I have a cool villain I really like. I mean, I love that character. I would squeal with excitement if my players could meet him, figure him out, confront him and foil his plans and maybe even kill him.
But I don't know how to pull it off.
The villain in question is constructed on a completely different scope than the PCs. They are a reasonably competent bunch of beginner adventurers and he is a polypresent, nigh-immortal, mind-controlling entity of nightmare and giggles. I would like the characters to grow to tackle him, but I'd like them to meet him and confront him before – possibly taking down one of his schemes.
How do I introduce a larger-than-game-scope villain and have players confront him without falling into Failure Is The Only Option or even worse Yank The Dog's Chain trope? (TVTropes, beware!) I don't want the players to feel powerless against him, but at the same time I want them to start building up to someday be able to meet him on a level ground.
Best Answer
Initially expect the group to mitigate his schemes rather than foil them.
If they aren't actually preventing the big bad from getting what he wants, then he doesn't have to stop them getting what they want. So they can pull innocent bystanders out of the way of whatever terrible stuff he's up to, or they can be threatened by side-effects or after-effects of his schemes rather than the main event. Maybe they can actively work to give him what he wants in a way that's different from what he planned, and would have been more effort for him, but that avoids destroying their city or whatnot. Dealing with this stuff will be a victory, even though he's still out there causing trouble. Maybe they inconvenience him a little, but not so much that they're more effort to tolerate than to destroy. As ego-damaging as it may sound, their best defence is that he doesn't care what they do.
The campaign builds to the point where they can start to confront the trouble at its source. The time where they're obviously becoming powerful enough to thwart him but aren't there yet, is crucial, since that's when he has means and strong motive to take them out. They'll have to find a good reason for him not to, which might be "sudden power-up", "politics", "hiding", "joining his side", "joining his enemies" or whatever else suits your setup.