"Order of the Triad, ASSEMBLE!"
— Doctor Byron Orpheus, The Venture Bros.
When your house comes to life and tries digesting you in its basement, when all of the village kids are kidnapped by evil fairies, when a portal to Hell opens and unleashes bedlam on the land of the living, who you gonna call?
When it comes to the supernatural and all things that simple science cannot explain, one usually turns to a specialist. Unhappy Mediums, Demon Slayers, Vampire Hunters, Occult Detectives, Alchemists, fortune tellers, Blue Collar Warlocks, Hollywood Exorcists, Noble Demons, real ghostbusters, Magical Girls, even Stage Magicians, there are always people who are trained (be it professionally or on the streets) how to handle these kinds of situations. In a world were Magical Society is underground, these teams are usually made of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, keeping to the shadows due to whatever gift or curse they carry around.
When the world is a Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink full of heroes with varying power origins, the Supernatural Team was formed with the purpose of working together to dispel supernatural threats in a "fight fire with fire" situation, since a Science Hero or Badass Normal might be out of their element. That being said, you might have one member who isn't supernatural but thematically-appropriate, like a Technically-Living Vampire whose powers are science-based but otherwise fills the horror niche. Naturally, this team will often double as an Anti-Hero Team as well.
See also Identically Powered Team, Legion of Doom, Super Team and Token Wizard (who might be temporarily plucked from their usual team to serve on this one).
Examples:
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Comic Books
- DC Comics:
- The "Trenchcoat Brigade" in DC Comics The Books of Magic is one, assembled for the express purpose of protecting Timothy Hunter and introducing him to magic, and consisting of John Constantine, Dr. Occult, The Phantom Stranger and Mr. E.
- Justice League Dark was established by Madame Xanadu as a precaution when she foresaw the Enchantress going on a devastating rampage. The recurring theme between the members is that they are all magical or supernatural in one form or another (many of which published by the DC imprint Vertigo Comics), including Zatanna, Deadman, Shade, the Changing Man, John Constantine, Swamp Thing, and so on.
- The 2018 version of the team kept Zatanna, Deadman, Constantine, and Swamp Thing, but also swapped in Wonder Woman as team leader, Detective Chimp, and Man-Bat. Later, it added Kent Nelson and Khalid Nassour, both formerly Doctor Fate (Khalid reclaimed the title of Doctor Fate during the series).
- The Shadowpact, composed of Enchantress, Ragman, Blue Devil, Detective Chimp, Nightshade and Nightmaster.
- The "Sentinels of Magic" was a short-lived magic team consisting mostly of members that would later join Justice League Dark or Shadowpactnote that debuted during the Day of Judgment storyline in 1999, primarily concerned with the protection of the spear of destiny and managing the Spectre. Raven was also associated with this group during Day of Judgment, but during the crisis she was separated from the rest of the group and promptly forgotten about. (She got her followup in the pages of Titans Vol. 1).
- Marvel Comics:
- S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Howling Commandos, a Monster Mash of various creatures that fight the supernatural. One incarnation works under Special Threat Assessment for Known Extranormalities (S.T.A.K.E.), which deals with supernatural occurrences (unrelated to Wizardry Alchemy Necromancy Department, a.k.a. W.A.N.D., which deals with other magic).
- The Legion of Monsters are a group that functions similarly to the Howling Commandos, but without government oversight.
- The Midnight Sons are a group formed at various times by Doctor Strange or Morbius to face many supernatural threats.
- In Immortal Iron Fist, the Immortal Weapons are a group that each use Ki Manipulation to face off against their enemies, with each member having his or her own specialties.
- The Savage Avengers, the first team was an alliance of wizards (ie Dr. Strange, Dr. Doom, Magik etc.), warriors (ie Conan the Barbarian, Elektra, Wolverine etc.) and supernatural entities (ie Juggernaut, Ghost Rider etc.) formed to battle the godlike wizard Kulan Gath and kill a lot of mooks in the process. The team has such a big roster because Kulan Gath is that much of a threat.
Films — Live-Action
- The Masters of the Mystic Arts from Doctor Strange are a secret group of sorcerers that harness interdimensional energies in the form of magic to combat cosmic threats. So far, they are the only exclusively magical group in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, every other hero group composed of science heroes, scientifically-enhanced individuals or aliens.
Literature
- The Menagerie was an unfinished urban fantasy series from Christopher Golden and Thomas Sniegoski which featured a team of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who turned out to be The Archmage and master alchemist, a ghost of an early 20th century scientist-adventurer, the first woman Eve who had become a vampire, a Fey princess, a demon changeling, a shapeshifter made from the last bits of the clay that made the world and a goblin.
