Yeah, Grakko was another experiment - his blitz-wagon lieutenants are effectively his minion-producers, which is part of why I stuck a limit on them so they should run out eventually. Overlords with Rapid Deployment punch so far above their weight IME I keep trying to find ways to tone them down a bit.
Pretty happy with Professor Peril, and I like Doom Room a lot more than Danger Room - heard it in a M&M play vid, of all things. Kind of Murderworld if Arcade was replaced with Brainiac.
Anyhow, new pair of partner-villains and the conspiracy of technocrats that created them;
For some reason I struggle with acronyms that don’t start with the letter S. Happy with the wordplay of the organization’s SIN/OD and SIN/NER divisions, though - even if I couldn’t get a Y in for synod.
She’s out to prove she’s the better baddy to daddy, and she might just do it.
As a Skilled/Titan build she gets access to a phenomenally annoying ability combination that lets her stick a big persistent and exclusive penalty on a target, then follow up with that Titan trick that lets you deal some damage and then leave the victim unable to do anything but Overcome to escape confinement - which is a real joy with a big fat P+E penalty in place. Usually better off getting a teammate to break you out than dealing with it yourself, and having a Booster specialist on the team for support sure helps against her.
Taking a brief break from the villain series, here’s a random superhero writeup based on the art on page 134 of the core book, inspired by a comment over on the Podcast Suggestions subforum.
Nifty. “Made In America” is a great ability name. I feel like Sentinels should have some sort of '90s-tastic super-team that includes this guy, Sk8-Blayde, and some others. (Possibly Alpha 2000 or Darkstryfe & Paynstayke.)
Also did some possible stats for the gal on page 170. Someone suggested using Emo G for a supranym, which is great wordplay but unfortunately claimed by a musician already. There was another suggestion for a Form-Changer, so I’ve done up two possible versions of the character in the art, one insnaely complex, one pretty straightforward:
And also posted Part 8 of that villain building series I’ve been working on.
And Part 9 finishes off the Approaches with Tactician and Underpowered. Engagement on this series of posts has been lousy, so I’m going to be reconsidering whether it’s worth keeping up. I sure don’t need it for myself, and by the view counts precious few people do either.
Resuming my series on villain design, although I’m still not sold on its utility to people. At least starting on archetypes lets me discuss what you might want to look for in your Approach pairing, since some mesh better than others.
Onslaughter - Physical powerhouse with metallokinesis, vehement anti-government extremist - and somehow still not Magneto
Plurality - Port of an old Villains & Vigilantes villain whose psychic powers are focused on duplicating his consciousness, either by overwriting the minds of others or forming psychoplasmic clones
Syzygy - Otherworldy mystic weirdo who uses supposedly-impossible mixes of opposed power sources for its magic
Damage typing is one of the less defined aspects of the SCRPG. I believe that the only real distinctions made in the rules is that there is “physical” and “energy” damage, and that each Elemental/Energy power has its own damage type, which are presumably sub-types under the energy umbrella.
However, on page 24, the core rulebook says thus:
An Attack is your hero attempting to inflict some kind of direct harm — that is, deal damage — to another character, whether it’s physical (a series of punches), emotional (mocking taunts), or mental (psychic blasts).
So, say a hero blasts a Legion villain with an Attack made using the Electricity power. Lightining is certainly physical, in the common sense, but would it count as such in regards to Divide and Conquer or Instability of Form? Or would it count as energy damage, and thus not trigger those abilities?
On the other hand, I’m fairly certain that socio-emotional attacks—like, say, a hero using Presence + Insight to ask a Legion villain an Armour-Piercing Question—would completely bypass the aforementioned abilities.
Uhm, it’s a villain ability, and since villains are almost always run by the GM, why would the GM need to grant permission to themself to use the ability?
Fair point. I have a tendency to hand off individual villains to a co-GM (or random bystander) at times for RP purposes and a combat assist and it warps my thinking. Still, the ability does call for the GM to consider how they’re going handle ambush tactics, going hidden during a fight and combat awareness in general. Overcomes are probably the answer, but no matter what you do some degree of consistency between how heroes and villains deal with the subject is likely a good idea.
Complicated further by the fact that some damage reduction abilities specifically call out “any physical or energy” (Armored and Powerhouse) while others only mention physical (Artificial Being) and at least one forces you to make a [physical or energy] choice (Power Suit). Bit murky - and presumably each Element/Energy power is a subtype of energy, but are all Material attacks physical, even Toxic with its partial overlap with Nuclear? Inventions or Gadgets could probably be either - frag grenades are physical, plasma grenades are energy/Fire, etc. Telekinesis is probably physical, but you could use it with the environment to (say) throw molten metal or liquid nitrogen or something for an energy type effect.
