Give me your top three SuperVillains...

[Kemrain]

I'm now facing a villaness who's tactics have made her both suprisingly efficient and terribly hard to get a hold of.

She enters the scene, helping to defeat the last bad guy, and making her help very public. We didn't have good publicists, so it seemed like she came out of nowhere to save the day. She took over this city that had been sieged and raised, and built it up strong. Then she starts to expand, using propaganda and misinformation to keep the public loving her.. The White Queen.. The Savior of Alsatia... And no one knows that she's sold her soul to a Demon, uses human souls to power her magic, and has, through religion, basically completely subjigated another prime material plane, using them as her "White Army."

Crystal Rose is a nasty villan, with vast resources, powerful weapons, innumerable loyal troops, another world to hide in (where time passes 8 times more slowly) where the population thinks she's a God, and powerful magic.

Our GM's done a good job making her a very hatable villan. I'll enjoy personally delivering her to hell when the time comes. It's coming, but it's taken months and months (years and years to her world), and it might take months and months more. She's very good at what she does. Great Villan.

- Kemrain the Vengeful.

 

[Black Omega]

By the way, I think Batman finally beat Shiva. In Hush, Shiva beat up Selina pretty bad. In Batman/Superman, which follows right on its heels, they run into each other in Washington DC and Batman makes pretty short work of her.

Well, technically, Shiva was being mind controlled at the time and not really fighting very well. Batman did beat Shiva in the Death in the Family storyline, though he needed Robin's help to do so. Batgirl also beat her, though it was suggested in the book at the time Shiva had a death wish and wanted to die in the fight. It says alot that later when Batman needed help getting his edge back, he went to Shiva for training. Which means by now Shiva's trained Batman, Batgirl, and Robin.

I'm a big Shiva fan, she's not a true villain, but has a complex zen amorality (when well written. Her best appearance recently was in Bird's of Prey 62-67). Her goal is to test herself against the best martial artists in the world. To that end she's killed a group of thugs before just to draw a nearby hero into fighting her. She's also helped Robin against a martial arts villain trying to poison Hong Kong and the Justice League against a occult martial artist cult baddie.

As for top villains, that's pretty tough.

The Joker: "When supervillains want to scare each other, they tell Joker stories." Just so many ways to use the guy. Basic robberies. Mass death. Something symbolic, like defacing a work of art. He's truly insane, so anything is possible. Still, Joker, Doom, Magneto have been talked about enough. On to something different.

Shasti: Former 3WA Trouble Consultant. Vat grown at an accelerated pace, so no childhood. Used as an experiment in cyber-enhancement, including a multiple personality chip that selected an appropriate persona for different situations. Until then 3WA messed up and added a criminal persona to aid in tracking a villain. Now freelance, amoral, very angry, and willing to kill plenty of innocents to get her revenge on the system that created her. And still a bit crazy thanks to the multiple personalities.

 

[Teflon Billy]

2) The Riddler - Batman

Isn't the Riddler's superpower "Giving Away the Plan"?
:\

 

[Ghostwind]

Loki - Here is the ultmate schemer and trickster. He's come very close on numerous occasions on ruling Asgard and defeating Thor. His strengths are that he knows who to get that can do the fighting and the dirty work. Throw in the Destroyer, Hel and Enchantress (when she was considered evil) and you've got a pretty powerful combination.

 

[SmokestackJones]

Hey TB,

Here's my take:

1. David Lo Pan: I love the thought of an undead sorcerer who longs to be mortal and who can back it up with the Three Storms and tons of minions. May not be as wide-reaching as Fu Manchu, but he should be.

2. The Joker: Gotta go with the Clown Prince of Crime, no matter what his incarnation. He's evil and insane and he does it with style.

3. The Mechromancer (M&M): Yes, my villian. Another undead guy. However, he's a brilliant meglomaniac who discovered how to combine two favorites - zombies and droids (two great tastes that taste great together) and tops it off by having absolutely no regard for life, human or otherwise.

Honorable mention: Boris Badenov: The Pottsylvanian Poster Boy For Evil holds a warm spot in my heart because he's so dedicated to his cause.

-SJ

 

[billd91]

Favorite supervillains? Tough choice since there are so many good ones out there. The trouble with just picking a few is that so many of them really are fantastic, depending on how well the comics are written. For example, I'd be a little more luke-warm on Darkseid, except that the time he appeared in Legion of Superheroes was so cool that I have to like the character.

