Yet another villain, this one a Titan with a rather different schtick than the usual kaiju-type. If given a serious power-up he could easily shift into “powerful entity” status rather than a villain you can beat with sufficient punching, but as it is he’s “only” killing people one crowd (or apartment building) at a time.
Samuel Hakes, aka The Black Miasma
Let the background fluff and trivia section get a bit out of control on this one. 
Yeah, I personally think that it’s somewhat odd that Titan appears to be the only Approach or Archetype that prescribes some sort of physical attribute instead of just, like, fighting style or skill set. (“Titans are MASSIVE. Their sheer size makes them difficult to contend with and they require extraordinary measures to deal with.”)
Samuel Hakes (Prisoner #761-176) was facing a life sentence in prison without parole after being found guilty of multiple spree murders, so volunteering to participate in a research trial for better living conditions seemed like a risk worth taking. Besides, everyone had heard rumors of another con who’d been granted superhuman strength and durability in a similar experiment. Maybe Hakes would get lucky too.
Hah, yeah, if you’re offered a place in an experimental medical trial, you take it, because you will get superpowers. Although, I guess, in this guy’s case the powers weren’t worth the side-effects.
Yeah, this is certainly one villain that I don’t feel sorry for.
“Oooh, I’ve lost all my humanity! Sob!”
“Yeah, well, you know who else lost their humanity? All those people you murdered.”
This guy kind of highlights my problem with the “Density Control” power: density = mass / volume, so when you’re changing density you can change either of those variables. But “volume” is essentially the same thing as “size,” but we already have a different Size-Changing power. So, despite what logical definitions would mean, I guess “Density Control” is essentially “mass” control, and I guess that since Size-Changing implies that it doesn’t alter one’s density, it’s also changing one’s mass when one grows or shrinks. So, yeah, I dunno.
Also, how exactly does an amorphous cloud have “Fitness”?
He despises his supranym and using his real name might get you a break when talking to him, or it might enrage him as a reminder of his past depending on his mood.
Huh, there’s really no way to win with this guy. Besides just saying, “Hey you!” I guess.
It’s trickier than the rest to reskin/reimagine as something else. I haven’t found a good way to manage it, and with Miasma I’ve now done one of every Approach pairing with it. Still, it’s too useful an archetype not to have, what with monster comics being ancestors of modern supers books.
He’s meant to be a monster even before he became a giant murder-cloud. Realistically, he isn’t asking for sympathy anyway, he’s just pissed at the nuisance factor.
At this point I will paraphrase MST3K and point out that it’s just a comic and you should really just relax. Comic Science is ludicrous even when you’re not insisting light can be green-shifted.
Although now that you mention it, Z-Man over here has growth-only Size-Changing that’s also tied to his less-dense-than air Flight, so his version does actually seem to be slightly more realistic, if “being a human zeppelin” can be called any kind of realism.
Same way anyone can. “You are in top physical shape and can run long distances without getting tired.” He’s in good condition as giant murder-clouds go, and it emphasizes the fact that (like any jogger) he can move against all but the strongest winds and maintain a decent (but not superhuman) pace for longer than most people. Deliberately avoided giving him actual mobility powers so the heroes can save more of his potential victims. He’s likely to rack up a grim 90s bodycount as-is.
Yeah, he doesn’t even like listening to the screams of his victims anymore. Just wants everyone to shut up and die. Not a big talker unless you can convince him you might be able to let him turn his powers on and off at will. Good luck with that, but it does make him a potential (very dangerous) pawn for a mastermind villain.
And — at the risk of sounding obvious —what with giant monsters and other enormous foes still being incredibly common adversaries for supers.
Yeah, I know, I’m often one to use that same mantra against others, but this is a case of just really simple definitions used in an annoying way that’s hardly as useful as something like No Conservation of Energy.
I note that the alternative title for that trope (tucked away at the very bottom) is No Conservation of Mass. Which is the real issue with how density control and size-changing work.
