In the game I am DMing, the players are about to meet the BBEG. She is going to be disguised as simply a wayward traveler whose travelling party was attacked with her the only survivor. Long story short, she's a Warlock who knows that the party is going to be a thorn in her side, but she cares more about making their lives difficult than killing them at this point.
Something I've considered as a good opportunity to show the party what they are dealing with is a "hallway moment" (so named after Darth Vader's appearance in Rogue One, where he simply has an opportunity to beat up on cannon fodder to show off how powerful he is). However, I want to make sure that the party can't do much to stop her, despite being right there watching her as she ruthlessly kills a few NPCs they have grown to like the last few sessions.
Here's the current plan: 1) BBEG begins by casting Forcecage around the party. This will surprise them, as it is going to happen abruptly during their journey with no warning. This has no concentration, which becomes important later. 2) She pulls out her Pact weapon and takes on the four (maybe more, unsure yet) NPCs that try to stop her. At one point, she is going to Banishing Smite the NPC I like the most and would prefer not to kill, though if it happens it happens. 3) If a party member manages to Misty Step out of the Forcecage, she is going to Hold Person that party member. Again, Forcecage is no concentration, so she can keep it up while Hold Person-ing a couple other party members. 4) Finally, the killing blow is going to be Mass Suggestion, and force the cannon fodder NPCs to beg for their lives while she does a little monologing to taunt the players. And then she will kill them despite their begging. 5) Her escape plan is to use Dimension Door and leave them wondering what just happened.
As reference for some of the things that could cause issues, the party has access to spells like Command, Misty Step (as mentioned), Dispel Magic, and Earthen Grasp. I've given her Dispel Magic just in case something needs Dispelling. (I don't use Counterspell at my table, since I think it makes spellcasting less fun -- literally just negating spells makes the game less interesting IMO. At least Dispel Magic forces a little more action economy consideration.) Additionally, I'm giving her one Legendary Resistance just in case as well.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Seriously, tear holes into this plan, I want to attempt to patch them so this can be a momentous event that will strike fear into my PCs. Thanks y'all!
ETA: Level 8. Shadow Sorc and two sidekicks, Warrior and Expert (with some spellcasting abilities from race/feats).
I'm not going to sugarcoat it: don't. Trying to keep player characters helpless sucks: either they escape and get themselves killed, escape and ruin your plan, or don't escape and feel like the whole thing was a railroad cheapshot. (At level 8, it's more than likely you'll have to pull some cheapshots and/or fudged rolls to keep them down, so they probably won't be wrong.) And you'll be rolling all the dice: nobody likes watching a DM play with themselves.
That's not to say you can't create a moment to underline the power of your villain, though! Just do it offscreen, and show the aftermath or tell it using survivors. Do you have an NPC like Gandalf or Dumbledore, who's often offscreen but well liked and VERY powerful? Brutally murdering or defeating a character like that is a good way to establish a villain's evil and power.
I'm not going to sugarcoat it: don't. Trying to keep player characters helpless sucks: either they escape and get themselves killed, escape and ruin your plan, or don't escape and feel like the whole thing was a railroad cheapshot. (At level 8, it's more than likely you'll have to pull some cheapshots and/or fudged rolls to keep them down, so they probably won't be wrong.) And you'll be rolling all the dice: nobody likes watching a DM play with themselves.
That's not to say you can't create a moment to underline the power of your villain, though! Just do it offscreen, and show the aftermath or tell it using survivors. Do you have an NPC like Gandalf or Dumbledore, who's often offscreen but well liked and VERY powerful? Brutally murdering or defeating a character like that is a good way to establish a villain's evil and power.
Agreed. I'm not all that experienced, but everything I've read and watched says that trying to set up cinematic moments is generally a misstep. It takes out the collaborative part of collaborative story telling. If you want an encounter to go in a predetermined way, write a novel.
Have them arrive at the aftermath. Narrate it via a clearly in-shock NPC - unstoppable, merciless, couldn't make a mark, the usual clichés. All the impact, with none of the chances of the PCs figuring out a way to escape and fighting BBEG too early. Remember that PCs are supposed to be the heroes of the story - if they are present they are supposed to think they can do something to save the day. If they are witness and cannot stop it, they have failed, they also may second guess what they are supposed to do when they do finally face off against BBEG.
