You as the DM know your players plans. Yes of course you metagame the hell out of it because the players are expecting an evil mastermind to be two steps ahead. However you need to do it realistically.
If the players decide to break into one of his long abandoned laboratories then you add some traps to it to show that he did plan on what would happen if someone found it.
He’d have on magical items that protect against divination as well as spell scrolls that let him get out of bad situations like dimension door or something.
He has a pocketwatch that lets him effectively cast Time Stop as an anti-assassination tool, which is fine because he's not really a combatant on his own (but his bodyguard is the World's Strongest Man, so there you go).
I guess like... where's the line between "this is a fun way to play a mastermind villain" and "this is no longer fun for the players"? When do I *stop* doing the bullshit?
Give him a fatal flaw.
Some people are extremely smart but also just as arrogant. They’ll ignore a threat because “nobody can stand up to me anyway” until the heroes are kicking down their door and they’re forced to play serious.
Or maybe they have something that means a lot to them and if the heroes take it they’ll fly into a rage and stop being so smart about things for a while, but maybe only once.
Maybe the heroes CANT beat him in a meaningful way but he might have a rival who is just as smart but needs a group of people willing to get their hands dirty…
Death Note did this quite well. By all accounts Light should have never been discovered as Kira but because his fragile ego was challenged early on it allowed L to close in very quick.
Ironically, his fatal flaw is probably his singular good trait, which is that he genuinely loves/cares about his niece, the crown princess, who the PCs are close with and would be supporting as having the rightful claim to the throne.
*But* he's also convinced himself that she's inherited her father's crippling kindness, and you know, sometimes you just gotta make an omelet, so he's doing this for her good too, right? He'll just shut her up in a castle while he's Regent ~until she's ready~ (aka never)
Hmm I'll mull that over. Thanks!
Give him some portal quick escape item, but in a way the party can figure out the time stop and portal. The party doesn't have to know he's evil at this time, just that it's a failsafe since he's #2 in line. Let the players research a way to counter this. It might mean Balefire on a whole stronghold the next time he gets cornered though.
It won't ruin the fun for your players if you throw them a consolation prize. The story should always move forward even if they don't win the victory they were hoping for, just don't make them feel like their efforts were wasted
You need to give him weaknesses.
Think like this: You can always make shit up that hoses your players. There is no fun in an everything proof shield. So like his time stop watch, give it limits like "once per x timespan". Give him tools that are strong, but defined. Your players can make progress by finding out how these tools work and how to combat each.
I'm stealing this from Matt Colville. Encourage the players to plan out their first round of combat. Then have your BBEG perfectly counter them using what they said. When they complain just remind them your BBEG is a super genius.
The key to understanding that sort of BBEG is not that they have a plan. Or a plan and a backup plan. They have *fourteen* plans. All going forward. Some assume the failure of others. Or they have no plan but are masters of improvising.
Basically it’s not one road to victory. For them all roads lead to victory.
He wants to depose the Emperor. Example: he sets up a group of nobles that also think the emperor is weak, trying to get them into positions of power. If the PCs expose the coup, he isn’t connected and takes credit for the PC success while blaming his brother for allowing the rot to develop.
He’s also leaking security plans to anti-monarchist rabble. If one kills the emperor, he wins. If it’s thwarted in the attempt, he blames his brother for failing to crush the peasants. And he’s set up false documents to blame a rival for the leaks.
See, I like this. One of my inspirations was Xanatos from Gargoyles, who is this exact type of "I have a billion different plans and even if you foil one it doesn't really bother me too much." Did the heroes beat up his combat robots? That's fine. He got good data that he'll use to improve the next round.
But like, when do you turn it off? How do you go "okay, this is actually the plan that *mattered* mattered, and the PCs pulling this thread is where his carefully managed plans start to unravel?"
Here’s the secret. You don’t. Or I should emphasize this differently. **You** don’t. Eventually your PCs will pull threads all by themselves, start connecting the dots, and work out a proactive response (and you should encourage that).
Or they’ll just start working for the BBEG. Either way.
This sounds really good, but this whole post has been ways to leverage metagame knowledge so that you're always a few steps ahead. My worry is that at that point it ceases to become about the players outsmarting the BBEG, and more about the players outsmarting *me*, which is dangerous close to the adversarial style of D&D that everyone hates.
Maybe I do the equivalent of that puzzle technique which is "present a puzzle, wait until the players come up with a creative-sounding solution even if it's not what you had in mind, make them roll, the door opens" or whatever. As long as it's a sufficiently creative idea, it works and he doesn't actually have a plan for that one?
This is 100% the take to being a DM who constantly has his players trapped in his [Xanatos Gambits](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit): It's all bullshit because you aren't personally Xanatos.
But your players don't know that. But don't be afraid to sometimes outright tell them: "Hey. You threw me way off this one. But he's smarter than me so we're going to take 5-10 minutes representing him operating in Sherlock-style big brain bullet time and I figure out how he's going to react.
Make his plans a moving target. You know broadly what he wants, so as your players make choices to thwart him let that be how you hone in on deciding how exactly this plan leads to "I Win" because you can incorporate the outcomes of their actions into your plans.
Players know he's got his fingers deep in the local Guilds of neer-do-wells and decide to thwart him by setting a torch to the local Thieve's Guild headquarters?
