Well, _a_ definition of evil is 'considers other people to be objects'. This leads to 'they're just tools' and 'it doesn't matter if I break them, I can make another just like them'.

Applied to anything that can be considered Alive, or Sentient, this is an evil attitude.

Be Well!
Fireheart

{edit}

desviper wrote:

A Hero could summon asentient energy constructs to do battle against evil.

Or, you know, you could summon Smurfs from the 14th dimension, because, when they're killed here, they don't die, but just return home... over and over and over... So, in a way, you're doing them a favor! Right?

A heroic necromancer could very well just be an individual that helps the dead pass on. A psuedo Grim Reaper pretty much. The corpses could just been wandering undead that he/she reined in for the purpose of keeping them from stopping a zombie apocalypse. The undead (talking about standard zombies here for the most part) generally don't have souls attached to them so taking control and keeping them from attacking the civilian populace would be a good thing.

Alternatively the necromantic constructs could just be skeletons. They would have no souls attached to them and bone and marrow are pretty strong (good for bludgeoning and cutting too). Either that or they could just be sentient ghosts that chose to follow the necromancer after said necromancer helped them with there ghostly issues.

There is many different ways you could make a heroic necromancer.

Halae wrote:

Another good one is one where you're friends with the minion and they help you of their free will, or are trained to help you. Good examples: a military squad, or an attack animal, such as a bear, wolf, or wyvern.
There's also the fact that you're not necessarily sacrificing them when they go down; unless they're literally exploding or being dismembered, we can take it as the classic tagging someone else in.

Pretty much this yeah. CoH/V had the ''defeated'' status which to me implied that you knocked your opponent unconscious or just flat out killed them depending on your character. It seemed intentionally vague. Only certain robots or ghosts would explode or disappear on death so you could argue if you were a Thug or Military Mastermind that you or your other ''minions'' dragged out anyone that was badly injured. Ninjas could teleport in and out if I remember correctly (The Oni was definitely supernatural enough to do it).

It all really depends on the type of character you want to play. You could even play a ''hero'' character that is morally objectionable and might be more of an asshole masquerading as a hero.

A heroic necromancer could construct the undead from random protons electrons and neutrons found in the pollution in the air.
Not only is the air cleaner you also have theses disposable biodegradable non sentient soldiers who might smell just as the pollution there created from.

Right, they're all 'solid light holograms' anyway.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Huckleberry wrote:

I hope most of us are at least a little familiar with quantum theory and the idea that every decision we make spawns an alternate world where we made another decision. Multiply this by all the decisions made by all the people in all of history and you have more than a couple worlds.
Now imagine if you could summon people from 3 seconds into the future of a word where you made a different decision. Imagine if you failed in that world and you are trying to make the world yo are in a better place so you bring people in from the failed world to actually help you succeed in this world. You know that you'll be sacrificing these people, but those same people exist in this world and you are trying to save those people by sacrificing their alternates from the failed world.
That could be an heroic use of people, no?

With some of the ideas you've presented here on the boards, have you considered submitting for a writing contributor with the composition team? Here is a thread with relevant info following: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/writer-thread

ConundrumofFurballs wrote:

From another thread:
ConundrumofFurballs wrote:
If there are people that are interested in joining *any* of the teams, they should send an email (including relevant experience and samples of their work that relate to the department(s) that they are interested in joining) to

Emails will get forwarded from there to the appropriate department heads. Also, some of the departments watch these boards more than others, so posting a thread, as I've seen many do, may or may not get a response. Email is best for this.
If you are inquiring about space in Composition, feel free to drop me a PM.
*points at the last line of that quote....*

Shouldn't a mastermind be directing things from behind the scenes?

Information brokering. Social engineering. Exchanging favors with superheroes and other successful people.

The normal capes can go around beating up individual villians. A mastermind should be looking at the bigger picture.

desviper wrote:

However, a hero with master plans might need a funky definition of hero ;)

Or you could just call them "Batman" like the rest of us.

