Ok, so after screwing around with the hero maker tool, I decided to try and whip up a couple of my own that don't follow the editor or use the powers it lists. Right now, I don't have any images or figures that I'm going to use, but I would greatly appreciate some (constructive) criticism in reference to the stats of my characters. Thanks in advance!

Rikimaru (Trying to go with a ninja theme on this character. Very quick and hard to hit)

12 Wounds. 4 Fatigue. 0 Armor. 5 Speed. 2 Melee Dice. 1 Ranged Die. 1 Fighting Card. 2 Subterfuge Cards. 3 Conquest.

When Rikimaru dodges, he may discard his dodge order to regain 1 fatigue and move a number of spaces up to his speed before or after the reroll. If moving in this way causes the attack to go out of line of sight or out of range, the attack misses.

Mitsune (Samurai type character. His special ability is supposed to be in the spirit of Seppuku, the ritual suicide that samurai performed to save honor).

16 Wounds. 4 Fatigue. 1 Armor. 4 Speed. 3 Melee Dice. 3 Fighting Cards. 4 Conquest.

If Mitsune dies from an attack he or an ally made, only 1 conquest token is lost.

Flint (Kind of a faster tank type character. Think swashbuckler).

12 Wounds. 4 Fatigue. 1 Armor. 4 Speed. 3 Melee Dice. 2 Fighting Cards. 3 Conquest.

Flint always starts the game with the "Ambidextrous" skill card. When dual wielding, Flint may exhaust one or both of his weapons just like a shield to negate damage.

Quick thoughts:

Rikimaru: I'm not sure how this actually works with the current rules but its interesting.

Mitsune: Sooo...basically this is the anti-Dark Charm hero? Because I'm not sure when it will come in handy otherwise but I could be missing something

Flint: Potential there definitely I think.

Rikimaru: Attacks target spaces, not figures, so I don't think this does what you want it to do as written. Even if you rewrote it to specifically cause attacks to follow him, that would do weird things to AoE attacks. Might be better just to let him do that as an interrupt effect during the overlord's turn (using the same interrupt rules as guard); that will still probably make it possible to negate a melee enemy's attack much of the time.

Mitsune: This will cause heroes to use guard orders to deliberately kill him when he's low on health. A lot. I don't think that's a good thing from either a balance or gameplay perspective.

Flint: Slightly underdefined; need to clarify exactly how many wounds are canceled. Using up both 1 skill slot and a hero ability for +1 damage and canceling 2-4 wounds/round, all conditional on dual wielding, seems probably a little on the weak side. Ambidexterity is definitely one of the weaker skills.

Thanks for the replies. More brainstorming here, would love some followup input!

Rikimaru - Perhaps I am not familiar enough with the game terminology to write this ability correctly. In any case, I want dodging to increase his fatigue by 1, and to allow him to move when he discards it (like Tahlia can with her guard order). Additionally, I would like for his dodge to increase the enemy's miss chance. Is this too much for one skill? Perhaps I should just say that his dodge order can force two rerolls instead of one?

Mitsune - I would really like to keep with the honor thing and reduction of conquest loss...any suggestions on refining this ability to maintain this thematic goal? Or should I abandon it in favor of something simpler?

Flint - Ok, so instead of forcing the Ambidextrous, included its effect somewhat in his ability and let him draw a subterfuge card?

"When Flint receives an Off-Hand Bonus, he gains +1 damage for every 2 melee power dice he has. Additionally, Flint may exhaust an equipped melee weapon to negate 1 wound for every 2 melee power dice he has."

So he would potentially gain +4 damage and can cancel 2 wounds per weapon (total 4). Still too little? Too much now lol?

McRae said:

Rikimaru: both regaining the fatigue and moving the 5 and needing to still be targetable seems a bit strong I think (could be wrong, some playtesting might be good here). either dropping the fatigue or bringing it down to half a move (like knight) might bring it more in to balance, and I think i'd have it trigger as "when you force a reroll with his dodge, you can discard it to [above effect you decide on]. If he is no longer in the area of effect, the attack misses"

I was considering allowing the OL to change the target space for the attack when he uses this, but then he'd probably just target another hero with it (if he could anyway), and that doesn't seem right, so part of his cool feature is letting his dodge get him to completely evade 1 attack. And I think it might have to be instead of actually forcing the reroll, so his escape would be at the price of protecting his buddies in the case of some AoE attacks. Exactly how much effect to bring out of the ability is a little tough to determine, but I like the idea quite a bit.

Mitsune: I kinda like the idea, might work as it is, the thing is normally you wouldn't get much use out of that, except that now since you have that ability, you might make use out of it on purpose, to try to screw the OL out of some conquest. He gets low on health, and you don't think you can get him to town to heal, so you use an attack to take him out yourself and prevent the OL from gaining 3 of the 4 conquest, although he doesn't have to do the job himself. I think it works fine as you initially thought, imo.

Flint: yea, might leave out ambidextrous, but for the parrying ability you got there, how about exhausting a weapon blocks 1 damage for each green/yellow die it rolls? that way it goes up about the same way shields do, adding dice as the weapons get stronger.

