Insult me like this again and it will mean war.

Great video, but a lot of it is unnecessary, cause the only tip you need for making a great villain is to give them a twirly mustache.

Jacob sounds like he’s angered some god and is rushing to get this video finished.

I feel compelled to point out that you can have villains with deep complex motivations, who think they're the good guy, and they can still be very clearly wrong.

"But I don't want to cure cancer, I want to turn people into dinosaurs!"

"I want my players to really really HATE someone." The one villain in the long-running campaign I'm playing in that really meets this criteria was an assassin who, funny enough, pulls the "I'm actually a good person" schtick to everyone *in-universe* BUT the PCs - i.e. we the PCs know he's an evil sadist but all other NPCs only see him for the competent, just, authoritative public figure that he presents... and that frustrates the PCs to no end because they've on occasion even had to work WITH this villain to not get into trouble by other NPCs. We can't wait to have the chance to kill that POS. : )

Jacob makes a good point on how the dm should feel about their villain. You can’t love it to the point where you won’t let it die or feel anguish when it does. But, I’ve had experience with not caring about my villains enough and the players kill them a little anticlimacticly

Step One: Watch Online Campaigns. Step Two: Profit. That’s it. Just take those.

Pretty sure you're more of an expert than anyone else on D&D Villains. The fact that the Mad Wizard King Jacob exists is proof of this.

Some concepts I like The Palpatine: A villain of manipulation and extreme power that just has absolute fun with villainy, LOVES his job, believes morality doesn't exist and is a complete sociopath, but can out-do philosophy with the best of them and argue that there is no such thing as good and evil. Yes of course it needs to be adjusted for the setting, but you can do similar things with someone who's just blatantly enjoying the villainy. The Conquering Rebel: I came to this concept from my interpretation of Ganondorf. He is absolutely unapologetic in what he does. He knows what he is, and he does it primarily for himself. What he believes is simple - will without power is no will at all, thus one must conquer all that would oppose him to truly be independent. He's someone who would rule hell and see the heavens fall. Got a bit of Paradise Lost's Devil in there, where it is better to rule over Hell than to serve anything else, a complete refusal to obey anything but his own will, with maybe some personal twisted up code, basically an Oath of Conquest Paladin taken to its most extreme with no god, but rather in opposition to all the gods. It's got a bit of that sympathy, but it's still absolutely clear he's someone that needs to be stopped from the perspective of the party, especially if you have Clerics, Paladins, Warlocks, etc. he makes an excellent enemy to. A being born to fate he doesn't agree with, but is willing to tear everything, everyone else down for his own selfish desires and beliefs, no matter how understandable that selfishness may be, can make a good villain, but it has to be done right. Sympathetic Villain: It runs into the problems you mentioned, but I think there's a way to deal with it. When you do this, it should be up to the party to investigate. If they don't he just gets killed, don't pull the rug but give room for them to understand well ahead of time what the exact position of the villain is. One concept I've been wanting to run forever is basically taking Vlad Tepes and making him the current target. He's a brutal dictator that appears vampiric, tortures people, displays the slowly suffering, dying impaled convicted around his castle, but the people accept his rule, why? Because there's a Hobgoblin empire on the edge of their territory and the only way to stop them currently is to show superior brutality to the hobgoblins. It's not hard to figure this out, it is pretty easy in fact if you just investigate a little bit. This still leaves you with choices and some clear cut villains, while not saying Tepes is a good guy. If that makes sense. The Bad Ending is if you kill Tepes and just leave, because then the hobgoblins invade and destroy the country, best ending you deal with the hobgoblins first then get back around to dealing with Tepes. The Dracula: Classic, domineering, just a bully but bigger and fancier. How I would like to run my games is more building a world with characters in them and events happening around you, your characters have a clear impact, but the world exists outside of them and will constantly be changing and having things happen, that dark necromancer's tower will rise if you don't spend the time to stop him, the wars will happen whether you join them or not, cities rise and fall, things change, but your characters will be recognized and have significant impact on how they change. I haven't gotten to DM yet, but these are things I play around with. Villains are often my favorite part of a story so I think about these things quite a bit.

