How do you deal with psychics and body manipulators?

How do you deal with psychics and body manipulators?

I admit, we're playing a pretty gritty setting where 'the bad guys won' and now the heroes are protecting people in unconventional ways.

The psychic scans the city looking for known villains, makes herself invisible to the mind and shanks their brains.

The body manipulator kind of does the same thing, but instead of scanning, he morphs into the villain's friends and family, gets them in a vulnerable position and tears out their heart (and stops there if they're lucky).

There's two other heroes. A gun using martial artist, like Batman if he was a Grammaton Cleric. And a singer who uses his voice to deafen. Nothing too bad.

My problem is I can't keep a steady villain. Heart Ripper and Brain Shanker, not their names but might as well be, make sure no one sticks around for long.

Wat do?

Body manipulation wouldn't work for replacing close friends and family without months of research on their personality and habits.
As for the physic you're gonna need a villain specialized to stop them.

I mean...there's nothing particularly wrong with heroes feeling powerful. However, if you feel like too many villains of yours are jobbing, don't forget that what they can do you can do tenfold.

Don't be afraid of boosting the PL of your villains and giving them ways to counter such as distracting the heroes with endangered citizens. Heck, the villain might biologically "infest" someone that the Brain Shanker can't get away with mentally hurting.

Basically, just give them different problems to handle in a fight that makes them do things outside of "kill villain" and encourages to use the powers they have in atypical ways.

Unless you've went up against a kaiju monstergirl that can summon two high level swarms from her ovipositor that can both Interpose and heal her on top of having Luck Powers among other fucktons of different powers, I'd consider you very lucky.

>The psychic scans the city looking for known villains, makes herself invisible to the mind and shanks their brains.
Higher level psychic who can lead her into an ambush.
>The body manipulator kind of does the same thing, but instead of scanning, he morphs into the villain's friends and family, gets them in a vulnerable position and tears out their heart (and stops there if they're lucky).
Hyperparanoid villain who has a load of paranoid defenses against his own family and friends.

>Body manipulation wouldn't work for replacing close friends and family without months of research on their personality and habits.

He 'copies their biological imprint'. While he doesn't know what they know, he's used spur of the moment thing. The latest was killing a villain as his daughter at 'her' birthday.

>As for the physic you're gonna need a villain specialized to stop them.

I'm afraid of that. I just don't want it to be a random out of nowhere thing. Like "suddenly there's a villain that counteracts everything you do, suck on that"

Dare I ask?

While we're on the topic, how do you guys make combat interesting? My DM lamented the fact that the even epic encounters can be trounced by one or two good/bad rolls.

>I mean...there's nothing particularly wrong with heroes feeling powerful

I get that, but I think it'll get boring after a while.
>Don't be afraid of boosting the PL of your villains and giving them ways to counter such as distracting the heroes with endangered citizens

Yeah, I've tried upping the power and putting civilians in harm's way. All four of the players are thinkers.

>Basically, just give them different problems to handle in a fight that makes them do things outside of "kill villain" and encourages to use the powers they have in atypical ways.

This is what I plan to do!

>Higher level psychic who can lead her into an ambush.

Yeah, the thing is is she's that paranoid also. It's like playing mental chess with an angry middle age woman (the character, the player is actually nice)

>Hyperparanoid villain who has a load of paranoid defenses against his own family and friends.

As I mentioned above, Heart Ripper doesn't have a plan. he just has a list of villains that he can go after.

And thank you for your suggestions!

Yes, it's exactly what you're thinking, but it's exactly what the player and I were planning. Unfortunately it's also the reason why the very first campaign I did had to be canceled.

Army of robots led by an AI who can jump from one to another or onto the internet if needed.

That might be fun actually. I'll see what I can do with it.

Apply fire.

Magneto Helmet

That's the answer to everything, user. Unless they're immune to fire. And rocks falling. Made a character like that once.Unfortunately he did not get a chance to use them as he was ran over by a car. That game was silly.

Lone gunman who's geared up to fight the party. Think Frank Castle wearing Magneto's hat.

