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Waspinator
2008-10-27, 02:42 AM
I'm new to Mutants and Masterminds GMing and was wondering if someone more experienced than me could help me with a villain build. I want a villain who can fight a standard group of heroes (3 or 4, PL 10?) and is based off of a old City of Villains character of mine: Long John AgNO3, geek pirate extraordinaire! :smalltongue:

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/5818/longjohnagno31jk4.jpg

Basically, it needs to be a tech-y villain inn some kind of powersuit with a laser rifle and some robot minions. For people not familiar with City of Villains and/or what this kind of character can do, these are the kinds of things I'd like among his and his robots' capabilities:

1: All of them being able to fly with rocket jets on their feet (hence the suit).
2: John being a bit of a gadgeteer. Little hovering force field projectors, portable mortars, sticky-web grenades, that kind of thing.
3: John and the robots all have energy weapons. In addition to that, the robots should have some specialization. Preferably, to match the game, there should be one big battle-bot with a flamethrower and missiles, two smaller "Protector" bots with force fields and repairing abilities, and three drones that fill out the ranks of disposable minions.
4: Is there anyway to have a "bodyguard" effect? City of Villains let you keep your robots in a defensive mode so that they automatically absorbed damage that would have hit you. Is there a way to duplicate that in Mutants and Masterminds?

I don't need any backstory or roleplay help since I think I have that figured out, though it's going to be fairly silly. "Yarr! If ye be not part of the solution, yer part of the precipitate!" Not to mention the 'bots having names like Infra-Redbeard and Bluetooth. I might also need to work some "Monkey Island" references in there.....

Nerd-o-rama
2008-10-27, 03:50 AM
First, the way Battlesuits are usually done is with Hard-to-lose Devices. Long John Silver Nitrate will want Protection (to beef his Toughness save up to max via armor), Flight, and maybe his weapons as part of this Device (for weapons that are built into the suit)

The robots should probably be statted as Minions (one failed Toughness save and they're gone) of a PL somewhere below the PCs, with Long John as a regular character of some PL 2-4 levels above the PCs, depending on how much of a threat he's supposed to be. Even of the same level, if he's meant to be a nuisance rather than a supervillain.

1. Easy. Flight Power, probably rank five or less.

2. Pretty much any effect in the book can be done through goofy technology. Snare for glue grenades, Trip with Knockback modifier for a sonic cannon, Force Field with Affects Others extra for a big force field bubble he can protect adjacent robots with, etc.

3. Blast covers pretty much any basic ranged weapon like a laser or rifle.
Missiles: Blast with the Homing feat
Flamethrower: Strike with the Area (Cone) Extra and a fire descriptor
Force Fields: Er, Force Field. Again, Affects Others for a wider bubble to cover each other or the boss.
Repairing: Healing, possibly limited to Mechanical creatures or people wearing a lot of technology.

4. You're looking for the "Interpose" feat. Lets the thing with the feat take an attack for someone else once per round. Should be exactly what you need.

The Rose Dragon
2008-10-27, 10:10 AM
If you're not afraid of thinking outside the box a bit, you can use Create Object to give cover to your allies. Especially if you make it Selective. Susan Storm Richards uses this a lot instead of a Force Field with Affect Others.

And you can use the often debated effect of Deflect instead of Interpose, with the ranged Extra. However, the usefulness of Deflect is questionable, at best.

Nerd-o-rama
2008-10-27, 10:16 AM
Deflect is way too costly to buy up to effective levels. At least for PCs. As the GM, you can do whatever you want, but I personally think it's best to keep things as close to 15 pp/PL as possible.

Good call on Create Objects, though.

Tengu_temp
2008-10-27, 10:31 AM
M&M villains using specialized robot mooks... ugh, deja vu...

Monstrodoom
2008-10-27, 06:30 PM
I'd trick out the robots as if they're the Summon power, personally - it's a little closer to the CoH mastermind functionality, since, with interpose they'll die for you, and with a certain power extra you can pull them alllll out all over again. So you're basically untouchable for a while as long as you've got the action to summon your minions.

Otherwise, with the Minions feat, you've got a limitation on how many you can have, ever, until you've got time to replenish your ranks. While it's a little dumb, a fight against a real villain might seem hopeless as crates fall from the ceiling, pooping out more and more and more of his battle drones... Until the heroes invent/quest for some sort of remote control of heroism or some similar plot device that renders the villain from impossible to simply tough. Maybe even disable the conveyor belts/teleportation device/keebler elf assembly line.

Tengu_temp
2008-10-27, 08:01 PM
Why bother with Summon/Minions? We're talking about an NPC villain here - he has as many minions, and statted with as many points, as the plot requires.