Tech

Gotta agree with the others; you shouldn't be penalized for looking cool. This is the opposite of the question but a PC has a +2DCV, Act 11-, OAF-Cape, because it's harder to hit him due to the cape.

Entangle, based on ECV, Invisible, Limitation: doesn't affect you that PHA (or turn if you prefer) with an Ego roll

I long-since created stats for Thugmaster (in 4th ed).

How I play him:

He's a leader and able to go head-to-head with a hero but he's not a megavillain, nor is he supposed to be. I play him as the guy behind things happening in episodes, with the heroes occasionally meeting him - and fighting him. He always has an escape route prepared; those escape routes are not supertechnology such as a teleportation belt or anything like that. Instead, his escape routes involve things such as mirrors, sliding doors, smoke grenade, etc.

He is the one that the heroes will grow to dislike (but not the players) because he lures young people to a temporary lair, no more than 10 at a time to minimize his scheme. He looks for people who have latent or actual powers but aren't at any level that would turn them into an instant hero. He plans to train them to be his stooges and with training, help them to develop their powers. His goals are long-term.

I gave him 1d6 Unluck to represent his failings and that heroes always seem to be able to pick up his trail so they can thwart him. You can add other skills as you like.

European Enemies.... there are almost no words how messed up that book is. A friend asked me recently: "I got a copy of it as a present. Can I use it?" (He's one of our GMs)  I replied, "Sure, go ahead. Be aware one villain is used by another GM but the rest are yours. Enjoy. Have a laugh.Your mouth will drop; it's a mess so just use the general concept and do whatever you want with the villain; it'll be better."

For those of you who use Foxbat, do you have him do things solo, is the Awesome Exo-Skeleton Man with him, did he form his own team? What do you do with him?

For myself, he's got himself some villains who hang around him. They have no group name because: "I'm Foxbat and we don't need a name. My name speaks for itself!". Unofficially, the heroes call him Foxbat and Company. The Awesome Exo-Skeleton Man is called, "The herald of Foxbat".

You will enjoy "Watchers of the Dragon". So many varied martial artists, including the very powerful. Also, if you don't know what name to give an oriental character, check the back. You say you want a very skilled ninja? No problem; check the back again.

I don't know if I have a favorite but there are some for me that still stand out and I use:

a) Enemies I - one of the first books I ever got, nuff said

b) Enemies II - I think I like this one even more than I above.

c) Classic Enemies - this is a good addition but quite frankly, I felt the new versions of Eurostar were powergaming versions and never use them. However, the art is a wonderful revision, in particular Panda, Herculon and Leech.

d) Enemies: International - I kinda like this and at the same time don't. The art is mediocre for the most part. Some of the villains felt like the author was stretching to create villains to fill out the book so for the campaign. Only a few are used now (the rest cured, locked away, etc)

e) Conquerors, Killers and Crooks - quite good. However, I felt the villains almost always having 2 pages each was unnecessarily detailed. There's alot of information on each villains as well as 3 plot hooks for each. However, with 2 pages for each, I've occasionally ended up putting them on spreadsheets streamlining them to 1 page; flipping through pages during an episode slows things down & makes me as GM look like I don't have the episode ready.

Hero Games has put out alot of books with supervillains in them. You've got Enemies I, II, III, International Enemies, Villains Vandals and Vermin and so on.

What's your favorite (or one of your favorite) supervillain books that they've put out and why?

2 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

Another huge drawback is it means the character cannot maintain a secret ID.   

 

This is just off the top of my head.  Given enough time I could probably find a lot more drawbacks.

 I wouldn't say he couldn't maintain a secret ID but it would be difficult; it depends on the campaign.

You could directly ask them though Herogames by going to Support (on blue line below Herogames logo), then Contact Us.

On 2/15/2018 at 3:49 PM, RDU Neil said:

 

This is really where I want to go with this... as the "Stunned" effect I'm most interested in is basically the results of a flash bang type of attack. Rattles the brain, makes you a bit incoherent as you need to shake it off, but not really knocking you out. It really is what zslane posted above... an attack that has a "Stunned" as its effect, with a Stat roll to counter, -1 to Stat roll for every +5 points. Essentially an attack where your CON or EGO were the defense.

 

Totally think that is the way to go... so with that in mind... I'd ask "How is this potentially broken, abusable, and/or violates some core tenant of Hero, would create weird scenarios, etc. more than any other power or build?"  On the surface it seems pretty good. Would affect normals and lower CON/EGO characters, but would have little to no effect on supers who have very high stats, unless you spent a lot of points on it, and even then, all your getting is a 1/2 DCV and one lost action, which is what an Entangle gets you, but this goes away even if you miss the original role.

 

Seems quite tame compared to how some attacks could be abused, and gets right to the heart of what we are trying to simulate.

 

I like it.

 I wouldn't use a Flash attack - you can still use other senses to 'see' your opponent and it doesn't stop them from actually attacking. I'd go with what cassandra said: Entangle, takes no damage, then use Con to break out, not Str.

 Abuse - it's one thing for a storywriter to use it, quite another to be on the receiving end of it in a game. We already came up with a Stun Advantage  and it's rarely used because players don't care for it; this concept would probably not be received well. 
 

Excuse me, but are you always this catty or were you born this way?

In the course of having played Champions way longer than I ever expected, I've ended up secretly re-using episodes I've done before. Quite frankly, it's easier for the most part. However, I've made sure that alot of time has passed since the last time. For example, I plan to reuse a Champions episode I ran 5 years ago. Change which heroes are in it, a few changes as to the place or villains used and voila - new episode.

