Villainous Vengeance

Question: Y'know, the question about fun and memorable villains from earlier made me think of something: how do you manage to HAVE memorable recurring villains? That is to say, how do you manage to have villains that your heroes don't kill off on their first encounter?

Recurring villains can be some of the most fun NPCs in the game; there's nothing quite like the furious hatred that crosses a player's face when they resurface, or the bewildered dismay when they find out what hijinks they may have been up to since they last saw them. Of course, that means PCs will probably be trying to kill them a lot of the time, but all it takes is a little ingenuity and preparation to make sure that they have a decent chance of living to annoy everyone another day.

Think about how hard it is to kill PCs; from Skin-Shedding to Shadow Step to Avoid a Fate and more, Scion is absolutely riddled with powers designed to let characters survive in the face of impossible odds. These powers are just as available to your NPC antagonists as they are to the PCs. If you're planning for an enemy to be around for a little while, give him a few of these "panic button" powers so he can run for it if things go south. Hand him some Stolen Face for those quick getaways; give him that good old Rainbow Bridge escape hatch. These aren't foolproof, of course, but they certainly up the odds compared to an antagonist who has to escape in, like, a Jeep.

You should also never underestimate the power of minions. Having a squadron of little foes or a giant backup creature can give an antagonist plenty of room and time to challenge the characters in glorious combat but still bail out if he has other things to do or things don't seem to be going his way. Most PCs are not going to take the DV penalty and damage to let a bunch of ninjas beat on them while they try to run after the boss (though god help those ninjas... thwarted PCs are the most violent PCs).

Alternate goals and other things happening outside of fights are equally great tools for keeping antagonists alive. Maybe there's a political reason you're not allowed to kill this guy (his mom and your mom are friends, or you'd end up on trial in front of his hostile people, or you need him for a certain co-op project, whatever). Maybe other things are going on that require your immediate attention more than beating his face in, like exploding reactors or mortals in imminent peril. Maybe he intentionally created a failsafe for himself like this, by setting up some horrible calamity that only he can stop, thus preventing you from murdering him before he's done so. The important thing about these scenarios is to make sure the players know the details; it doesn't do your NPC any good to be the only man who can prevent nuclear holocaust if they kill him before they can find that out, so drop clues early and often.

Finally, remember that Fate loves a good antagonist as much as it loves a good hero; you're the Storyteller, and it's your job to make sure that is reflected. Antagonists can use things like Legendary Deeds or Virtue Channels when the chips are down; they can have other powerful NPCs as friends who might help them; they can even have their stats fudged, just a teeny tiny bit, in the service of the story. As the Storyteller, the ultimate call on whether or not an NPC dies is always on you. That doesn't mean the Hand of God should swoop down and save them when the PCs are doing well, but it does mean that you have literally limitless resources at your disposal if you need to keep a character alive for purposes of the story.

None of this, of course, means that you should cockblock your players. Don't do that; they'll notice and they'll hate it. Sometimes PCs are so unexpectedly awesome that they manage to get over or around whatever you were doing to prevent them from killing off an NPC, and when they do something fantastic and surprising to get there, they shouldn't be cheated by having victory torn from their clutches just because you weren't planning for it. Sometimes PCs kill people they shouldn't or that you didn't plan for them to. When that happens, shrug your shoulders, congratulate everyone, and figure out what consequences apply; if the players have done something so amazing that they beat your best efforts, then Fate clearly wanted them to win and that NPC has met his story-appropriate doom.