Continuing this series with a look at villain Archetypes, the second mandatory element of building a villain. Archetypes define how the villain's status dice are determined, provide a modifier to Health that's combined with the base number from your Approach, and add another two or three choices of abilities from the Archetype's list of options.
Bruiser
Bruisers have a 6/8/10 status die spread that scales upward as their Health drops through the GYRO zones, fighting harder the more damage they've taken. They have a solid Health bonus that lets them take quite a beating and two abilities from the following list:
Bring It On! - Reaction that Boosts you using the damage of an Attack against you. A bit more useful for villains than heroes owing to having more Health to start with.
Feel No Pain - Innate damage reduction scaling based on your current GYRO zone.
Grin and Bear It - Bundled Defend and healing, both quite strong.
Lash Out - Single-target Attack ability that starts okay and scales up as based on your current GYRO zone, adding a second target in Red.
Living Wall - Reaction that lets you become the target of an Attack against an ally. Can be used more than once per round with extra uses costing a tiny amount of Health.
Toss Hero - Solid Attack ability that lets you choose to Hinder the victim or hit another target.
Despite the Archetype's name, this list is actually somewhat defensive in nature, with strong options for damage reduction and healing. It also has two solid offensive abilities, but the real standouts are its two reactions, one of which rewards you for taking damage and the other provides a rare "bodyguard" option that lets you take hits for allies, and the only villain reaction that can be used multiple times per turn. It's a fairly versatile list that lets you build a villain capable of operating independently or as part of a team, and can be paired with most Approaches with decent synergy.
One notable weakness to the Archetype is that its status is based solely on their personal Health zone. If the heroes don't damage them they can stay at a d6 indefinitely, only to be suddenly put down in a flurry of strong Attacks late in the scene when PCs have access to strong Red abilities. This can be gotten around with the Living Wall ability, but without it an "avoidance strategy" can leave four of your five other abilities underperforming, so you'll want to think hard about taking Approach abilities that are less damage-dependent.
That said, there doesn't seem to be a real need for homebrew abilities here.
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Domain
Domain villains have a 6/8/10 status die spread that increases the more environment targets and challenges are in play. Their Health modifier is tied for the highest of all Archetypes, and they gain three abilities from this list:
Ascend From My Realm - Innate ability that makes you immune to damage from environmental source, but only during the environment turn.
The Earth Trembles Around You - Lets you destroy any number of environment minions to Attack every target in the scene except yourself by rolling all their combined dice. You might as well destroy all of them, because they any you don't use are going to die anyway. This can easily lead to a total defeat for the heroes in a single action if they haven't managed to keep environment minion numbers under control, so be very careful about using this one on teams that can't sweep minions efficiently.
Power Heeds My Call in All Forms - Strange ability that lets you remove any number of environmental bonuses in the scene to Attack that many targets for medium damage with a different bonus used on each. Kind of hard to use effectively unless the environment has twists with multi-target Boosts.
This Place Is Mine To Command - Lets you activate your choice of environmental twist in the scene's current GYRO zone or the next one closer to Red. Still can't use any single major twist more than once per scene. Effects are obviously going to be wildly variable based on what twists are available.
To Me, My Minions - Lets you destroy any number of environmental minions, rolling all their dice and healing that much damage. This can produce some enormous swings if the heroes have let too many environment minions get into play, especially given the high Health many Domain villains have.
The World Moves to Defend Me - Reaction ability that lets you redirect an Attack on you to an environment minion.
No other Archetype interacts with the environment to the degree Domain does, and it's essentially mandatory to include an environment in any scene that uses a Domain villain. You may even need a custom environment built for the villain for narrative and/or mechanical reasons, and if you're using a generic environment it may be a good idea to write up a few extra twists tailored to the villain's impact on their surrounding - for ex, a magical villain might have twists involving supernatural effects or being that get "overlaid" on a mundane urban environ or scifi space station.
This Place Is Mine To Command is almost mandatory for a Domain villain, giving them the ability to accelerate environment twists to bring out the mods, targets and challenges needed to fuel their status die and other abilities. Three of the those abilities require environment minions to be present, and all of those destroy or at least degrade the minion(s) being used. One ability eats up environment bonuses for extra Attacks, which can be stolen from hero targets if a twist gave them some. The last ability keeps you from taking damage from environment sources during its turn, which means you'll still at risk if you trigger a damaging twist on your turn, limiting your options.
All of this tends to push Domain villains into gameplay that resembles more conventional minion-creation villains that use the Creator Approach or Legion/Overlord Archetypes. Players who can effectively control the number of environment minions and challenges will generally have an easy time of it, while others will struggle. There's also no interactivity at all with any environment lieutenants that appear, and no resistance to environment penalties, only damage.
With that in mind, here are a few homebrew abilities to add a bit more variation in what frequently feels like a very narrow and swingy Archetype:
Advantageous Circumstances (I) Whenever you would gain a bonus from an environment twist, target or challenge increase the size of that bonus by one. Whenever you would gain a penalty from an environment twist, target or challenge, ignore that penalty entirely.
Coordinated Offense (A) Attack one target using [Power/Quality]. One nearby environment lieutenant or minion rolls their die and adds the result to the Attack's damage.
So an option that protects you from environment penalties while making bonuses better on you (which slightly discourages expending minions on other abilities when they could be Boosting you), and an ability that interacts with environment all types of environment targets - both of which could be some kind of mind control or trickery if cooperative environment minions don't make narrative sense.
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Continued in Archetypes part 2.
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