Hello everyone!

I'm a big Talisman fan and one of my favorite things about the game is playing with different characters every time. I like the flavor every character brings to the game, as well as having to adapt to slighty different strategies every time I play.

Inevitably, I ended up designing my own characters. I wish to share them with you and hopefully get some feedback, either positive or negative. :-)

Now, I have created a lot of characters lately... 25 to be precise (wow)! So instead of flooding you all by posting all of them together, I will be posting 5-6 of them at a time, in alphabetical order.

I'm surprised there's never been an Archer character before, it seems like a very basic fantasy archetype.

The Archer is all about initiating battles from afar. He has two advantages: 1) he can collect Strength trophies more quickly, since he can finish off faceup Enemies without the need to land exactly on their spaces; 2) he is very annoying to other players, since he can attack adjacent players with no repercussion. Limiting this ability to only 1 space might seem too short, but after I thought about it it made sense. After all, every space represent miles of terrain.

I also thought that the Archer should have an advantage on the Plains, thanks to the unobstructed view they provide and his eagle eyes.

The Artisan resembles the Alchemist in some ways, however while the Alchemist is all about discarding Objects to convert them in other stuff, the Artisan is all about creating them. Her melting ability is there mainly to provide the raw materials to craft other Objects, even though the easier access to gold and Spells can be useful in other ways as well.

For realism, I made so that when the Artisan is busy with her crafting, she must miss a turn.

This character might seem redundant since the Minstrel already exist. While I like the poor Minstrel as much as the next guy, I really missed a character who's closer to the bard I'm used to play in D&D.

This bard is a spellcaster focused on collecting Followers. Her ability #4 is my Talisman version of inspire courage/competence: if you have a Follower, you can boost his abilities with your bardic music.

To clarify what I mean with "fixed numerical bonus". If a Follower adds X and X is a fixed number, then they are affected by the bard's ability (for example, the Maiden would add 3 Craft instead of 2). If X is variable, then they are not affected (for example, the Warhorse).

The Frostmarch expansion first converted one of the board NPC into a playable character (the Warlock), so I did the same with a couple of my custom characters.

While the Black Knight isn't invincible like the NPC equivalent (obviously!), no one can complain about him being weak. Besides his good stats and his Armour, he can use his own domain as an improved Mystic of sorts (gaining Strength each time you roll 5 is the main appeal, but unlike the Mystic you pretty much always gain something).

I reasoned that the Black Knight is a disgraced knight, so he is not welcome at the Castle. This is an important drawback for the character, since it means he has no reliable way to heal in the Middle Region.

His ability #4 can be either an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on the circumstances.

I wanted a character who made more use of the Grim Reaper, and I ended up with Death's fangirl #1!

While she can gain fate and Spells and has a good teleport option, she must be very wary of being too close to the Grim Reaper.

Inspired by the D&D Eldritch Knight, she is the gish: a warrior who knows the ways of magic, and a wizard who knows the ways of the sword. As such, she has the main abilities of both the Warrior and the Wizard.

However, she can only use both these abilities if she keeps her Strength and Craft balanced. Whenever she ends up favoring one of her sides to other, she loses the related ability.

Second part.

The Farmer is not a hero, he is a normal person who starts having an adventure by chance and could become a hero if he survives long enough. His stats are subpar, but he can gain stat points quickly and once he gain 3 counters he can choose to be any class he wants if he has the requisites for it. (For example, if the Farmer gains 3 Craft counters, he can't become a Warrior but he could become a Wizard, or a Prophetess, or a Monk, etc.)

A mage whose magic focuses on the element Earth.

The Gnome Follower is basically a Dwarf with a different name, so I was inspired by D&D gnomes instead. In D&D, gnomes have an affinity to illusion magic (hence the ability to evade using Spells) and can communicate and befriend little critters (hence the starting Pet).

I intentionally worded ability #2 so that it only applies to Enemies and characters, not creatures in general, because I didn't want for the gnome to be able to immediately access the Middle Region.

The abilities reference both the Hobbits from LotR and the halflings from D&D: they are lucky, excellent at hiding and other thieving abilities, they love food, and somehow I felt that a halfling riding a mule/pony was very stereotypical.

