Continuing on from the Upgrades overview, this will be the penultimate post in the series. I don't really have much to say about individual villain Masteries beyond the obvious. They offer a villain an automatic success on an Overcome in certain situations. They can also take Overcomes that their Mastery doesn't apply to, but that requires a die roll and risks generating twists so they're less likely to do so.
Villains don't normally spend their actions Overcoming challenges the way heroes do, but they could certainly use an Overcome to create a challenge the heroes need to deal with instead. When doing so you want to be careful about what types of challenges you use, with simple one-success, no-timer ones probably being the best. Complex multi-success challenges will result in the villain pulling ahead of the heroes in terms of action economy, and timed challenges can put too much pressure on heroes if there are already many things to deal with. If you want to use the more complex challenge types those are probably best "purchased" as scene elements on their own (although they might stay "off stage" until a villain puts them into play, or the scene tracker hits a certain point, or some other trigger goes off) or as environmental twists.
Another common use for villain Overcomes is concealing oneself - essentially a "Hide check" - or detecting a hidden hero or other target. This is most common with Predator Archetypes, who have several abilities that key off their foes being unaware of them, but pretty much all "stealth" is a duel of Overcome actions.
Perhaps the most common villain Overcome will be to escape the scene, usually using some kind of Mobility power in the die pool. Some action scenes will have the villains escape automatically when the scene tracker runs out, but a villain might choose to duck out earlier if they've completed their objectives already, feel seriously threatened, or just want to leave their allies to take the heat because they're backstabbing jerks and figure they'll get more loot that way. Some Masteries lend themselves to this trick more than others - and a Master of Annihilation is likely to cause quite a mess to cover their retreat if it comes to that.
The eleven existing Masteries are probably plenty, but I'll suggest a couple more to reflect some villain "personalities" that aren't quite covered:
Master Infiltrator (I) If you've had the opportunity to properly study a security system, automatically succeed at an Overcome to bypass or otherwise manipulate that system without being detected. Villains with this Mastery rarely remain in prison for very long unless special countermeasures are employed to prevent their escape.
Master of Terror (I) Automatically succeed at an Overcome to spread fear in a community and weaken the morale of those who oppose you as long as you've made an example of a victim recently. This primarily affects NPCs, although heroes may suffer indirectly as frightened civilians refuse to co-operate or blame them for failing to stop the villain sooner.
This series will finish up with one final wrap-up post, after which we'll move on to other subjects.
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