One particularly creative episode I've re-used 3 times: a heroine from a different dimension, who is the love interest of another hero, is called home due to unusual circumstances occurring on Earth. The heroes have to solve the problem before three days passes or else she leaves. Interestingly enough, I plan to redo this again because I've found ways to make it interesting, not repetitive (most important) and fun.

So, do any of you reuse episodes you've run in the past?

Don't know if this is grandoise but Foxbat had a list of things he was going to get, for his collection of course. Two of the unusual items were: a heroes costume (or part of it), and the mayors Toupee'. He managed to get a glove and the mayors toupee. Surprisingly, the battle turned into a keep-away game with the toupee bouncing from hand to hand. He almost got away with the heroes glove but a superspeedster nabbed it at the last moment. Poor Foxbat.

I'd just go with Martial Arts. I wouldn't use Blast, no range. I'd go with extra damage defined as Energy to your Str. If necessary, add weapon proficiency. I don't think we need new martial arts.

The most annoying villain would be one a GM made. Supposedly in the vein of the joker (not), the hero group is investigating odd things. Mind you, no crime or real reason to be there, and it's an abandoned town if I recall. Doors blow up on the heroes (no chance to detect or make a PER roll, etc). The villain has loudspeakers around so he can laugh at the heroes. The heroes start staying "Why are we here???"  Eventually, we demand to make PER rolls and so on. The villain shows up and we beat the living daylights out of him. The players never want to see that freak again.

I strongly dislike the 'government requires you to reveal your secret id'  shtick so I never use it.  Once in a long while, I have a villain in their secret id make an appearance to the heroes. The thing is, the heroes never realize it at that time. A long time ago, I had Dr. Destroyer - without his armor - make an appearance and the heroes didn't realize. When the mentalist got a little suspicious and tried to read his mind, his high ECV and mental defense gadget prevented it. Heh. So, yeah, it's a once in awhile thing.

What I'm much more likely to do is have a villain show up in costume, either for help or someone they need to contact for some reason. In one episode, they had to meet someone at a bar to get information. What they didn't know is their contact was Ripper. He said if someone could out-drink him, he'd give them the info. I think the hero lost but he was impressed so he gave them the info they wanted.

Last Saturday, our heroes ran into a situation where they were being reviled on a talkshow. Our GM likes to use interesting/funny names so here we go. The talkshow host was a smarmy guy named Bart Babble of the show "Vent Your Spleen!". On top of that, an Alderman started to raise questions about the hero building. The alderman was working with the judge, Rory Rotheart (rot-heart), who was letting thugs who were committing crimes off for the slightest reasons. Turns out the Alderman was a Viper Nest Leader working with the Judge, transporting illegal goods. The talkshow host, Bart, was just a convenient person to keep the heroes busy. However, some good detective work on the part of the heroes turned up the evidence on the Alderman to go after him, and have the judge arrested. Another Viper nest down the drain & Bart Babble's show got cancelled. 

In "Hi-Tech Enemies", the villain Downtown has a homing missile built as a robot. It takes care of all the problems with one exception: if you want to use the attack more than once (because the missile robot is destroyed after hitting) unless you buy multiple robots.

1 hour ago, Starlord said:

Other than the nerfing of Supes in the 1st season, that show is perfection.

 Don't know why but Superman was the punching bag of everyone in S1.

In the process of watching the cartoon tv series, "Justice League Unlimited".

On 1/20/2024 at 4:46 PM, Cloppy Clip said:

I don't think anyone could accuse Steve Long of being lazy, but I think his strongest villains are held back a bit by the need to cover absolutely every angle. When he does the midlisters you can see some really creative build ideas and tradeoffs being made, which is why I tend to prefer those characters in the villain books. Thanks for the Classic Enemies recommendation; I'll have to give it a look!

 Be aware I think this has some powerful "updated" stats for villains. In particular, Eurostar and the newer version of Dr. Destroyer (not 30DC though).

A long time ago when the Adventurer's Club was around, a poll was taken for what power levels are used. 11d6 oddly was about average. Speed was 5.5, meaning 5 or 6 Speed. Defenses ranged from 20-30. I have heard a few (emphasis on 'few') campaigns that have 20d6 to start, where one heroine was hunted by Dr. Destroyer and Grond. Those are the exceptions. I never used the higher-end 6th edition write-ups, they simply don't fit in the campaign. I also tire of the Multipower examples of: slot 12d6 EB, next slot 8d6 EB at 0 End but that's besides the point. I guess it's supposed to be variety for different campaigns but I think it wasn't a good idea IMO.

12 hours ago, Stanley Teriaca said:

Characters who have been operating since Champions 1 would probably be strong enough to kill Destroyer by 6ed. Talk about dedication.

 I have been and no, my characters aren't that strong. Nope.

(Contains spoilers of the villains past)

I'm planning on doing a Champions episode where the supervillain, Hideous, gets healed of his past injury and stops being a supervillain. I'm going with the original version of Hideous which leaves a bigger opportunity for exploration of what happened. Off-hand, I'm thinking a supervillain was battling Lady Blue to set her up as the bad guy to cover-up what was really going on: storage of illegal chemicals. The heroes exploration will lead to the villain, having worked for a company, which does a multitude of illegal shadow operations. It could expand to Viper being behind this or a supervillain team. Still thinking on it. What's lead to this is I've had Hideous show up a few times recently and all the heroes are sympathetic to him so I figure, go with it.

Thoughts? Suggestions?