Villains to challenge 1,000 point heros

[Greywind]

34 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.

 

Point them at the early New Teen Titans appearance of Deathstroke the Terminator. Up to at least The Judas Contract.

[fdw3773]

1 hour ago, grandmastergm said:

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

 

I didn't have the game support materials for it to develop to the desired fidelity, but one of the ideas we kicked around many years ago was that a tactical mastermind like Dr. Doom or the villain Destro from G.I. Joe was controlling multiple Kaiju like the Smog monster, King Ghidorah, Gigan, etc. as his high-powered muscle through some powerful technological artifact. The idea was from the classic monster movie Destroy All Monsters but instead the mastermind was Dr. Doom, Destro, or maybe even Lex Luthor or Brainiac, and not the alien Mysterians or Xiliens. 

 

Another idea was that Black Adam from DC Comics gets amped up to where he could challenge Superman directly and has power over Egyptian god avatars. I think I got the idea from the Egyptian god cards from the Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon series involving Obelisk the Tormentor, Slifer the Sky Dragon, and the Winged Dragon of Ra.

 

Finally, we once danced around the idea of Transformers' Starscream or Masters of the Universe's Skeletor stealing or stumbling upon celestial artifacts to become powerful enough to challenge Superman-level heroes and potentially defeat them. Given how narcissistic and annoying Starscream was portrayed as a character (along with being a bad shot), he seemed like the perfect fit for a villain to become epic level and then wreak total havoc against heroes and his fellow Decepticons since he would finally "win" in overthrowing Megatron. 😉

[Matt the Bruins]

There's always Vulshoth from Dean Shomshak's Arcane Enemies sourcebook. 5e, but easily updated.

[Lord Liaden]

Nice thing about Vulshoth is that it's conceptually scalable in strength. Its form from AA is weakened from eons of imprisonment. Once it's free it can start mass sacrifices to renew its former world-shattering power level. Your heroes will have to stop Vulshoth before then, but when you have them confront it, it can be as strong as you need to give them a good fight.

[Matt the Bruins]

If I'm remembering correctly even in its weakened initial form it can easily summon/create lots of minions, has pretty high defenses against practically everyything, and has the use of three different 150-point multipowers, so it's not exactly chopped liver right out of the gate.

[dsatow]

It would depend on your players and how they designed their characters but a scenario villain might be interesting.

 

Here's the villain.  Johnny is a little 4 year old kid.  Unfortunately, he's a timid kid who has lived through some pretty f***'d up s#!+.  He's afraid of the dark and easily afraid of violence (3 Pre).  He has this power where his id manifests monsters to stop anything and everything he's afraid of.  The monsters don't go away after he summons them and he's afraid of his own monsters.  After the monsters stop whatever is frightening Johnny, they act like monsters would expect to act.

 

1) If players are fighting monsters or villains near Johnny, this scares Johnny into accidentally summoning more monsters.

2) If players kill or hurt Johnny, this is easily a public relations nightmare as Johnny seems to a simple innocent.

3) If players hurt Johnny, as soon as he wakes up, monstrous versions of their greatest foes come back to attack them.

4) If Johnny is isolated, monsters which kidnap people will kidnap people to keep Johnny happy.  He's afraid of being alone.

 

The best way to help Johnny is to isolate him from what's causing him fear and then treating him in a healthy happy environment until his psyche heals and solidifies, but I figure most players design their characters as straight forward combat monsters or mystery solving skill twids.  In 30 years of gaming, I've only seen two PCs who can easily handle Johnny with skills. 

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

59 minutes ago, dsatow said:

It would depend on your players and how they designed their characters but a scenario villain might be interesting.

 

Here's the villain.  Johnny is a little 4 year old kid.  Unfortunately, he's a timid kid who has lived through some pretty f***'d up s#!+.  He's afraid of the dark and easily afraid of violence (3 Pre).  He has this power where his id manifests monsters to stop anything and everything he's afraid of.  The monsters don't go away after he summons them and he's afraid of his own monsters.  After the monsters stop whatever is frightening Johnny, they act like monsters would expect to act.

 

1) If players are fighting monsters or villains near Johnny, this scares Johnny into accidentally summoning more monsters.

2) If players kill or hurt Johnny, this is easily a public relations nightmare as Johnny seems to a simple innocent.

3) If players hurt Johnny, as soon as he wakes up, monstrous versions of their greatest foes come back to attack them.

4) If Johnny is isolated, monsters which kidnap people will kidnap people to keep Johnny happy.  He's afraid of being alone.

 

The best way to help Johnny is to isolate him from what's causing him fear and then treating him in a healthy happy environment until his psyche heals and solidifies, but I figure most players design their characters as straight forward combat monsters or mystery solving skill twids.  In 30 years of gaming, I've only seen two PCs who can easily handle Johnny with skills. 

What sort of series of skill rolls would you expect to be needed to resolve the problem?  I'm curious how you'd run that. 

[dsatow]

13 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

What sort of series of skill rolls would you expect to be needed to resolve the problem?  I'm curious how you'd run that. 

