If you could change THREE THINGS about 4E...

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 6:15 pm

Um... ok. Nevermind you've got mechanics to do it, scads of monsters that can do it, and no requirement that an NPC has to fight the PCs personally to be a villain, fight to the death even if he does do it, but fine. We can all pretend that somehow no one who plays rpgs these days tries to do a recurring villain.

:/

fliprushman · Post by **fliprushman** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 7:19 pm

ROFL!

That's about all I can do about this discussion of Recurring villians.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 8:26 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Minions can be fixed by adding a resist all 10-15 to their stat blocks.

Good thing we're not talking about houserules.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:05 pm

Psychic Robot wrote: Good thing we're not talking about houserules.

Well, I don't really consider it a house rule I guess because I create mostly custom monsters anyway for high level 4E. And given that 4E monsters are made of arbitrarium anyway, assigning them resist all as a property is perfectly legal.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 10:09 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
Psychic Robot wrote: Good thing we're not talking about houserules.
Well, I don't really consider it a house rule I guess because I create mostly custom monsters anyway for high level 4E. And given that 4E monsters are made of arbitrarium anyway, assigning them resist all as a property is perfectly legal.

Obi Wan fallacy. Wait, let me roll a bit ...

Absentminded_Wizard · Thu Oct 09, 2008 10:53 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
Voss wrote:Recurring villains don't ever happen? Thats... weird.
In 3.5, very rarely. It's hard to ever survive a battle in 3.5 to fight another day unless you have some contingent teleport. But I don't really consider that even a recurring villain, that's just more of a taunting villain, because you never fight him for real until the final battle.

So we keep defeating the BBEG's minions, but he always teleports out before we get to fight him, but we finally have the big battle at the end of the move/book/TV season. That's the very definition of a recurring villain in most pop culture.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 11:46 pm

So we keep defeating the BBEG's minions, but he always teleports out before we get to fight him, but we finally have the big battle at the end of the move/book/TV season. T hat's the very definition of a recurring villain in most pop culture.

Most recurring villains don't keep popping out, though.

Either they curbstomp the party and move on, get the MacGuffin they want in the middle of combat and move on, or the party defeats the villain and they stick them in jail.

The problem with the 1st option is that most villains in D&D will kill your ass and the rules and setting supports them killing your ass. The problem with the other two options is that it promotes extensive villain decay. You kicked this guy's ass in the past, why should you be worried about them now? While this is acceptable for the low-level orc barbarian suddenly becoming a Necromancer Berserker, able to command the dead with his huge fury... a 'recurring villain' who tries to stay competitive but still beatable by adding an extra level or so gets old fast.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 1:57 am

fliprushman wrote:ROFL!

That's about all I can do about this discussion of Recurring villians.

I think that's all anyone can do. If you don't, you're taking it far too seriously.

The whole point of being a villain is to reoccur. If a villain doesn't come back it was just a speed bump or a minor enemy in a 30-minute kids cartoon.