Make him have the same goal as the PCs.
Make him reach it first.

Simple. He's not a bad guy, he was just born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Under any other circumstances he would be a knight in shinning armor, but because he was born into a criminal empire, or a byzantine court, or what have you he's had to look out for himself and constantly play others against each other simply to survive. He wants power, not because of what he can do with it but because of what his opponents might do to him if they had it. He's charming, but selfish at heart. He's generous and helpful at times, but when the chips are down he will do what's in his own best interest regardless of morality or the consequences for others. He helps the party on their way to their objective for two reasons: to distract his opponents from him and his operations and so that at the last moment he can swoop in and snatch it up without the risk normally involved.

easy out: Politician

What I did once was have a cleric that seemed like a nice enough guy, till the party realized he worshiped an evil god when he summoned demons to help in a fight. They were like "WHAT THE FUCK?" and he was like "problem guys? Oh, the demons? yeah, they're with me. Why are you guys looking at me funny?"

In 3.5e I'm a big fan of true neutral druids. They start out helping and then they go batshit crazy cause you're upsetting the balance.

Not really creepy though.

Lawful neutral wild mage, four levels higher than any of the pcs (two past 12, 1 past 15) who is an agent of the king.

>>3913941

No, you can't make Druids creepy.

Other, more competent people, might.

>>3913941

the concept of the true neutral "balance keeping" was the worst thing ever

some gnolls get killed? okay, better raid the human village and stab some babies

LG Paladin

His goal is to subjugate and, thereby, unite the world, eliminating war and strife for all time. He knows that, in doing this, his own soul will be damned, but he doesn't care. He'll shoulder the burden so that other won't have to.

He doesn't lose his powers because his god uses a consequentialist philosophy - the ends justify the means.

>>3913983
>the concept of the true neutral "balance keeping" was the worst thing ever

Well, the way _you_ do it, certainly.

For someone with more subtlety than an poorly socialized 15 year old, however, the concept of maintaining Cosmic Equilibrium is more about nondualistic philosophy and less about being a literalist fuckhead.

At one point our party talked with an old man who spoke in a bit of an odd way. He never used contractions, never raised his voice, and almost never had an expression on his face other than a slight smile. He occasionally helped out with information regarding the city we were in, points of interest, people of import, etc. At first we thought nothing of him other than that he was a helpful old man who knew the city like the back of his hand.

Later on we were trying to find a way to nab a guy who was hold up in a decrepit old fort a bit downstream from the city. Before setting out we went to the old man to see if there was anything we should know about the place before heading out. He told us that it used to be the hideout of a powerful warlock who had prowled the city streets routinely murdering people and serving their souls up as sacrifices to the Baatezu. We had heard a bit about the warlock, namely that he had finally been taken down by a group of adventurers after a particularly brutal killing spree a decade or so before the campaign was set.

The old man filled us in on a few details, that the adventurers had tracked him to the old fort and fought him, besting all of the traps (which he described in some detail for us) and finally confronting him in his sanctum. From the way he told the story he hinted that he had been one of the adventurers, then he mentioned that though they beat the warlock they never found the body. One of our party members pointed out that that meant the warlock might have survived to continue killing and sacrificing people. To this the man just shook his head and said "Ah, but I am an old man now. What harm could I possibly do?"

It was an awesome moment, especially for those of us who knew where the line was originally from. I loved that game.

make him a Lich

but make him the most charitable, helpful, and altruistic Lich ever

He uses his zombie army to build orphanages and homes for the homeless. He volunteers at the retirement home, and calls all the old people "young tikes"

but he's appearance of course follows all the classic villain tropes; black cape that constantly flows behind him, red glowing eyes, dark smog rolls around the ground wherever he walks.
And most importantly he still TALKS like a villain
(think Megatron from Beast Wars, "Yessssss....")

"COME CHILDREN! Feast upon this meal my minions have gathered for you! Vegetables! Fruit! Milk! remember, you're still growing....BWAHAHAHAHAHA!"

I leave his motives for doing so completely up to you, but I'd go with something along the lines of he discovered his phylactery is slowly decaying and he needs willing souls to sacrifice themselves to keep it going.

>>3914125
Lame story is lame.

>>3914130

Not OP, but consider this stolen.

>>3914001
>>His goal is to subjugate and, thereby, unite the world, eliminating war and strife for all time. He knows that, in doing this, his own soul will be damned, but he doesn't care. He'll shoulder the burden so that other won't have to.

Pic related?

Maybe you could have both him and the party be searching for some magical power-giving macguffin, and he happens to get it first. However, the macguffin not only gives great power, but insanity, too. So he gets it, suddenly gets a taste for human flesh and likes the sound that purple smells.

>>3914151

That guy had the best character establishing scene for a villain ever.

Except for maybe Darth Vader.

>>3914001
LE, not LG.
But the Knights Templar/Well Intentioned Extremist does make a cool BBEG.

>>3914151
The Operative was my first thought as well. Damn good villian.

Necromantic cleric. Prays to a dark god, and regularly summons up the undead. But he has a strange piety in regards to them, and makes an almost insanely devoted effort in replacing their bones in their respective graves. He is somber, and his brows often furrow in accepting despair.

I don't know how you make him BBEG though.

>>3914161
Well, he was kind of designed to be an anti-thesis to Vader.

Vader kills a bitch because the bitch pisses him off.

The Operative kills a bitch because its his job, and then lets the guy know while he's dying that he did a pretty good job while he lived.

>>3914184
A polite villain who empathises with the group is just so.. rare. He's not coarse - he's gentle and refined, and does not enjoy violence for it's own sake. So... insanely nice for a change of pace.

BBEG wants to give people what they want.

People want to know why they lose things, why they hurt, why there is pain.

The BBEG wants to answer those questions. The BBEG wants to become to cause of everyone's suffering. Not out of malice, but out of a desire to answer the question: Why?

>>3914242
So he has an obessive compulsive disorder in regards to knowing the answer for all of lifes issues?

The best BBEG is one that actually proves to be a challenging adversary to the heroes.

He kicks their collective asses so hard during the course of the story/campaign that in the end, if he's beaten, the heroes wonder if they truly won at all.

>>3914213
Not only that, but when bested he doesn't brag or say "things would have been different", he just smiles and accepts it - even though things WOULD have been if he wasn't overconfident.

>>3914252
Nah. Just this one question, because he used to be a relief worker or something dumb like that, and he got sick of hearing "why did this happen to us" over and over, and not having an answer.

Now, he intends to be able to answer them:

"Because I made it so."

Some twisted fairy guy who has noticed that people are a lot more happier after some personal tragedy. Like, steal kid's lollipop and he cries, but when you give it back, he'll be even more happier than he was before.

So she starts making some really disturbing shit, trapping people in her personal nightmare for torture and general awful misery.

When the party finally kills her, she reveals her motives. On her last breath, she sees how happy people are now that the nightmare is over, and dies with a smile on her face.

>>3913698

fuck YEAH pic related!

>>3914280
Your party will lose sleep over it if you make the fairy turn out to have used a hideous disguise and she's actually a naive young loli.

That they butchered horribly in rage.

>>3914280

The philosophy of Epicurus on happiness, if memory serves. Bread is best when you are starving and water best when you are parched. Even the simplest things, when denied and then returned, can bring a great deal of happiness.