This is a bit of a gimmick villain that was initially written up as an explanation for how some other baddies kept getting away from the authorities, but in my campaign he spiraled into becoming one of the most frustrating foes the players ever faced. They finally managed to catch him in a recent session and he's now serving time in prison, but it remains to be seen how long that situation persists. I mean, they took all his toys away from him. How could he possibly escape now?
The S-Cape Artist
Harold "Houdini" Marks earned his nickname in college for his hobby, rather than his brilliance at exotic physics. Years of learning how to effortlessly slip out of restraints as a party trick and slip past campus security for pranks may have foreshadowed his future, though. After having an epiphany in his senior year he made a major technological breakthrough in the field of spatial displacement engineering, one that let him build his own teleportation device - and on a student's budget, no less. After field-testing it a bit, he considered his financial situation, his dislike for the military-industrial complex, and an intense dislike for US law enforcement ingrained in him by his ex-convict parents and grandparents and decided he'd be paying off his student loans via "unconventional" means.
Shortly thereafter, word spread in the criminal underground that there was a new techno-mercenary on the market. Dubbing himself the S-Cape Artist, Harold offered a reliable getaway service to anyone who could afford his fees. His teleportation tricks are exceptional even by supervillain standards, fast, accurate, able to carry a significant payload over vast distances, hard to block and difficult to trace even with exotic senses and technology. After some noteworthy successes the S-Cape Artist has recently expanded his services to include assistance with break-ins as well as speedy exits, and is considering several lucrative offers for jail-breaking work as well.
Description: A thin man dressed in a reinforced black duster and a bulky fully-enclosed helmet with fancy optic sensors built into the visor and a multitude of small antennas. He wears an elaborate metal harness over his outfit, made up of an array of mysterious modules, holsters for a variety of control wands and weapons, and pouches filled with gadgetry and tools, with the whole thing connected to a backpack that looks like a rejected Ghostbusters prop. The whole setup emits an irregular chorus of pings, hums, and buzzes. His helmet modulates his speech into a flat, unaffected machine voice like a TTS program.
Gender: Male Age: Late Twenties Height: 5'11" Eyes: Brown
Hair: Light Brown Skin: Pasty Build: Gaunt
Approach: Focused Archetype: Inventor
Health: 25 + (5 x H)
Powers: Teleportation d12, Inventions d8
Qualities: Science d10, Technology d8, World-Class Escape Artist d8
Status: ( # of inventions & mods) 4+ - d12 / 2-3 - d10 / 1 - d8 / 0 - d6
Abilities:
Blink and You Missed Me (R) Defend yourself against an Attack that only targets you by rolling your single Teleportation die. Boost yourself using the amount of damage reduced.
Delays and Distractions (A) Hinder one target using Inventions. Use your Max die. Attack that target using your Mid die.
Spacetime Tuning Scans (A) Boost using Inventions. Use your Max die. Boost again using your Mid die, then either make one of those bonuses persistent and exclusive, or Attack with your Min die.
Sustained Warp Shield (A) Defend yourself using Teleportation. This Defend lasts until your next turn. If an Attack deals more damage than the value of the Defend, use the Defend value to Attack your Attacker and then end the Defend.
World-Class Operator (I) Whenever you create a bonus, increase that bonus by one.
Upgrades & Masteries (optional):
Defense Shield (I) You cannot be damaged by anything except yourself until the defense shield is destroyed. The shield has 40 Health, or can be deactivated with three Overcome successes. If a hero takes a minor twist working on the shield, you can use a Reaction to Attack that hero by rolling your single Teleportation die. Gain Reestablish Shield (A) Overcome using Inventions. Use your Max die. On a success remove one success from the deactivation challenge. Alternatively, instead of an Overcome, use your Max die to Recover that much of the shield's Health. This ability cannot be used if the shield has been completely removed.
Master Mercenary (I) If you have a contract for a specific task, automatically succeed at an Overcome when your payment is at stake.
Tactics
The S-Cape Artist rarely engages in super-crime for his own purposes, instead concentrating on providing his services as a "exit specialist" to the criminals who've hired him while staying safely out of a brawl. In an ideal world he'd 'port in at the last moment, collect his clients and their loot and 'port out again, but more often his presence is required during the job itself and he's even been known to accept extra payment to assist with penetrating security going in rather than just on the way out. When he does get embroiled in a battle, he'll initially concentrate on running Spacetime Tuning Scans to accumulate bonuses for future actions, not least of which being Overcomes to make group escape teleports. Once he's got a few bonus banked he may take a direct hand with Delays & Distractions against a particularly troublesome hero, protecting himself with Blink and You Missed Me while doing so. If hard-pressed he'll put up a Sustained Warp Shield while backing it with bonuses as needed, making him very hard to hurt and hitting back hard if something does get through. Being a World-Class Operator makes all of his Boost actions more efficient as well.
With his upgrade he's much tougher to harm and can spend his actions maintaining the shield while damaging heroes who roll twists trying to drop it. His mastery reflects his reputation for getting the job done and making sure he and his employers make a clean getaway if a situation goes wrong. If working on his own schemes it could be replaced by Master of Mad Science instead. Harold has a narrow focus by super-villain standards but he is a brilliant scientist in his own field and occasionally has a flash of more grandiose ambitions.
Yoink!! Great plot device too. Excellent content. Thank you
ReplyDeleteJust be sure to let the players know they can try to counteract his getaway teleports if they put some time and effort into it, ie doing some suitable Overcome actions during montage scenes to figure out countermeasures and more Overcomes during an action scene to use them. My players took forever to even ask about "how do we stop this guy from escaping every time?" - and that was despite them having had their own powers occasionally messed with by villains in the past. Exotic counters to specific powers are a well-established comic trope, after all. That sort of "I have your kryptonite!" thing should come up now and then for both heroes and villains.
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