Antagonist of godly proportion

[GCMorris]

I'm just starting champions again after a (very) long hiatus, I still have fourth edition but am getting ready to purchase 6e. I have a leftover idea from back in those days that I never had the chance to build.

 

I'm wanting to build an immensely powerful adversary who gains his power from the people who worship him. He is actually quite weak by himself but he charges himself up through the 'worship' of his followers. In reality he is siphoning energy from these people and managed to create his first worshippers through mind control. How should I go about this?

[assault]

An NPC, obviously. You're the GM?

 

Write him up at a couple of different power levels, and use the one that is relevant when he does "major stuff" or the PCs encounter him.

[Christopher]

An NPC, obviously. You're the GM?

 

Write him up at a couple of different power levels, and use the one that is relevant when he does "major stuff" or the PCs encounter him.

That.

You really just have a special effect for having written him up on differnt powerlevels and using wichever fits the story.

Unless he can somehow change his power mid-combat, there is nothing about him that would not also apply to any other major villain in a campaign

 

I can only give the usual "Bossfight advice":

Lower his defenses, but give him Damage Reduction (the percentile, post defense thing) around 50%.

It allows everyone to have some effect, but also makes him really hard to Stun or Knock out. Be carefull with obvious weaknesses like no Mental Powers and lows strenght/grab and entangle escape.

[Doc Democracy]

I *think* the OP was looking for ways to model this worship power.

 

The obvious first route for me is to have an endurance battery with a limited recovery.  The recovery does not work unless there are worshippers nearby (how near is for you to determine) and the more there are the greater its rate of recovery.  That means that all of the powers are useless unless he has worshippers around.  I would also not build any of his powers with END efficiency in mind - that means that he will quickly become useless without those folk around him.

 

He will also need a way to make people into worshippers.  Obviously he can buy followers and this is good for the core 'church' but I think he will need a minor transform, one with gradual effect and it simply adds a complication "follower of XXXX" to the character.  He may have more powerful effects that transform people from follower to initiate to devotee to disciple.  All of that can add some complexity to the REC if you want.

 

What it can also do is provide limitations to the powers available.  You could build him, for example, with a 6D6 energy blast and then have bonuses to that for groups of followers, proximity of devotees and disciples etc.

 

If you take this guy on in his temple then he is going to be maxed up, firing huge energy blasts at will and manipulating the very foundations of creation.  If you can isolate him, then he will quickly run out of juice and not have access to the mega-weaponry that he otherwise enjoys.

 

He obviously needs a healthy dose of megalomania and believes his own hype to allow him to be drawn away.  He has been among the faithful so long he has forgotten what it means to be deprived of the heady joys of ultimate power.

 

I would also have there be some way the heroes can discover to disrupt the flow of energy/power from the followers to the God.  That provides them with a way, if they are clever, to beard him in his lair and still fight him when he is not at the zenith of his powers.

 

Doc

[Tjack]

If you want a more modern take on this type of character, think about making him a rock star or Twitter/YouTube celeb. Also the online series Star Trek Continues did a sequel to "Who Mourns for Adonis" with the original now 70 year old actor in the role as a withered Apollo. The episode may give you some ideas. Good luck.

[assault]

I *think* the OP was looking for ways to model this worship power.

 

What he was given was the GM's answer: don't make life harder for yourself than it needs to be.

 

Your suggestions about how to cut his power down are good, but don't need to be modeled in game terms. The PCs do it, he gets cut down a bit. Number crunching doesn't matter.

[Doc Democracy]

Not arguing with the whole dont make life too difficult for yourself as GM.  I like to make the build even if I dont actively use the numbers as it allows me to make better (and more consistent) judgement calls during the game.  Even with the different power level versions you still need to think about when and how they switch in and out.  Making the build often makes me think about some of the detail that give the players the confidence that I not just making this stuff up as we go along!!  :-)  

[GCMorris]

Thanks Doc. Yes, I was asking how to do the worship abilities. He's not a 'real' God, he just assumes the role buy draining energy from his followers who he has mental control over. I also want his followers to have a dependency on him "blind faith". Keep in mind that I haven't played in 20 years and then it was 4th edition. Any advice is welcome. He's also going to have a priesthood who gain a small level of superpowers from him. Am I starting off too difficult?

[Lucius]

 

Give your Deific Antagonist an initiation ritual (Transform) that is used on followers.

 

It makes the follower's abilities Usable Simultaneously, in whole or in part. Carefully Limited so they can share only with this Character.

