Who's the baddest mutha in your campaign?

[RevHooligan]

I'm curious about your "guy to beat" in your campaign. Who's the guy that makes your players groan when the miniature come out of the box? is he/she a CU baddie or a homegrown?

[Enforcer84]

Well the toughest 'Mutha' was Argent, she was the mother of three and could toss a house a block.

 

 

The one guy I hated was my character's arch nemesis, Zepplin. He was just my character only moreso. I had taken him as "More Powerful" and we paid for it every time we encountered him. Eventually, I was allowed to buy him down (I had a huge increase in power as part of the storyline). Powerman and Zepplin fought for seven turns of combat. It was a brawl to end all brawls. Then I a lucky combination of him missing and me rolling great damage enabled me to stun him. I finished him off with a haymaker and then...then...I was so horrible...My brother's character Coup De Grace'd him while I was too tired and beat up to stop him.

 

I still wince about that. It was very unheroic.

[Asperion]

With my campaign the one character that no one especially appreaciated was the one that got everyone together. He never did truly fight anyone or anything and had an extremely open and friendly personality that made it so that people were not afraid to approach him in any manner for anything. The way that I created him was so that his mental abilities were second only to the PTBs and everthing else were normal. His public face was that of an extremely successful businessman but this was only a cover for his true goal - meglomania, with he did not truely want but felt as though he was the only person qualified for the job.

[Hermit]

SHAFT!

 

Uhm, sorry about that, it just slipped out.

My campaigns are still fairly 'new' so the 'baddest of the bad' for 5th is still undecided.

Takofanes is seen as someone who "NEEDS to be beaten... eventually." and the heroes haven't even meet him yet! Just his minions. *Smiles*

 

Everyone fears Dr. D.

 

Mm, I need to work on some more home grown 'muthas' now that I think of it. I have one or two ideas I haven't sprung on the players yet.

 

Thanks

[JohnOSpencer]

The Baddest Mutha in my campaign is Fury. Nothing really special about him, he's just a very tough brick who fights intelligently. Nothing scares a party like an Intelligent villian.

 

John

[OddHat]

The Old Woman, who goes by many names. The oldest "human," and Earth's most powerful witch.

 

Other deadly top dogs include:

 

Valt Skaald, a shape-shifting body jumping thousand year old German ghost.

 

Baba Yaga, the Old Woman of The Forest, one of Europe's most powerful paranormals.

 

The Nine: The group headed by the Old Woman, a group which has secretly ruled the paranormals of the world since the fall of Atlantis. In disaray since WWII when Valt Skaald, Doc Calliban, and others betrayed its greatest secrets and created the modern wave of metahumans, but still powerful.

 

Demon: On the surface a loose affiliation of cults and crackpots guided by a few metahumans, in reality a paranormal controlled doomsday cult that has been around in one form or another since the 12th century.

 

The Dragon: Master of the paranormals of China ans SE Asia for many thousands of years, one time member of the Nine, still trapped in a pocket of the Astral Plane but fighting to break free.

 

Not many master villains in my campaign that have been around for less than a century.

[TheRealVector]

The one villain that my players hated was a Syrian born, western educated scientist who was a genius in the field of nanotechnology. He used his knowledge to re-engineer his body; adamantium skeleton, muscles of diamond fiber, every cell a mini-computer to enhance his considerable intellect. He dubbed himself Jihad and became a super powered terrorist. All this was just the excuse I used to have my players (playing in a modified Ultimate Marvel setting) fight my version of silver age Superman.

He was one tough villain. I used him only twice:

The first time Jihad and a small cadre of enhanced terrorist planned to release a super-virus upon our troops in Afghanistan. It took the combined might of Vanguard (our players superteam) and the Ultimates to bring Jihad down.

The second time Jihad escaped from imprisonment during Gulf War IIand nearly destroyed downtown Chicago (Vanguard's home base) in a preemptive attack that left one hero dead and the team defeated. Then Jihad headed striaght for D.C. and held the capitol hostage. Vanguard rallyed and finally defeated Jihad for good. The archtypical "loose canon/wolverine type" player character made sure Jihad never regained consciousness and disposed of the body. Fortunately the congressional investigation didn't look into that too deeply. My players were never so glad to see an NPC dead.

 

With Jihad dead, and not counting entities like Galactus, I'd say my players most fear Magneto and a home grown villain of mine called Time Sinc (temporal powers are scary!)