Rikimaru: That is, in fact, quite a lot of stuff for one ability. Merely giving him the ability to discard the dodge order to move as an interrupt effect would make it more complicated than many hero abilities, and would also qualify it as one of the more powerful ones (you can always use it just before the overlord's turn ends to get the normal effects of a dodge plus a free movement, and movement as an interrupt effect has a number of potentially powerful uses). Not as good as Tahlia's ability on the face of it, but Tahlia's hero ability is arguably the best in the game, and would be even better if she had 5 speed instead of 3. If you're attached to the interrupt-move idea, I would consider just using that, and nothing else.

If you want to make him harder to hit when dodging, I'd recommend giving him Fear 1 while he has a dodge order on him. This takes less time to resolve than an extra reroll, synergizes with the normal reroll, and doesn't stack with invisibility potions for ludicrous effects. It also means that powerful monsters will generally still be able to hit him reasonably often, because more dice means more chances to roll a surge, but he'll be highly resistant to beastmen. It'll get a significant boost if he picks up Deflect (gold "other" rune, grants Fear 1), but not to the point of making him immune to ogres or anything, and the overlord can partially counter by playing Doom!

You could also consider allowing him to move 1 space each time an attack misses him, or something like that. That's much less abusable, since it's a short distance and can't be used at an arbitrary time.

Mitsune: I'm not clear on what "the honor thing" is, exactly. I'll admit I'm no expert, but I'm not aware of any traditions in which it is considered honorable to be killed by your allies in mid-battle. Also, I believe ritual suicide is generally only done to make up for some previous dishonor, and I'm not sure what that would be in this case.

You could flip it around and allow him to gain an advantage in some "dishonorable" way, at the cost of gaining a Curse token (thereby increasing his conquest value). But that will encourage him to be "dishonorable," since otherwise he gets no use out of the ability. Maybe make him inherently powerful, but apply curse tokens for doing things that players would normally do, like...killing monsters before they've been activated once? That seems maybe overly harsh, and guard orders would provide a loophole.

I really don't know what you're aiming at here.

Flint: If I'm not mistaken, that's a maximum of +2 damage (4 trait dice / 2), not +4. You only receive an off-hand bonus from the weapon you're not attacking with. And since buying more trait dice is fairly rare (at least in vanilla), it would normally mean +1 damage and canceling 2 wounds. Though that's probably on the strong side for a hero ability (though not necessarily broken); I said it seemed weak before for a hero ability and a skill. Keep in mind that shields are better on already-tough heroes (because they get to use them more times before dying), and that they give increasing (rather than diminishing) returns.

In any case, having your hero ability suddenly double in effectiveness when you buy 1 trait die seems like a bad idea to me. Too swingy. And I'm not actually terribly fond of abilities that are powerful but compensate by turning off if you get unlucky treasure draws--I know that's kind of your concept here, but it means that the hero is really good sometimes and really bad other times, totally at random.

The revised version of Ambidextrous that I created for The Enduring Evil allows you to gain Off-Hand bonuses from both weapons while dual-wielding, or exhaust the skill card like an extra shield if you have a shield equipped. But Enduring Evil also includes more one-handed melee weapons, and they tend to have better and more interesting Off-Hand bonuses than the official treasures, and it's still definitely not the best skill in the deck. On the other hand, hero abilities are generally weaker than skills (especially for characters with focused traits and skills), so maybe that would work OK for you. I'd need to check what the off-hand bonuses for treasures actually are; unfortunately, I seem to recall a lot of copper and silver treasures simply having a +1 damage off-hand, which is downright insulting.

Thanks again for all the feedback everyone, and sorry for waiting so long to reply (out of town).

As for Rikimaru, yes, I was mainly trying to go for a move interrupt along the lines of Tahlia's ability (minus the attack of course). So more of what I was thinking. Also, I don't have the actual game terminology yet, just working with the general ideas for now, so if I don't phrase something correctly in game speak, feel free to note it but don't bludgeon me over the head with it (yet anyway hehe).

A. Discard a dodge order to move a number of spaces equal to his speed. OR

B. Cannot wear armor, but while dodging gains Fear X, X being melee or ranged trait, whichever is higher.

C. While dodging, may spend fatigue (to move spaces only, not for potions or opening objects etc) on the OLs turn.

In terms of Mitsune, seppuku was something that occurred in many aspects of samurai life. It happened in highly ritualized form, such as a punishment for disobedience or a samurai's way of protesting his lord's actions; in these cases there was much ceremony associated with the suicide. In battle, it was also used as a method of preserving honor if the leader of a group of soldiers was defeated, as well as a way to prevent the enemy from taking a samurai as prisoner. To summarize, it was more honorable to die on the battlefield by your own hand (or with help from a friend) than to suffer the disgrace of capture by the enemy.

