The Enemies books

[Tech]

Hero Games has put out alot of books with supervillains in them. You've got Enemies I, II, III, International Enemies, Villains Vandals and Vermin and so on.

What's your favorite (or one of your favorite) supervillain books that they've put out and why?

[Stanley Teriaca]

Me? I guess I'm in love/hate with European Enemies. Mostly because how bad the book is. Full of stereotypes and bad write-ups.

 

Yet there are many villains actually have protental. Eclipse (Eurotrash), and Mammoth (renamed Masterdon [from mastodon] and made into a comedy parody of a mastermind villain) are two examples of what could be done with a little work and some reworking.

Edited March 18 by Stanley Teriaca

[Lord Liaden]

Michael "Susano" Surbrook did a quality "debugging" of European Enemies character sheets for Fifth Edition, including correcting math errors, revising character abilities that were inconsistent or made no sense, and providing notes explaining his process. You can view those here. As Michael points out, a few of those Enemies are decent concepts and designs, albeit most of them are "Eurotrash."

 

For my part, two supervillain books are tied in my esteem. Classic Enemies edited by the late great Scott Bennie gathered many previously published Champions baddies, updated them to Fourth Edition, and fleshed out their back stories, personalities and motivations to make them more interesting to roleplay. The book also established the "Bennie formula" for character write-ups as the template which all subsequent Champions books were based on. A reprint/elaboration of the classic Stronghold super-prison was a welcome bonus.

 

My other fave is 6E's Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains. It's a very large and very diverse assemblage of nasties, with something for a supers campaign of just about any style and power level. The color artwork is also a pleasure to see, something noticeably missing from past Hero Games volumes dedicated to such a visually vivid genre and medium. My only significant complaint about it, is that it eliminates the "plot seeds" that accompanied all the character write-ups for Fifth Edition Champs. Those often gave me story ideas that would not have occurred to me otherwise.

[Tech]

I don't know if I have a favorite but there are some for me that still stand out and I use:

 

a) Enemies I - one of the first books I ever got, nuff said

b) Enemies II - I think I like this one even more than I above.

c) Classic Enemies - this is a good addition but quite frankly, I felt the new versions of Eurostar were powergaming versions and never use them. However, the art is a wonderful revision, in particular Panda, Herculon and Leech.

d) Enemies: International - I kinda like this and at the same time don't. The art is mediocre for the most part. Some of the villains felt like the author was stretching to create villains to fill out the book so for the campaign. Only a few are used now (the rest cured, locked away, etc)

e) Conquerors, Killers and Crooks - quite good. However, I felt the villains almost always having 2 pages each was unnecessarily detailed. There's alot of information on each villains as well as 3 plot hooks for each. However, with 2 pages for each, I've occasionally ended up putting them on spreadsheets streamlining them to 1 page; flipping through pages during an episode slows things down & makes me as GM look like I don't have the episode ready.

 

[DShomshak]

Classic Enemies showed how Enemies books should be written. The addition of Plot Seeds in Conquerors, Killers and Crooks was the most useful innovation in format since then -- and for writers as well as GMs. Coming up with three stories for every group and character forces one to think harder about how characters can be used in play. That makes characters more useful to GMs, so the product gives better value for money.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

Heartily agree. I find I now tend to come up with scenario ideas in "plot seed" format initially, then flesh them out.

[Sketchpad]

Classic Enemies is my personal favorite. It kind of felt like a "trade paperback" of the old Enemies books with some added details.

[death tribble]

I have all the Enemies books. Of the ones I could easily lay my hands on

Enemies 1:

This gave us GENOCIDE. the mutant hating organisation and their version of the X-Men's Sentinal robot programme.

Herculan became important as the father of a villainess in our campaign

The team the Ultimates who would appear in later editions

Ankylosaur and my favourite rendering of the character by Mark Williams

Cobra and the seed of what would become an organisation in later books

Project Sunburst and the villains that came from that.