 

So that, for example, if there are 50 initiates who are more or less normal people with a STR of 10 and half of their STR is Usable (One Specific) Other, our antagonist picks up 250 STR right there. Also 250 CON, EGO, etc.

 

If this added power on the followers is "Grantor can Take Back Power at Any Time" than you can deprive their Deity of power by convincing substantial numbers of the followers to withdraw their support.

 

You could also write up the ability so it "requires multiple users" so that for example it takes a group of four followers working together to give +x to their Deity. Then convincing even one of the four to stop will block that group's contribution.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

God of Palindromedaries

[massey]

Thanks Doc. Yes, I was asking how to do the worship abilities. He's not a 'real' God, he just assumes the role buy draining energy from his followers who he has mental control over. I also want his followers to have a dependency on him "blind faith". Keep in mind that I haven't played in 20 years and then it was 4th edition. Any advice is welcome. He's also going to have a priesthood who gain a small level of superpowers from him. Am I starting off too difficult?

One thing to remember in Champions is that some stuff you just don't need to model.  Superman draws power from Earth's yellow sun, but you don't need to write that up as a giant Transfer.  You just give him powers and declare that it comes from the sun.  Your character should be the same way.  If you really want to, just give him a limitation on his powers, "powers decrease as followers lose faith in him".  And then buy him a really high Presence and give him a bunch of Followers.  If he's not going to be using his Mind Control on the heroes, then it's not important to have it as actual Mind Control.  It's just a cult of personality for a guy who has a 40 PRE or something.

[Christopher]

Thanks Doc. Yes, I was asking how to do the worship abilities. He's not a 'real' God, he just assumes the role buy draining energy from his followers who he has mental control over. I also want his followers to have a dependency on him "blind faith". Keep in mind that I haven't played in 20 years and then it was 4th edition. Any advice is welcome. He's also going to have a priesthood who gain a small level of superpowers from him. Am I starting off too difficult?

In order to give a Complication like Dependency you would need Transform. Possibly even goes to "turn into willing slave". It exceeds what mere Mind control can do by a few degrees.

 

But if that power is not realy useable during combat/adventure time, then this power does not need a writeup either.

You just have a special effect for him having followers with a certain Complication, same way Viper Agents wear matching Costumes (Distinctive Featrures complication).

He does not need a follower power either - you just add them like you would Viper agents.

The Evil Mage in the Castle with teh 1000 demon guards does not need a base or 1000 followers. Both parts are just there because on it's own the Sorcerer would be no challenge for the players. After the adventure is over - if the castle exploded or not - he will not re-use it.

[TheQuestionMan]

Through blurred vision My first thought seeing the topic read: Agnostic of Godly Proportion

 

My brain hickuped and I though "Scarlet Johannson"

 

Spiritualist - Universalist

 

QM

[steriaca]

Kinda sounds like my pseudo-vampire Cooper Manson. He has a god complex also.

[Scott Anderson]

If you don't want your heroes to be able to defeat him, don't write him up at all.

[GCMorris]

He's actually quite easily defeated it will just take time and creativity.

[assault]

Which is "even worse", since there is no point to writing him up at all.

 

He can't be beaten in a straight up fight, so his stats are irrelevant there.

 

He can be beaten after taking time and creativity - which could mean a fight at the end of it, which would require stats - or it could simply mean that he gets hosed to a degree where the weakest of the PCs can just punch him in the face and take him out, which doesn't.

 

OK, so one write up for a fight at the end.

 

Before that he's just an auto-win against the PCs.

[GCMorris]

I really just asked how to translate how he draws his power from his worshippers, not input on how sucky my character is. It's my first time playing in 20 years, take it easy man.

[steriaca]

I really just asked how to translate how he draws his power from his worshippers, not input on how sucky my character is. It's my first time playing in 20 years, take it easy man.

He is not suckie. It is simply a power special effect most GMs don't use. An extremely hard to figgur out limitation to reduce the effectivness of the power by the number of true believers out there. I didn't even use this for Cooper Masion. I copped out by making his powers based on something beyond worshipers, and gave him a god complex.

[Doc Democracy]

Hmm.  There is a line to be drawn when you are GMing.  More and more detail is the lure of HERO simply because you can.  It is also useful to have detail that you can share with the players later if they are the kind that like post-match analysis.  :-)

 

I like to have enough detail that I can understand what would happen in edge cases like, Dimension Man pulls the God into the astral plane, does he still get his worshipper bonuses??  Or what if Chemical Guy produces a huge cloud of knock out gas?  Do the worshippers need to be awake? The players will often seek to solve the problem in a manner you never imagined and (IMO if you are a good GM) you seek to make that work but that means you need to be able to adjudicate stuff you never planned.  For that you need to understand the power and what that means in game terms.

