How would you make a true neutral BBEG?
>>45634292
BBNG*
>>45634292
If they have animal level intelligence and do evil BBEG things for the sole motivation of survival. I.e. like it was in Moby Dick.
>>45634292
You don't
It's called Big Bad Evil Guy for a reason.
Under pressure from the religious faction of people, the government institutes prohibition. Your tavern is now a criminal enterprise.
Make a construct which was programmed to do a particular task and does not have the emotional capacity to understand the moral ramifications of its actions.
![1364fdd0b1353bb0f9cbe499f4c6d867[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/0KdLjCJ.jpg "1364fdd0b1353bb0f9cbe499f4c6d867[1].jpg")
>>45634292
1. A force of nature that applies no thought to it's actions, like a Godzilla tier monster or some sort of zerg like plague. It's a thing that can be fought (unlike say, a Tornado) but has no motivation beyond survive and no concept of good or evil
2. A Druid, Mage, Philosopher or other such sort who believes it is necessary and their duty to maintain the universe into a cosmic balance between good and evil. And guess what? Shit's been altogether too nice lately, so it's time to burn down some orphanages.
3. Some sort of utterly alien or elder god like entity whose motives are completely inscrutable, and cannot be understood by mortality. These entities may have cults or servants that try to serve the entity, but in reality it finds them irrelevant or doesn't notice them at all.
A good example that sort of fits under ALL THREE of these umbrella's is this magnificent motherfucker right here, Grigori from Dragons Dogma. Explaining why is spoilers heavy.
>>45634328
BING (Big Indiferent Neutral Guy)
>>45634410
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXuZF-fF2-g
Spoilers, but such a great character
>>45634292
Only way to do it is to make them one of those balence of good and evil faggots that are only not evil because people have a boner for mordikime.
>>45634426
Hopefully this catches on
Some kind of outsider/fucked up humanoid who believes passion and emotion to be the cause of all suffering, thus he attempts to convert everyone to absolute neutrality, his conversion method leaves people as emotionless automatons, cold, uncaring cogs in a 'perfect' world.
tl;dr go read Brave New World
Guy who raids another kingdom because his lands were cursed by some dick wizard for no good reason. Crops won't grow and live stock wither and die. His people will starve, because no one else will trade in any meaningful quantity or except them as refugees because they are afraid the curse will pass on to them.
The other group are trying to do thing because they were told it will save the world, you were told it will bring catastrophic doom
>>45634410
>Shit's been altogether too nice lately, so it's time to burn down some orphanages.
I fucking kek'd
>>45634410
Godzilla has motivation.
To wreck the shit of all other monsters (except Anguirus because he's chill).
Make it a force of nature
>>45634292
Someone who opposes the party for political or ideological reasons. The invading king is not an evil man, but one who is attempting to expand his nation's influence and size. He doesn't cause wanton destruction, but takes opportunities as they arise.
>>45634292
Wizards with far too much power and time and no sense of scale.
You want some type of automaton like a Rubric Marine. They simply do what they are told without any kind of thought or emotion.
>>45634292
A druid eco-terrorist burning down the city and destroying over-developed civilized lands to re-claim for the wild forest at the cost of "innocent" people.
>Have freaky plants take over city
>plant zombies
>Urban folk now have to get accustomed to jungle combat
>fun to be had.
>>45634523
>implying a push for order and stability at any cost isn't Lawful as fuck
>>45634591
>Golden Sun
>>45636153
If I rape and murder people can I still claim neutrality as long as I say I did it for the trees?
Planescape: Torment had a well done neutral villian, he just wanted the Nameless One to fuck off.
Buddhism is pretty much True Neutral: The Religion.
What's more neutral than detachment from everything?Buddha is the BBEG because causing a stop to the cycle of samsara by enlightening everything so that they wouldn't reincarnate would, logically, bring an end to all life, since all life is reincarnated
>>45636391
Dude this is fucking brilliant
>>45634531
And your party will now try to cure the land and fight the wizard, who is now your bbeg.
>>45636391
so good. hello next planescape campaign.
thread this with dead gods and holy shit.
>>45636391
Arcanum?
