... no matter what you do to them, you'll never feel sorry.
It's true; undead are probably the only type of enemy that no player ever regrets slaying. A skeleton, mummy, even a lich, they're either totally devoid of any thought, or have been brought back by their very own scheming. The cases in which somebody's mind has been enslaved in a dead body are rare at best.
Compare that to the rest of the typical adversaries a party normally faces: Goblins are poor, fearful contemporaries that attack you mostly because of either sheer stupidity or enormous need. Slay one of them and the rest flees, unless something went really wrong. Orcs, oh well, they make formidable enemies: Brutal and mostly stupid. Having an intelligent orc can be even frightening since this race employs rather ugly looks. But even they have a culture, there are wifes they return to, and they have children. Orcs might be driven by their constant urge to conquest, but some even attest them to have philosophers. Dwarves, elves, other humans? There are many reasons a member of this civilized group can try to kill the party. (I admit the attribute "civilized" might be misplaced when it comes to humans; but let's not debate this.) But in any case, when thinking of an elvish villain, it is easy to imagine a reason for their goal and eventually pity them. Hell, even a daemon, and be it a perversion of local time and space, is able to think, and therefore reason; and if they look cute enough, a female member of the party will, in the end, try to cuddle it. Oh, dear.
What they all have in common is the ability to think, something elaborate -- in contrast to an animation spell -- drives them. And that leads to the conclusion that one could understand the reason why they are against and not with the characters. They have a choice. An animated corpse doesn't.
That won't change the fact that most players won't regret having killed a NSC that fits the pattern of the adversary. I talked vaguely about "high-quality RPG" in my last post; it's time I begin to shape that topic by trying to answer the question: What does it take to create a worthy, vivid, plastic antagonist?
A story. People, even the Bad Guys, just don't pop out of nowhere. They have a life, there's a story behind them. They got born somewhere, they have or had parents, had a youth which perhaps had been taken from them: Something formed them. Having some bullet points about a NSC's life makes it easy to improvise, to (as a GM) predict his next move, to create an authentic behaviour.
A goal. Somebody isn't just evil because he's decided to be. Something motivates his actions, and in nearly all cases this has to do with the story of his life. The reason for the evil magican to create his doomsday device might just as well be sheer frustation and the greed for revenge. And in the end, the players might just pity him.
Values and principles. Nearly everybody will stop somewhere, even if it's ripping soft toys. It makes the very only guy without them really frightening, and it will cause the insane one to stick out pretty badly. "I don't care if you kill my mummy, I want to drink your blood, you smell so sweet!"
A stringent course of action. Most people never never fully realize this, but knowing the Status Quo and a somebody's character makes it easy to predict what she's going to do next. Of course, the problem is with (fully) knowing the character, at least as a player: The GM shouldn't face this problem. Every person in the story should follow her own logic, it makes her credible.
Quirks. What really makes our villain truely unique are the little quirks everybody shows without noticing it. Does he stroke or scratch is beard, massage his temples? How does he speak: Very elborately or rude, or even suffer a speak defect? Does she curse often?
It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. Creating a true antagonist enriches any story. On the other hand, no story is filled with truely unique villains, there are also the little sidekick robbers and highwaymen that just happen to be there. Even so, they have a motivation for being just now the party's adversary, and be it because they want or need their money. Thinking it through takes only two minutes, but turns the two-dimensional guy along the way into a three-dimensional character and will also answer the question of "what will he do now?" a GM sometimes faces when the party decides to do something really original. That happens more frequently than one thinks, at least here.
You see, I came to like undead. Nobody's ever sorry for killing them, and they never cause the GM any headache.
