These two villains often partner up, and between the two of them, an environment, and a group or two of minions they're a challenge for a small team even without other full-on villains. They have broadly similar power sets (ie they both make minion duplicates of themselves, and lots of them) but quite different play styles. They could show up as part of a larger villain team, but using both of them in that case might be a few too many things to keep track of for some GMs, and risks swamping the heroes with too many threats.
Manpower
Delmont Dane grew up dreaming of becoming a soldier like his grand-daddy, whose stories about his time in Nam deeply impacted him as a child. Unfortunately, his mutant duplication powers manifested during his initial interview with the army recruiter he applied to, disqualifying him from military service under international law prohibiting direct weaponization of powered individuals. He would most likely still have been quietly offered a position in one of the less public US pseudo-military agencies if he hadn't demolished the recruiting center in a furious tantrum, followed by a public fight with police and culminating in him making a narrow escape from a local superhero team. After that demonstration of poor impulse control and general instability he was poison even for the most tolerant black ops groups and slid into the supervillain community.
Working as Manpower, Delmont is dead set on "avenging" himself on the government that "betrayed" him, and has been an easy mark for manipulation by conspiracy groups and extremists. He's low-grade super-muscle with the ability to act as his own force multiplier, but his emotional instability and lack of foresight and planning make him a dubious ally. His only recurring partner in supercrime is Bodycount (see below) and even she usually works with him only when she wants a patsy to distract any heroic interference.
Manpower is also a fairly revolting example of toxic masculinity at its worst, although he's careful to tone down the misogyny around Bodycount who he's secretly kind of terrified of . This marks one of the rare times when he's correctly assessed the relative power of another super. Anyone digging into his family background will quickly discover that the (now deceased) grandfather who started his obsession with military service as a "good time, makes a man of you" was dishonorably discharged before he even left the US and spent the time he was supposedly overseas in prison on sexual assault charges.
Description: A muscular, hairy man in dark blue pants and tank top, with brown leather combat boots and multiple belts and straps holding his many pouches and small arsenal of firearms. He wears a skimpy face mask of sorts that does nothing to really conceal his features. Loud and arrogant, it's still hard to hear his boasting over his wild gunfire.
Gender: Male Age: 23 Height: 6'0" Eyes: Black
Hair: Auburn Skin: Caucasian Build: Burly
Approach: Generalist Archetype: Legion
Health: 20 + (5 x H)
Powers: Duplication d10, Blazing Guns d8, Strength d8, Agility d6
Qualities: Conviction d10, Fitness d8, Wannabe Soldier d8, Criminal Underworld Info d6
Status: (# of Legion Minions) 0 - d12 / 1-2 - d10 / 3-4 - d8 / 5-8 - d6 / 9+ - d4
Abilities:
Cutting Loose (A) Attack using Wannabe Soldier. Use your Max die. Recover Health equal to your Min die.
Instant Bodyguard (R) When an ally is Attacked, Defend them by rolling your single Duplication die. Boost yourself using the same die roll.
Manly Toughness (I) Reduce physical and energy damage dealt to you by 1/2/3 while the scene tracker is in the Green/Yellow/Red zone.
Manpower, Not Brainpower (I) Whenever multiple legion minions all take the same action against the same target, you must roll all their dice at once and use the lowest rolling die amongst them for each minion's result on that action.
Quantum Reverberation (A) When one of your minions is destroyed, roll its die and you Recover that much Health.
The Name Is Manpower! (A) Roll your single status die. Deal yourself that much irreducible damage. Create that many d6 legion minions.
Upgrades & Masteries (optional):
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
Manpower is a brash combatant and seriously overconfident. If he thinks he can get away with it he'll avoid using his minion creation powers because they hurt like hell, but usually he'll open with The Name Is Manpower! and repeat it carefully when he runs out duplicates. Quantum Reverberation will give him some healing as his minions are destroyed, although he'll often use his reaction on Instant Bodyguard instead, sometimes even protecting one of his duplicates with it if he really wants the bonus it creates. Manpower, Not Brainpower limits his duplicate quite a bit but they're as dimwitted as their creator and will often to just make mass attacks on one target, efficiency be damned. His preferred move in combat is Cutting Loose, which also gives him some healing and hits pretty hard. Manly Toughness makes him a bit more durable than his low health would indicate.
His upgrade only helps with one ability, but it's his favorite ability and it does help his starting health a lot. His mastery reflects his desire to be taken seriously as a "a real soldier" and not just a wannabe.
His d6 legion minions are simple duplicates of their creator, right down to not being the sharpest tools in the shed. They mostly follow his orders like good soldiers, but sometimes seem to act on Manpower's subconscious urges when he's not watching them closely.