A good idea is to have the BBEG fight the party, then if the party loses, the BBEG decides she's taught them a lesson and leaves them alive (you did say that they aren't yet interested in killing the party). If she somehow loses, have her plane shift or dimension door out of view so they can't kill her, with counterspell ready in case the party tries to stop her doing this. In this case, also make sure to make the BBEG stronger for the next or final battle.
I agreeing with the "don't" advice. Keep in mind the "hallway moment" in Rogue One was Vader beating down a bunch of extras, not the principle characters who in this case would be your PCs. Having characters "witness" mechanical effects you've set up where the point is that can't do anything, is basically keeping your PCs hostage while they idly watch a power set played out (I mean, would you actually roll all this out?).
The moment I'd advise would be a "Only Imperial Stormtroopers are this accurate" moment in New Hope where the PCs basically discover evidence of BBEG's atrocity and get a sense of the BBEG's brutality through a forensic combing of the scene. What seemed like something done by a platoon of enemies turns out to be one person, and you can give them an idea that the NPCs should have been completely capable of defending themselves but weren't, meaning probably powerful magic at play.
Sitting idly while watching the DM use an NPC to beat up other NPCs is fun for no one except maybe the DM. Anything the PCs come across should be something that they either have agency over, or contains evidence of events that provides them clues leading them to events they have agency over.
Another classic trope to use would be "let one live to tell the story" so now they're not idly witnessing but interacting with a witness.
The BBEG's thing is that she wants to remain hidden. Having a "lone survivor" situation won't work because she has underlings to do her dirty work. This is the exception because she wants to better know the party because she has learned they are now aligned with her true enemy, their Lord patron. Her whole thing is tearing apart the lives of the people she feels have wronged her, and killing them quickly isn't her MO. Killing mooks is, especially mooks that the party has come to like.
They know there is a mastermind behind the other crimes and problems they've dealt with. They don't know who it is though. I'm looking for some way to bring the BBEG in so they know what they're going against, but not put her at risk enough so as to let the party kill her early. I don't want to just make her incredibly powerful just to let her survive, because (a) then I'll have to scale her back later and (b) that feels even more railroady than her simply having a smart plan that can likely be foiled if she tries it again.
So any suggestions how this BBEG can be revealed to the party in some other way? I don't want them to be just an offscreen spectre that is absent from the story entirely right up until the final fight. I was hoping for some way to introduce her, get the party to trust her (or at least get her close to them), and show off her power.
You could maybe have the players "experience" the massacre if the "lone survivor" was some restless spirit ghost... maybe have the players find a way to commune with the ghost and then see through its eyes as the massacre unfold in all your cinematic storytelling glory?
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“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Players have one source of agency in the world: their characters. You should rarely make them unable to use their characters. Unless they fail a saving throw against a spell (cast reasonably as part of a spellcaster's reasonable course of actions, not just to screw with the party) you should rarely, if ever, try to take their character's ability to act away from them. Put them in difficult situations and make them find solutions, or challenge them with the environments and enemies they face, but don't put them in cutscene mode. There's a reason people skip cutscenes in videogames.
If you want a character to be powerful, usually the answer is that they don't need to show it. Obviously, you shouldn't "gotcha" your players unexpectedly for no reason- the peasant from the first town shouldn't be the BBEG unless that's the kind of plot twist your players enjoy (and that peasant should show up incrementally so that they have foreshadowing that your players can see, even if they don't catch the twist), but not every powerful character needs to show it. They can simply appear, perhaps with rumors, people responding to them or their reputation, or doing things that are unusual that give a hint something is off, but not tossing out end game level spells and abilities.
Generally, players should be confronted with things that are the same power level as they are, plus a little bit for encounters that are foreshadowed. Throwing a bunch of 1st level characters across planes can be fun, but if you're not careful it can end up as a railroad if you're showing them a lot but then taking it all back. When you have NPCs, whether they're on the party's side or against them, that are hugely more powerful, it can make what the players are doing seem meaningless.
I was spectating a session a while back when the DM running the session had a character literally descend from the heavens and kill dozens of cultists in a single hit with a greatsword that extended to 35 feet in reach. Every single player in the session felt railroaded, because suddenly instead of them investigating a cult, they were cleaning up the messes someone else left behind. While there were also some other issues there too that made it worse for player experience and eroded some of the good will that can help players overlook a mistake in storytelling, the DM clearly let the story he wanted to tell take over the game that the players wanted to play.
