Villains to challenge 1,000 point heros

[grandmastergm]

Hello everyone,

 

I was wondering if you have any suggestions for villains that can challenge superheroes built on 1,000 points. Feel free to suggest villains you've used from your own campaigns on top of any existing villains from the Champions source material.  The heroes of the world are a group of bio-engineered "humans" that were made by a supervillain (The Kyphotic Man) but freed by a superhero (Caliber).  I'm running this campaign in tribute to a late friend's plans to run a campaign featuring these characters.  They showed up in the final session of a campaign I played in back in 2014, and one of the PCs was the superhero that freed them.  

 

Personally I hate reinventing the wheel, so please post and send what you have to help me out.

 

Thank you all for your help in the past!

[SteelCold]

If the heroes were bioengineered, its possible that at least some of them were cloned.

[steriaca]

Doctor Destroyer comes to mind, but that one guy from Champions Beyond is a "better" bet.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

Knowing how many total points they're built on doesn't really help us.  What we really need to know are DCs, defenses, SPD, etc.  There's a massive difference between a kilopoint character who spent 100 on combat stuff and a kilopoint character who spent 800 on combat stuff. 

[Greywind]

Ultron 3k...er Mechanon 3k.

[Duke Bushido]

Zombies.

 

 

Everyone runs out of END eventually.....

[Tjack]

   Well, there’s Thanos, Darkseid and Doomsday on one side of the equation and Lex Luthor and the Kingpin on the other.  It all depends on what type of “challenge” you want to give them.

[Lord Liaden]

Well, if you're talking straight combat, I'd start with Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains. Dr. Destroyer, his alternate-Earth counterpart Shadow Destroyer, and Mechanon, were all designed to fight whole superhero teams single-handed. While an entire team of thousand-pointers -- if optimized for combat -- could overwhelm any of them, they also have extensive organizations with troops and super-powered minions to back them up.

 

Takofanes would also be in that weight class, except that while he's supposed to have many servants in extra-dimensional space they aren't written up. You'd need to add enough high-level undead, demons, dragons, occult supervillains, and the like to balance any opposition.

 

Some of the "divine" master villains in the book could team up, e.g. Kigatilik and Tezcatlipoca. It would be easy enough to justify creating circumstances where either of them gets a big power-boost, enough to match all your heroes alone. A team of all the heavyweight mutant masters -- Gravitar, Holocaust, and Kinematik plus his followers -- should be a threat to almost any assemblage of heroes. All of them have worked together in the past.

 

While Istvatha V'han is far from the most personally powerful master villain, her resources are practically limitless. Book Of The Empress would give you full details on her immense and sophisticated military machine, plus guidelines on adapting many of the published Champions super villains into members of V'han's elite troops.

 

If you want to move away from combat scenarios, CV1's Franklin Stone is the Champions Universe analogue to DC Comics' corporate robber-baron version of Lex Luthor. Like Luthor he can attack an opponent in far more insidious ways than just hitting or blasting them; and is insulated from any legally-sanctioned action by layers of plausible deniability, a host of lawyers, and many government and media figures in his pocket. Speaking of government, Congressman David Sutherland, aka the former "superhero" Invictus, is a secret villain with a lot of clout in government, as well as great personal wealth and numerous connections to influential people.

 

There are more opponents I could suggest, but that's enough from me for now. If you want more suggestions just ask.

[steriaca]

Xarriel: When you absolutely, positively need a giant cosmic humanoid obsessed with conquering everything.

[steriaca]

One could look at Tryoun (sp! You know, the guy with a billion other bodies), but he is so tied up with the mystical world it isn't funny.

 

As others said, it depends on the campaign, and the needs of the campaign. Need a 'Kingpin' type? You could tweek Franklin Stone into one. Or create your own. (Stone works more as a Lex Luthor type, but not all characters are archtype one without touching archtype two). Kraven The Hunter? There is a space type guy who is kinda like that. Doctor Octopus? Well, Beamline is closest to his worldview... Doctor Doom? Drstroyer is your best bet. Brother Blood of the HIVE? Sunburst and his radioactive crew.

