Super Villians 60s Style

[Boomerang]

I'm looking for ideas for super villians for a cinematic style supers campaign set in America in the 1960s. Power level would be 1,000 - 2,000 points. I don't need builds just concepts. I'm planning on borrowing heavily from classic comic book characters but I was hoping for some different ideas.

[Boomerang]

I forgot to add, psionics exists but not magic.

[Phantasm]

Well, there's the Soviet counterparts to the heroes, often operating without sanction to kill or publicly humiliate their American counterparts. Examples: Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man (both Iron Man foes), Red Ghost and his Super-Apes (Fantastic Four foes, gaining powers in a manner identical to the FF). Or you can have Soviet or Red Chinese spies (Black Widow, Comrade X (an Ant-Man foe)), some possibly gaining powers of their own in related means (ala Abomination), and folks operating behind the scenes (Mandarin).

There's also the various atomic horrors that can spawn much the same way the Hulk did, as a result of nuclear testing. Don't be afraid to toss Godzilla expies at your players. :)

[Flyndaran]

You might get more useful suggestions if you give us a style. 1960s Batman TV type villains aren't the same as the more violent murderers of some comics.

[David Johnston2]

The Grandmaster and the Red Queen: Two Russian superspies, the first the head of Soviet espionage operations in North America and the other being his top agent.

Purple Hayes: Ability to use mental powers to put people in trances.

California Girl: A watered-down Supergirl. Possibly a powerful sidekick to American Woman.

Pinball: Has a alien metal sphere he can mentally control

Devil Woman: Mentalist who went up against American Woman.

Professor Brainstorm: Disembodied brain in a clunky robot suit with the ability to shoot "brainblasts" after losing his body to radiation poisoning.

Gorilla Weird: Gorilla with a television set for a head.

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

You might get more useful suggestions if you give us a style. 1960s Batman TV type villains aren't the same as the more violent murderers of some comics.

Probably X-men style heroes and villains. Super powers come from exposure to alien superscience. The PCs were turned into superheroes by alien artefacts discovered when touring as soldiers in the Vietnam war.

[AlexanderHowl]

1,000+ point superheroes (and supervillians) get problematic. For example, you could give a supervillain Affliction 1 (Cone, 100 yards, +1050%; Cosmic, +50%; Extended Duration, Permanent, Reversed by a Kiss from a True Love, +150%; Malediction 2, +150%; Petrification, +150%; Selective Effect, +20%; Selectivity, +10%; Underwater, +20%) [170]. You could combine it with Will 20 and have a supervillain who is capable of turning anyone within a 100 yard cone to stone on a successful Will versus HT roll. The majority of superheroes would have difficulty against such an attack because they usually lack Cosmic defenses, especially since the supervillain would also have defenses and other attacks.

[ericthered]

Digging through an old document:

Crosshair: can do one point of burning damage to any set of locations he wishes on a global scale. He thinks this entitles him to live in style. He is built to be good at intimidation, and he's as calloused as feral child's feet. His signature is to make a demand, and then burn a pair of crosshairs into the ground of city he'll incinerate if his demands aren't met.

He can aim using longitude and latitudes with very fine detail, but surveying errors will be reproduced, including if he has his own location wrong.

Crosshair is directly inspired by the famous M.U.N.C.H.K.I.N. build, but he doesn't have the questionably legal rapid fire, and the damage is burning.

Blast-Off:
Can produce a sphere of near-invulnerability that sends objects flying away from him at high speed. He can control the direction of this, and use it to propel himself into the air. He has a bad temper, and when he looses control of it his powers activate, creating a small explosion of nearby objects and shooting him into the air.

Blastoff is not intended to be a villainous villain, merely a hazard to all around him who really doesn't want to spend the rest of his life as a hermit. A GM can change that of course.

Note that these characters demonstrate the point issue described above. Cross-hair can be built with surprisingly few points (his power can be built with less than 50). Blast off can soak up as many points as you want to give him. But I think I'd rather face blast-off in a fight.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

Probably X-men style heroes and villains. Super powers come from exposure to alien superscience. The PCs were turned into superheroes by alien artefacts discovered when touring as soldiers in the Vietnam war.

If X-Men is (Dr. King vs. Malcolm X) vs racial inequality, then this should be what? (Anti-war movement vs. returning vets) vs. the Vietnam War? The PCs are the returning vets? That suggests that your Magneto equivalent should be something like Abby Hoffman. Maybe also look at the Weather Underground for inspiration, too. For Bolivar Trask equivalents look to both mainstream Democrats and Republicans during the Eisenhower through Nixon administrations.

[tshiggins]

How much social consciousness or social criticism do you plan to include? For instance, a character called "White Knight" might perpetrate horrific atrocities, but if he was from a Southern U.S. state in the 1960s, he might consider himself a hero, and even enjoy considerable popular support -- at least, locally.

Conversely, one named "Black Bishop" might be labeled a terrorist, even though he restricted his actions to physical defense of protesters and Civil Rights activists. That would be particularly true, if he hospitalized a bunch of Ohio National Guard troopers at a certain state university protest....