It seems that a lot of people are tied up into mechanical comparisons of specific careers. Some of the discussions have been fruitful and pointed out flaws, others seem to be going around and around about hypothetical arena battles.

I think one of more important aspects of Ascension is the chapter on Ascended Antagonists/Villains. The book makes it very clear that the opponents of Ascended characters are going to be powerful, smart and proactive. This is a key component of the “next level” aspect of Ascension. We’re not discussing villains to be trapped in the sewers, or raided in their lairs. It is also a good argument for why mechanical discussions can sometimes miss the point of the game. There are a number of examples given in the book but let’s discuss the actuality of playing such a villain.

First of all, the villain is going to be planning ahead. They’re going to use everything at their disposal, their plans are likely laid out intricately, strategically and long in advance. They’ve devised counter-stratagems should something go wrong. They are well-aware that the entirety of the Imperium is looking for them… starting with the Departmentum Magistratum, Adeptus Arbites, and ending with the Inquisition (or maybe not). In addition, their plan has to have a good percentage of success otherwise it would not be implemented.

They’re going to act like devious PC’s. They’re not going to stand in an arena and shoot at people, they may not even know how to use a gun. They’re going to hire the best mercenaries, through psy-blanked cut-outs, to hit the PC’s where it hurts. They’re not going to let up the pressure. An informant network of recidivists, cultists or whatever are also going to be giving them information. Double-agents, sleeper agents, moles, and psy-turned individuals are going to work on their behalf.

They’ve been planning this for years, decades maybe longer and are capable of seeing beyond the immediate actions of an investigative unit. As noted above, they’ve got patsies set up already, red herrings to send the PC’s out into the Koronus Expanse (Bonner’s Reach anyone?), they have access to incredibly powerful organization, employees and more.

And they are going to use EVERY SINGLE ONE. They don’t want to get caught, they don’t want to be executed and, more importantly, they don’t want their plans to fail. They are dedicated and smart. So start thinking like a REAL adversary. You know how to do it, it’s just always been so unfair to your players. I mean, how could they stop you if you brought everything to bear on them… that’s their job to figure out. That’s what Ascension means.

If your PC’s have a top-notch security system installed, your Adversary has already mind-scanned the guy who installed it to make sure that a back-door is put in. They’re the ones who made sure of who the PC’s hired. Want to go for a ride? A single person with a rocket launcher has done more damage in Afghanistan since the 1980’s than most any other weapon out there. Do your PC’s eat? Chances are they do… poison is a real downer. Hard to trace, even surviving can cause debilitation and permanent damage. Sometimes it’s even better to just drug them, let them hallucinate and discredit themselves. Hard to trace things like that.

Your Acolytes had better be well-hidden. Once this Adversary learns you’re coming, they’re taking out your people. One by one. Two by two. City block by city block. That Rank 3 Guardsman you just hired… likely to meet his match when 30 hab-gangers with surprisingly nice weaponry attack him from ambush. Who hired them? Strange girl, couldn’t see her face, gave us guns to kill ‘em. She had an accent common to the hives of Solomon… two subsectors away. Your people are vulnerable if they’re exposed. If they’re known. There’s just no way of getting around it.

These Adversaries are going to think like player character villains with a tremendous amount of time on their hands. And lots of guns.

The book gives several examples of powerful but I think a great one is this guy… Governor Malakai Vess of Zweihan’s World.

He does not represent an unstoppable monster in personal combat. No, in fact, he is little more than a normal man (albeit hardened by years of service in the Emperor’s Name). What makes him truly and exceptionally dangerous is his heretical beliefs and his exceptional ability to inspire fanatical loyalty in his followers. Thus, Vess presents an interesting challenge to an Inquisitor and other Throne Agents, in that facing him head-on will likely not produce ideal results. Rather, a more creative approach is going to provide a much better outcome for the Throne Agents. It may even be possible to reason with Vess, and no doubt there could be a great deal of exciting roleplaying opportunities for the player characters to attempt to sway him...or perhaps for Vess to sway them to his point of view in turn!
As an Imperial Governor, Vess has a great deal of power and authority. This is represented by his Influence score. In Ascension, Influence is a game mechanic that measures the impact a person’s authority may have on the various organisations of the Imperium. For Vess, his impressive Influence score means that the Throne Agents will not simply have to face him in battle, they will have to first untangle the web of favours and pressure the Governor can use to slow their progress.
Influence may also be used to acquire special gear or the services of particularly useful groups or individuals. In Governor Vess’ case, this means that he not only commands the potent forces of his own personal guard, he may also be able to call on the services of the especially deadly Eversor Assassin!
Imperial Governor Malaki Vess oversees Zweihan’s World, a minor hive world located in the Malfian Sub-sector. A cool and temperate planet, much of Zweihan’s World’s surface is covered in water, resulting in a rather damp planetary climate. The planet is circled by several long, mountainous and almost serpentine continents, which are straddled by four hive cities near the equator. Zweihan’s World’s most notable feature is not on the planet, but around it: a vast ring system made up of the shattered remains of what used to be a large moon. Now the rock rings are mined, bringing the planet impressive mineral wealth.
As the Imperial ruler of the planet, Vess has overseen Zweihan’s World’s development for most of the last century. An intelligent, empathetic, and charismatic man and ruler, he has ruled his planet well, and as a result his subjects are prosperous and content. It is no wonder that Vess is respected, even adored, by his subjects.