The Healer is another fantasy archetype, but it isn't easy to adapt to a game like Talisman, where players are supposed to screw each others. I didn't want to simply give the Healer an ability to autoregain lives. I wanted him to be a spellcaster who could heal others as well.

The Healer has the best ability to acquire Spells, and her ability #3 is quite versatile. She could recycle her Healing Spell to basically have infinite lives, she could recycle Resurrection to prevent other players from gaining trophies, she can also simply use it to discard a Spell she doesn't like in order to make room for another one.

The Hexer is a voodoo mage specialized in curses and inspired by the Shadow Hunter from Warcraft III.

I'm pretty impressed; these are all thematically appropriate and seem well thought out. Looking forward to seeing the rest!

I don't know if you play the digital version of Talisman, but if so there's a character submission contest going on that you should consider entering.

Thank you, Vendark, I'm glad you like them. :-)

I do play Talisman DE, but I don't have a Steam account and I rarely use Facebook, so thank you for letting me know!

Here's the third part.

There are already two official characters who can make use of the Graveyard despite being good, so I wanted to create a character who could make use of the Chapel despite being evil. The Inquisitor thinks he is a good guy, but he won't hesitate to execute someone simply for not conforming to his dogma. He is very PvP-oriented.

In pretty much any game in which there are characters with different abilities, there's one whose ability is to copy the other players' abilities. The Master of Masks has a clear advantage over other characters in that he can change set of abilities instead of being stuck with one, but since he has to make this choice at the start of his turn, he needs to predict what set is going to be better.

A few rules clarifications about impersonating certain characters:

- Special followers: If you impersonate a character who can turn some non-Follower cards into Followers, you must discard those Followers as soon as you lose that character's ability. As long as you keep impersonating that character at the start of each turn, you can keep them.

- Ancient Oak: You don't get any free Growth token, but you can convert trophies into Growth tokens while you are impersonating him. You keep your Growth tokens even while you are not impersonating the Ancient Oak, but they have no effect unless you are impersonating him.

- Druid: If you changed your alignment when you chose to impersonate the Druid, you can no longer change your alignment during that turn.

- Elementalist: You can't use the Elementalist's elemental mark, since it's only gained at the beginning of the game.

- Leywalker: You can't use Portal tokens, since they are only gained at the beginning of the game.

- Scout: You can't use Hidden Path tokens, since they are only gained at the beginning of the game.

- Spider Queen: You can't use Spider tokens, since they are only gained at the beginning of the game.

- Swashbuckler: If you play an extra turn, you can't impersonate a new character during that turn. You are still impersonating the Swashbuckler.

- Totem Warrior: You can gain Totem Spirit tokens and keep them even while you are not impersonating the Totem Warrior. However, they can't be used unless you are impersonating the Totem Warrior.

The Nobleman is similar to a spellcaster, except he always has gold instead of Spells. This is not the same as having infinite gold. When you visit a space or Place where you can buy something, all cards are bought at the same time. This means you gain 1 gold only after you finished your shopping.

The Nobleman is also one of those rare characters with 3 lives. Since he always has 1 gold to heal and other players can't attack him, he can handle it. Flavor-wise, the Nobleman is only now getting used to a life of hardships.

I wanted to avoid giving the Orc a cliché ability that helped him in battles. Instead, his belligerent nature means that he can pick fights even when he doesn't need to.

Anyone who is famliar with Warhammer Fantasy RPG will get the reference. In WFRP, the Ratcatcher is one of the possible starting careers, and he became a symbol of the fact that in that game you're much more likely to play a normal person than an adventurer.

The Savage can't have gold nor can he visit any of the "civilized" spaces on the board. Instead, he gains benefits each time he defeats an Enemy. He can eat Animals to gain lives, he can loot Monsters and Dragons to gain equipment, and so on.

Since the most important use of gold in Talisman is for healing, I gave him a high life value and the ability to heal in the Woods. This makes him playable and competitive despite his limitations.

I enjoy these too Loud. I have made some for our group but ours are more specific than general(skaven, high elf, dark elf, dwarf slayer and some others to film our Warhammer fantasy fix).

