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I'm curious what GMs have done for that iconic hated villain who keeps coming back no matter how many times the group "kills" them.

Superpowers, racial abilities, magical spells, what has kept villains coming back to torment the players time and time again?

Oddly a trick that I use in palladium that doesnt seem to work as well in any other system is invisibility. For some reason my players seem to suspect invisibility to be used against them in other systems, and I can't explain it, but I can have an invisible opponent harrass my players for weeks without them noticing. And when they finally do notice... The vengeance is always extra special. Shapeshifters are another one. Amazing how consistantly you can get your bad guys to spy on and harrangue the party by utilizing a shapeshifter.

And those are valid methods for the return. I'm more looking for how does the villain appear to die or consistently escape, but survive?

Say they gun the badguy down, he appears dead. What brings him back next time? As he's dying he triggers a smoke bomb and teleports. Or soul transfer into a clone. Some kind of delayed regeneration or reanimation or resurrection power, the multiple lives super power, etc.

The group thinks he's dead or he makes a miraculous escape. How?

I think the large number of Races and R.C.C.'s with an innate invisibility or natural low-level-magic which easially included invisibility is part of it.

multiple beings (instead of multiple lives) is very useful for this ruse. he always sends in a duplicate while himself remaining close by. when it seems like the battle is lost, drop a smoke grenade and the original being removes the copy from existance. Like teleporting away but the original copy who's waiting in the wings typically isnt as beholden to his place within the initiative order if nobody knows he's nearby. Copy can be resummoned in perfect condition after a brief delay.

Intangible characters can play dead even if they're feelin just peachy. Unless your party likes to 'loot the body' a lot... They can also sink into the ground or hide within a tree or a wall the second the grenade goes off at his feet, simulating having been blown to bits.

The villain's immortality is tied to an object (rune weapon, magic ring, ducks' egg, etc.) - destroy it, and kill the foe once and for all.

Thanks for the ideas!

doesn't even need to be copies/clones.. could just be designated successors taking up the identity.

Variation on theme here I used previously in PF
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=155988
Fifth entry down is the tale of Slyestria the Unknown
(I hate to cross link, but long post is long)

Avatar Stand-in (remote operated robot, maybe AI), body double/decoy, Illusion (tech or "power"), Alternate Universe Version who has traveled dimensions, Time Slip Spell

I like the writing style. I had actually come up with a similar villain idea after reading the living rune weapons in one of the Rifters. But I decided that dealing with a rune weapon that can possess people could be problematic and disruptive to a campaign in Rifts so I have yet to throw it at the players. Instead using the rune weapon as a recurring NPC who the players don't yet realize is the same person because the host-bodies keep changing. At some point they might cross the NPC and then it may take a form of cat and mouse and revenge against the party. We'll see.

Thanks


Have fun. It can be a blast. Assuming your party is interested in the detective work that is.

We'll see. They tend to be all about shooting all things.

I don't do it.
If the villain dies, fair and square... it's just another NPC.
The closest I came was a mage who used the Doppleganger: Superior spell.

Agreed. I'm just trying to build a villain with several ways to escape while the characters can be deluded into thinking he's dead so he can be a recurring thorn in their sides. Without doing something that would make the rules lawyer (admittedly less so in Rifts than D&D) lose his mind.

I like using a Dimension-Hopping, (HU-2E) Immortal Necromancer, bent on learning all spells/rituals of the various Necro-related Dark Arts, including the M.C.C. specific spells/rituals. Stopping short of Demon/Pact Magic and any other magic (spell, ritual or item) that could, just by use, force subservience. Though, allowing for Herbology, the making of wands, staffs and other items related to Necro-Magic, Rift & Ley Line Magic and Temporal Magic.
Unknown by the Players/Characters, there really is no grand plan/scheme/evil plot, past "What would you do if you lived for who-knows-how-long, did not age or "die", knew not why, but Death Magic?".

As for Super Powers and other abilities beyond that, I go with Immovability (PU1, pg. 31), Power Touch (PU1, pg. 81; short the glowing hands/arms), Focused Touch (PU3, pg. 14) and the Power Category-Specific Mega-Hero Option of Magic (Rifter #37, pg. 27).



