What are the major (necessary) Super archetypes

I am working on a caste for a superhero story and I was wondering what are the staple archetypes that need to be a part of a superhero team/

I am also wondering about the archetype for the nemesis of the team should/could it be a singular villain or a group to mirror the heroes?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be very appreciated.

Thanks.

Depends on who you ask really. Personally, I believe there are two schools of thought when it comes down to this, the DC and Marvel approaches.

With DC, look at their premier team, The Justice League of America: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern. That team is made up of a Tank, Vigilante, Magic Being, Underwater Hero, Speedster, Psychic and Cosmic Hero respectively. That right there could serve as the basis of a Superhero cast no problem. The great thing is that there are no gender requirements with any of those.

Now Marvel does things a little differently. The Avengers are the biggest team in that Universe and no many how many people there are at anyone time, theres the core three: Iron Man, Thor and Captain America, each one representing a specific genre(s). Captain America is your classic pulp or vigilante hero, the normal guy. Thor represents the magical and fantasy genre and Iron Man serves the Sci-Fi guy. Those right there can allow you to come up with your own creations.

There are no hard-and-fast rules. You can do what you like.

One thing that might be cool would be to borrow an idea from World Of Warcraft, where they often have five-man teams of a tanker, a healer and three damage-dealers. That might make an interesting superhero team - one guy who's Nigh-Invulnerable and does his best to get all the bad guys to go after him, three fairly fragile guys who can deal out hard hits (and you could make them different kinds of damages, like a stealth-killer, a ranged blasty type, etc), and one who can heal the injured.

In super hero settings, there is always Super Strenght as it is the most basic super power.

The Cape and The Cowl are also commonly present, but in the end, it's up to you.

The Ensemble tropes though might be a bit more universal.

Is it "caste" or "cast", because there is a difference even if I can do both.

Standing out from the other advisors, I think that if you're starting with the superhero team, you need to look more at X-men than the Avengers. You see, the X-men started as a core team gathered by Professor X, then added members, while the Avengers each had their own comic series before joining the grand collaboration. Same thing with the Justice League, and most of them had sidekicks that later formed a separate collaboration, and their own rogue galleries to pull plots from.

Plot is going to be the key thing, because one of the pitfalls is literally a pitfall where the fliers have to catch and carry the non-fliers. Usually there's at least one plot about a world-wide threat that's too big for one hero to handle.

In that case, there's usually a Jor-El, who's the first to see the threat coming, and their stalwort companion, who has come to trust the Jor-El the few times they've worked together in the past. They know they're going to need at least three more, so they start by recruiting a Jerk, who is vocally skeptical about everything, a Hero-Worshipper who is willing go along with and in the way of anything the big names do, and the Stoic, who doesn't say much for or against the plan but sometimes asks very pointed questions. After this there's some roles that overlap to the point that they can be either one of the earlier characters or a new character. They are the anti-social one who wants to solve the problem without help, the two who fight each other more than the enemy, the constant flirt whose hitting on their teammates is either a distraction or comedic relief, someone with actual leadership skills, someone who can support the Jor-El's findings once the threat is closer, and someone who everyone else is at least a little afraid of.

Even after the threat is removed and the team is together, the flirt will still flirt and the fighters will still spar. The Jor-El and his chum will be Those Two Guys in commenting on the rest of the team, and the Anti-Social will leave the team from time to time. Overall, the biggest permanent character development will be the Hero-Worshipper, especially if they one with leadership skills mentors them.

The growing up of the Hero-Worshipper is one of the man reasons for adding new members to the cast. Among these is usually a Antisocial/Jerk jr., a younger, possibly gender-flipped flirt, and two who either fight or make comments. The fresh-faced Hero-Worshipper may not be among the youth of today, but all of them are much less experienced and at least secretly look up to the older heroes. Also, people start dying.

Except in another major world-wide conflict, the heroes are sent out in small groups by this weeks Threat Monitor, who doesn't leave mission control. Usually, this is one of the farseers or one of the team has the advanced technology, but really it can be whichever character you want to leave out of the plot. However, as the plot will reveal, the mission is not what it first appears. Often it is either a trap or distraction for a specific hero or heroine, and the plot then becomes can the hero escape with their friends and can their other friends deal with one of their most powerful enemies? Further complicating matters is the "stuck in mission control/attack on mission control/if you're here, who's watching the controls" triumvirate.

For a brief formula, make sure each team has a mover, an infiltrator, and a heavy lifter. The mover should be a flier or a speedster, someone who can make those nail-biting dropped hostage catches. The infiltrator could be a ghost or a theif, but they should have a electronic component in case of computers, elevators, drones, and bombs. The heavy lifter should be able to break walls and hold off mooks with equal capacity and can use physical strength or elemental power.

No archetype needs to be part of a superhero team. The only constant is that no member of the team should ultimately feel superfluous. This is, of course, normally achieved by differentiating the heroes according to any or all of (1) different powers; (2) different roles in the group — see Five-Man Band and related tropes; (3) different personalities — see Four-Temperament Ensemble and related tropes.

As for a singular villain versus a group, bringing down a single Big Bad tends to be a more satisfying climax, but the well-worn formula of giving the Big Bad a Quirky Miniboss Squad so the villains have a bit more variety can give you the best of both worlds. Of course, if you're aiming for this to be long-running or open-ended then using a singular villain can be counterproductive, as the reader can feel invested in that villain's story arc and disinclined to start afresh.

Thanks for the advice,

I was actually thinking of a more X Men feel to the team. Maybe even going a route similar to the Seven Samurai for the first arc and expanding from there. I was also thinking fewer Heavy hitters than the JLA or Avengers. Maybe they look up to a bigger hero, at least on or two of them would.

I am thinking of having the Tank, Infiltrator, Psionic, Energy, Elemental, Shapeshifter, Feral and a leader type.

You could try SPAWM: Speed, Power, Air, Wind and Magic.

It can also be interesting to give the group a common theme (for instance, a group in which each character is some variant of the "illusionist" archetype, but none have exactly the same powers, forcing teamwork for certain threats.)