Okay. His stats are pretty unimpressive, I think we can all agree on that. An Acolyte has a decent chance of taking this guy out. But he’s an Imperial Commander of a planet, an entire planet, and extremely popular. The book discusses ways to get at him but the key point is that combat is not always an effective option.

If an Inquisitor starts knocking on his door, an Imperial Commander can do little but refuse the rosette. Granted, he can pull some rank with the Sector authorities, or maybe any Ordos allies, but he’s going to give the Inquisitor the run of the place. So what?

An Imperial Commander is powerful. Not his stats. Not his Talents. But his position, his control over the population of the world, his political power in the Sector, his resources and, finally, his military might. It will take far more than a few revealed facts, a couple bloody scraps of paper or a ringing accusation on the throne room floor… that’s just going to get the Inquisitor a whole mess of trouble. No, the Inquisitor needs to go in quietly, start putting the shreds together, complete the tapestry, get his evidence before some allies and make good on his duty. This is going to take time, resources and, all the while, the Imperial Commander is keeping an eye out for just this kind of trouble.

The above snippet indicates some aspect of his power. What can he do?

-Discredit the Inquisitor. Frame Acolytes, accuse him of Radicalism through surrogates, set the Inquisitor up to be exposed committing a grievous error, call his sanity into question. How does he do these things… he's smart, remember? But let’s just assume that he has an entire platoon of trusted and skilled staff working on this problem. These individuals are the equivalent of Ascended Careers, they are trusted to fix “problems.” And they excel at their job.

-Miscue the Inquisitor. Assisting him, working alongside of him, giving him access to everything… while all along he’s had a patsy all lined up. The Noble House of Patsy has been subverted by his own agents into thinking a rebellion would place them in power. All the evidence, all the informants, all the clues eventually lead the Cadre to confront the House of Patsy… who really can’t deny their plans. Good job! Ticker-tape parade! I’m sure the Imperial Commander is very happy about their work and thanks them diligently, all the while knowing that the caches of weapons found were a necessary sacrifice and most of his preparations remain hidden. The Cadre moves on having solved the problem of the traitor House of Patsy!

-Attack. The Inquisitor begins snooping around, gathers a few pieces of evidence and then the Governor calls him out. Accuse him?! How dare you! Present your evidence! I demand that a trial be held immediately! By making public speeches, calling on other Imperial Commanders, he can force the Inquisitor to reveal that all he really has is gut-suspicion. At trial, the Governor is found innocent. Or the Ordos suggest that the Inquisitor move on considering he just made a fool of himself.

Maybe the Inquisitor exercises the full power of his rosette and executes him on no evidence. No denying that he can do it! But, an Inquisitor does not live within a vacuum. There are millions of repercussions for such an act… from censure by the Ordos, being stripped of rosette*, stone-walling from every other planet in the Sector, a suggestion from Lord Sector Hax that Ixaniad looks great this time of year and will remain so for the next millenium. Not to mention, making the enemy of every single paranoid ruler/guild house head out there… maybe they’re next? The repercussions to Influence are astronomical. Forget any Government Peers, forget any Underworld peers, forget any Noble peers. No one wants anything to do with them.

(*While an Inquisitor is theoretically outside of Imperium justice… he is not outside the Inquisition’s justice. They can strip him for acts deemed unworthy, dereliction etc. They don’t need to prove he’s wrong. They don’t need to prove he’s right… they just need to vote that he acted in a way they didn’t like… And they may not always do it for the more pure of reasons. It's politics, kids.)

