Villain Teams

SCRPG does something much different than other supers RPGs in that it seems to default to the team fighting one supervillain (not surprising, given the DNA from which it was created).  In most other games, villain teams have to be the norm in order to deal with the action economy of combat, but in SCRPG, challenges and environments and tough villains with high Health seem to make up for that.

However, if I switch over my homebrew world to SCRPG, the heroes' nemeses are a team.  One of them is definitely the Magneto-type leader, but the others are all powerful enough in their own right.

Thus, from my limited understanding of the SCRPG rules, it seems that a supervillain plus 3 high-powered lieutenants would be both a bad representation of the distinctiveness of the other 3 villains, plus a little too easy to beat (though I understand high-end lieutenants are no pushovers).

OTOH, 4 full supervillains seems way overpowered (I think?).  Is there a middle ground here? Did I miss a category in the rules?

There was actually just a question about this in the Letters Page. As I recall, the answer was that a team of villains should be a good match for a team of heroes (I assume there are at least 4 heroes). Villains with upgrades and masteries are meant as solo villains, so make sure they don't have any of those.

Someone else can double-check me here, but that's what I remember.

This is from the WT notes in the latest Editor's note and you are right TakeWalker

>
> When setting things up in the RPG, how should we set up a team of villains (it seems like multiple fully-fledged villains would be too much)? Model some as Lieutenants? Lock some parts of the Villain sheet? No, villains with Upgrades are meant to be solo threats and ones without Upgrades are suitable for team fights. You want to make sure you’re not creating too strong of a synergy between them, but that’s the main way to do this. A Villain without Upgrades or Masteries is basically one-to-one with a Hero.

Thank you!

I'm just glad I remembered something right. :D

SCRPG Live Season 2 spoilers:

There was a 4 hero vs. 4 villain battle. It was really rough, basically a perfectly fair fight, could easily have gone either way.

So far, I've used a mixed group of Lieutenants (for jobber villains) and Villains as villain teams. But the heroes are now into their second trade and in the last issue wiped the floor with a villain that I was sure was going to give them a run for their money. So for the upcoming issue, I'm using the "Red" encounter design rules and all of the villains will be fully statted out villains. 

What made the heroes so powerful? Are two "max dies" per hero so powerful? Was there a flaw in your main villain design? Was it luck?

I'd like to know because if heroes are OP after only 2 trades, that's an issue.

Sure thing. To start off, it should be noted that I have some very smart, very tactical players, who often times outsmart my tactics.  The big thing they're doing is, once they get to the Yellow Zone, they invoke trades to use a Red Zone power, getting off finishing moves early. 

The Cast:

* The Coach - a psychic whose powers are all based around sports metaphors. He's throwing around team Boosts and has the "flip a mod" Red Zone power which turns a hindered hero into a boosted badass and makes boosted villains totally hindered. If you've seen the latest season of the GTG SCRPG game, he's a lot like Bespoke, with very different metaphors. 

* Cypher - a former evil sorcerer turned good after seeing his future. Largely a blaster, but his troublesome power is the Red Zone "now I have a bunch of minions". 

* Johnny Hibbert, Quantum PI: He's a shapechanger who operates mostly as the team tank. He's also got the "bunch o' minions" power. 

* Sparklepony - Sort of if Poison Ivy was a hero and could control fire as well as plants. The Troublesome Red Zone power of hers is the Charged Up Blast (burn a boost, which she always has thanks to Coach, then add Min+Mid+Max+All Bonuses) which she's used to do over 20 points of damage in one shot. And she can do it twice. 

The Adventure: A news chopper had fallen through a crack in reality to The is Crooked Land, a place where time and space are broken and home to The Weaver In The Web, a Minion Maker villain. The environment generates minions and hinders. 

My first mistake was not having any threats as soon as they appeared. The Challenges of "Find the Path" and "Follow the Path" got eaten up by Cypher's Principle of Magic which let him use his Max die (and thus check multiple boxes). Coach's psychic senses ate the rest of the boxes up.  So the environment only had 1 round to add threats to the board, and my plan had been for the Scene's Minions and Lieutenants to come in over multiple rounds. So that was my bad scene design. 