Next: How to Make DnD Animal Companions Good

''Recurring villains are the worst" *The Rise of Skywalker flashbacks intensify*

I dont know about you guys, but an angry, failed artist could make a good villian.

"And that can be done with a rock and 20HP." _takes a note_

I literally had a chaos god who was gonna destroy everything as my BBEG, the player motivation wasn't really, "I don't agree with what your doing" but rather, "I want to exist to see my 9th birthday" in the case of one of my players

“It can all be done with a rock and 20 hit points” Me, planning a campaign involving a warlock of Karsus, who takes the form of a really big rock: *sweating nervously*

I honestly like villains that aren't that strong, but are very smart, so they manage to flee before getting killed (Although these are REALLY hard to write)

I like that Jacob addresses that he’s not the only one making these videos and cites other people’s points not to shit on them but to say “they make a good point but I disagree for these reasons” I think it’s a cool video structure

Video Title: How to make good DnD Villains (imo) Actual Title: JACOB ROASTS NEARLY EVERY DND CONTENT CREATOR AND DASHES AWAY

"Morally grey villains are not fun" well I have you know my morally grey bbeg in Eberron currently has my party having to decide between mass genocide or restarting the last war and they h̶a̶t̶e̶ love it.

*sympathetic DnD villain:* I did this to save the one I love! *the Party:* People are dead because of you!

Probably the best advice I was ever given for villains, is making the villain the embodiment of a particular vice or sin, or the fundamental opposite of the PCs. Envy? The villain is a rival bard who gets twisted and jealous of the PCs' accomplishments and starts spreading malicious rumours in towns ahead of them. Wrath? Fighter, classic sociopath soldier type, perhaps scarred by the horrors of war and now determined to win by any means fair or foul (especially foul). Gluttony? Cannibal or insane chef. Pride? Maybe your villain was a hero once, but their reputation got to their head and now they extort people because they believe they are entitled to it. Party of mages, put up against a "magic luddite" who decries magic as a tool for the weak and wicked (and may or may not use it himself); party of rebellious types, up against a ruthless paladin with a control freak streak; party of mostly non-humans, up against a racist tyrant. Good example of this mentioned in the video is putting a party that runs on the sixth commandment up against a villain with a literal death wish. The good guys have to break their number one rule to beat him, but he's never going to stop.

A good villain is a villain that kills the party's pet

How to make a good villain: Insult everyone else Now everyone hates you You are the villain

If you want to create a Big Bad Evil Guy(TM)(R)(C) but lack ideas, one really easy way is this: make a guy who steals from or otherwise peeves and inconveniences the players, then he calls them big stinky poopoo heads. Then expand until one orphanage in each town has been thoroughly set on fire, or something along those lines. Unabashedly EEEEVIIIIL characters don't need a deep, tragic backstory to be memorable.

For me it is important that the villain is hated for his actions but that he has a motive for what they do, just so they are not evil for the sake of being evil. It could be something as simple as wanting to fight strong opponents, wanting that adrenaline rush and therefor they are bringing chaos to the world to try and force strong opponents out to fight them.

Having a "force of nature" hit point bag for a main villain can really open up interesting options. How do different people in the world react to their approaching, semi-inevitable doom? Maybe some of them feel like more drastic measures are justified to stop it. Maybe others believe that all options should be exhausted before sacrificing innocent lives. The fun part of a faceless force of destruction isn't the monster itself, it's exploring how different characters come into conflict over methods, despite everyone genuinely wanting to solve the problem. The Reapers over in Mass Effect demonstrate this beautifully.