 

Sorry this is so long, but it's saturday and I'm at work:(

[Agent X]

I think among my group it would be Alchemy, created by the poster known as Superskrull. Apparently he asked what if Firestorm was a mad scientist who liked to manipulate the genetic structure of those around him? He was a frighteningly effective villain and, even though he hasn't been used in something like ten years, he's still the bad mamma jamma.

[Nucleon]

Originally posted by OddHat

Not many master villains in my campaign that have been around for less than a century.

 

Yep, same here. I make it very plain in my campaigns that the Universe did exists before 1939. God-like, immortal heroes and villains, if rare, are in a league of their own, ever dwarfing the players one on one. They always get my player's attention; it most be the lofty way I roleplay them

 

However, for sheer worrying factor, these "mortals" usually take the cake:

 

The King Of Spades; The actual King of Spadesnia is an energy form maintained by the sheer power of his ego; He absorbs physical and energy attacks in the appropriate defenses, and usually hits with BOECV blasts and draining HTH. My players would generally bet on him vs Destroyer, even if the former is build on less points. Charming personality too, an abusive, disdainfully haughty Blaastar-like ogre with a taste for mythophilia and his descendance. The female players' nightmare.

 

Captain Justice; A hero, mind you, only a very rightwinged-minded one, the Super's self-appointed police. A typical flying brick à la Superman (or more precisely DC's Cap Marvel), he's incredibly strong, fast, well-trained and resistant, and he knows it. He is the arrogant Law, and he tends to draw hasty, impulsive conclusions. Everybody's nightmare.

 

The Mass; A low-level loon, this mean, humongously enormous woman usually get all the attacks until she is done for. Her favored (and single) tactic is to wallop her super-dense layers of body fat into the ground, creating a quake. This clumsy personnage can be surprisingly fast (at triple END cost) when the need arise, and is close to invulnerablity (Lard laying Dam. Red.). And once again, a temperament players just love to hate.

 

I think's that's the key.

[Blue]

Re: Who's the baddest mutha in your campaign?

 

Originally posted by RevHooligan

I'm curious about your "guy to beat" in your campaign. Who's the guy that makes your players groan when the miniature come out of the box? is he/she a CU baddie or a homegrown?

 

Me, the GM.

 

Actually, the biggest, baddest guy of this campaign has not reared his head yet, but will soon. And if I run him right, the characters should be petrified. He's homegrown.

[Pegasus]

Unfortunately, the campaign didn't last too long, but one antagonist did manage to make a reappearance. He never formally had a name, but I think he was eventually dubbed Hate. He was a mindless rampaging creature composed entirely of acid. And i do remember audible noises when we encountered him a second time after barely surviving the first.

[Lupus]

I'm planning two games at the moment. One is a regular Champions Universe game - there, the bad dude is Dark Seraph. It's a mystic-oriented game, set in London.

 

The next game is one I'll be running after the regular CU one. Kind of a 'world of darkness Champions Universe.' Supers haven't made an appearance yet publically, and the government is controlling things very carefully. Nazi Germany is also out and about (WWII was fought to a draw in the European theatre). The bad guy for the first few stories, though, will be a government man, military, who collects, controls and studies metahumans. He's human, but has high technology at his disposal. I don't have an identity for him at the moment, but I may use the Warlord. Or perhaps Defender. At the moment, I'm imagining him as a cross between Midas (evil Iron Man from Grant Morrison's Marvel Boy) and Donald Lydecker (from Dark Angel). That game's still being planned.

 

In a previous game (sci-fi Star Champions), the triple-team of bad guys was Hass, Zorn and Rache (Hate, Anger and Revenge, in German). Humanity was living far away from earth at the time, having been chased off by aliens. The three dudes above had gone back to earth and taken it over. Essentially, their base was a planet populated by slaves and automatons, giving them an immense industrial base. They had the nastiest everything out there, as well as methods of brainwashing that were particularly difficult to fight. No-one was immune to them, though strong-willed people were more difficult to subvert. However, once subverted, their morals were totally changed - they would now resist any attempt to turn them back. It was essentially impossible with current tech available to the good guys. Interestingly, it meant people who were weasels before conversion remained weasels... so could sometimes throw off the conditioning.

[RevHooligan]

My baddest dude is Blitzkrieg, a power armored mastermind with scores of agents. The PCs were shocked when they beat him into a coma, not realizing they were fighting a flunky in a lookalike suit. They don't know his real identity is someone close to the team who has been steering their actions to his ends. I plan for Blitzkrieg to be a Lex Luthor type after he's found out. I may even swipe the supervillian in the White House plot from DC.

