Need help with a Mastermind
I think any of the MM primaries could work (although if he's frugal about spending his vast wealth, I'd say using Zombies, as they don't need to be paid, and arn't costly to repair/replace )
But....Does it 'HAVE' to be an Master Mind?
For some reason, when I saw the Greed thing, my mind jumped to a Super Strength/Willpower Brute, with powers kinda like Colossus from X-Men. The Yellow/Gold aura of both powersets combined with a golden-metallic skin with a background of hoarding enough riches to buy numerous small countries just strikes me as the embodiment of Greed.
Heck, you could even RP him as having his powers from the Midas Touch!
*Ahem* umm...Sorry bout that. I go on tangents whenever I think up ideas for character concepts
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From a roleplay perspective, I think just about any of the MM types could work. The biggest stretch might be Necromancy (why would a rich guy go digging in graves and/or studying the occult), and the easiest to explain would be robots of course, and of course mercenaries (military) blends perfectly with a James Bond villain.
I would argue that if Greed is truly your theme that Robotics is probably the easiest fit, since to extremely greedy person robots dont require a paycheck!
One thing I want to caution you about MM is it is a fairly passive gaming experience. Masterminds in general are very easy to buff/build into a creation that largely runs itself. Your sole responsibility will be to heal your army and pull them back before mob spillage can cause any real danger.
The advantage is you can roleplay a lot (while your army decimates the opposition), the disadvantage is, you might feel a little disconnected from the action. I know I did. Also, my understanding is MMs are fairly inept at PVP, if that matters to you.
One other small rant:
I like the villain side better than the hero side, because the enhancement/invention market is far more reasonable; levels 6-20 have a much better design to them, theres far less zone to zone travel to complete or setup missions, and the smaller player pool, often means you become more familiar with other players.
However, one thing about villains is, you rarely feel like a villain in the mission arcs and if you do, it feels like obscure and trivial work. Mostly, you are either just being paid to do someone elses bidding, or you are kidnapping people, or you are robbing a bank. For someone who hopes to make greed the centerpiece of the character, the standard mission arcs might feel frustrating; especially when you realize that for five levels you might be nothing more than a stooge and lackey for Frank Sinatra and his casino. This is your situation when you are but a level or two away from getting epic powers.
Your powers and ability rarely, if ever, are reflected in the work you are asked to do.
Ah, but you mention Issue 14, and now suddenly we can get some decent writing infused into our game.
The game has great writing and stories and parts, and then clearly a muddle of missions thrown together without much thought or effort to fill out the game.
This is why I think I14 might be a real boon to the game as a whole. There's nothing like being able to cater your RP vision, with actual content creation.
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One thing I want to caution you about MM is it is a fairly passive gaming experience. Masterminds in general are very easy to buff/build into a creation that largely runs itself.
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My MM's (Bots/FF) thought pattern runs thusly;
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Back in my base I've spent endless hours tuning my robots, perfecting their programming, adjusting their parameters, anticipating every possible complication...
I am the conductor who spends hours patiently leading his orchestra in practice so that react to the slightest subtle movement of my baton or wave of my hand.
I am the sniper, that with a single pull of the trigger sends a bullet into the brain.
When the enemy falls and my robots assume their default ready position... Were my eyes not metal I would weep over that single perfect moment of orgasm. My mind has met his brute force...
And prevailed utterly.[/list]
He's a very sick man is Servo Master. The world is not a better place because he roams free within it.
That being said...
Not all MM builds are that passive, especially with pets that prefer melee combat over ranged. (The mystical winds blow inconstantly, I must stay attuned to them and execute the precise ritual at the precise moment they shift lest they become a storm and blow my soul into the Void.)
And that's really the first to choice you have to make building an MM - do you prefer ranged over melee combat? The danger of laying close alongside an enemy or the safety of executing from a distance?
The second choice is whether you prefer active intervention in the battle, or stand like a distant general having set things in motion a merely awaiting the conclusion of the battle - one way or the other?
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
I think I'm going to go with Robots/Traps. I was sort of leaning towards them in the first place, just needed a slight push :P
And I understand that you're usually the lackey for someone in missions, but in a City of Villains...what can you do? There's so many villains and villainesses running amock, you'd think the world would have been dominated/destroyed a long time ago.
I bet there's a coalition for Villains, perhaps called COVDDM (Coalition of Villain Destruction and Domination Management) who decided it best to regulate the amount of chaos you can cause, to give villains more opportunities for work, without getting rid of work for others.
Honestly I can't see why you'd go with anything but thugs. Seriously, nothing else says greed like stealing even from your own minions. I mean if you're going to go after a base human being psychological profile you might as well be thuggish and thick as well as painfully greedy. Someone who would attract other thugs who wouldn't mind smashing open windows and snatching purses from old ladies, if you get my drift. Someone who would steal candy from a convenience store, which always seemed a little too "low brow" for a bots mastermind, and hardly worth waking the dead over. I mean, ninjas can't be bothered with daytime jewelry store theft, they're bloody ninjas!
So until they come out with Pirate MMs, [Do you hear that devs!?] thugs would be where I would start. Low brow, stupid, drooling thug who's just greedy as his main motivation.
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Honestly I can't see why you'd go with anything but thugs. Seriously, nothing else says greed like stealing even from your own minions. I mean if you're going to go after a base human being psychological profile you might as well be thuggish and thick as well as painfully greedy. Someone who would attract other thugs who wouldn't mind smashing open windows and snatching purses from old ladies, if you get my drift. Someone who would steal candy from a convenience store, which always seemed a little too "low brow" for a bots mastermind, and hardly worth waking the dead over. I mean, ninjas can't be bothered with daytime jewelry store theft, they're bloody ninjas!
So until they come out with Pirate MMs, [Do you hear that devs!?] thugs would be where I would start. Low brow, stupid, drooling thug who's just greedy as his main motivation.
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I might go with thugs, and probably will now. I was going to have his background being he was one of seven children who became The Seven Deadly Siblings. I was actually thinking of naming him Greed, or a variation of the word. He has minimal powers, and could be bested in a fight by a trained athlete. But being an embodiment of greed, he wants everything: Women, money, attention, knowledge, etc... So, using Bots wouldn't be too odd of a choice, since he's exceptionally smart. But I might choose to make him more thuggish to fit that, and say he stole himself some traps. I want to make him today, so I'll need to think of something first.
I feel like making at least 1 character based on one of the 7 Deadly Sins, and I decided to go with Greed (I was orignally wanting to maybe form a team with other people who each represented one of the sins, but the odds of those names all being available are slim, so I might implement them all in a Story Arc once Issue 14 comes out).
Being Greed, his backstory is going to be along the lines of stealing/hoarding as much wealth as he can, but then I get stumped. He could either use his wealth to hire Mercenaries to be his body guards which he uses to help him obtain more, riskier wealth, maybe he bought/stole robots, or maybe he stole some enchanted thing which let him control Zombies...you see what I mean? From a roleplay perspective, I wanted to know others opinions on which would be a better fit.
I also wanted to know about the ups and downs of each power set. If I can decide through what fits, I might as well see what's best :P