D&D (and other tabletop RPGs) are a collaborative experience. I think you've got a good grasp of that from changing your original plans, so that's promising. Since she already has a motive and agenda against the party, she can have her agents work in the shadows to make things go awry. She can make arrangements to sabotage the quests that the party accomplishes, stealing items from under the noses of the party, arranging to have people go missing or make places inaccessible. Remember that powerful characters can also use things that aren't mechanics against the players- spreading rumors about the players' characters that makes life harder, blackmailing them with the consequences of an adventure gone wrong, tossing around wealth and influence to make the players personae non gratae at social events, or even just sending taunting messages while remaining one step ahead of detection or capture.
If you want to hint that the BBEG is a powerful enemy on the battlefield, they can find the aftermath of an encounter- bodies left behind, scars from powerful magic, stories of horror spread through the underworld. That way, you can use the BBEG being adjacent to the party as a threat- when you find out that the walking superweapon who hates you and your boss is going to show up at the same social function, public place where fighting would be unwise, or other situation where they might interact without a fight breaking out, there's always that threat. That might work a bit more for a hands-off puppeteer type villain, but it can also work for basically any kind of leader if it's enough.
Laws and protocol can be powerful ways to make players and BBEGs encounter each other without worrying about players killing the BBEG too early or having your BBEG be too strong for the party before they get more levels/items. Sure, the party might suspect the BBEG is behind those crimes, but you can't shout that to the crowd at the duke's wedding, even if she's there to taunt the party about their powerlessness. Perhaps she can meet with some PCs and tell her side of the story, and even try to pit them against their current employer. Even if your players have a powerful patron, they're probably bound by some expectation of conduct, and there are plenty of opportunities to creep into the storyline and meddle with things while maintaining enough plausible deniability to seem sympathetic enough for a twist reveal or at least make the BBEG more interesting than a final boss fight.
This is more of a general outline to throw back to you, rather than addressing your specific ideas (you got me thinking and so I came up with this in that process):
The BBEG could have reason to win them to her side. They're the most trusted tools of the Lord, so getting them to turn would be a real twist of the knife in wrecking his life, so to speak. Now I'm considering her discussing what he's done to ruin her life (long story short: she's a scion of the last regime whose family was assassinated per the Lord's instructions, but he did so because they were running the kingdom into the ground and he wanted to stop a larger war between the new regime and old) in inexact terms, stuff like "My family was murdered in the night, everyone, even children -- so I am going to [kingdom] to help me shed my demons and start the next chapter in my life", "I grew up badly scarred because someone set fire to my house, just because they believed my father was an important man", etc. Basically, tell them truths about her backstory, without giving away that she is talking about their patron as the villain in her story.
Then, as she travels a bit more with them, get into some kind of threatening combat where she instead helps the PCs and effectively saves their lives by winning a fight that they'd otherwise badly struggle with. After that combat, when she can no longer hide that she is a very powerful entity rather than some random lone traveler, she reveals that she is the last scion of the last regime, and she needs their help to get revenge for her family in the most brutal of fashions. When they refuse, she gives one final jab at them, telling them they're as bad as the patron and will suffer like he will, and Dimension Doors out of there before they can do anything else.
The party is tracking the BBEG. The party hears screams and sounds of battle from a locked chamber down the end of a long hall. By the time they get there and get the locked door open, they see a room full of dead NPCs covered in blood. No sign of the BBEG.
And then - one or two rounds later - the BBEG appears in the center of the room and says something wicked cool and kinda threatening to the party. Something like, "Now run along, or this could be you next." Or maybe, "Ooohh, if only you had been a little faster, you might have saved them." If the party hits the Image it disappears. If they roll Perception or Investigation they'll see that it's an illusion. Either way, it gives you the ability to reveal her to the party, and to demonstrate her power to the party, all while maintaining the party's sense of helplessness in the situation.
(What follows could be a terrible idea, or a cool one)
If you want this to be a brief exercise for them to really get just how bada$$ the BBEG is, then why not engineer a situation where there are as many NPC's as there are players. Have the PC's imprisoned using a relic, a one-use only inverted version of the Tiny Hut - whoever's inside can see out, but can't leave in any way, and nothing can get in or affect them. Trap the PCs inside and leave the NPCs outside, then have the players take control of the NPCs - make some stats for the NPC's as PCs and hand out character sheets. Let them perform the epic battle, and make it an important lesson - she blocks most of the hits, she deals huge amounts of damage, she casts massively powerful spells. Have her ruthlessly cut down each and every NPC, and kill them when they are attempting death saving throws. The party will be attached to the NPCs, and will be engaged in the battle, so when the NPC dies a player will be genuinely affected by it. The BBEG might strut around outside and monologue afterwards, then say "the cage should wear off in an hour or two. I trust by then you'll have made the right decision to stay out of my way". By the time the party can escape, she's long gone.