[Twilight]

Well at the moment I can't really say. My Golden Age game didn't last long enough for the big bad there to be revealed, though I feel that Professor Peril would've been a very worthy big bad indeed.

 

Obviously, I'm not going to give out to many details about the possible modern day campaign I may get started, aside from the fact that it's in Millenium City and Dr. D is still belived dead. However I'm hoping that my mystery villain would be capable of holding that position once he's actually revealed.

[don]

In my game, there are two. One is a good guy who spooks the HELL out of the players. His name is Agent Smith and imagine him being active from the pulp era (the twenties). He has grown into a combination of Nick Fury (more likely the Ultimates version, who is more like Shaft, via Sam Jackson) and Dr. Strange. Whenever they contact him, he tends to send a fragment to talk with them, because he's several dozen dimensions away battling hideous reality devouring entities, and only has a spare moment for chat.

 

The second is a villain. His name is Intellect, and he's my world's equivalent of Dr. Sivana. He's been dead over a quarter century, as far as the world knows. But he casts a long shadow. On a recent adventure, when several terrorist groups were using high-tech weapons to destabilize African nations (like they need much help), they ran suspects, and every one of the players shuddered when it occurred to them that Intellect might be behind the scheme. None of them wanted a piece of that. Could be because he was responsible for apparently killing my world's equivalent of Captain Marvel. Could be because my players are always more afraid of my playing an intelligent opponent.

 

Don Walsh

[Lord Liaden]

Originally posted by Nucleon

I make it very plain in my campaigns that the Universe did exists before 1939. God-like, immortal heroes and villains, if rare, are in a league of their own, ever dwarfing the players one on one. They always get my player's attention; it most be the lofty way I roleplay them :

 

I love that kind of character too. You can justify so much depth for a hero or villain who's been active (if only behind the scenes) for centuries: the breadth of knowledge and skill they've acquired, the vast resources and organization they've built up. They may not necessarily be the most powerful beings in the world, but they're certainly among the most versatile and capable.

 

My campaigns have featured two classic Champions characters of that ilk. On the side of villainy, Lung Hung from Steve Perrin's VOICE of Doom leads the primary world-threatening terrorist organization. A master manipulator but also devastating in a straight-up fight, he's had nearly eight hundred years of practice interfering in the affairs of mortals. (I'm currently in the process of updating and collating VOICE for 5E.)

 

As for the camp of the angels, I've made use of Nuada of the Silver Hand from Kingdom of Champions on several occasions. This is the original hero on which the mythic Nuada was based, actually an incredibly advanced cyborg who remains in suspended animation until the world faces a major threat. My PCs teamed up with him twice - actually they handled one element of the menace while Nuada confronted another alone, since he greatly outpowered them. Much as my players welcomed his help, they dread his appearances because they usually mean that the world is about to literally go to hell in a handbasket.

[Nucleon]

Re: Re: Who's the baddest mutha in your campaign?

 

Originally posted by Blue

Actually, the biggest, baddest guy of this campaign has not reared his head yet, but will soon. And if I run him right, the characters should be petrified. He's homegrown.

 

Huh, and that's it? More, more!

[John515]

I plan to use everyone's favorite lich (the BIG T) as soon as the heroes get some seasoning under their belt (BTW, whoever designed that guy deserves a medal or something-he's great!). I'll also be using some of my old characters from long-past 4Ed as a super team in case they get cute and start trying to learn about any of the published villains. I've also got a super agency in place that promises to give my players some real headaches......

[Vondy]

Count Wolfgang Von Eroberung and his evil organization CONQUEST. He's an immortal Prussian Count who nearly pushed Germany to victory in both World Wars.

 

Reporter: "Count, could you tell us what C.O.N.Q.U.E.S.T. stands for?"

 

CVE: "Its is my goal: to bring unity to the world through Conquest."

 

Reporter: "Isn't it an acronym?"

 

CVE: "No."

 

Reporter: "Then why is it all caps"

 

CVE: "It looks more impressive that way, don't you think?"

 

Humor aside. He's in destroyers' league in terms of raw power (though destroyer probably had an edge before the count removed him from the playing field), but he's smarter, has a bigger plot-device pool, and often succeeds where destroyer fails because his gargantuan ego doesn't get in the way. He's feared for his machiavellian ruthlessness.

