Another villain, this one kind of a special-use concept for taking a campaign in a new direction for a while or justifying major character rewrites. It also marks 227 different Approach/Archetype pairings, putting me just over the 90% mark for finishing this daft project.
Happenstance, She’ll Take You On A Far-Out Trip
Huh. Where’d that green text come from? I have been doing way to much of this stuff lately…
And following up from Thanksgiving’s Florida Man post, how’s about this?
I’ve done several vampire-adjacent villains, but they’ve all got their quirks. So here, let’s do my setting’s OG vampire:
A big one today, with the face of of a conspiracy bent on ruining your heroes’ reputations rather than just beating them up. Includes three tech-villains with their lieutenant forms, custom minions, and suggestions for using them in everything from a one-shot where their cover is blown immediately to a mid-length story arc with some buildup to a long slow-burn story where they gradually become part of the campaign and require some real legwork to reveal what’s going on.
And add one more (busy evening) in the form of a teleporting martial arts weapons master with an obsession for carving up select opponents and a nasty trick up his sleeve.
I like the inversion of the “Honourable Martial Arts Guy” trope. I also always enjoy superpowered martial artists in general.
Could the heroes try to find his arsenal to deprive him of his weapons? For that matter, does it even exist in realspace, or is it extradimensional pocket?
Also, him not even using his minion abilities until later in a fight kind of actually works out, due to it giving him such a great status die (as you likely intended).
Yeah, I haven’t really done as many of those as I should. There’s a master ninja (who’s also quite pale, although in his case it’s for disguise purposes - he essentially bleached himself so skin dyes have an easier base to work with) and a very angry nigh-immortal mysterious sensei type out to reclaim stolen teachings from his unique I-won’t-share style and a mutant boxer who might qualify if you’re generous (boxing is certainly a martial art, but he’s more about the mutation than being really skillful) but that’s about it. They probably deserve some pals before I wind down this project.
They sure could, although it’s up to the GM as to what they need to do to break the attunement that lets him teleport them. It might be on the room they’re stored in (in which case just moving them out of it might work, but he also might notice that) or you might have to “disconnect” each weapon. Or, knowing my players, the guy with d10 Metal turns most of them into a giant puzzle-ball and then the Fire thrower burns the wooden stuff to ashes. He probably has some spares somewhere but denying him his main stash is good for a big chunky penalty he can’t shake until he fixes the problem.
That would be telling. 
Personally, I was thinking a weapons hall in the creepy isolated palace/mansion/temple he no doubt has tucked away on some snowy mountain in the middle of nowhere, but it could be nonspace just as well.
Yep. The Legion dichotomy of simultaneously wanting minions and not wanting to cripple your status die is a fun one to play with. He does need to be a little careful if the heroes are slinging serious non-physical Attacks though. He doesn’t have great Health and his only defensive trick is a really strong one but also really narrow, although he’s a comeback king if he has time to back off and sacrifice a few minions to heal off of as they get defeated.
As I get close to the end of this daft villain project I’m trying to identify what I haven’t gotten around to but people (self included) might need, so here’s a fairly generic paramilitary militia group that can be easily reskinned to suit a wide variety of times and places and motivations. Whether it’s Captain America in the 1950s punching commies bent on opposing democracy in some fictional foreign country or 90s heroes fighting a narco-lord’s personal army or modern-day heroes preventing an attempted assassination on the US campaign trail, these guys ought to be suitable. Make 'em aliens and they’d fit on Apokolips too.
Genius villains often recruit more physically-inclined villains as muscle for their plans. This one reverses the concept and hires himself out to unstable or thick-headed baddies who have trouble plotting a simple bank robbery, much less something elaborate involving a doomsday machine and holding the city for ransom. He certainly doesn’t have ulterior motives for doing so beyond the mere cash, of course.
Sixteen more to go. Groan.
And as long as I’m at it cleaning up drafts, here’s a small post of gameplay suggestions:
Another four villains, this time a group of unfortunate oddballs who are currently working toward a common goal.
Twelve more to go.
The Odds…
Four members…
Sighs
The Thorathians are pleased but the mathematical punsters were hoping for something more (or less).
It wasn’t an accident.
You just know they have stories titled “Against the Odds” and “Beating the Odds” and “Bad Odds For Our Heroes” and that sort of thing.
Also a tangential homage to the Mads of MST3K, of course.
A pair of archery-themed villains, since I didn’t really have any beyond Crossbolt (who’s kind of a cheat with his custom weapons). Not my favorite villainous (or heroic) trope, but having a few seemed like a good idea.
Ten more to go.
Three anachronistic martial artists from 69AD China, which should give me enough to cover that super-trope when added to the earlier ones like Saitetsu, Fist of Shadows, and White Steel. Probably forgetting someone…
If 69AD China rings a bell, you’ve probably played original edition Feng Shui or Shadowfist. It is not an accidental homage, if the literal eunuch sorcerer in the trio didn’t make that abundantly clear. I used to be more of a Jammers fan than Eaters of the Lotus, but Atlas ruined the monkey-cyberpunks big time with 2nd edition. Pfui.
Seven to go. Single digits at last.
And how about an alien space monster, for those times when you want to mess with the heroes’ ride, force them to go save the ISS, deal with an invasive xeno-species left behind by stellar visitors, or break the wrong cage in a space zoo?
Six to go. It’s getting increasingly difficult to find pairings that work well (or even adequately) mechanically, and this one can really just fold up and die if the initiative goes wrong for it or the heroes deal with its squirmling minions too easily. Probably best used either as a “surprise” third party in a fight that turns out to be hostile to everyone, or in multiples (it’s a type of critter, not a unique entity) in an high-energy environment where these things would congregate. Having one show up chewing on your ship’s power feeds when you’re busy with space pirates or something is another possibility.
Noteworthy partly for needing to break the mold on how to use Legion minions. Its weak minions don’t lose much from using the worst of their dice and it desperately needs the bonuses to heal and keep the minions coming, but a big mass Hinder can really ruin the process.
And in a flurry of activity, here’s another one, this time a microversal “big game” hunter who’s embiggened herself to collect specimens from your PCs’ setting for some no-doubt nefarious purpose.
I rather like her, in large part because her varying degree of re-enlargement for her brainwashed specimen minions is one of the more reasonable explanations I’ve managed for the Overlord’s wacky range of minion die sizes. Going all the way from d4 to d12 is and watching it vary up and down throughout the scene is just plain batty game design, and one of the reasons that I’m down to five out of 252 villains and two of them are still bloody Overlords. Gah.
A networked array of specialized drones built for emergency response assistance in case of disaster or large scale accident? What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, right. Supervillains. Forgot about them when budgeting for network security.
Still filling in gaps in my villain tropes with today’s offering. A very, very stereotypical dictator of a nebulously Eastern European rogue state, just the thing for heroes to punch in the nose.
Probably most at home during the height of the Cold War, but he’s still an acceptable villain in 2023, if somewhat lacking in nuance. Then again, Kim Jong Un isn’t exactly nuanced IRL.
Cookie to anyone who gets the homage without reading the Design Notes section.
Nearing the end here, we’ve got a Domain villain designed to act as an unpredictable third party in otherwise “normal” super-conflicts.
The supranym’s a double entendre, since ze thinks mob violence and chaos (a real riot) are absolutely hilarious (a laugh riot). Not a nice person at all.
Two more to go.
Not quite enough supernatural horror villains yet, so here’s one more:
One more to go.
So close!
Quick note - the Visitant doesn’t have Qualities selected for its abilities.