Still, I feel like most comic readers intuitively grasp what’s meant by Size-Changing and Density Control, especially if you mention Ant/Giant-Man and the Vision. It’s weirder to me that Growth and Shrinking are folded together (another thing to blame Hank Pym for) and Intangibility is its own power when it comes so close to “turn density to minimum” in game effect rather than making Density Control Density Increase instead. I suppose it’s all the result of having so few dice to work with, of course - but it’s still odd.
Selective Intangibility, for everything but the soles of the feet so you don’t fall through to the planet’s core. Oops, there I go with that pesky physics thing again.
One could argue that gravity only affects things with tangible mass.
And Newton in fact did. One could argue many things in comic books, I suppose.
Hardly seems worth the effort.
Big sprawling five-villain team post on the blog today:
The Masters Family, rulers of the Domain of Sovereign Herralund
My setting is a bit light on the “villain-ruled fictional country” trope represented by Mordengrad and Latveria and the like, but I didn’t want to do the usual single dictator (which raises story questions if they appear to die or get jailed) so instead we’ve got a super-powered family council in charge of an island micronation. With five people to work with and more potentially getting inducted as they manifest powers I can “lose” a couple without having to explain why the government doesn’t collapse, and there can be some interesting roleplaying spun off the family dynamics. I don’t expect to ever use the whole Family at once, but having the threat of them in the background when dealing with one, two or three of them ought to provide some uncertainty for the PCs.
Think Latveria if it was run by the royal family of Amber and you’re in the right neighborhood.
Mechanically, it’s also an experiment in a bunch of distantly-related villains with shared family traits. They’re different flavors of Domain villains (again, rather Amber-ish in terms of how they can twist background reality around them), all with the same three Domain abilities and Approaches that differentiate them and provide different synergies with the Domain side of things.
They’ve also got a shared environment twist that gets added to whatever one they’re actually in, representing the fact that as proper VIPs they go nowhere without a security detail along, letting them call on minion backup anywhere even vaguely plausible.
Cool beans. I really dig the shared Domain-ness of all of them. It’s a neat way to keep different builds connected to one another. It also reminds of Mech-Stalin’s two iterations.
Yeah, that dynamic sounds neat.
Huh, it’s interesting that Majestra has power over both plants and animals; it makes sense, of course, but it seems that I can’t think of any other supers with the same ability — most simply control one or the other.
Given the opportunity, Marcus will happily pick a fight with foreign supers to test himself against them. He’s fairly good natured about it even when losing (which is fairly rare) and tries not to kill or seriously injure such foes, although his raw power can lead to unfortunate mistakes. He’s very good about sending flowers to the hospital or the funeral if things do go awry. Actually beating him one on one in what he regards as a fair fight will earn his respect, which is not an easy thing to do otherwise.
Wow. That is very surprisingly good-natured of him. If he wasn’t caught up in all this supervillain politicking, it seems like Marcus might not be that bad a guy.
Hmm, it seems like you have a thing for the name “Mordecai.” So much for the One Steve Limit.
Also it’s kind of interesting that, save for Mordecai, all of their first names follow Latin naming conventions, with the females’ ending in -a and the males’ ending in -us.
Conceptually, if it’s a living thing, she’s got some control over it, with Presence letting her compel humans to some degree. Works best at home, like most Family tricks - hence the way the upgrades generally work.
He’s a bit of loudmouth and way too full of himself, but running across someone who can stand up to him is so rare he enjoys the novelty and the challenge. The guy could probably use an actual friend beyond his relatives - Magnus and Mordecai play at it but they’ve got their own motives for doing so, and Majestra’s a little too distant to really show what affection she feels toward him as part of the older end of the Council. And he mostly just gives Minerva a headache, she’s always worrying about him wrecking some scheme by accident.
But he’s also kind of responsible about staying around and defending the Domain, so the odds of him ever getting to make other friends are pretty low.
Deliberate. The name variation hints at him being a bit of an outsider, although he’s still named for a former Council member from centuries ago. Most Herralunders are, largely out of optimism.