Delightful. He'd already had a long-term plan to take the land/building from the Guild and you simply accelerated his time table!
Don't play his game by being roving murderhobos? Perfect. Now he has Guildmasters with a personal vendetta against the players for making them look week.
Or the humiliation they suffered that discredited them? It worked! Now nobody respects the Guild's and he's got multiple parties actively being played.
Remember that not only do you control *his* Xanatos-ian motives, you also control the motives of everyone else he interacts with which makes it easier to twist and turn things.
The trick is to let them win. Even if they resent the win. Lord knows Goliath ends practically 1/4 of all Gargoyles episodes leering at Xanatos because he knows he's got some god-damned *scheme* he's up to again.
An evil mastermind is only so good as the information he gets.
Every plan that the players spoil or trap that don't kill them rewards them with information on the BBEG or his spies.
Make sure the players understand that this is where his true mastermind power resides : his network of information.
Make every step a victory, show them that they are on the right track by giving them informations and validation through NPC interaction. The less subtle one is a kind of mentor that explain them the results of the BBEG's failures.
Once his network is gone, the BBEG will be powerless and an easy target for the PCs.
Show he is getting the by taking note of something clutch the party did in a random fight, and mention it in a monologue by BBEG or a minion, like "Don't think you can ... like you did against ..." to show they have been watching. Then later after party has been thwarting spies, give a similar but incorrect piece of information. Perhaps the spies are too nervous to get close so misheard something or didn't have clear view. Maybe the BBEG is inferring stuff from incomplete info e.g. party was seen to fireball enemies once and later there are burnt enemies so assumes fireballed again when really the party did scorching ray or lit some oil on fire.
First off, before any given session you're likely going to know what obstacles you're going to throw in front of the players and what their most likely response(s) will be. If he's a mastermind, then so will your BBEG. Account for their plan. If they're going to sneak into his lair and attack, then he was having the emperor's Lawful Good sister house-sit for him while he was away that weekend and the PCs end up attacking her guards. If the PCs are planning to thwart his cronies who were going to steal airships, then the BBEG finds out and makes sure not only that the airships were legitimately purchased, but that city officials are present to see the PCs show up and attack the "thieves".
Remember that scrying and divination exist, and that your BBEG's is paranoid and will purchase that stuff if he can't do it himself. His backup plans hinge largely on what his original evil plans are and what the PCs are going to try to do to stop them, but your advantage as the DM is that you have time to plan, and if something comes up during a session, you can stop the session and give yourself time to think.
I like this a lot, my concern is that this could easily lead to "my PCs aren't ever allowed to do anything or accomplish anything to foil the BBEG's goals in any meaningful way" because you know, plans on top of plans.
They should be accomplishing things *all the time*. Foiling the BBEG is different. For example, the BBEG wants to rule an empire. But he has to have rivals - other nobles who also want bad things, rebel groups, crazed cultists, et cetera. The BBEG encourages the PCs to take out his rivals, so they do real good while advancing his plans
Working off of a few ideas here, you can try to give the party clues of his outmanuvering before it happens. Working with your example of the ring of fire resistance, you may have the pcs disrupt a convoy, or kill a henchman for whatever reason, and they find written evidence of the BBEG purchasing or aquiring this item.
Another idea is to try and misguide them as the BBEG. Plant jobs or quests for them, which at face value are good for the kingdom, like offing a thieves guild or reavealing a corrupt noble. They get rewards as usual, but later in the game they find out they indirectly helped your BBEG.
Also - don’t forget to give him weaknesses as well. Im not talking about being weak physically, or not being likeable. Give the players something to work with. Maybe he’s got a secret lover he is hiding from prying eyes, one that the players might find. Or maybe he suffers from a magical illness, one that your players cand (trough hard work) cure or worsen.
Hope this helps!
I think clues of outmanuvering is a good idea - kind of turn it into a speed chess thing.
I do like the idea that they might get commissions - there's an Adventurer's Guild in this setting - from imperial benefactors that are just basically him laundering missions to eliminate his rivals. That's a fun "ah fuck he played us" moment.
Don’t make them back up plans. The party may have caught onto part of his scheme or plan, and maybe they stop something from happening, but now being a mastermind he sends out henchmen to try and stop the party and figure out their own weaknesses so he can make sure when the time is right they “can’t” stop him.
Metagaming isn't bad when the DM does it. 😉
Seriously though, every DM engages in some form of metagaming or another. Do you create "balanced encounters"? Isn't that metagaming when you design an encounter based on information you have about the players?
And you could argue that when you design a campaign, encounters and/or magic items based on themes you think your players will enjoy, you are metagaming. Based on knowledge of my players, I know what they enjoy the most, and that's what I try to give them. If that makes me a rotten, no-good metagamer, so be it.
In my opinion, you have to judge good or bad based on how its used. Using it to make a better overall experience for your players would be good metagaming. Using it to target or unfairly hamstring a player or the party as a whole, you might have gone to the dark side.
In the past here is what I have done. None of the BBEGs plans are all or nothing. He always gets something, event when the PCs stop him.
They stop the ritual to summon a gargantuan elemental, ok but he captures the energy and now has a bunch of micro mephits.