Live-Action TV
- The Mystic Force Rangers from the Power Rangers franchise are a Power Rangers team composed exclusively of magic users. Their morphers were magic wands before they were turned into phones (both for their modern sensibilities and for them to punch in codes as spells), they fight an army of demons, vampires and evil wizards and act as both guardians to the humans in Briarwood and the neighboring magical pocket dimension that exists within the neighboring forest.
- Their Japanese Counterparts, the Magirangers are this for Super Sentai.
Podcasts
- In The Adventure Zone: Balance, the Red Robes were an interplanetary exploration group consisting of four wizards, a cleric, a spellcaster of an ambiguous nature, and a token fighter.
Tabletop Games
- In Mage: The Awakening, the default "Cabal" of Player Characters is one of these, for obvious reasons. Mages are distinguished by Paths, which define the areas of magic (e.g.: Life, Time, etc.) in which they're most proficient; Legacies, which help them hone specific abilities; and Orders, which adopt specific philosophies to develop their skills and function in the mundane world.
- Shadowrun 3rd Edition supplement Shadowrun Companion. One of the alternate campaign concepts is "Double Double Toil and Trouble", in which a team of shadowrunners with magical skills (hermetic mages, shamans, physical adepts, etc.) investigate and deal with Awakened supernatural threats (blood magic users, vampires, insect spirits/shamans, toxic spirits/shamans, shedim, Earthdawn Horrors, etc.).
Video Games
- Dragon Quest VI: The hilariously broken Job System lets you keep the spells learned in one job to another, no matter how inappropriate for the job or the character. Thus it's possible to field an entire team of gladiators who have just enough mana to fully heal themselves when they finally get low on HP, or sages who can punch their way through the enemies they didn't set on fire.
- Dragon Quest IX: It's possible to set up a party this way thanks to the Job System. It can be quite effective in boss battles, as hitting the same enemy with the same spell or ability causes additional combo damage, but it's best suited for endgame dungeons after the HP bonuses from other classes have been taken.
- Technically every character in Golden Sun is a spellcaster (of the Magic Knight or Kung-Fu Wizard variety), but once all eight characters have been found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age, putting the four Magic Knight characters in the back will leave a severely underpowered team, since despite the flashy graphics and wide area of effect, endgame spells are simply less effective than hitting the enemy until it dies.
- The eponymous Jericho Squad of Clive Barker's Jericho. Put together to handle supernatural threats, their abilities range from Healing Hands to Religion is Magic to Playing with Fire to Mind over Matter, and that's not even getting into one user of Sufficiently Advanced Technology capable of inducing a Stable Time Loop to reload weapons.
- The Midnight Suns, like their comicbook-counterparts, are a team of various supernatural heroes from Marvel Comics. But whereas the Sons/Suns in the comics are only formed on a temporary basis, the Midnight Suns in the game are a permanent team not unlike the X-Men and the Avengers, with Caretaker acting as a Professor X-style mentor/Mission Control.
Web Comics
- 8-Bit Theater: In a Brick Joke spanning nearly the comic's entire length, Chaos is defeated by a party made of four White Mages, none of which are part of the main characters (Fighter, Black Mage, Thief and The Red Mage).
- The protagonists of morphE, an RPG Mechanics 'Verse based on Mage: The Awakening, are all freshly-minted Mages: a Street Smart Healer and tactical shapeshifter, a cripplingly shy teenager who wields darkness and decay, a scatterbrained young man with power over Fate, a skeptical Mind Manipulator, and an Insufferable Genius wielder of Pure Magic.
- Played for Laughs in The Order of the Stick when Durkon and Hilgya briefly form "Team Cleric", whose main strategy is to heal each other of all injuries until their attackers get fed up and leave.
Western Animation
- The Order of the Triad from The Venture Bros. are a three-man group of heroes associated with the supernatural in one form or another. Dr. Orpheus is a dramatic master necromancer, sorcerer and guardian against cosmic peril. The Alchemist is a Straight Gay mage with the power of transmutation and is able to tell if someone is lying. Jefferson Twilight, while not a trained mystic himself, is a skilled vampire hunter with a magic, vampire-tracking eye and seems to have the latent ability to be between worlds, allowing Orpheus, the Alchemist and the Outrider safe passage out of Hell.
- Miraculous Ladybug: All of Paris's superheroes get their powers from the Miraculouses, magical Transformation Trinkets which enable them to undergo a Fusion Dance with their respective kwamis to become Animal Themed Superbeings. This contrasts with the United Heroez, seen in the New York special, whose powers are non-magical in nature with the exception of Eagle (formerly Sparrow, up until she acquired the Eagle Miraculous).
- Young Justice (2010): The Fourth Season has an arc with Zatanna Zatara leading a team of her magic-using students known as the Sentinels, consisting of Traci Thirteen, Mary Bromfield, Khalid Nassour.