So in my mind, the ability becomes somewhat of a gamble, and perhaps more tweaking would be necessary to make it appropriately balanced. If Mitsune is low on life he can risk further fighting to get more gold for potions etc. or he can risk fighting to get that extra strike in on a powerful foe, but if he gets killed you lose a lot of conquest. Conversely, you can play it safe and kill yourself (which fully heals you etc) you can get back in the fray faster and with less conquest loss, but at the expense of wasting a turn that could have been used attacking, or he might miss (how embarrassing)!

Flint: Yeah I typed the wrong number there (I'm not THAT bad at math.....really!). Moving on, you are right I do only play "vanilla" with Altar. However, my game group basically saves all their money and trades all their treasure to get attack dice. Granted, I personally don't find it always the best strategy, but that is what they do, so I usually see at least 1 hero that has 5 power dice.

I was a little confused with what you were saying Antistone about abilities turning off with treasure draws. Could you please clarify with an example for me?

McRae said:

Noooo. No. No . The marginal return on Fear is very, very high.

Fear 2 is a silver armor in my Enduring Evil mod. A heavy silver armor that provides no other defensive benefits. Immaterial Mail: +0 armor, your maximum fatigue is reduced by 1, you have Fear 2. It's theoretically balanced against armor that gives you +3 armor and lets you dodge any attack after it's rolled for 1 fatigue (max speed 3). And Fear is less powerful in my mod than in normal Descent because you fight a lot more advanced monsters (i.e. with lots of dice) and fewer basic monsters in the late game.

Fear 3 means that you can't even theoretically be hit by any monster that rolls only 2 dice, and the ones with 3 dice have very, very low odds. You've pretty much already broken the game if you can get your Fear ranks that high.

Fear 5 is overpowered to the point of utter silliness. Giants, Demons, Master Ogres, etc. cannot even theoretically hit you, no matter what they roll.

McRae said:

Well, I don't personally like the idea of the heroes saving conquest by killing each other with Guard attacks. Just on principle. But it's your character, so if you want to use it, feel free.

McRae said:

If you don't happen to draw any one-handed melee treasures, Flint basically can't use his ability. I mean, he could stick to dual-wielding swords from the shop, but that's really unacceptable late-game, even with his damage bonus. So realistically, he'll have to use a treasure weapon, which means he's no longer dual-wielding, which means he gains no benefits from his ability. Even if you draw a one-handed copper melee, there's many quests in which that won't really cut it late game if you can't upgrade to a silver or gold.

In Descent, there's always a small risk that you won't get any good weapons in your specialty, but it's pretty small, and a gold weapon outside your specialty is still way better than a shop weapon in your specialty. But only half of the melee treasures are one-handed, so if you specifically want to dual-wield, your odds of being stuck with no appropriate weapon shoot up significantly. Also, the amount you lose by switching to a different weapon type is even higher.

Basically, these sorts of abilities are supposed to work by giving the player a larger bonus than you could normally give them, but compensating by saddling them with some restriction they need to meet in order to get the bonus. Only in this case, that restriction is basically "draw the weapon you want from the deck." Which means that in games when you happen to draw the right weapon, the restriction really doesn't matter, so you're just flat-out more powerful than you could normally get away with, and in games where you don't draw the right weapon, you effectively don't even have a hero ability.

I dislike the Born to the Bow skill for the same reason, though in that case it's at least partially justifiable by the fact that many of the two-handed ranged weapons suck, so you can arguably view it more as evening out the treasure draws rather than skewing them further. Also Ambidextrous to an extent, though the fact that it works when dual-wielding or using a shield makes it a bit more flexible.

So if I were designing the character, I'd want to try to make the ability useful with a wider range of equipment. Of course, if your core concept for the character is "good at dual-wielding," and you don't want to duplicate Laughlin Buldar, I'm not sure what you could do to achieve that.

Rikimaru: Ok so I think you're saying Fear X is too much . To revise further:

A: While he is dodging, he gains Fear 1 (MAYBE 2 if other things are balanced out, such as life max etc.). OR

B: While dodging, he may spend 1 fatigue to discard it and move spaces equal to his speed. OR

C: If an attack misses him while he is dodging, he may move 2 spaces.

Mitsune: So right now it seems that it's just a matter of flavor preference; I guess I'll just have to playtest him and see how he does. That said, the curse thing brings a dishonor system to mind that could be implemented, such as doing certain actions costs him honor while other actions restore it etc. but that might end up being too complicated.

Flint: Thank you for the further clarification. To follow your logic (which is sound and I agree with now that you have explained) his ability should be tweaked to make it more accessible in case one handed weapons are not drawn, correct?

A: May exhaust a melee weapon to negate 2 damage just like a shield. Advantage still goes to dual wielding because he can negate twice as opposed to a 2h weapons 1, but his ability still has some function if he HAS to use a 2 hander.

B: Dual wielding a 1h ranged weapon and a 1h melee weapon confers the dual wield bonus to the ranged weapon. Maybe still allow the melee weapon to negate damage.

C: Can use shield as weapons (1red 1 yellow or something like that) and function with 1h weapons for dual wielding purposes.

Again thanks for all the feedback, and please anybody else who is reading this say what you think, even if it's "sounds fine" or "not so hot". This is no way an insult to those who have been posting, just having more voices helps the brainstorming process!