So they got to the Center of the Web at the start of the Yellow Zone, largely free of trouble and carrying the Coach's Inspirational Boosts. 

I put all of the budgeted minions and lieutenants on the board with the Weaver. She also had the Impenetrable Shield upgrade. My thought was that she could use those initial rounds to throw out more of her Leng Spiders while the heroes chipped away at the shield. 

Johnny freed the reporter and pilot. (These guys are very good at having the person with the right Principle take care of Challenges.) 

Cypher invoked a trade to summon his minions early. 

Sparklepony invoked her trade and ate up half the shield with one blast. 

The Minions had a good round, alternately chewing on the heroes and hindering them with webs. 

Next round: (And my memories are a little hazy) 

Cypher had his minions chew up the spiders, blasted a few of them himself and Johnny (in his Towering Form) stomped on a bunch. 

Sparklepony used her healing pollen to wipe out the damage the minions caused. Coach flipped the hinder on the one tangle hero and gave them another speech. 

The Weaver made a lieutenant.  

After that, it was more or less downhill. Cypher sent his minions to swarm the Weaver, eating up half her Health, and Sparklepony used her other trade to blow the Weaver to bits. 

So here's what I've learned - 

* Get more foes on the ground right away. Leading with just a challenge is just letting the heroes get all their Boosts on without any opposition. 

* Even an upgraded Villain has a hard time when all of the Heroes can focus just on them with Red Zone powers. 

* Minion Makers (and possibly other Archetypes) may need multiple rounds to set up. So make sure they have those rounds. 

If you edit a post you can click adminstration and then by Status choose the option "Not Published" then save the comment.  That will get rid of any duplicate posts so you don't need to apologize for all of them. 

I don't know whether to be pleased someone made a hero named Sparklepony or disappointed her power set seems to have nothing to do with sparkling or ponies.

I am old and not hip so I had no idea what it meant, but the player explained it. A sparkle pony is someone who shows up to Burning Man, without bringing anything but suitcases full of fabulous outfits. They assume people will take care of them because they’re just so wonderful. 

And while Sparklepony the character is flighty and self-absorbed, she's also the nicest member of the group and took the time to mentor a troubled young heroine who was going through a tough time. ("Trainwreck" from the Mutants and Masterminds book "Rogues, Rivals and Renegades.") 

I just wanted to come back to this again now that I'm designing villains.

Is it *really, really* the case that *all* villains on a team get 5xH extra Health? 4 heroes w/approx. 30 Health each against 4 villains w/approx. 55 Health each?  And this is a Moderate encounter?

For that matter, even *one* of those villains is supposed to be equivalent to 4 d8 Minions or 2 d10 Lieutenants?

As a GM who plans to use a lot of villains, this just seems off.  Can anyone with play experience verify that Yellow and Red hero Abilities are actually strong enough to balance these numbers out?

I can verify that they are strong enough. I would advise giving the heroes a longer scene tracker though; GGGYYYYRRR works well with multiple villains.

Thanks for that.  I wanted to trust what I'd read, but without experience, the numbers on paper just seemed off.

When it comes to whether or not to give a team of villains all +5H, I will say that I tend to fudge things. I had 4 heroes (of 6 possible players) show up for last week's game and I had 4 villains (three plus an upgraded one), plus a lot of minions, plus a difficult environment (a research science boat in the ocean and full of hostages) and a complicated challenge. I could see by the way they were struggling that I'd turned the knob too far in the other direction. So when one hero tossed the big heavy superstrong villain over the side, his partner (a flying battlesuit guy) dove into the ocean to save him. I let that eat up their actions for 2 rounds so the heroes had a chance of getting through the minions to the Big Bad. With only 1 red box left on the turn tracker, the heroes had chased off one villain, the two that had gone into the ocean got out of Dodge because by the time they'd gotten back to the boat, all the heroes were below decks and they decided that one dunk in the ocean was enough for them, and the Boss Villain was down to his base Health (the part before adding 5H). Rather than draw things out, I let the next big attack on the final round polish him off, when he should have had about 10 more Health.