And a lot of villains have abilities that affect “any damage” so it doesn’t matter if you’re punching, zapping, mind-melting, or just being very, very mean, they treat it all equally.
My take is that Electricity is energy typed and bypasses those legion tricks, but you could probably find away to make it physical if you wanted, maybe by taking a twist or prepping with an Overcome so (say) your lightning blast knocks a telephone pole over on the victim or shatters the ceiling overhead and dumps debris on them.
I think you’re right, the way the many defensive abilities are phrased suggests that most attacks are either physical or energy types, with an unmentioned “other” category that contains bardic Savage Mockery, telepathic assaults, incapacitating intimidation, etc., etc.
When I introduced this guy to my campaign last year I was expecting him to be a nuisance gimmick villain my players would be annoyed by a time or two before they developed some countermeasures and walloped him good. Instead, he managed to become the most frustrating baddie in the whole campaign and has been making on-and-off appearances for the better part of three collections worth of stories. Thankfully the players finally got proactive about dealing with him, did some prep work and eventually lured him into a trap that led to one of their most successful busts to date.
Last session his trial was finally over and he’s now safely in prison, deprived of all the tech that made him such a pain. It took about three sessions worth of game time for that to happen. My group attendance is hit-or-miss and they had any PC whose player was absent that week providing coverage of the trial to make sure he didn’t escape before sentencing, and the one time everyone did show up they called in a bunch of favors from an NPC superteam to keep an eye on things at teh courthouse while they dealing with another problem. The level of paranoia was so impressive I was sorely tempted to actually have him make a plausible escape attempt, but Harold’s gotten a little tired at this point and I eventually decided to just let him go serve some time.
How long he’ll serve, well, that’s up in the air. The guy’s a real savant when it comes to teleportation tech, and there might be some former clients of his who’d bust him out as well. If he does get out I expect hunting him down again will be a top priority for my players.
All that hate for a villain who has literally never done enough damage himself to KO anyone, and he’s not even a Hinder machine like some of my villains.
Lore-wise, this guy ties in to a bunch of previous street-level villains, including the ever-popular Professor Pusher.
Mechanically, he’s one possible answer to the “my villains never manage to KO anyone!” complaints I see sometimes. The build is a glass cannon (or glass sledgehammer, I guess) but can reasonably deal 20+ damage a round to one target, or (if you ignore the way Relentless villains are meant to concentrate on one victim at a time) split that over two targets. If he spikes his Mid die 30+ damage is entirely possible, which can easily be a one-hit KO. That starts on round one, where fresh heroes will have to twist to use most defensive reactions or Hit the Deck!
It’s pretty scary, but also offers a tactical puzzle. If he sets his sights on you, can you get away from him before he lands a KO or use your Yellow/Red zone abilities to weather the storm while your team wrecks him or his allies? His mobility options aren’t great and he’s at his best in melee, or maybe some tricky Overcome could make him lose track of his target.
Never had much trouble getting the odd KO myself, but if this won’t do it I don’t know what will other a bunch of Inventors using the villain version of Charged-Up Blast repeatedly.
This guy was written up for a surprise one-shot that may turn into an ongoing campaign. I was initially going to give Major Patriot (aka the page 134 guy) a test drive but the group already had a trio of tech-hero types and didn’t have anyone who could even sort of handle any mystical stuff that might come up, so I figured I’d make something different to fill the niche. Rather liking the roleplaying possibilities of being time-displaced from mid-1400s Eastern Europe so far, so I hope this goes long-term.
Mechanically, Ivan’s a borderline glass cannon built around a lot of varied offensive abilities and hoping he gets a chance to act in Red status to start the Health yo-yo with the familiar Eruption/Improved Immunity combo. In the two action scenes he’s existed in so far he got KO’d in the first one (got greedy for damage and didn’t heal/Boost myself enough) and then started the second one in Red and spent the whole scene bouncing between Yellow and Red while cranking out damage and self-bonuses like mad. Seemed to work okay.
I’d feel bad about being such a selfish build (no real team-friendly abilities at all, just some limited Hinders) but the group has a hero that’s so focused on pure support I’d feel like I was bigfooting their act if I dabbled in it myself. And hey, someone’s got to dish out the damage - and at least my self-Boosts are pretty solid, so I’m not a resource drain myself.