Jacob while making this video: *this is a suicide mission* Also Jacob while making this video: *ok*

Uh oh, looks like someone’s trying to get Cody to make another 20 minute response video 😂

One campaign my group had actually had the main "villain" be a player character from our last campaign (that player became the new DM). See, their character was a paladin who sorta...lost their mind...in the previous campaign. He lost some friends...a village was blown up by one of our party members...and then flung miles away...anyway, not important. Then the paladin got possessed by an otherworldly sword that fed his worst impulses and...well, you get the picture. Periodically, this paladin would show up as our party dealt with this otherworldly threat, and every time it happened, it was a treat.... We'd hear the slow metallic clank of his armor...his mutterings of how the "law" was flawed and he was the solution...his beastly griffin... Oh, and he had a sack of severed heads from people who "broke" the law. Real nightmarish stuff. And he just couldn't be STOPPED...he'd become a Conquest Paladin, and every fight with him gradually became more and more difficult...and he would always pursue us somehow (one of us had something he wanted)... He dropped poisonous gas on our fortress gates...so our party had to scatter away from the fumes...then our Fighter got hurled through the Void with the freaky sword...and while our Cleric and Rogue tried to attack him in melee, the paladin froze the Rogue in fear and the Cleric kept taking psychic damage (because goddam Conquest Paladins punish you for hitting them!) to the point where the paladin had the Cleric questioning their own god...the Bard got wrecked... ...it wasn't about winning, or wiping us out...it was fun just trying to survive against this unstoppable force.

So I haven’t been watching these channels for super long but I think I know what each channel is like for me. Runesmith feels like that educated friend teaching you what you need to know in a very relaxed setting. Davychappy teaches through meme language. And honestly Jacob (or at least this video) feels like I just encountered a mad man go on a ten minute rant about what he knows and I’m too speechless at the time to respond but when I get home he actually makes a lot of sense. I love all three of these guys

The best advice I can give for making sympathetic villains is that just cuz their actions can be justified doesn’t make them right. A great example of this is Dracula vs Alucard in castlevania. They were both impacted heavily by the death of Lisa, but the reason Dracula’s the villain and Alucard is the hero is that Dracula’s doing horrible things. This can make your villain still compelling and someone that can be empathized with, but not someone you can just forgive. I think the most important factor of villain vs hero design is that a hero is gonna be the one who’s making hard decisions to help others, and if tasked with the same decisions, the villain wouldn’t.

I personally agree with your sentiments about tragic villains, and I find it's far more interesting to present shades of grey by presenting a villain that can be helpful to your players but is still unapologetically evil. That makes it feel like the moral complications are coming from the players, rather than the DM. THEY become the ones that have to decide whether to accept the help of evil to perform good, rather than the villain doing it. I do not recommend it if there is hostility at your table, though, it's a been a week and two people are still mad at the other three killing some monsters that were potential allies. Still really interesting though!

Honestly I love being a player with a morally gray villain. The questions it makes my character raise are always interesting and will always be different because every character will approach it at a different angle. One of my groups dms likes to do this villains and they have been my favorite stories.

Word of advice: instead of having a bad guy that's trying to do a thing and whom the heroes are typing to stop, it's also valid to have the heroes try to do a thing and have the bad guys try to stop them.

Their neighbour trying to start their business? *_DINKELBERRRG_*

So this video is just “sometimes no think, ungabunga hit bad guy, feel good, hit dude”

I think the key is sympathetic villains who are ultimately wrong. Honestly any villain trope I think can work so it’s kinda weird to rail so hard against sympathetic villains. I like some ambiguity like why not question your and their motivations?

Hellsing Ultimate Ova's Villan "The Major " is the perfect example of a bad guy being bad just because he likes it.

Something which a lot of people designing villains who are the heroes of their own story overlook is that different people can have fundamentally different outlooks on life and the world around them A villain can genuinely believe that they're doing nothing wrong, while the PCs are utterly disgusted by their actions. Matt Coville's videos on Diplomacy (of all things) were a real eye-opener regarding this

0:45 Jacob, can we please hear this story? I feel like zariel did something either to you or your party.

I honestly think the best way, especially for a long running campaign, is to have multiple villains. Each with a different villain archetype, with their own arc that intersects with the adventure several times. You really can have the best of both worlds. The big absolute evil punching bag shows up when the game needs some action, the misguided rival shows up when you want an interesting narrative.

