THE PATIENT VILLIANS GUIDE TO GETTING EVEN
A.K.A.
"BUT I DIDN'T DO IT!!"
(LAST WORDS OF THIVIN THE CLERIC)   Heroes, they're everywhere.  Getting into everything, killing henchmen, messing up dirty deals, disrupting long term plans.  Now, being a villian requires certian flair, you can't just walk up to someone and smash him across the face if you are a card carrying member of the Local Villain's Guild, you have to do involved, intricate plans.
  Do you have to reveal your weaknesses to any hero you've caught?  No.  Getting a full frontal lobotomy is not a prerequisite of joining the guild.  Intellegence is.
  Hero's are just like you.  They are after power, glory, wealth, furthering thier own socio/theological goals, just like you are.  They pack items of magic, weild spells, and seem to have the powers of good strengthening their hand, but they are just as vulnerable as you.
  First of all, and most important:  KNOW YOUR ENEMY!!!!
        This is the difference between life and death.  Mages don't necessarily dress like mages, and powerfull heroes are cunning and skilled.  Know what opponents pack what weaponry and skills.  Mistaking a thief for a mage can turn the tide of a battle against you.  Know who is vulnerable to what.  If an oppenent is vulnerable to acid, but not cold, he will laugh as he walks into your frozen lake of acid, at least until you fireball it and drop him into it.  A spray of acid into a cone of cold will also be effective.
  Number Two:  Properly use your henchmen.  Chase them out of thier graves, away from thier dice and wine cups, and out of the whore houses, and put them to work.  Find out where they first performed their first hero duties.  Often, they will have left small clues that can be used against them there.  Have your henchmen follow them now, and also follow thier carreer by plying the graybeards in front of the taverns with wine.  Find out what villians are missing, speak to the rulers of the domains as to what has gone on, have your henchmen bribe town ruffians to attack them, and by the heavens, sacrifice some of the lesser henchmen to observe their combat tactics.  Sure, you may lose some of those lesser ones, but they can always be brought back more powerfull and obediant.  Thier fighting styles will tell you a lot about them.  Mages who conserve their power till the end can be wiped out quickly, while ones who use their best spells first can be taken out later in the fight.
  Number Three: Properly allocate resources.  You have the damn treasure vault!  What are you waiting for, some goody goody to ransack it?  Dish out those items where they will do some good.  If your on good standing with the moldy old lich, ask Azalin for his Item Location spell.  Do you have an arrow of slaying undead?  Good.  Wait until they bury a dead comrade and bring him her or it back to unlife, sic them on the do-gooders with instructions to mumble "Help me, help me" over and over.  The hero's will try to rescue him by bringing back their former comrade.  Let them get there, and just when he gives them the location of your hide out (Actually, a rather nasty ambush location) spit the rotted corpse on the arrow.
  Number Four: Always, always have a backup plan, but make preperations for it to go wrong. The more inticrate of you should make a plan that is supposed to go wrong, so that you will be on track.  If you ask, you don't understand how a plan going wrong is actually better than it suceeding.
  Number Five:  Never forget, they will find the worst place to get to you.  Most often, they will find your back door into your invincible super fortress.  They will look for it.  Use this sterotype against them.  Have the secret back entrance turned into a one way death trap.  If you have to travel through a ravine, be ready for an attack.  An ambush depends on a split second lack of reaction.  Without that, the onrushing foes are exposed and mincemeat.
  Number Six:  Set up goals and foes for them to beat.  If they have discovered you, they will stop at nothing to destroy you.  Do not fear faking your own death, fellow guild members will not feel you are a coward, and many can give you good advice on how to go about faking your own death.  Knowing when to retreat is an important part about being a villian.  If you frame the local burgomeister as the big man in your operation, his guard as your thugs, and make them think you are out to corner the rasberry market so you can control the wine shipment, so to cut the luxuries of the poor overworked peasants, they will completely miss the fact that your actual goal is the elimination of a Burgomiester who is interfering with your slaving ring.
  Number Seven:  Let the heroes do your work for you.  Have them eliminate rivals, eliminate targets, and retrieve powerfull items for you, all by planting false clues.  Remember, they use Occam's Razor to cut thier own wrists all to often, the simplest answer should be a lie.
  Number Eight:  Give them bad choices.  They have two choices.  Face you, and possibly win. or stop your zombie henchmen from devouring the helpless orphans.  If they split up, you will defeat them, and the your spectral minion will kill the others.  If they stay for you, they must live with the fact that they caused those children to die, if any live through you.  If they leave, pull your minion back, and have the zombies try to eat weapons and gear, not them.  Lie, if you have to, once you've set a precedence for this, and soon, you just say you have innocents hostage, and they will fall all over themselves to get to them.  Imagine their chagrin when they get there to find you killed them days ago, and you got away.
  Number Nine:  Hey, heroes think their gear makes them.  Destroy it, steal it, make them destroy it.  If you have a choice between running the Paladin through with your blade or kicking him into a fast, deep river, go with the river.  He will have to ditch his armor and weapons or drown.  He will be out of the fight, and have less gear.  Deprive them of their mounts.  A needle to the butt of a horse as the heroes are riding along the edge of a ridge can cause more damage than you yourself and best of all, it can start inter-party fighting!
  Number Ten:  My personal favorite.  Once you have begun following the above steps, and know your enemy better than you know your parental creature, frame them for your crimes, a fellow guild members crime, hell, any damn crime.  In Har-Akir, stealing will lose them a hand.  Try fighting with a stump, Paladin-boy.  Gossiping can cost a woman her tongue in Darkon.  If they are a druken nusience in Lamordia, Barovia, or Darkon, they will be put in the stocks by other innocents.  Once in the stocks, you can kick the good out of them, have your way sexually with them, or just tempt them to the dark side.  Frame them for anything, and let them talk their way out of jail or worse.
  Remember, Support your fellow guild members, and pay your dues, so that you can use your guild assets of evil to thier fullest extent.
  Written by Ralts-Guild Master, Villains Guild, Local 349