For maximum effect, have the imprisonment happen at the end of the session, and hand out a character sheet for them to peruse before the next one, so they aren't suddenly going from barbarian to wizard!
I would look to environmental story telling rather than exposition or cutscenes - bare in mind why that happens in movies, it’s most for time reasons. You have 90-180 mins to tell a story in a movie. You need to condense things down into scenes and exposition that do a lot of heavy lifting.
that is not true in D&D, you have the length of a piece of string to tell your story.
have the characters encounter victims of the BBEG’s vendettas. People almost scared to talk about her for fear of retribution, have them find a village that has been ravaged and destroyed and find out she was the one that did it. Have them find glimpses of the past scattered, a gem with a stored memory, (to steal from the front page article) a living painting of a moment in time, a folk song or tale, have them attend a play. Show them the trail of her devastation as rewards for good insight, investigation and perception roles.
If a player walks down the street and finds 10 gold in the floor they pocket it and have ten gold, never to think about it again. When they loot a body of a freshly killed enemy equal or lock pick a chest and get 10 gold it is worth far more. The same is true of narrative, lore and plot.
I am setting up a similar lair thing but it is more that one of the bbeg will be trying to escape if they are found out (currently a helpful friendly npc). This is a wizard working with an aboleth so the plan is as follows.
Enslaved townsfolk get in the way and try and stop the party, the wizard meanwhile is disappearing through a series of tunnels to his hiding place.
His hiding place is a Mordenikenans Marvelous Mansion. Once in there he takes a long rest and then prepares plane shift and plane shifts away before his mansion ends.
BBEG is raiding a village. Party sees her across town mowing people down. Those NZpCs got here first and have engaged her. But now, her troops are in the way, delaying the party. And there’s a burning building full of orphans and widows, who will probably all die if the party doesn’t save them. And her foot soldiers are destroying the town’s food supplies, so the people will starve come winter unless the party stops them. The idea is, you give them the choice that they could potentially go try to fight her, but make that choice a bad one. They still might go for her, but she can always call over some more minions and hop on her horse, or whip out the scroll of teleport she keeps handy. Then the party didn’t get her, and the orphans and widows died, and the town will have no food this winter.
I like it a lot. It lets them interact with her, gives them a decision to make with some moral implications (even if they are being deceived or manipulated), and still (via Dimension Door) does allow for her to exit should things go badly and their relationship doesn't pan out. It might make your overall story more complicated, and she shouldn't overshadow the party too much in that battle, but I think the idea is very good.
I have seen a number of references in the thread about having the BBEG be a friendly NPC with the party and honestly I have some thoughts.
The biggest Narrative pay off you can aim for with this is betrayal. Someone the party trusted, used them, misled them and was always against them. There is one small problem.
no one trusts NPC’s that travel with the party.
much like clerics in small villages and old white men that own broken down amusement parks it’s a really used trope. And players honestly cannot help themselves but to metagame and predict story beats.
IMO the only way to do this and get the required pay off is to make the npc joining the party seem like something you had not planned. An enemy they talked down from combat and convinced to repent, a bounty hunter they hire for assistance etc.
now the problem with this is the wannabe murder hobo players will rarely try and talk anyone down from combat or believe they can’t do everything themselves (“I mean sure the piano is a complicated instrument that people spend decades mastering but my hobgoblin bard that has never seen one before has +6 on performance which I am sure means they can win the Faurun’s Got Talent Piano division”).
So crafting a perfect backstory for the villain to enter the parties world only for them to breeze past it, can be fruitless and then trying to have that same villain just pop up everywhere until the party asks them to join them on the road can make it even more obvious this is the bad guy.
my suggestion if you are intent on seeking this out is to come up with a dozen different ways that the party could encounter an individual and create a different looking NPC for each one and use them all until the party invites one to tag along - then they become the BBEG
Town A has a bounty hunter they can.....walk right past....okay so it also has a side quest with a villain they can....decide not to take.......okay well no worries there is a hitchhiker on the road to.....oh they will travel by the under dark now......that’s fine because in this under dark kobold village there is a prisoner in a cage that they can......burn to a crisp along with everyone else when they cast multiple fireballs on the village....but that’s fine because I also have this cabbage seller they can......murder and steal all their cabbages........
