Your thoughts?

Below-average stats for a 4-conquest hero.

Having 2/2 traits is barely better than 2/1, and probably still worse than having 3 in one trait.

Only 2 skills. That's a huge drawback. The only other hero with only 2 starting skills gets 5 dice in a single trait to compensate.

Hero ability significantly worse than Arvel Worldwalker's--the option to draw more types of feats is marginal, and compared to Arvel, this hero has a smaller feat hand size and collects half as many feats during the game.

I'm prepared to say that this hero sucks. Probably not to the point of being unplayable, but enough that I'd be very unlikely to take her in a draw-3-pick-1 scenario.

If you raised her wounds to 16 and added another skill, I'd still rate her as slightly weak but probably within the normal spread.

Antistone said:

Thanks for the feedback. That's why I asked for input. I'll make some changes and post back a little later.

Ok, just for grins as I'm learning.

That second one has above-average stats and completely focused trait dice. That "redirect" ability is strictly better than +1 armor against melee attacks, which is a skill (Parry). Not one of the best skills, admittedly, but not the worst, either. I'm concerned mostly because she's already got good armor, and in Descent, every additional point of armor is worth more than the previous one.

The max feat hand size bonus probably doesn't affect much either way, but I'd drop it because (a) she's already pretty strong and (b) you should avoid making the hero ability unnecessarily complex if you already need to reduce the font size just to make it fit.

Compare Battlemage Jaes. If memory serves, he's got the same stats (and is the only official hero with exactly 12/4/2/4), a similar 2/1 skill split, a 2/1 trait split, and a hero ability that basically just allows him to function as a magic-based tank at all.

I'm going to say she's on the strong side.

In this case, since her hero ability is better than a skill and she's already got good stats and traits, reducing her to only 2 skills might be a reasonable way to balance her (since it's "like" having 3 skills, one of them is just written into the hero abililty instead of the skill block). Alternately, I'd consider moving one trait die from melee to ranged, removing 1 armor while raising her health to 16, and probably dropping her fatigue to 3 as well.

By the way, there are no established rules for this and I'm not exactly an expert. You should just take the stuff I say as one guy's opinion, not as gospel.

If you want to see my hero designs, though, they're posted here .

Antistone said:

I don't mind your input at all. I need to play test her, and the other heroes I'm working on (I'll post them later). I have a nephew who loves the game and he'll help me sort some stuff out.

I'll go ahead and try out your suggestions and see what happens.

Ok, the latest. Upped the wounds to 16, set the traits to 2/1, and removed the feat hand size increase (put that into another character).

Ok, latest version. Changed the ability to not be like Parry, but a new, more powerful one.

I seriously question whether that's more powerful. 3 fatigue is a pretty hefty cost, and it seems likely the overlord will simply make sure to move other monsters away before making a melee attack against her, which could make it quite weak even if it were free.

Unless the intention is that you can redirect the attack back to the attacking figure (not entirely sure whether "another figure" is meant to exclude the attacker or just herself). In which case it might be mildly useful, but she still doesn't have even the threat of using it unless she ends her turn with full fatigue, and melee monsters can always go after another hero while ranged/magic monsters attack her.

This sort of ability could be devastating if the opponent didn't know you had it...like if it were on a feat card, for example. But since hero abilities and skills are open, you have to assume the overlord will adjust his tactics in response.

Antistone said:

Gotcha. Good points.

Yes, the intention was that she could bounce it back at the attacker, or even to another friendly figure if desired (which is dastardly, but potentially very useful).

I'll think about it some more and post later.

Antistone said:

This is a great use of the Taunt skill.

1) Taunt requires extremely specific hero formations to be effective against melee attacks. If the monster isn't within melee range of you, you can't force it to target you, so you have to arrange it so that the monster can't reach any space that is adjacent to its intended target but not adjacent to you.

2) Making a hero that's only good if they draw one specific skill is a Bad Idea

3) Intentionally designing a hero to synergize with a specific skill that some players already argue is overpowered is probably an even worse idea

Also, redirecting an attack to a friendly hero may occasionally be useful, but suggesting that as a legitimate use of an ability that normally redirects attacks back to enemies is insulting. If you removed the ability to redirect to allies, that wouldn't measurably change the value of the ability.

Incidentally, if you want to keep that ability, it should specify when in the attack sequence you choose to use it.

Antistone said:

1. Agreed.

2. Trying to avoid that.

3. Not the intention at all, I didn't think about Taunt until just before I posted that comment. I'm still building my knowledge of the game overall.

I meant potentially useful in the sense that an attack could be redirected to another hero that may have better defenses than Thriva, if agreed to by the player, of course. A player that abused such an ability would deserve the backlash from the other players.

Yes, I updated the current revision of Thriva to specify when the redirect happens, as you were replying. Great minds think alike.

Perhaps a better ability description would be:

"During the Overlord's turn Thriva may spend 1 fatigue to change the target of one Melee attack made against her, after dice are rolled, to a figure adjacent to her."

i like the Character but i agree 3 fatigue is too much unless she gets 6 fatigue to start

that mabe a solve

Ok, photobucket did not like me trying to go back and change some images... The latest version, uploaded today, actually shows up as the image in reply #7 from me, up above. The ability cost has been reduced to 1 fatigue.