I have to admit I’m pretty disappointed that Gaeta and Cally didn’t make it into the expansion. So to make up for it I decided to make fan versions of them for my group to use and was wondering if I could get help balancing them. Here they are.

Felix Gaeta
Support
Skills:
2 Tactics
2 Engineering
1 Politics/leadership
Abilities:
Dradis contact: After the setup phase of a cylon attack card activate two vipers or civilian ships.
FTL calculations: Once per game you may activate the FTL control as if the jump track were one higher than it currently is.
Weakness:
Trusting: When another player attempts to leave the brig you must add all tactics cards in your hand to the skill check.
Cally Henderson
Support
Skills:
2 Engineering
1 Tactics
1 Piloting
1 Leadership
Abilities:
Scrounger: The card “Jury rigging” Lowers difficulty by five instead of four.
Persuasive: Once per game you may use another player’s unused once per game ability as if it were your own. The ability is now expended.
Weakness:
Specialist: You may not pilot a viper or use the text on card of three or higher strength.

i hate to be meanie mcmeanie again...but cant we give it a rest on homebrew characters and leave it to the designers of the game?

I suppose we could but I’ve always considered half the fun of awesome things to be adding little personal touches.

Exactly! If people wanna play with the game (in a creative sense) let them play with it!

Vonpenguin said:

This would not really work as no one is allowed to know what cards you have and they would not know whether you really did put all your purple cards into the skill check or not without knowing what all your cards are.

Vonpenguin said:

I don't see why she would get Piloting or even Leadership. Her power is a nice idea but stealing someone elses power does feel a bit cheap, especially since they would want to use the power themselves if that is why they picked the character. Don't really have a better idea for a similar power.

I guess I see your point for Geata's weakness. I was mostly trying to highlight how he's a poor judge of character throughout the show. Any suggestions for that?

Well with Cally I was trying to think of something she could do and I thought that maybe evasive maneuvers could be her squeezing a little extra performance out of the ships. And leadership was for a similar reason to her once per game because she does seem to get leaders to do what she wants with some frequency. I was really just stretching partially because I didn't want her to overtake chief in engineering. I do see what you mean about persuasive being cheap though. Maybe she could copy someone’s once a turn once per game?

Copying someone elses power without using up could be ok, but then it would seem like she is a must for most games.

Perhaps something like "may not look at other players loyalty cards and must discard 2 skill cards when a player reveals as a Cylon"

Yeah I really don't want either of them to be that powerful. Just a decent alternative to Chief and whatever Dee can do. I think taking a per turn power might be the best way to go. It could be a life saver but obviously it's not that powerful since it's something someone else can do whenever they want.

That might work though I think it might possibly be too close to Cavil's weakness.

A suggestion for Cally (series spoiler!):

Resilient: Once per game, if successfully targeted by the "Airlock" location, move to Sickbay instead of being executed.

The second time you're out of luck though...

Aren't you hockeyjedi from BGG? ^^

ninjamatic3000 said:

Haha. Nice.

[LNA]Gary said:

Talking to me? Nope, same username there. Don't post much there...

After some new info that was released on BGG I decided to make some minor revisions. Still looking for help balancing.

Felix Gaeta
Support
Skills:
2 Tactics
2 Engineering
1 Politics/leadership
Abilities:
Dradis contact: After the setup phase of a cylon attack card activate two vipers or civilian ships.
FTL calculations: Once per game you may activate the FTL control as if the jump track were one higher than it currently is.
Weakness:
Trusting: You may not check loyalty cards. When a player is executed lose two skill cards.

Cally Henderson
Support
Skills:
2 Engineering
2 Tactics
1 Leadership
Abilities:
Scrounger: When you use an engineering card you may increase or decrease the number on it by one.
Persuasive: Once per game you may use another player’s once per turn ability as if it were your own. Weakness:
Specialist: You may not use the text on a non engineering card of three or higher strength.

"Scrounger: When you use an engineering card you may increase or decrease the number on it by one."

How would this be useful? The only time you use the number is in skillchecks, and you can't say "this one was mine".

For Gaeta, if you are doing early Gaeta I would think it should just be 1 Leadership instead of 1 Politics/Leadership.

If it is meant to reflect later Gaeta, I would think it should be 2T, 1E,1L,1Poly or 2T,1E,2L/Poly.

I didn't mean the strength numbers. I meant like, repair three vipers, lower difficulty by five, increase/decrese a roll by two.

2 T 1E 2L/P might work. I was mostly trying to best reflect him at the point of New Caprica.

I love your first Gaeta ability--creative and strategic. I also think its better than the "rival Gaeta" card created by Ithkrall in his large fan character expansion. I thought I remembered seeing a character, perhaps a third Gaeta, who could replace a roll with a Tactics card from his hand--this is the coolest ability in my opinion.

On the other hand, I think Cally's ability that Ithkrall designed is more interesting than yours ("Team Player: If you play the Scientific Research card before a skill check, add 2 to the positive count of that skill check.")

Btw, it looks like the FFG guys are listening to you "homebrew" creators, because the Pegasus characters have abilities similar to what have been suggested on the forums. Coincidence?? More power to the fan designers, you guys rock!

prof. joe

ProfJoe said:

Thanks for the complement on Gaeta. Can you tell me exactly what it is about Cally's ability you don't like? Or is it just that you prefer the other Cally. I also thought of changing her once a turn to "After your recieve skills step you may discard one card to draw one of equal or lesser value from the corrisponding discard pile."