And Firewing who would inspire the creation of an entire team in To Serve and Protect.

Enemies 2:

This gave us the Destroyers as a superteam who would be revisited and remodelled.

It also gave us Black Paladin who has also had staying power

And Bulldozer. Who could forget him ?

And Grond whose origin is the funniest ever.

The Conquerors who joined with Wyvern and Ankylosaur from the previous book. While the latter two went on to get more coverage, Neutron and Arc did not.

Eurostar also featured. A villainous European team. I keep the core team despite write ups later on that got rid of some of them

Others who went on to have a prolonged life were Slug and The Monster

Then we have Terror Incorporated under Professor Muerte who was never as popular as his idol Dr Destroyer

But above all Enemies 2 gave us Foxbat. Who only made the book because Mark Williams drew him on the cover. Beloved of many people, it is odd to think that he was a last minute addition to the book.

Enemies III

This gave us an index of villains in all three Enemies books plus several other published works and what kind of villain they could be categorised as, which was helpful.

My favourite here is Rainbow Archer with her trick arrows. Sadly she was one of the ones who was not as well thought of and thus no (official) updates.

We were also introduced to Dark Seraph and Mechassassin who would be revisited.

 Enemies Assemble:

This book gave us villain teams and provided an update on the Ultimates whilst giving Foxbat staff.

And while I might use Ultimate Mastermind and Supercharger I don't use Plasmoid as emissary.

I like the idea behind Factor 7 and the Furies and the origin of the Maestros

 

I have a soft spot for European Enemies as it has Enemies based in Europe. I like the idea behind Eclipse. And it was easy to adapt others.

 

The one I was disappointed in was Enemies the International File. The interior artwork I found was a let down and none of them grabbed me the way other ones did.

Thankfully Enemies Villainy Unbound was a a return to form. This had a a team created by the Chernobyl disaster and introduced The Engineer and Invictus who would have a legacy.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I cannot find it right now but there is a huge thread on this forum of updated characters to 6th edition, part of them from Euro enemies (with colored pics!).  We were trying to cover any that were not reprinted somewhere else.  Panda, Racoon, Sledge, Wyvern, and I think one other* [ed: Hideous!] are updated in the 6th edition version of Island of Dr Destroyer as well.

 

 

*Oh yeah, and Vibron!

Edited March 21 by Christopher R Taylor

[Dr. MID-Nite]

I think all of them have something positive in them. Enemies for Hire is probably the weakest of the bunch because both the ideas and writeups are so pedestrian. I'm a big fan of Horror Enemies, Allies, and Classic Enemies myself. Enemies 3 had a lot of villains who never returned.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I found it!  The 6th edition conversion thread!  26 pages of character conversions, most of the art sadly has been internet scrubbed but the groups can be found in the downloads section and I have a bunch of the colored images on my pinterest page.

[Lord Liaden]

Enemies: The International File was flawed, in that it was clearly an attempt to create villains based outside of the United States, by someone without familiarity with the cultures of the countries they were from. As such it fell back on cliches and stereotypes, or contextually inappropriate associations. OTOH it was Hero Games' first deliberate project to broaden its Champions gaming resources beyond the Americentric focus of most of the genre source material. The company continued those efforts through Fourth and Fifth Edition, to a greater extent than almost any other RPG, and more than the mainstream comics companies.

 

It was also the start of "themed" Enemies collections, moving away from generalized villain compendia to ones whose characters shared common themes and/or motifs. Fourth Edition Champions was the height of that experiment, with Alien Enemies, High-Tech Enemies, Creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies, European Enemies 😖, Enemies Assemble for teams, Enemies for Hire for mercenaries... despite varying success in execution, each book aspired to fill a defined niche in the supervillain ecosystem.

[Stanley Teriaca]

8 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I cannot find it right now but there is a huge thread on this forum of updated characters to 6th edition, part of them from Euro enemies (with colored pics!).  We were trying to cover any that were not reprinted somewhere else.  Panda, Racoon, Sledge, Wyvern, and I think one other are updated in the 6th edition version of Island of Dr Destroyer as well.

