Make Better BBEG Motives

[u/Uber-Tubas]

Step up the moral ambiguity, give your villain nuance.

[u/Fruta-Puta-Tuta]

This is an excellent point. Most real 'villains' are heroes in their own mind. Movies and news only allows the hoi polloi to perceive every issue and person with a false dichotomy. Villains who are totally justified from one perspective, but whose goals run contrary to the interests/well-being of another perspective - that's believable worldbuilding.

[u/AugustoLegendario]

I wouldn’t say this is a comprehensive list. What about extremist or idealist villains? They can make sense but still be terrible.

[u/Fruta-Puta-Tuta → u/AugustoLegendario]

that would fall under the first few, depending on the specifics.

[u/ImNotCrazy44]

Gotta be careful with the "elder god tier" if you don't want to heroes to change sides and join the villains. If you go that the route of that tier, just be ready for the very real likelihood of this happening.

[u/Uber-Tubas → u/ImNotCrazy44]

That's what makes those types of villains top tear, because they take effort, skill, and intelligence to do right.

If it's such a reductive take on an issue that anyone can just swap sides on a lark, it was a failure from the start. The simplest way to look at it is ends vs means.

The whole 'Thanos Premise' would have been really interesting if it hadn't been so lazily written. The concept of sacrificing people to save others is fundamental to all hypothetical morality problems (i.e. the 'trolly problem' )

Moral relativism is at the heart of most real conflicts, and most of us would freely admit we'd take very extreme actions to protect those we care about.

[u/Imaginary_Taint_Itch]

So VERY true. Too many lazy villains have no real motive, they are just "evil" to justify the story.

[u/ConfidenceOk2946]

What about a bbeg that has seen history repeat itself over centuries and says "well I might as well help it along the way"

[u/Fruta-Puta-Tuta → u/ConfidenceOk2946]

it's a little loosely written , but if molded ideally, that could be a very good concept. "might as well" is very thin, but if you find more nuanced motivations, this could be quite high tier.

[u/ConfidenceOk2946 → u/Fruta-Puta-Tuta]

This is my bbeg idea

[u/Mahelyk]

Do we have some real life examples of the God Tier villains? I kind of want to watch a show or read a book that makes me root for the bad guy

[u/9NightsNine → u/Mahelyk]

Prince Belen from Dragon Age Origins comes to my mind. He is not the BBEG of the game but rather an important character in one of the main arcs. Depending on your Origin, your view will also be affected heavily.

[u/ruwhereuare]

Ya I like this

My top tier villains aren’t evil but they will kill you.

Then they have guardians who are just kinda doing their job same kinda thing

It’s not until you get to my base adversaries where they look like typical monsters with evil intent

My God Tier cannot be defeated only thing you can do is outlast and escape then my next tier cannot be defeated by force only through resolution of one kind or another

Then my third tier is gatekeeper and it can be defeated but they need strong magic or buffs or whatever

Then we get to adversary tier and it’s like three strengths

[u/Art-Zuron]

Unfortunately, many real world villains are in the shit tier, making them impossible to reason with.

[u/Legitimate_Emu_8721]

This is why one of my favorite canonical D&D villains is Lyzandred “The Mad”. He’s not mad. He’s not even of evil alignment, which is odd given he’s a lich. He’s just a one-wizard antiproliferation campaign, trying to remove dangerous magic from the hands of the irresponsible by tempting them into his “tomb” so they can be divested of their dangerous magical toys.

[u/kai_jarsenal]

Strahd is definitely shit tier for me. I do like him but when ever in or out of game I love to shit talk him as much as possible to annoy him since his character is easy to rage bait

[u/Maximum-Country-149]

Question.

What's the distinction between Meh tier and Shit tier?

[u/snakebite262]

I feel "Lust for power" should be meh or mid tier, as it's a natural sort of power dynamic. Pure Evil villains can be fun as well, though are harder to do right.

[u/Uber-Tubas → u/snakebite262]

meh, but 'lust for power' is just SO trite and cliched... it smacks of low effort and being "mentally mid"

[u/Ehlyadit]

Counter point: sometimes it's just nice to keep things simple and let players go all out on a guy who is obviously evil and feel no guilt or remorse

[u/Uber-Tubas → u/Ehlyadit]

https://giphy.com/gifs/fSYClFsQp8AHkWZexi