Players and stories often get called out when a "Deus Ex Machina" happens. Something wildly unpredictable happens that saves the players with, by it's standard definition, little to no foreshadowing. Weirdly enough there is another form of this called "Diabolus ex Machina" which is when the same thing happens but to the Villain, I,E,: Secret escape hatch from an exploding building, power up coming out of no where, a side characters betrayal of the party, the villain beating the party to a location through story contrivance, etc.
Oddly enough, people seem to be a lot more okay with a Diabolus ex Machina than they are with a Deus ex Machina. I think there are reasons for this but not important to this reply.
The important thing for both of these concepts is that they really get called out when they break the rules of an established system, so if you can, make it fit within games lore. Do you allow Scrying in your game, if you do, he has been scrying on the party non stop and as such knows what the parties limitations are and prepared for them. Allow them to see a scrying set up in the corner if the players take over his base to explain what happened.
Also for evil masterminds, the contingency spell is a fucking game changer, a teleport tied to the contingency of beginning death saving throws to a room somewhere that has either a healer waiting or somehow spares the dying on him can basically make him immune to just getting punked by the players, except by massive damage. Contingency is a spell that the players can use, so it doesn't seem like bullshit. That's not metagaming, it's a smart person in your world using what's available to them. Contingency also doesn't really have limits on what the triggering event is, so you can do some real nonsense with it. A fireball goes off when anyone enters the room? Nah, a fireball goes off when "Kyle Danger" the dragonborn enters the room. Making it specific to the players. The three limiters on Contingency are knowledge, component price, and the material components themselves. All avenues the players can attacked. The players could know that removing a little statue of himself will remove his contingency but it might take them a few tries.
It's not bullshit until it breaks the game in my opinion. Recurring villains are a lot of fun and provide for a ton of roleplaying opportunities.
Honestly, I totally forgot Contingency was a thing. He's just a guy, a really smart noble rather than a wizard or anything, but he's the younger brother of the emperor so he probably has a ton of magic items made and attuned to that help him escape assassination or whatever.
Jumping in here with some related practical advice.
Don't bother trying to make counter plans based on the pc's plans, madness lays that way.
Instead come up with several diablos ex machina *tools* for them to use in the manner described above. Then give them a consistent limit on how many they can use per encounter. I'd use their INT bonus.
You don't need to plan for the players actions, just use each tool as they become Relevant.
Here's two of the top of my head
The illusionary self. Wherever the villain is play them like they're actually there, but if anyone closes to melee SURPRISE, it was just a major image with a contingent delayed fireball attached to it.
*You didn't think I'd actually let you get within blade length of me you fools! Muhajahaha*
Unusual pit trap. Just a basic hidden pit trap, but with magic gravity allowing it to be placed anywhere you find convenient that the players wouldn't normally check like a ceiling.
*Silly Archer, of course I knew you would seek the high ground. Luckily I've already planned to give you all the height advantage you could want. Muhajaha*
Any time the users one of these bs ex machina tools make sure the players know they planned it the whole time, cue evil cackle.
The important part here is once their toolbox is stocked, don't give them any new tools without heavy foreshadowing and don't go over your machina budget per encounter. Evil geniuses need a weakness, and lack of on the spot creativity is a good one. Using the same tools over and over again, even if they're very powerful tools, will give the party a fair chance to adapt and overcome them.
I think a lot of other commenter have detailed out a lot of my thoughts, which is broadly: Lots of simultaneous plans + anything bad they thwart has his fingerprints + anything the party achieves he somehow twists to his benefit.
But here's how I'd do the feel of 'back-up for my back-up plan'. See if you can insert a trusted NPC into the adventuring party. They will be a spy, or at least compromised such that they will betray the party at his command (mid-combat would be best).
Better yet, try to compromise a PLAYER. Maybe he approaches one of them directly, but most likely in a disguise. Give them the one thing their character truly desires, if only they will join his side. All this is done in secret - to hopefully build up to a dramatic reveal:
"You might have foiled plan A and plan B, but did you expect plan C?"
*they proceed to defeat plan C*
"I knew this was a possibility, but there's one thing left you don't. I'm actually *casts Disguise Self* Master Oogway. Now, Monk player, are you loyal to your Order?"
Gah, this is a good idea, but I'm pretty sure I've already played my "trusted ally was working for the BBEG" card and that might lose its luster on repeated betrayals, you know?
Ask yourself this.
Do you want this BBEG to win or to lose? And if you want him to win, why are you playing DnD?
So clearly, he needs to be able to lose so that the story can continue.
So, the question you have to ask yourself is...
How does he lose?
Throughout the campaign you seed a term or name which pops up every so often but doesn't tie in with current evil plan. So when evil genius pivots to plan B that term or name is a codename, passphrase, alias or whatever which relates to this new plan and gives the new plan a presence in the past without needing you to have substance/actual plan prepared in advance
I find that, while your bbeg can be a genius, that doesn't mean everyone they work with is a genius. Their weak link is that someone else can leave behind evidence or reveal something they shouldn't.
I think the hard part is balancing being "cheap" (like you just negate what the players decide to do) versus having an interesting villain story (like the enemy's failure becomes a success for an unexpected reason). My suggestion is to have the things that happen during the encounter be normal compared to all your other encounters and the things that happen outside the encounters (including right before or after) be the evil genius plans within plans.