But I don't want a good villain, Jacob from XP to level three, I want an evil villain.

I don't want to contemplate the meaning of life in my Imaginary Math Rock Rolling Game - Jacob, the Big Brain Dough Boi

"Neighbour trying to start his business" Flashback to Waterdeep part 3.

This is how Logan becomes a villain to Jacob. Two idealist, at odds.

I think its great to make a villain like the lich from Adventure time. You can make a simple concept but as long as they are calculated and a terrifying force whenever they are shown/spoken about.

Thanks for boiling all this down and you're recommendations on the other video really helped me out with Strahd as I've often had my own questions if I am running him right.

I remember my party thought Straud was just a sad old crazy man mourning over the loss of his soulmate until they found his diary and it was such a good moment everybody immediately went into murder mode

4:54-5:17 this could actually work just if you do the inverse. Perhaps a sacred hero on his *glorious destiny to defeat the BBEG* fell from grace and turned evil. Either through his own vices and sins, or being corrupted from the inside out by a wicked spell turning him into the bad guy. So now the players have to follow in his footsteps to complete his journey and kill the anti-hero as well as the BBEG. And there’s a lot of different ways you could go about this. Perhaps the BBEG and Anti-Hero are working together. Maybe Anti-Hero still wants to kill the BBEG but he’ll do whatever it takes to defeat him, like killing an entire town of civilians to use their souls to make him more powerful or to complete some sort of ritual. And one great thing you could use to your advantage is that Anti-Hero is the complete opposite of what he once was: The good guy. So by the party filling in that now vacant spot they all in a way will become heroes, so even if one guy kills all the super bad peoples, a DM with a little experience could help use this symbolism to bring the party together. Or in laymen’s terms: Don’t make a bad guy that’s secretly good (unless you’re doing an evil campaign), make a bad guy that *was* good so that way he becomes understandable, compelling, and a complete badass that could use his heroic powers in new and ruthless ways to really test the party.

One of my favourite videos of yours in quite some time, awesome stuff!

Awesome timing for this video, got the notification as I was sitting down to work out the details of the villain for my current campaign

I’ve only recently found that I really enjoy both kinds of villains. I used to be someone to definitely favor more complex villains, and while I still do because I’m heavily a role player, our last game has had a lot of morally complex characters which has led to me, a fighting type character with strong morals, having to miss out on a lot of opportunities to do cool fights for role-play reasons, which are very valid and interesting, but it’s also nice to just have a mindless monster to fight sometimes (and when this actually happened, my DM had never seen my character fight fallout, so it was accidentally really easy kill lol)

OMG THIS IS PERFECT TIMING

Compared with other D&D channels, your advice is always mercifully short and relentlessly entertaining. Thanks for the wisdom!

This may be your best video. I think it really illustrates your philosophy in a cool way.

The descendant of Ben Franklin is in my D&D group... ME

In our very first session, a goblin ran away with a mashed face from the bard’s thunder wave. I suspect he will return as a villain later

Massive props for putting this up to help DM's. To many videos & I've been waiting for years to find one video that sums it all up. Good to see the tabletop D&D community doing what has even hit video games years ago. Table top D&D is still by far better then ANY game ever.

Thank you for this video, literally today I was thinking about a villain and general objective for my game, and this helped me out a lot.

I want to hear that example of perfect villinous rock (with 20 hp)

THANK GOD SOMEBODY SAID IT. I'm so sick and tired of these *deep, philosophical villians* that is _secretly the good guy!!_ Spice is fun every once and a while, but if I'm eating a burrito, and there's no meat, its only spice - that isn't a burrito. I'm just shoveling chili paste into my mouth.

