This is the first in a series of posts focusing on designing your own supervillains, so mostly aimed at folks running the SCRPG rather than players. After building nearly two hundred of them myself (at time of writing) it seems like it would be useful to share some insights on the process and results you can expect. As I've said elsewhere, villains are not created equal and their effectiveness in an action scene can vary wildly. Knowing what you can expect out of an untested villain is kind of important when you're trying to tune the difficulty of a scene.
The first and most important part of creating a villain is to have a character concept in mind, whether it's something fairly detailed ("the monstrous product of a covert government super-soldier project gone horribly awry") or quite abstract ("big tough brawler"). Once you've got that you can proceed to the mechanical end of things. You may find yourself revising your concept as you look at the mechanics, which is fine. Your choice of abilities can do a lot to further inform you about the nature of the villain you're making.
Mechanically, villain design is much simpler than hero design is, consisting of two mandatory elements and a couple of optional ones. Every villain is a combination of Approach and Archetype, and many will also opt for an Upgrade and Mastery as well. I'm going to tackle each of these elements in detail over the course of the series, starting with Approaches - and the first Approach is:
Adaptive
This Approach offers slightly above-average Power and Quality dice and slightly below-average base Health, and is one of relatively few options that give you three choices of abilities instead of just two. Its six abilities are:
Adapt & Thrive - This is a strong defensive reaction with an attached Boost, which is just plain pretty great.
Diversity Through Adversity - An inherent ability that lets you self-Boost every single time you Attack a target on your turn that you haven't already dealt damage to this scene. This is a terrific source of bonuses, and I would actually recommend not allowing to function on when Attacking minions because of how fast it can stack a huge pile of bonuses when combined with multi-target attacks from your Archetype. Other than that it's quite good despite only triggering a pretty limited number of times per scene.
Efficient Reconfiguration - One of two abilities that let you change your Power die sizes during a scene, a unique feature of this Approach that makes their starting Power dice much better than they look. It lets you trade two Powers down a die size to change a third to a d12, then take a basic action with the newly-maximized Power. This is actually pretty complex for a villain ability and can add some unwanted record keeping for the GM, so think carefully about using villains with it in a big complex scene.
Initiate Upgrade Procedure - Probably the most "normal" action ability this Approach has, this lets you Boost, Attack and Defend all at once. Like any villain ability that uses all three of your dice it's pretty efficient.
Powerful Imitation - This lets you imitate an ally's action ability, which (according to the podcast) uses the "owner's" dice pool - although I'd be inclined to only use their Power and Quality dice for these sort of tricks and stick to the Adaptive villain's status die. It's a versatile trick for a team villain, but best avoided for someone who normally operates alone.
The Pain of Perfection - The other Power dice-changing ability on the list, this one's a bit simpler. You trade some minor damage to increase all your Power dies sizes by one for the scene. Pretty inefficient in terms of action economy, and becomes more so if used twice or even three times as more and more Powers reach the d12 cap. It does make a good opening move in a scene, though.
As you can see, there's not much raw offense here, but you have a strong defensive option and quite a lot of potential self-Boosting, some nice versatility (especially on a team), and uniquely, two ways to improve your Power dice during play. You'll have half of the list available to you, which can make multiple Adaptive villains feel a little similar over time. So here's a couple of homebrew abilities you could try adding to your options for more variety:
Adaptive Response (R) After taking damage from a type of energy/element, any further damage dealt to you of that type is reduced to zero until the start of your next turn. This reaction can affect a different energy/element type each time you use it after suffering damage from that type.
Continuous Adaptation (I) At the start of your turn, you may remove one penalty on you.
That gives you another strong reaction to consider as an alternative, and a reliable way to remove penalties that seems appropriate for the "adaptive" theme.
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Ancient
Ancient provides a first-rate array of Power and Quality dice backed up with very high base Health. It offers the usual two choices out of its ability list, which goes as follows:
Behold My Immortal Glory - Very strong multi-target Hinder and Attack combination that uses all three of your dice.
From Before Space and Time - Reactive forced die pool reroll when you are Attacked or Hindered, with a trivial Health cost.
Immortal Vitality - Innate "last chance" ability to avoid defeat if you would be reduced to zero Health, works as long as you don't have a penalty on you.
Ideal Action - Versatile ability that lets you take a Max die basic action of your choice.
Out of Time - Surprisingly weak self-Boost. Gets better if any heroes are in Yellow or Red status, but it's never really efficient. If you want a reason to actually choose this one, consider adding "This bonus is persistent and exclusive." to the text of the ability as a homebrew variation.
Unknowable Pain - Strong single target Attack and Hinder, one of the only abilities in the game that lets you use your Max twice in one action. I'd think it was a typo but the ability honestly needs it to even begin to compete with the multi-target alternative.
This gives you two extremely strong Attack + Hinder combination abilities, one of which is multi-target to boot. The sole reaction is a bit hit-or-miss defensively, but you have access a unique and quite powerful "last chance' ability that makes staying clear of penalties important. There's also a Max die basic action option for improved versatility. There's only one Boost ability, which would be absolutely terrible if it weren't for your large die sizes and isn't very good even with them. If you want to scrub off penalties for your "last chance" trick there are almost always going to be better ways to do it than relying on this ability.
With a bit of a dud ability on the list I'll include another pair of suggested homebrew abilities for more variety again:
Ancient Curse (R) When you take damage from an Attack, roll your single [Power] die. Your Attacker loses that much Health.
Font of Power (I) Whenever you Boost yourself, increase the value of the bonus by one.
Adds an aggressive reaction that doesn't outshine the existing option, and makes spending actions Boosting more efficient and therefore helps keep penalties off you.
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