 

However, I don't like the detail of having to account for every two bit worshipper in the area so that I can ensure I know exactly what power is available to the main bad guy.

 

As such you need to find your own level - enough info to adjudicate and run the game - not so much that you are constantly scratching and scribbling on the paper while the players twiddle their thumbs.

 

I think that you want the followers to be faceless masses and find a way to account for them in blocks of whatever denomination is convenient.  You might have them in various locations that can be added or struck off as required.  You could have those represent chunks of powers or REC/END/STUN that can be added or taken away as things happen.  Your resolution there does not have to be too detailed.  It should never take you much more than 20 seconds to know how many D6 you need to roll....  :-)

 

Write up the priests with GodGuy as the source of their powers and if he is defeated, dont waste time rounding them up - have NPCs ready and waiting to capture (or worse depending on tone of campaign).

[Lucius]

I really just asked how to translate how he draws his power from his worshippers, not input on how sucky my character is. It's my first time playing in 20 years, take it easy man.

I don't think anyone is saying your idea is "sucky" - they are just saying that you can run with this idea without having to write up a Power for it. In their view, as Game Operations Director all you need is the version of the character the players can beat, and some idea what they need to do to knock their enemy down to that power level, and when totally "powered up" you just need to say "uh huh. He shrugs off your attack" (don't bother marking off ANY damage) "and hits you for" (roll arbitrary number of dice - without bothering to make a to-hit roll.)

 

I don't necessarily agree with that position, but they're not saying your idea bad, just arguing about how to make it happen.

 

Now what I want to know is more details about how YOU see it working. There seems to be an impression for example that the worshippers have to be like the Antagonist's spectators and cheerleaders - physically very close, paying conscious attention to the Antagonist etc. I didn't notice that YOU said anything like that and there are a number of ways it COULD work. Maybe the Antagonist has to be constantly drawing power each phase, or maybe the Antagonist "loads up" on special "holy days" at the Temple and the level of power depends on how many people show up at Temple in a given period, for example. How exactly did you imagine the players disrupting this person's power?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

God of Palindromedaries

[massey]

I really just asked how to translate how he draws his power from his worshippers, not input on how sucky my character is. It's my first time playing in 20 years, take it easy man.

 

Not criticizing your character, I just don't think that the "draw power from worshippers" deal is something that needs to be bought as a Power.  That ability is not his superpower, it's his justification for having superpowers.

 

In Champions, there's a temptation to build every tiny little detail of a character.  The thought that everything must be on the character sheet.  Since you can customize things to your heart's content, you want to make sure you get something exactly right.  But that comes with a danger.  There are a lot of ways to build the effect you're looking for.  Most of them, however, are going to run into one of two problems:

 

1) The power will end up being far more expensive than just buying the abilities outright, or

2) The power will end up being far cheaper than just buying the abilities outright.

 

Neither one is desirable.

 

So let's take your guy as he is described and look at what he might need.  He's got the ability to control large numbers of people at once.  That's a Mind Control, probably Area of Effect.  Because switching religions is probably something most people are "violently opposed to", you probably need at least 12D6 to get even normal 10 Ego people to switch.  And then you don't want them to break out of it, so you're going to need more effect so that they get a fairly significant minus to their roll.  So let's say a -3 to the roll is good enough so the average follower won't break out very quickly.  So you'll need a total of 55 on the Mind Control dice to get Ego + 30, and then 15 more for the -3 (giving the average dude an 8- chance to break out).  So that's about 16D6 on average.  16D6, 0 End, Area of Effect.  That's 200 active points.

 

That still doesn't get you any power from them though.  So now you're going to need something to do that.  So you're looking at maybe a Transfer, to take from some of their stats and boost your own, or maybe a Transform to change them into people with some sort of Aid to your character.

 

All that stuff will be very, very expensive.  Probably more expensive than just buying the guy lots of powers to begin with.  Building it that way isn't doing anybody any favors.  It's just building a weird power for the sake of building a weird power.  