 

It would depend on what the players would be attempting.  For instance, the easiest solution is mental illusions of a calm place.  But that's a rare power.  Conversation, charm, persuasion, KS/SS psychology would also work depending on how it was applied.  The main thing would probably be to remove the frightening situation from Johnny at least over 200' away (64m or 32") and then use skills to console or redirect the child's attention.  That's how I would see it, but other heroes might do something different.  Players are a creative and mysterious bunch, so something creative should be awarded.  

[JackValhalla]

Okay, granted first of all that I'm a munchkin bastard. But... CVs of 15, DCs of 18, defenses 35-40.. I build that on regulation 350 pts with room left over for flavor, fluff and noncombat skills. What did you do with the other 650? What've I missed?

 

Anyway, the trick to challenging a team is in the team itself. For a combat challenge: look over their character sheets and see what they don't have. No precognition? Put them up against a master-planner who has a new trap and a new trick for every occasion. No life support? Enemies from space or from underwater who can strike with impunity and make the PCs find a way to overcome their liability. No STUN-only attacks? Put them up against a villain who is dangerous but fragile, who will die if they hit him even with a pulled punch. This should not come up every adventure- if you do that, the players are within their rights to feel like you're picking on them by tailoring enemies to their weaknesses. But, for a master villain, someone who has an entire campaign arc devoted to them? It's a great start.

For a more mental / roleplay challenge, look over the character sheets and see what they do have, in Disadvantages or Complications (whichever edition). A villain learns the PCs secret identity, but instead of threatening it directly he uses it to kidnap the DNPCs and start brainwashing them. If they have multiple Hunteds, form a Revenge Society and throw several of those Hunteds at them simultaneously. If all the characters have a shared origin, they probably have some shared Disadlications, so this may be pretty easy. And any villain with enough Contacts or Favors from the government or law enforcement is going to be a tough puzzle to beat. Most Perks- money, followers, networks of contacts and associates- are signs of a successful supervillain, and not for no reason.

[Matt the Bruins]

On 1/5/2020 at 7:35 AM, JackValhalla said:

Okay, granted first of all that I'm a munchkin bastard. But... CVs of 15, DCs of 18, defenses 35-40.. I build that on regulation 350 pts with room left over for flavor, fluff and noncombat skills. What did you do with the other 650? What've I missed?

Noncombat characteristics higher than 8?

[Tech]

One of the easiest "villains" for the GM to come up with are copies of the characters themselves. Whether it be through a race of copying aliens, robots, magic, evil alternate dimension people or whatever, you can be sure that they are exactly equal to the heroes themselves because each has the same stats/powers/etc of the original hero.

 

I've run with this idea twice and it's fun. To enhance the situation, I had each player also run the hero copy in addition to their real hero. Interestingly, combat goes much faster. I was even able to take a 5 minute break while combat went on. Each player is familiar with their hero and therefore, with their copy, resulting in an intelligently run villain. 6 heroes vs 6 exact copies = a powerful combat.

[grandmastergm]

On 12/23/2019 at 2:19 PM, Matt the Bruins said:

If I'm remembering correctly even in its weakened initial form it can easily summon/create lots of minions, has pretty high defenses against practically everyything, and has the use of three different 150-point multipowers, so it's not exactly chopped liver right out of the gate.

 

I'm going with a sci-fi rather than mystical route, but it could be changed to a malevolent alien entity rather than a mystical one.

[grandmastergm]

On 1/5/2020 at 8:35 AM, JackValhalla said:

Okay, granted first of all that I'm a munchkin bastard. But... CVs of 15, DCs of 18, defenses 35-40.. I build that on regulation 350 pts with room left over for flavor, fluff and noncombat skills. What did you do with the other 650? What've I missed?

 

Anyway, the trick to challenging a team is in the team itself. For a combat challenge: look over their character sheets and see what they don't have. No precognition? Put them up against a master-planner who has a new trap and a new trick for every occasion. No life support? Enemies from space or from underwater who can strike with impunity and make the PCs find a way to overcome their liability. No STUN-only attacks? Put them up against a villain who is dangerous but fragile, who will die if they hit him even with a pulled punch. This should not come up every adventure- if you do that, the players are within their rights to feel like you're picking on them by tailoring enemies to their weaknesses. But, for a master villain, someone who has an entire campaign arc devoted to them? It's a great start.

For a more mental / roleplay challenge, look over the character sheets and see what they do have, in Disadvantages or Complications (whichever edition). A villain learns the PCs secret identity, but instead of threatening it directly he uses it to kidnap the DNPCs and start brainwashing them. If they have multiple Hunteds, form a Revenge Society and throw several of those Hunteds at them simultaneously. If all the characters have a shared origin, they probably have some shared Disadlications, so this may be pretty easy. And any villain with enough Contacts or Favors from the government or law enforcement is going to be a tough puzzle to beat. Most Perks- money, followers, networks of contacts and associates- are signs of a successful supervillain, and not for no reason.

 

Well they have NCM in everything as a start- so that's over 200 points, and then do the CVs, but here are some of the characters.

Jinx.hdc Psyker.hdc Skystep.hdc