-Remove the threat. This is a man with entire economy of a planet behind him. There’s a pretty decent chance he’s gathered up enough black-bag dough to hire the Kabal of Crimson Woe to stop by the Inquisitor’s next void trip and make it permanent. How about just a pair of assassins… each targeting a member of the Cadre? Or the Inquisitor? There are always folks like Worna and worse out beyond the reaches of the Imperium. They work for cash, they can’t be psy-scanned, they can’t be traced and they’re really, really, really good at their job.

So think about it. Think about all the different applications of power (political, social, military, historical, economic etc.) that your adversary has to draw upon.

The most dangerous person in the room is usually not the most heavily armed but the one who has lived the longest.

IN SUMMARY
Take a cue from any novel, movie or other medium… the villain is always winning in the beginning. The main hero has no idea what’s going on for the first half. They’re being shot at, cars blown up, people betraying them, losing their jobs, their friends, their dog. Then there are some patterns, some leads, small things… maybe they guess their target. Maybe they have a good hunch or a stellar piece of evidence that brings the BBEG down.

Yeah, that evidence is going bye-bye. Your Adversary knows about it and has already taken care of it.

But the PC’s know. No evidence but they know… so what are their next steps? How are they going to deal with this, more investigation, frontal attack (ie. Suicide), drawing in favors… it’s all up to your PC’s. Don’t be afraid to frustrate them, beat them at their own game, make their mistakes COST them… resources, allies or their lives. The stakes are higher now. They’ve Ascended, if they didn’t want the responsibility they shouldn’t have taken the kewl powerz.

Good thread on this here…

forum.rpg.net/showthread.php

BEST ADVICE FROM IT:
1-"I do two things immediately. First, I define what reasons the antagonist has for not squashing the PCs immediately. Second, I clearly define what resources the character has at his or her disposal."

2-Find someone else to run the Villain. Someone you can send an email to once in awhile and ask how the villain would react, what plans would they enact… I don’t think you’ll find too much trouble online finding someone willing to play the strategic part of your villain. Play smart. Play to win.

So tell us about your Ascended Adversaries...

A great post and a nice read. A GM after my own heart.

I always build my NPCs to win and I always do similar things as mentioned in the thread you pointed out. Especially number 1. Why hasn't the big bad squished the PCs? and What does he have at his disposal to do son once he decides to. Number 2 from that thread I vehemently disagree with unless I knew the person and had seriously talked about campaign long terms before hand. I treat major villains like I would my own player character, only NPC Epic villains can be built on an ala carte blanche build style. And therein lies the danger. I have ALOT of leeway with what I can build where the players do not. So I have to keep it reasonable. I assign a point value to anything and everything I give to an NPC. So I do not get out of hand. They are no where near Ascended so right now they have no ideas of the bigger picture. Yet.

Alexis

*smiles*

It took me a while to find it again, but i find this list rather helpful:

www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

I read it nearly every two weeks before i make the final touches to my program for my DH group.

After all, those guys got their title and rank not by luck alone, but because they had smarts, were vicious and ressourcefull. Not like those 'EGs' from your generic action movie.

The important thing for a good GM is to find the balance between the NPCs and the PCs powers.

A weak villain gets chewed out, but too strong and no amount of FPs is gonna rescue your group. I found it helpful in D&D3.5, Dark Eye and all the other systems i played/GMed to have a PC as well in the group, as it helps me to meassure the threat level for the PCs better.

And, as some one else in this forum already stated: For some things i don't make a profile. Something with a profile can get killed.

It's getting late for me, and i can't think of anything more useful to add so i stop here. So see you guys (and gals) tommorrow, maybe i've thought of something new to add.

Pretty good post, though I must say that I feel this seems a bit more towards the "action" Inquisitor playstyle. Having dueling networks and shadow wars that are as hard to trace back to the Inquisitor as they are to the Governor are interesting as well. Sadly, that means old Bob Vindicare Assassin will shoot less stuff in a game.

Though, fluff wise, I think Inquisitor's can't actually be stripped. You can be censured, even arrested. But the only way out of being an Inquisitor is in a box.

Not to say that you can't be totally discredited and made ally and friendless, unable to do anything but be a pawn for others...

This isn't so much Ascension-level in powerscale of characters present, but I think it covers the concept well since the campaign ended on a sector-wide note and took the party from ranks 4 through 7-8. This campaign took us about a year IRL to finish.

