Welcome to Guidance, Private Sanctuary’s source for tips and techniques for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, written by Everyman Gamer Alexander Augunas. Today, we’re going to be talking about villain types.

One of my most-viewed articles ever was Flavors of Villainy, which talked a bit about antagonist presence and highlighted some extremes that often befall players and GMs. Today I’m going to do a follow up on villain presence, but instead of talking about gameplay presence, I’m going to talk about world presence.

So, what’s the difference? Well, knowing about gameplay presence is a bit more important than world presence in my opinion, because ultimately gameplay drives how players interact with the world while the world info is the backdrop for your players to tell their stories in. As a result, the line between “effective” and “ineffective” here is less stark, and as a result you can fiddle around with this stuff a lot more.

When talking about world presence, there are two big questions that one needs to ask: how visible is the villain and is he a frontline villain or a rear villain?

Visibility

In regards to a villain’s actions, visibility is how well-known the villain is for his crimes. A villain with high visibility is one that everyone knows about. Anyone affected by the villain’s villainy knows who to blame. In contrast, a villain with low visibility is one that most don’t know about. He may have a right-hand man that acts as his public face or he simply might see no reason to make his actions public at all, instead allowing others to pick their own scapegoats for his crimes.

Frontline vs. Rear

In military confrontations, a “frontline” unit is one that is closest to combat while a “rear” unit is furthest away from combat. In regards to villainy, a frontline villain is one that is proactive, who does things and makes sure that everyone can see him. A rear villain, on the other hand, typically allows others to fight his battles for him. He sits in the back and orders things to happen. For example, a ruler like George Washington or Napoleon Bonaparte is a frontline ruler because they’re actively in the heat of things while most modern rulers are rear rulers; you don’t see President Obama or President Putan jumping on a bomber and flying into combat.

Examples

Together, visibility and positioning make up where our villain exists in the hierarchy of things. With these two categories in mind, let’s take a brief look at the four major types of villainous styles using this information.

High Visibility, Frontlines (The Warmongrel)

A villain with high visibility is a natural for the frontlines; this is a very effective, yet often poorly done villain type. This is the villain that isn’t content with sitting in a fortress waiting for the heroes to attack him. He’s out on the fight dishing out pain and getting his agenda done the good, old fashioned way. With his FISTS.

An effective warmongrel is a villain that everyone knows, a villain that everyone whispers about. When the warmongrel does something, everyone hears about it. An effective warmongrel acts independently of the heroes; for example, the PCs might go out and find a fantastic magic weapon with which to fight the warmongrel, only to find when they return that he made a preemptive strike against them and burned their home to the ground. The advantage of this type of villain is that the PCs will never feel safe. The warmongrel has his own plans and is almost always on the aggressive. For the PCs, fighting a warmongrel is a game of survival.

Now, the downside of using a warmongrel is that this type of villain doesn’t typically last very long against high-level PCs. It is very easy to locate and surgically strike a very public presence unless he is very well-protected or extremely competent. As a result, a warmongrel is a more effective villain in the following conditions:

1. A low-level adventure or campaign arc.
2. The warmongrel has a means to protect him from common PC attempts to assassinate him with little hassle, such as scry-and-fry.

Here are some examples of popular warmongrel characters.

Archimonde (Warcraft III): A demon as powerful as Warcraft III’s Archimonde could very easily take on the role of his equal, Kil’jaeden; sit back, scheme, and watch his plans unfurl. But when faced with an opportunity to destroy Azeroth, Archimonde doesn’t leave anything to his lesser minions; he marches on the world tree itself and comes very close to destroying it, an act that would have destroyed all life on the planet. Although Archimonde is defeated, his willingness to appear before his enemies and go on the offensive is what categorizes him as an excellent warmongrel.

Menardi and Saturos (Golden Sun): Menardi and Saturos are good examples of warmongrels that don’t have armies at their sides. These two fire adepts trek across the land, seeking a means to ignite the world’s alchemical lighthouses for their own purposes. For the entirety of Golden Sun (and its sequel, Golden Sun: The Lost Age), the heroes chase after Menardi and Saturos in a desperate bid to stop them.

High Visibility, Rear (The Dictator)

A villain with high visibility, but who doesn’t keep themselves on the frontlines is a very popular villain choice. This villain is less warmongrel, more general. He sits back and orders others to get his tasks done for him. He is a master of micromanagement and focuses himself for efficiency. This is the perfect role for a more modern politicians; people know who he is and likely know about his wickedness, but he doesn’t often sully his hands with tasks he deems menial. He is a ruler, and his word is to be followed.

An effective general is a villain that everyone knows and that the PCs see often. He takes direct action against the PCs and towards his aims, but those actions are delegated and carried out by others. A general’s subordinates might not know why they are being tasked to do what they’re doing, but they often do so out of extreme loyalty to the general or simply out of fear of the powerful connections that the general is made. Most generals get things done through emotion; they are often very charismatic individuals and use either fear or extreme zealotry to meet their ends.