As far as "heroic" Masterminds go ... there's a fundamental asymmetry in comic book storytelling that makes this archetype more often used as a villain than as a hero ... and that asymmetry is simply Division Of Attention. Hero comics are usually about [b][i]THE ONE[/i][/b] being superlative and awesome in their own unique way. That means a Singular Focus rather than a distributed one. "Pet Herders" however rarely make for compelling heroic types (re: [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaman]Aquaman[/url]) since their Summons are, by definition, effectively "disposable crunchies" that aren't allowed to do the ACTUAL plot resolution on their own without their leader leading them in a leader-like fashion of leading leadership. This in turn promotes the whole [b][url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu]Conservation of Ninjitsu[/url][/b] trope as exemplified by this image ...

[img]http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/807391be7507e74708a5bb1b8fda0025.png[/img]

Guess who the "hero" of that image is?
Guess who you're *expecting* to win that fight?

If you didn't answer "White Ninja" both times, you're Doing It Wrong™.

My point being that as a [i]GENRE[/i], comic books don't lend themselves all that well to keeping track of the proverbial "Cast Of Thousands" thing you'd need in order to properly support a Pet Herder type of Mastermind. Consequently, the archetype is most often reflected in comic books as a "villain" with the (often literal) Horde Of Faceless Minions, thereby allowing the Hero(es) to prove their mettle and derring-do by chowing down on the horde on their way to the Horde Boss.

So when you watch THIS SCENE ...

[youtube]lLXaRtc1f4I[/youtube]

... your sympathies for the "hero" in the fight aren't with Agent Smith, they're with Neo.

This fundamental asymmetry of "fairness" in a fight means that all too often, the Mastermind archetype is viewed as a Villain, rather than a Hero, although there have been notable (if not entirely successful) exceptions ...

[img]http://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/1/1a/FSRLFstorypage5_blaster_vs_soundwave.jpg[/img]

Redlynne wrote:

desviper wrote:
However, a hero with master plans might need a funky definition of hero ;)
Or you could just call them "Batman" like the rest of us.
As far as "heroic" Masterminds go ... there's a fundamental asymmetry in comic book storytelling that makes this archetype more often used as a villain than as a hero ... and that asymmetry is simply Division Of Attention. Hero comics are usually about THE ONE being superlative and awesome in their own unique way. That means a Singular Focus rather than a distributed one. "Pet Herders" however rarely make for compelling heroic types (re: Aquaman) since their Summons are, by definition, effectively "disposable crunchies" that aren't allowed to do the ACTUAL plot resolution on their own without their leader leading them in a leader-like fashion of leading leadership. This in turn promotes the whole Conservation of Ninjitsu trope as exemplified by this image ...

Guess who the "hero" of that image is?
Guess who you're *expecting* to win that fight?
If you didn't answer "White Ninja" both times, you're Doing It Wrong™.
My point being that as a GENRE, comic books don't lend themselves all that well to keeping track of the proverbial "Cast Of Thousands" thing you'd need in order to properly support a Pet Herder type of Mastermind. Consequently, the archetype is most often reflected in comic books as a "villain" with the (often literal) Horde Of Faceless Minions, thereby allowing the Hero(es) to prove their mettle and derring-do by chowing down on the horde on their way to the Horde Boss.
So when you watch THIS SCENE ...

... your sympathies for the "hero" in the fight aren't with Agent Smith, they're with Neo.
This fundamental asymmetry of "fairness" in a fight means that all too often, the Mastermind archetype is viewed as a Villain, rather than a Hero, although there have been notable (if not entirely successful) exceptions ...

Well you could say the same about the Defender AT, it was an AT built around being more useful to other people rather yourself and by that logic didn't follow along with the whole "The hero must be able to stand alone" thing, yet it was a hero AT

What about a hero that has the ability of self duplication. All of her minions would merely be variations of her.

