How to make your villains count...

[Johnny Awesome]

I started the "Villains Seem Underpowered" thread. What I learned in that thread and by Watchering more is that they are underpowered if you run them straight up against the heroes, but you do have a number of options to beef up the challenge for your players if your villains need a boost.

I decided to start a new discussion to give advice to new Watchers that want their villains to count.

The main thing that holds villains back is the size of their dice pool: Affiliation + Distinction + One Power Set + Specialty is not usually going to cut it.

Solutions:

1. Start a villain with a resource, like Master Plan D8 or Just Sharpened my Claws D8 etc...
2. Grandstand to add a D8 or D10 to the Doom Pool that you can use over and over again (it will cost you a PP each time you use it though).

Other things that will help:

1. You can boost a villain from minor to major status by stepping up his/her Affiliations by one step.
2. Don't forget to use D4s when possible with Distinctions to add D6 or step up dice in the Doom Pool.
3. Consider only buying multiple opportunities as D8 or D10 etc... into the Doom Pool if you find that players are just using PP to add 3rd effort dice to their totals. I don't believe in starving players for PP as they are the stuff of cool stunts etc... but sometimes they can end up with bucket loads of PP just for the purpose of beating your rolls easily. If that happens, then stop buying so many opportunities.
4. Start defensively with villains and create Assets for them to use later in the fight.
5. Consider using Doom dice to create Scene Complications or bring in LSTs (Large Scale Threats) like collapsing bridges etc... for the players to deal with. That will use up actions from some characters and make the fight more interesting as well.

Those are my tips. I'd be very interested in hearing others.

[Cam]

Don't forget opting to split an Expert Specialty into 2d6 or a Master into 2d8 (or 3d6). You won't get higher totals, but you're giving your Watcher characters more dice from which to grab better outcomes. Smaller sized dice are also much easier to add into the total or to keep as effect dice.

Cheers,
Cam

[Arcane Springboard]

Don't forget opting to split an Expert Specialty into 2d6 or a Master into 2d8 (or 3d6). You won't get higher totals, but you're giving your Watcher characters more dice from which to grab better outcomes. Smaller sized dice are also much easier to add into the total or to keep as effect dice.

Cheers,
Cam

Oooooo...that's a really good point. Not so much for players, but definitely for Watchers.

[IxCptMorganxI]

Put a lot of weak enemies before villains you want to be heavy hitters. I had my group go up against Loki this weekend and they had to track him down through his castle. After 5 mobs, some stronger guards, and a couple of frost giants Loki had a lot of Doom dice to pull from.

Also split up the party. Living Laser and Zzzax were getting their butts kicked so I paid to have Zzzax fly one of the guys away. Changing their affiliations caused a lot of problems for them. Zzzax then went on to grandstand by electrocuting civilians so while the hero he took away tried to rescue them he was making himself and Laser both more powerful.

[figurefour]

The main thing that holds villains back is the size of their dice pool: Affiliation + Distinction + One Power Set + Specialty is not usually going to cut it.

You missed an obvious solution there . . . Give any villain expected to be "tough" two, or even three power sets.

Take a look at Doctor Doom in Civil War as an example. His die pool is pretty significant on its own, even without much Doom Pool boosting.

Don't forget opting to split an Expert Specialty into 2d6 or a Master into 2d8 (or 3d6). You won't get higher totals, but you're giving your Watcher characters more dice from which to grab better outcomes.

My number crunching backs this up. The expected total of your highest two dice is about half a point higher with 2d8 than it is with a d10. If you factor in it being easier to add an extra die to your total with a lot of d8, it's actually a pretty decent option for the Watcher.

My math could be wrong though.

[Johnny Awesome]

Well, I wasn't considering the option of rewriting villains since that isn't as easy to do, but making more powerful versions of the villains would work.

[Spatula]

Doom is an interesting case, since he has three power sets but they aren't designed to be used together.

I think the important bit is to make sure that your bad guys, or at least the ones that you want to be a threat, can easily get 2-3 dice out of their powers. And that they have a relevant specialty. This is where a lot of the villains in Breakout fall down - they mostly have crap for powers and often crap for specialties, as well.

But beyond that, you need to look at how the villain's typical die pool compares to the players' typical die pools, on attack and defense. If your villain is a master of mind control but your players all have d12 Psychic Resistance or Immunity to psychic attacks, there won't be much of a fight. If you've got a Wolverine in your group, your villain needs to be able to handle some physical punishment (and fear). etc.

[Johnny Awesome]

Once again, this is a thread about making existing villains more effective, not upgrading or making new ones.

[Morik]

Building up that Doom Pool can make even the lowliest villain quite deadly.

Case in point: We had a group of four characters (gave them a fresh start. We made them way back during the FASERIP system days). Put them up against three villains that really should have only been a slight challenge (Boomerang, Blacklash, and Whirlwind).

Boomer and Blacklash went down in the first round along with several portions of the building they were fighting in (DP growing). Whirlwind thrashed the heroes because the DP was so big. Stat-wise, he should have caused a wound or two then fallen pretty quickly. The heroes were having a 1-fest. It was awful (and funny....hehe). Eventually, I had him run for it (at 4 to 1 odds, I felt that he would have bolted, even though he'd been very lucky up to that point).

I started the above fight with 3d6 and 1d8 in the DP. All the rest came from horrendous rolling from the players

[Mystrich]

See I just made a post in the "Does Nefaria Ever Escape" thread and none of these help at all. He appears at the beginning of the scene. And starting him with a d12 Escaping Asset, I still only have 2d6 in the doom pool (or perhaps a bit more if I ran the PCs needing to get there). There's virtually no way for him to go first in the fight.

Iron Man grabs a d4 distinction, and ends up with a pool of Solo d10 + Open to the Elements d4+PP + Enhanced Reflexes d10 (shutdown Superhuman Strength) + Repulsors 2d8 + Tech Master d10 and then use the 2 PP he has to get a 20-30 total with a d10 effect die which will get stepped up. Nefaria, not being able to take 4 dice for his total (again, low doom pool) can't beat that and it gets stepped up twice and he goes to a d12+ stress in one hit.

Even with a good doom pool, Nefaria is one of those villains who has almost no small dice on his sheet. With other villains around or not, he can get one-shotted easily because he IS a power house and can't add more to his total with the doom pool (and having only a single power set doesn't help either).