Damn it.  He's dead, Jim.  Sucks.   A good villain and your players just went and killeded him.  Oh well, the GM is allowed to cheat.   And  when the GM cheats, its not cheating.   So go right ahead,  take that dead villain, put him back in the files and use him again.

Why?


Cause that is what they do in comics, that is why!



So Proffesor Vomit is smashed by Mr Good  and he is pushed into the meat grinder.  Meat, blood and feces ( yes feces, there is a good amount of feces in every body  even after an enjoyable release) go spraying every where.    So Professor Vomit is dead.  The heroes walk into the camera while the factory of mal intent is aflame.   Fin.



Now, a year later, a mask is pulled off a mystery villain and  Dr Good is stunned.  Did I say stunned?  Gosh no, he is ASTONISHED to see his old sparing rival Professor Vomit is back and about to pull that lever!

"How can this be..?!! I saw you ground into puppy food!"

"You never killed me, you killed the  clone of my brother's fiancée's  cousin!  And you feel for it.   And you left me alone long enough for me to finish my abominable plan for world domination.  Behold, the Discombobulator!  HAHAHA"



So now,  who gives a shit if your favorite bad guy dies?  Just put him away for a while, and bring him out BETTER THAN EVER a year or so later.   And then have him spend an inventing point to come up with some crazy, stupid, plot hole filled lame excuse to bring this asshole back just because you want to flaunt that YOU and ONLY you can cheat.


Why not, its not like Marvel and DC don't do it every fuckin' month.

Everyone knows that popular characters never die. If nothing else, you can resurrect them, or clone them.

While I would try not to let my villain get killed in the first place, if the PCs do kill him off (and killing bad guys is usually a big "no no" for heroes in my campaigns), he stays dead.  No miraculous returns.  Resurrecting dead characters is the comic trope that I loathe the most, whether it's a hero or villain (it's particularly rancorous when the resurrection occurs many years after the original death and the original death was pretty iconic -- I'm looking at you, Jean Grey).

That being said, there's gotta be no room for doubt that the bad guy was killed.  If the PCs witness the character being eviscerated by lasers first hand, he's dead.  OTOH, if they see his plane explode from a distance, there's wiggle room.

The only time I "resurrect" a dead villain is when he really wasn't dead to begin with.  That is, it really was his clone/twin/robot double/surgically altered henchman that the PCs were fighting at the time -- I, as GM, had already made the switch before the fatal incident occurred (I didn't just retcon it in later as a way of resurrecting the character).

I thought this thread was about Jack Herman ...

John wrote on Mar 28^th, 2016 at 2:42pm:


That's the name of one of the bad guys in the FGU adventure "The Sands of Time" (it's an old refurbished module from the 80s).

So there's one scene where the bad guys who attack are Phoenix and Scorpion.  Not the most original names, even back in the 80s.

Razor_Fangs wrote on Mar 31^st, 2016 at 1:08pm:


It also works for player characters.

I have a player who had to drop out of the game because of taking a new job requiring a lot of travel.  To further a plot line I was developing, the emergence of an anti-meta-human group of bad guys, the character was killed off in a bloody, disgusting manner and left in a public place for discovery.  These really aren't nice people.

The twist had the desired effect on the team and when and if that player can re-join us, I will resurrect his character if he wants.

Bringing back PC's also provides an element for better role play. Think about how many good guys come back with some quirk or mental instability.