So how many levels of Striking Appearance does Hideous have?

[death tribble]

Ask him about his appearance and he will strike you. More than once....

[Christopher R Taylor]

11 hours ago, Stanley Teriaca said:

So how many levels of Striking Appearance does Hideous have?

 

You know, when I built him I didn't give him any.  He has distinctive looks, but I guess he just keeps his mask on all the time in the Island of Dr Destroyer adventure.  You're right he should have had a good 2-3d6 just for being so scarred and horrible looking

[Stanley Teriaca]

On 3/21/2024 at 6:50 AM, death tribble said:

Ask him about his appearance and he will strike you. More than once....

Well, that is one reason it is called Striking Appearance...

[Tech]

European Enemies.... there are almost no words how messed up that book is. A friend asked me recently: "I got a copy of it as a present. Can I use it?" (He's one of our GMs)  I replied, "Sure, go ahead. Be aware one villain is used by another GM but the rest are yours. Enjoy. Have a laugh.Your mouth will drop; it's a mess so just use the general concept and do whatever you want with the villain; it'll be better."

[death tribble]

It has taken me awhile but I found other of my enemies books

 

Classic Enemies reprinted a number of enemies from enemies 1-3 and included

The Ultimates, The Conquerors, Eurostar (with new members Mentalla, the Whip and White Flame), The Raiders(Enemies III), Terror Inc, Project Sunburst, Thunder and Lightning, Panda and Raccoon as teams or at least duos, Dr Destroyer, Dark Seraph, Slug and Firewing all appear as do what I call the fan favourites Foxbat, Grond, Black Paladin, Lady Blue, The Monster, Bulldozer and Blowtorch. Ripper who was in the Stronghold book featured as did Timemaster who appeared in an Adventurers Club. The latter would not appear again sadly. And Cobra became King Cobra.

 

Enemies Villainy Unbound contains the teams Mass Reaction (created by Chernobyl), PLUNDER and PSI-Kin. It also introduced Borealis (who went on to become a major figure in other books, The Duchess (who would graduate to being part of Viper's hierarchy), The Engineer (who went on into other books), Malachite (who I believe became Teleos in later books. if not the similarities got me to mix the two up) and Invictus (who got a changed update later on. I would use him as he is here the bodyguard to Reagan and Bush)

 

Enemies. The International File. Individual villains from around the world. The only ones I thought of using were Death Knell, Dream Thief, Madame Guillotine, Oracle, Pretty Poison and the Ruler of Crime.

Oddly I have more affection for European Enemies despite its flaws than this book. European Enemies is larger and was more expensive. It had the band Argent Anarky, the groups Triad and Eclipse and villains like Banshee, Inquisition, Black Druid, Black Jack, Carpathia, the Despoiler, Facet, Hood, Hoarfrost, Doppelganger, Mammoth and Silhouette. And if I did not use them as written I adapted them. And I liked the artwork more.

Mind you, I looked at the Zodiac book and the villains there would need a complete rework. There are also editing mistakes there for example Sagittarius is supposed to have radioed Zodiac in order to join but the description around her character sheet says she fled the law and ran into Leo and that was her way in.

 

Enemies for Hire. This starts off with a guy who has a gun on his shoulder. That was a win for me straight off. Interface makes his debut but is rewritten for subsequent editions. I can't think of any others who made a subsequent appearance either. Again I like the artwork here more than The International File. There was a stylistic thing here with 'missing' photos and 'post it' notes covering text which was gibberish.

 

Enemies of San Angelo. I got this because I liked the San Angelo stuff but some of the artwork is a little off-putting to me or rather, it is not to my taste. It is a stylistic thing more than anything else. But to be honest I have not read this in a while so I can't say much about it.

 

EDIT: and thanks to Tech I have been able to group the enemies books together

Edited April 11 by death tribble