Want your ideas for a Villain

[Tech]

I want everyone's thoughts on how powerful to make a villain of mine. His power is to cancel any hero's innate superpowers. This translates to a punch that can ignore any superhero's PD if that PD is due to superpowers, most likely an AVLD, Does Body attack. This also means that most innate superpowers can't bother him much because he's cancelling that attack. For now, I'm giving him Damage Reduction 1/2, Resist, vs PD & ED. Of course, his weakness right away is any attack that isn't innate, such as Martial Arts or a foci attack or even knockback.

I plan for this weakness to be his downfall eventually.

 

He'll be fighting a team of superheroes and probably only used a few times. What I'm stuck on is whether to make him powerful enough to handle the team singlehandedly or make him only slightly more powerful than the hero and rely on flunkies to assist him. The average hero will be about 10d6, 25 PD/ED and 6 SPD. I'll also accept any suggestions for alternate powers & new powers.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Want your ideas for a Villain

 

What I'm thinking might work is: Suppress Superpowers 20d6 [standard Effect: 60], all Innate Superpowers at the same time (+2), Area Of Effect (One Hex; +1/2), Personal Immunity (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2), Inherent (+1/4) (350 Active Points); Always On (-1/2), No Range (-1/2). Total cost: 175 points.

 

That's so bloomin' expensive that your way is probably better. But it's worth considering.

[SleepyDrug]

Re: Want your ideas for a Villain

 

Gotta disagree. He's a villain, forget point totals and go for effect.

 

Use Bob's Suppress write-up...it'll be easier to manage in game.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Want your ideas for a Villain

 

What I'm thinking might work is: Suppress Superpowers 20d6 [standard Effect: 60], all Innate Superpowers at the same time (+2), Area Of Effect (One Hex; +1/2), Personal Immunity (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2), Inherent (+1/4) (350 Active Points); Always On (-1/2), No Range (-1/2). Total cost: 175 points.

 

That's so bloomin' expensive that your way is probably better. But it's worth considering.

 

If it's only 1 hex, then Our Heroes' defenses are still on against ranged attacks and their powers still work if they're more than a hex away (meanting our villain still gets smacked with ranged attacks, doesn't he?)

 

On the other hand, Suppress implies the powers won't work at all.

 

What about:

 

Suppress Superpowers 20d6 [standard Effect: 60], all Innate Superpowers at the same time (+2), Area Of Effect (One Hex; +1/2), Megascale (+1/4; 1km radius), Personal Immunity (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2), Inherent (+1/4), Invisible Power Effects (+3/4*) (420 Active Points); Always On (-1/2), No Range (-1/2), Only to the extent powers would affect him (-1/2 **). Total cost: 168 points.

 

* So it's detectable only by some obscure sense, based on his SFX.

 

** So the characters' powers still work, just not against him. You can still, for example, fly away or attack his allies with your EB. It just won't affect him personally. Arguably not a -1/2. At -0, the power costs 210 points. I'm with sleepy on this - he's a major villain so don't worry about his point cost. If you wanted, you could build him within 350 (140 left over after hius major power), but he's definitely a one trick pony then.

 

BTW, seems to me the easy way to beat this guy is use your powers to drop a wall on him, or toss a car at him. Anything indirect should work, right?

 

This guy is liable to wind up dead, of course. "He's taken a direct hit from MuscleMan, and soaked up two of RadiationGirl's most powerful blasts. I can't afford to hold back - I'll fire my MegaStrike Arrow at him!"

 

"Say again? He did what?"

[FTJoshua]

Re: Want your ideas for a Villain

 

Campaign-wise, I'd opine that it depends on fear factor. One dude who can handle 'em all is more frightening than a semi-big dude with X amount of flunkies. On the other hand, it lessens the liklihood of stumbling upon his weakness if there are disposable underlings. So I'd say it depends on the story.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Want your ideas for a Villain

 

If it's only 1 hex, then Our Heroes' defenses are still on against ranged attacks and their powers still work if they're more than a hex away (meanting our villain still gets smacked with ranged attacks, doesn't he?)

 

On the other hand, Suppress implies the powers won't work at all.

Both of these, I think, are a matter of interpretation. I'm not in a good position to pull out FREd at the moment, but it seems to me that Suppress targets the Powers themselves rather than the character wielding them, so a ranged Power can be Suppressed at the beginning, middle, or (as in this case) end.

 

I had been thinking of adding Self Only (-1/2) to the Power to represent the fact that it affects only Powers against the character himself and not anything entering his hex and missing him, but I wasn't sure it'd be quite the thing (though it could always be applied as normal and then defined as such).

[freakboy6117]

Re: Want your ideas for a Villain

 

hmmm is it just me or does it strike you that some one with this power would go in search of weapons that would expand his power to all types of power.

 

Lets see he'd need a psionic alpha wave nullfier, Wakkooms eldritch talisman of the mana vampire, and an organic energy wave field dampening genrator. thatw ould pretty much make him unstopable well that and a unobtanium battle mech to bolt it all too.

 

and of course he needs a name

how about The Vitiator

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=vitiate&db=*

[pinecone]

Re: Want your ideas for a Villain

 

I used to use a villian called Zero, who used the self only supress method...I think I threw in Invisable power effects of some sort...after all he's a villian who cares about points....I used him as a team beater....The martial brick was So happy he had MA......but I retired him he does hose some power sets totally...such as the beamer...being useless is not fun.....maybe set the supress to stardard effect to make book keeping easier...

[Tech]

Re: Want your ideas for a Villain

 

Thanks for the real interesting ideas. I hadn't even thought of Suppress. This guy definitely has an end in mind so he won't be around forever, unless he becomes one of those surprising 'Wow, I like this villain. I hope you use him again' from the players.

 

FTJoshua, I agree with the fear factor. I may still have him employ a few agents here & there but I'm tentatively thinking about going with the single-baddie-vs-all concept. To not do so would dilute his presence upon the unsuspecting heros. Based on the hero average stats I presented though, I still wonder about the power level to hit the hero(s) with. Since I intend to ignore the heros superpowered PD, except for the figured PD characteristic, there's gonna be BODY being taken here. I don't want to kill heros left & right. The fear factor is that heroes, yea, even Bricks can be surprised that they got injured.

 

Johnny Fist: Brute Fist, you're injured!

Brute Fist: I know!

Johnny Fist: But you can bounce a bazooka off your chest!

Brute Fist: Tell me about it! We're in trouble!

 

Causing a few BODY here & there with every blow can be more effective in making a hero blanch than hitting them with a killing attack of 20 BODY, 60 STUN or something like that.