What kind of enemies cannot be killed by the players? How do you make an enemy interesting and stop the party from beating it to a bloody pulp? Sure, you can use your PL X enemy, or having an enemy immune to everything, or just hand out hero points, but what if you want something more unique?
Well here are some concepts you can exploit in your own campaign without being cheap.
1) The enemy is already dead.
Consider this: The villain has the power to project himself astrally into the future. Once there he can possess people, or otherwise affect things without being physically present. Now consider that this man has been dead for 2000 years. He is projecting himself into your present. Now even if you "defeat" him you just send him back to his own time. He doesn't have any phyiscal form in your own time- he's been dead for millenea. How can you defeat him? You can't you can only stop him. Even if you manage to kill him somehow, he can return. If you kill him on your Monday and His Monday, he can return on YOUR Tuesday, and his Sunday. CheckMATE party!
2) The enemy is not a person- and not a thing!
Consider this: The enemy is a malevolent emotional state, he is a demon (such as the possession demon from the movie Fallen, or he is a corporation or nation that has become self aware- like computers tend to. Perhaps the enemy is a hivemind like a swarm, or the borg, or is an organization with no leader (like the Klu Klux Klan or something with no ultimate leader). How do you defeat it? What if the enemy is a drug that keeps getting made by various chemists? You can't destroy it, it's not something you can not beat on. Lots of opportunity here for a recurring "villain" without it being a villain.
3) The enemy is you.
Consider This: The enemy is YOU but from the future. The PC fights himself, perhaps at a higher power level. He has to consider how to defeat his future self, while trying to discover why he is evil and working against himself. The enemy will probably never kill the PC, and the PC could always win by committing suicide (unless resurrection is a thing), but will the PC be hesitant to kill his future self? Makes things more interesting!
4) The enemy is not aware
Consider This: There is no enemy. You have to deal with a plague, zombies, mold, the world is losing color, a meteor falling towards the earth, the sun is about to go out, or there is some major problem with NO ANTAGONIST! How do you beat the crap out of a problem like that? HA! CheckMATE!
5) The enemy can't hurt you either
The enemy is a living illusion, a ghost, or is some cripple who uses ESP from some other nation or plane. He is able to convey information, but unable to physically affect anything. As such, he is also unable to be physically affected by the players- considering he's not there. Or he COULD affect the players, firing perception powers via esp or across dimensions with dimensional powers. Even more mean then!
6) Duplication
This enemy can duplicate into multiple forms, and you never see the prime villain, only his duplicates. No matter how many times you kill him, he can re-duplicate and fight you again. Maybe there's a limited amount of duplicates, or you can capture the duplicates rather than kill them to prevent him from re-absorbing?
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