My Vault of Larrin Karr/Arcana Unearthed campaign ended earlier that I expected. We've got a gap in scheduling so I've got to have the Champions mini-adventure ready in mid May, about a month earlier than expected.
I'm working on the Big Three Plus One, a group of yutz villains who have, nonetheless, been around long enough to represent a minor challenge to a super team. The "Plus One" member, Big Time, started off as even more of a yutz than the rest of the team; he was reasonably tough and had a booster field that pumped his buddies up.
I've given him some martial arts to make him a slightly-less-than-standard physical combatant, and added a few powers, deriving conceptually from Ambrose Chase, the dead guy from Planetary with the distortion field.
One of them, though, was puzzling me. I didn't want a shut-down-the-opponent power like Chase has (yet--Big Time will eventually be the most powerful member of the Big Three Plus One), but I did want something that would fit in with the distortion field motif, so I wanted a vertigo-induction power. Helpfully, Chase's FX resemble Count Vertigo's FX, so it's a natural fit. The object of the power is to knock the characters down and make them struggle to get up.
After some consideration (Energy Blast, does knockdown only, continuous?) and consultation with fellow nerds, here's what I came up with:
Vertigo induction field: Mind Control, 16d6, reduced END (+1/4), one command only (fall down, requires DEX+20, -1/2), applies versus DEX, not EGO, with Acrobatics and Breakfall as complementary skills (-1/2), breakout roll occurs each phase (-1), stops working if mentalist is stunned or knocked out (-1/2), active cost 100, real cost 29, END 4.Physical Limitation: Mind Control does not grant mental awareness, 3 points.
"One command only" and "stops working if stunned" are straight out of the book. I wanted the power to go off ECV and mental defense, which is why "applies versus DEX" is so low compared to "based on CON"; I'd probably make it -1/4 without the complementary skills.
"Breakout roll each phase": I figure in a fight, a character gets max two in-combat breakout rolls: next phase, and one turn later. Additional breakout rolls are made in non-combat time. With this limitation, the character gets a lot more breakout rolls, faster, at increasing bonuses. This power will put the character down for a couple of phases, then he'll bounce back up.
16d6 (and 100 active) is considerably higher than the PC limits, but A) this is a villain and it's more important that he do want I want than I keep to the limits; and B) this is about what it'll take to keep a DEX 20 character down for a couple of phases. Expected roll is 56, which means an initial breakout roll modifier of -3, against a DEX roll of 13; targets are 75% likely to be back up in two phases.
Posted by Greg at April 18, 2005 12:52 PM
All I remember about the Big Three is the intense annoyance they provoked in Viv.
Then they succeeded in their campaign mission....
Three low-level brokerage/management-consultant types were camping in the woods near the crystal resonance point where the Marquis was drawing power in the ritual that ended up giving the Voyagers their superpowers. These three frat-boys-gone-corporate got hit by some of the flare-off from the points and also developed superpowers, but they became supervillains.
The original Big Three were Phillip Tupper, aka Big Plans, a big-headed mentalist, objectively one of the smartest people on Earth and yet a complete tool; Thomas Csupy, aka Big Man, with growth powers; and Richard Bigelow, aka Big Deal, a Human Torch-wannabe.
They concocted some sort of cockamamie plan to rob the Federal Reserve, and the Voyagers spanked them royally, capturing Big Man and Big Plans.
This being early in the heroic era, the Supermax prison for supervillains at Coppervale hadn't been built yet, so they were housed at a maximum security prison in California, where they met up with career criminal Morton Tennant (whose name will probably be changed) and contrived to give him a transfusion of their superhuman blood. As expected, Tennant developed superpowers and became Big Time. Eventually, the trio escaped and reunited with Big Deal.
There was a second encounter with the Voyagers, where the Big Three, now Plus One, got imperially spanked, but I have forgotten any more details than that.
The Big Three Plus One are going to be the demo fight at the beginning of the adventure so that the players can see how the system works, since I'm dealing with almost complete newbs.