Seeing other topics about the best heroes, I haven't noticed anything about Runewitch Astara who is, IMO, great. First, she has an AWESOME ability combined with her excelent running skills. Second, her traits and skills can make her a lethal magic combatant. Third, give her a divine retribution or a telekinisis and she'll become unstobable.What do you think?

If you're in a RtL campaign, she is kinda nerfed (3 squares instead of 6) and Telekinesis is removed from the game as well. The glyph activation can come in handy for the OL that places his/her monsters on the glyph, other than that, there are other heroes I would choose before her.

I do like her, but her ability suffers from one weakness: If you are not near a glyph, or if all the glyphs in the game have been triggered her ability is no useless. She's one of the only characters that has an ability that stops working at some point in the game completely.

That's pretty much the only reason I put some other mage type heroes above her.

many characters have at some point useless abilitys. for example Arvel Worldwalker, ronan of the wild, nanok, ..

they get picked because they make the game easier in the beginning. however in my oppinion runewitch astarra is not that great, she is cool for not campaign play in my oppionion. in rtl/sob i would not pick her (only if i draw aurim and another useless one )

Turric4n said:

Wow, you and I have very very different definitions of "uslesss" if you put think Ronan or Nanok's hero abilities are useless

never said they are useless. if you quote something ,whats right in the post above you, you should also read it.

once you find a dragon chain mail for example nanoks ability is useless. this has a greater impact on sob where he does not get 2+x armor. it does not stop working (unlike arvel worldwalkers ability.. so runewitch is not the only one with this problem), it just is inferiour to another ability like thalias, or mordrogs. they get nearly the same armor BUT abilitys from the armor in addition.

Turric4n said:

Oh trust me I did.

Ronan is never useless especially in RtL and SoB because its a free dice that upgrades for free

Nanok...I fail to see how getting the Dragon Chain Mail or any other armor except Ghost Armor makes his ability useless since he can't equip armor. It can still reach high levels, especially when you add Other items that give armor bonuses.

at some point you can have maximum dice with all heroes, making pico useless.

thalia: dragon scale male = 6 armor, usefull ability, You are immune to Bleed, Burn, and Poison.

nanok: nothing = 7 armor, +1 armor, cannot lose his armor(value). not beeing able to lose an equipement however can be a huge advantage.

I'd agree with Remy, neither of those ever become useless. If you have Pico, why upgrade that last die? Why not use that armor/XP on a different upgrade?

And Nanok's ability is definitely not useless, especially considering there is only one super-good-armor per treasure deck. With Nanok, this frees up an armor for someone else to use, and the group is now twice as uber-tough.

-shnar

Turric4n said:

Pico is always useful because the granted die is completely free. There's no training payment, no carrying capacity problems, and no downsides whatsoever. There can't be any situations where Pico is totally useless because, at the very least, you're saving the training cost and time of getting a gold die. Usually, Pico offers weapon flexibility that comes in very useful against soaring monsters.

Nanok's ability is always useful, because another hero would require armor. Simple as that. Replace Nanok with Thalia and you have to get her armor: A party with Thalia in Dragon Scale Mail is arguably worse off than one with Nanok at full armor and Another Hero with Dragon Scale Mail.

Basically, those are two terrible examples for whatever point you're trying to make about weak character abilities.

Turric4n said:

Nanok will also have +1 movement over Tahlia in dragon scale mail.

the topic was runewitch astarra. and it was argued her ability gets useless. WHEN does her ability get useless? when everything is explored. but by that time she can save the heroes so much trouble by creating far better situations. thats no weakness. that i compared to other hero abilitys which can get at some point obsolete. of course you dont buy the last die when you carry pico but then.. why not pick a character with 3 die in first place if you can.

of course nanok is one of the top tiers and so he got nerfed to 5 maximum base armor. but he does not need an item though ;-)

nanok has 4 movement. thalia effectively 6. your point again?

Turric4n said:

Not if she's wearing some of them heavy armors...

-shnar

Turric4n said:

First, I agree that Runewitch Astarra is a first class hero. Stats wise, she's as good as it gets as a Runner (5M5F, 12W 2CT, and her special is very useful for a runner in particular). On top of that, she is an excellent mage, with 3 dice and 3 skill picks. Only Carthos and Landrec are 'better' mages (Andira's pierce ability has both pluses and minuses so I don't rate her any higher than Astarra or Thorn as a mage). So she can do double duty and add a lot of flexibilty to a hero party.

Second, you don't seem to understand Ronan's capability's with Pico. Ronan does have 3 dice in the first place! (2 + pico). He also has 2 dice in a second combat area (1 + pico) giving him excellent flexibility. Further, he also gets to upgrade one of his dice for free every campaign level (pico). Even further, he can lend his freely upgraded dice to another hero if he isn't planning to be using it a lot! That gives him massive flexibility. He is pretty good runner (4F5M with a useful 1/2 skill split that can get him tattoos etc as well as running skills) and if he is acting as a runner then he can pass Pico to a combat specialist, buffing someone like Landrec or Hawthorne or Talia improving their takedown of the nasty stuff by quite a lot. In short, Ronan is a first class hero from a party perspective because no matter what the party style or composition he makes it better.

Corbon said:

+1

"Quick, take the cat....DO NOT...anger the cat"