If you want a good-quality secret lair or inescapable deathtrap, this guy is who you go to.
The Architect
“Yes! This deathtrap shall be my grandest yet!”
Alias: Archibald Tetch
Approach: Mastermind
Archetype: Domain
Health: 50 + (
× 5)
Powers
Inventions 
Remote Viewing 
Robotics 
Qualities
Architecture
Creativity
Criminal Underworld Info
Finesse
Science
Technology
Status: The Environment
3+ environment minions, lieutenants, or challenges
1-2 environment minions, lieutenants, or challenges
0 environment minions, lieutenants, or challenges 
Abilities
Deadly Architecture (A): Attack one hero using Technology. Hinder all heroes using your Max die.- Desperate Adjustment (R): Take 1 irreducible damage to reroll your dice pool on your turn or the dice pool of a hero Attacking or Hindering you.
- Explosive Automatons (A): Roll any number of environment minion dice. Attack every target in the scene (other than yourself) with those dice. Remove those minions.
- Insidious Activation (A): Activate one of the environment’s twists in its current zone or one zone closer to red.
- Necessary Sacrifice (R): When Attacked, redirect the Attack to an environment minion.
- (U) Sequestered Control Room (I): You cannot be damaged by anyone except yourself until your control room is breached. The room’s defences have 40 Health, or can be deactivated with three Overcome successes. If a hero takes a minor twist working on it, you can make an Attack as a reaction by rolling your single Inventions die.
- (U) Reestablish Defences (A): Overcome using Inventions. Use your Max die. On a success, remove one success from the deactivating challenge. Alternatively, instead of an Overcome, use the Max die to Recover that much of the defences’ Health. This ability cannot be used if the control room has already been completely breached.
- (M)
Master Behind the Curtain (I): As long as you are not directly involved in the fray and are using your influence indirectly, automatically succeed at an Overcome to manipulate a situation.
The Architect
Alias: Archibald Tetch
Gender: Male
Age: 50s
Height: 5’10"
Eyes: Blue
Hair: White
Skin: Pale
Build: Slight
Costume/Equipment: A grey three-piece suit complete with tailcoat.
Approach: Mastermind
Archetype: Domain
Biography
Archibald Tetch, the world-class architect, had become tired of the challenges that mundane architectural design could afford him. He had mastered the art, and looked for new, novel applications of his craft. He found it one morning when he was reading the paper, and his eyes alighted on an item on a recent supervillain attack. His mind wandered on the subject for a while, before it struck him: supervillains, like anyone else, need someplace to live, and the needs of their abodes are far more challenging to design than normal structures, as they must be able to repel invasion by heroes.
So, calling himself The Architect — a simple alias, he’ll be the first to admit — Archie Tetch offered his services to the super-criminal underworld.
Capabilities and Motivations
The Architect is a master of the craft of architecture, as his moniker implies. Since he’s turned his unique talents to providing for supervillains, he’s designed mainly two types of projects: lairs and deathtraps, although some projects combine features of both.
In addition to various traps, hazards, defences, and robots installed within his creations, the Architect also usually outfits every room with hidden cameras, allowing himself or his client to monitor all the happenings that transpire within the structure.
Upgrades
Often, the Architect will construct a special concealed control room in the complex, from which he can observe the heroes’ futile struggles and control the various functions of his creation. From within this room, he is completely safe from attack, so heroes must breach its defences before taking him on directly.
Associated Environment: Lair of the Architect
Editor’s Notes
The Architect was partly inspired by the Mad Architect, a Golden Age Charlton villain that I read about in the excellent League of Regrettable Supervillains book by Jon Morris. Unsurprisingly, the Mad Architect was an architect who went around murdering critics of his work with, I think, mundane weapons like a gun or a knife. I was pretty disappointed by this execution, as I thought it was a waste to have a villainous architect who didn’t even use his architectural prowess for villainy! So here we are.
Due to the way the villain creation system works, I was kind of forced to give the Architect a huge Health total, with him having 70 Health at = 4, which I think is a touch too much for an entirely-unpowered, frail old man. I suppose I could have had his Health total simply represent tearing down his building or locating his control room, but the Defence Shield upgrade just felt so right for that. So, I suppose, when he’s being used without any upgrade, his Health total can represent that, and when he does have an upgrade, his Health total can be, oh, I dunno, some kind of Indestructible Clear Plastic Box that he hides in during a scene while controlling the functions of his structure.
I’ll admit that the “expert in some field who becomes tired of the challenges that field offers and so becomes a supervillain” angle has already been done by me with the King, but eh, motivations are hard.
Incidentally, Archie Tetch here has absolutely no relation to another supervillain of the same name.
And yeah, “the Architect” is a pretty prosaic name, but I think it works for a Golden or Silver Age baddie.
Oh, and in case it wasn’t clear, his Remote Viewing power is simply his extensive network of cameras; he ain’t a psychic.