Storytime?

Alright, I shouldn't have brought that up unless I was prepared to elaborate. I will give you your story...in time.

Honestly, I had several of my players complain about the combat because it was "too swingy". But most of them then also complain that some of their attacks "do nothing" when I up'd the villain's PL. Ultimately though, it does take a lot of creativity to keep players occupied enough that they don't just start swinging the villain the moment they see them or at least keep their "one shot" moves in mind when making a villain's statblock. It's also good to have at least give a villain a "second form" or some equally strong allies.

Alright, here goes:

>Decide to run a game which a giant multi-dimensional world conquering broodmonster attacks several dimensions
>Steampunk squire, post apocalypse survivor raccoon, not-tatsumaki and definitely sure that's the Dragon King from Kingdom death
>Prologues went pretty well for raccoon and steam squire
>Because I had so many people bail, I kinda had to make psionic and solar dragon's introduction quick
>The two decide to ask me to invite a female player who also has her own pregnancy rpg system. She is the one that ultimately makes a character that we both decided (and thank goodness I went this route for the solo campaign) would still have her world intact...and is also a half-kaiju that shifts into something that ovulates crab minions.
>She ends up having the most enjoyment out of the campaign...even though almost everyone hates the system initially(despite not actually understanding things as basic as damage).

>Unfortunately, she seems to be the only one that actually talks with me and knows at least 70% of how anything works
>One of the combats ends up ending on a single crit thanks to me running on 4 hours of sleep and having a session just two days after another.
>Raccoon leaves, Steampunk Squire has to bail because he flaked way too many sessions (note that these two are the ones I had the most prep done for plothook wise...).
>That leaves only Psionic, Dragon, and Kaiju girl
>Kaiju Girl ends up persuading herself out of several nasty situations (thanks to +22 Persuasion and Attractive +5)
>Eventually managed to have a very good fight with massacring a gang of corrupted fiends that have less scruple ways of dealing with the main villain.
>However, thanks to a mixture of the main villain's involvement not showing up for many sessions and me assuming that "Oh hey, we all like pregnancy right? Let's just make that a major focus!" and then the Dragon and Psionic (who was impregnated from some corruption earlier in game) decided that they weren't enjoying it anymore.
>Feel like shit for not knowing better sooner

However, currently the Kaiju Girl player and I are doing a solo campaign continuing from that one.

Combat in M&M is super lame when players try to chew through it without thinking. The game shines when players use their powers creatively and interact with the environment around them, hero points make this really easy as well.

Once my players and I found the pace and style of combat that worked for the game we didn't have a single back and forth slugfight from then on. Some of the best moments I've ever GMed were when the party worked together to pull off an absurd and clever team attack.

That's probably the reason why your villains should have some very good defenses immunity, and maybe some other nasty tricks like reaction damage, encourages players to either do their power stunts or or perhaps team up to get their damage higher.

Just once, I want to see a flying brick throw a car at someone.

>Psychic
Mind Shield plus an "I don't give a shit about your obscure/concealment effect" super-senses power. Any magic/psychic/genius villain (or any villain with one of those on staff) could be reasonably expected to have those, ESPECIALLY since villains have been dropping dead with exploded brains lately.

>Body manipulator
Again, any smart villain should have anti-doppleganger measures in place by now, word travels fast about when shapeshifting assholes start assassinating people. And if these people aren't chumps then they should have a reasonable chance to make a save at least well enough to not instantly die, in which case the shapeshifter is now alone in a room with an angry villain who will be triggering all their security measures.

Heart ripper's easy;
1: can survive without heart, and is a beatstick
2: is a touch paranoid, and simply keeps tracking devices on all his family and friends. If he finds someone who's not got his tags, they get hit by sleep darts and then riddled with bullets if their identity isn't confirmed.

Psychic is impossible to defeat without some bullshit.

>Psychic is impossible to defeat without some bullshit.
>makes herself invisible to the brain
>not her heat
>anyone with heatvision/UVision/x-ray can still see the bitch

Time to up the ante, fa/tg/uy