Keeping your Villain in good health

As a rule, most villains are great at what they do. But so are the heroes. And what do heroes do? They defeat villains, that's what. And this usually means one dead antagonist. Or does it?

All GM's have felt the pain of having their lovingly crafted villain get minced in the first round, and the temptation to have him use some unknown immunity talisman and then teleport away shaking his fist, is tremendous. Sure, this is viable, but only if the PC's genuinely had no idea he could do that (or failed to take it into consideration), and if it is used consistently in the campaign. Otherwise the players will feel cheated. And rightly so, because you would be cheating.

A competent villain must of course have a good array of defenses, unless he is supremely overconfident that he can't be bested. The trick to these defenses is to have them clear in your mind from the start, and to use them fairly. If a PC can stop teleportation, so be it.

So how do you keep Mr. B. Adguy alive?

Of course, it depends a bit on the type of villain he is, but let the him go about his business in peace. He really shouldn't care about the PC's until they have foiled his schemes enough times. If the campaign devolves into nothing but the bad guy chasing the characters around, trying his level best to kill them, you will either get a TPK or your villain will go splat. Game over in any case.

And when he does notice, use mooks, goons and thugs with the occasionally more powerful henchman. After all, there are evil plans to organize! He can't be expected to chase after just anybody. Imagine Emperor Palpatine standing at the arrivals gate on some planet, checking passports just to catch rebels... it's just not on, right?

The added benefit to this, is not only keeping your villain in one piece, but it will make the final, encounter more dramatic. As the old adage goes: Familiarity breeds contempt. The Lord of Doom shouldn't frequent the same coffee shop the PC's do, at least not in his Doom-ly regalia.

In other words, don't over use him. It's cool if he shows up now and then, but be aware that the players will most likely try to kill him given half a chance. And there is nothing more devious than a determined group of players.

Besides, defeating an awesome right hand man makes for a good middle-of-the-story victory.

Let me finish with an example; In the old Transformers cartoon, the evil Decepticons were usually busy trying to steal energon cubes, or whatever, and the Autobots would inevitably show up to stop them. Fight ensues, Decepticons flee. If the show had been all about pure confrontation, it would have been a very short show indeed.