 

Now it's possible that some enterprising individual could come up with another method.  Maybe you buy lots of Followers.  And each follower buys 1 point of each of Str, Dex, Con, Body, PD, ED, End, Stun, etc., with "Usable by other, simultaneously"  And it costs them like 10 or 15 points or something to do that.  And you buy a million followers.  So you make contact with each person, they touch your cloak or something, and grant you their strength.  And so you spend 3 points for a 15 point follower, and then you spend 100 points for twenty doublings, for one million followers.  So you've spent 103 points, and you come away with a Str, Dex, Con, etc, of 1 million each (one million and 10, actually, including your base stats).  So you get all that for 103 points.

 

Is that balanced?  No way.  You wouldn't let a player do that.  Like I said, doing something like that will either be crazy expensive for the effect you want, or it will be insanely cheap.  Neither one is good.  Better to just buy the guy the powers that you want him to have, and slap some limitations on him.

 

I'd suggest setting different tiers for the character.  Baseline level, he has no worshippers (or not enough to make a difference).  He can be beaten unconscious by the weakest member of the party.  His defenses are low and he hits for several D6 less than the players.  He's kind of pathetic once you've stripped away his believers.  Then you've got the next level up, where he's a match for a PC.  This might be an early encounter or something, where you first meet him and you're not sure if he's good or bad or what yet.  He's got a small but dedicated following.  Most people have never heard of him, but his follower are like a weird cult.  The next step up, he's a solid match for the entire team.  His cult has grown and you're starting to see creepy stuff happen in public.  Local news anchors end their broadcast by saying "Good night, and Lord Damien bless us all."  Most people still seem to think that's weird, but a growing number of people are falling under his sway.  You call the police and its like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, "stay right there Mr. Johnson, we've got someone coming right now".

 

Then you've got the level where he's more powerful than the whole group.  "He is Viggo, you are like the buzzing of flies to him."  The whole city seems to be under his control, and his cults are popping up in other major cities.  Time is running out and he's too powerful to beat in combat.  At this point, he's hitting for 6 or 8 more D6 than your players, he's got 2 or 3 extra Spd, and 20 or so Def more than your players.  He can casually slap them aside.  The final level is the one your players are supposed to keep him from reaching.  It's the one where the whole country is following him, and he's unbeatable at that point.  Power level is off the charts.  He's hitting for 30 or 40D6, he has 100 Def, a huge VPP, etc.  You never want him to actually get to that point, it's just the threat.  Let the team smart guy calculate what the guy's character sheet would look like it they fail.  He never actually has to reach this point, it's just the threat that is important.

 

 

That's how I'd do it.  Like I said, actually building the "gains from worship" mechanic is difficult because the price is almost guaranteed to be way out of whack compared to what you get from it.  So you probably just want to treat that as a justification for why he is powerful instead of an actual power.  It's his origin, and nothing more.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Because I am very, very lazy, I usually look for "good enough" builds in the books. Sure enough, there is a villain race in Galactic Champions with these kinds of powers. The Nibu Gemani are weak individually, but get steadily more powerful as more Nibu "gather together." The Nibu Gemani are primarily a psionic menace, and the scale suggested is +1Int, +1 Ego, +1 DC with psionic powers for every hundred additional Nibu Gemani, counting in thousands once you hit the thousands, and adding in an Aid Mental Powers 1d6 and a Cosmic VPP (20+15) at 10,000 Nibu Gemani, incrementing at 1/2d6 and 5 points base for every additional 10,000, etc. You would have to adapt this for a different power set, but, other than that, it's good to go.

 

Now, the trick is that the build isn't costed. I guess Darren Watts thought it would be too much work, and there are worse things than following Darren's example. 

[GCMorris]

Well, I imagined the GodGuy actually mind controlling his stronger followers and the stronger followers mind controlling the normals (an ability granted by him). I also wanted him to be able to transfer power from his followers to augment his own abilities, basically cannibalizing them. An ability he also grants to the stronger followers.

 

To defeat him the heroes will have to defeat the normal goons which will later bring on fights with the real villains and then a final (?) confrontation with Mr. Special. They bring him down to a beatable level by taking out his generals and removing the mind control he has over them. He can only take their power if he has them under his control.

 

Is this too much micromanaging?

[assault]

I really just asked how to translate how he draws his power from his worshippers, not input on how sucky my character is. It's my first time playing in 20 years, take it easy man.

 

Sorry.

 

At the moment I've got a bit of a Berserk: In the Presence of Avoidable Complexity. A temporary disadvantage that I will buy off soon enough.

 

For what it's worth, I like the idea of your character. The implementation... meh.

 

The main thing is that it's fun!

[Amorkca]

I like the concept of the character as well, I just wonder how the players will make the connection between his vastly growing power base.