When is enough, enough!!??

[garhkal]

Got an email from a buddy, who is starting his foray into gming, though more with vampire than anything else (he is doing a mixed vamp mage game from WOD fame).. He has an interesting question, but for a change, i thought i would put it here to see what you all think.

OK. We all know one of the big ways to set the stage for the pcs to have a nemisis, is to have said BBEG/nemisis find and fight the party, beating them down with ease. Leaving them broken, while going off muttering "they are not worth his time to kill" etc.
Then they beaf up, and come back at him at a later date. But his question, is what if they go back, and get beaten down a second time? A third time?
When does (or would) it be worth his time to do more than just 'whop their collective' butts and leave them, to come back later??

Me i would think, after the third time. What say you?
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Endwyn]

When a question like this comes up I always think about Buffy. (I hope you watch that show. If not, shame on you!) Anyways, the best conflicts are love/hate. When the character is torn between hat needs to be done and what they want to do. (Buffy vs. Angel season) Buffy should have been able to kick Angel's @$$, but she didn't want to hurt/kill him; so she was always holding back. Top that with the emptional mess she was not being able to focus.....

As far as how many time the villian will show up and hurt the PC's before they really feel like squashing them? It depends on the villian. When the villian wants or needs something from the PC's they are much more patient than say, when the PC's are useless nuecensess. Every villian should have a motivational interaction with the PC's. Glory wanted the key, only Buffy knew where the key was, Glory couldn't find it without Buffy; hence the Ex-god never squished her no matter how much she wanted too.

As a side note, as a player or a PC, I would never just walk into a second fight with the villian unless I had a plan and really thought we truely had the upper hand or it needed to be done in defense of a greater cause.

If you friend provides motivation behind the PC's / villians the conflicts will mean more and extend throughout the plot without feeling forced. I mean, the basic Xavier / Magneto premise is they used to be close friends who had a falling out over mutants place in society. They're still friends and care about each other.... they just get in each other's way and sometimes have to act against each other.
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Luke, I am your father.
That's impossible!
And Leia is your sister!
That's improbable?
And the Empire will be destroyed by..EWOKS!
That's...highly unlikely.
The Force? Bacteria called midichlorians.
If you don’t take this seriously I'm out.

[Ray]

Depends on how lazy the villian is. And how bloody he wants his hands.

'Course, if he were really smart, he'd then have his underlings kill them.

I'm reminded of a scene from "Once Upon A Time In Mexico", when Billy (Played by Mickey Rourke), simply stated, "I... I don't feel like killing him." Then hands his gun to a mook who then promptly shoots them.

They may be villians, but even the worst of them have off days and don't want to kill all the time. It gets monotomous after awhile.

So, it really depends on how the Villian is feeling at the time. If his stocks have come up, he just got paid by the Emperor, and he just got some new Twi'Lek slave girls, he isn't going to feel like killing anyone (Unless that's his bag, to prepare for said slave girls.).

If nothing's going right, he just got the bill for all those Probe Droids he's sent helter-skelter out all over the universe, and the boss is screaming at him every twenty minutes for a "No-Progress-Report", then killing some do-gooders is just what the doctor ordered. Or, would have been, if he hadn't already shot the doctor in a fit of rage. Stupid protective vests, the doctor lived...

[KageRyu]

I agree with others. It depends a lot on several factors: The villain himself, the villain's motivations and goals, the dynamic between villain and PCs, the overall plot, the alignment of the stars, etc...
In general, for the first few encounters if the players have grossly ,isjudged their chances of success, it's not so much that the villain will "beat them down and leave them" but that they will be given chances and oportunities possibly to withdraw from the fight. If it becomes clear to me the players aren't realizing the graveness of the situation, I may step things up a notch and have one maimed, or mortally wounded, or kill a trusted NPC companion to get the point across. If this still does not get through, the Villain will fight to take them out, but I generally asume that when a player falls (be it Incapacitated, or Mortally Wounded) the only concern of the villain is he is out of the fight. Rarely do I have villains wander the battlefield putting shots into every body "just to make sure", instead, they are fallen, and thereby left for dead.
The other things I consider is where is the battle happening, and what are the villains goals at this location? If it is in his fortress, palace, on his ship, then he will fight to the end, and the PCs must try to withdraw if outmatched. If it is elsewhere, he will fight until all obstacles interfering with his goal are no longer a problem, and then he will go about his buisiness.
Only after sever successive encounters with the PCs where they have served to annoy him or foil his plans will he then try to make sure a PC is dead (whichever has annoyed him most).
After all consider how easily Vader could have killed Solo on Bespin, but didn't, and Solo had certainly annoyed and thwarted many of Vader's plans.
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[Hellcat]