[dsatow]

It would depend on the number of dice, CVs, and Defenses.  The matchstick girl could be a serious antagonist if each matchstick shot out a 300d6 EB.

[Tywyll]

Yeah, what are the avearge CVS, DCs, and Def of the party? Are you looking for a combat challenge or a mental/social one?

[grandmastergm]

4 hours ago, Tywyll said:

Yeah, what are the avearge CVS, DCs, and Def of the party? Are you looking for a combat challenge or a mental/social one?

 

I'll take both.

 

CVs are like 12-14, DCs are 18, and DEF is 35 (non-resistant) and special defenses are around 30-40.

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, grandmastergm said:

 

I'll take both.

 

CVs are like 12-14, DCs are 18, and DEF is 35 (non-resistant) and special defenses are around 30-40.

 

Yup, as high as I suspected you were going for.

 

Well then, getting away from combat, Menton in CV1 is the mentalists' mentalist. He can twist brains like pretzels, even some as well-guarded as your PCs'. He'd be just the ticket for subtle mind-games.

 

In the same book, Professor Paradigm (and his Paradigm Pirates -- love saying that ) is nowhere near that power level; but his experiments with Reality could cause all manner of weird crises for your heroes to clean up. The Devil's Advocates (Champions Villains Volume Two: Villain Teams) have similar potential, as their leader Demonologist seeks to provoke a "Dark Renaissance" of magic in the world.

 

Speaking of magic, and CV2, the Circle of the Scarlet Moon are masters at using subtle magic to accumulate financial, social and political power. Anyone interfering with their schemes can find themselves attacked on levels brute force can't really combat: lawsuits, government harassment, media smears, financial squeezing.

 

Moving to Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains, the Incubus is this setting's analogue to DC Comics' Mr. Mxyzptlk. The magnitude and versatility of his powers can do almost anything, and also mean that if he doesn't want to fight you, there isn't a lot you can do to bring the fight to him. The Examiner, a "cosmic entity" from Champions Beyond, embodies that type of super character to an even greater degree, and is always looking to set up "tests" for super-powered sapients.

 

 

[Tech]

Since the heroes are that powerful, there's no reason some of the standard villains had someone increase their powers as well. Agents can be given super-technology by pseudo-Lex (whomever) and be quite the threat when they're each aiming their Blast Cannon of a 14d6 Blast at you, with megabelts of protection.

 

Gravitar will be glad to meet them, as well as Monster, Slug with his army (sure, you can stomp them but try that when you're swarmed by slugs - wow, that doesn't sound threatening), Sunburst and so on.

[dsatow]

Of the prebuilt villains, most of the master villains in the Champions Villains book 1 (6e) would probably be challenging with their respective counterparts in the other versions.

 

BTW: What version of HERO are you using for the Champions game?

[grandmastergm]

22 hours ago, dsatow said:

Of the prebuilt villains, most of the master villains in the Champions Villains book 1 (6e) would probably be challenging with their respective counterparts in the other versions.

 

BTW: What version of HERO are you using for the Champions game?

 

6e.   I plan on letting it start out easier for the PCs, then ratchet things up for the challenge.

[grandmastergm]

I used Necrull.  The PCs had a pretty easy time against him and his minions except one who was vulnerable to the BODY drains.

[fdw3773]

For inspiration, you could draw from Superman as depicted in DC Injustice where he has no problem using lethal force to impose his will. Similarly, you could adapt from the Plutonian in the miniseries Irredeemable where the world's greatest hero goes insane and rogue as a result. The Plutonian is arguably more powerful than Superman since he has comparable power levels based on his psionic powers but without the weakness to Kryptonite and magic.

[death tribble]

The Internal Revenue Service !

They will always come back for more regardless of who wins.

[Doc Democracy]

With heroes of this power you really need to begin challenges that are social and investigative.  The heroes need to know what they are fighting and why before they get to unleash.