Plenty has already been said about Magneto. He's probably my hands-down favorite supervillain. Mastermind, enormously powerful, huge chip on his shoulder, and yet sympathetic to a point because his extremism is based in such profound oppression and tragedy. A wonderfully textured villain.

Saker from the Elementals was also awesome. He may be hard to find these days in the comics but there was a trade paperback called Elementals: Natural Order that covered his story. Very cool and it tied into some Villains and Vigilantes modules.

 

[Eccles]

I'd go Joker, but he's already been covered.

In that case, I'm going to give you my favourite 3 homebrew from my superhero game a while ago.

1. The GamesMaster. A themed villain who based everything on board games. Beyond that he was a bit of a Joker ripoff, but it was great to have a character that led the heroes to mutter "we must kill the Gamesmaster!"

2. The Cardboard Ninjas. You remember those shooting gallery games where you had to shoot cardboard ninjas? I had a villain who could animate two dimensional images. The heroes never found out who he actually was, as they were having too much fun attacking totally harmless murals and pictures... The best scene was when they decided to get in a lift to chase the villain on the ground floor of a large bank. Ding! The doors open, and they saw the A-Team, with a few bags of loot. Everyone in the group agreed to stand and watch until the lift went Ding! and the doors closed again...

3. Lady Doubletake. Had the power to steal and suppress heroes' own powers. And then duplicate herself. Then all 8 copies of her could blast the heroes with their own powers. Which annoyed the hell out of 'em.

I could go on with The Baron, The PrimeEvil, 10 Ton Jake (who lasted half of one very violent combat), and a few others...

 

[takyris]

Since most of the big folks have been covered, more archetypal traits. Ideally, for two separate villains:

1) The Empath. The Joker is like this in some incarnations -- he's the villain who gets inside the heroes' heads. Sometimes, this means killing their family or trashing their new car. Other times, this means saying the things that the hero is afraid to say out loud and can't quite disagree with. Usually, this villain is played as insane (like the Joker), but other times, he can be somebody who just doesn't care -- can't for the life of me remember where, but there was a great biker gang leader who went up against a non-powered hero, and it all came down to the fact that the biker had been like the hero once, seen the truth, and given up.

In M&M, this guy works well in a lot of ways -- because he's so energetic, he usually does great with flashy stuff -- super-speed, super-dex, strike, energy control, whatever. Anything that can look big and splashy and give him a chance to make people pay attention to the things he says.

2) The Uncaring. This villain archetype is often played by cyborgs, undead, dark avatars from parallel dimensions, whatever. In some cases, Vader and Soth fit the bill as well. They are people of few words, and they need a lot of henchmen around to kill in order to show that they mean business.

In M&M, these guys need enormous amounts of Protection, Immovability, Incorporeality, Energy Field, or something like that. You don't want the heroes to throw these guys off with Snare or Slick. That doesn't look cool. Ideally, this guy is hovering a few inches off the ground most of the time. I'm currently playing with some sort of Grim-Reaper-esque guy in black who has Super-Speed, Incorporeality, Strike, and Neutralize. He ignores most attacks, just standing silently and stripping the heroes of their defenses, and then he moves in as a dark blur and rips their hearts out in a single swift motion. Good stuff. (Yeah, it's actually something like Super-Speed, Flight or Floating, Incorporeal, Phase Touch, Neutralize (with Ghost Touch), and a whole lot of ranks in anything defensive, like Protection and Mental Protection and a few Amazing Saves.)

 

[Jamdin]

My top three DC Comic supervillains would be:

1. Lex Luthor - Not only is he the nemesis of Superman but he became President of the United States.
2. The Joker - He killed Jason Todd, put Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon in a wheelchair and pushed Batman to the edge of sanity several times.
3. Deathstroke the Terminator - A deadly mercenary that's not afraid to kill

My top three Marvel Comic supervillains would be:
1. Dr. Doom - He rivals Reed Richards in smarts and he is the monach of Latveria
2. Green Goblin - He dropped Gwen Stacy from a bridge
3. The Red Skull - Captain America's greatest enemy from yesterday

 

[D+1]

Only three? From any source?

Adolf Hitler
Joseph Stalin
Usama Bin Laden

Easy choices all.