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In the game I am DMing, the players are about to meet the BBEG. She is going to be disguised as simply a wayward traveler whose travelling party was attacked with her the only survivor. Long story short, she's a Warlock who knows that the party is going to be a thorn in her side, but she cares more about making their lives difficult than killing them at this point.
Something I've considered as a good opportunity to show the party what they are dealing with is a "hallway moment" (so named after Darth Vader's appearance in Rogue One, where he simply has an opportunity to beat up on cannon fodder to show off how powerful he is). However, I want to make sure that the party can't do much to stop her, despite being right there watching her as she ruthlessly kills a few NPCs they have grown to like the last few sessions.
Here's the current plan:
1) BBEG begins by casting Forcecage around the party. This will surprise them, as it is going to happen abruptly during their journey with no warning. This has no concentration, which becomes important later.
2) She pulls out her Pact weapon and takes on the four (maybe more, unsure yet) NPCs that try to stop her. At one point, she is going to Banishing Smite the NPC I like the most and would prefer not to kill, though if it happens it happens.
3) If a party member manages to Misty Step out of the Forcecage, she is going to Hold Person that party member. Again, Forcecage is no concentration, so she can keep it up while Hold Person-ing a couple other party members.
4) Finally, the killing blow is going to be Mass Suggestion, and force the cannon fodder NPCs to beg for their lives while she does a little monologing to taunt the players. And then she will kill them despite their begging.
5) Her escape plan is to use Dimension Door and leave them wondering what just happened.
As reference for some of the things that could cause issues, the party has access to spells like Command, Misty Step (as mentioned), Dispel Magic, and Earthen Grasp. I've given her Dispel Magic just in case something needs Dispelling. (I don't use Counterspell at my table, since I think it makes spellcasting less fun -- literally just negating spells makes the game less interesting IMO. At least Dispel Magic forces a little more action economy consideration.) Additionally, I'm giving her one Legendary Resistance just in case as well.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Seriously, tear holes into this plan, I want to attempt to patch them so this can be a momentous event that will strike fear into my PCs. Thanks y'all!
ETA: Level 8. Shadow Sorc and two sidekicks, Warrior and Expert (with some spellcasting abilities from race/feats).
What level is the party?
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Spells, Monsters, Magic Items, Feats, Subclasses.
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Level 8. Sorc and two sidekicks, Warrior and Expert (with some spellcasting abilities from race/feats). I will add to the OP.
I'm not going to sugarcoat it: don't. Trying to keep player characters helpless sucks: either they escape and get themselves killed, escape and ruin your plan, or don't escape and feel like the whole thing was a railroad cheapshot. (At level 8, it's more than likely you'll have to pull some cheapshots and/or fudged rolls to keep them down, so they probably won't be wrong.) And you'll be rolling all the dice: nobody likes watching a DM play with themselves.
That's not to say you can't create a moment to underline the power of your villain, though! Just do it offscreen, and show the aftermath or tell it using survivors. Do you have an NPC like Gandalf or Dumbledore, who's often offscreen but well liked and VERY powerful? Brutally murdering or defeating a character like that is a good way to establish a villain's evil and power.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Agreed. I'm not all that experienced, but everything I've read and watched says that trying to set up cinematic moments is generally a misstep. It takes out the collaborative part of collaborative story telling. If you want an encounter to go in a predetermined way, write a novel.
Have them arrive at the aftermath. Narrate it via a clearly in-shock NPC - unstoppable, merciless, couldn't make a mark, the usual clichés. All the impact, with none of the chances of the PCs figuring out a way to escape and fighting BBEG too early. Remember that PCs are supposed to be the heroes of the story - if they are present they are supposed to think they can do something to save the day. If they are witness and cannot stop it, they have failed, they also may second guess what they are supposed to do when they do finally face off against BBEG.
A good idea is to have the BBEG fight the party, then if the party loses, the BBEG decides she's taught them a lesson and leaves them alive (you did say that they aren't yet interested in killing the party). If she somehow loses, have her plane shift or dimension door out of view so they can't kill her, with counterspell ready in case the party tries to stop her doing this. In this case, also make sure to make the BBEG stronger for the next or final battle.
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I agreeing with the "don't" advice. Keep in mind the "hallway moment" in Rogue One was Vader beating down a bunch of extras, not the principle characters who in this case would be your PCs. Having characters "witness" mechanical effects you've set up where the point is that can't do anything, is basically keeping your PCs hostage while they idly watch a power set played out (I mean, would you actually roll all this out?).