Probably one of the easier ways to do a Mastermind as a Hero would be to set up someone with an Entourage. In the School Setting, this often takes the form of the Queen Bee and (usually her) Groupies, but it can also take the form of a Gang Boss and the like. The basic idea is that you have a Focal Point surrounded by Henchmen/wenches and that you're dealing with them ALL as a (led) Group, rather than needing to deal with them as a collection of individuals. Same deal can be applied to a team of scientists/engineers/researchers where you've got the "chief" and a group of underlings who have their own supporting specializations. This then produces the inevitable "I'll have my people call your people" type of situation so stereotypical of Hollywood where you aren't dealing with only individual persons.

So it CAN BE DONE ... but it isn't all that typical in comic books. Anime and manga, however, have no such qualms against this sort of thing. ^_~

Redlynne wrote:

Probably one of the easier ways to do a Mastermind as a Hero would be to set up someone with an Entourage. In the School Setting, this often takes the form of the Queen Bee and (usually her) Groupies, but it can also take the form of a Gang Boss and the like. The basic idea is that you have a Focal Point surrounded by Henchmen/wenches and that you're dealing with them ALL as a (led) Group, rather than needing to deal with them as a collection of individuals.

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Scooby gang" is a fairly good example of this.

Redlynne wrote:

Same deal can be applied to a team of scientists/engineers/researchers where you've got the "chief" and a group of underlings who have their own supporting specializations. This then produces the inevitable "I'll have my people call your people" type of situation so stereotypical of Hollywood where you aren't dealing with only individual persons.

You could relate this concept to how Star Trek Online handles its "bridge crew" minions. That entire game is designed around what could be arguably labeled (in CoH terms) as "heroic masterminds".

Gluke wrote:

Lothic wrote:
You could relate this concept to how Star Trek Online handles its "bridge crew" minions. That entire game is designed around what could be arguably labeled (in CoH terms) as "heroic masterminds".
Yeah, since they've greatly underdeveloped the Klingon redside and Romulan greyside. :(

Yeah but when you're playing a Klingon or Romulan captain do you actually consider yourself a "villain" or just naturally superior to those pesky humans and their hippy-dippy Federation? ;)

Sure technically the Mastermind AT started out as "redside only" AT in CoH but I never considered it an intrinsically "villain" class even from the very beginning. In keeping with that the CoH Devs eventually unlinked all ATs from being hardwired as being "hero only" or "villain only". Ideally classes should never be tied to alignment - even D&D gave us the anti-paladin to play with.

Nyktos wrote:

An interesting necromancer mastermind idea that I thought of was this little wraith/ghost/spectre/wisp looking pet-like creature that could take (via injuring your enemies in your defense) ''life force'' and give it to you or your allies. Although that's a different type of necromancy...

I like this. How about taking advantage of the momentum mechanic and have that little whisp of a ghost you have get bigger and more powerful with each bit of life force it absorbs, to the point where it is a fearsome spectre. Then every heal you perform reduces its own lifeforce, regressing it to a smaller form. Healing then becomes a ride up and down the momentum bar as battles progress.

I will admit I got the idea from the description of Moord Nag's power from Worm. She had a shadow pet that would grow when from eating/injuring/taking flesh from anything organic if I am recalling this correctly. It was described as a undead looking specter of an animal. The pet/minion could literally mutilate you just via touch though so it was certainly not the best power for heroing (and Moord Nag was in the hellhole that was Africa in that setting)

I just decided to think of a way to make that more hero friendly. It can't gruesomely injure you (no mutilation just via touch) and it can heal you and your allies for the damage it deals to your enemies.

In the very beginning of Alan Moore's Top Ten there was a hero whose superpower was that she had a crew of roughly action-figure sized robots that she carried around with her, which were highly advanced and could be deployed to pick through a crime scene in a matter of minutes, finding the most minute clues that a smaller number of larger eyes would not likely find easily. I think her name was Toybox, IIRC. Her partner was your basic "loose cannon cop" in the mold of him being the Hutch to her Starsky. He was the uberpowerful "Captain Mar-Vell" type in terms of powers, but basically just a guy who punches things in terms of personality. It was a neat treatment of the buddy cop duo, I thought. There was also human-on-robot racism in Top Ten, which I thought was just funny. I mean it was clearly a metaphor, but it was still kind of outdated and silly, to me.