I confess I'm still learning. Last night, I was doing a riff on an Omnitron Factory Floor fight. The adventure had taken a very long time to get to the big  Factory Fight.  We were at our normal quitting time, but only in the middle of the yellow and the only damage the boss had taken was self inflicted to get a re-roll. But the heroes had saved the hostages. So we narrated a Victory with a Twist. the heroes and the hostages got clear before Not-Omnitron blew up the factory, with everyone correctly assuming that Not-Omnitron Mark 2 was booting up even as the credits rolled.  

Did you follow the chapter 5 guidelines for scene design? Was it moderate or difficult?

The fight on the boat I made as a difficult scene for 6H, due to the way they completely rolled over a moderate scene the week before, and I went overboard, making the equivalent of a difficult scene for 8H. (And since only 4H showed up, I should have taken even more off the table than I did before starting, rather than fudging it mid-fight.)

This week, against Legally Distinct From Omnitron, I designed another hard 6H action scene, and scaled it down a little to a 5H scene against 4 players. That said, I don't think the scene was too hard, just that we ran long. (This week there was a lot more investigation and roleplay before they got to the Big Fight.) 

I've been working with a team of 4 players and then some NPCs (that they approved), so I've been running H=6. The biggest thing I've found is that an Environment can be a very adaptable element in an action scene. You can make it friendly, or unfriendly, or in between. Especially in Hard scenes though, adding an unfriendly environment is a good way to keep the action moving if players are prone to stall.

Hey, everyone.  I'm coming back to this again.  This weekend, we had our first session of actual play (vs. Starter Kit) with our converted Champions characters.  I created 3 new villains to oppose them, and put 2 simple challenges in the scene as well.  Here's some reflections on villains:

1) Combat is long.  We're new and we're online, but at 3 hours, we still haven't finished the fight.  This is not a deal-breaker for us - we played *Champions,* after all - but I was a little unpleasantly surprised by this.  I hope this will improve.

2) At catDreaming's recommendation, I used the longer scene tracker.  It was necessary.  They have 5 turns left and 2 villains and 1 challenge still to go.  I kinda wish I could have used the normal scene tracker, but that would have meant only 2 turns left instead, and they would definitely fail.  Which leads me to...

3) I agree that adding (5xH) Health is not overpowered for the villains (more or less), but I do wonder if it artifically lengthens a scene.  I wonder if I used a normal scene tracker and no bonus health if the whole thing would have seemed faster.  On the other hand, only 1 of the 4 heroes right now is any real danger of going Out.  If the villains went down even easier, maybe the whole thing would be a cake walk for the heroes.

4) I'm using a Minion Maker villain.  The temptation to flood the battle with minions is real.  This is a tricky thing to balance.

5) I'm a little disappointed that straight hero vs. villain scenes definitely wear out their welcome.  Villains don't have as many tricks as heroes, so the heroes have "seen everything" by halfway through the fight and then things can get grind-y.  And, frankly, SCRPG is not so good with grind-y (e.g., by comparison, grind-y Champions at least offers the thrill of rolling a fistful of dice and hoping for a wow moment).

5a) I know the fix for this is more varied opponents and challenges in scenes.  A couple of my players really enjoyed that in the Starter Kit and, in this session, those players *immediately* went after the challenges rather than the villains, which felt really heroic.  However, it seems to limit big combat showdown scenes.  (Also, my PCs are much less tuned-up principles-wise to solve challenges compared to the Freedom Five!).

6) Earlier in the session, I ran an easy scene as a combat test and I included a Lieutenant as a jobber supervillain.  That worked really well.

Just wanted to share some experiences for those still setting things up or wondering about the game, and soliciting commentary from more experienced GMs.

