I remember playing a MMO similar to SotM in that it had archtypes (and I know there's been many others), or different classifications of heroes.
Here they were in that game:
TANKS: Damage absorbers. They could redirect damage to themselves, and while they could punch a little, there was virturally no area-of-effect damage. Superman without nearly as much offensive potential.
BLASTERS: Ranged damage dealers, heavy damage and heavy on the area-of-effect damage. They had glass jaws though, and would go down fast without some protection. Human torch.
CONTROLLERS: Crowd control. They couldn't do much damage and they they weren't tough, but they could keep huge crouds wandering around in a daze or slipping on ice or something. They could buff and debuff a little. I'm thinking maybe Dr. Strange, I'm having a hard time thinking of one.
DEFENDERS: Great for dealing out buffs and debuffs, as a secondary they could blast a little. Good healers.
SCRAPPERS: Tough melee damage dealers with very little AOE. Not as tough as tanks, not as much damage as blasters.
Anyways, would these five archtypes fit SotM? If so, where would you put the heroes? It seems to me that Legacy is a tank; Ra, Fanatic, and Chrono-Ranger would be blasters; Visionary is a controller; Haka is a scrapper. Am I wrong on these? Where would you put the others?
I know, probably a noob question, but I'm just trying to better understand the game.
As Foote pointed out, each hero has the capacity to fall across many categories, if not all, to some degree. What's extra fun about the promo cards is that you can see just how much their role is allowed to shift simply by changing their base power and HP. Young Legacy for example gives up an incredibly strong support buff and some base HP for the strongest base power in the game. This can completely change how Legacy plays, going from a buffing support to a primary damage dealer.
I'm having difficulty putting the characters into the different categories as well. It's obvious they don't fit 100%, but if anyone wanted to categorize them "where they leaned," that would be great for helping me better grasp the game (and explain it to others).
Maybe just three categories:
Strong Tank (excells at absorbing damage)
Strong Damage Dealer (excells at dealing damage)
Strong Support (excells at crowd control, buffs and debuffs)
If that doesnt scratch your itch, Im not sure what will
The "Mechanics" catagory might be a tad bit esoteric, certainly but the 3 main catagories of Offense/Defense/Support fit your bill and are further broken down into 4 sub catagories of each. You should be able to draw decent conclusions for Skippys rubric.
I go through most of the heroes, villains, and environments and give a short blurb on what kind and how much damage they do and their abilities for on-going or environment destruction, deck search and manipulation, healing, support, and stuff like that. It's intended to be a quick intro to the game.
I don't think your 5 categories really map well to how SotM plays, so I think it's better just to know what kinds of damage or other things people do and what kinds of targets and issues the various villains and environments are going to put out.