While thinking about items and how they could be modified/rebalanced I made an overview of how common certain conditions and attack modifiers are, so I thought I share that with you. This Overview is probably only for newcomers, but maybe I have also a few nice pieces for the experts.

Short Overview:

The conditions are Poison, Disease, Stun, Immobilize, Weaken, Burn, Bleeding, Cursed, Doom, Terrified

Very good against heroes are those which require and action to get rid of: Stun, Weaken, Burn and Bleeding . Immobilize is awesome in any case, Curse and Terrified can cripple a hero or monster. Doom just increases the damage by one. Poison and Disease are rather weak and situational. They are usually better in Akt I than Akt II. Mark the fact that monsters and lieutenants can't get rid of some conditions. Monsters and Agents cannot perform skill tests and cannot rest ( Weaken ), Lieutenants have stats but cannot rest.

Attack Modifiers :

Pierce, Reach and Blast are the common ones.

So how common are they?

Shop Items:

Akt I (67 Items) Akt II (48 Items)

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Poison 2 1

Disease 0 2

Stun 4 3

Immobilize 0 1

Weaken 1 1

Burn 1 1

Cursed 0 2

Bleeding 2 (1 self) 2

Doom 1 2

Terrified 3 0

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Pierce 11 9

Blast 1 3

Reach 4 3

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Items to remove/

deny conditions 2 1

Of course: some conditions/attack modifiers are also linked to class decks: (SW=starting weapon)

Runemaster: Blast, all conditions, Pierce (SW)

Necromancer: Blast

Hexer: Pierce

Conjurer: Stun (SW)

Geomancer: Blast (2x), Burn, Stun , Immobilize (SW)

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Disciple: Stun (SW), remove condition

Spiritspeaker: Reach (SW), Poisoned

Apotecary: Poisoned (SW), Pierce, remove condition

Bard: Pierce (SW), remove condition

Prophet: Reach (SW), Weaken (SW)

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Wildlander: nothing

Thief: Stun, Immobilize

Bounty Hunter: Doom , Piece (SW)

Treasure Hunter: Pierce , Pierce (SW), Reach (SW)

Stalker: Weakened, Pierce, Poison , Immobilized (SW)

Shadow walker: Bleed(SW), Pierce , Copy attack of a Monster

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Knight: Stun

Berserker: Immobilized

Champion: nothing

Marshal: Reach (SW)

Skirmisher: Bleed, Pierce, Remove Stun or Immobilize , Pierce (SW)

Beastmaster: Pierce, Pierce(SW), Reach (SW), Pierce (Wolf)

And some conditions and attack modifiers are linked to heroes (HA=heroic ability, HF=heroic feat):

Stun : Asharian (HF,HA), Vyrah the Falconer (HF)

Immobilized : Dezra the Vile (HF), Shiver (HF), Thaiden (HF)

Pierce : Jaes the Exile, Nara the Fang, Pathfinder Duric (all HF)

Reach : Lord Howthrone (HA)

Immune to Poison : Isper (HA)

Immune to Immobilized : Logan (HA)

Can remove conditions : Grisban (HA), Shala (HA), Isper (HF)

So what can we conclude from that? The by far most common attack modifier is Pierce, but most of these are Pierce 1 or Pierce 2. This modifier stacks however. The second most common modifier is Reach followed by Blast. All three are great for heroes. Having these modifiers either bound to the class or hero gives definitely a head start.

Regarding conditions: the four conditions from the base game appear naturally more often than the other ones. Surprisingly, some conditions don't show up in the Akt I shop items at all (Cursed, Diseased) or are extremely uncommon (Doom, Weaken, Burn, Bleeding). The best Akt I items to deal or remove conditions are trinkets/shields since they stay useful in Akt 2 (Shadow Bracers, Belt of Alchemy, Blessed Shield). With Akt 2 weapons on the other hand it is impossible for heroes to terrify monsters (only with skills) and most other conditions are rather hard to get as well. Being immune to curse is big deal however (Obsidian Scalemail). This lack of access to conditions is not a big problem for heroes since most monsters die pretty fast anyway, but some conditions are very useful against lieutenants, especially in end fights. The Runemaster with Runic Sorcery (access to ALL conditions for 2 XP) really stands out here.

It is also interesting to see that the options to remove conditions are not that common. Spiritspeaker and Prophet are the two Healer classes without a skill to remove a condition and apart from that, there is only the Belt of Alchemy, the curse doll (search card) and heroes like Isper, Shala and Grisban. High stats and items to improve those are helpful to get rid of poison, disease and curse, but some conditions like terrified will stick. The rest will either cause damage or cost and action to get rid of. Annoying.

This leads me to the Overlord:

53 Monster groups exist so far (all expansions, but not the new Chains that rust).

Monster groups with access to the condition

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Poison 6

Disease 5

Stun 4

Immobilize 9

Weaken 1

Burn 1

Cursed 2

Bleeding 2

Doom 2

Terrified 1

All conditions 1

------------------------------------------------------------------

Pierce 11

Blast 2 (total 10 with multi-target attacks)

Reach/Extend 7

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Immune to piece: 2 (Golems, Ironbound)

Groups to make conditions more sticky: Carrion Drakes, Changelings

Finally, the lieutenants are ok with conditions as well. 2 have access to all, 3 curse, 2 immobilize, 2 can stun. (The rest is not so important.) Bol-Goreth can get rid of 1 condition per turn.

However, only Baron Zachareth has access to pierce. (I have left out the 3 new lieutenants, since the Akt 2 versions are not yet released at this point)

So, in summary, if the heroes have no way to remove conditions consistently, the OL can choose the right monster groups to cripple them completely. Terrified is probably the most annoying condition for the heroes (ex aequo with immobilize ) while doom is great if a lot of small monsters (Goblin archers, Bandits) focus their fire on a single target. Poison and disease are great if applied to a low HP hero early in the quest, but only if the hero can't get rid of it. Cursed can be extremely helpful against warriors and stunning multiple targets at once will drive the heroes crazy. There is also an OL card to remove conditions if the heroes start to curse your Giants or so (Dark Remedy).

Final remark: There are more monster groups with terrified coming our way, but I find it a bit sad that there is only one group with burn and one with weaken. Also, I think we can safely assume that ' The Chains that Rust' will bring Act 2 items with terrify as well. I will update this post once it is out.

So, I hope this helps to plan some new strategies and evil plans.

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@ Atom4geVampire: your monster characteristic's tool was very helpful. Do you plan to have item characteristics as well? I guess so.

Edited August 4, 2016 by Chaoticus

Very nice writeup. I always felt that non-base game conditions are a bit underrepresented.

If only they had done something like monster traits but for conditions, which would allow items and monsters to deal thematic conditions. This sadly was a big design oversight.

Discussions are going on in this forum to create modified items which do exactly that. Nothing complete yet.

The saddest thing is, how much this limited the monsters in the h&m sets as well as the agents from the lieutenant packs. They were all limited to the base game conditions.

While it is undoubtly possible modify this (in fact I did this myself in a custom scenario), it will sadly always stay a houserule.

It´s would not be impossible to revise items, monsters, agent, lieutenants and relics to incorporate new conditions, but it´s quite a major change.

I agree, it is a bit sad, but I can understand the policy of FFG to make sure that every expansion requires only the base game. They simply maximize their sales. From a thematic point of view, I don't like it at all. Some HOT monsters deserve burn in my opinion, and using weaken instead of poison or disease once or twice would not hurt.