A few things I would note for thematic representation:

-An archer should be st3. Strength IMO, is a combination of physique, toughness and ability in HTH combat.

-The black knight being st5 starting out with armour is a bit much I would think

-You have an assortment of characters at st2, notably the halfing and farmer being the same?

-The savage could be a fun character to play considering how heavily everyone relies on the city! However obvious, his card should maybe be ammended to include he may not enter the city?

Well done. Great themed characters and obvious you put a lot of thought into these. I particularly like Eldritch Warrior and Nobleman . We have a game scheduled for Sunday and maybe I will introduce a couple of these! If we do I will let you know how they play.

I feel that Master Of Masks will present too many issues. The fact that you have to have half a page of rule clarifications probably is reason enough to rethink this one.

Regardless, I love to see custom characters introduced so thank you

Thank you both for your comments and feedback! :-)

-An archer should be st3. Strength IMO, is a combination of physique, toughness and ability in HTH combat.

Flavor-wise, I think Strength 4 is appropriate. I think the fantasy genre has spread a sort of urban legend about archery, since the bow seems to be the favorite weapon of elfs, women, and other delicate types. Truth is archery does require physical strength.

Also, I don't think "battle" in Talisman automatically means hand-to-hand combat. There are Weapons that can be used in battle and are clearly long ranged, for example the Elven Bow from the Woodland expansion.

If an Archer kills a Hobgoblin and he didn't using any melee Weapon, I picture the scene in my mind as him shooting the creature down.

-The black knight being st5 starting out with armour is a bit much I would think

That's fair. IMHO, if you compare the Black Knight with other high Strength characters like the Bounty Hunter, Ogre Chieftain, or the Troll, he isn't imbalanced.

Starting with an Armour is nice, but since the Armour only lets you avoid losing life (it doesn't actually help you win), I don't think it is that good an item. It's good, but a simple Sword is more effective, since it helps you win more often and lose lives less often at the same time.

-You have an assortment of characters at st2, notably the halfing and farmer being the same?

Well, Strength 2 / Craft 4 is pretty common for official characters! The idea behind the Farmer is that it sucks in combat since he's not the adventurer type... not yet anyway.

Like you said, Strength doesn't represent simply physical strength, it also represents the character's fighting prowess. You can rationalize it this way: the Farmer is physically stronger than the Halfling but he never fought before in his life, while the Halfling can fight competently but he isn't very strong.

-The savage could be a fun character to play considering how heavily everyone relies on the city! However obvious, his card should maybe be ammended to include he may not enter the city?

That's fitting, I approve. ^.^

Even though since the Savage can't have gold, he probably wouldn't enter the City anyway.

I feel that Master Of Masks will present too many issues. The fact that you have to have half a page of rule clarifications probably is reason enough to rethink this one.

Hmm, I think the MoM is a pretty simple concept, though the application can lead to rule debates. I think most of the clarifications I wrote could already be understood by the card itself, but maybe that's just because I wrote them. :-)

I'm glad to hear you could use some of my custom characters, please let me know your thoughts if you do!

Here's the forth and final part. Happy holidays.

The Sentinel in Training is a battle obsessed warrior who's been training under the Sentinel to become the next one. As long as his Strength is less than 9 he isn't a real Sentinel yet, so he will have to fight the Sentinel in (lethal!) sparrying matches. Once he hits Strength 9, the Sentinel will see him as a peer and let him cross without a fight.

Being the Sentinel's apprentice, he can also take on part of his role, such as challenging characters who attempt to cross the bridge or keeping weak people out of the Middle Region.

The Shaman is focused in subduing rebellious Spirits. This includes the Animals he encounters, as the Shaman sees them as manifestations of spiritual totems.

One thing I like about the Frostmarch expansion is that it has a really strong theme. The Snow Barbarian, an expert of the hazards of cold environments, can avoid any card of that expansion.

The Spellthief has no magic of his own, but can steal magic from any spellcaster he meets. The more magic power he accumulates, the stronger he becomes.

The Tattooed Monk covers his body in magical tattooes that make him stronger in combat.

A mysterious wizard from a far away land (or possibly another dimension altogether), the warper possesses a strong magic that allows her to warp the time-space continuum.