This started off with a lowly, mid-ranking Administratum adept called Enoch. This guy had learned our Inquisitor had discovered a set of five artefacts to summon a powerful daemon. He convinced the Lord Sector Hax to convince Lord Inquisitor Zerbe that by dividing these artefacts in pieces amongst his cabal of peers it would be harder to contain them and prevent any attempt to summon them. After getting our inquisitor denounced, declared Excommunicatus, and the artefacts condensed into one location, he proceeds to steal them using his now relatively high status, with the party busted out of prison and in hot pursuit, chasing his schemes across the sector. The other inquisitors of our master's cabal are a paranoid lot, and are also looking to obtain each of these artefacts in a deadly web of cat-and-mouse amongst each other, Enoch, and us. They don't trust anyone other than themself to hold the pieces alone or together, and they each have their reasons for wanting their share. He also turned our techpriest into his own personal spy via connections with his Magos.

Fortunately (though this was revealed later) our inquisitor had pulled a bit of a Xanatos Gambit in relinquishing fakes of these artefacts before hiding the real ones elsewhere. We go through endless hoops chasing down phenomena related to the artefacts, thwarting our rivals, and killing two of the inquisitors in the process as they attempt to stop us. Enoch laughs all the while as he pulls strings upon strings. Eventually we find where the artefacts are. Enoch slips in and gets to them first and it takes a final confrontation at a long-abandoned cathedral on a dead planet to reverse the now-realised summoning.

The real culprit? The man second-in-command of the Temple Calix of the Calixis Sector and primary acolyte of one of the inquisitors involved in this mess.

Krell Mithras was a powerful biomancer and more than a match for anyone in combat. Out of the two PCs who ever fought him, each fell in a turn at most. Mithras also possessed something the PCs lacked: connections and the knowledge to use them. He and Enoch set the PCs and their master up to fall so they could swoop in and take their dues. They both figured (rightly) that having a daemon of this power would be like holding a nuke to the entire sector; they could demand whatever they wished. Mithras used Enoch to thwart the PCs every turn, harassing them around the sector, while he went and found himself a church dedicated to the daemon. He preached their creed as the Emperor's return and reformed them into the perfect place to call it forth should his bluff be called. He also took their best orator, Pontius, and trained him in his image, using his Malleus connections to have him certified as a Black Priest in the process. He ended up, statwise, a combat-twinked cleric optimised for melee.

So, after getting another guy to do half the legwork turning a total of five inquisitors against each other and the sector in general, watching the acolytes burn everything as they're forced to kill them all, not suspect him of anything (or even know of his existence) until the final act, and finally stepping over their exhausted frames to take their prize afterwards, he was ready to end the sector for denying him his greed.

Until he died in the penultimate showdown when two spaceships crashed and exploded with him onboard, fighting his former master to the last breath. Enoch had already left with the artefacts to do the same thing without him; one final betrayal. Sucks to be the pawn of a Tzeentchian daemon, I suppose. The final battle involved the acolytes racing down planetside, fighting through walls of fanatical cultists, to the final summoning chamber where Enoch, Pontius, and several other experts in the occult were standing before the arisen, slowly-ascending daemon.

As a BBEG, Enoch was rather failtacular as an administratum agent can only be. he was the first one to hit the floor, a single hand cannon shell exploding his face. Pontius was the only real combatant; it took our dual-wielding-powerswording-assassin, with a little extra help from the rest of us, to bring him down. The real challenge was banishing the daemon with a counter-ritual, including trying to decipher said ritual, when every minute wasted was another handful of CPs added to the list.

If you managed to struggle through that wall of text, then that's the sort of convoluted plot I expect out of high-ranking antagonists. Wheels within wheels, plans within plans, and always one step ahead of the PCs. And a healthy bit of backstabbing from all angles.

This is a great thread!

Here are my personal top five rules of villain creation:-

1. Give them a motive which makes sense.

Inquisitor Quixos from the Eisenhorn trilogy was a good villain because he had a good motive: he was trying to close the eye of terror using warp energies focused through Cadian-style pylons. The more explicable the villain's underlying motive, the more interesting they become. Cult leaders are often quite dull as villains because they want to destroy everything without much thought given as to why. An ostensibly noble motive can lead even good men or women astray. Inquisitorial chronicles should be full of these moral debates: do the ends justify the means?

2. Make them somehow grotesque

Ian Fleming was the master at this. All of his villains were marked by some kind of personality trait or physical flaw which triggered the hatred of the reader for that character. Goldfinger's big head and ugliness. Drax's hare lip. Dr No's lack of hands. Fleming was a terrible snob, and he used this to his advantage by giving Bond (Fleming's cipher) something to look down on, to find pitiful, even in an ostensibly much richer and more powerful man. This technique is pretty un-PC (Fleming often strayed into what bordered on outright racism using it) and unsubtle, but if used sparingly - perhaps by giving a villain an irritating turn of phrase or tic) you can have your PCs itching to kill the villain just because he's so grotesque and annoying.

