Continuing this series with a look at three more villain Archetypes.
Legion
Legion villains have a very wide 4/6/8/10/12 status die spread that decreases the more Legion minions there are in the scene. They suffer a Health penalty rather than gaining a bonus, and get the usual two ability choices from their list:
Divide and Conquer - Reaction that lets you cancel all damage from a physical hit and create a minion. Can be used any number of times per round, taking one damage each time after the first. This is very strong, but doesn't help against non-physical damage at all. No die roll involved, so immune to penalties.
Instability of Form - Innate ability for your legion minions. When they pass a save against physical damage while at a d6 or larger die size, they split in two after degrading. If they fail a save, they just degrade instead of being defeated. Again, a very strong trick but vulnerable to non-physical damage.
Parts of the Whole - Creates a number of weak legion minions equal to a roll of your current status die, dealing yourself that amount of irreducible damage as well.
Returned Vitality - Reaction that lets you heal when a legion minion is defeated.
Split Up - Creates two minions one size smaller than your current status die. No die rolls required, so immune to penalties.
Combine - Lets you destroy any number of legion minions, roll their dice and heal that much damage. Can be a huge swing if timed right.
You also gain the mandatory Uncoordinated Actions ability, which is effectively a penalty to your legion minions' freedom of action and strongly encourages them to use different actions on different targets rather than ganging up to spam the same action on a single foe.
This is an odd list, with two very different actions and a rather situational defensive reaction that create minions, as well as an innate ability that makes your minions a lot harder to defeat when facing physical damage. The other two abilities use minions for healing. There are no Attacks, Boosts, Hinders or even a Defend option, but the expectation is probably that some of your legion minions will be doing that for you. Moreover, your status die drops like a rock the more minions you have in play and they can't mass up to do the same action on the same target at all well, something the Creator Approach and Overlord Archetype don't suffer from. Legion villains can also wind up with some serious Achilles' Heel problems if they take either (or both) of the two abilities that only work versus physical damage.
All this can make very swingy in terms of effectiveness, although I still don't think it's in need of house rules. Minion creation is just inherently a very strong trick.
When picking an Approach, looking for something with strong base Health, damage reduction, and/or healing would help make up for your relative fragility. A more universal defensive reaction might also be useful, and having any action abilities to take advantage of your excellent status die when you have few or no minions in play would be good - a strong Hinder option would be good for penalizing multi-target Attacks that threaten minions might be best, but a a decent Attack would let you do some damage on your own beyond basic actions. Boosting yourself might be least useful owing to how few Legion abilities actually roll your own dice.
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Loner
Loner villains have a 6/8/10 status die spread that gets smaller the more other allied villains are in the scene. They work just fine with lieutenants and minions, who don't harm your status die. The Archetype is less "Loner" and more "Wants to be the biggest fish in the pond" really. They have a below-average Health bonus and two ability choices as usual:
Antisocial Behavior - Moderate multi-target Hinder that heals you based on the number of targets affected.
Best On My Own - Solid Attack bundled with strong healing.
Better Them Than Me - Reaction that Boosts you when a non-minion ally is defeated. This can add up to quite a few bonuses when there are a lot of lieutenants working with you, and of course every actual villain defeated helps your status die as well.
Singular Strength - Innate ability that gives you a small damage bonus and damage reduction when you have no nearby allies. This one does care about the presence of minions and lieutenants, not just villains. Even as an innate ability this one actually does feel awfully weak considering its use conditions, and you could probably house rule the bonus and damage reduction to two instead of one to make it more attractive. True lone villains with no allies at all tend to struggle against PC hero teams, even small ones.
Thin the Herd - Strong multi-target Hinder bundled with a moderate multi-target Attack on the same targets.
Worst Case Response - Reaction that reduces penalties you take, or reduces the damage of an otherwise deadly Attack to one.
The list includes quite a bit of healing, two multi-target Hinders with useful riders, one rather specialized reaction and another more generalized one, and an odd innate that discourages keeping even henchmen around you. It's a decent list that leans a bit toward applying penalties and damage. In terms of finding good Approach pairings, stronger single-target Attacks or Hinders would help for one-on-one fights, and any dice fixing is always useful when relying on Hinders (or Boosts, with the one reaction). If you wanted to break with theme taking Creator to make your own lieutenants and minions might also work, since you really don't want to work with other villains.
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Overlord
Overlords have a very wide 4/6/8/10/12 status die spread that increases the more minions they have in the scene. They have an average Health bonus and can choose three abilities from this list:
By My Command - Moderate Boost for all of your minions. Really impactful when there are a lot of them in play.
Get Back In There! - Reaction that lets you reroll damage saves against one Attack for any number of minions. Really weakens multi-target Attacks, the usual way to scrub off mobs of minions efficiently.
Give Me Your Strength - Odd ability that lets you roll all your minion dice to Boost, then make a moderate Attack using the resulting bonus. It's actually got rather mediocre damage even at the best of times, and is often weaker than the average villain Max-die Attack ability. At the very least I'd recommend house ruling this to use the Max die rather than Mid to make it somewhat better balanced with Form Up below.
"Look Out, Boss!" - Reaction that redirects an Attack to one of your minions, which will often pull any rider effect off target as well.
Rapid Deployment - Mass minion creation ability, using your Max die to determine the number created and the Min die for their starting die size. The first use is usually relatively weak and then rapidly grows to incredible effectiveness if the heroes can't stay ahead of the number of minions out there. This ability is almost a mandatory choice for an Overlord villain unless they've taken the Creator Approach.
Form Up - Solid Attack bundled with a self-Defend based on the number of minions you have that works until your next turn.
Overlords are all about their minions, and the ability list reflects that. They can create them, protect them, enhance them, use them to augment their own offense and defense, or use them to hide behind. Unless the players can keep their numbers under control an Overlord can be incredibly dangerous, and is much more capable of tackling multiple heroes than most Creator or Legion villains are. Use them with care, and you may need to consider house rules to reduce their power level somewhat if your heroes are a bit lacking in efficient minion removal.
When selecting an Approach it's probably best to look for abilities that don't require actions so as to concentrate on enlarging and supporting your army, so check for useful innates or reactions. Multi-target Defend or Boost options would also help improve the durability of your minions.
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Continued in Archetypes part 5.
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