>>45636391
I think Taoism would be more Neutral with its rejection of Good and Evil as dual values. Buddhism has the whole merit making process to net good karma. Forms of Mahayana are focused on compassion and selfless love in order to achieve enlightenment, or theories that everyone is a Buddha already and needs to realize it. It's pretty Good in terms of alignment.
>>45634405
Wouldnt that just be lawful neutral?
>>45634426
My first BING will be named Crosby.
>>45636671
Godfuckingdamnit anon
>>45634292
>An incredibly gigantic transdimensional monster, something akin to a Lovecraftian Elder God, rampages cities and the countryland, screaming in an abominable alien language, causing havoc with its psychic powers and inmense strength. Destroying everything, killing people and making those that do survive mentally insane.
>Years pass, humanity's last hope relies on a team of brave men and women with different expertieses in science, weaponry and ancient magic that build a machine to destroy him, or at least banish him to another dimension.
>They managed to temporaraly trap the beast in some sort of canyon or gorge, and just as they are about to turn on the machine, two more beings like the first appear, but four to five times more gigantic and menacing.
>The monster is actually juat a lost toddler of a sapient but peaceful transdimensional gigantic race, his parents appear a few years later to pick him up. The team somehow understand how its parents scold it for running off and something equivalent to "I turn around for 5 minutes and you disappear again to make such a mess"
>Parents use their powers to revert the worldwide destruction and deaths their kid's tantrums caused to just before it appeared, but they don't wipe the people's memories because they consider that humans don't have enough mental capacity to have memories in the first place.
>Suddenly on the evening news you see a special report on a worldwide mental insanity epidemic, millions of people had to be placed in mental hospitals because of constant horrifiying nightmares, claiming to have surived an attack by a gigantic space monster, where 90% of the population died, everyone from common folk to elite government members are affected
>You are glad that you, your family and friends have not been affected, but you worry about your roommate that just cries day and night, afraid to sleep because of nightmares, always screaming that you were dead, that everyone you both know were dead.
>>45634292
This is so damn contradictory in the DnD rules. Moral relativity does not exist - it doesn't matter whether you're pro or against guns or abortion or whatever, one of those things is Good and the other is Evil. Viewpoints and culture do not matter at all.
But having low intelligence excuses you from all Evil. This rule must have been created by those pussy-ass Good gods. They know they'd instantly lose if all the misery from natural disasters and retarded accidents counted toward Evil. Always tryin' to keep the bad man down.
>>45636612
The problem is Taoism places heavy emphasis on ideas such as filial piety, self improvement for its own sake, etc.
Bhuddism meanwhile is "life is suffering, and the best way to escape it is to completely separate yourself from the world
The god/godess that rules over weather just leaves winter on.
Forever
When questioned she answers that she doesn't give a fuck and is tired of changing season, goes to take a big nap.
Now it's up to our heroes to gain enough power to wake up a god and tell it to do it's job.
>>45636739
damn thats a heck of a setting right there
>>45636746
Ignorance and relativity are different concepts.
You cannot be blamed for the evil you had no reasonable ability to foresee or avoid, but it remains evil.
On topic, a neutral villain needs to have a goal and achieve it at all costs.
Revenge for example is a good neutral motive. An evil being out for vengance will destroy all in its path. The neutral villian would be the kind to say "I have no quarrel with you." as he slaughters the king's guard on the way to end the dynasty that killed his family.
Try building a balanced character and giving him a goal directly against the party.
An alienist who seeks to destroy the barrier to the far realm before we grow too soft to survive their inevitable invasion.
The bastard son of the old elf king, who leads a host of goblinoids to retake his rightful throne.
An bard who seeks to learn the score of the universe, so he can retune it to beauty and elegance (Collateral damage non-withstanding)
>>45636671
Crosby practices Song Magic purely for the love of the art. He intends to sing the ultimate Songs, being the greatest Bard of the Land. However, as he sings songs of greater and greater power, reality begins to warp and unfold at the tower of Crosby. Despite all manner of pleas and threats, he refuses to stop his singing as it is his one true dream.
The party must stop him before he sings the Song Which Will End All Things.
>>45636306
I don't recall the rape part, man....
>>45636809
>The problem is Taoism places heavy emphasis on ideas such as filial piety, self improvement for its own sake, etc.