3. Make them gifted but flawed

Good villains are more than mooks because they have a better range of skills and talents. But there should be some fault, some flaw within them that PCs can recognise and exploit, as this will make for a more characterful and satisfying conclusion. This should be played to the hilt, but one must be careful to avoid cliche. The "evil genius" is an incredibly overused stereotype, and it has become so familiar that everyone knows one when they see one. The classic supervillain gifted/flawed combination is "genius/arrogant" but you should experiment with unusual alternative versions, like "master assasin/socially awkward" or "ruthless heretic/crippling remorse."

4. Make them ruthless

Some of my favourite villains come from the TV series The Wire. The major drug barons - Barksdale, Stringer Bell, Proposition Joe and Marlow Stansfield are, without exception, totally ruthless, willing to kill anyone who stands in their way. They betray their friends and family to get what they want. Arguably, this is the defining characteristic of a villain: their willingness to commit cruel acts to achive their objectives. Ruthlessness can be used to show the true nature and calling of a villain. John Le Carre touches on the essential difference between a hero and a villain through his character George Smiley, who comments that his Nemesis (Karla) has a weak spot in that Karla's weakness is a "fatal lack of moderation." Smiley acknowledges that he himself uses ruthless methods (blackmail, for example) to achieve his ends, but that Karla is blinkered by ideology, proving that the ends don't justify the means. Smiley comments that "I'd rather be my kind of fool than his."

5. Avoid Cliche

This means tearing up one or more of the rules above, as each of them is, to some extent, a cliched stereotype of a villain. If you want to spring a really surprising villain on your players, ignore some of these rules. Have a villain whose motive doesn't really make any sense - like a self destructive serial killer who leaves so many clues it's as if he wants to get caught. Or a totally non-grotesque villain, like a beautiful and elegant noble lady. Or a villain who doesn't seem to HAVE any flaws. Or a villain who doesn't actually LIKE killing, and uses non lethal methods where possible. Having an interesting spin on the old supervillain format makes for a more interesting chronicle!

Anyway, just a few thoughts!

It's probably already been mentioned, but just in case:

I suppose a good idea would be having a villain who can't just simply be killed. The conflict demands a different resolution (at first, anyway). By that I mean that they might have knowledge of something that is just too valuable to be destroyed, or perhaps they know which Hive is set to explode or perhaps they've found ways to blackmail the Acolytes in the worst way possible.

Many of the greatest villains have been taken out of commission rather anti-climactically. A lucky bolter round to the head, for example. That can be appropriate to, I know, but you know what I mean...

In my current campaign, the players are only peripherally aware of what is going on, right now. They know who their boss is, they know what they are being sent to do. Investigate a holding facility where the Tithe went missing, signs of Psyker activity, and a history of Malfian involvement left this to Malleus. However getting there has proved problematic with a Gellar Field Failure. But they do have a mission beyond the hell they have to face on their ship.

Right now though, they know their boss, they know she has enemies. Some know more than others about her nature. The Two Psykers. One of whom was sent away and forced to apply a background package in pre game preludes for hearing a single word. The other is the Prime who heard the word, knows it is significant as it got a fellow Psyker sent away to be made unreadable, and left him with an order to kill a twelve year Veteran Lieutenant. Who's only crime basically was to have walked the other Psyker in at a wrong time forgetting to signal at the door and thus hearing something he should not have. They know that and they know not much more.

They are not yet aware of the convolution that is the meta plot. Enemy? Enemies. What they have stumbled into/been thrust into by fate (me) will leave them with enemies on all sides. Possibly even more so if they finish what can only be described as a heroic deed of the greatest magnitude. If they decide to do so. I run a sandbox elemented game, and cannot discount that the players may left field me. But each and every single personae majoris in my world has motives. Real and true as the players, some noble some monstrous, but I have never been keen on two dimensional world building. That is why I enjoy the posts in this thread so very much. It seems others share my interest in confronting their players with more than Dealth Cult #420101, whos maniacal leader is intent on...killing everyone....because!

I will post some information about my game later, have to make certain my players are aware to stay off the boards. And am so very glad I can trust them. It's great when you game with your closest friends.

Alexis

*smiles*