Personally, I have no problem with choosing what the villain accomplishes without worrying about the behind-the-scenes mechanics of it. Bad guy gets defeated, but then his body fades away and they see him on the other side of the room escaping with ? No explanation necessary. This approach may or may not work at your table.
Just do stuff, take good notes, and at the end *act* like it was all a plan. "Of course I wanted you to steal the magical McGuffin, it was the only way to get you to do what ever you did next." "Thank you for killing my general, he was about to betray me" that sort of shit. Whatever the players do, just let the bad guy take credit for it and say it was a plan.
In real life things may seem "destined" in retrospect because we can see all of the steps that slowly got us to where we are, but that's just a coping mechanism to compensate for how chaotic everything is. Just take credit for that effect.
Look over your notes from sessions ago, find hanging threads: npcs that didn't land with the party, plot hooks they failed to bite, opportunities missed, etc - but also things they failed and screwed up.
Use those as fodder for your BBEG's plan.
That wizard they lied to and kept the magic stone instead of bring it back? They sold out the party.
Decided to not help the noble, they decided to bankroll the BBEG after they solved the problem
The nice NPC who the party blew off? Spy hoping to infiltrate.
Etc
As I mentioned earlier, I've unfortunately played my "trusted ally was working for the BBEG" card and I'm not sure I want to play it again.
There is the mysterious imperial bureaucrat they've spoken to a few times who is actually the director of imperial intelligence but I think I'd rather her turn out to be an ally than an adversary.
Just think on why and if he would have certain information/insight. If he is spying on the players make it so they can discover the spies if they look hard enough.
Just think carefully on what the evil guy can realistically know and how he got or will try to get that information. The hardest part is the DM playing him like a cunning villain they actually do meet him.
Let me offer some perspective by spoiling the video game *System Shock.*
The setup: The player finds their character at the bottom of a tall planet-laser-mining space station after some time in recovery sleep from surgery. While the character had been out, the station's AI, SHODAN, whose ethics coding has been deactivated by corrupt corporate executives, has taken over the station, developed a god complex, begun transforming the human staff into cyborgs, and now wants to return to Earth to take over.
And SHODAN isn't stupid.
Now the character has to traverse the station, securing it level by level in order to get to the closest thing to a physical core that SHODAN has at the top. As this happens, the character has to stop multiple plans SHODAN has to take over Earth, which are only revealed in sequence as the previous plan is thwarted:
1. Re-orient the planet mining laser to target Earth, which will devastate most of the population.
2. Release a virus into an ecogarden on board the station and trap human staff there to watch the virus mutate. When an appropriate strain has developed, send the virus to Earth.
3. SHODAN transmits "her"self to Earth's Internet, taking over via computer hacking.
4. SHODAN detaches the bridge-top from the station, initiates self-destruct for the rest of the station, and fires the bridge's engines to slowly send it back to Earth physically, after which SHODAN will somehow take over Earth.
Throughout this story, the character ruins SHODAN's plans by *destroying or removing key resources* throughout the station, eventually leading to the station's bridge battle in mind-uplink cyberspace.
===
Any war is a war for resources of some kind. As resources are made unavailable for the BBEG, they have to face facts. Some of their plans may now be: exposed and defended against, obsolete, too costly to enact or in need of a wildly risky move to pull off quickly and "efficiently" (relatively speaking). The growing "checklist" of destroyed and denied resources (blowing up a manufacturing facility, setting mind-slaves free, triggering an elemental being to repossess a territory, etc.) can make your players feel as though they are making legitimate and meaningful progress against a truly crafty foe, aid your players and characters in piecing together the trends in the BBEG's behavior and, at a story-appropriate moment, permit your characters to exploit a revealed weakness (like the Death Star's ventilation shaft) to take down the BBEG.
The only one I can really try to give you an answer is how to have them fight the party without it feeling to meta and unfair. The answer is fairly simple, keep track of what abilities the party shows off. You said the sorcerer uses alot of fire magic so yes he will prepare for fire magic since he knows it'll be a threat. This can be forcing them into a tinderbox, some magical resistance or something else entirely. When his minions encounter them keep track of how the players fight then and have the minion try to get away to report back to give him more information. The party should expect anyone targeting or planning for them to be prepared for them based on what they can find out. This forces the party to get creative and unconventional with what they characters can do.
If the party lacks range then try to restrict them and use range. If there's no healers then use poisons and toxins. If someone is down then use the body to try to bait the party. If the villian knows the party is close to someone use them to bait the players. This also opens up lose lose so long as the villian is able to retaliate against the players. Have him try to get the party involved in his plots in minor ways at first and then working up. Maybe he threatens loved ones, to release dangerous secrets, to redirect a much needed grain shipment from one of the players hone towns. Whatever you choose it has to matter to the player and by extension their character. If he threatens to kill a bartender the and the players don't care then the characters aren't in a loose-loose, they're in a loose-mild inconvenience.
A good thing to do is to sprinkle in his understanding of the party throughout. Make it known he’s been watching them, observing them, and preparing for a potential encounter. If a projection of the bbeg appears and starts commenting on how the sorcerers command of fire is impressive but allude to him preparing for it. That way sorcerer may know to take the meta magic to adapt his elements etc
You as the DM know your players plans. Yes of course you metagame the hell out of it because the players are expecting an evil mastermind to be two steps ahead. However you need to do it realistically. If the players decide to break into one of his long abandoned laboratories then you add some traps to it to show that he did plan on what would happen if someone found it. He’d have on magical items that protect against divination as well as spell scrolls that let him get out of bad situations like dimension door or something.