Your energy, Jacob, is a gift to mankind. I love your videos😅🙏

Case in point. Keep balancing the sympathetic part until you reach a point of having players question themselves. Then throw off that balance by next time they encounter the villain, by having them help him unknowingly. Solidifying how far gone he is. Now in witch direction of how far gone you want him is up to you. You could have that moment where you step up to him, him, being the evil guy he is, could have placed tripwires that unleashed a poison into the nearby village waterbed. Making each passing minute ever so slightly pressing. Or you could stick to an senseless anger theme. Having the villain already be in a village, that your party gave the coordinates to. You could then describe this raid by pointing out how the villain is just hacking and slashing with furious blows. The blood gushing and spattering in to the air, as another guy's head get's mercilessly split while running past the villain. Or you could go with a different approach like having it simply be for a greater "good" Meaning he will happily kill himself for a bigger BBEG. Use tropes as a building block, not an obstacle.

I really like that this video takes a stab at the perceived "right way to play dnd". This idea that has come around from the fact that a lot (but not all) of the famous and influential dnd players seem to play in a very similar way even though it's not even close to the only way. Especially how it tackles the "big bag of hit points villain". More people need to start recognizing that playing the game for the mechanics is a perfectly valid way to play if everyone is having fun and not every character in the world needs a five page essay on why they did this apparently evil thing and not every villain needs a twist. After the 500th "this guy was doing it to save what HE loves" it stops becoming a twist and becomes a trope. Really well made video.

7:58 I laughed way too hard when you said “shoof”

This actually brings up an issue I've had with DnD for awhile; the leveling system is based on the assumption you go kill other sentient creatures.

"... cause I had to adapt to their villain needs." was honestly so good I just had to comment about it. This makes you sound like a good DM. lol :3

My goal in a campaign is to orchestrate events so that the party splinters and one of the members becomes my bbeg for me.

May I just say that Matthew Colville's villains video (all of them really) is a great mainstay to me. I'm glad you made one too!

I have a hard time watching some of this guy’s videos but this was a piece of art. Well done.

Thanks for the video, helped me decide on my current campaigns villain!

Heard you were making this and have been looking forwards to it! My party is going to meet their next BBEG soon, so the timing on this video's release was convenient. :)

I've run 1 dnd campaign and how it went is this: DM character named earl, a drow paladin raised by the wealthy to be physically strong but mentally meek. He has hard time killing the goblins that have knives to his throat showing him the hole they're gonna bury him in and the pike for his head. His solution to not break his moral compass: get some adventuring buddies to do it for him by breaking them out of a jail underneath a tavern, because adventure start tropes are good and great. Earl wanted to start an adventurer company that followed the rules of all kingdoms and was present in all of them to help out everyone he can. He finds 4 adventurers: Jest, Mysty, Knuggey, and Drimathyl After a while of taking adventurer requests, they begin to start uncovering a conspiracy of Councilmen, Politicians, and the Royal are all participating in a large crime ring lead by The Great Cult, who in turn is led by Moldoveanu Lafite-Rothschild, a fanatic of the nine hells. They don't know who it's led by at that point of course, as Moldoveanu was my BBEG. After uncovering the conspiracy, they set out a new goal: stop that conspiracy and set up company afterwards. During this time, Earl even developed a relationship with Mysty, whom he found out she's not a high elf but rather a changeling. After stopping the Child-Slave trade, and busted a drug trade in one of the cities, they got arrested for having a changeling in the party, as the country they were in were racist. After being taken to an out of country prison that laid outside of all kingdoms borders, they were introduced to Moldoveanu who was impressed at their work in stopping his business, but he didn't need them anymore anyhow, and mocks them for it. Moldo then asks for Earl specifically to be taken elsewhere, and the DM character everyone adored for being an innocent kind creature is now missing, taken by the BBEG. Prison break ensues and they're first goal was to find and rescue Earl. They found him in a dungeon underneath one of the kingdoms capitols, in a room with a bunch of machinery that earl was tied up to that was constantly skinning him in places or even gutting him, then injecting strong health potions to keep him alive. The room was labeled the "Spare Parts Room". After they inched closer to the machine, there was a glass barrier between them and Earl. Drimathyl, our parties Barbarian, decides the best way to get earl is to smash the glass, so he does so. Alarms sound throughout the hallway the machine starts clinking in parts that weren't active Earl convulses in pain, letting out an agonizing scream Tearing is heard as his fingers and toes are torn off, as more of the machine spurs to life blood drips on the floor as more tearing, and crackling from bones is heard his feet and hands ripped from their place on the body, as large metallic spikes pierce his stomach form behind as blood pools on the floor Earls screams echo through the hall louder than the alarm, as blood soaked tears rain from his agonized face his forearms are torn, along with the rest of his legs, and the screaming stops. all that's left is the whiring of the machine, the cracking of more borns and ripping of flesh as the rest of his arms are torn off, and the siren which seemed so much louder moments ago earls head falls forward, before being lifted up by a chain attached to a metal collar he was placed in and a few more cracks and the sirens stop his torso falls to the floor and his head with it. An echoey voice comes through the halls, almost as is if it was in their head a familiar cackle fills the air "I want you to know, that you're the ones who did that" said Moldoveanu, as his laughter trails off. And that really gave my players motivation and boy oh boy did they have a good time killing good ol' Moldo, giving him the same treatment he gave earl without the machine after relentlessly beating him.

