I based a set of D&D villains around the six main stats called Virtues. (think Full Metal Alchemist sins, except Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, etc..) My favorite of the bunch was Charm. Her conceit was she could persuade, lie, cheat, change appearance, and manipulate the players pretty much however she wanted, but the second someone attacked her she would go down. I introduced her relatively early into the campaign, and I was a bit nervous because I was pretty upfront about her introduction. I didn't say it explicitly, but it was pretty obvious Charm was a Virtue from the offset. I thought "well, I like this character a lot, maybe I'll cheat it a little if I have to." Surprisingly, I never did.

In retrospect, I think the context of the Charm encounters was a huge boon. The party really only confronted her twice: the first time at a dinner party and the second at a war council, where leaders from various factions met to discuss retaking the main city for the finale of the campaign. Neither were explicitly combat scenarios, and both times it would have looked pretty bad for the party if they just up and killed Charm for apparently no reason. The end result was I had villain with only eight hit points to her name run around and torment my level 16 party unpunished for several sessions. Let me tell you, as a DM, that felt amazing.

To add onto this as a player perspective, Charm was immediately positioned in such a way that, in the social and emotional dynamics of the roleplay, she was untouchable.

Charms first introduction was as the foreign dignitary of a far off nation who we knew had secret ties to the Church. We were at a mansion dinner party held partially in our honor - we were in part invited directly by the King, who we were favored by and wanted favor from. Charms plus 1 at the party was our party leaders sister - they were good friends. This was all true the second time she appeared at the war council, which was not only an expressly political appearance but also one where she represented the nation from which we were trying to secure military aid from.

It didn't matter at any point that we could have rolled a few dice for an attack roll and destroyed her. To destroy Charm of the six virtues, we had to murder, in cold blood, someone who was well liked, well connected, and well loved by some of the npcs closest to the party.

The only way we defeated her was because when we threatened her, subtly, she tipped her hand. Charm openly threatened the party leader's sister, who from then on no longer believed in her. We came to the bargaining table with her and convinced her (with no deception!) she could leave the battle march and be done with us. And when she got on her boat to leave, as it left port, our Bard (independently of anyone) snuck onto the ship, snuck into her room, and killed her in her sleep. The only kill that character ever got in the entire three year campaign.

It was an extremely well executed factor of the game because it was essentially a social encounter Boss fight. We had to construct and push and change the context of the situation until we could kill her without everything else crumbling around us - personal relationships as well as political ones.

I should add, Bard character *chose* not to kill anyone. She would willingly torment enemies and assist the party in combat, but never did any killing herself. She only killed Charm after everything had been resolved and Charm had effectively exited the campaign. She would have gotten away scot-free if Bard hadn't decided to take action. It was a great moment, and as a DM I couldn't have asked for a better character death

Here's what the fight with Tenacity (Constitution) looked like:

That little red bar at the top is her health. I don't show specific numbers, but I like having the health bar available for players to see so they have a general sense of how wounded the enemy is. I believe for this fight I started Tenacity at 999 HP out of a possible 20,000.

I greatly enjoyed watching my players realize what they were in for after they hit for 50+ damage on their first attack and saw the health bar get one pixel smaller.

Ferocity (Strength) was the most conventional of the Virtues, but context was everything. The players hadn't fought a Virtue yet, and were debating whether to defend some potential allies or lay low, only for the Paladin to slip away and confront Ferocity by himself. I was personally prepared to save the fight for later, but when a Paladin does something heroic and foolish you gotta let them have it.

I did not skimp on Ferocity's stat block either. She had a greatsword fashioned out of a massive hunk of stone that dealt bludgeoning damage and was much too heavy for anyone else to even lift. She could grab players and throw them across the map, resulting in fall damage from the distance thrown. She could chuck her sword at someone and leap to where it landed from a standing position. Paladin stood no chance by himself. The result was a mad dash to the join the fray while Paladin tried to hold out for as long as possible, with new party members arriving round after round to help. It was a very close fight, and my favorite combat of the whole campaign.