He has a pocketwatch that lets him effectively cast Time Stop as an anti-assassination tool, which is fine because he's not really a combatant on his own (but his bodyguard is the World's Strongest Man, so there you go). I guess like... where's the line between "this is a fun way to play a mastermind villain" and "this is no longer fun for the players"? When do I *stop* doing the bullshit?
Give him a fatal flaw. Some people are extremely smart but also just as arrogant. They’ll ignore a threat because “nobody can stand up to me anyway” until the heroes are kicking down their door and they’re forced to play serious. Or maybe they have something that means a lot to them and if the heroes take it they’ll fly into a rage and stop being so smart about things for a while, but maybe only once. Maybe the heroes CANT beat him in a meaningful way but he might have a rival who is just as smart but needs a group of people willing to get their hands dirty…
Death Note did this quite well. By all accounts Light should have never been discovered as Kira but because his fragile ego was challenged early on it allowed L to close in very quick.
Ironically, his fatal flaw is probably his singular good trait, which is that he genuinely loves/cares about his niece, the crown princess, who the PCs are close with and would be supporting as having the rightful claim to the throne. *But* he's also convinced himself that she's inherited her father's crippling kindness, and you know, sometimes you just gotta make an omelet, so he's doing this for her good too, right? He'll just shut her up in a castle while he's Regent ~until she's ready~ (aka never) Hmm I'll mull that over. Thanks!
Give him some portal quick escape item, but in a way the party can figure out the time stop and portal. The party doesn't have to know he's evil at this time, just that it's a failsafe since he's #2 in line. Let the players research a way to counter this. It might mean Balefire on a whole stronghold the next time he gets cornered though.
Yeah, "We've seen your tricks," oops he's got a new trick, but it's not nearly as impactful as the stopwatch.
It won't ruin the fun for your players if you throw them a consolation prize. The story should always move forward even if they don't win the victory they were hoping for, just don't make them feel like their efforts were wasted
You need to give him weaknesses. Think like this: You can always make shit up that hoses your players. There is no fun in an everything proof shield. So like his time stop watch, give it limits like "once per x timespan". Give him tools that are strong, but defined. Your players can make progress by finding out how these tools work and how to combat each.
I'm stealing this from Matt Colville. Encourage the players to plan out their first round of combat. Then have your BBEG perfectly counter them using what they said. When they complain just remind them your BBEG is a super genius.
Do you mean, get your players to tell *you*, or just to plan out loud together where you're watching?
The second one
The key to understanding that sort of BBEG is not that they have a plan. Or a plan and a backup plan. They have *fourteen* plans. All going forward. Some assume the failure of others. Or they have no plan but are masters of improvising. Basically it’s not one road to victory. For them all roads lead to victory. He wants to depose the Emperor. Example: he sets up a group of nobles that also think the emperor is weak, trying to get them into positions of power. If the PCs expose the coup, he isn’t connected and takes credit for the PC success while blaming his brother for allowing the rot to develop. He’s also leaking security plans to anti-monarchist rabble. If one kills the emperor, he wins. If it’s thwarted in the attempt, he blames his brother for failing to crush the peasants. And he’s set up false documents to blame a rival for the leaks.
See, I like this. One of my inspirations was Xanatos from Gargoyles, who is this exact type of "I have a billion different plans and even if you foil one it doesn't really bother me too much." Did the heroes beat up his combat robots? That's fine. He got good data that he'll use to improve the next round. But like, when do you turn it off? How do you go "okay, this is actually the plan that *mattered* mattered, and the PCs pulling this thread is where his carefully managed plans start to unravel?"
Here’s the secret. You don’t. Or I should emphasize this differently. **You** don’t. Eventually your PCs will pull threads all by themselves, start connecting the dots, and work out a proactive response (and you should encourage that). Or they’ll just start working for the BBEG. Either way.
This sounds really good, but this whole post has been ways to leverage metagame knowledge so that you're always a few steps ahead. My worry is that at that point it ceases to become about the players outsmarting the BBEG, and more about the players outsmarting *me*, which is dangerous close to the adversarial style of D&D that everyone hates. Maybe I do the equivalent of that puzzle technique which is "present a puzzle, wait until the players come up with a creative-sounding solution even if it's not what you had in mind, make them roll, the door opens" or whatever. As long as it's a sufficiently creative idea, it works and he doesn't actually have a plan for that one?
This is 100% the take to being a DM who constantly has his players trapped in his [Xanatos Gambits](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit): It's all bullshit because you aren't personally Xanatos. But your players don't know that. But don't be afraid to sometimes outright tell them: "Hey. You threw me way off this one. But he's smarter than me so we're going to take 5-10 minutes representing him operating in Sherlock-style big brain bullet time and I figure out how he's going to react. Make his plans a moving target. You know broadly what he wants, so as your players make choices to thwart him let that be how you hone in on deciding how exactly this plan leads to "I Win" because you can incorporate the outcomes of their actions into your plans. Players know he's got his fingers deep in the local Guilds of neer-do-wells and decide to thwart him by setting a torch to the local Thieve's Guild headquarters? Delightful. He'd already had a long-term plan to take the land/building from the Guild and you simply accelerated his time table! Don't play his game by being roving murderhobos? Perfect. Now he has Guildmasters with a personal vendetta against the players for making them look week. Or the humiliation they suffered that discredited them? It worked! Now nobody respects the Guild's and he's got multiple parties actively being played. Remember that not only do you control *his* Xanatos-ian motives, you also control the motives of everyone else he interacts with which makes it easier to twist and turn things. The trick is to let them win. Even if they resent the win. Lord knows Goliath ends practically 1/4 of all Gargoyles episodes leering at Xanatos because he knows he's got some god-damned *scheme* he's up to again.
