Hello all,

With the advent of the many Talisman expansions, many of the original character classes seem unbalanced, either over- or under-powered.

The following is a list of tweeks that my friends and I have come up with to make the original characters more balanced.

Assassin: of all the assassination concepts out there, we like ours the best: the Assassin can assassinate any Strength-based creature, as long as the fight is not a surprise. Cards drawn from the adventure deck and fights that occur due to die rolls (e.g. Dragons at the Crags) cannot be assassinated.

Spell cyclers: With the exception of the Wizard, all our spell cyclers now draw new spells ONLY at the beginning of their turns.

Wizard: Gets a new spell the second he has zero.

Troll: He can heal AND move on the same roll of 6.

Monk: Probably still the most brokenly powerful class in the game. My sharp-eyed friends noted that the new wording of the Monk reads "cannot use weapons or armor IN BATTLE" which means he can use them in psychic combat. I put a stop to that: he cannot use weapons or armor AT ALL. In fact, to help out other players vs the Monk, our rule is that he can't even pick up armor or weapons, except the axe.

Ghoul: Probably the worst character in the game. His abilities contradict each other. We solved this thus: he can gain 1 life any time he wins deals damage in Psychic Combat. He begins the game with +1 Strength.

Minstrel: He can "seduce" any obviously female female follower in the game, including St. Josephine, the Avenger, etc.

Sorceress: She can "seduce" only non-female, non-unicorn followers.

All the other character classes are more or less balanced.

The Monk's "ability" regarding Weapons and Armour does not allow him to use the items that come with the Core Game in Psychic Combat.

The wording on those Objects is related to Battle only.

...and yes, this will give the Monk an opportunity to use other types of Weapons and Armour in future that are related to Psychic Combat. This is not an oversight..

The 4ER Assassin has been nerfed by many groups. In 2E (?) he could only assassinate when he attacked but not when he was attacked. And when you land on a face up adventure card or another character is the only time you are on the attack. That distinction has been reintroduced in most of the groups I've heard from abroad who hail back to 2E. Similar "juiced up" characters have seen de-evolutionary changes as well.

The distinction with the Monk is a bizarre one to consider. I don't know how one would ever create a Weapon for Psychic Combat. Well, okay, I sure someone could make a card classified by that subtype... disregarding that it makes no sense and breaks the standard understanding of what "weapon" is in Talisman.

And another monkey wrench hits the gears.

There are quite a few weapons and armor for Psychic Combat in the existing expansions. There's a psychic version helmet and shield, which is boring and doesn't make much sense, a psychic sword that can only be used vs spirits, and a necklace (which is REALLY stretching it) that can freeze other characters... but is only really useful if you can initiate psychic combat.

The first time I "let" my friend use psychic stuff for the monk, he got the psychic shield and psychic necklace, and faced lots of psychic enemies. I swear the man has a horseshoe surgically implanted somewhere.

I think the problem here is the word "shield" (etc.) combined with an illustration of an actual shield (etc).

One of my expansions has an item called "Astral Shield," but it is a piece of head gear. Making an actual shield that is labeled as Armour, or a weapon used in Psychic Combat, is still an Armour and a Weapon and should preclude the Monk from using it. Then again, the whole Monk thing was so obviously based in part on Friar Tuck, who was an expert longsword fencer in the Franciscan style.

The only reason the Monk's ability was ever worded as "in Battle/Combat" was likely because of the Axe also being used for making a raft. It would have been better to describe the ability as "You may not use any Weapons or Armour, but you may use an Axe to build a raft." That would have been more to the point, lacking in some silly exceptions, and thereby he could still collect other such objects for trade, the alchemist, etc., but not use them.

Suddenly all the confusion is gone, eh? Some games need a real editor or someone with better knowledge of rhetoric.