The moment I'd advise would be a "Only Imperial Stormtroopers are this accurate" moment in New Hope where the PCs basically discover evidence of BBEG's atrocity and get a sense of the BBEG's brutality through a forensic combing of the scene. What seemed like something done by a platoon of enemies turns out to be one person, and you can give them an idea that the NPCs should have been completely capable of defending themselves but weren't, meaning probably powerful magic at play.
Sitting idly while watching the DM use an NPC to beat up other NPCs is fun for no one except maybe the DM. Anything the PCs come across should be something that they either have agency over, or contains evidence of events that provides them clues leading them to events they have agency over.
Another classic trope to use would be "let one live to tell the story" so now they're not idly witnessing but interacting with a witness.
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Speak for yourself! I happen to be great at it. In fact, you could say I'm a mast..... oh nevermind.
...cryptographic randomness!
We are Dungeon Masters, after all.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Okay, so revising the plan:
The BBEG's thing is that she wants to remain hidden. Having a "lone survivor" situation won't work because she has underlings to do her dirty work. This is the exception because she wants to better know the party because she has learned they are now aligned with her true enemy, their Lord patron. Her whole thing is tearing apart the lives of the people she feels have wronged her, and killing them quickly isn't her MO. Killing mooks is, especially mooks that the party has come to like.
They know there is a mastermind behind the other crimes and problems they've dealt with. They don't know who it is though. I'm looking for some way to bring the BBEG in so they know what they're going against, but not put her at risk enough so as to let the party kill her early. I don't want to just make her incredibly powerful just to let her survive, because (a) then I'll have to scale her back later and (b) that feels even more railroady than her simply having a smart plan that can likely be foiled if she tries it again.
So any suggestions how this BBEG can be revealed to the party in some other way? I don't want them to be just an offscreen spectre that is absent from the story entirely right up until the final fight. I was hoping for some way to introduce her, get the party to trust her (or at least get her close to them), and show off her power.
You could maybe have the players "experience" the massacre if the "lone survivor" was some restless spirit ghost... maybe have the players find a way to commune with the ghost and then see through its eyes as the massacre unfold in all your cinematic storytelling glory?
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Players have one source of agency in the world: their characters. You should rarely make them unable to use their characters. Unless they fail a saving throw against a spell (cast reasonably as part of a spellcaster's reasonable course of actions, not just to screw with the party) you should rarely, if ever, try to take their character's ability to act away from them. Put them in difficult situations and make them find solutions, or challenge them with the environments and enemies they face, but don't put them in cutscene mode. There's a reason people skip cutscenes in videogames.
If you want a character to be powerful, usually the answer is that they don't need to show it. Obviously, you shouldn't "gotcha" your players unexpectedly for no reason- the peasant from the first town shouldn't be the BBEG unless that's the kind of plot twist your players enjoy (and that peasant should show up incrementally so that they have foreshadowing that your players can see, even if they don't catch the twist), but not every powerful character needs to show it. They can simply appear, perhaps with rumors, people responding to them or their reputation, or doing things that are unusual that give a hint something is off, but not tossing out end game level spells and abilities.
Generally, players should be confronted with things that are the same power level as they are, plus a little bit for encounters that are foreshadowed. Throwing a bunch of 1st level characters across planes can be fun, but if you're not careful it can end up as a railroad if you're showing them a lot but then taking it all back. When you have NPCs, whether they're on the party's side or against them, that are hugely more powerful, it can make what the players are doing seem meaningless.
I was spectating a session a while back when the DM running the session had a character literally descend from the heavens and kill dozens of cultists in a single hit with a greatsword that extended to 35 feet in reach. Every single player in the session felt railroaded, because suddenly instead of them investigating a cult, they were cleaning up the messes someone else left behind. While there were also some other issues there too that made it worse for player experience and eroded some of the good will that can help players overlook a mistake in storytelling, the DM clearly let the story he wanted to tell take over the game that the players wanted to play.
D&D (and other tabletop RPGs) are a collaborative experience. I think you've got a good grasp of that from changing your original plans, so that's promising. Since she already has a motive and agenda against the party, she can have her agents work in the shadows to make things go awry. She can make arrangements to sabotage the quests that the party accomplishes, stealing items from under the noses of the party, arranging to have people go missing or make places inaccessible. Remember that powerful characters can also use things that aren't mechanics against the players- spreading rumors about the players' characters that makes life harder, blackmailing them with the consequences of an adventure gone wrong, tossing around wealth and influence to make the players personae non gratae at social events, or even just sending taunting messages while remaining one step ahead of detection or capture.