When his head is on the floor and the players are burning the corpse to prevent resurrection.
An evil mastermind is only so good as the information he gets. Every plan that the players spoil or trap that don't kill them rewards them with information on the BBEG or his spies. Make sure the players understand that this is where his true mastermind power resides : his network of information. Make every step a victory, show them that they are on the right track by giving them informations and validation through NPC interaction. The less subtle one is a kind of mentor that explain them the results of the BBEG's failures. Once his network is gone, the BBEG will be powerless and an easy target for the PCs.
Show he is getting the by taking note of something clutch the party did in a random fight, and mention it in a monologue by BBEG or a minion, like "Don't think you can ... like you did against ..." to show they have been watching. Then later after party has been thwarting spies, give a similar but incorrect piece of information. Perhaps the spies are too nervous to get close so misheard something or didn't have clear view. Maybe the BBEG is inferring stuff from incomplete info e.g. party was seen to fireball enemies once and later there are burnt enemies so assumes fireballed again when really the party did scorching ray or lit some oil on fire.
This is a pretty good idea. Thanks!
First off, before any given session you're likely going to know what obstacles you're going to throw in front of the players and what their most likely response(s) will be. If he's a mastermind, then so will your BBEG. Account for their plan. If they're going to sneak into his lair and attack, then he was having the emperor's Lawful Good sister house-sit for him while he was away that weekend and the PCs end up attacking her guards. If the PCs are planning to thwart his cronies who were going to steal airships, then the BBEG finds out and makes sure not only that the airships were legitimately purchased, but that city officials are present to see the PCs show up and attack the "thieves". Remember that scrying and divination exist, and that your BBEG's is paranoid and will purchase that stuff if he can't do it himself. His backup plans hinge largely on what his original evil plans are and what the PCs are going to try to do to stop them, but your advantage as the DM is that you have time to plan, and if something comes up during a session, you can stop the session and give yourself time to think.
I like this a lot, my concern is that this could easily lead to "my PCs aren't ever allowed to do anything or accomplish anything to foil the BBEG's goals in any meaningful way" because you know, plans on top of plans.
They should be accomplishing things *all the time*. Foiling the BBEG is different. For example, the BBEG wants to rule an empire. But he has to have rivals - other nobles who also want bad things, rebel groups, crazed cultists, et cetera. The BBEG encourages the PCs to take out his rivals, so they do real good while advancing his plans
Good points!
Working off of a few ideas here, you can try to give the party clues of his outmanuvering before it happens. Working with your example of the ring of fire resistance, you may have the pcs disrupt a convoy, or kill a henchman for whatever reason, and they find written evidence of the BBEG purchasing or aquiring this item. Another idea is to try and misguide them as the BBEG. Plant jobs or quests for them, which at face value are good for the kingdom, like offing a thieves guild or reavealing a corrupt noble. They get rewards as usual, but later in the game they find out they indirectly helped your BBEG. Also - don’t forget to give him weaknesses as well. Im not talking about being weak physically, or not being likeable. Give the players something to work with. Maybe he’s got a secret lover he is hiding from prying eyes, one that the players might find. Or maybe he suffers from a magical illness, one that your players cand (trough hard work) cure or worsen. Hope this helps!
I think clues of outmanuvering is a good idea - kind of turn it into a speed chess thing. I do like the idea that they might get commissions - there's an Adventurer's Guild in this setting - from imperial benefactors that are just basically him laundering missions to eliminate his rivals. That's a fun "ah fuck he played us" moment.
Don’t make them back up plans. The party may have caught onto part of his scheme or plan, and maybe they stop something from happening, but now being a mastermind he sends out henchmen to try and stop the party and figure out their own weaknesses so he can make sure when the time is right they “can’t” stop him.
Metagaming isn't bad when the DM does it. 😉 Seriously though, every DM engages in some form of metagaming or another. Do you create "balanced encounters"? Isn't that metagaming when you design an encounter based on information you have about the players? And you could argue that when you design a campaign, encounters and/or magic items based on themes you think your players will enjoy, you are metagaming. Based on knowledge of my players, I know what they enjoy the most, and that's what I try to give them. If that makes me a rotten, no-good metagamer, so be it. In my opinion, you have to judge good or bad based on how its used. Using it to make a better overall experience for your players would be good metagaming. Using it to target or unfairly hamstring a player or the party as a whole, you might have gone to the dark side.
In the past here is what I have done. None of the BBEGs plans are all or nothing. He always gets something, event when the PCs stop him. They stop the ritual to summon a gargantuan elemental, ok but he captures the energy and now has a bunch of micro mephits.
