Most Successful Opposition

[Ichabod]

In an interest in trying to get away from rules discussion, a thought came to me of something that might be interesting.

What have people found to be the most successful antagonists in their games? By successful, I mean enjoyable rather than effective. I kind of have in mind stuff the party would fight, but I suppose it could be something else.

For different level groups? (Not sure how to best break these out, though 6th level and 10th level tend to be big power pushes between the stat climbs and typically gaining back to back feats.)

In our campaign, my favorite were giants (around average party level of 8, I believe). Likely, too often, *we* have stuff that's immune to sneak attacks (and poisons) making the party too dependent upon one character. The (few) giant battles had a lot of different stuff used by the party with a solid, hard to handle enemy.

 

[Supplement Four]

It's hard for me to comment, since I haven't quite had my first game yet (next weekend!!), but I am looking through the 1-3 level module, at the mountain lion that attacks the group...and then I look at the no armor and the 9 HP of the first PC I rolled up the other day...and I've decided that I'm going to give who ever gets attacked by the lion (he tries to pick off the last in line) two checks. One for Listen and one for Spot, in order to give them a chance before this lion tears 'em up.

It's going to be brutal.

Of course, a real lion would be pretty damn scary, and the Conan tales are filled with stories where normal beasts give Conan a challenge.

This will be no different.

 

[Terrible Tim]

I haven't GM'ed in years, but I always like a reaccurring bad guy. Like underworld boss, gang leader or an enemy which is hard to stop/kill and turns up on occassions to annoy the party. A large or "evil" organisation also works well.

You can play on the party's paranoia with a reaccurring villian and it is also fun for you the GM.

Just my thoughts,
TT.

 

[Style]

This idea is one I've used in D&D style campaigns. I have yet to try it in Conan:

I've always been a fan of a rival party of heroes. Give them the same number of PCs, same level, and you could even have a similar party make up (but that's not required). It's good to have them dead even in power. Have there be a strong personality clash between the groups (having them led by an arrogant, "holier than though" paladin works nicely), so that there is a natural dislike between them. However, like the PCs, they're good guys, so they shouldn't be directly fighting, out to kill each other. Of course, you have to have at least one scene where they're in a tavern, well in their cups, tempers are flaring, and the threat of a (non-lethal) bar room brawl is thick in the air.

They should be recurring NPCs, turning up to annoy the PCs or steal their glory. Speaking of which, you'll want to give them both common quests at least once. I would work it so that during the climax of such a quest, the rivals show up, and there are tense moments where they must decide if they will ally verses a common enemy, or turn it into a three way fight. Regardless of their decision to fight together or against each other, during the fighting I'd have one of the rivals attempt to make off with the treasure, adding a "race for the golden cup" to the chaos of the battle field.

Good times.

 

[flatscan]

One of my favorite encounters to run was from an adventure in Signs & Portents. Big climactic encounter with a demon who could only be hurt by silver and fire and members of his cult (one of which was very formidable). The party was really challenged as their usual tactics didn't work on the demon and they had to keep the girl the cultists were planning on sacrificing alive. In the end, the Aesir Barbarian wielded a silver mace and the Cimmerian Barbarian used an improvised club with rags on fire against the demon, the Vendhyan fought the cult-leader, and the Brythunian thief avoided cultists and got the girl out of harms way.

Was good times.

 

[thelevitator]

I've always enjoyed opportunities where I could inject a moral dilemma into the situation.

One of my groups' favorites was when an outcast priest decided to take revenge on the village home of one of the PC's by raising the dead to attack the villagers. The moral dilemma is that the villagers were being attacked by their own formerly dead relatives and friends. And of course, the current priest of the church did not want the undead destroyed. He wanted them subdued so that they could be "cleansed" ritually and be returned to the earth without the curse of undeath upon them.

That of course made the adventure difficult for the party. Not only did some of the PC's actually have to face Grandma and Grandpa zombie, but they had to try and subdue them without destroying their bodies.

I had another similar campaign where the multiple serial murderers in a city were unwitting killers. A sorcerer wanted to take revenge on a rival sorcerer who had "sold out" and went to work for a local noble. So he used mind control to turn average citizens into cold-blooded killers and turn the city to chaos, ruining the "good" sorcerer's credibility. The first killer that the party caught nearly in the act was a 60 year old woman with a limp. It had some intrigue, some moral dilemmas, and a really great final act with the PC's eventually tracking the sorcerer to his hideout and taking on his hypnotized horde of villagers from a nearby hamlet. The party found a great way to bypass the mind-controlled villagers and take away the sorcerer's source of control, a staff with a crystal ball on it. They smashed the staff, and when the people snapped out of it, they turned on the sorcerer and tore him apart.

Of course, big frikkin' monsters make for great antagonists too! :twisted:

 

[Krushnak]

My favourite antagonist is a Demon Lord(or so the pc's think) called Anfauglir, looks like a chaos warrior in his black plate armour and cloak of human skin and he tricked/forced the pc's into serving him. they are all afraid of him but he hasnt once done anything to harm or hinder them, worst of all he's actually rather reasonable and even helped them out when they were trying to get a bane weapon created to use against him.

oh and also a fight against one of the Black Ones- vulnerable to silver and fire only, turned into a pretty funny fight with a couple of the pc's weilding fists full of silver and the others using brands from their fire.