Hey there,

Long time Champions GM here too. My current group, however, has never played champions (a couple made characters once, and some hero system Shadowrun but not Champions). While I lack the experience of many here, I have only run through 1 session with 5 players, and thinking about Villain teams just the other day I want to give a couple opionions based on what I saw so far.

Overall, I was surprised at how slow SCRPG ran. However, looking back I think the pacing issue was due to new players playing new characters. It took a bit for some of them to wrestle with the concept that they really could come up with anything they thought their character should be able to do based on a few vague words on the character sheet, and the flavor and description and being true to your own concept was king. 

Also a few players were purposely feeling things out. Doing basic actions where they normally would probably have done with of their abilities. Just to see how the system works. 

This led to most of the team, for most of the session to be focused on what they themselves could do, and not what others could do and synergies. The action scene I had them encounter was a bank robbery, that had a 3 step challenge in order to get into the barricaded and locked down vault where the villain was gathering loot for their escape. They dealt with minions and lieutenants and learned about environments that sometimes help and sometimes hurt. But this was a great learning way to divide things up, as when they got into the vault and were facing the villain + some D6 minions they had formed some ideas, and started to work as a team...

While they didn't take advantage of all the possibilities, what happened next was a sweet 3 person combo with a 4th being a support. One character boosted the entire team while hindering themselves, which kicked off the next character doing a red ability to hinder all the enemies, which led to the third character making an attack that was amplified by boosts, combined with the support having galvanized up, while the support took care of all the minions by taking their hits and redirecting them back. It ended up being a big move which resulted in a lot of damage to the villain and wiping out all 5 minions. 

The villain bounced back after that making it a fight, and the whole scene ended with 2 heroes being out, and the villain going down on the very last attack on the last hero's action. 

But how does this apply to a fight vs a villain group? Well I am hoping that if the team can focus on a couple villains rather than split between a big bad, a couple challenges, minions, lieutenants etc, that the players can learn some killer teamwork moves between their characters to be able to really push the damage levels up. If the team doesn't have abiliites/actions that synergize well with each other I am sure they would struggle, though. And I definitely worry about those fights wearing out their welcome.

I do remember a few champion groups having to be taught 'the hard way' how well teamwork can impact the results of a fight. Usually by facing a villain team that worked really well together but are a bit underpowered compared to the heroes to make them think "Why are we having so many problems? Look what they are doing! We should do those things". I am thinking this current group might just naturally fall into some teamwork, and it feels like SCRPG really lends itself to big team moves.

So I am hoping that player teamwork can make the fights a little quicker. 3 hours for a SCRPG fight and it sounding like it's about half over scares me a bit. I am not sure when I am running SCRPG again with our group, like other groups COVID has slowed things down, and we don't all enjoy Roll20. But when I do I will make a super villain fight the main part of the session and time it and report back to what happened with my group. 

I do fear even with teamwork and big hits that it will be a slog like you are reporting, but we will see.

Thanks for your observations.  One of my villains was doing a Reaction to hurt people, so the team focused fire on him.  Of the other two, one is about 2/3rd down and the big brute is not even half (just like most brick fights in RPGs).

I *don't* think 4+ hours will be the norm.  But I *do* think that, like Champions, the "big fight" will be most of the session (i.e. 2-3 hours).  Fortunately, that's not a big minus for my group.

I also want to re-iterate that the feel is still a little off because the heroes aren't really close to losing...it's just taking a long time to win.

In most RPGs, it seems fairly standardized that an opponent goes down in a fight after 2-4 hits.  In SCRPG, a supervillain seems to need about 10 (unless you buff up).

I suspect a gaming session will be about 10% montage scenes, 15% social scenes and 75% action scenes anyway, so the fighting is where time will be spent. I find many RPGS when the initiative is dropped, the pacing does too. So I bet you are right the big villain fights will be the majority of the session.

Not sure about the heroes not being close to losing. I don't have enough experience to comment to that part. If it feels like there is no danger to the heroes and the fight is going to take 3 hours then....that won't be much fun I think. So that is a very valid concern. Maybe build villains that synergize well together? 

It's great to hear these issues before hand, great to know what keep a heads up for.