What's RAZE?

A story/world Chris is developing

Ohh. I thought it was something like GURPS.

i like the sandman style villian where it is just a guy desperate for money or something to survive and is forever changed by a event so they can do things wiht both heroes and villians plausibly and can make good moments where you might want them to win.

What's the setting you're going for here again? I feel like that can change how you do it.

First off, ask yourself what drives them. What is the underlying reason for their motive? Are they a well-intentioned extremist seeking to right a wrong, real or perceived? Or are they more motivated by vice - greed, pride, lust, envy? Or, perhaps they're out for revenge?

Once you determine that, that helps you narrow down what motive would fit them.

Another thing you should consider is their method of operation. This should be partially based on their goals, partially on their skills and abilities, and partially on their personality. A seductive museum cat burglar isn't going to go in guns blazing without a plan, she's going to scout the place out, maybe make nice with the guards while in plainclothes to gather information she shouldn't have, and then she's going to be subtle and silent as she slinks around the museum like a cat stalking its prey. Meanwhile, a dim-witted mob muscle isn't going to be much for subtlety, he's going to play the polka on his victims like an accordion.

It's not set in stone, though. You can get away with contrast depending on the tone of the work. Just keep suspension of disbelief, and more importantly its limits relative to the particular type of work, in mind when doing this. A Darth Jar Jar can work if it's hinted at just enough to make it reasonable.

Finally, figure out a way to make them play off the protagonist. This is especially important if your villain is also the foil to the hero. It's possible to make a villain who doesn't even play the role of direct antagonist to the hero - Both Sauron from LotR and Emperor Palpatine from the original Star Wars trilogy are good examples of this. But it really depends on what kind of story you're writing, and it works better if the villain is more of a "Big Bad" than a more ground-level type of villain.

I'd also like to make a mention of the TVTropes Evil Overlord list. This is a good selection of things a smart villain would do. Some of them would make them OP (just shooting the hero instead of monologueing to them after capturing them, for example), but a lot of them really help with making a villain more believable rather than a typical mustache twirler.

Finally, if you want to give the villain a "Kick the Dog" moment, make sure you don't actually make them "Poke the Poodle" instead on accident. If you want to show how terrible the villain is by making them do something irredeemable, it needs to have impact.

Go with their motivations other then money or ower. You need a logic to it, a method to their madness

Watch My Hero Academia

You just ask yourself "How did they get to where they are?" Villains have their reasons for why they do what they do. They may not be good reasons but they do still have them.

make him like the hero with a great cause make him compassionate make him honorable maybe have him and hero be friends or have the villain have been his mentor a case of great idea bad way of going about it

Well, one way to make a more compelling villain would be to remember the phrase, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".

In the case of your Dogs of War faction, maybe you could have it start off with the idea of their leader wanting to unify the wasteland under one banner, so as to create a more civilized world; especially since I imagine in the world of Raze, bandits and raiders are fairly prevalent. So to combat these raiders, a single man (or perhaps woman) rallies a group of people into becoming a fighting force. At first, they come with a noble goal of wiping out the local raiders, But as time goes on, real life starts to complicate their plan.

Maybe the Dogs of War needs more soldiers for their cause, so to boost their forces, they start conscripting men and women into their ranks from local villages, sometimes even by force.

"Yes, we know that your father only has one leg and can't shoot, but we still need him to fight the raiders, isn't that a most noble goal? To die protecting your village from these horrible scum?"

Maybe they occasionally run low on supplies, like food, medicine and ammo, so they send soldiers to settlements to procure the necessary supplies for their cause, but when said settlements refuse to give them the supplies the need ("no, you can't take this much food, we'd all starve if you do"), they just take it all anyway, under the thought of "we had to do it, it was for the greater good".

Maybe some settlements have started to raise arms against the Dogs of War, because they've heard stories of how the settlements under their "protection" are really just under a form of totalitarianism. So not wanting to be conquered by "a bunch of war mongers", they try to resist against the Dogs of War; and in so doing, the Dogs of War consider them an enemy, and thus burn their settlements to the ground, killing the men and women, and taking the children to train them as future Dogs of War (since hey, the group could always use more soldiers, why not take the young and impressionable and raise them to be noble warriors for the cause?).

So as you can see, the idea could be that while they originally started off with good intentions (i.e. making the world safer by getting rid of all of these raiders and bandits), over time, they'd end up becoming just as bad as the raiders they fought against, if not worse.

Oh, also this quick tumblr post might help give some ideas too; it's more related to the protagonists of a story and story-telling in general, but the same concepts could be applied to antagonists as well. :)

https://www.tumblr.com/faustandfuri.....ing-fiction-an

I could draw more of the Celestial Troupe, if that'd help.

One villain I can name who has "good intentions" is Waternoose from Monsters, Inc.