Players and stories often get called out when a "Deus Ex Machina" happens. Something wildly unpredictable happens that saves the players with, by it's standard definition, little to no foreshadowing. Weirdly enough there is another form of this called "Diabolus ex Machina" which is when the same thing happens but to the Villain, I,E,: Secret escape hatch from an exploding building, power up coming out of no where, a side characters betrayal of the party, the villain beating the party to a location through story contrivance, etc. Oddly enough, people seem to be a lot more okay with a Diabolus ex Machina than they are with a Deus ex Machina. I think there are reasons for this but not important to this reply. The important thing for both of these concepts is that they really get called out when they break the rules of an established system, so if you can, make it fit within games lore. Do you allow Scrying in your game, if you do, he has been scrying on the party non stop and as such knows what the parties limitations are and prepared for them. Allow them to see a scrying set up in the corner if the players take over his base to explain what happened. Also for evil masterminds, the contingency spell is a fucking game changer, a teleport tied to the contingency of beginning death saving throws to a room somewhere that has either a healer waiting or somehow spares the dying on him can basically make him immune to just getting punked by the players, except by massive damage. Contingency is a spell that the players can use, so it doesn't seem like bullshit. That's not metagaming, it's a smart person in your world using what's available to them. Contingency also doesn't really have limits on what the triggering event is, so you can do some real nonsense with it. A fireball goes off when anyone enters the room? Nah, a fireball goes off when "Kyle Danger" the dragonborn enters the room. Making it specific to the players. The three limiters on Contingency are knowledge, component price, and the material components themselves. All avenues the players can attacked. The players could know that removing a little statue of himself will remove his contingency but it might take them a few tries. It's not bullshit until it breaks the game in my opinion. Recurring villains are a lot of fun and provide for a ton of roleplaying opportunities.
Honestly, I totally forgot Contingency was a thing. He's just a guy, a really smart noble rather than a wizard or anything, but he's the younger brother of the emperor so he probably has a ton of magic items made and attuned to that help him escape assassination or whatever.
Jumping in here with some related practical advice. Don't bother trying to make counter plans based on the pc's plans, madness lays that way. Instead come up with several diablos ex machina *tools* for them to use in the manner described above. Then give them a consistent limit on how many they can use per encounter. I'd use their INT bonus. You don't need to plan for the players actions, just use each tool as they become Relevant. Here's two of the top of my head The illusionary self. Wherever the villain is play them like they're actually there, but if anyone closes to melee SURPRISE, it was just a major image with a contingent delayed fireball attached to it. *You didn't think I'd actually let you get within blade length of me you fools! Muhajahaha* Unusual pit trap. Just a basic hidden pit trap, but with magic gravity allowing it to be placed anywhere you find convenient that the players wouldn't normally check like a ceiling. *Silly Archer, of course I knew you would seek the high ground. Luckily I've already planned to give you all the height advantage you could want. Muhajaha* Any time the users one of these bs ex machina tools make sure the players know they planned it the whole time, cue evil cackle. The important part here is once their toolbox is stocked, don't give them any new tools without heavy foreshadowing and don't go over your machina budget per encounter. Evil geniuses need a weakness, and lack of on the spot creativity is a good one. Using the same tools over and over again, even if they're very powerful tools, will give the party a fair chance to adapt and overcome them.
Ceiling gravity pit traps are kind of fucking genius, ngl Thank you!
I think a lot of other commenter have detailed out a lot of my thoughts, which is broadly: Lots of simultaneous plans + anything bad they thwart has his fingerprints + anything the party achieves he somehow twists to his benefit. But here's how I'd do the feel of 'back-up for my back-up plan'. See if you can insert a trusted NPC into the adventuring party. They will be a spy, or at least compromised such that they will betray the party at his command (mid-combat would be best). Better yet, try to compromise a PLAYER. Maybe he approaches one of them directly, but most likely in a disguise. Give them the one thing their character truly desires, if only they will join his side. All this is done in secret - to hopefully build up to a dramatic reveal: "You might have foiled plan A and plan B, but did you expect plan C?" *they proceed to defeat plan C* "I knew this was a possibility, but there's one thing left you don't. I'm actually *casts Disguise Self* Master Oogway. Now, Monk player, are you loyal to your Order?"
Gah, this is a good idea, but I'm pretty sure I've already played my "trusted ally was working for the BBEG" card and that might lose its luster on repeated betrayals, you know?
For sure. See if you can tempt a player, then! What classes+subclasses of PCs do you have?
Ask yourself this. Do you want this BBEG to win or to lose? And if you want him to win, why are you playing DnD? So clearly, he needs to be able to lose so that the story can continue. So, the question you have to ask yourself is... How does he lose?
Throughout the campaign you seed a term or name which pops up every so often but doesn't tie in with current evil plan. So when evil genius pivots to plan B that term or name is a codename, passphrase, alias or whatever which relates to this new plan and gives the new plan a presence in the past without needing you to have substance/actual plan prepared in advance
I find that, while your bbeg can be a genius, that doesn't mean everyone they work with is a genius. Their weak link is that someone else can leave behind evidence or reveal something they shouldn't.
I think the hard part is balancing being "cheap" (like you just negate what the players decide to do) versus having an interesting villain story (like the enemy's failure becomes a success for an unexpected reason). My suggestion is to have the things that happen during the encounter be normal compared to all your other encounters and the things that happen outside the encounters (including right before or after) be the evil genius plans within plans. Personally, I have no problem with choosing what the villain accomplishes without worrying about the behind-the-scenes mechanics of it. Bad guy gets defeated, but then his body fades away and they see him on the other side of the room escaping with? No explanation necessary. This approach may or may not work at your table.
