a bone to pick with the pcs is basically a campaign in itself, and is criminally underutilized.
I like having several to pick from that operate against each other between sessions. If the players work for or against one, that changes the world state. Yuan-ti are fun, but I've not seen them used as often as core threats in a campaign. More's the pity, since they are described as being equivalent to the greatest of Drow nations, beholders and mind flayers in their evil, capability and depravity.Truth be told, I am tired of mind flayers. Those bastards seem to pop up everywhere and I think that their mystique has been worn down and dulled with excessive use. I'd prefer to throw some Kuo-Toa or Sahuagin into the mix for lovecraft-adjacent theming, or just throw in something twisted like a Worm that Walks or a Starspawn if I'm going for that weird theming.For higher levels, I like the bad guys to expand to entire political or administrative systems. A low level bad guy you can kill, but a general or a faction leader has insurance against accidental death and has a whole network of influence to work against. Dragons working through ruler-proxies, undead kings who have been running the "good guy" nations for centuries, or just a dickhead king who decides that the players are too influential and marks them enemies of the state.
>>98348488You already posted them. Serpent men are the best antagonist out there.The perfect, pulpy contrast between their ancient grandeur and their current, degenerate state, the fact you can include throwbacks who are as cruel and decadent as you like, as well as hordes of abominations.The Shadow Kingdom is top end shit.
>>98349872Serpent Kingdoms (the 3.5 faerun splat) is mineable for pretty much any setting
I love evil fantasy snake women who use guile, assassination and manipulation to control retarded men from the shadows.
>>98349872I'm on team snakemen too. Theyre awesome and such great bad guys that i just cant get away from them. Probably due to howard influence.
>>98348488I never use an uniform faction. As such, I like cults of evil creatures, especially the lawful evil kind. Which may or may not include snakes. You get humanoids of different types (casters, soldiers), brutish beasts (summons?), undead warriors, constructs in a cohesive whole.And you can be sure the encounters are not all fights to the death. Prevent the sacrifices (more enemies, but focused on civilians), disrupt the ritual, save as many people as you can before reinforcements arrive, and so on, and so forth...So much better than "kill all the orcs in the fort".
>>98348801The game you are talking about.
>>98348488I will generally work in a Chaotic Evil creature type that is essentially an embodiment of pure spiritual hunger, and the presence of that creature type degrades and can eventually erase the very existence of a given area.Left unchecked, they would eventually overwhelm and destroy all of existence itself.Personally, I think they're neat. From a gameplay perspective, it's nice to have a faction that sucks so bad that literally every other faction would rather team up than lose ground to it. I also find in games with a 3x3 alignment grid it gives Lawful Evil a reason to exist: misery is a fantastic tool for creating new soldiers for the Blood War.
>>98351459Based as fuck
>>98348488In the Shadow of the Demon Lord campaign I've been running, the main enemies have mostly been orcs in the beginning and faeries since the party started in Low Country. My two most memorable fights were a massive murderslog of 20 orcs in a mansion where I got to experiment with giving orcs thematic path combinations and a bossfight consisting of a level 8 Cavalier riding a Unicorn. That one was terrifying and damn near killed the party if they weren't careful. I also used faerie adjacent stuff like animals and animated plants and trees. Pic related got a good laugh out of everyone
>>98348488Snake people are one of main races in my settings, aren't evil, just weird and obsessive. They like uniqueness, are generally chaotic. All the mad science magic bioengineering they practice led to huge variety of reptile-adjutant variants of their race appearing over centuries. Some of which cause a lot of trouble for inhabitants of the world. Most recent one is straight up resurrections of dinosaurs, which now plague a part of the continent.Despite their love for experiments, they almost never conduct them on other races, unless asked directly. Why waste time on people who get mad over little gene modification, and are so far from excellent scaly forms anyway? Too much hustle, not worth it. Snakes prefer change over stagnation or security, aren't bothered much by hardships or disasters. That can be one of their main weaknesses however, race has 'fallen' many times, because of their dismissive attitude towards threats.This weirdness, aloofness, instability makes other cultures be weary of snakes, yet the knowledge exchange and techno trade are still thriving. Few want to live in snake cities, but many love to welcome a snake scholar or explorer in their own town.