If you want to hint that the BBEG is a powerful enemy on the battlefield, they can find the aftermath of an encounter- bodies left behind, scars from powerful magic, stories of horror spread through the underworld. That way, you can use the BBEG being adjacent to the party as a threat- when you find out that the walking superweapon who hates you and your boss is going to show up at the same social function, public place where fighting would be unwise, or other situation where they might interact without a fight breaking out, there's always that threat. That might work a bit more for a hands-off puppeteer type villain, but it can also work for basically any kind of leader if it's enough.
Laws and protocol can be powerful ways to make players and BBEGs encounter each other without worrying about players killing the BBEG too early or having your BBEG be too strong for the party before they get more levels/items. Sure, the party might suspect the BBEG is behind those crimes, but you can't shout that to the crowd at the duke's wedding, even if she's there to taunt the party about their powerlessness. Perhaps she can meet with some PCs and tell her side of the story, and even try to pit them against their current employer. Even if your players have a powerful patron, they're probably bound by some expectation of conduct, and there are plenty of opportunities to creep into the storyline and meddle with things while maintaining enough plausible deniability to seem sympathetic enough for a twist reveal or at least make the BBEG more interesting than a final boss fight.
This is more of a general outline to throw back to you, rather than addressing your specific ideas (you got me thinking and so I came up with this in that process):
The BBEG could have reason to win them to her side. They're the most trusted tools of the Lord, so getting them to turn would be a real twist of the knife in wrecking his life, so to speak. Now I'm considering her discussing what he's done to ruin her life (long story short: she's a scion of the last regime whose family was assassinated per the Lord's instructions, but he did so because they were running the kingdom into the ground and he wanted to stop a larger war between the new regime and old) in inexact terms, stuff like "My family was murdered in the night, everyone, even children -- so I am going to [kingdom] to help me shed my demons and start the next chapter in my life", "I grew up badly scarred because someone set fire to my house, just because they believed my father was an important man", etc. Basically, tell them truths about her backstory, without giving away that she is talking about their patron as the villain in her story.
Then, as she travels a bit more with them, get into some kind of threatening combat where she instead helps the PCs and effectively saves their lives by winning a fight that they'd otherwise badly struggle with. After that combat, when she can no longer hide that she is a very powerful entity rather than some random lone traveler, she reveals that she is the last scion of the last regime, and she needs their help to get revenge for her family in the most brutal of fashions. When they refuse, she gives one final jab at them, telling them they're as bad as the patron and will suffer like he will, and Dimension Doors out of there before they can do anything else.
Thoughts?
So you want the BBEG to demonstrate her cruelty and her power to the party without directly confronting the party.
Easy. . . . "Project Image". 7th level warlock spell. Range = 500 miles.
The party is tracking the BBEG. The party hears screams and sounds of battle from a locked chamber down the end of a long hall. By the time they get there and get the locked door open, they see a room full of dead NPCs covered in blood. No sign of the BBEG.
And then - one or two rounds later - the BBEG appears in the center of the room and says something wicked cool and kinda threatening to the party. Something like, "Now run along, or this could be you next." Or maybe, "Ooohh, if only you had been a little faster, you might have saved them." If the party hits the Image it disappears. If they roll Perception or Investigation they'll see that it's an illusion. Either way, it gives you the ability to reveal her to the party, and to demonstrate her power to the party, all while maintaining the party's sense of helplessness in the situation.
Just my 2 c.p.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
How many players and how many NPC's?
(What follows could be a terrible idea, or a cool one)
If you want this to be a brief exercise for them to really get just how bada$$ the BBEG is, then why not engineer a situation where there are as many NPC's as there are players. Have the PC's imprisoned using a relic, a one-use only inverted version of the Tiny Hut - whoever's inside can see out, but can't leave in any way, and nothing can get in or affect them. Trap the PCs inside and leave the NPCs outside, then have the players take control of the NPCs - make some stats for the NPC's as PCs and hand out character sheets. Let them perform the epic battle, and make it an important lesson - she blocks most of the hits, she deals huge amounts of damage, she casts massively powerful spells. Have her ruthlessly cut down each and every NPC, and kill them when they are attempting death saving throws. The party will be attached to the NPCs, and will be engaged in the battle, so when the NPC dies a player will be genuinely affected by it. The BBEG might strut around outside and monologue afterwards, then say "the cage should wear off in an hour or two. I trust by then you'll have made the right decision to stay out of my way". By the time the party can escape, she's long gone.