Since there is a Fire Wizard, why not a Water Wizard? She has some strong similarities with the Druid: both gain Spells when they land on certain spaces. (I was inspired by another custom character posted on this forum for the bit about bridges btw.)

I love a lot of the ideas here.

One point for the Farmer - we all know Farmers have 3 Strength. The tavern is lousy with the drunken SOBs.

But seriously, I do like the idea behind it and making him have 3 Strength would really limit his potential. Maybe if he was a Shepard? They're good at fighting animals and like Fields. Though the picture doesn't really work. Either way I love the concept.

Thank you, ShivaX. :-)

I don't mind so much that there's already a Farmer with Strength 3. Afterall, the Alchemist Follower is quite different from the Alchemist character (the former turns Magic Objects into 1 gold, the latter into 3).

However I do like your suggestion, I might do a Shepherd card and see which one people like the most. :-)

Hi Loudo

I am really enjoying reading up on your custom characters, I think they are well created and would definitely like to play with them. I have a couple of requests if it would be at all possible?

1) Firstly would be possible to compile all of your characters into a zip file, so I can be sure I have all of your characters in one single download

2) Also by any chance have you made character tokens for these characters, so they can be played without the need of additional minitures. This is be absolutely amazing if you did

Thanks Loudo, congrats on the characters they are great! Hope to hear back from you soon

Thank you very much, jackyboy. :-)

Here you go, I hope this is what you were looking for.

Thank you, ShivaX. :-)

I don't mind so much that there's already a Farmer with Strength 3. Afterall, the Alchemist Follower is quite different from the Alchemist character (the former turns Magic Objects into 1 gold, the latter into 3).

However I do like your suggestion, I might do a Shepherd card and see which one people like the most. :-)

I got it, the booze makes them stronger.

Just give the Farmer +1 Strength when in the Tavern.

Hello everyone, I'm back. :-)

I have been working on some extra characters. Here's the first bunch.

This studious type gets more powerful the more he researches about a topic. He's not a natural spellcaster but once he gets his hands on a spell, this will open his mind to research more about magic. He's not a natural fighter but he's quick to learn about the weaknesses of Enemies he's already defeated once.

And if he's forced to miss a turn, he'll use that time to study (which may lead to him changing his philosophy, getting more intelligent or learning more about magic).

This guy is the Captain of the city guards. His abilities are pretty straighforward. He's a sort of revisited adaptation of the Soldier from 2nd edition.

This girl has a special mission of her own. Her job is to deliver messages and communications between the City, Castle, and Village. Each time she delivers a message, she gets a reward.

The Dancer is of course meant to be played with the Woodland expansion. Since Fairies love dancing so much, it's no surprise she is good at gaining the favors of both Seelie and Unseelie.

Her movement ability is sort of the reverse of the Dervish's. Instead of moving after encountering the cards on her space, she can move before encountering them.

He's the Eagle King's son and must prove his father that he is worthy of inhereting the title. The Eagle King has given him some missions and for each one the Prince completes he will receive one of his father's items of power.

Regarding the characters I have already posted, I have determined that the Orc 's ability to attack other characters is simply too powerful, especially when most other characters start the game with Str 2. So I'm thinking of simply removing the bit about characters so that the ability only applies to Monsters.

Hello everyone. I'm finally back and updating this thread.

First of all, I have updated most of my previous characters. The update is mostly about graphics. My oldest characters used to have too much spacing between the lines in the text, so I have changed that to match my most recent characters.

I have also added expansion symbols to the character cards. Expansion symbols mean that a character should only be used when playing with that expansion. For example, the Black Knight has an ability that concerns drawing from the Stables deck, so the card now has the Sacred Pool slash City symbols.

Not every character card that references elements not in the base game gets a symbol. For example, the Geomancer card references both Constructs (of which there are none in the base game) and the Earthquake card (which is from the Reaper expansion), but both are minor abilities and the Geomancer is perfectly playable with the base game alone. For this reason, he gets no expansion symbols.

