Thursday, August 18, 2022

The Brute Squad, Multiplying Muscular Menace

A one-man heist gang with a real chip on his/their shoulders.

The Brute Squad

Roger Dreyfus is a former Penn State football star whose sports career came to a crashing halt when he was caught in a game-rigging scandal and then, when confronted, manifested his mutant duplication powers and inhuman strength under stress.  He's gone on to become a fairly well-known minor-league supervillain who specializes in sports-related crimes, particularly robbing the box offices of soccer events ("It's phony football!").  Roger usually works "alone" except for a team of duplicates, although with sufficient motivation he'll work with other villains for short jobs.  Definitely not at his best as a team player, though.  His connections to organized crime date back to the cheating scandal, and he'll sometimes work as super-powered muscle when the price is right, in which case he might show up alongside some mundane gangers or family soldiers.    

Description: A tall, heavily-built man wearing two-toned black and blue bodysuit with red gloves and boots.  If you give him a a few minutes there'll be a whole bunch of him. 

Gender: Male            Age: 34           Height: 6'3"           Eyes: Brown

Hair: Brown Buzzcut            Skin: Tanned Caucasian          Build: Defensive Tackle

Approach: Creator                   Archetype: Loner

Health:  25 + (5 x H)

Powers: Strength d10, Momentum d8, Vitality d8, Duplication d6                                       

Qualities: Fitness d10, Alertness d8, Conviction d8, Criminal Underworld Info d8, Disgraced Football Jock d8

Status:  (# of allied villains in scene)  0 - d10 / 1-2 - d8 / 3+ - d6

Abilities:

Blitz (A) Attack using Strength.  Use your Max die.  Recover Health equal to your Mid + Min dice.

Make Another Brute (A) Use Duplication to create a lieutenant of the same die size as your Max die.

Need Some Extra Hands (A) Use Duplication to create a number of minions equal to the value of your Max die.  The starting die size of these minions is the same as the die size of your Min die.  

The Only One That Matters (R) When a non-minion ally in this scene is defeated, roll your single Conviction die to Boost yourself.

Upgrades & Masteries (use whenever he's a solo villain):

Group Fighter (I) +20 Health.  When you take an action that lets you make an Attack, also make an Attack using your Mid die.

Master of Conquest (I) As long as you are in command of your own forces, automatically succeed at an Overcome to seize an area or capture civilians.

Tactics

The Brute Squad prefers to sit on the sidelines (sometimes hidden out of sight, even) using Make Another Brute over and over again to slowly fill the scene with tough duplicates of himself.  As they get knocked out he'll Boost himself with The Only One That Matters, usually stacking bonuses up for use with Blitz if he needs to get personally involved.  If seriously pressed he'll use Need Some Extra Hands to create a bunch of less-potent duplicates all at once, but they usually come out all weedy looking and he hates seeing his other selves like that so he tries to avoid using the ability.  When operating without other villains he should have his Group Fighter upgrade and Master of Conquest mastery (which uses his duplicates as "forces" there).  If involved in a team up he usually lacks either.

His lieutenants are usually exact copies of himself and seem to share his thoughts and senses, while his minions are frequently much smaller and more lightly built, with d6 minions being about 5'6" and weighing around a hundred pounds.  Without at least one other self in play his Alertness should drop to a d4 since he lacks the extra eyes and ears.

He usually pairs Fitness with Duplication and Strength when building die pools, since his copies draw on his life energies and his fighting style relies on his powerful physique rather than grace or skill.  His Disgraced Football Jock RP quality gets used for making throwing attacks, intimidating people, quoting sports statistics, and finding old contacts whether they really want to talk to him or not.  His Conviction is that he'd have been the best football player in history if things had gone differently, that soccer sucks, and that at the end of the day he's the only person that really matters in the world.  Quite the sociopathic narcissist, really.


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