I’m saving this video not for its own value, but because it’s easier than saving all the other videos you linked in the description and making a legitimate playlist for them

Bruh that clip of Marth's tipper 😂😂😂😂😂❤❤❤❤❤❤

4:01 Sun Tzu is their DM

I had a villain that was a night possessed by an evil force but the twist was he actually killed the evil but his queen died and so he began slaughtering everyone

Love the editing of this video and the jokes, big up

This video is all over the place, but thats what I have come to expect from this channel! XD

Gonna make the Lord of Blades invade Sharn in eberron. To give Warforged a Home. The party has drug markets in Sharn. They're gonna fight.

This kinda feels like a video excuse on why Jacob likes simple villains the most and doesn't like complex villains. Great vid as usual, but I wholeheartedly disagree.

My life is just so much better with Jacob's videos

The editing in this video is awesome. As well as the content of course!

I tried to learn something about villains. All i got was Jacob Sneak attacking every DnD Content Creator followed by disengage.

Jacob be ducking for cover this entire video, lmao.

Literally ended the video at what seemed as early to get us to go and check out another video about the topic. Ngl, thumbs up cus of that ending. It's wasn't an advertisement, but it was.

Yay, glad you mentioned Dael, she's awesome!

I feel like this was an extensive advert for DavvyChappy's video.

Jacob: has dumb brain and likes to roll math rocks also jacob: makes the best encyclopedia of D&D videos on villains!

BEST Villain video on KZfaq ❤️ those visual aids are golden 👌

I love this video, and I think it's a great take. It reminds me of Sid Meier's #1 rule of gaming - "The player should feel like the coolest person in the room." I take that to heart when I DM. I love my super cool OC villains, but ultimately the spotlight is on the players, and the villains are nothing without the heroes.

in these situations i always defer to Red's statement on her Disney Villains video: An antagonist doesn't need to be complex, Disney villains can be a lot of fun, expecially in D&D

What I'm doing largely in my game is having my BBEG be a sympathetic villain, and having most of her minions being unapologetically evil, and it's worked out so far. I haven't fully introduced my BBEG yet however

The mad lad made an 8 minute video, and through out the entire this he did shout outs to other D&D channels. This is awesome.

Your neighbor owns a business and you own the same kind of business. The DM wants you two to have a fun competition. Necklace of Fireball has entered the chat...

"But I'm dumb and bored and don't want to contemplate the meaning of life in my imaginary math rock rolling game" yep, that's it

So, a villan that's actually an item possessing a character's family member, may be a bad idea? Since the "villan" isnt the body, but the weapon attached to them.

I'm currently spiraling because I've run out of my planning buffer and desperately trying to write the next bit of the campaign because my players want to play soon so really great timing on this excellent video Jacob

*Sitting at home, writing my own campaign come across your video* "Here i go loosing sleep again!" very well done, thank you.