Personally, I'm more of the mind that if Mr Big beats the living daylights out of the PCs then even if they do come after him again he's not going to give them a second thought, and their probably going to be less likely to go after someone who, in the first place, hunted them down just to beat them up. But if they beat the **************** out of him and let him live, he's gonna be more likely to go after them.
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FLUFFY for President!!!!

Wanted Poster

[garhkal]

As i posted this on several forums, and 2 of them, so far have had the same request for more info on the nemesis, i will email the guy back and get it.... Hope to have it bby tomorrow evening... (guam time)
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[garhkal]

Finally got the reply. What he was looking to do for the NPC in qyestion (remember it is a vampire game), was have an old / low gen vamp, of the Gangrel clan, who has a strange mentality when he awakes. For X time he will act like a kitten, playing with his food (possibily the pcs!!), but eventually goes into his normal mode, which is to be the best survivor around.....
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Jedi Skyler]

Well, this will still depend on the relationship between the nemesis and the party. Take Batman/Joker. There have been plenty of times the Joker could have offed Batman if he'd really wanted to. But even though he really enjoys trying to kill Batman, he's come out and admitted that he'd be crushed if it actually happened; ESPECIALLY if someone else got the pleasure of killing Batman. It ALL comes down to the relationships.

[garhkal]

I have not spoken to him since. So do not know what the pc/npc relationshop would be...
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Jedi Skyler]

And it might have nothing at all to do with relationships. It could simply be the villian's ego: "No one but me gets the pleasure of killing this worthless... thing. It will be in my timing..."

[scott2978]

Some villans might even ENJOY beating down the PC's. Maybe he lets them live just so they can come back and give him the pleasure of beating them down again? Maybe it makes him feel superior to give others the smackdown. Maybe it makes him more powerful somehow to beat others down. Maybe he thinks that the PCs will turn to his side if they get beat by him enough times, and maybe that's really why he lets them live- he wants to turn them.

Just some ideas.

[Demona]

And some villians are all about power. If they kill them, then the bad guy doesn't have anyone to fear him. It is scarrier for the villian to taunt and stalk rather then kill. But then that all depends on how demented and weird you want your villian. Obviously he is a bad guy, and there are all kinds of different bad guys. Like one bad guy might get his jollies by stalking players and writing in the captians quarters "I see you" And following them spaceport to spaceport till the players find him and dispatch him in a proper way. Then the players are on their toes and always looking behind them looking for someone they have no idea who or what they are. All bad guys don't have to be the big brutal "Me kill rebels"

Another good clue to enough being enough is when the players just aren't feeling it anymore. If the players start really hating every encounter with a baddie and just groan and complain about it...it might be a good time to start planning a death or disappearance scene.
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So uh...I rolled a 1 on the wild die...is that good?

[garhkal]

Got some more word back from my friend.. Hope it can answer some of the questions that came up..

Relationship: Unknown as to what 'style' it would be. but it is described as "for X number of months, while the elder gangrel is awake, he will regard the pcs (and any other vampires he encounters) as prey but through the eyes of a kitten (meaning he plays with them before killing).
He enjoys stalking and making 'hit n fade' style attacks, and then goes into 'grooming'. Basically he will toy with them, smacking them down.
After X number of months has passed, he goes to survivor mode: meaning if it threatens him, he dispaches it post haste.

Ego... Hmm not sure how it would be here. Will have to ask him about that.

Enjoyment... see ego.

Power. umm. i would place that in ego.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Jedi Skyler]

[Darius]

With it being a vampire game, the villain may be more woried about the Prince (or whoever else is in charge). He can probably get away with whipping the players behinds but cant get away with killing them. He would have to frame them for something first to convince the other elders that he did the right thing in killing them.
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oops - i didnt mean to make it go off