Graphical updates aside, I made the following changes:

> Hexer: I got to be honest, me and my friends have always played the Toadify! Spell by letting the target of the Spell (instead of the caster) rolling the die. This means that the victim had the option to spend 1 fate to reroll while the Hexer couldn't, meaning that when using Toadify! against another character he had an unavoidable 1/6 chance to toad himself. Playing the Talisman DE I was reminded that this is not the case in the official rules. So I added the following limitation to the Hexer: he can't spend fate to reroll 1s. I like this change because it fits the character: the Hexer is about bringing bad luck to others, not really avoiding bad luck himself.

> Orc: As anticipated, I removed his ability to end his movement and attack other characters when he enters their space.

> Tattooed Monk: I improved his tattooes, making them work on a roll of 4-6 (instead of the previous 5-6), but I added the limitation that each tattoo can be actived only once per turn.

And now, onto the new characters!

The Astrologer is partly inspired by the three Wise Men from the Bible. As you would guess from a man who studies the heavens to predict the future, he is strongly tied to both the Day/Night cycle and to fate.

But his most vicious ability is his complete control of Events. He can put certain Events "on hold" and choose when they will show up.

Hunter/Ranger is one of the most common custom characters I've seen around, so I decided it was my turn to tackle the concept. Since I've seen similar characters around, I wanted mine to be as unique as possible.

His ability #1 is especially useful to gain Craft in the Forest (though he still has less than 1/3 chance of gaining it). I always wanted to give a character an ability like ability #3, and Animals seemed like the right type of Enemy to do it, since most have low Strength.

There are quite a few official characters with the ability to turn Enemies into Followers, but in most cases it ends up being an ability which is rarely used, or used only for specific purposes (like beating the LoD). The Hypnotist is a different story. With his pathetically low Strength, he relies on hypnotising others and letting them fight for him.

A note about his ability to hypnotise. Since he uses Craft but it's still a battle, it means that he can't benefit from either bonuses to Strength in battle (he's using Craft) or bonuses to Craft in psychic combat (it's a battle).

This is my strangest concept for a character yet. With this one, you are not playing one character: you are playing four: a party of four heroes straight out of D&D!

Each of your 4 lives represents a character. When you lose life below your life value, one of your 4 character has been killed. When you heal, one of your characters gets resurrected (a reference to the fact that resurrection is quite common in D&D).

The Pharmacist collects herbs and liquids to create potions, oils, and poisons. With access to a laboratory, he can use the components he collected to create even more powerful incantations.

Yet another concept I took from D&D. The Psion can manifest effects which work a lot like magic, but that aren't really magic. They are the result of pure mental power.

Instead of casting Spells, the Psion can manifest a series of effects by spending Power tokens, which he can win by overpowering others in psychic combat.

PART 2:

Let's face it: drawing a summoning Spell can be quite dreadful in Talisman. Not only can't you easily cast it and proceed to spellcycle. You probably also have to give up a trophy by summoning a weak creature to fight for you.

This is not the case for the Summoner. The Summoner relies on his summons to patch his weak Strength. But more importatly, the stronger the Summoner becomes, the stronger his summoned creatures grow!

Since the Summoner is a specialist of forging magic links with creatures, he's also able to break them to steal magically linked Followers like the Familiar.

Like his name implies, the Temple Guardian is neither good nor evil: rather he serves the capricious gods of the Temple. Since he is a guardian, the more Enemies he kills for his Temple, the more likely it becomes that he will receive divine gifts.

The Trapsmith brings on the table a new way to kill, collect trophies, and damage your opponents. The downside? While you are immune to your own traps because you know where you placed them, you can end up accidently killing innocent people who would otherwise be useful for you.

The Treasure Hunter is an Indian Jones type of character.

A very fun-seeming set of characters. Looking forward to trying them out.

I think the Astrologer is my favorite; a nicely evocative set of abilities.

Thank you Vendark, let me know your feedback if/when you manage to try any of them. :-)

I wasn't planning on making new custom characters, especially since Vendark posted a lot of new characters I definitely want to add to my collection.

However, I stumbled upon his Mageblade and I thought to myself "Well, this is an interesting idea but the concept does overlap a little with my own Eldritch Warrior." So I decided to make a few modifications to make the character concept more distinguished.

The Bowmage is a character who mixes archery and magic. When I first created my Archer character I didn't own the City expansion yet, so I made no reference to the Bow. For this reason, I've always wanted to create a character who can make better use of the Bow.

