Villains are the best part of a DM's world in many aspects. Only through these characters of passion and hate does the DM get to explore his or her own dark side, and play the game with the others. However, in some cases, creating the villain can be a difficult problem.
Its Saturday night, and after two weeks of work creating this new campaign, you place your players into the world, and after 15 mins, they have not only discovered the plot you have casually planned, but came up with something you had never thought of and kill your great villain, destroying weeks of work. Sound familiar? Most DM's have this problem at least once or twice in their life, if not on a regular basis if they have cleaver players. So what to do? Best advice any person could give, Make a better Villain.

After a year or so of Dming, most people already know how to make a stock villain. The necromancer who wants to control the world through undead, a Transmitter who only wants to work on bold new experiments, the Warlord who love to pillage. These and others like them are standard, and every DM has used them at least a few times. And players can learn how to deal with them quickly enough. ("Oh look, another vampire lair, where is my crossbow bolts?") When this point is reached, it is wise to try and create a Grand Villain.
How to create such a Villain? A simple step by step is offered here for your consideration.

1) Find a race;
This is best to be an intelligent race. Though it does not need to be naturally, Magic experiments go wrong quite often, so an intelligent creation that shouldn't be is possible. Try to pick one that you haven't used very often. Grab your Monstrous Manual and pick one. A random choice can be useful, or try one you never thought of before. For this example, I have chosen the Hobgoblin.

2) Read it thought carefully;
There are lots of preconceptions for every race and how they are played. Read the description for this chosen race carefully; look for something that you might have missed. While doing this, think back to your past games. How have you played this creature in the past? What is its Intelligence? What is its Society? For this example, the Hobgoblin is used. In the past, in this campaign, Hobgoblins have been used sparingly. Most similar to Ogres or Orcs, occasionally in tandem with trolls. Never as a powerful force. They have an Average intelligence (normally between 8-10). And they are described in the book as a "Nightmarish mockeries of the humanoid races…" After a few more moments of reading and a bit of research into other campaigns and books (Here is where other DM's are valuable) I decided to use them.

3) Give them a boost;
As every good DM knows, the book is a guideline, and nothing more. Find some point you like about this creature, and look at how it could be changed a bit from a simple danger, to a truly threatening creature. With some this can be difficult, requiring a Magical force or the intervention of the Gods, with others, it might be surprisingly easy. For our example, the Hobgoblins are a tribal race, with only small military groups that rarely meet without violence.

As I was reading through this, I recalled that in the history of the Real world, there where often tribes like this, and at times, a Single person would arise and unite many of these tribes into a small nation, often causing a great deal of trouble, what if a Hobgoblin was born with superior intelligence and strength, (say around 15 Int and 18+ Str?) that decided to unite the local tribes into a civilization?

4) Don't go overboard;
It is tempting, especially after a few months of watching villains die at the players hands to go overboard on a new creation. Granting them to much power and to much strength. But this is an error that many DM's do make. But reading this through with a few of the players and other DM's can quickly remedy this problem. In this example, It was a strong temptation to give this Hobgoblin leader the backing of one of the gods to keep the players from killing his off to quickly. But after a few moments of thinking it over, I realized this would be to much of an over kill.

5) Give them someplace to work from;
A common problem that is often overlooked till the last moment. But it is an easy way to turn a useful villain to a powerful force to be feared. After all, there is a reason why they didn't just walk an army into Mydor in the Lord of the Rings. For our example. I looked on my map of this home built campaign world. And noticed a large island on the far edge of the map, Only one city on it and rather isolated. This isolated island soon became a deep forest and swamp mix populated by a growing empire. A place that most would fear to even go.

6)Take a break;
Not something that is thought of as a part of the creation process. But something that can lead to many great ideas to fine tune the work. After the rough draft is in place. Get up and go for a walk. Visit a park, get a soda from the local convince store. Let your mind wander over ideas. After setting up the basic work for this example, I allowed myself the time to walk to the local park and wander around for 30 mins. I came back with an few ideas that I'm sure my players will hate and will make my life much easier. Only a few where used, but over the next few days. I fine tuned the villain into a source of ideas for hundreds of adventures, and even a few campaigns.

7)Look over the Villain;
How will this Villain be played? Will he or she be a on hands controller? Or will he or she work from a distance? How does this villain handle defeat? Victory? Is he or she dependent on Magic? What are there weaknesses? Strengths? The answers to these questions will define how this villain is used in the campaign.

For this example, the Hobgoblins are building a Kingdom, one ruled by a single leader, called the Hobgoblin Lord. This Villain is not a hands on control, preferring to give orders to his underlings and counting on them to do the job while he works on other things. The players will rarely see this hobgoblin Lord, if at all. This villain sees things in the long range, a rarity for hobgoblins at best, but it means he handles defeat well, not demanding immediate revenge.

Hobgoblins are not known for there magic, but as an added kick, I have allowed this race to develop magical talents of there own, witch means that any party of hobgoblins encountered from this kingdom may have a mage among them.

8) Run a few tests on them;
If you have a few DM's who can help, or are imaginative enough yourself, generate a "test party" of 3 or 4 NPC's. and run them through there paces agenst the villain. Try to identify possible problems. Weaknesses that you don't want the villain to have, or strengths that you didn't expect. For this example. I generated a few small parties of NPC attackers from the kingdom, and ran my standard test party agenst them. The party fared well, but not to well. The test mage had to waste almost all of her spells countering the Hobgoblin mage. The fighter and thief did well, holding there own agenst there counterparts, and the priest was kept rather busy healing wounds. Most of the test ran about the same way. Letting me know that at least for now, this new villain would keep my players on there feet.

9) Be ready to change if needed;
After creating this great villain, don't try to keep him or her "as is", after all, the party of players learn from there mistakes, why shouldn't the Villain? And the Party will grow in strength. So should the villain. Don't be afraid to make changes, large ones if needed at times. And try to be ready for when the players do the impossible and actually kill the great villain. In this example, a warlord usually has several children, and one or two are bound to inherit his gifts as well..

A villain is the source of the players pain and there pleasure to fight. The better the villain, the more fun he or she is to fight. And for every DM, there is a special thrill in the use of a villain. Maybe that's why we DM's love to bring a Grand Villain into place.

For comments, questions, or angry letters from your players hating me, send to:
Array50@hotmail.com