Hell in a Handbasket

The thing about Champions nee the Hero Game System is that you can build your own superhero. Kathryn opted to be a Mentalist, someone with mind powers. She built her character with good defenses against powers like hers, and she included a jet pack and armor. That way she could keep up with the rest of her group when they flew off to combat evil, and the armor meant that she might just survive if someone attacked her physically.

The villain was another Mentalist, an assassin who could cause anyone over a wide area to see their greatest fears come to life before their eyes. The victims would roll around on the ground, screaming and crying out in terror. Then he would simply walk up to the target and, I dunno, choke them to death or something. I also gave him some unarmed martial arts skills so he could beat the mark to death if that was the only way handy.

Kathryn's super hero group heard of trouble at a local hospital where an injured witness against the local mafia gangs was being treated, and when they arrived they found that everyone was acting like they were in a horror movie when the monster shows up.

They entered the hospital, but the villain was disguised in a doctor's lab coat. He pretended to be terrified himself, but he was just gathering his strength so he could zot their minds as well.

Suddenly, the only hero who could still move was Kathryn. She looked around, saw some guy calmly get up and move towards the exit, and figured he had something to do with the situation. He, on the other hand, was shocked that his trusty mental horror show didn't work on her.

You see, the bad guy's powers couldn't affect her through her defenses, and his own mental armor was enough to render her own powers ineffective. It was time to resort to fisticuffs.

The thing that made the most impression on me was that the fight took forever! The assassin's martial arts skills meant that he could hurt Kathryn through her armor, but not enough to end the combat quickly. Kathryn could hurt the bad guy since he didn't have armor, but since she didn't have any physical combat skills the damage she dished out was rather minor.

It was her jet pack that finally ended the fight. After beating on each other for awhile, it became apparent that the assassin was just slightly better at causing damage than Kathryn. She hit on the idea of grabbing a trash can from the hospital lobby and using it as a battering ram while flying into him.

With the villain unconscious, his mental hold on everyone was gone. An intern, traumatized by the horrors that he had been forced to live through, ran up and stuck a ball point pen through the bad guy's ear to make sure that he couldn't turn the power back on. Kathryn was too bruised and exhausted from the fight to stop the attack.

It is important to keep from just pulling something out of left field to screw with the players. The fight I just described followed the rules, the heroes had previously come across evidence that the assassin was in the area, and the whole thing was part of a greater plotline.

But what is most important is that I didn't just overwhelm the hero group with an ultra-powerful threat. Instead I exploited a vulnerability that most of the characters had ignored while building their characters. You have to do this or else the players will get upset.

Not that most of them weren't a bit upset anyway. It isn't easy to realize that the bad guy would fall like a house of cards in a high wind if you could only reach him, but not being able to move.