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Bodycount
Annabelle Grant was a child prodigy, gifted with a remarkable intellect and talent for the sciences from her childhood. As she grew older she found that many people would overlook her intelligence and focus on her wealth (both her family's, and later her own from patents) and physical beauty, something she found but irritating and childish. Her frustration with others led to increasing isolation and a growing obsession with the phenomena of so-called super-powers, which were one thing she hadn't inherited. She eventually stumbled on darknet scientific papers on the subject of quantum teleportation that led her to attempt to engineer her own powers. She succeeded, gaining massively augmented reaction speed and the ability to slip through spacetime while leaving behind short-lived quantum duplicates of herself. Her new powers left her more self-absorbed than ever (even if those selves were in separate bodies) and gradually led to her seeing the rest of humanity as beneath her, following a path into supervillainy that many mega-geniuses before her have taken.
These days she's abandoned her former life entirely and operates under the supranym Bodycount, which is both suitably intimidating and a sly comment on people valuing her physical attributes over her intellect in her youth. She claimed the name from a powered serial killer by the simple expedient of luring him in with one of her duplicates and then remorselessly killing him with a small army of teleporting clones, an accomplishment she regards as further proof of her superior nature. Her motivations are a combination of cold scientific curiosity, arbitrary whim, and the occasional pragmatic theft of money or material goods to maintain a comfortable covert lifestyle.
Bodycount has been known to team up with other villains for short term projects, but prefers to avoid dealing with other intellectual types - she very much prefers to be the smartest person (or people) in the room. Her younger days taught her how to manipulate people well, particularly men who are attracted to her, so she has little difficulty dealing with some of the more muscle-headed villains out there. Manpower is a frequent "partner" of hers and has been wrapped around her little finger since she first hunted him down to see if his duplication powers might offer an insight into how to improve her own - which they did not, operating on a wholly different principle. He does make a useful if somewhat unreliable patsy, though.
Description: A stunningly attractive, stony-faced woman wearing a skintight leg-baring black costume triple-banded with yellow at the neck, elbows, wrists and waist. The tops of her low black boots have similar banding. Her speech is meticulously correct and free of contractions and slang.
Gender: Female Age: Late Twenties? Height: 5'8" Eyes: Blue
Hair: Honey Blonde Skin: Golden Tan Build: Playboy Centerfold
Approach: Skilled Archetype: Overlord
Health: 30 + (5 x H)
Powers: Agility d10, Teleportation d8, Duplication d6
Qualities: Close Combat d10, Science d10, Acrobatics d8, Coldly Superior d8, Criminal Underworld Info d8, Technology d8
Status: (# of Minions & Lieutenants) 9+ - d12 / 5-8 - d10 / 3-4 - d8 / 1-2 - d6 / 0 - d4
Abilities:
Disruptive Grasp (A) Hinder using Close Combat. Use your Max + Min dice. That penalty is persistent and exclusive.
Expendable Selves (R) Redirect an Attack to one of your minions.
Reinforce Echoes (A) Boost using Science for all your minions until the start of your next turn.
Superior In Every Way (A) Take any basic action. Use your Max die. Recover Health equal to your Mid die.
Teleport Echoes (A) Use Science to create a number of minions equal to the value of your Max die. The starting die size of for those minions is the same as the size of your Min die.
Upgrades & Masteries (optional):
Quality Upgrade (I) +20 Health. Increase the die size of each of your qualities except Coldly Superior by one step (maximum of d12).
Master of Enforced Order (I) If you have complete control over your surroundings, automatically succeed in an Overcome to organize rabble to accomplish a task.
Tactics
Bodycount is coldly efficient when it comes to violence, invariably opening with Teleport Echoes to create a group of minions to aid her in battle. Her minions tend to be quite weak (often d4s when starting from scratch) but she can get some mileage from them with her Expendable Selves reaction and they greatly improve her status die. Once she's comfortably in the d10 or d12 status range she'll shift to Reinforce Echoes to massively buff her duplicates or select a particularly threatening hero (one with a multi-target minion sweeping attack, for ex) and teleport in to cripple them with a big lasting penalty using Disruptive Grasp. If the situation looks stable she can do almost anything well with Superior In Every Way, which will also provide some solid healing.
Her upgrade makes her die pools much better and really improves her outcomes with Superior In Every Way, and her mastery works on any hired stooges or so-called "peer" supervillains as well as her duplicates.
Bodycount's minions are perfect physical copies of her, albeit more fragile. They're very canny about how they spend their actions, Defending and Boosting their creator, Hindering enemies who have multi-target attacks and piling damage on whoever most threatens their original - as well as selflessly throwing themselves in the way of Attacks. Sometimes they'll even block for her allies, but only when they're confident Bodycount isn't at risk.
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