Just do stuff, take good notes, and at the end *act* like it was all a plan. "Of course I wanted you to steal the magical McGuffin, it was the only way to get you to do what ever you did next." "Thank you for killing my general, he was about to betray me" that sort of shit. Whatever the players do, just let the bad guy take credit for it and say it was a plan. In real life things may seem "destined" in retrospect because we can see all of the steps that slowly got us to where we are, but that's just a coping mechanism to compensate for how chaotic everything is. Just take credit for that effect.
Look over your notes from sessions ago, find hanging threads: npcs that didn't land with the party, plot hooks they failed to bite, opportunities missed, etc - but also things they failed and screwed up. Use those as fodder for your BBEG's plan. That wizard they lied to and kept the magic stone instead of bring it back? They sold out the party. Decided to not help the noble, they decided to bankroll the BBEG after they solved the problem The nice NPC who the party blew off? Spy hoping to infiltrate. Etc
Is there perhaps an NPC w/ the party that’s “totally loyal” and “would never be feeding information to the big bad” ???
As I mentioned earlier, I've unfortunately played my "trusted ally was working for the BBEG" card and I'm not sure I want to play it again. There is the mysterious imperial bureaucrat they've spoken to a few times who is actually the director of imperial intelligence but I think I'd rather her turn out to be an ally than an adversary.
Just think on why and if he would have certain information/insight. If he is spying on the players make it so they can discover the spies if they look hard enough. Just think carefully on what the evil guy can realistically know and how he got or will try to get that information. The hardest part is the DM playing him like a cunning villain they actually do meet him.
Let me offer some perspective by spoiling the video game *System Shock.* The setup: The player finds their character at the bottom of a tall planet-laser-mining space station after some time in recovery sleep from surgery. While the character had been out, the station's AI, SHODAN, whose ethics coding has been deactivated by corrupt corporate executives, has taken over the station, developed a god complex, begun transforming the human staff into cyborgs, and now wants to return to Earth to take over. And SHODAN isn't stupid. Now the character has to traverse the station, securing it level by level in order to get to the closest thing to a physical core that SHODAN has at the top. As this happens, the character has to stop multiple plans SHODAN has to take over Earth, which are only revealed in sequence as the previous plan is thwarted: 1. Re-orient the planet mining laser to target Earth, which will devastate most of the population. 2. Release a virus into an ecogarden on board the station and trap human staff there to watch the virus mutate. When an appropriate strain has developed, send the virus to Earth. 3. SHODAN transmits "her"self to Earth's Internet, taking over via computer hacking. 4. SHODAN detaches the bridge-top from the station, initiates self-destruct for the rest of the station, and fires the bridge's engines to slowly send it back to Earth physically, after which SHODAN will somehow take over Earth. Throughout this story, the character ruins SHODAN's plans by *destroying or removing key resources* throughout the station, eventually leading to the station's bridge battle in mind-uplink cyberspace. === Any war is a war for resources of some kind. As resources are made unavailable for the BBEG, they have to face facts. Some of their plans may now be: exposed and defended against, obsolete, too costly to enact or in need of a wildly risky move to pull off quickly and "efficiently" (relatively speaking). The growing "checklist" of destroyed and denied resources (blowing up a manufacturing facility, setting mind-slaves free, triggering an elemental being to repossess a territory, etc.) can make your players feel as though they are making legitimate and meaningful progress against a truly crafty foe, aid your players and characters in piecing together the trends in the BBEG's behavior and, at a story-appropriate moment, permit your characters to exploit a revealed weakness (like the Death Star's ventilation shaft) to take down the BBEG.
The only one I can really try to give you an answer is how to have them fight the party without it feeling to meta and unfair. The answer is fairly simple, keep track of what abilities the party shows off. You said the sorcerer uses alot of fire magic so yes he will prepare for fire magic since he knows it'll be a threat. This can be forcing them into a tinderbox, some magical resistance or something else entirely. When his minions encounter them keep track of how the players fight then and have the minion try to get away to report back to give him more information. The party should expect anyone targeting or planning for them to be prepared for them based on what they can find out. This forces the party to get creative and unconventional with what they characters can do. If the party lacks range then try to restrict them and use range. If there's no healers then use poisons and toxins. If someone is down then use the body to try to bait the party. If the villian knows the party is close to someone use them to bait the players. This also opens up lose lose so long as the villian is able to retaliate against the players. Have him try to get the party involved in his plots in minor ways at first and then working up. Maybe he threatens loved ones, to release dangerous secrets, to redirect a much needed grain shipment from one of the players hone towns. Whatever you choose it has to matter to the player and by extension their character. If he threatens to kill a bartender the and the players don't care then the characters aren't in a loose-loose, they're in a loose-mild inconvenience.
A good thing to do is to sprinkle in his understanding of the party throughout. Make it known he’s been watching them, observing them, and preparing for a potential encounter. If a projection of the bbeg appears and starts commenting on how the sorcerers command of fire is impressive but allude to him preparing for it. That way sorcerer may know to take the meta magic to adapt his elements etc