The Cancer Mage is a concept inspired by D&D (what a shock!): a person who infects him/herself with diseases to spread them but who is immune to their effects.

The Cancer Mage is a very peculiar character. She has a pretty good chance to avoid any kind of death, which is counterbalanced by her low life value and by her fate value 0 (which means she can gain fate during the course of the game, but she can never replenish it). She does however brings destruction and desolation wherever she goes. Living creatures, even plants, just die by simply being around her.

The Church Thief is someone who specializes in stealing from religious institutions, robbing the faithful, taking away religious artifacts, and evading retribution. With such a pedegree it's no surprise he is the only character the deities refuse to listen to, is it?

The Church Thief is inspired by the 1st edition Thief, who instead of choosing freely what Purchase card he steals when he lands on the Village had to roll a die and see what he gained. This mechanic is ideal for stealing from the City shop decks, since objects there have such different values.

Now this is a little more complex than my characters usually are, but I wanted to try something different.

She is an agent of the Devil who makes pacts on his behalf. The Devil's purpose is to corrupt souls, so the Devil's Advocate offers a deal: she will do something for another party, in exchange for a change of alignment and a small favor. For example, suppose the Devil's Party contracts with the Warrior: she draws "Discard 1 fate" and he draws "Kill a Dragon". The Devil's Advocate immediately gives 1 of her fate points to the Warrior, who in return becomes evil and must kill a Dragon within 3 turns.

Since this is the Devil we are talking about, he doesn't actually care about your mission. The whole deal is just a pretense to lead your soul to damnation. He is actually more happy when the other party can't pay his debt in time and he will reward the Devil's Advocate accordingly if this happens.

I have always liked Werewolves, so I wanted to create a Werewolf character who is actually good instead of evil (unlike Vendark's Loup-garou).

The Wolf Mage is a wizard who contracted Lycanthropy but that thanks to his magic was able to take control of his new affliction. He takes advantage of all the powers lycanthropy gives him but he doesn't let himself be dominated by it.

Thanks to his powers over lycanthropy, he can also ward off Werewolves and cure Lycanthropes of their affliction, even if the whole ordeal lets them exhausted.

Magic is an unpredictable force. Sometimes a curse meant to turn a person into a toad for a limited period of time can go wrong. The curse only half-works, leaving the subject half-frog half-person, but permanently stucking to him/her and spreading like a contagious disease.

Unlike other characters, the Toadcursed isn't meant to be a starting character. Don't shuffle it together with the other characters, instead put it aside together with the Toad cards. Every time someone would be turned into a Toad, roll an additional die: if the result is 1, instead of turning into a normal Toad you become a Toadcursed! There can only be one Toadcursed per game.

The Toadcursed has some obvious advantages over a normal Toad: he doesn't lose his Objects and gold, and he can keep all the counters he gained during the game. However, this affliction is permanent: replace your original character card with the Toadcursed.

(Of course, you are free to modify the rules to become a Toadcursed in order to better suit your taste, either making it more likely or less so.)

NOTE: The "Start: City" portion is only there for when you have to interact with cards like the Patrol. Otherwise, you continue the game as a Toadcursed in the space where you have been cursed.

Nice characters once again, Loudo. The Devil's Advocate especially looks like a lot of fun.

Loudo

I was wondering if I might add these to Talisman Island?

If so, have you a link to the later files (after your Mega link)?

Feel free to email me directly on the site

Hello talismanisland,

Thanks for your message. I'll send you a mail with what you asked by the end of this week, I just want to make sure everything looks good and understandable. :-)

To download all my custom characters in one go: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/195746-loudos-expansion/

The very last two additions to my list of custom characters:

Despite sharing names with Vendark's Champion, this is a very different character concept.

The Champion is a professional who fights for other people every time someone is challenged to a trial by combat. Since I created a new NPC (the Judge), I wanted to make a character who took advantage of this new game aspect.

The Urban Druid strikes to keep balance between wilderness and civilization. His task is to protect or destroy nature (represented by Animals and drawing spaces) or human creations (represented by Constructs and any space where gold can be spent or gained), depending on what Balance requires.