Villains get 5xH Health added to their other 2 characteristics (I forgot their names at the moment). Even without Upgrades, is that only if the villain is fighting solo?
Example: a lone villain fights 4 heroes. His Health is increased by 20. Simple.
If 4 heroes face 4 villains (without any upgrades, so each is a "Moderate" element), do they *each* get 20 extra Health? 5 extra? None?
They each get an extra 20 health.
Wow! How are the heroes supposed to deal with 4 60ish Health opponents when they generally have around 30 (maybe)? It's not like they can do more damage than the villains or act more often.
I ardently disagree. While it does help for heroes to have multi targeting attacks, I've had players absolutely mow down some of the villains I've thrown at them, even with defensive abilities. Heroes can do a lot more damage together, and often have more incentive to work together than villains do.
Edit: Just pulled up my excel spreadsheet for calculating average dice pool results, and a bit of quick math.
d6/d6/d6 dice pool has an average mid of 3. So, 3 damage. 3 damage*4 heroes is 12 damage per round. Over 8 rounds, that's an average of 96 damage, which is enough to take down one of those villains and drop a second to about half. That's no abilities, just a d6/d6/d6 mid die attack.
Yeah, it seems like a lot of HP, but it burns out pretty fast in practice. Yellow and Red Abilities can do a lot of damage, and players using their powers in concert, as catDreaming mentioned, can get the players a long way.
(Also, I probably wouldn't suggest [H] Villains as an encounter, anyway. I'd probably suggest [H]-1 with a Challenge, or maybe [H]-2 with a Challenge and some Lieutenants or Minions. This isn't for balance as much as it's for variety.)
I have no play experience, so I'll take your word for it; seems wonky on paper.
I asked specifically about 4 villains, as I noted in my "Sell Me Off" thread, I'm looking to transfer an existing Champions game to SCRPG and the heroes have a nemesis team.
As for variety, though, surely 4 villains has more variety than, say, an encounter with just minions and lieutenants, right? (But perhaps less than one with Challenges.)
That depends on the Villains, really. You could make a scene with four villains all working on the same goal the same way, or have them approach it different ways. The end result will be a combination of what you make, and how the storytelling goes.
"Variety" just means that, sometimes, players have abilities that focus on Minions or Environments or Overcomes, and an all-Villain fight might leave out some of their abilities. And remember that Hero Points come from Overcome actions (because of Principles), and Challenges are the main way those come into play. Of course, you can always give out Hero Points in another way :-)
If you have a team of 4 Villains and you want them all to play together, it's possible to have them all but change up how they work mechanically in the fight. For instance, assuming you have 4 Heroes:
If the Villain is creating a Challenge or an Environment-equivalent element, you can always have their character sheet if the players Attack them, and skip their "Actions" in favor of describing the ongoing effects Challenge or the Environment effects. If they take out all the Villain's HP, that might "defeat the Villain," but there might be consequences because they didn't deal with the Challenge or Environment.
Of course, I think we can assume your scenes aren't ALL going to be 4 Villains, and if you do run a 4 Villain scene every once in a while, it's not the end of the world. Still, I always like to think outside the box, so thinking about how to run "4 Villains" but do it in mechanically unique ways was a fun exercise for me. :-)
Very cool ideas! Thanks!