Doctor Mentallax has been absent from the game for months after his latest bout of No One Could Survive That Explosion Syndrome and my players are still paranoid about him making a comeback. Stumbling across something with the name “Mordecai” on it will give them fits.
Also, I lived across the hall from a Mordecai in freshman year, and I always liked the name. Better than Chuck when it comes to supervillainy, anyway.
More villainy, this time from the labs of the Science Integration Network.
These two aren’t quite as, ah, successful successes for the Q-radiation empowerment program as the earlier Rush and Crush were, but they’ve certainly got superpowers and they didn’t suffer molecular decoherence like the rest of the test batch so we’re calling it a win for SIN!
And now the organization can field a proper villain team for larger operations without having to rely on mercs or robots.
So is Guy Gardner, and he’s considered a hero. ; ) But I’m also just fond of Awesome Ego characters.
That just makes it sadder . . .
Hah, that’s fun, deliberately averting a trope that the players will expect to be played straight.
I think the first place I heard it was as the name of the thief lovable rogue in the Fantasy subtheme of Irregular Webcomic!
Yeah, Marcus is not a wholly unsympathetic guy - unless you see him sink a navy task force that makes the mistake of getting too near his homeland. He plays rough with mundane humans and doesn’t have much respect for them, another common family trait. The Masters are very much superhuman elitists through long tradition and their current lack of numbers (and Mordecai’s lackluster powers - Stone is usually up there with Storm as “national military assets” go) has them feeling more paranoid than usual. That’s one of the main reason they’re letting Magnus go ahead with his experiments delving into the foundation of the Family Holdings, and with Majestra’s aid no less.
That might come back and bite everyone if he finds a way to permanently absorb rather just emulate everyone’s unique abilities, at which point he’s likely to go full megalomaniac ala Count Nefaria. But that’s a ways down the road if it happens, I want the PCs to have some time to get to know them as individuals and mostly background threats. They’re pretty new to my game yet.
I am so far behind on Irregular Webcomic. Used to be regular reader for years and fell off somewhere.
Updating an old post with a new villain and a few minor tweaks. Carronade and the Brute Suit Boys have shown up a few times and most of them have been in and out of prison after getting trounced, but their leader Carronade has managed to avoid capture (once with a d4 villainous vehicle rolling the four it needed for Escape Plan to go off, no less). He’s not as good at prison breaks as a specialist like S-Cape but still manages to get his crew out and recover or replace their suits. I figure his mixed successes earned the team a new suit for next time, so they recruited another convict during the last escape and they have a new defensive specialist in the form of Cellblock, bringing them up five Squad archetype villains and their Inventor from the year 5000 boss.
Only 40 more Approach/Archetype pairings to go…
Okay, yeah, fair points, I’ll admit.
Well, it’s nice to chance upon another reader, although I suppose that that isn’t super unlikely in these geeky circles.
I’ve seen the Death of Overpowered Fireballs mentioned on other gaming forums, so yeah, it’s not unknown. Just the fact that it uses GURPS instead of D&D earns it a lot of gamer cred - and who doesn’t love math humor?
Well, lots of people, but you know what I mean.
Haven’t done a hero in awhile, so here’s another member of the Syracuse Seven, my super team that started life over in Tiny d6 Supers.
Mister Corundum, alien brick and team support
After writing him up I realized he was way too similar to an earlier S7 member, the Leaping Lizard. Since I struggled with his port in the first place, I’ve done a rewrite that switches him from an Armored archetype to a Wild Card, which seems more fitting for the kind of kid genius who’d transform himself into a giant lizard while his parents were out of town.
You can see him (along with the rest of the related posts) over at the Syracuse Seven tag.
As long as I’m doing Syracuse Seven stuff, here’s a villain tied to them through the Leaping Lizard’s family - although he should work fine in other settings if you introduce a mysterious miracle metal that’s become all the craze in the super-science community since it was discovered. Or maybe it’s made of unstable molecules and has come eat the Fantastic Four’s wardrobe.