Like a warmongrel, a dictator’s publicity can work against him at high levels, but the general has the advantage of being able to construct a near-impenetrable stronghold that is specifically designed to counter the PC’s attempts to assassinate him. To be targeted by a general is to have entire populations of people turned against you publically out of fear for themselves, so fighting a general should have a very hopeless, “I’m alone,” feel to it.

Here are some examples of popular dictator characters.

President Snow (The Hunger Games): President Snow is essentially the iconic general; he hits all of these points perfectly. He rules by sowing fear and ignorance among his people and delegates all manner of tasks to others while never letting any one individual truly see the bigger picture of his plans. In Catching Fire, he is able to directly threaten Katniss with an entire party’s worth of people watching with no one being the wiser. That’s some villainous mojo!

Doctor Robotnik / Eggman (Sonic Comics): Although he’s definitely more of a warmongrel in the games, in the Comics Dr. Eggman rarely involves himself directly in the affairs of Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends. Why should he; he practically rules the world as it is. Instead, he creates wave after wave of robots to send to do his work but despite hiding away in his fortress, Robotnik’s presence is very much known; he often hijacks phonelines and communication networks to taunt and jeer his enemies. Everyone knows Robotnik’s face. But what are you going to do about it when there are a few hundred million robots between him and you?

Low Visibility, Frontlines (The Assassin)

This isn’t a very popular big villain choice, but when done well it can be TERRIFYING to behold. The assassin is the villain that’s out there, but nobody knows about it. He’s actively working towards his ends, but its completely in secret. He’s basically the warmongrel without the bluster and big-shotness. When done well, the heroes won’t even know where to look because every shadow could house the villain.

The secret to running an effective assassin is to make sure the PCs don’t know anything about him or her, or what they do learn comes in drips and dribbles. The difficult part in running a villain like this is to figure out what, exactly, he wants. What is he doing and why does he need to be secret about it?

Here are some examples of popular assassin characters.

The Shredder (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles): I open with the Shredder to prove a point: just because you’re in the shadows doesn’t mean that you’re alone. The Shredder leads an entire underground organization and leads them from the frontlines. For almost every scheme he has in place, the Shredder is up there fighting alongside his minions. While he will delegate when he needs to, he also recognizes that he is just as skilled (if not moreso) then his goons and should be with them to assure his success.

Slenderman (Marble Hornets / Creepypasta Stories): As an antagonist, Slenderman captures the assassin feel perfectly. It directly antagonizes its victims, but for the most part the victim(s) are alone in their torment. They don’t know what Slenderman is (or even if it has a name in some cases) or what it wants. It simply works in secrecy and does whatever it needs to, when it needs to. As a general rule, most Lovecraftian-style antagonists are going to be assassins and function in similar ways; they are proactive from the shadows.

Low Visibility, Rear (The Chessmaster)

The final type of villain is very well-known: the chessmaster. The secret villain behind everything bad that is going on in the world. The villain that no one knows and has no publicity, but controls everything. This is a very well-documented type of villain, so I’m not going to go into much detail about it. Like the general, the chessmaster has the avantage of having his own fortress or base of operations that he can deck out with dangerous defenses and like the assassin, he has the veil of obscuring to hide behind. This type of villain typically needs to be uncovered slowly after a chain of related events.

Let’s look at a few examples of chessmasters.

Senator Palpatine (Star Wars): This guy basically MADE the chessmaster into what it is today. Seriously, if you want to know what a chessmaster is, just watch Star Wars and pay attention to what Palpatine does and says. If you’re not paying attention, you might not even know who he is or what he’s done to be such a colossal threat by Episode VI. That is the hallmark of a good chessmaster; he’s so obscure that even you as an observer are unsure of what, if anything, he’s done.

Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes): And here’s the other character that basically wrote the chessmaster. Who could be an antagonist for someone that is arguably the most intelligent person alive? Why, someone equally intelligent that can’t be simply beaten in the typical sense. Moriarty works as a chessmaster because his scheming and his subtly allow him to escape Holmes unscathed with a greater-than-average frequency.

So, those are my four essential types of villains in regards to presence. What do you think? Can you name any other villains that fall into these four categories? Was this sort of Punnett Square identification system helpful to you? Anything else you’d like to know about designing an effective villain? Leave your questions and answers below, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing you near next week for another installment in the GM Guide! Take care!

Alexander “Alex” Augunas has been playing roleplaying games since 2007, which isn’t nearly as long as 90% of his colleagues. Alexander is an active freelancer for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and is best known as the author of the Pact Magic Unbound series by Radiance House. Alex is the owner of Everyman Gaming, LLC and is often stylized as the Everyman Gamer in honor of Guidance’s original home. Alex’s favorite color is blue, his favorite Pathfinder Race/Class combination is kitsune mastermind, because who doesn’t want to call themselves a “mastermind?”