Every time people lament changes to the lore that amount to “not every member of species X is irredeemably evil” and claim the game is removing villains from it, I think how villains of so-caleld evil species fall into two cathegories: a) bland and boring and b)have something else, unrelated to their species going on for them, that makes them interesting.
I feel like the bigger reason to have evil races is to have a more or less ever present challenge and point of conflict. For instance, the underdark is horrible place to be, in large part due to the drow. Their presence and general alignment of evil makes the setting dangerous and interesting. Is this town safe? Have the drow been messing about assassinating local leaders? Should we help this group by liberating them from slavery from the drow?
It’s almost like their species is in of itself a character, with this species sized character being evil. Having an entire species be generally evil gives the world more scale than a single evil character would. But yes, an individual villain needs more than just their evil race to be interesting.
But the reason the drow are evil is primarily because of the Spider god Lolth, not because they’re Drow. Drow free from Lolth aren’t necessarily evil.
Absolutely. But I wasn’t talking about the lore reason why they’re generally evil.
Evil races give someone the PCs don’t have to feel bad about killing. Obviously depends on your party, but if they befriend the hungry wolf pack and negotiate with the bandits, then a band of definitely evil goblins gives the barbarian something to smash without worrying if they’re killing little Timmy’s dad.
Edited to add: And if “he’s an evil race” is your only reason for them being a major villain, that’s bad storytelling. About as bad as “yes they’re going to help you because they’re good,” and not for some kind of benefit to them, monetary or spiritual or whatever.
If you can kill something without feeling bad because of its race, that’s fucked up. A group of goblin bandits can be fun, but they’re villains because of the bandit thing, not the goblin thing. Why should a group defined by plundering travelers be more acceptable than a group defined by being short with green skin?
That said, the undead are, more often than not, fair game. Undead are a mockery of the life that came before and a defilement of their corpse, so killing them is a way of honouring the dead.
Can confirm, I run a LOT of dragons and the interesting dragon villains are generally about finding unique takes on their common traits or villains because of their response to their circumstances rather than pure random villainy. We’ve got the red dragon who self-perpetuates her own cycle of violence, we’ve got the black dragon who’s mentally broken because their worldview of being entitled to everything due to their strength collapsed after they lost a territorial struggle, we’ve got the emerald dragon who’s desire not to be bothered by their humanoid allies led them to neglect their promises, we’ve got the silver dragon who loved her friends so much she was willing to fall into necromancy to try and undo their deaths.
Also we have That Bastard With Eight Player Kills.
That said, always remember: To become cliche, something needs to work super well first- so well that everyone does it. It only crosses from great into cliche if everyone does it and forgets why and how it worked in the first place.
Oh, please do tell the story of That Bastards With Eight Player Kills
Young Black Dragon called Gendridd, wasn’t meant to be a major obstacle, his personally is that he’s evil mostly just because he’s having a fantastic time being an asshole and constantly taunting people (to the extent that the first and so far only lair effect he’s got is the ability to heckle people at any location in the lair). Anyways he was fully aware that he’d get one-rounded trying to fight a party of four level 7 PCs, so instead of fighting them stole the party’s unattended bags and sat in a tree to taunt them about it before flying off (he did not consider this might lead to fighting them anyway).
The party’s plan was to ambush him in his own territory, so their plan was to cut through some of the most overgrown parts of the swamp to get behind his lair and set up an ambush, instead of confronting any of his minions. However, between several spellcaster party members who had both completely dumped their strength/dexterity and couldn’t cast spells while drowning, party members wearing full heavy armour that weighed them down significantly, and bad rolls, then two of them fell into a bog, and in trying to rescue them the others also fell in and they all drowned, resulting in the first TPK.
Obviously that wasn’t a super satisfying ending, so for closure I offered to run a oneshot with a level 5 party in Gendridd’s lair, sent to avenge the original party, on condition that I wouldn’t hold back with enemy strategy and tactics (no bullshit with magic, just good enemy postioning, balanced teams that had lots of options in fights, and had actual battle plans). They made it through most of the dungeon pretty well, while constantly trading off verbal barbs with Gendridd who basically ran a snarky sports commentary the entire way through, letting them know how eager he was to crush them when they made it to HIS big boss chamber. Anyways they reached the outside of the chamber and they were just preparing to fight the skeletons who were guarding his door when he jumped out of an acid river behind them and got a Surprise Round, hitting two of them with a breath weapon and then rolling good enough initiative to knock out their fragile backline casters.
After that then he’s become popular/respected enough to get Promoted To NPC.
TLDR: First wipe due to RNGiamat cursing the d20 and a party badly suited to dealing with falling in a bog. Second wipe because Gendridd employed the secret chromatic dragon art of ‘lying to people’.