 

He's also frustrating to heroes because he's [occasionally] sympathetic. He honestly believes he could run the world better than the current governments are running it. He's also a physician and has staged invasions of embattled third world regions as peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, and has actually improved conditions for the people when he's done so. Improved standards of living, improved education, improved health-care, very little freedom. And that last part is the kicker. He's a great leader, but he's an autocrat... he is a villain.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Originally posted by D-Man

Improved standards of living, improved education, improved health-care, very little freedom. And that last part is the kicker. He's a great leader, but he's an autocrat... he is a villain.

[lemming]

Originally posted by D-Man

has a bigger plot-device pool.

Every villian needs a plot-device pool.

[Argus]

Re: Who's the baddest mutha in your campaign?

 

Originally posted by RevHooligan

I'm curious about your "guy to beat" in your campaign. Who's the guy that makes your players groan when the miniature come out of the box? is he/she a CU baddie or a homegrown?

 

Mademoiselle Damnation.

The team met her once. She never showed any powers. She looked like Betty Davis at 90. She smoked with a 12†holder. And she was into pain, giving and receiving.

The Team Mentalist tried to read her mind and was given

A tour into the darkest pits of human depravity, the mentalist fled.

When the team asked her what happen, she would only say.

“Catnip, oh my god, catnip that’s sick.â€

 

The Hero (NPC) is named Stonewall. “He’s 103 years old and has survived a Nuke.â€

The Team got to fight in a different world where he was the ruler.

 

The Team Brick attacked him with a 24d6 Pushed Move Through. (This was her really big attack, only used on Mechanon once).

 

He didn’t even move.

 

They ran like children.

 

 

A.

[Vondy]

Originally posted by lemming

Every villian needs a plot-device pool.

 

Indeed, its a variable power pool with the SFX "Plot Device". Its huge... immense, really.

 

We meet at last, Destroyer. I see your plot device is as big as mine... not.

[zornwil]

The players haven't met the REAL "big bad" yet. They had a long-running battle with Kingpin but honestly he wasn't really enough to make them groan out loud, except maybe once or twice.

 

The surprise to me in a way was an effective nearly-human group I set up called Fox Force Five, modeled after the mention in Pulp Fiction. These women have not been defeated and have proved difficult to deal with, both in the PCs' "regular" life as well as in super-hero mode. However, they are mercenaries and really not so evil that things have escalated to all-out war.

 

Oh, and Magneto - he's a tough cookie. They are now at odds, as Magneto demands that mutants join his cause. As the PCs' friends, Professor X/the X-Men (who actually are an under-powered team that goes up against Magneto but is somewhat easily beat by him right now), have become embroiled in conflict with Magneto, so have they. They've only had one battle and even since then have conversed. In that one battle, it was more like shadowboxing. I restrained Magneto a bit, mainly because he's not interested in killing. However, after he was surprised at their strength in battle, he's warned them next time he won't hold back - via a warning to ALL mutants that times are grave and if he must kill other mutants, then he will. It's something he greatly dislikes, but now feels that the battle-lines within his own community must be drawn and he must be more aggressive.

[Tech]

Hmm, on the personally-created villains side, I'd have to go with either Black Hole or Hurricane.

 

Black Hole is enormously strong, dense and able to absorb virtually any energy in the area. This includes attacks by one super at another super, even those not aimed at him. This never fails to amaze heroes and villains alike.

 

Ex. Lazer fires an intense laserbeam at you, Skyguy. However, the beam warps and gets sucked into Black Hole's dark corona of energy.

 

Hurricane is superbly strong on the normal side but not superstrong. He can whip up a small hurricane and dash multiple heroes (or other opponents) to unconsciousness as fast as he wants to. He's somewhat tied into nature and can feel the pollution damage depending on his proximity to it.

 

Interestingly enough (and not planned for), both of them greatly have the player & characters respect. Black Hole has an amiable personality and isn't a vicious criminal, just selfish. He's even helped out the heroes a couple times. Hurricane, on the other hand, hates cities due to the blatant damage to the environment from pollution. When Hurricane shows up, the heroes rush to try to find out what he's rampaging against and try to fix it and/or investigate. Hurricane is willing to let them since he won't have anyone opposing his ambition, the heroes find out a lot of corruption while saving the environment and both are mostly satisfied. However, should the heroes fail to act swiftly...