For maximum effect, have the imprisonment happen at the end of the session, and hand out a character sheet for them to peruse before the next one, so they aren't suddenly going from barbarian to wizard!
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I would look to environmental story telling rather than exposition or cutscenes - bare in mind why that happens in movies, it’s most for time reasons. You have 90-180 mins to tell a story in a movie. You need to condense things down into scenes and exposition that do a lot of heavy lifting.
that is not true in D&D, you have the length of a piece of string to tell your story.
have the characters encounter victims of the BBEG’s vendettas. People almost scared to talk about her for fear of retribution, have them find a village that has been ravaged and destroyed and find out she was the one that did it. Have them find glimpses of the past scattered, a gem with a stored memory, (to steal from the front page article) a living painting of a moment in time, a folk song or tale, have them attend a play. Show them the trail of her devastation as rewards for good insight, investigation and perception roles.
If a player walks down the street and finds 10 gold in the floor they pocket it and have ten gold, never to think about it again. When they loot a body of a freshly killed enemy equal or lock pick a chest and get 10 gold it is worth far more. The same is true of narrative, lore and plot.
I am setting up a similar lair thing but it is more that one of the bbeg will be trying to escape if they are found out (currently a helpful friendly npc). This is a wizard working with an aboleth so the plan is as follows.
Enslaved townsfolk get in the way and try and stop the party, the wizard meanwhile is disappearing through a series of tunnels to his hiding place.
His hiding place is a Mordenikenans Marvelous Mansion. Once in there he takes a long rest and then prepares plane shift and plane shifts away before his mansion ends.
BBEG is raiding a village. Party sees her across town mowing people down. Those NZpCs got here first and have engaged her. But now, her troops are in the way, delaying the party. And there’s a burning building full of orphans and widows, who will probably all die if the party doesn’t save them. And her foot soldiers are destroying the town’s food supplies, so the people will starve come winter unless the party stops them.
The idea is, you give them the choice that they could potentially go try to fight her, but make that choice a bad one. They still might go for her, but she can always call over some more minions and hop on her horse, or whip out the scroll of teleport she keeps handy. Then the party didn’t get her, and the orphans and widows died, and the town will have no food this winter.
I like it a lot. It lets them interact with her, gives them a decision to make with some moral implications (even if they are being deceived or manipulated), and still (via Dimension Door) does allow for her to exit should things go badly and their relationship doesn't pan out. It might make your overall story more complicated, and she shouldn't overshadow the party too much in that battle, but I think the idea is very good.
I have seen a number of references in the thread about having the BBEG be a friendly NPC with the party and honestly I have some thoughts.
The biggest Narrative pay off you can aim for with this is betrayal. Someone the party trusted, used them, misled them and was always against them. There is one small problem.
no one trusts NPC’s that travel with the party.
much like clerics in small villages and old white men that own broken down amusement parks it’s a really used trope. And players honestly cannot help themselves but to metagame and predict story beats.
IMO the only way to do this and get the required pay off is to make the npc joining the party seem like something you had not planned. An enemy they talked down from combat and convinced to repent, a bounty hunter they hire for assistance etc.
now the problem with this is the wannabe murder hobo players will rarely try and talk anyone down from combat or believe they can’t do everything themselves (“I mean sure the piano is a complicated instrument that people spend decades mastering but my hobgoblin bard that has never seen one before has +6 on performance which I am sure means they can win the Faurun’s Got Talent Piano division”).
So crafting a perfect backstory for the villain to enter the parties world only for them to breeze past it, can be fruitless and then trying to have that same villain just pop up everywhere until the party asks them to join them on the road can make it even more obvious this is the bad guy.
my suggestion if you are intent on seeking this out is to come up with a dozen different ways that the party could encounter an individual and create a different looking NPC for each one and use them all until the party invites one to tag along - then they become the BBEG
Town A has a bounty hunter they can.....walk right past....okay so it also has a side quest with a villain they can....decide not to take.......okay well no worries there is a hitchhiker on the road to.....oh they will travel by the under dark now......that’s fine because in this under dark kobold village there is a prisoner in a cage that they can......burn to a crisp along with everyone else when they cast multiple fireballs on the village....but that’s fine because I also have this cabbage seller they can......murder and steal all their cabbages........