 

If you read Justice League, you are talking about unbeatable power head on, their stories are often about getting in a place where they can bring the firepower to bear.

 

I find concentrating the power in one villain is a high risk strategy, I prefer dispersed foes, ones that mean the heroes have to be more discriminatory and surgical. 

 

One of my friends that I was trying to persuade to run a game thought the group was too difficult to challenge (they were running at about 500 points under BBB rules).  Next scenario I had each hero begin by being called out by a robot.  They were built on 125 points but designed specifically to defeat each particular hero.  I made that part of the next adventure, the robots tattoo'ed their defeated opponents and left them in prominent public places in the campaign city. 

 

It was supposed to demonstrate to my friend that the GM can beat the heroes any time he wants and it does not need a lot of points to do it.  Instead it decided him that he was never running a game in which I built my own character. 😬

 

Principle is still a good one.  The challenge for the GM is not beating the players or competing on power, it is coming up with a credible threat and an entertaining game.

 

Doc

[grandmastergm]

On 12/16/2019 at 1:15 PM, fdw3773 said:

For inspiration, you could draw from Superman as depicted in DC Injustice where he has no problem using lethal force to impose his will. Similarly, you could adapt from the Plutonian in the miniseries Irredeemable where the world's greatest hero goes insane and rogue as a result. The Plutonian is arguably more powerful than Superman since he was comparable power levels based on his psionic powers but without the weakness to Kryptonite and magic.

 

That is a story arc that I've thought of.

[Tjack]

   I see this thread concentrating on how to match strength against strength.  
  When GMing I prefer to challenge my players with opposites,  is the team “brick heavy” show them the value of not getting hit with high Dex villains.  Are your players the type to run in without thinking...show them what one planner on the other side can accomplish.  And so on.

   There’s probably some very deep Sun-Tzu quote I could throw out, but I’ll go with that great strategist Vince Lombardi.  “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.

[fdw3773]

Other villains to draw inspiration from are Onslaught, which would be merging Professor X's mental powers and making them more offensive-oriented with Magneto's powers over magnetism; Cthulhu or some other type of Lovecraftian-inspired deity; Unicron from Transformers: The Movie which has a standard write-up in the Hero Bestiary (Fifth and Sixth Edition) as the archetypal "Death Star-like" battle station that can modified to transform into a gargantuan robot; and assorted Kaiju ("strange beast" in Japanese) such as King Ghidorah, Mothra, Mechagodzilla, etc. that are running amok on the planet. The Kaiju have a write-up in the Hero Bestiary (Fifth and Sixth Edition) that can be modified with a power upgrade to challenge epic level superheroes.

[grandmastergm]

32 minutes ago, Tjack said:

   I see this thread concentrating on how to match strength against strength.  
  When GMing I prefer to challenge my players with opposites,  is the team “brick heavy” show them the value of not getting hit with high Dex villains.  Are your players the type to run in without thinking...show them what one planner on the other side can accomplish.  And so on.

   There’s probably some very deep Sun-Tzu quote I could throw out, but I’ll go with that great strategist Vince Lombardi.  “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.

 

Yeah, some of the players love to think out things while others are more impulsive.  

 

5 minutes ago, fdw3773 said:

Other villains to draw inspiration from are Onslaught, which would be merging Professor X's mental powers and making them more offensive-oriented with Magneto's powers over magnetism; Cthulhu or some other type of Lovecraftian-inspired deity; Unicron from Transformers: The Movie which has a standard write-up in the Hero Bestiary (Fifth and Sixth Edition) as the archetypal "Death Star-like" battle station that can modified to transform into a gargantuan robot; and assorted Kaiju ("strange beast" in Japanese) such as King Ghidorah, Mothra, Mechagodzilla, etc. that are running amok on the planet. The Kaiju have a write-up in the Hero Bestiary (Fifth and Sixth Edition) that can be modified with a power upgrade to challenge epic level superheroes.

 

Interesting.  

 

Do any of you guys have some interesting villains that you'd like to see powered up?