I think this is created by its intertwining with Confucianism. If you strip core Taoism belief from it (i.e. just go by the traditional texts) and keep the cosmology and magical technologies, you would have a pretty neat BING.
On the other hand, completely separating oneself from the world is a minority view within Buddhism as a solution suffering and I think it gets misinterpreted. Even at its most basic level, Buddhism espouses the Eight fold path of rightful conduct. The Buddha found the ascetic lifestyle flawed as much as a self indulgent one and spoke of the Middle Way. I don't think any religion teach one to completely detach from the world would have much popularity.
![220px-YesMan2008poster[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/yhkfEVf.jpg "220px-YesMan2008poster[1].jpg")
>someone asks him to destroy the world
>"ok bro"
>>45635897
He's also friends with Mothra and was with Rodan (but Rodan is dead, sadly).
>>45634292
Power without Ideology. Their strength insulates them from what suffering or celebration they leave in their wake, order grants them no significant leverage, and chaos is inconsequential noise. They need no allies, so they need not be kind. They need no slaves, so they need not be cruel. Their position of strength gives them perspective, and from that perspective they see problems that the weak take as the workings of the world. With the conviction we might have to correct a crooked painting, they might smash a dam to restore the flow of a river. Where we would damp a fire that was burning too hot, they would break the temples for a god with too great a following. There is no ideal cycle or balance to achieve, but there is a way they want the world to be and all those between the current state of things and what they desire are as inconsequential as the grass.
Their power could be personal might, an army with perfect loyalty, wondrous artifacts, spirits of nature, or the underlying machinery of the universe itself, anything so long as it is great and achieving it requires no introspection or great effort of will.
>>45636870
Thank you.
>>45636739
>Epilogue: The team that built the machine and the government people behind them are the people that know the most about the incident, they too have constant nightmares and insanity, but because the parents reverted everything, the machine and its blueprints are gone, all photos and videos of the attacks are gone, so they form a secret society of elite survivors to rebuild the machine as a "just in case".
>>45634292
Someone who wants to eliminate the ideas of good and evil from every existing culture and reduce all life to animal-level survival and reactionary intelligence.
>>45637518
So your average relativist?
Make him a guy in some sort of important position whose mere existence is causing some kind of crisis. It could be because of political, magical, legal, divine reasons, whatever.
The party needs to kill him or remove him, etc, but naturally he just wants to live.
If you're in a group that enjoys moral ambiguity then you can probably pressure them big time about their choice whether or not to kill a probably-innocent dude in order to avert disaster.
>>45636671hes only neutral to the males
>>45635961
Putin pls go.
>>45634292
Just put their goals at odds with the party's. If the party is lawful good, they'll probably have to be somewhat misguided, but you could still make a solid antagonist.
Make a bureaucrat who pushes to abolish the Adventurer's Guild. A king letting his people starve as he puts all of the kingdom's resources into a project that will save the world, refusing to hear out any alternative solutions.
>>45636621
No. A creature has to choose to be lawful, or they have to struggle with the ramifications of lawful actions. A construct, incapable of rational thought, can not behave lawfully; they merely obey the instructions of its creator, an entirely Neutral existence.
>>45634426
BANG: Big Ambivalent Neutral Guy
>>45634337
/thread
>>45634410
Grigori is lawful evil as fuck, he literally cannot disobey the Seneschal's order to make a new Arisen to take his place on the throne.
>>45637138
He's like a reluctant ally of Mothra sometimes, they aren't bros like he is with Anguirus. And Rodan usually been a rival to godzilla and when Mothra approached both of them to get them to team up to save the earth from Ghidora they were both like "firstly fuck the humans, secondly this guy is a total cocksucker and ima beat his ass so gtfo".
Of course much later Rodan gives his life force to godzilla to help him beat mechagodzilla 2 because fuck humans.
A group of druids that want to keep everything in perfect balance, and the only way to do it is to return the land back to nature
>>45634337
Ahab was the real monster.
>>45638382
if he literally cannot disobey he is not evil
good and evil are always a matter of CHOICE
>>45634328
Oh man, if I ever run a goofy everyone-has-music-powers game, I'm totally gonna make BBNG the villains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bGhAsdXc6M
The "laws of nature" type are pretty easy to be opponents to a civilized party.