Incredibly, Monk found a way to disarm Ferocity after she threw her greatsword at him. He couldn't lift it of course, but he could use his new magic item to teleport away with it and hide it in a nearby river. Ferocity spent the rest of the combat leaping around the map to find it, allowing Barbarian to finish her off. Really ingenious play.

(Pictured above, Ferocity and Paladin.)

Celerity (dexterity) was had a similar setup to Charm. She was fragile, with only 8 hp. The trick was hitting her, or, thanks to her ridiculously high Stealth, even knowing she was there in the first place. I wanted to give the party a puzzle to solve, as opposed to an enemy to fight.

I had Celerity stalk the party in secret as they made their way through a lengthy dungeon, until eventually the Barbarian made an abnormally high perception check; not enough to know she was there for sure, but enough to sense something was off. They later verified her location through a magical telescope.

Deducing (correctly) that Celerity was there to try and capture an important npc, they decided to lay a trap. The Druid disguised themselves as the npc and drew the attention of a nearby Ancient Deep Crow. As they were about to be snatched up, Celerity intervened, eviscerated the crow, and spirited away the disguised Druid. Before she could realize she'd been tricked, the Paladin, who had been disguised as a spider on the shoulder of the Druid, smote Celerity while her guard was down, killing her instantly.

I remember this encounter fondly, as my players spent a good two hours planning their trap, which then took only about 5 minutes to execute. It was quick and clean, exactly what it should have been.

I struggled a lot with what to do for Wisdom. I already had Brilliance (Intelligence) cast as my big bad mastermind final boss encounter, which ate up a lot of the design space. I could make her a religious figure and lean into the divine casting aspect of D&D, but there was already a quasi-religious sect of corrupt paladins hounding the players and I don't like to double dip.

Eventually I settled on Vigilance, a machine made up of wires and tubes with a network of mechanical eyes that spied on the players as they made their way through the capital city. Wisdom is the stat use for Perception after all. I was happy with Vigilance as a background presence. She contributed a lot to the eerie atmosphere and aloof puppeteering nature of the Virtues. The problem was turning a network of cameras into a compelling boss fight.

I wish I could say I had a clever idea here but, uh... I really got nothing this time. She just showed up and harassed the party as a giant tentacle monster. I do like how her token came out though.

In hindsight I think this still could have worked if I hadn't given her a voice and made her a silent powerful threat. Unfortunately, I did give her a voice, and a very silly one to boot.

Oh well, no campaign is perfect.

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Realistic crafting/survival sim where you have to do everything like that stone age technology guy. None of this "collect 20 clay and make a brick wall in ten minutes" bullshit. I'd value my half-decent stick and palm shelter if it took me a full in-game week to make it.

I want the game to make me fire all the bricks and then place them one by one. It can "cheat" by making wall sections a single object that updates the image a few times during construction like the other games do, that's fine, I don't expect the game to remember two hundred individual bricks forever. But I should have make and carry them with realistic encumberance. "Derin why would you want to spend two in-game hours building a sad clay hut that can't be instantly turned back into materials if you change your mind" because I have audiobooks to listen to.

The game you are asking for is Vintage Story. In its current state, not literally everything uses in world crafting, but a lot of stuff does, and one of the games long term goals is the removal of the Minecraft-style crafting grid entirely (or at least as much as possible).

As of now, stone knapping, pottery, and metalworking all use a similar system of crafting something voxel by voxel. The specifics of each differ but yeah. you have to fire the clay in a kiln and everything. one of the early major goals is finding enough trace bits of copper to make a pickaxe (and hammer to crush ore bits) so you can have enough copper to start actually using it for stuff, like a saw. Until you get a saw, you’re stuck either building stuff out of logs or sticks or dirt or cob.

It has a vibrant modding community despite is small community, and there’s a few which actually add in-world methods for crafting a lot of things, too. Like there’s one that makes it so you have to chop the wood yourself to get firewood, rather than using the grid. same mod does the same for making planks with the saw.

And of course, there’s The Horrors. but don’t worry about that. What are you going to eat this winter?

minor gripe + expanded pitch below the cut

BIG ASS STURGEON

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