Cr'Imson

That's fair.
Of course, GMs who won't let an NPC die caused me to start beheading anything resembling a GMPC or "important" villain with pretty much every character I play.
It causes some frustration, I suppose, but... whatever.

Have the NPC know Chi magic and make use of the Chi Clone spell. The spell creates an almost exact duplicate of the caster, with the only exceptions being Chi and PPE. The caster's Chi is transferred to the clone and the mage gets to decide how much PPE to place into the clone.

Alternatively you could have the NPC be a negative Chi master and at/near the moment of death have their spirit leave their body, and become an undead immortal in the process.

I generally dislike "Immortal" Villains, both as a GM and a player. So usually I have them come back by having them run away whenever they might be in danger of dying.

If the campaign I am running does need that reoccurring villain to function, then I usually make the villain "immortal" by having it be an organization.

Running away shouldn't be in every character's psychological make-up.

I villain type I once used was the Cadaver Corpse/Ghoul found in one of the rifters.
Basically it's and undead that was killed by an Earth Animal (including dinosaurs) and can only die when said animal dies.

Harassed the party until one day he never came back.

I dont like having villains die and come back.
If I want them around again and again then I have the PC's take out their underlings and never get the chance to stop the Big Bad.

I think it, like most things, is good if used in moderation. If all of your villains come back from the dead over and over then it gets ridiculous.

I created a villain right after Conversion Book 1 came out with super powers. The players killed her pretty early on, I still needed the character for the story so I added multiple lives to her and took it from there. Now this became pretty interesting after a while and we also played it for laughs a few times. Now I did this once, and players were fine with it, if I did it every campaign they would have gotten bored.

I think the disposable henchman is a better way of advancing the story then the immortal villain unless it is part of the character. The villain I loved using for more then a decade was Ahriman from Pantheons. This was a villain they could never kill, no matter how hard they tried. The best they could do was keep him inprissoned.

This is the big thing with a recurring villain.
They need to be done with care.
Done right, they add to a game... done poorly they take away from it.
The biggest issue I find is that you need to carefully construct the villain in advance. This way, you know exactly what they can and more importantly can not do and how they will be recurring. This means that if the party does find a way to beat them that defeats what ever the villains shtick is, that the villain will stay beaten. This care turns them from "GM fiat/railroading" into "just another part of the story"

I actually disagree with this. I frequently leave loose plot threads, like these, in my games that I can use later. Some of my players favorite villains were ones I created years after they first encountered some of his minions or victims. It is harder to create a villain in what amounts to the middle of his story, and you do have to be careful, but you can reverse engineer a truly effective and interesting villain from things that have already happened.

Oh you can create a villain on the fly certainly.
What I think you should never do though is create one that is "immortal" with out careful work on it before you introduce them. You can even introduce them late in the game to tie a bunch of loose threads together into their plot or what have you. But what ever it is that you plan on using to make them "immortal"? That needs to be carefully worked out in advance so that when they 'cheat death' it isn't just the GM screwing with the players via fiat but an actual already existent part of the character.

Thus I would say that what your describing isn't an "immortal" villain anyway. You are talking about a mastermind. Which is something totally different. The mastermind can show up at anytime and be revealed to be the true source of any number of previous events... that's how masterminds work after all. But if your players kill Captain Cruel in a session, simply having him show up six months later with no explanation of how is playing dirty pool with the players. Now if they don't see the body? That's just genre not fiat. But if the martial artist cuts off his head, and then the mage cremates them separately? Then simply retroactively saying "well that didn't work...because stuff" isn't fair. But on the other hand if when you create Captain Cruel you note that he is cruel because the cruelty is the price he pays for the soul pact he made with the demon Bth'x'rexx and that therefore as long as his left pinkie (which was cut off in the ritual) back at his fortress is intact it will regrow him a new body if the old one is destroyed? THAT is fair. After all, just because they thought they killed him... they didn't really, and more importantly they didn't because of a reason that was already in game. Now granted, it is possible to retroactively add such a pact and all. But it needs to be done with care because what ever you add on later needs to not conflict with anything that the players did before or you are once again undermining the players by railroading them into a failure...even if they did the right things at the time.