The "balance in all things" types are the logical foe to any extremely good or extremely evil party.
But the true true neutrals, the apathetics? Those who don't feel strongly about anything and are completely unmoved by anything that doesn't concern themselves?
They become antagonists when something they have becomes important to your party. When evil dragons are burning down villages and the BBNG is sitting in his castle holding the orb of dragon control (that he isn't using) and refusing to talk to the PCs as he's busy writing a book or something, they will break into his house and try to kill him.
>>45634410
>Implying Tornados can't be fought
>>45634292
Instead of an Elder God whose motivation cannot be comprehended by humanity, what if the BING is just Some Guy?
Some Guy isn't in charge. He receives his instructions from the Evil Council of Vagueness, who have a vague, evil goal in mind. The problem is, they suck at both planning and putting said plan into motion. Their nefarious plots have been stopped one too many times, so they got Guy. Guy doesn't have any special powers or abilities, but he's a good planner and manager. The council is confident that he can direct the evil cultists to succesfully gather whatever McGuffins and perform the rituals are necessary to make the scheme a success.
Some Guy isn't a vicious or sadistic person. He's not the type to harm others if it's not necessary. The list of things he's supposed to gather says "virgin blood", but you can get that just as easy from a fake blood drive as you can get from serial killing. On the other hand, Guy isn't a particularily moral or upstanding person either. He doesn't go out of his way to help others and doesn't partake in charity if it inconviences him. Sure, he could have timed those explosives so that that civilian bus wasn't caught in the fireball, but then there'd been a chance that the police could have caught up with the escape vehicle, and he couldn't allow that, right.
Some Guy doesn't hate the adventurers coming to stop him. He's not invested in the evil plan, in fact, he doesn't even know what the end goal of it is supposed to be. He doesn't care to know. It's a job. The adventurers are nothing more to him than additional obstacles to overcome or tools to use when convenient. If they were to walk away from this conflict, he'd never waste another thought on them again.
Some Guy doesn't think about his job when he's off the clock. He works overtime, but only when the workload requires it and only because it's paid.
Some Guy has never killed anyone. Not with his own two hands. He would, if the choice was him or them.
>>45634292
True neutral is tough, the alignment is just too wishy-washy.
Villains tend to be people who fall to extremes, else wise they'd be more normal Tha villainous.
Lawful Neutral on the other hand, now there's some seriously good evil fertilizer.
>>45641138
I fucking love /k/ so much.
>>45636185
tfw cartridge battery died today.
>>45634292
A politician/noble looking to unite the world to bring peace to it, but doing so in unsavory ways.
>>45636365
As well as Kreia in KoToR 2 because the two had literally the same plot.
One word:
Harpers.
>>45644735
Ok so maybe I'm not as knowledgeable on the subject as I thought, or maybe they've just changed a bunch since second/third ed. Once upon a time though, or so I'm told, their main job was to ensure the status quo. They would just as readily overthrow the evil overlord poised to throw the kingdom into everlasting darkness as the Benevolent King who would bring true peace and stability to the land. As "villians", that pretty much means they will fuck you up just because you are good at your job.
As far as motivations though, WHY they want to maintain the status quo. I haven't really heard anything compelling.
>>45645644
>Muh balance
>>45634292
My last game didn't have alignments but the chief antagonist/BBEG/BBNG was the shaman of a tribe of mostly irrelevant tundra peoples who stumbled across an enormously powerful artifact that he barely understood, and could scarely be dissuaded from using it to bring his people back into the sun.
He wasn't even evil, just kind of stupid and overly optimistic about unleashing something absurdly dangerous.
>>45638967
MY BROTHER FROM A DUSKY SKINNED MATRON
>>45634292
Evil is subjective. Make them Amoral, rather than Immoral. Then make their motivation for dong bad things a "greater good" justification. E.G. they'll kill six people in cold blood to keep their plans secret, because they truly believe that their plan will lead to a better world for everybody. Also, make them feel guilt for their actions (despite seeing them as necessary) and accept the fact that, once their plan is done and the world is changed, they're going to spend their rest of their life in prison, or be sentenced to death.
